Quote of the week: “Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens.”
– Marjorie Taylor Greene
1.
For thirty years photographer Ryan Weideman took ‘snaps’ of the folks who rode in his NYC cab. He was both subject and photographer in many of them, an early version of the selfie, except these images have power, especially in stark black & white.
Some articles about the guy seem to suggest he was not unlike Vivian Maier, whose work I love, in that he just picked up a camera and naively started shooting. He actually graduated with an MFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts, and as his biography states, he already had a style greatly influenced by the other photographers of the period including Lee Friedlander and Mark Cohen.
As Einstein said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Driving his taxi during the night shift in Times Square certainly helped to keep up the curiosity quotient and create an edge to his work.
2.
I wrote about the Kansas Senate finalizing a new congressional map that could hand the GOP six of its nine congressional districts in 2022 a week or so ago. Since then the Sisyphean efforts of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly to veto the map was thwarted this week. The GOP-controlled House cobbled together by 85-37 margin for a two-thirds majority necessary to thwart the governor’s veto of the map known as Ad Astra 2.
“The House voted to override the governor’s veto of the extremely gerrymandered Ad Astra 2 map,” House Democratic Leader Tom Sawyer, a Wichita Democrat said. “The public could not have been more clear. They repeatedly demanded — through email, through phone call and even in-person at town halls — that the redistricting maps be constitutional, just and fair. Ad Astra 2 makes a mockery of the redistricting guidelines and betrays the public trust.”
Sure glad we don’t have any crazies in the Arizona legislature…
3.
You’ve got to love a headline that screams Ron DeSantis Signals He’d Be Open to Making Florida an Anti-Gay Hellhole.
On Tuesday, the Florida Senate Education Committee passed the Parental Rights in Education bill, proposed by Republican State Senator Dennis Baxley, that would bar school districts from encouraging classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.
DeSantis spewed that “Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write. They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.… The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools. We don't want them to be engines to be putting things like the CRT (critical race theory) that we talked about, things that are divisive and are not accurate of course when you start talking about some of the stuff that they're teaching with it, and making sure that we're really focusing on the basics.” Who is this ‘we’ he’s referring to?
Even the prez jumped into the fray by tweeting, "I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are. I have your back, and my Administration will continue to fight for the protections and safety you deserve.”
According to CBS News, Studies have shown that nationally, schools serve as a vital support system for LGBTQ youth. The Trevor Project's 2021 National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health found that of the more than 82,000 youth who responded, only one-third considered their home LGBTQ-affirming, while 50% considered their school to be so. The organization released a statement on Tuesday condemning Florida's proposed bill, saying it would result in "erasing LGBTQ identity, history, and culture — as well as LGBTQ students themselves." The organization also said it would effectively allow schools to "out" students to their parents without their consent.
4.
The Guardian has reported a glimmer of good news in the wacky-World-of-Plastics. Researchers who have been working on plastic-eating enzymes for many years have linked the PETase and MHETase enzymes together, creating a “super-enzyme” that could eat PET about six times faster than the two enzymes working separately. This is being led by Prof John McGeehan, director of the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth.
I reported in August of last year that there are some alternatives on the market for packaging other than petrochemical plastics. I mentioned this article in Medium that introduces some more environmentally friendly alternatives . This company in Boulder, for instance, states “It’s our mission to help migrate fossil fuel based plastic users to our far greener option. We aim to serve our planet, investors, clients and dedicated team through the development and distribution of premium eco-friendly polymer solutions. We are uniquely positioned to leverage a more inviting regulatory environment, technology, supply and our own marketing expertise. Our intent is to raise awareness and offer comparably-priced polymer alternatives which will revolutionize this industry. If the prices and properties are competitive, it’s our experience that the market will adopt bioplastic alternatives. We have built our company on this premise.”
Eat that plastic, enzymes, but people should just stop tossing their one-use plastic bottles anywhere they damn please (he exclaimed, clutching his Mamie-era pearls…). My hopes aren’t all that high, however. When I was working at the University of Arizona I was witness to plastics galore in the receptacles meant for trash, even when there was a recycle bin within eye sight. And this was among the more ‘educated’ populace. At least make something useful outta the stuff.
5.
That darn Liz Cheney is starting to sound like Hillary with her deplorable comment: “I’m not going to convince the crazies and I reject the crazies,” she said of Wyoming’s Republican leadership. “I reject the notion that somehow we don’t have to abide by the rule of law. And the people right now who are in the leadership of our state party, I’m not trying to get their support because they’ve abandoned the Constitution.”
Last Saturday, Cheney spent her evening with reporters and media executives at the annual gathering of the Wyoming Press Association while over 200 miles away, the ‘crazies’ were attending the Crimson Gala, a prom-themed fund-raiser at a Holiday Inn that drew 150 of the most active conservatives in Carbon, Sweetwater and Uinta Counties. Gotta love high school! The Holiday Inn! Does this look like fun or what?
Running against Cheney in Wyoming is Harriet Hageman, who once called Donald J. Trump “racist and xenophobic,” but now says that “he was the greatest president of my lifetime.” Jeez, ya think her change of heart has anything to do with money and greed? Or is it moral principle? She seems to be playing it safe by saying she didn’t know who the legitimate winner of the 2020 election was (“I don’t know the answer”) and couldn’t say if former Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to block congressional certification of President Biden’s election (“I’m not an elections attorney”). “I wasn’t there on Jan. 6. I can’t tell you everything Pence did or didn’t do. What you need to understand is that, for most people out in the real world, none of us really care that much about what happened on Jan. 6.”
Where is this ‘real world’ she speaks of? Hmmmm…(strokes beard). I hope it’s not more high school proms.
6.
H C Richardson points out in last night’s post that, basically, our national media sucks. She wrote that The defining narrative of the 2016 election was about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails, allegedly mishandled. Again and again, the email story was front-page news. A 2017 study in the Columbia Journalism Review by Duncan J. Watts and David M. Rothschild found that the New York Times in six days published as many cover stories about Clinton’s emails as they did about “all the policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.” The network news gave more time to Clinton’s emails than to all policy issues combined.
I mention this because this morning I flipped through all the major network news programs and every last one of them is about ‘Biden’s’ inflation problem. And the Olympics. And the Super Bowl. Not one mentioned a word about the orange guy’s blatant breaking of the law concerning presidential documents.
Last week the Guardian published that the former president faces 19 legal actions, from alleged financial improprieties to his role in the 6 January insurrection. BUT, he just gets a *shrug* from the DOJ after finding out that he made off with boxes and boxes of classified and other presidential documents that he stuck under his California King in Florida. AND, the icing on the cake is just yesterday the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot, finding few records of calls by President Donald J. Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them. Will anything ever stick? Will he overcome all obstacles and rise once again to dictatorship? Stay tuned to the wacky world of American politics right here at the Homestead Dispatch…
If only I’d said gazpacho…
And now…