In year of crisis, growth continues on Northern Sea Route Barents Observer
Climate change intensifies tsunami threat in Alaska High Country News
Climate Change Will Make Parts of the U.S. Uninhabitable. Americans Are Still Moving There. ProPublica
Kevin Stiroh: A microprudential perspective on the financial risks of climate change Bank of International Settlements
The Man Who Could Explain the $2 Billion Wirecard Mystery Is Missing Bloomberg
#COVID19
Association of COVID-19 RT-qPCR test false-negative rate with patient age, sex and time since diagnosis (preprint) medRxiv. From the Abstract: “The primary testing tool, the RT-qPCR based testing, is notoriously known for its low sensitivity, i.e. high risk of missed detection of carriers.” And from the Interpretation: “Our results show that in the first few days following diagnosis, when results are critical for quarantine decisions, RT-qPCR testing is more reliable than previously reported. Yet the reliability of the test result is reduced in later days as well as for women and younger patients, where the viral loads are typically lower.”
Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications (preprint) medRxiv. The Discussion: “These results indicate that COVID-19 is hazardous not only for the elderly but also for middle-aged adults, for whom the infection fatality rate [(IFR)] is two orders of magnitude greater than the annualized risk of a fatal automobile accident and far more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Moreover, the overall IFR for COVID-19 should not be viewed as a fixed parameter but as intrinsically linked to the age-specific pattern of infections. Consequently, public health measures to mitigate infections in older adults could substantially decrease total deaths.”
The Vaccine News Is Good. Here’s the Bad News. Foreign Policy. Fauci ramping Big Pharma stock based on a press release would be shocking, if he hadn’t done it before.
Pandemic driving children back to work, jeopardizing gains AP. From October, still germane.
China?
China’s ‘recolonisation’ of Hong Kong could soon be complete FT
Hong Kong’s “New Normal” Asia Media Centre
The Koreas
Joe Biden should seize the opportunity for peace on the Korean Peninsula Responsible Statecraft
EU/UK
EU banks urged to prepare for bad loans as pandemic hits economy FT
Macron’s War on Islamists Comes Up Against Erdogan’s Soft Power Bloomberg
British Chancellor Closes Eyes, Wishes Real Hard That London Will Remain Relevant Dealbreaker
John Major says UK no longer ‘great power’ The Independent
Belgian chocolatiers struggling to stay afloat, amid pandemic Euronews
Belarus nuclear plant stops power output soon after opening AP
Alcohol Killing Directly or Indirectly Half of Working-Age Russians, Study Says Window on Eurasia
Brexit
Brexit warning to Boris Johnson in Joe Biden post-election call FT
Joe Biden’s long history with Moscow Russia Beyond
Biden Transition
Agency Review Teams Biden-Harris Transition. Anybody recognize any names?
* * * After Esper, Top Pentagon Official Ousted The American Conservative. Jake Tapper: “Sources say [the firings] may be because Esper and his team were pushing back on what they viewed as a premature withdrawal from Afghanistan before conditions were met, as well as other pending security issues.” Premature…
Forget it, Donny, you’re out of your element:
DECLASSIFY EVERYTHING!!!
We can’t let the bad actors get away with it.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 8, 2020
“If you want to lose a fight, talk about it first” –Richard Morgan, Altered Carbon
A furious behind-the-scenes battle to counter Trump’s threat to national security David Ignatius, WaPo. Ignatius is the CIA’s commissar at WaPo. NPR joins the fun:
Here, the incomparable @IgnatiusPost inquires what is really happening as the administration goes after its own national security leadership. https://t.co/z28NKBSL8Q
— Steve Inskeep (@NPRinskeep) November 11, 2020
The last time I can remember “incomparable” being used: sad sack law prof Larry Tribe, of Tory RussiaGate loon and New York Times Op-Ed contributor Louise Mensch. And how right he was. (As you see, the article has a lovely, shadowed image of torture maven Gina Haspel that makes her look like a feminine George Smiley.)
Back channels, my dudes. Back channels. Stay calm:
Trump @POTUS has not received Intelligence briefing since October 1st @CBS. Preventing President-Elect @JoeBiden from receiving critical Intelligence briefings places our national security at risk. This type of misstep factored into 9/11. We must be vigilant during transition. https://t.co/QuJrNGkIsS
— Todd Rowley??? (@ToddRowleyPA13) November 11, 2020
(Todd Rowley is a CIA Democrat. Mike Rogers is a national security goon with a CNN contract.)
White House official, former Nunes aide Michael Ellis named NSA general counsel Cyberscoop
NC readers aren’t the only ones to notice how clothing has been crapified:
Thrifting is the way to go, it also makes your look unique. @israhirsi & I do this often, it’s also where I get most of my jewelry.
Somali shops in my district have the best scarves on a budget, will get you some to spice up any wardrobe.
I specialize in $50 or less outfits ? https://t.co/cxsftlekqm
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 11, 2020
Donald Trump could land $100M book deal for presidential tome NY Post. Or not. Depending.
2020
Lambert here: In a year where so much conventional wisdom has been overturned, the old adage still seems true: “Democrats steal primaries, Republicans steal the general.” Of course, less yammering and more reporting is always welcome.
* * * The Front Page:
Tomorrow's front page. pic.twitter.com/iq7iSYkQKD
— NYT Styles (@NYTStyles) November 11, 2020
Scream “It’s legitimate!” any louder and I’ll begin to have doubts.
States cite smooth election, despite Trump’s baseless claims and Puerto Rico unearths uncounted ballots 1 week after election Associated Press. To be fair, Puerto Rico isn’t a state…
Second group of international election observers report no evidence of fraud The Hill. The OAS, which did such a great job in Bolivia….
Trump’s former chief of staff on election fraud claims: ‘Put up or shut up on the evidence’ Yahoo Finance. The absence of a site aggregating such affidavits as there are is telling.
