Sorry so late and a meager haul (lots of NPR). Rural broadband issues today.
The New Yorker interview of Mel Brooks on writing his memoir.
"Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has filed suit against the Pentagon, which he says has ordered him to redact portions of an 'unvarnished and candid memoir' that he hopes to publish about his days in the Trump White House."
"It's not exactly classified information — former president Donald Trump and the intelligence community didn't get along. But in an updated book, Getting To Know The President, the story is told from the inside… The author is a former CIA officer, John Helgerson, who spent 38 years at the agency. The publisher is the CIA's in-house research center. And the book is available for free on the CIA website."
"As I see it, there are two very different audiences for Get Back, Peter Jackson's new documentary about The Beatles' Let It Be sessions. There are the most rabid fans, who will watch it and recognize instantly the stuff they've never heard or seen before. And for them — well, for us, because I'm part of that group — this Disney+ docuseries is a true treasure. For everyone else, the first part of The Beatles: Get Back may be slow going."
"A new article published in the journal Science found that trees in urban areas have started turning green earlier than their rural counterparts due to cities being hotter and also having more lights… '[I] found artificial light in cities acts as an extended daylight and cause earlier spring greening and later autumn leaf coloring,' author Lin Meng said."
"Over the past two weeks, omicron has spread to at least seven of South Africa's nine provinces, quickly overtaking the country's outbreak — and thus, it appears, outcompeting delta, says virologist Pei-Yong Shi of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston… 'Based on the epidemiology data, it seems like the new variant has advantages in transmitting over the previous variants,' Shi says." Of course all the caveats are still here (it's early, we have limited data, blah blah). But there it is.
"The U.S. is enacting travel bans in an effort to limit the spread of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization warns poses a 'very high' global risk."
"They came for an Oasis tribute band and stayed for a massive snowstorm… The Tan Hill Inn in Northern England offers camping, glamping, weddings and now: Snow days… Dozens of people, mostly strangers, spent the weekend snowed in together at the remote pub after heavy snowfall blocked the exits."
"Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are getting a new vote on whether to form the company's first unionized warehouse in the United States… A U.S. labor-board official is ordering a re-vote after an agency review found Amazon improperly pressured warehouse staff to vote against joining a union, tainting the original election enough to scrap its results. The decision was issued Monday by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board. Amazon is expected to appeal."
"For their first Christmas in the White House, the Biden family will celebrate with the theme of 'gifts from the heart' for their holiday decor." The White House Xmas doesn't look like the waiting room to Hell this year! I'm sure we will soon here how this is terrible, unAmerican, and not really celebrating Christianity well enough for the conservatives. Maybe something along the lines of "while America is suffering from shortages and inflation, the Bidens show how out of touch they are for not getting trees and decorations at the local Walmart like the rest of America."
"The phone call between Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was meant to defuse tensions after the Republican made Islamophobic comments about the Democrat… Both congresswomen agree the call did not go well." Shocked, shocked I am…
"Lawmakers return to Washington, D.C., with a familiar end-of-the-year agenda — a pileup of important bills and not a lot of time to act on them… The most immediate issue is avoiding a partial government shutdown at the end of the week, but they also need to address the nation's borrowing authority and annual defense policy bill… Democrats have also set Christmas as their own deadline for passing the roughly $2 trillion domestic spending bill that includes climate, health care and child care programs. This massive bill is the second piece of President Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda. (The $1 trillion infrastructure bill was signed earlier this month and Biden has begun an effort to tout its value to communities around the country.)" Ugh, sloppy reporting again… "Federal agencies run out of money at midnight on Friday…" No no no no fucking no. Agencies run out of the authority to spend money at midnight on Friday. "Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress earlier this month that they have until Dec. 15 to increase the nation's borrowing limit or risk defaulting on the country's bills…" that's when we run "out of money." But even that isn't true, we just don't have enough to pay all the bills. While we like to equate the federal government "budget" to our own "budgets" it's not the same.
"Hours before the deadly attack on the US Capitol this year, Donald Trump made several calls from the White House to top lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington and talked about ways to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win from taking place on 6 January… The former president first told the lieutenants his vice-president, Mike Pence, was reluctant to go along with the plan to commandeer his largely ceremonial role at the joint session of Congress in a way that would allow Trump to retain the presidency for a second term." (Grokked from John Scalzi)
"Debate over the 2020 presidential election rages on in the political swing state of Wisconsin, where a prominent Republican lawmaker wants to strip the state's bipartisan elections agency of its power — and give it to the Republican-controlled Legislature." Danger, Warning, Will Robinson.
"Instead, at almost every turn, Trump was helped by people who had little liking for him as a human being or politician, but assessed that he could be useful for purposes of their own. The latest example: the suddenly red-hot media campaign to endorse Trump’s fantasy that he was the victim of a 'Russia hoax.'" Everything old is new again.
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