Bee Should Go

This Samantha Bee, whoever she is, should, of course, be fired immediately and her show should be cancelled.

As with Roseanne, I don’t watch the show and have no interest in the genre. But this kind of behavior is not OK. Calling women cunts on TV is not OK.

People who see some sort of a difference between Barr and Bee are damn hypocrites. The so-called feminists who are justifying Samantha Bee are a disgrace. And the wails of “but she did it for the kiddies” are nauseating.

The only decent thing to do is to support the firing of both of these disgusting quacks, Barr and Bee.

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15 responses to “Bee Should Go”

Shakti

June 1, 2018

The New Estimate of Deaths in Puerto Rico Reflects a Broader and Shameful Neglect

fter Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, last September 20th, leaving three and a half million Americans without power, clean water, or access to medical care, President Donald Trump publicly suggested that maybe, for people like them, the situation was kind of normal. The island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure”; the electrical grid was already in “terrible shape”; the government was in debt, the leaders didn’t know how to lead, and its truck drivers had to be exhorted even to show up for their jobs. Even as Puerto Rico slipped into a blackout that lasted, in parts of the island, for months—and, last month, again engulfed it almost entirely, after some post-hurricane repairs went wrong—Trump said, “They want everything to be done for them.” The implication was that these Americans were trying to turn images of their ordinary poverty into a special bonus, all because of a little rain and wind.

That stance—that disdain—is one of the reasons why a new report on the number of deaths in Puerto Rico attributable to Maria, led by researchers at Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health and published, this week, in The New England Journal of Medicine, is so crucial. It should be a source of shame for everyone who got tired of thinking about Puerto Rico—perhaps especially, but not only, the President. The researchers’ approach was, precisely, to try to determine what was normal in Puerto Rico, in terms of the number of deaths in a three-month period, and to compare that figure to the numbers in the storm’s wake. They found that there were four thousand six hundred and sixty-five excess deaths.

“We calculated a 62% increase in the mortality rate from September 20 through December 31 in 2017 as compared with the same period in 2016, corresponding to an annual mortality rate of 14.3 deaths” per thousand residents, the researchers wrote. And they added that that number might actually be conservative, because of their methodology: they also relied on household surveys, conducted between January 17th and February 24th of this year, and “we could not survey single-person households in which a death had occurred.” That is, if a person living alone had died in the darkness of the storm, that death would remain obscure. For that single-person population, the researchers used the “normal” numbers from 2016. If they had not—if they had been less cautious—the number of excess deaths their study yielded would have been five thousand seven-hundred and forty.

The official death toll, calculated by the Puerto Rican authorities, is sixty-four, but no one—except, perhaps, the President, who, when the number was still sixteen, bragged about how much better the outcome was than with Katrina—really believed that. (There is still uncertainty about the Katrina death toll, which many estimates place between one and two thousand.) For one thing, for a death to make it into that two-digit tally it had to be confirmed by an office in San Juan, which meant that either the body had to be taken to the capital or that a medical examiner had to go to where the body was. The wide discrepancy in the numbers, in other words, is not simply attributable to differing definitions of what it means to die as the result of a storm. There is a shared recognition that it does not just mean, say, drowning. As the Harvard report notes, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths can be directly attributed to a tropical cyclone if they are caused by forces related to the event, such as flying debris, or if they are caused by unsafe or unhealthy conditions resulting in injury, illness, or loss of necessary medical services.” One might add deaths that can be attributed to conditions resulting from political indifference and bigotry.

Other analyses, based on incomplete official data—which the Puerto Rican government has said it is reviewing and, according to the Harvard researchers, has, in part, declined to share—have put the total at more than a thousand deaths. Rick Scott, the governor of Florida, who is running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, visited Puerto Rico this week—Florida has many voters who care about the island. When he was asked if he thought that the Harvard numbers were reliable, he said, according to the Tampa Bay Times, “Whatever the number is, it’s—I mean, you just—you know, it’s horrible.” That’s true enough, but what the real number is, and what contributed to it, matters. There are other studies underway; every lost American deserved to be counted.

One in ten of the deaths that the report tallied were directly attributable to the storm; the greatest number, though, came because medical care was interrupted or denied. The problems included not being able to get medicine, finding medical facilities closed, being unable to reach a doctor, and having no electricity to run respirators and other equipment. The study also captured a high level of household disruption, with people moving around or off the island; the full scope and political impact of the post-Maria migration still needs to be measured. There were also homes that couldn’t be surveyed because they had been abandoned.

Among the more devastating statements in the report, in a quiet way, is this one: “Our estimates are roughly consistent with press reports that evaluated deaths in the first month after the hurricane.” That is, they matched the stories in the media—the interviews, the footage—about what was happening on the ground. Similarly, the Harvard report notes that the deaths from a lack of medical care are “consistent with the widely reported disruption of health systems.” And again: “Many survey respondents were still without water and electricity at the time of sampling, a finding consistent with other reports.” And yet we somehow suppose that those same estimates come, now, as a shock. We saw the pictures; we heard the reports. What did we think they added up to? Not to sixty-four; not to the grade that Trump said that he would give his Administration’s response, on a scale of one to ten: “I’d say it was a ten.” The shocking thing is that we can still pretend to be surprised.

When Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, was asked about the Harvard report, she responded with a vague restatement of how well everyone was working together. It was, for this White House, a normal response. And it was not enough. It didn’t even come close.

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Shakti

June 1, 2018

One More To Go: Illinois Ratifies Equal Rights Amendment

linois lawmakers have voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, affirming equal rights for women and putting the legislation just one state away from potentially being adopted by the U.S. Constitution. The passage comes 36 years after the original deadline for ratification set by Congress.

Opponents of the amendment said that voting on it now was merely a symbolic gesture; some also said the protections it outlined in 1972 already apply to women today. But supporters said it’s important — now more than ever — for the government to state clearly that women and men have equal rights under the law.

The Illinois House approved the ERA on Wednesday night, just before the end of the chamber’s regular session. There were hugs and high-fives as Democratic legislators, including a number of female lawmakers, stood, cheered and hugged as the result was announced.

“It was close,” reports Rachel Otwell of NPR Illinois. “Members booed as it appeared it might have fallen short. But then, two more legislators voted affirmatively. It passed with a single vote to spare.”…

The Illinois Senate voted to ratify the ERA in April.

In the 1970s, the ERA failed to become part of the Constitution, falling just three states short of ratification — a result that stood despite extending the original 1979 deadline to 1982.

Wednesday’s approval was a stark turnabout for Illinois, the state from which conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, the founder of the Eagle Forum, had mounted her fierce opposition to the ERA in the 1970s. When the original 1979 deadline neared with no passage in sight, Schlafly threw an anti-Equal Rights Amendment dinner in Washington, with U.S. Sens. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, as honored guests.

Despite the lapse in deadline for ratification, the ERA’s supporters say Congress can revive the amendment….

Until last year, no U.S. state had voted to ratify the amendment in 40 years. But that changed when Nevada ratified the ERA in March 2017.

The approval by Illinois sets up the possibility that one of the 13 remaining states that have not ratified the ERA can now claim to have cast the decisive vote. Most Southern states have not ratified the amendment; neither have Utah or Arizona.

“Virginia could — and should — put the Equal Rights Amendment over the top,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said in a tweet on Thursday.

But the federal amendment failed anew in Virginia’s legislature earlier this year, to chants of “Shame!” from backers who had come to the state Capitol in Richmond to push for ratification.

“The #MeToo movement has underscored the importance of strong legal protections for women’s rights, and our resolve to secure these Constitutional guarantees is unwavering,” National Organization for Women President Toni Van Pelt said in a statement to NPR.

Van Pelt added, “There’s still more to be done to correct this shameful failure of our Constitution.”

The decades-long delay in ratification isn’t the first slowdown for the ERA, which Congress approved in March 1972 — some 49 years after it was first introduced.

The constitutional amendment was initially put forth by Alice Paul, an economist and organizer who helped to found the National Woman’s Party — and who marched for the ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote in 1920. Paul worked with another prominent suffragist, Crystal Eastman, on the ERA language.

“Alice Paul actually drafted the original Equal Rights Amendment and its updated text later in the ’40s,” Jennifer Krafchik, acting executive director of the Belmont-Paul National Monument, told NPR in 2016. “So she spent her entire life, really, working for women’s rights, women’s equality. She worked for equal pay. She worked for the right for women to serve on juries.”

Paul died in 1977, having seen the ERA adopted by Congress — but not ratified by the states.

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1. Shakti
  
  June 1, 2018
  
  World’s oldest lizard fossil reveals new evolutionary clues about reptiles, scientists say
  
  Scientists say they have discovered world’s oldest lizard fossil, revealing new information about the evolution of the reptiles — they might have lived among the first dinosaurs.
  
  The fossil of a lizard-like creature known as the Megachirella wachtleri was found in northern Italy’s Dolomites mountain range in the early 2000s. Recently, researchers determined the fossil was 240 million years old. That is 75 million years older than the previously known oldest squamate — the family of lizards, snakes and worm lizards — fossils, according to the analysis published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
  
  “Our new understanding of Megachirella is but a point in ancient time, but it tells us things about the evolution of lizards that we simply cannot learn from any of the 9,000 or so species of lizards and snakes alive today,” co-author Michael Caldwell from the University of Alberta said in a statement.
  
  Scientists used a new X-ray technology to examine parts of the fossil embedded within the rock to determine the species was in fact part of the lizard family based on head, shoulder and wrist features.
  
  Since this discovery, scientists didn’t know much about the early stages of lizard and snake evolution, even though there are twice as many different species of them as mammals, the University of Bristol notes. Lizard fossils are hard to come by, considering the fragile nature of their skeletons.
  
  Now, researchers are rewriting their family tree placing lizards before the Permian period, the great mass extinction…
  
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cliff arroyo

June 1, 2018

What about the news from Spain?!? Rojoy’s out!!! What do you think of Sanchez?

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Clarissa

June 1, 2018

Sánchez won’t last long. He has like 3 seats in the parliament. But yes, it’s amazing that Rajoy is out. Definitely good news.