Rep. Doug Collins calls on Georgia officials to conduct vote recount by hand NBC. Collins is correct, even if his Republican colleagues created the Georgia electronic voting debacle in the first place. Meanwhile, Democrats call for the Electoral College to be abolished, but do not call for electronic voting to be replaced with handmarked paper ballots, hand-counted in public, even though the two systemic problems are of a similar scope and scale. One can only wonder why.
Pennsylvania GOP rallies to Trump’s defense Politico
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick Offers Up To $1M Reward For ‘Voter Fraud Whistleblowers And Tipsters’ CBS DFW
Top US election crime prosecutor quits after attorney general orders fraud probe Euronews. But read Barr’s charge to the probe.
Without Another Massive Federal Stimulus, State and Local Governments Will Face Brutal Austerity Jacobin
Trump Transition
Scoop: Justice Department OKs Uber-Postmates deal Axios
McCabe Rejects Republican Accusations of F.B.I. Corruption in Russia Inquiry NYT
Census Bureau denies allegations by workers of falsifying tallies The Hill
Health Care
Argument analysis: ACA seems likely to survive, but on what ground? SCOTUSblog
A Conspiracy Collapses In The Court: Justices Appear To Confirm A Majority In Favor Of Preserving The ACA Jonathan Turley
$1,944 for a Coronavirus Test? How Readers Helped Us Spot an Unusual Trend NYT
Audit: PBMs paying pharmacies differently; CVS Caremark says that’s normal business TB&P
Our Famously Free Press
Reporter Tweets Perfect Burn After Pompeo’s ‘Second Trump Administration’ Claim HuffPo. That’s why we pay them the big bucks.
Platforms working as designed:
Twitter has *again* restricted the account of @OVargas52, one of the only journalists reporting in Bolivia in English on the defeat of the US-backed coup regime.
This is blatant censorship. The first time Twitter could claim it was accidental. Now it is clearly a pattern pic.twitter.com/1d8IkWfOBd
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 11, 2020
Evo Morales Returns to Bolivia to Cheers — and Worries NYT
Black Injustice Tipping Point
America’s protest crackdown: five months after George Floyd, hundreds face trials and prison Guardian
Groves of Academe
Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow:
Harvard's president said in March that he and his wife had "completely isolated" for 10 days before they contracted COVID.
Via @thecrimson, that's not so. Two housekeepers were cleaning his house for 4 hours a day, 2 days a week. One of them got COVID.https://t.co/wvpffv1py6 pic.twitter.com/aZPTGdDqHV
— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) November 9, 2020
The apparent paradox can be resolved if you give consideration to the possibility that Bacow does not regard the servants as fully human.
Class Warfare
Evictions would raise COVID-19 risk for everyone LiveScience
Record Low Mortgage Rates Widen Historic U.S. Economic Divides Bloomberg
How Platform Co-ops Transform the Gig Economy Grassroots Economic Organizing
‘Make America RAKE Again!’ Four Seasons Total Landscaping launches merchandise, including ‘lawn and order’ and face masks, after Giuliani held bizarre presser in its parking lot Daily Mail (Zelda). Zelda comments: “First they had the presence of mind to quote a price instead of directing Giuliani to the hotel, and now they’re in the T-shirt business.” And:
Just throwing it out there, new Philly 10-Miler? @rebthebarber @dhm @byJenAMiller @GPescatore @brimil pic.twitter.com/4iOoDnikiW
— Jeff Lyons (@usedwigs) November 9, 2020
Four Seasons Total Landscaping wins The Gritty Seal of Approval™!
Antidote du jour (WB):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
152 comments
Comments are closed.
There’s no reason to read this link and you likely need a subscription anyway, but:
https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2020/11/10/33rd-legislative-district-PA-election-results-Carrie-Lewis-DelRosso-Frank-Dermody/stories/202011100153
I don’t know anything about Frank Dermody or Lewis-DelRosso, and the district named surprised me to find it has been represented by an ancient D so the R replacement makes sense. However, here a commenter says something of interest:
Isn’t this how it is supposed to work? Despite the opportunity to complain about the massive infusion of outside money that more or less blindsided Dermody, whose campaign was ill equipped to match, he simply expressed what American politicians normally do, wishing the victor well and moving on. No reason to undermine the process or cry foul, even in such a close election that took days and days to sort out.
The R party put a “massive infusion of money” into a small suburb for a state house. Our state house is IIRC 435 seats. The Dems can’t even be bothered to do a 50 state strategy for US Senators..
That’s ground up work. Build the farm team. They deserve to win if the Dems, who have plenty of money, don’t ever start doing this.
But …but … the D’s ideas are SO MUCH better for EVERYONE that they sell themselves, so no need to expend $. But keep those checks coming in because … you know …
Dry powder costs $$$$$$.
But they’re fighting for you… somehow… somewhere… it must be true they said so.
The Dems are to the political space what Boeing is to the industrial world.
“Reporter Tweets Perfect Burn After Pompeo’s ‘Second Trump Administration’ Claim”
Hate to spoil a good story but when you see his delivery, I am pretty sure that he was just razzing the reporters with his talk of a second Trump Administration.
No doubt. After grinning, Pompeo immediately went on to say everything one says to assure a seamless transition, including “seamless transition.” What’s worrying is, I’m afraid the press corps isn’t lying anymore, their TDS has 0verwhelmed their judgement. But out-of-context words on a page aren’t what most people learn from anymore; the tv narratives containing context just keep damning mainstream reporting. But the bubble-people don’t know.
Today’s Rising has the clip with suitable commentary.
The mortality impacts of alcoholism in Russia are a parallel catastrophe to the opioid epidemic in the US.
2019 “Russian alcohol consumption down 43%, WHO report says”
“It attributed the decline to a series of alcohol-control measures implemented by the state, and a push towards healthy lifestyles.
The WHO said the drop in alcohol consumption was linked to a significant rise in life expectancy.
It noted that Russia had previously been considered one of the heaviest-drinking countries in the world.
“Alcohol consumption has long been recognised as one of the main driving factors of mortality in the Russian Federation, especially among men of working age,” the report said.
But from 2003 to 2018, alcohol consumption and mortality decreased, with the most significant changes occurring in causes of death linked to alcohol.
