Sedition. Full Stop.

“Trump has forfeited the public trust. For that reason, he cannot remain the commander in chief. He has shown himself to be mentally unstable, and for that reason he cannot remain in charge of an apocalyptically huge nuclear arsenal. He has demonstrated a clearly criminal approach to the Constitution, and for that reason he cannot be allowed to hold high office for the next two weeks in the run-up to the transition of power. He is, in short, a clear and present danger to the constitutional order, to the country, and to the world. Congress will fail in its duties if, after confirming Biden’s election win, it doesn’t continue on, in quick order, to forcibly remove Donald J. Trump, traitor, from the White House.”

“The top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer called for President Donald Trump’s removal Thursday a day after a mob spurred by the president overran the Capitol as lawmakers tallied President-elect Joe Biden’s presidential win.

“The quickest and most effective way - it can be done today - to remove this president from office would be for the Vice President to immediately invoke the 25th amendment,” he continued. “If the Vice President and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president.”"

“Members of the House Judiciary Committee have announced articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump, alleging he will “remain a threat to national security, democracy and the Constitution” if he is allowed to remain in office for two more weeks.

The announcement comes after Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the majority leader, said in a statement that the president should be “immediately” removed from office, either by the 25th amendment or articles of impeachment.

Reps. David Cicilline (D-RI), Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have authored the articles, according to two individuals familiar with the matter.

Cicilline and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) later tweeted the articles. “[S]o proud of everyone co-leading this effort with us,” Omar wrote. “We need to move quickly to remove this President from office.”

"And my god, if these insurrectionists were Muslim, they would have been sniped from the top of buildings," Scarborough continued. "So I wanna know from the Capitol Hill police, what is it? Is it just white people?

"Or is it Donald Trump supporters? Why do you scream at people walking across the street three blocks away from the Capitol?" he added, referring to when BLM protesters were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the way for President Donald Trump's infamous June photo-op in front of St. John's Church.

Scarborough then turned his rant up a notch with some profanity on-air.

"Why are you not as bad asses around the Capitol, but then Trump supporters come in, and you open the f---ing doors for 'em!" Scarborough said.

One of the show's panelists was heard muttering "Oh my god" when Scarborough dropped the F-bomb on live TV.

"You opened the doors for 'em!" Scarborough went on. "And let them breach the people's house. What is wrong with you?"

"I want to post my photographs to Instagram, but my ethics are getting in the way."

Interesting Reddit thread here where people are discussing the ethics of using Instagram with all the information that has come to light about Facebook’s data harvesting/manipulation. A good read with a lot of interesting opinions. As I have mentioned here before, I am very anti-social media.

“As I'm sure many of us have been, I have been using my pandemic induced free time to do some intensive organizing and editing of my photography archives.

I now find myself with an ethical dilemma: I want to post my pictures to Instagram, a Facebook CompanyTM

I quit Facebook some 7-8 years ago and Insta some 3-4 years ago due to the many scandals Facebook has been implicated in over the years - from massive data breaches, to major privacy concerns, to anti-trust issues, to willfully illicit use of user data to manipulate elections and public sentiments around the world:

CNET, NBC News, CNBC, NPR / WBUR, Wikipedia Mega List, etc, etc, etc

Sometimes it seems like a silly stand to take / hill to die on-- I am, after all, an infinitesimally small cog in the machine-- but that hasn't stopped my conscience from shouting at me every time I think about giving the 'gram another shot.

What are your thoughts on this? Am I being ridiculous? How ridiculous? How do you navigate the ethical/moral challenges involved with social media platforms?

​I'm curious to see what this community's take is :)”

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

-cough.

I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There.

Woo boy, pretty heavy read here.

“Today I assume you went to work. Bad news was everywhere, clogging up your social media, your conversations. Maybe it struck close to you. I’m sorry. Somewhere in your country, a thousand people died. I’m sorry for each of them. A thousand families are grieving tonight. A thousand more join them every day. The pain doesn’t go away, it just becomes a furniture of bones, in a thousand homes.

But that’s exactly how collapse feels. This is how I felt. This is how millions of people have felt, including many immigrants in your midst. We’re trying to tell you as loud as we can. You can get out of it, but you have to understand where you are to even turn around. This, I fear, is one of many things Americans do not understand. You tell yourself American collapse is impossible. Meanwhile, look around.”

“Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is.”

via- Kottke.org

As Their Numbers Grow, COVID-19 “Long Haulers” Stump Experts

More info is coming out about the long term effects of COVID and it’s not looking good.

“Anecdotally, there’s no question that there are a considerable number of individuals who have a postviral syndrome that really, in many respects, can incapacitate them for weeks and weeks following so-called recovery and clearing of the virus,” Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in July during a COVID-19 webinar organized by the International AIDS Society.

…

In the study of Italian patients, the most common symptoms reported at follow-up were fatigue, shortness of breath, joint pain, and chest pain, in that order. None of the patients had a fever or other sign or symptom of acute illness, but about 44% of them had a worsened quality of life.

A measure of social progress finds that the quality of life has dropped in America

New York Times piece on the decline of America.

“The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

“The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action,” Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. “It’s like we’re a developing country.”