Category: Politics

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Sedition!

I’d never heard of Randy Rainbow, but he’s got quite the collection of song parody YouTube videos. I especially liked this one about sedition.

It’s amazing the amount of work he must have put into this video and the speed in which he put it out. Mark Evanier suggests Randy Rainbow is a one man show:

Supposedly, he does all this himself from a not-huge apartment in New York…and he’s got to do it quickly because these days, current news has — as Jon Stewart used to say of The Daily Show — the shelf life of potato salad. “Topical Humor” used to be about something that had happened in the last month or so. Now, folks like him and Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah and Jimmy Kimmel are going on-air or on the web with material about what happened six hours ago…or less. No wonder MAD Magazine with its six-week lead time couldn’t compete.

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Kieran Healy on the Mob at the Capitol

Required reading: author and researcher Kieran Healy on what happened during the mob raid of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.

From the moment he knew he’d lost the presidential election, Trump absolutely wanted to get the result overturned. Some large proportion of his own staff and Congressional Republicans thought there was no harm in humoring him. Many surely knew him well enough to realize he was quite serious about it. But most, falling into a way of thinking that Trump has repeatedly benefited from over his entire career, and especially during his Presidency, figured that he could not possibly overcome the weight of institutional and conventional pressure behind the transition of power. Still, by the first week of January he had not relented in his efforts to find some way to do it, whether through bullying local election officials, chasing wild geese through the courts, or directly intimidating state officials. That all failed, or looked like failing. The next thing on the horizon was Electoral College certification.

She points out that she doesn’t have any more information than anyone else following the story, but she does paint a coherent and plausible outline based on the facts we know of what Trump and the Whitehouse might have been thinking. I think this is exactly what happened.

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The Title of Liberty

Despite LDS church officials distancing themselves from fringe conspiracy theories and congratulating incoming President elect Biden, we still witness the embarrassment of a Mormon proudly participating in yesterday’s debacle and broadcasting their association with the church publicly by flying the “title of liberty” pictured above and cosplaying as a warrior from the Book of Mormon.

From Wikipedia:

Moroni [a character from the Book of Mormon] is associated with the “title of liberty”, a standard that he raised to rally the Nephites to defend their liberties from a group of dissenters who wanted to establish their leader as a king. Moroni was so angry with Amalickiah’s dissention and wicked influence that he tore his coat and wrote upon it, “In memory of our God, our religion, and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.” With those words, he rallied his people to defend their families and their freedom and drive out the armies of Amalickiah. Moroni put to death any dissenters who did not flee and would not support the cause of freedom, and his ” title of liberty” was raised over every Nephite tower.

I guess I’m more disgusted by the so called Saints participating in this madness than others because of my background in the church and the sensitivity church members have with regard to fighting against the United States government. See also Articles of Faith: “12 We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

There are lunatics within any large enough group of people, but I even know some — heck, am related to them — that would not surprise me to hear they went to this level. (By his body size, I certainly don’t think this is someone that I know.)

As I mentioned previously, it shocks me the level of support Mormons give Trump.

Update: These tweets sum it up for me:

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Religious Vote Share

It turns out American Mormons voted for Trump at a much higher rate than other religions. As someone that grew up LDS, I don’t understand how they can stomach such a monster.1 Here are the statistics:

From NPR’s VoteCast:

  1. Look at me, haunted by my past… I wrote this right after the election but never posted it until December 25 and just backdated it to be less conspicuous. Is there anything in this post that I should feel bad about posting? Obviously not, but then why did I feel sheepish?[↩]
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President Biden

We were listening to CBC Radio 2 on the HomePod this morning when the news broke. After four long years, our worldwide nightmare is officially coming to an end.

Trump, while golfing, tweeted out that he’s not going to accept the results.

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I Am Starting to Regret My Vote For Trump

The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by several prominent current and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Their latest ad features the comedic satire of David Cross explaining that he is just now starting to regret his vote for Donald Trump.

Here’s the original Cross routine that is a little longer than what you get in the ad.

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Dr. Danielle Martin and US Senator Richard Burr Debate Health Care

Back in March 2014, Canadian Dr. Danielle Martin was asked to speak to a US Senate Committee investigation on health care systems, specifically regarding issues such as single-payer and multi-payer systems and wait times.

From a CTV report on the clip:

Martin was invited to testify by the committee chairman, Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist who would like to see the U.S. adopt a single-payer system like in Canada, something Vermont is already doing.

Canada’s health system is really run by the provinces, with federal funding, Martin explained, citing research showing better outcomes for cancer and heart patients in Canada at a much lower cost than the U.S. medical system.

That made her a target for Republicans on the committee, but Martin counter-punched with gleeful spontaneity.

Was it true that Canadians were dying because of health rationing? Not as many, she replied, as the 45,000 Americans dying each year in a health-care system rationed on the basis of someone’s ability to pay.

(via Metafilter)

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Peter Mansbridge at SWATCA

After a wonderful, although extremely busy, parental leave I’m back at work teaching and just in time for the 2020 SWATCA Teacher’s Convention. This morning’s keynote speaker was none other than newscaster and Canadian icon Peter Mansbridge.1

Mansbridge opened his talk by speaking about the important role teacher’s have in Canadian society, and I caught the few minutes on my iPhone’s camera for posterity:

He went on to speak about his experiences with notable Canadian politicians from John Deifenbaker to Justin Trudeau. My favorite though, was his summary in three stories about what it means to be a Canadian.

Here’s the Soundcloud of his speech (I missed about 10 seconds between the end of the YouTube clip above and when I started the audio recording):

Later that day, I happened to stop into the operations room for the event and mentioned that I was looking for a substitute teacher when a guy dressed in a hoodie sitting next to me asked if it was true I had to find my own subs. I said yeah—I used to have an admin at my old school that did it but now I had to find them myself. I glanced over at the man and did a double-take. To my surprise, it was Peter Mansbridge! So we chatted a little more and then I got up the courage to ask if he would pose for a photo with me. He kindly obliged.

Jeff Milner and Peter Mansbridge
Jeff Milner meeting Peter Mansbridge at SWATCA 2020.

It made my day.

1. Mansbridge is also known for his role presenting the news in the North American version of Disney’s Zootopia as Peter Moosebridge.