Our Democracy Is at Stake, Yet Congress Would Rather Play Shutdown Chicken

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment to the Last Post of the Week from the Blog’s Favourite Living Canadian)

It was a cracker of a week in the Congress of the United States. First, FBI director Kash Patel demonstrated before the Senate Judiciary Committee why you don’t hire Internet trolls to run important federal law enforcement. He got in a noisy wrangle with Senator Mazie Hirono, and Senator Richard Blumenthal told him he wasn’t to be believed, and he ended up screaming at Senator Adam Schiff. Cory Booker called down the wrath of God on him. Things didn’t get better for Patel in front of the House Judiciary Committee, where even Republican members bullyragged him over the Epstein files and the Democrats got their innings in too. The Epstein files are not going away, but I suspect the petulant, angry talk-radio caller at the head of the FBI might be.

In another feature attraction, former CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez got to meet a Senate committee that included Senator Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma and perhaps the dimmest bulb in the Senate chandelier. At issue, was Monarez’s claim that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had told her she was untrustworthy. (Kennedy claims Monarez volunteered the information when he asked her if she were trustworthy, which certainly sounds like human beings communicating.) Mullin spent most of his time trying to catch Monarez in petty gotchas such as when exactly she hired her lawyers. But he went for the gold on the meeting between Monarez and Kennedy. Mullin told her that the meeting had been recorded. It had not been, and Mullin is a meathead. What a world.

Shutdown Politics heated up again on Friday. The Republicans in the Senate voted 47–45 to reject a Democratic proposal that would have funded the government through October 31. From Politico:

The Democratic proposal was widely expected to fail—it needed 60 votes to pass, which would have required support from more than a dozen Republicans. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer pushed to get GOP senators on the record rejecting some of the health care ideas wrapped into the bill, including a permanent extension of soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies. Schumer on Friday said the two bills “truly crystallize the contrast between the two parties. ... Senators will have to choose to stand with Donald Trump and keep the same lousy status quo … or stand with the American people, protect their healthcare and keep the government functioning,” Schumer said.

The Democrats then sank the bill the House Republicans passed, so there’s no deal on funding the government at all and this game of chicken will go on. I give Schumer credit for adding that bit about the president’s clearly illegal impoundment of funds already passed by Congress. The real fight is yet to come.

Weekly WWOZ Pick to Click

“Number 9 Train” – Tarheel Slim

Weekly Visit to the Pathé Archives

Here, from 1918, is President Woodrow Wilson visiting London. Probably talking the League of Nations and not his proposed ballroom on the White House grounds. History is so cool.

The martyrdom cult continues to go bananas. In Oklahoma, one of our favorite states, Rep. Shane Jett has filed a bill mandating that every state college and university declare a “Charlie Kirk Free Speech Plaza.” And Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, would like to carve the First Amendment into bite-size pieces. From MSNBC:

“Under normal times, in normal circumstances, I tend to think that the First Amendment should always be sort of the ultimate right,” the Wyoming Republican said. “And that there should be almost no checks and balances on it. I don’t feel that way anymore.” The far-right senator added, “I feel like something’s changed culturally. And I think that there needs to be some cognizance that things have changed. We just can’t let people call each other those kinds of insane things and then be surprised when politicians get shot and the death threats they are receiving and then trying to get extra money for security.”

I have begun to doubt that the conservative love of “free speech” that kept the late Mr. Kirk’s career aloft may not have been sincere.

Discovery Corner

Hey, look what we found! From Archaeology News:

This breakthrough comes from two decades of work by Dominican archaeologist Kathleen Martínez, who has dedicated her career to tracing Cleopatra’s elusive tomb. While most Egyptologists maintain that the queen was buried in Alexandria, Martínez argues that evidence points to Taposiris Magna. The temple was dedicated to Osiris, a god associated with death and resurrection, and its name—“Great Tomb of Osiris”—may hold symbolic significance.

Martínez’s theory was strengthened in 2022, when her team discovered a 4,300-foot tunnel beneath the temple ruins. Carved deep into the rock, partially submerged, and heading seaward, it contained jars and ceramics dating to the time of Cleopatra. The newly discovered offshore harbor appears to be aligned directly with this tunnel, indicating an integrated network that could have been utilized in the queen’s burial.

I hope this works out for Ms. Martinez. I root for all obsessives.

Hey, The New York Times, is it a good day for dinosaur news? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

Upon closer inspection, Dr. Chinzorig quickly realized this wasn’t just any round rock; it was the dome-shaped skull of a pachycephalosaur, a dinosaur famous for its presumed proclivity for head-butting. And Dr. Chinzorig had stumbled upon what would turn out to be the oldest and most complete pachycephalosaur fossil ever found. The specimen was described Wednesday in the journal Nature. The researchers say it is 115 to 108 million years old, or around 14 million years earlier than scientists had thought these dinosaurs first evolved their helmet-like heads. The fossil also had intact arms and hands, as well as a stomach full of stones.

The study’s authors named the species ​​Zavacephale rinpoche. It means “root” and “jewel” in Tibetan, a reference to the fossil’s value and ancient origin, said Lindsay Zanno, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and an author of the study.

Let joy be unconfined!

“For those of us who study the dome-headed dinosaurs, Zavacephale is the specimen we have all been waiting for,” said David Evans, a paleontologist at the Royal Ontario Museum who was not involved with the study. “This is a very exciting fossil that helps illuminate the early evolutionary history of this famous, yet poorly understood, group of dinosaurs.”

It lived then to make those who study dome-headed dinosaurs happy now.

I’ll be back on Monday to see what fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and wear the damn masks, and take the damn shots, especially the boosters and the New One. In your spare time, spare a thought for the victims of the unspeakable violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and for everyone touched by the mass shootings in Colorado, Minneapolis, New York, and Reno, and everyone recovering from the flooding in Charleston, and in the Roanoke Valley, and in Wisconsin, and in Texas, and in North Carolina, and by earthquakes in Myanmar and Thailand, and in Turkey and Russia, and by the tornadoes throughout the Southeast, and for everyone touched by floods in Kentucky and in West Virginia, and Nigeria, and by the crash in Washington, and by the measles outbreak in the Southwest, and in the wildfire zone around Dallas, and in the fire zones in Napa, and in Las Vegas, Nashville, and Queens, who who were visited by the Crazy before the year had hardly begun, and the folks in Dallas and Tallahassee, who were visited by the Crazy this week. And the people in drought-stricken north Alabama. And the folks caught in floods and tornadoes in Nebraska, and in Missouri. And the folks caught in “historic floods” in Kentucky. And in Oklahoma. And the folks in L.A., now fighting floods and mudslides exacerbated by the recent wildfires. And the folks in the wildfire zones in Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota. And the folks in Lahaina, who are still rebuilding. And the victims of the nightclub collapse in the Dominican Republic. And especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they’ve been getting. And for all of us, who will be getting exactly what we deserve. Thank you for your attention to this matter.