In 2018, life expectancy in Russia reached a historic peak, at 68 years for men and 78 years for women.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49892339
They are #9 in global opiod deaths. They aren’t as exceptional as America, but they are getting there..
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/10-highest-overdose-and-drug-related-death-rates-in-the-world.html
That’s alcohol sold by registered, legal producers, the folks outside the cities drink samogon (moonshine).
There are still plenty of folks slowly killing themselves with alcohol in the U.S.. And in the presence of a market for moonshine, I’d expect to see a thriving black market for illegal drugs like heroin in Russia. But heroin here is usually the drug addicts turn to when they can no longer access prescribed opioids…
How hard is it to get opioids in Russia?
The age to liter equation was alarming. 15?
>Scream “It’s legitimate!” any louder and I’ll begin to have doubts.
Don’t. Biden won the primary, the EC as well as the popular vote.
Here’s the problem with all the conspiracy theorists that have come to infect this blog: have any of you ever watched a “magicians reveal”? Did you understand what they were telling you?
What they did, and what you can’t seem to understand, is the complete misdirection of where the con was made. All the votes were counted just fine in every instance. These electronic voting machines work as intended, whether we like them or not.
The initial Dem primary is, if I remember correctly, Iowa, New Hampshire, and soon after South Carolina. These are states that are way out of reach for the Dem party, and the Dems that are in them are basically cowed by Republicans.
This makes it so easy for an establishment Dem like Biden or Clinton to win. Stalin says it was “who counts the votes” but that is so 100 years ago. In the US of today, you just rig the underlying premise of the whole game. At worse you risk an (ex Republican) Warren victory.
But keep up the chatter, the more distracted you are by “voting machines” BS the happier they are. You keep looking in that hat for the rabbit…
Was there cheating in the current elections? Absolutely. Was it enough to shift the win to Trump? Almost certainly not. That is Trump that you will see going out the back door. Why am I certain that there was shenanigans this year? Check this out from twenty years ago–
“DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 – Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county’s Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore’s count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000–all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters.”
– Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22
And I have been reading stories like this ever since then. I think that Iowa in 2008 was another such story. Why would it be any different now?
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
“Was there cheating in the current elections? Absolutely. Was it enough to shift the win to Trump? Almost certainly not.”
There is no way to know because you don’t know if the computer software was written correctly.
Absolutely no way for us to know.
–antidlc, computer programmer in a former life
+1.
This isn’t the argument Trump and the GOP is making though.
Brennan Center identifies the issues in the post-election suits as deadlines for mail ballots, poll watcher access, and ballot counting procedures.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/why-these-new-election-lawsuits-will-fail
Too true.
We may as well uncover a real palantir and consult with “The Eye of Sauron.”
The recent elections have about as much grounding in reality as did Professor Tolkien’s tomes.
But the complaints are not just about computer programs. They supposedly have affidavits from witnesses of tampering in Michigan.
And no it probably won’t make any difference, particularly given Biden’s over all popular vote majority which doesn’t seem to be in dispute. But Trump was hired by the voters who like him as the disruptor so perhaps he is going out that way even if he did very little swamp draining when he had more of a chance. Given the huge and open press favoritism toward Biden I’d say this could hardly be called an unbiased election regardless of what turns up. But that’s been true for many years although never to this degree. The national media usually have a favorite.
Here’s an thread with an overview and samples of the affidavits from a journalist:
https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1326548890384916480
His take: “Many of these boil down to not being able to observe as closely as they wanted, not having questions answered. A bunch are people saying they saw something but didn’t know exactly what was happening or why. Some are relatively detailed; most are not…But they’re not alleging fraud. A few allege things that made them suspicious, but they offer very little detail.”
More on the affidavits:
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/11/trump-lawsuit-affidavits-allege-misconduct-do-not-show-widespread-fraud/6247949002/
Another review of the affidavits: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-voter-fraud-michigan-lawsuit_n_5fabef94c5b68707d1fb0166
“There is no way to know because you don’t know if the computer software was written correctly.”
Correctly to allow/facilitate cheating or correctly to prevent cheating?
Not to mention controls in place so that the results could be accurately audited to detect cheating.
I guess we just have to trust the powers that be and the declared results. Strange that the powers that be (in either party) don’t seem to care.
+1
Completely agree.
– another computer programmer
It’s hard enough for the people who wrote it to know. And there’s no way to know whether it was tampered with or interfered with at some point.
Paper ballots are secure because the chain of custody is secure. When you replace ballots with software, the software needs an equally secure chain of custody. You would need scrutineers observing the creation of the software, the hardware, and at every step from there to point of use and counting. Even the first of these is straight-up impossible. We can never know.
I keep trying to think of new awys to make the problem of e-voting obvious. I don’t think this does it, but perhaps it could lead somewhere:
A magician shows an empty hat. He passes his wand over it. A dove pops out! The audience is surprised.
A magician shows an empty ballot on his iPhone. An audience member selects Trillary. The magicain passes his wand over it. Now it shows a vote for Hump! The audience is not surprised.
This is the difference between an (apparently) secure chain of custody and an insecure chain. A magician could do a magic trick with a ballot box. He could never do a trick with a computer. No-one would be surprised.
The innocence of computers can only be asserted when the source code of all modules are posted in public domain for everybody to evaluate.
Until then,
You say the computers are infallible.
I say all programmers are fallible.
BTW, we should all learn to code.
Rev Kev: There’s an old World Wide Web (not the same as the internet) saying, “Pics or didn’t happen.” Usually when I see a story like that, I ask, “So what happened then?” Usually somebody noticed the anomaly (that’s how the story got into WaPo in the first place) and than somebody checked it out and corrected the error. Very often the resolution doesn’t get reported, though. You have to find out through some obscure blogger.
Really, “conspiracy theorists that have come to infect this blog”?
I don’t see it, I see a healthy skepticism. Anyone who doesn’t think the establishment favored in every way possible a Biden over Trump win, just wasn’t paying attention or is willfully ignorant. Given that, and with the election in some states within 1/2 of 1%, I think you’re being disingenuous.
