Sedition, Torments My Heart, Sedition
keeps us apart
Links are at the end, rebelling.
You all probably know by now that Oath Keepers honcho Stewart Rhodes has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, with some of his colleagues receiving substantial prison time as well.
Rhodes shoulda kept an eye peeled for the feds, is all I can say.
I’m not a big fan of imprisonment here in the U.S., where rehabilitation takes a far distant back seat to societal revenge. Perhaps 20 years of strictly monitored community service with the League of Women Voters would work, or a midnight basketball program, or some rotating congress of do-gooder organizations.
I don’t know how much of a goober Rhodes is, but he could conceivably do more damage inside prison than out.
Contrarily, fuck him and the chuds he rode in on.
Today in Florida Man, and speaking of goobers, some guy with a grudge against a former mayor drove his car into two public artworks and a sign at the same park as one of the sculptures he wrecked.1
This past weekend in Florida, a 49-year-old man drove his car into a large blue rabbit sculpture on the side of the road—an act of intentional vandalism that was caught on camera.
Police were called to the scene by witnesses shortly after the incident, which took place at Justin Flippen Park in the city of Wilton Manors on Sunday, according to NBC South Florida. CCTV footage showed the man pull over and get out of his car to retrieve and reattach a piece of the vehicle before fleeing.
By tracking down the car, the police soon identified its driver as Derek Alan Modrok, who turned out to be a repeat offender. On May 16, he smashed his car into a sign, also at Justin Flippen Park, and only two days later he collided with a popsicle statue by Craig Berube-Gray at Rachel Richardson Park.
The Blue Bunny was on loan from the artist and seems to be reparable, but at significant cost. Damage to the popsicle sculpture wasn’t specified.
Someone will have compared this kind of artwork vandalism, in connection with a personal grudge, with attacks by climate change activists on artworks in museums or on public events; goose and gander, so to say. Is taking a piece of hide from a museum or the public any more effective in service to a global cause than it is against some guy who isn’t even in office anymore?
I dunno. My sympathies are with the people trying to bring attention to the necessary work of keeping the planet habitable, and the odds that they’ll accomplish something good are certainly better than the odds that the former Florida mayor will suffer from a guy driving into a sculpture, but I dunno.
Speaking of climate stuff, the various Colorado River despoilers have managed to stave off federal intervention for the moment by striking an agreement among themselves to cutback on their water use.
Monday’s historic Colorado River agreement represents a big win for California, which only months ago was embroiled in a bitter feud with Arizona, Nevada and four other Western states over how to dramatically reduce their use of water supplies in the shrinking river.
The proposition, which came after months of tense negotiations, would see the three states in the Colorado’s lower basin conserve about 3 million acre-feet of water from the river by 2026 — a 14% reduction across the Southwest that amounts to only about half of what could have been imposed by the federal government had the states not come to an accord.
The potential grenade in the gorse is that the agreed cutbacks are voluntary, and participants might not feel so public-spirited should the drought, especially in California, which accounts for the majority of water conserved, return in force.
One doesn’t necessarily want to call Democrats a buncha fucking idiots but, keeping in mind that participating in talks with their serial killer colleagues across the aisle is a wholly elective act of dementia, one’s resistance might be overcome if what the two sides are leaking about an impending debt ceiling deal proves to be anything close to accurate.2
Top White House officials and Republican lawmakers were closing in on Thursday on a deal that would raise the debt limit for two years while capping federal spending on everything but the military and veterans for the same period. Officials were racing to cement an agreement in time to avert a federal default that is projected in just one week.
The deal taking shape would allow Republicans to say that they were reducing some federal spending — even as spending on the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — and allow Democrats to say they had spared most domestic programs from significant cuts.
Isn’t that swell?
One mightn’t necessarily want to call Democrats a buncha fucking idiots, but I do. The things to keep in mind, according to me, are that Democrats needn’t have negotiated anything; that any consummated negotiations were bound to end in pain for people at the big bottom end of the pyramid; that none of the people negotiating, nor most of the people voting to seal the bargain, will feel any pain at all; and that certain mercenaries to the process, political and otherlike, will do really, really well from it.
Ah well.
Not a buncha of music today: Lanie Lane, “Nightshade;”3
Ungodly amounts of coffee, though, which one of the King Charles’s said is bad for the manly race.
That, Comrades, is all I got. Please share it if you like it, and consider subscribing if you’ve not already done so—it’s free unless you want to pay.
Take care, be well.
"Isn't that swell" shall be my watchword and slogan of the summer. If I survive it.
Rhodes just needs to serve time until The Donald is (re) elected and he gets pardoned.