Afternoon Tea 11.18.2020 - Shadow Box Thinking

Public Banking, Jawn Leadership, and Dark Carnival Pokémon

November 18, 2020

People-driven action in Poland is growing, AOC pushes public banks, the PA Lt. Governor has a future in national politics, and never send a Dark Carnival Pokémon to do the work of a tank. It’s Wednesday, November 18th 2020, and this is the Tea.

The Abortion Protests in Poland are Starting to Feel Like a Revolution (New Yorker) Listen to women, or they will deliver a better tomorrow. Poland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe, so it is learning this the hard way.

Rashida Tlaib and AOC have a proposal for a fairer, greener financial system — public banking (Vox) My Congresswoman pushing for the empowerment of public banking. I’m going to be on a policy conference call later this evening to understand the text of the legislation, so a brain dump might be forthcoming. Get a tarp.

Giuliani wrecks Trump campaign's well-laid legal plans (Politico) If you don’t play video games, the idea that some moron might just ignore months of carefully built strategy and practice, smashing all of your hopes & dreams. If you do, you’ll just simply whisper “Lerooyyy Jeeennkins!” to yourself while reading this.

John and Gisele Fetterman Are Fighting for the American Working Class (Teen Vogue) The minor celebrity of last week’s PA recounts, the 6’9” PA Lt. Governor, is a leftist to watch out for. You heard me, don’t sleep on this jawn.

NYC Will End Practice Of Drug Testing Pregnant Patients Without Written Consent (Gothamist) Oh. I'm glad we're no longer doing a thing I'm infuriated that I just learned we had been doing. Excuse me while I scream in this closet.

Don’t Blame the Left for the Democrat’s Loses (The New Republic) Seriously, don’t come at me with this trash take. Progressive policies are widely popular, Centrist/Blue Dog Dems are not. Additionally, the DNC does not fund downballot races, an unforced error leftists have been pointing out in the Democratic Party’s ground game since before Obama’s presidency. As discussed:

But in a Wednesday piece for The Washington Post, political scientists Daniel Galvin, Daniel Scholzman, and Sam Rosenfeld argued that the Democratic Party’s organizational weaknesses have deep roots and reflect a long-standing strategic asymmetry between our two parties. “Republican presidents going back to Eisenhower have systematically invested in their party’s organizational capacities at the national, state and local levels: funding local party-building initiatives, assiduously recruiting activists, volunteers, and candidates, teaching campaign techniques, and launching fundraising systems,” they wrote. “Democratic presidents, in contrast, have repeatedly emphasized enacting policies over party-building.”

Oceanfront Property Tied to Obama Granted Exemption From Hawaii’s Environmental Laws (ProPublica) The chair of the Obama Foundation is engaging in some trashy shenanigan’s in Hawaii. Hey Obama, come get your boy.

PlayStation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory (Nikkei Asia) You know that factory in sci-fi movies where things are built by only robots? Not only is that factory from the Animatrix real, they make Playstations.

‘Their Loads Are Garbage’: Drivers Say Uber’s Trucking Business Is Making a Tough Job Worse (OneZero) Because what trucking needed was a lack of oversight, hour caps, and basically 100% of what we’d done over the last 70 years to make trucking safe. Can’t wait for the UberTrucking industry to revert back to the mixture of poverty, unaddressed health problems, and crystal meth that got them through.

Harvard’s Thrilling—and Pyrrhic—Affirmative Action Victory (The Nation) Elie Mystal remains my favorite American Legal writer. His ability to thread the needle here, explaining how Asian Americans were exploited by this case, ultimately losing & not vanquishing the real racist disadvantages they face, is second to none.

Song of the Tea: CloZinger is not a name I’d heard of before, but this scintillating bassy ambient tune means they’ll probably come up again.

How are you keeping warm? Check your stores, revise your plans, the chill will be powerful.

Yours,T