Misdirection, absolutely, in every possible way by many actors and in many different directions. I think Biden will be the next President and for the reasons listed by a recent post here a day or so ago.
1)The Professional Managerial Class (PMC) attained class consciousness.
2) The PMC was and is embubbled by a domestic psyop.
3) The press replaced reporting with advocacy.
4) Election legitimacy is determined by extra-Constitutional actors.
5) “Fascism” became an empty signifier, not an analytical tool.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/what-it-took-the-price-of-democrat-victory-2020.html
You have no actual basis for claiming that Chris is disingenuous, you simply disagree.
I agree with the Chris. There has been so much in the comments on this, with little to no substance, that they are barely worth wading through.
I put my faith in the moderators to determine if a post is “worth wading through” not the folks posting comments. I’ve had post that haven’t been approved and I respect NC’s right to do so. So give the moderator some credit on what is suitable to be read, they are better judges and know the guidelines and parameters of this site better than you…no disrespect intended.
Simply disagreeing or agreeing is of no import. Provide a reasons why, I noted why I thought that a healthy skepticism is appropriate. Provide counter argument and substantiate it.
I am sorry but there was a post here a while ago decrying the Katyn forest massacre as a “fable”. That was the cold blooded murder of about 15000-22000 Polish POWs during WW2. The moderators are good but the system is not infallible.
On another note, today is Remembrance Day
If I recall it was much of their officer corps. The Stalinists were beheading their annoying neighbor by removing “elites”.
Providing that there were old regime sympathizing and nazi collaborating armed bands robbing post offices etc. well into the fifties they were on to something. However repugnant the deed may appear.
Canadian, eh?
LOL!!!
I agree that the moderators do a good job here, but I don’t expect them to filter out all silly comments either.
Your comment struck me as wrong-headed because you accused Chris above of being disingenuous, which implies insincerity and game playing on his part. Just because you lend more credence to claims of fraud than someone else doesn’t mean you have to accuse them of bad behavior.
Acknowledged, I redact. I’ve read, enjoyed and profited from many of his post in the past. Not first time I have been “wrong-headed”…
“barely worth wading through”
On the contrary, it is quite fun to imagine them with enraged scarlet faces, veins bulging at the temples, in a total tailspin, thinking they can make a difference by regurgitating that garbage here.
And, alas, imagine you must, since we did not indulge your fantasies by taking to the streets and breaking windows, stealing merch and setting other people’s property on fire.
All that wasted plywood.
Our bulging veins will live to fight another day.
Eh? I didn’t think for a moment that the cantankerous old fools, who waste their lives defending their Dear Leader online, had the nads to do anything but.
My prescription: Take a breather from the www!
…& I disagree with you , Nick.
It is going to take some time and effort to figure out exactly how much fraud and deception took place and whether it was or was not enough fraud and deception to change the results of the electoral college distribution.
Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai : MIT PhD Analysis of Michigan Votes Reveals Unfortunate Truth of U.S. Voting Systems:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztu5Y5obWPk&app=desktop
What is the “actual basis” for d.c.’s claim that the electronic voting machines work as intended? Is it the “whether we like them or not” part?
Intended?
Misdirection?
Thank god Trump lost and heaven help us that Biden won. And yes, I’ve no doubt Biden won… even voted for him after swearing I would write in “Vladimir Putin.”
Which has nothing to do with the veracity of electronic voting systems. In my humble opinion. different chris is certainly entitled to his. Maybe I’ve missed some absurd comments defending Trump and if so I expect they’ve been called out. But d.c’s not-so-humble slur against NC welcoming different opinions is unwarranted.
Conspiracy theorists “infecting” NC?
uh… no.
It’s conspiratorial to imagine the Democrats rigged things to steal the Presidency and forgot to steal the Senate and lost seats in the House. I have nothing against the notion of conspiracies, but this one doesn’t make sense.
It makes perfect sense if certain ling serving Republicans were willing to conspire with the Democrats to oust Trump in return for preserving their seats.
Do you really think Graham or McConnell, et.al. are above making such a deal with Pelosi and Schumer -the very same Democrats with whom they have been crafting and allotting their pork and graft with for decades?
Addendum: what Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai is displaying in his analysis in my link above appears to me to be a variation on a simple Digital Compression algorithm that one would find in audio recording and/or audio effects software -complete with ‘makeup gain’ ..
+1
This is it.
Oh, right. EVERYBODY’S in on the con in this election, Republicans and Democrats alike.
I prefer Occam’s Razor. As Arizona’s Secretary of State (a Republican) said about the results in his state, lots of Republicans split the ticket, voting against Trump and for down ballot Republicans. “Just because it happened doesn’t mean it’s fraud”.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/11/trump-unlikely-to-beat-biden-in-arizona-no-fraud-seen-state-ag-says.html
Why?
Running the table would be too obvious.
I think people could be convinced to help get rid of Trump.
Just a lil white lie dontcha know
FD: I voted JJ
It makes even less sense that, with visions of a “blue wave” veto-proof majority in the senate and the dethroning of the hated turtle mcconnell dancing in their heads, impassioned biden voters blew off the senate vote to let the chips fall where they may.
I do not think there was ever a chance that McConnell would be defeated. He may be intensely disliked among Democrats, but he has had a lock on Kentucky for a long long time.
The turtle didn’t need to be electorally defeated. If the democrats take / took the senate majority, he’d not be the majority leader, where all his power comes from, anymore. He’d be demoted–still a senate hack just not the most powerful one.
Not to mention that all committee chairmanships would be held by democrats instead of repubs. Even Bernie would be in line for a chairmanship–Finance Committee if I’m not mistaken.
Dems taking the senate is big. The idea that it was only about Trump/biden only flies if somebody wanted Trump gone but everything else to stay the same.
Katniss Everdeen: Gee, hasn’t Joe Biden said many time that “Nothing will fundamentally change.”? That seems quite certain now. 8^)
Yes, and that repeatedly
spoken statement would
ensure that he would
never get my vote
if I
identified as a Latino person.
