(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)
It gets worse by the day. From the Washington Post.
The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes. The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.
The ballot warnings, issued at the end of July from Thomas J. Marshall, general counsel and executive vice president of the Postal Service, and obtained through a records request by The Washington Post, were planned before the appointment of Louis DeJoy, a former logistics executive and ally of President Trump, as postmaster general in early summer. They go beyond the traditional coordination between the Postal Service and election officials, drafted as fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented and sudden shift to mail-in voting.
Let’s all not sprain something pretending that this is simply some "sweeping organizational and policy overhaul" wha-dee-doo-dah. It’s ratfcking under color of law, pure and simple—a more complicated version of the "accidental" Election Day water-main break in front of the mayoral challenger’s headquarters. (Hi, Jim Curley!) Except, of course, this little monkey-wrenching keeps veterans from getting their prescription medicines, and rural customers from sending or receiving their packages. It also is a clear violation of the president*’s oath of office. He promised to take care that even the postal laws are faithfully executed. That doesn’t mean having your fat-cat apparatchik slow-walk the U.S. Mail to get you re-elected. Impeachable offenses are exhausting to carry around.
A friend points out that it was in Minsk, in Belarus, where the agreement to dissolve the Soviet Union was signed in 1991. Three years later, Alexander Lukashenko ascended to power, and he hasn’t let go of it. Yet. The video from Belarus is all equal parts inspirational and horrifying. The screams of dissenters being tortured escape the dark walls of the prisons. The tableaux of mothers waiting outside are reminiscent of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires during the bloody reign of the Argentine junta. It appears that the European Union is stirring its stump to get tough with Lukashenko. And the people of Belarus seem to have recalled how happy you can be when you pull down a dictatorship. From Yahoo! News:
In euphoric scenes on Independence Square in the capital Minsk, protesters hugged and kissed young interior ministry troops guarding a government building and put flowers in their anti-riot shields. Unlike the scenes of violent detentions days earlier, police stood by quietly. The opposition movement gained momentum as large groups of workers from huge tractor and automobile factories downed tools for the first time...
Protesters danced and sang and waved lit-up mobile phones before gradually dispersing over the evening without police making arrests. Opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claimed victory in Sunday's polls, called for further protests against Lukashenko at the weekend. "Belarusians will never want to live with the previous government again. The majority do not believe in his victory," Tikhanovskaya said in a video address after leaving home for neighbouring EU country Lithuania on Tuesday.
We could use some of that over here, tell you the truth.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Lost Without Love” (Lonesome Sundown): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: How about some fencing? Here’s the championship bout in men’s sabre from 1978. Saber fencing without electric scoring was complete anarchy. Most bouts made Bob Knight on the sidelines look like a cloistered Carmelite. History is so cool.
In case you missed it, the Government Accountability Office ruled this week that a couple of the administration*’s more prominent "actings" are acting illegitimately as officers of the government. This is what we used to call, in the Before Times, a Big Fcking Deal. From Politico:
The Government Accountability Office — Congress' independent investigative arm — concluded that after the resignation of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in April 2019, an improper succession occurred, with Kevin McAleenan taking on the position. McAleenan then altered the order of succession for other officials to succeed him after his departure. "Because the incorrect official assumed the title of Acting Secretary at that time, subsequent amendments to the order of succession made by that official were invalid and officials who assumed their positions under such amendments, including Chad Wolf and Kenneth Cuccinelli, were named by reference to an invalid order of succession,” GAO's general counsel Thomas Armstrong concluded.
Neither guy belongs within an area code of any job that does not involve selling beer nuts over the counter, and this especially applies to Cuccinelli, a lifetime wingnut whose career was in a sarcophagus before Camp Runamuck lifted the lid.
It's not the first time that Cuccinelli has faced questions about the lawfulness of his appointment. A federal judge ruled in March that he was invalidly appointed to his role as acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a ruling that blocked two policies he had implemented at the time. Trump hasn't nominated Cuccinelli for either of the two top DHS jobs he has held, a prospect likely to meet resistance among Senate Republicans who have clashed with Cuccinelli in the past.
Jesus, these really are the mole people.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, CNN? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!
Paleontologists at the University of Southampton have spent months studying four bones that were found last year in the village of Shanklin, on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England. They finally determined that the bones were from the neck, back and tail of a new dinosaur "previously unknown to science," according to a release from the university. The dinosaur would have measured about 4 meters (about 13 feet) long, and is a type of theropod dinosaur -- a group of carnivores that typically walked on two legs instead of four, which includes the Tyrannosaurus rex. It lived in the Cretaceous period, about 115 million years ago, according to the release.
New T-Rex cousins! Can’t have too many of them.
Scientists named the dinosaur Vectaerovenator inopinatus -- a name that refers to large air sacs in some of the bones, which are commonly seen in theropods, and which helped the researchers identify the species. The sacs are also seen in modern birds; they likely helped create an efficient breathing system in these dinosaurs, while also making the skeleton lighter...Paul Farrell, from the Isle of Wight town of Ryde, was one of the people who stumbled upon the bones. "I was walking along the beach, kicking stones and came across what looked like a bone from a dinosaur. I was really shocked to find out it could be a new species," he said in the release.
Best I’ve ever done is digging up an old A-1 bottle in my yard. No matter, the whole story is that we’ll always have the knowledge that they lived then to make us happy now.
I’ll be back on Monday to watch the beginning of the Democratic National Convention from Milwaukee. Virtual Milwaukee is better than none, but with no brats and no coldies. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line, and wear the damn mask, OK?
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Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.
