Didja Hear?

"Boeing, Citing Slogger Blogger, Declines Massive Handout; Shocks Planet; Ford Follows Suit, Demands to Pay Its Fair Share Too while FOX Panics, Shits Pants; Blames Obama

Washington A.D. -- In Historic Good News today, the Boeing Corps declined a giant HANDOUT, saying they no longer Truly believed in the Socialism, pointing to a Stranger (that’s what they call themselves – and it’s been Years) thread where they realized they’d been wrong, all along, and’d rather Man Up, bite the gottdamm bullet, dig deep grab, them Bootstraps and Pull themSelves up; and, while they’re at it, why not clean up its (currently-less-failing) Board of Directors – maybe put a few Union Members up there, people from the factory floor who know what the fuck, see how that goes -- something they’ve been talking about doing for ages, and (Finally!) get back to building planes the Olde Fashioned Way – with Everyone in the loop, not cutting corners, for pennies, again, and gallivanting off to Chicago or wherevertf to consort with Beancounters – the Enemies of Safety, apparently (Boeing promised them they can stay in Chicago, perhaps nearer the stockyards).

Passenger groups were said to be thrilled."

Hopefully we'll get the EPA back when we finally get an actual president.

@2 kristofarian: Say WHAAAAAAT...? Boeing CEOS finally do the right thing by saying no to another Trumpty Dumpty KKKorprate handout?? WOW!!
Is this a dream?

@3: To clarify: "....an actual president." We haven't had one since January 20, 2017.

Trumpty Dumpty's approval rating is at a record high?!? Further proof that incurably stupid, shamelessly incompetent idiots are overbreeding like sewer rats.

Good work on the West Seattle bridge coverage, very thorough.

@3: No, it's not a dream. It's fake news ala kristo.

Your certaintity is amusing, rainy.

Combining plausibility and possibility does not create facts, krisco.

JUST IN: Trump signing statement on coronavirus bill says he’ll override a provision requiring the newly created inspector general to report to Congress any time agencies refuse to give him/her requested info.

I KNEW THERE WAS A REASON HE DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE LANGUAGE REGARDING HIS BUSINESSES NOT GETTING ANY OF THE MONEY. HE KNEW HE WOULD JUST GUT THE OVERSIGHT AND NOW HE AND MUNCHKIN AND MCCONNELL HAVE $500 BILLION THEY WILL DOLE OUT AS THEY PLEASE (TO THEMSELVES).

@10 xina: WHY can't RepubliKKKans just die of their own filthy, putrid MAGAvirus, already?

Chase, I’m not sure what I’ll be watching, but I did want to mention that I’m excited that you’re watching a Juzo Itami film! I’ve watched all his stuff — it’s all great. Minbo is about the oddest (they’re all odd) and funniest. Please don’t forget to tell your loyal readers what you thought of the movie. Terrific writing that you do , btw.

@12: Science, but not history.

@4 is correct, and the current IMPOTUS is Weak and Incompetent and scared of women.

Got a nice Challah french toast for takeout today.

Those cracks in the W.S.Bridge are bizarre -- if the cracks are growing, I wonder if they need to increase the tension on the steel. If that's even possible.

@auntie Gee -- "In the Midst of the Coronavirus Crisis, We Must Start Envisioning the Future Now" --Masha Gessen in the New Yorker, March 25, 2020

"Our political system, frayed as it was, is under extraordinary stress. The Supreme Court has delayed cases. The Justice Department is seeking extreme powers.

The Trump Administration is using the crisis as an opportunity to push through a more extreme version of its agenda.

The President now lies to the nation daily ,not only on Twitter but also on live television, during briefings that he has turned into versions of his rallies.

The election campaign is in a state of suspended animation. The borders are effectively closed.

At the federal level, there is a real possibility that the coronavirus will paralyze the work of Congress, leaving the White House without check.

At the local level, quarantine measures either have stopped or will stop all town councils, school boards, and community meetings.

Local news media, an endangered species before the crisis, may have been dealt a final, fatal blow by the coronavirus.