“Conspiracy theory” is just a taboo against thinking of combined self-interest, so that people don’t unify against the elites. “How dare you project your base motives onto me” is a boring hermeneutic, having ran out of lulz for me years ago.
I mostly agree. I’m not a big fan of performative/competitive cynicism but it goes down a lot better if it includes citations to testable facts and claims.
a different chris
November 11, 2020 at 7:56 am
I agree.
AND I would note* that Bush won by 537 votes over Gore – except, I think that level of accuracy given the practicalities and exigencies of any activity undertaken by millions of humans is nonsense – it really was a tie if we could only be honest about margin of error. Now, we do know for sure that Gore won the popular vote – but we choose to put ourselves through this.
Its kinda like health care – we choose to spend more and get less. Because its better to die sooner as a capitalist than live longer as a socialist…or something.
* I would note Clinton won over Trump in 2016, but who’s counting…
“But who’s counting…” Yeah. That Dominion computer software? Lots of ‘glitches’ apparently. ;)
Please see the YouTube link above for a discussion of the statistical dispersion of those ‘glitches’…
Trump’s partisans were passionate and they came out to vote in great numbers. Those who were of the opposite persuasion were equally passionate and attracted the often indifferent who had become, shall we say, tired of Trump. That could account for his defeat.
The Democrats as a party ran on nothing more than opposition to Trump an the assertion that somehow in the face of long standing evidence, they woud do better.
As a party the Democrats have, in my estimation, become Republican-lite. Why vote for near-beer when you can have the real thing?
There was so much publicity given to the prospect of unrest and hanky-panky in one form or another that I think election commissioners, secretaries of state, the folks at the polls, and the vote counters made a great effort to see that the election went off smoothly and none of the more dire predictions have been realized, at least so far. I use a computer but I have no expertise with the arcana of their inner workings. But, if it can be programmed and set up to run, it can be hacked, tampered with, subverted, and that can be done in such a way that finding it would be extremely difficult. That would take a conspiracy on steroids; I find it unlikely.
The ballot is important as a means of self-assessment by the people that can be made reasonably free of ruling class manipulation. To fetishize the campaigns of worthless oligarch servants as somehow the point of elections is weird, authoritarian logic.
The initial Dem primary is, if I remember correctly, Iowa, New Hampshire, and soon after South Carolina. These are states that are way out of reach for the Dem party, and the Dems that are in them are basically cowed by Republicans.
Iowa had a hybrid caucus this year: people gathered but the counts were run through a new computer app. It was a mess, a complete and total mess. Remember Pete jumping out to say “he won”, and the count not finishing until it they were in NH costing Sanders a headline coming out of Iowa?
Recall that Obama won the 2008 Iowa caucus (before computerized apps fiddling). He won the general in Iowa. Don’t say Dems never have a chance in Iowa.
Dem’s also apparently had a pretty good chance in NH this year, as they won it 53% to 45%.
However in general there is no remotely serious evidence of fraud against Trump. Since 2000, average Pres. pop. vote for Republicans has been around 46.5%, while for Dem’s, around 50%. This election will come in very close to those figures, with Biden slightly exceeding the Dem. average. All routine… Most people vote much more for party than person, and even Trump, who for his entire life has been one of the most loathsome, infantile sociopaths in American history, didn’t change that much.
Trump’s evidenceless lawsuits are being laughed out of court almost as soon as they are filed. Capitalist oligarchy marches on under Joey B, but without an actual oligarch’s narcissistic antics gumming up the works.. Joe should thank his lucky stars he got to run against this fool.
You missed my point about electronic voting causing more problems than its supposedly “quick and efficient counting” being “better” and “more accurate” than the process of hand marked ballots, counted by hand, in public. ;)
Totally agree that hand marked and counted in public is best!
But since I was (mildly) correcting A Diff. Chris’s comment on NH, I wanted to indicate my support for his take in general. While I agree with the generic faults of electronic ballots, there is still no evidence (as opposed to vague speculation) that in this election Trump was the victim of fraud. The courts are verifying this daily by pitching all his lawsuits in the trash heap.
He has only his own pathetic con-man self to blame for being such a lying clown that he lost to a mentally challenged dissembler who supports oligarchy as much, if not more, than the actual oligarchs!
The funny thing is that it isn’t Trump’s transparent lies about his political intentions (to help the working man–Trump has a long history of stiffing his low-level contractors on payment for building his gaudy hotels) that generated so much antipathy. Most politicians do that kind of lying. It was the fact that he serially lied about everything, even easily checkable routine facts. He once took credit for “his administration” passing a bill that a reporter eventually pointed out to him was passed during Obama’s term.
If Trump got 98% on a math test, he would have lied to his parents and said he had gotten 101%!. That’s how much of a dishonest narcissist he is. I have been truly amazed to watch him–as if one were watching the Mozart or Einstein of prevarication. But will be happy to do so no longer… :)
Nice work around on “These electronic voting machines work as intended, whether we like them or not.” Oh I know you probably mean to equate intended with accurately, but anyone who says that hasn’t been paying attention past the misdirection of the last twenty years.
I suggest you go read all you can on Black Box Voting.
I do want massive recounts, hand counts of paper ballots. I want the real counts. And I want everyone in America to find out how often they are inaccurate or impossible. The only bright spot to this farce of an election would be the destruction of our for profit deeply insecure by design electronic voting fascination. And if everyone has to wait to back to brunch while it happens, so be it.
As far as I am concerned neither one of these *sshats should be anywhere the White House. So when I tell you what I want it isn’t about who gets to be President, we are screwed either way. It is about the future and giving some small power back to the public.
My big story is from 2012. I happened to flip to Fox just as they called Ohio for Obama. I saw Rove declare it to be impossible and have a fit. I laughed hysterically when Anonymous announced they removed the improvements from Ohio’s software a few days later. I’m pretty sure Obama should thank them.
