https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/vermont-is-a-great-state-and-dc-would-be-too

There is no good reason to disenfranchise almost 3/4’s of a million Americans because of where they live. The Dakota Territory was split in two to give Republicans two extra seats. Several other Western states were admitted to bolster GOP power.

While we are at it, let’s bring in Puerto Rico which has more Americans than 20 states. The upside is that Mississippi would not be the lowest per capita income state. A bragging point perhaps.

Time to even the score a bit.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-03-21/half-of-republican-men-say-they-dont-want-the-vaccine-theyre-mooching-off-the-rest-of-us

“Herd immunity against the coronavirus will require between 70% and 85% of the population to be vaccinated, Fauci estimates. It’s a new disease, so nobody knows the precise level, and new variants of the virus could push the number higher.

“If a significant number of people do not get vaccinated, that would delay where we would get to that endpoint,” Fauci warned recently. 

And the longer it takes, the more people will get sick.

Paul, Cawthorn and their colleagues are casting themselves as courageous individualists. In fact, they’re acting as epidemiological moochers. They’re free riders, relying on the rest of us to protect them by helping the country reach herd immunity.”

A whole ‘nuther take on American exceptionalism.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/08/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-signs-law-shortening-early-voting-closing-polls-earlier-election-day/6869317002/

Closing the polls earlier is part of that effort. Now what “fraud” is that supposed to stop? That working voters now have a shorter time to dash to the polls after work seems pretty obvious effort to reduce participation. Virtually no fraud was found or proven in 2020. And the main reasons that drove cases to SCOTUS were about changing voting rules by the state. So how is targeting individuals anything more than suppression? The GOP are chicken poop petty tyrants who can’t sell their agenda, so they cheat.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-dr-seuss-fundraising_n_604b5123c5b672fce4ebf541?ncid=APPLENEWS00001

Signing a book he did not author is a bit odd. But even more so is that “Green Eggs and Ham” is not one of the books the Seuss Foundation decided to not reprint and Cruz is selling it as a “collector’s item”. Was the ex-president right about “lyin’ Ted”? Can’t make this stuff up. No wonder the GOP is trying so hard to rig elections in their favor.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-weisselberg-idUSKBN2AZ0IO

In the movie “The Untouchables”, there is a masterfully suspense laden scene involving a baby carriage and the arrival of Capone’s accountant at the train station. The accountant kind of resembled Mr. Weisselberg, Trump accountant since 1973.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/

A long article steeped in biological and climate data regarding the geological history as we know it. It may sound alarmist, but the reality is that it puts geologic time in comparison to human time in a fascinating way. To put another way, Mothership Earth is a pretty unforgiving and hostile place for long stretches. Human development is hardly a blip in time. Climate science is not my expertise by any stretch, but the article is engrossing nonetheless.

https://www.mic.com/p/the-milky-way-is-probably-full-of-dead-alien-civilizations-according-to-physicists-53931796

“Perhaps most importantly, they took into consideration the tendency of advanced civilizations to experience self-annihilation. And as it turns out, any alien life that came before us likely gave into that tendency long before we showed up on the scene.”

Perhaps intelligence is not exactly the go to quality for long term survival.
Or not.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-electric-bills-were-28-billion-higher-under-deregulation-11614162780

ENRON was just the beginning of a long road of what can now be called a “Texas discount”.
“Those deregulated Texas residential consumers paid $28 billion more for their power since 2004 than they would have paid at the rates charged to the customers of the state’s traditional utilities, according to the Journal’s analysis of data from the federal Energy Information Administration.”

“We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us,” Washington County GOP Chairman Dave Ball told Pittsburgh-area CBS affiliate KDKA-TV.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/538964-gop-official-on-toomey-wasnt-sent-to-do-the-right-thing-or-whatever-he-said

It sure sounds like the GOP would prefer pure democracy. Representatives be damned.  Continue reading “GOP finally tells the truth.” →

https://digitaledition.pilotonline.com/html5/mobile/production/default.aspx?pnum=10&edid=fd8d1ef1-f8ab-40c0-97e9-5dd744ca42d9

 The problem is we still have 47,000 miners who can’t or won’t move and we’re promised lots of coal mining jobs by the last administration. However,  that 47,000 is 7% less than in 2017. Solve this issue and West Virginia will be Democrat again.