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cliff arroyo

June 1, 2018

I don’t get the mania for firing people for ideological impurities at all, while I agree the in terms of consistency you should be in favor of firing both or none I lean toward firing neither.

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Clarissa

June 1, 2018

I know nothing about the ideology of these women. But I know that this is completely unprofessional behavior. If they want to pose as tantrum-throwing creatures who are not in control of their emotions, they should learn that there is no space in professional environments for them.

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Shakti

June 1, 2018

In fights with Canadians you love to hate:

Canada could impose duties on U.S. yogurt, meat, and jam, as well as mirroring tariffs on steel and aluminum starting in July, in response to the Donald Trump administration’s tariffs on those metals, foreign minister Chrystia Freeland announced this afternoon. Minutes before, Prime Minister had declared the U.S. measures “completely unacceptable.”

The U.S. levies will take effect at midnight, after the original one-month exemptions granted to Canada, Mexico and the European Union expire. Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross explicitly linked the move to the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he said was “taking longer than we had hoped” in a conference call with reporters.

The U.S. tariffs are 10 per cent on aluminium and 25 per cent on steel.

An early sign of the impending action may have been Freeland’s abrupt return from Washington, D.C., halfway through what was supposed to be a two-day trip to talk about NAFTA and the tariffs.

Trudeau said that in a conversation this week with Vice-President Mike Pence, he offered to go to Washington to negotiate on NAFTA, but the U.S. demanded a sunset clause—limiting any new agreement to a five-year lifespan—be included in the deal as a precondition for any meeting. The Prime Minister said he made clear Canada would not concede that point.

The U.S. duties are being imposed under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which pertains to national security. Freeland called that rationale “entirely inappropriate” in Washington on Tuesday, noting that the U.S. and Canadian industries are highly integrated…

Mexico announced its response to the current set of U.S. measures earlier in the day, picking on pork legs, apples, grapes, cheese and steel. The EU issued a 10-page list in March of potential products to levy, including stainless steel sinks, rice, orange juice and more. European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, seemingly flippantly, identified Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Kentucky bourbon and Levi’s jeans in particular in a German TV interview….

Beyond their Americana associations, those choices—if they were to be enacted—target important political leaders in the U.S. Harleys hail from Wisconsin, the home state of outgoing House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, while bourbon is the specialty of Kentucky, where Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is from. “You try to identify products that will strategically bring the other party to the table to change their mind,” said Mark Warner, an international trade lawyer and principal at Toronto’s MAAW Law, in March.

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Tal Hartsfeld

June 1, 2018

So what’s the big deal with one country wanting to, essentially, tax another for profiting off its citizens?
That’s all a tariff is, basically.
Yes, I think Canada and the European countries (and any others) should likewise impose tariffs of their own in response to the U.S. tariffs.
But, again, I ask: What is such a big deal about a tax in the form of taxing outsider countries who profit from doing business in your country?
The real issue is in the way the most wealthy pay the least amount of taxes within their own countries, thus “necessitating” these “outsource” forms of taxation. The consumers are the ones who’ll end up hurting the worst from all this.
Perhaps a straight-across-the-board unconditional 20% federal income tax on all income, regardless of economic or social class, might be a good panacea to attempt? Can’t hurt to try. What’s the worst that can happen with it? Probably not much worse than the ripple effects of all these proposed tariffs.

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1. Clarissa
  
  June 1, 2018
  
  The opposition to tariffs and other forms of economic protectionism stems from a whole-hearted embrace of neoliberalism. In neoliberal ideology, the greatest crime is to put any obstacles in the way of capital flows. Why people are so into neoliberalism is a mystery, indeed.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    June 1, 2018
    
    Neoliberalism doesn’t accept the concept of different countries, period. It’s all one vast borderless space where capital moves freely.
    
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2. Shakti
  
  June 1, 2018
  
  The only thing I can see out of this maybe some steel and aluminum workers are happy. But I’d imagine several agricultural sectors are shitting bricks right now because they depend heavily on subsidies and exports. There is only so much food even Americans can consume.
  
  Perhaps a straight-across-the-board unconditional 20% federal income tax on all income, regardless of economic or social class, might be a good panacea to attempt? Can’t hurt to try. What’s the worst that can happen with it? Probably not much worse than the ripple effects of all these proposed tariffs.
  
  Someone making $20,000 is going to feel the effect of a $4000 tax much more acutely than a person making $200,000 paying $40,000 and a person making $2 million paying 400,000.
  Most super rich people don’t have most of their money as “income.”
  
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Tal Hartsfeld

June 1, 2018

Why are people so concerned with the antics of celebrities and politicians? Those kind are little more than “civilian royalty”. Who cares what they think or do? Or whether or not they slander, defame, or mock each other?

I have kind of a low opinion in general for these “civilian royalty” types anyway. I don’t feel bad for the President’s daughter as she’s the privileged offspring of a wealthy robber-baron, and has plenty of entitlement and authority of her own not shared by commoners. As far as I’m concerned anyone can call her whatever they want. It’s not something that affects my life any anyway.

Everybody just needs to get their myopic heads out from up their tabloid asses, that’s the real issue here.

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