The only bright spot to this farce of an election would be the destruction of our for profit deeply insecure by design electronic voting fascination.
+1.
Nice work around on “These electronic voting machines work as intended, whether we like them or not.”
And then there’s this:
Every instance. Every. Single. One.
Up is down and down is up.
Yikes, fellow proles. Just yikes.
It doesn’t matter who counts, how and with what, hand counted in public or opaque for profit voting machines.
If you have 150 million votes across a single country, there will always be errors and problems. Always. Even without the (legal) fraud the US undoubtedly has.
Scream its illegitimate
https://t.co/dteGG5Mkx7?amp=1
North Carolina purged 576,534 voters from the rolls in early 2019. (Google/DDG the number along with North Carolina… You’ll find it.)
So much for the Senate.
But the point about misdirection deserves thought. The media obsess about a handful of miscounted ballots and ignore millions of purged voters. The go-to investigative-reporting source is gregpalast.com. Palast worked with Stacey Abrams on the Georgia purge situation this year.
‘Make America RAKE Again!’ Four Seasons Total Landscaping launches merchandise, including ‘lawn and order’ and face masks, after Giuliani held bizarre presser in its parking lot Daily Mail
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As much as I want this to be comeuppance perpetrated by a WH junior scheduler and hopefully totally spur of the moment tomfoolery with the realization-Hey what’s the worst that could happen, they’d fire me?…
…it is possible a concatenation of circumstances made it so
If unintentional, imagine the daisy chain of missteps when said junior scheduler that had bought gardening supplies recently, cued in four seasons and the smartphone realized this is what your looking for, and down the maze it went clearing every hurdle, the highest one being that Rudy et al ended up in a hood right out of Rocky in Philly after losing to Apollo Creed.
R. Balboa
Their merchandise is pretty tame. Maybe they took down the more controversial ones for fear of losing clients.
But they don’t have a trademark on their name (not a surprise) so there are some pretty funny look-alikes out there that have the “Make America Rake Again” logo.
15 minutes of fame tends to linger in times such as these, and if Four Seasons Total Landscaping only had catchy looking merchandise for the occasion, sales would be such that they could afford to stay @ the Four Seasons down the road.
Forget landscaping, what about the porn guy on one side and the crematorium on the other. Are there Trump links there?
Porn guy should look into a special video signing/appearance by Stormy or produce a “quickie” memorial porn titled “Grab Her *****”.
As for the crematorium and memorials, who knows where the bodies are not buried but burned? You would think there would be at least one aspiring, inquisitive journalist who would determine the ownership of the crisper. Hey, if I were running a respectable organized crime org, I would have my own personal high temp disposal unit. Bada-bi-gone. And it’s in Philly to boot!
lol
That kinda makes me look forward to WWIII, when the President and his cuff-whisperers turn up all sweaty at a camping goods outlet: “No, gentlemen – there’s no bunker here. And what we actually carry is thermal underwear. No idea where you got the nuclear from.”
for once the NYT is doing its job. After a lifetime of spewing bullshit claims Trump is claiming he won. The votes indicate otherwise.
and , like the boy who cried wolf, no one is listening anymore…
thank god, because the NYT continues to spew bullshit that is far more consequential than a clown who lucked into POTUS because of a feckless, indeed complicit, opposition party.
Someone said it best here yesterday – “watch their hips, not their lips.”
Today’s New York Times, the Toilet Paper of Record:
The Conservative part of NYC, Staten Island, that supported Trump gets Covid.
“serves them right” is the subtext not so subtly uttered.
Contrast that with (I’m paraphrasing} “The Latino and black parts of NYC disproportionately get Covid because they are essential workers…”
Poor little lambs that need cuddling, more justice and must vote the way we tell them to oust Trump is the stated logic there.
Staten Island, is where the Irish firemen, cops and nurses, the essential first responders, that do the work and are exposed to Covid, mostly live.
F* you NYT. The next five New York Times newsracks I see get kicked into the gutter where they belong. That kind of thing is cathartic and prevents the buildup of cortisol and lessons the chances of violence between citizens.
rawr, been doin squats?
what specific reason do you have to suggest that their reporting on this particular vote count is at fault?
Did Judy Miller tell you this? How anyone can still look to the NYT for “truth” is beyond me. Even if 95% of their writers and stories are on the up and up, how do you discern whether you are reading from the 5% that is propaganda, and the 95% which may be legitimate? Or maybe the story you are reading combines elements of both, in which case you are really screwed if the “truth” is what you are after.
The times is going beyond journalism to overtly influencing public opinion, and they’ve been
doing this with regards to Trump for his whole presidency. They’re doing this in concert with
the Democratic party establishment and intelligence agencies. All of this is very disturbing
but I’m starting to see another side here, which is that our society has a big problem: we are
now living in the age of fake news, and deep fakes. A lot of people are having trouble knowing what is real anymore, and the overload of information and all of the targeted narratives…
people have lost the ability to think critically. They see a story being spun that kind of lines up with what they already believe in some way, and maybe there are some statistics presented or a table or a graphic that seems to support the narrative, and it quickly becomes
gospel. And it spreads like lightning, with very few people really looking at it closely enough
to find out where it might fall short of the truth. It’s just too much work, and we’re
constantly blasted with new points, such that it all seems to fit together and be part of some
bigger picture.
I believe that a lot of these stories about the election and the ostensible interference in it
fall into this category of things that appear true at first glance, especially if you already
have a certain suspicion that lines up with them. The evidence that’s presented looks
sufficient on the surface but often is shown to be bogus upon deeper inspection, but no one has the desire, ability and/or time to do that. Social media is what enables this phenomenon, and I think the MSM (including social media) is trying to counter this out-of-control narrative
warfare and meme propagation. That’s part of the censorship we’re seeing and also the Times and other establishment mouthpiece’s more active opinion shaping.
