Google's FEC filing is in, and as always full of interest. On August 21, the company made a $1000 donation to Iowa rep Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Less than a month later, Miller-Meeks was here on Twitter spreading disinformation on vaccine policy (despite being a medical doctor)
The National Right to Life Committee gave West Virginia congressman David McKinley a 100% rating on abortion issues from 2011 to the present, and Google gave his campaign $2,500 on August 13.
On August 13, Google made a $5,000 donation to Abraham Lincoln PAC, twenty of whose 2020 recipients voted to overturn the results of the presidential election.
In December 2020, Georgia congressman Austin Scott signed an amicus brief in Texas vs. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit contesting the legitimacy of the presidential election. Google gave Scott's campaign $1,000 on August 13.
Texas representative Dan Crenshaw also signed that Texas vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief, falsely alleging that the Presidential election was stolen. Google gave his campaign $2,500 on August 13.
Michigan representative Bill Huizenga also signed the Texas vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief, alleging Biden stole the election. Google gave Huizenga's campaign $1000 on August 13.
Florida representative Michael Waltz similarly signed that Texas vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief, alleging a stolen election. Google gave his campaign $1000 on August 13. (I'm sorry this is getting repetitive, but Google gave political money to a lot of election deniers this month)
Michigan representative John Moolenaar signed on to the Texas vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief, attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 Presidential election. Google gave his campaign $1000 on August 13.
On August 13, Google made a $5,000 donation to Drew Ferguson's Point Action PAC. Of the seven people that PAC has donated to so far in 2020, three voted in December 2020 to overturn the results of the Presidential election.
Indiana Congressman Trey Hollingsworth also signed the Texas. vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief in an attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Google gave him $1000 on August 13.
Another signer to the Texas. vs. Pennsylvania amicus brief contesting the 2020 presidential election result was Ohio congressman Brad Wenstrup. Google made a $2,500 donation to his campaign on August 13.
I list these donations at length because Google promised in January to not make any political donations to members of congress who voted to dispute the election. Instead, it's giving them money indirectly through PACs, and giving openly to those who tried to subvert it in court.
If you work at Google, change your status to "outraged" and keep beavering away at whatever it is you do to effect quiet change from within while your employer publicly humiliates you.
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One politically difficult fact about climate change is that based on IPCC models, the next 10 years look the same whether we make massive cuts in emissions or increase emissions. Climate outcomes only diverge decades after the economic impacts of trying to reduce emissions hit.
This is one reason I argue the current "climate emergency" framing popular among educated liberals is harmful. When you have an emergency, but nothing you can do can affect the situation for years, the outcome will be backlash. We just saw this with covid on shorter time scales.
Instead of giving us a pathway to mitigating climate change, climate alarmism instead becomes an expression of righteousness and civic identity, which drops it right into the meatgrinder of media-driven polarization. Nothing could better guarantee failure cnn.com/2021/09/15/ent…
The Carrington Event in 1859 is a scary geomagnetic storm that would probably take out the GPS system and large parts of the power grid if it happened today. But evidence is mounting that it's small on the scale of potential solar flares to worry about knowablemagazine.org/article/physic…
There are signs in tree rings and ice cores that the Sun really roasted us in 994, 775, 660 BC and on earlier occasions. The 1859 size events probably happen on the order of 2-3 times a century, but (just like with California earthquakes this century) we've been unusually lucky.
If you've followed me a long time, you know my fascination with predictable natural disasters that are just rare enough to be outside living memory. A satellite-roasting solar flare is a 100% certainty, but imagine a world that can't even fight covid successfully planning for it.
If Democrats were committed to breaking Congressional deadlock they would hold the defense authorization bill, and not their own agenda, as a hostage. But it's going to sail through Congress like it always does.
We live in a country where defaulting on the public debt is normal political brinksmanship, but withholding military spending is unthinkable.
The Democrats could also kill the debt ceiling drama dead tonight by using the coin trick (the treasury has the legal power to mint platinum coins of arbitrary value). But the party, unlike their more creative opponents, appears incapable of *using* power while they have it.
Here's more information for the White House: the guy on the right works for Biden, and the men on the left are refugees Biden is deporting under fast-track public health authority he inherited from Trump that denies them a chance to file an asylum claim. cnn.com/2021/09/20/pol…
The pretense where Biden and his government are repeatedly shocked, shocked at the uncomfortable imagery of their policy decisions at the southern border or in evacuating visa applicants from Afghanistan adds insult to injury. At least Trump stood up for his nativist xenophobia.
Perhaps on Biden's watch we'll get a push to make sure more women and agents of color are whipping Haitians on horseback. But the substance of this Administration's attitude towards migrants, refugees, and undocumented Americans is pure MAGA.
The decision to obey the parliamentarian's rulings is a political decision made by the party in power. On the southern border, in Afghanistan, and now in the Senate, Democrats have shown us for the better part of a year how they feel about immigration. It's time to face the truth
Sorry, parliamentarian ruled I have to drink all your beer
I think making Facebook the villain, while always fun, takes us past the foundational problem here. Why people are so ready to be radicalized, including into some nonsensical directions like flat earthism, is a bigger question than can fit into a scheme of heroes and villains.
Part of the answer lies in a radical distrust of existing institutions, which if not born in 2008 certainly crystallized then. Another part of the answer has to do with how social media gives every subculture global reach. Another is in the architecture of persuasion and virality
Most of these are questions of human nature—we are a social species whose biology and culture is set up for life in small and gossipy local groups. Taking the "local" and "small" out of that equation has been a great social experiment enabled by the internet. It's not going well