Slaughter also suggests that the crisis has catapulted us into the future.

Direct cash payments to tax-paying Americans, which are included in the government’s relief package, will provide an unexpected nationwide test run of universal basic income; distance learning may pave the way to more accessible and more equitable higher education; the drastic rise in telecommuting could reduce pollution and free up real estate that could be converted from offices to housing.

All of this may be true. But how and whether these changes play out months and years from now depends entirely on how we think about both them and ourselves.

For example, will we think of universal basic income as a new approach to distributing resources—one in which society values people for their humanity, and not for what they produce—or simply as a less bureaucratic alternative to welfare checks?

Will we think of distance learning as a way to make education more accessible or as a way for colleges to save money on professors and classrooms?

For younger kids, might the shift prompt us to stop thinking of school as a place to warehouse children while their parents go to work, and start thinking of ways to engage children in learning?

Will we emerge more atomized than ever before, with all casual links severed, accidental connections precluded, and public spaces destroyed—insuring that the new authoritarianism continues—or will we take care to create our public space anew?

Will we have the courage to resist trying to restore the world we have lost, with its frenetic pace, its air travel and traffic jams, and its obsession with growth and production?

Our track record is abysmal. We have responded to crises by exacerbating the fundamental problems of society, including the root causes of the crises themselves.

Our response to 9/11 sacrificed civil liberties and human rights. Our response to the financial crisis of 2008 created even more wealth inequality.

If our response to the coronavirus pandemic follows the same patterns, it will make previous crises look like child’s play in comparison.

If we continue to create more authoritarian powers; if we continue to go on nationwide lockdowns, or even effectively stay in one for a year or a year and a half; if we continue to feel virtuous because we’ve stayed home and done nothing (and those of us who managed not to murder their children will feel even more virtuous)—if we do all these things, we will have prevented the worst outcome of the coronavirus, but we may still destroy ourselves in the process."

More at:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/in-the-midst-of-the-coronavirus-crisis-we-must-start-envisioning-the-future-now

"Why Estonia Was Poised to Handle How
a Pandemic Would Change Everything"

"Panic, dismay, anger, defiance, fear, despair, doubt, and occasional portions of denial: all of these have been common notes of communication lately, from the news media to private texts.

But some of the messages coming out of Estonia, a tiny country on the Baltic Sea, sound discordantly confident. Estonians seem to think they’ve got this: they are not only handling the coronavirus pandemic but also facing the world in which we will live after it’s over."

"The story of how Estonia went digital has been told before. A central role in it belongs to the former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who learned to code when he was a tenth-grader at a high school in New Jersey.

Ilves was born in Sweden, grew up in the United States, worked as a psychologist, educator, and journalist, and was asked by the president of Estonia to become the Ambassador to the United States a year after the Soviet occupation of the country ended, in 1992.

As a diplomat, Parliament member, and, later, President, Ilves promoted the introduction of computer classes in schools in the nineteen-nineties, the creation of public Internet-access centers throughout the country, and the idea that technological 'innovation was possible in a remote backwater of northeast Europe,' as he put it to me when I reached him by direct message and phone last week.

(Ilves, whose last Presidential term ended in 2016, is currently at Stanford, where he was sheltering in place along with other Californians when I reached him.)

Skype, an Estonian invention, served as the ultimate proof of concept."

"Next month, another private/public consortium, in coöperation with the European Commission and a Singaporean organization, is launching an online accelerator for projects for the crisis and post-crisis world.

This one is headlined by the current President of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, the first woman and the youngest person ever to hold the job.

These programs, explicitly tied to Estonia’s identity as a startup nation, are exercises of the imagination, not merely in reacting to the present crisis but in shaping the future."
--also by Masha Gessen

More at:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-estonia-was-poised-to-handle-how-a-pandemic-would-change-everything

@18 kristofarian: I was wondering the same thing.
also @19 & @20 kristofarian: Thank you and bless you for sharing.

Everyone stay healthy, safe, and sane.