In other words, the Times and other establishment forces are actively trying to suppress dissent, but it’s a kind of dissent that may end up harming or even destroying society, so I don’t really know who is right or what the answer is to any of this at the moment.
not a good look: Pfizer’s CEO cashed out 60% of his stock on the same day the company unveiled the results of its COVID-19 vaccine trial.
https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/1326454622140174336
FWIW – the article mentions it’s done “through a routine Rule 10b5-1, a predetermined trading plan that allows company staff members to sell their stock in line with insider-trading laws.”
What’s interesting is this bit “Pfizer is already working on a workaround powder-form vaccine to address the current one’s biggest limitation: having to be stored at extremely low temperatures.
I believe there is a study somewhere that shows Rule 10b5-1 trading plans show management can be used to cash out on the basis of inside info. No I can’t find the link or reference, sorry. My interest in this came from the 2008 financial crisis and watching New Century Financial, Washingtion Mutual, and Countrywide (among others) implode – which was how I and many others found NC.
The other orange man Angelo Mozilo (remember him !) cashed out from Countrywide using such a plan. When I see such programs in place in a company, I watch them for short interest and bad news – well I would if I had any money for such games.
TMoney
November 11, 2020 at 9:17 am
Michael Kinsley: The scandal isn’t that what they are doing is illegal – the scandal is that what they are doing is legal
Correct.
Not only was the sale scheduled for the date it was; the information was effectively held until that date.
The timing of the press release and the sale of the stock both simultaneously be timed to effect the outcome of the election by influencing voter anxiety and used to profit by manipulating the price of the stock into a 52-week high!
Interesting, so if I understand this, it’s not insider trading, when you line up your company news with a (fixed) selling date. It is insider trading when you line up a selling date with your (fixed date) company news !
I’m sure the lawyers got paid a bundle for that “but I sought out legal advice” opinion.
Totally agree; I would add that many of the vaccine and drug companies are doing it, with Pfizer just the most recent example. News always vague, always timed, always “perfectly legal” stock sales that happen to be very well-timed to capitalize on the maximum share price. Even did a podcast about it.
I don’t know much about much but I question what this does to your incentive to actually develop a viable product. If as a CEO you know that there’s a 1% chance that your vaccine wins the race, but you have a certainty of cashing out by effectively pumping and dumping your own stock, is that the route to remuneration? And if so how far is that from simply not having much of an incentive to pursue a viable idea?
Check the Wall Street Journal today: report on how ex-executives @ kodak were somehow able to sell several millions of dollars in stock options that they did NOT own in July just after the .GOV loan to Kodak was announced.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-says-ex-executives-sold-stock-options-they-didnt-own-11605107967
Several Kodak executives ( and apparently ex-executives ) and board members almost certainly belong in jail.
I expect a class action law suit by the shareholders to be a foregone conclusion..
sure don’t inspire any confidence in the vaccine.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/2020-election-labor-movement-joe-biden
“Joe Biden’s” Philadelphia victory party may not be even mainly about him, but do not mistake that for a ringing endorsement of “progressive” policies. After the party’s over, watch who everyone goes home with.
The “progressives” must understand that their work is just beginning.
The ‘tell’ here is the use of; “…a Thank God That’s Over rally…” to describe the “vibe” of the crowd.
Of more interest would be the performance of the “progressive” candidates downballot.
As for Biden, I’ll apply the lesson Obama taught us all and watch and wait to see who “Creepy” Joe puts in his cabinet.
I have a question; what can the Republicans (and Democrats) do for blacks to ‘really’ bring them into economic prosperity? I’m not speaking of what can we ‘give them’ for the same reason the Bible explains about, ‘teaching a man to fish and he will eat forever’. Instead, I wonder . . . what we can actually ‘do’ that will finally get the blacks out of the role of ne’er-do-well supplicants, e.g. perpetually asking for a handout and thus, looked down upon?
Anyway, while you’re not going to like this, but I hear things. For example, I’m from the south and believe what you will about integration and color-blindness changing things, but out of the blue I’ve sometimes heard my white acquaintances say something like, ‘The fuckking nig&ers just want us to give, give, give and it won’t ever end!’.
Similarly, Hispanic acquaintances say something like, ‘Blacks are lazy. They stand around and sell drugs instead of working!’ Or more telling, ‘Nobody gave us anything!’ I recently heard a carpenter I know say, ‘We lived in one room of a house we rented together with four other families. Me and my wife with our two kids, for three years before we could get our own place. My kids won’t use hammer all day, my son will be a doctor and do better than me!’.
Meanwhile, a friend of mine in New Orleans of Vietnamese extraction relates how after Katrina destroyed huge swathes of the city, ‘The blacks? They left while they stayed and rebuilt. Now the return and complain about gooks taking over! Worse, all three groups say something like, “Those black women they’re raising children on welfare to raise more children on welfare.”
And while all these statements are abhorrent, sadly, because there’s a grain of truth within them, it leaves me wondering this . . . what can we actually do to finally get black people up and out of the ditch? You know what I am asking; to where they’re actually contributing to society instead of as a class being feared or held in contempt. Or are we instead, perfectly happy to have somebody more downtrodden to whom we can point?
Anyway, it’s not enough – in my opinion – to be ‘woke’ but instead, I believe we have to do something. My question is, what can we realistically do? After all, I want this not just as an American as a question of fairness, but because it’s not right! And as a Republican, because I want to earn their votes away from the Democrats who get them for free! Bottom line? I want the same prosperity for which I work for to be the norm, and not just something for a select few. Genuine question. No snark in responding, please!
“continued to invite two Harvard custodians”
Keep it classy Harvard. I have so many questions.
I wonder why two presumably competent adults could have been up to that required 16 hours of cleaning per week?
It’s a big house.
I don’t know, but off the top of my head I would expect high Harvard muckety mucks to live in a huge mansion owned by some tax exempt entity so they don’t have to help support local public schools. Lots of dusting in my imagination. I had been guessing, but I googled it and yep, lot of dusting and silver to polish in a house that size. Assuming they don’t do any cleaning 16 hours a week doesn’t sound unreasonable to me.
“Joe Biden’s long history with Moscow”
With a history like that, are we sure that old Joe is not the Manchurian Candidate? Should he be trusted in a room alone with Putin and only a translator? Can we trust him to talk to Putin over a telephone without giving back Alaska? Will Rachel Maddow go after him for all his Russian connections along with those of his family? Will she demand to see Joe’s tax records to see if there are any entries from the Bank of Moscow? Is Robert Mueller still free to take on a job?
As for Joe Biden’s plan to offer Vladimir Putin the job as NATO’s general secretary, that is ridiculous. That job is now reserved for white guys who are a) from a Scandinavian country and b) are rabid delusional neocons.
He thought he would give it a shot–or so the article claims. It does show Biden’s transactional approach to foreign policy. It was an offer in exchange for Russian support of the LIbya “protection” action (regime change). Guess he figured go to the big guy and make him an offer.
It does seem vaguely possible that Biden may be better than Trump on foreign policy and all that war talk during the campaign was mere bluster. But at this point will Biden be any more in charge of his administration than Trump was?
No.
‘Biden’s transaction approach to foreign policy’ appears to amount to little more than assuring that his kin and kids are engaged in lucrative transactions.
Foraging for bacon on the public dime should be punished not rewarded..
Eye roll. The fact that this is considered news, much less news that is relevant to get posted here, seriously makes me want to kill myself. It’s almost as bad as the hair on fire reaction to the fukushima water that I would absolutely be happy to drink.
Is that with a Flint glass chaser?
lead, unlike radiation, is not safe at any dose.
Oh, and what about the microscopic radionuclides swirling about in the Dai Ichi water supply?
Plutonium is pretty close to lead in toxicity.
Or you could just read the link.
“They say”
Move along; nothing to see here…
Gotta back UserFriendly on this one.
So the establishment argues that we can not talk about the devastating potential of climate change because the fear and anxiety that it creates will keep us from act on it. While at the same time this same establishment ramps up the fear by continuously exaggerating the devastating potential of Cov19 in order to get us all to act on their orders for mitigation. Just another one of the numerous inconsistencies the times keep throwing at us.
You can’t profit off of climate change (yet). And by that time we will be long gone.
Biden Harris transition, anyone recognize any names?
No, but the patterns are familiar
Christine Wormuth RAND Corporation
From the folks who brought us winnable nuclear war
Hannah Lee State of California, Office of Digital Innovation
“California’s massive IT problems stem in part from chronic underinvestment in new technology and mismanagement of the money it has put into upgrades. The agency’s computer system relies on COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that many state IT employees don’t even know.”
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, Team Lead
Winner for best cross cultural ethnic hyphenated name contest
Department of the Treasury
Lots of Wall Street parasites ready to lay their eggs on the back of this caterpillar
Federal Reserve, Banking and Securities Regulators
Law firms and public employee unions, what could go wrong?
General Services Administration
Zoe Garmendia Democratic National Convention Committee
If the campaign is any indication of administration…
Michael Hornsby Salesforce.com, Inc. The idiots that built the biggest vanity skyscraper and mismanaged the transit center construction in San Francisco.
Small Business Administration
Not one small businessthang
United States Postal Service
The only good ones, mail carriers at least
Who’s gonna be the Women’s Right to Choose czar?
I’m sure they’ll get right on enshrining the right to an abortion in perpetuity for any woman since the dems were so freaked about Amy Coney Barrett blowing up Roe v. Wade.
Yeah, right. Until somebody hitches the Hyde Amendment to a last minute, must-pass budget bill and then like “whatevah.”
It should be a czarina, should it not? Preferably one with czardines.
I don’t think that kind of genderization stuff is permitted anymore. Or we’ll have to wait to find out what the correct pronouns are or something like that. I don’t know all the new rules just yet, but I take your point. In secret. If you say I said any of this, I’ll deny it.
Or who can dance (or play) a czardas.
“Association of COVID-19 RT-qPCR test false-negative rate with patient age, sex and time…”
Study mentions “…fluorescence measurements for 45 amplification cycles…” which has been proven numerous times to be worthless;
“Any test with a cycle threshold above 35 is too sensitive, agreed Juliet Morrison, a virologist at the University of California”
“A more reasonable cutoff would be 30 to 35, she added. Dr. Mina said he would set the figure at 30, or even less. ”
“In Massachusetts, from 85 to 90 percent of people who tested positive in July with a cycle threshold of 40 would have been deemed negative if the threshold were 30 cycles”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html
Even Dr Fauci has mentioned this; “”What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard,” Fauci said, is that “if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-confident are minuscule.”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/newly-surfaced-video-july-fauci-tests-dead-virus
Trevor Bedford, the virologist, posted an interesting thread about the state of things today.
https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1326404864843390976
It’s well worth a read. Sadly, he sees that the cases we are seeing today have ‘baked in’ at least 2000 deaths per day in early December, no matter what happens. This is due to the average 22 day lag and 1.8% CFR. Grim.
I was surprised to read that 1 in 55 of the people currently testing positive in the US, die of Covid in the end! The implication of these false positives is that the CFR would be far higher, if they were excluded.
“The overall FNR was 22.8%, which is consistent with previous studies. Yet, this rate was much lower at the first 5 days following diagnosis (10.7%) and only increased in later dates.Furthermore, the FNR was strongly associated with demographics, with odds ratio of 1.74(95% CI: 1.58-1.9) for women over men and 2.54 (95% CI: 2.39-2.69) for a 20 versus a 50 year old patient. Finally, FNR was associated with viral loads (p-value 0.002), with a difference of 1.1 (95% CI: 0.60-1.57) between the average Ct of the N gene in a positive testfollowing a false-negative compared to a positive test following a true-positive.”
This is all GOOD NEWS!
Gee whiz. I could swear I remember some big mouth jerk saying that the reason there were so many more covid “cases” was that we were doing so many more tests. How stupid could somebody be to think such a thing? Good thing fauci was around to set the record straight.
for those with the Criterion Channel (jr, iirc, and maybe others), I noticed they are now showing the 2000 documentary Dark Days, about New York City’s subterranean homeless.
First 10 minutes on YT here
Ty BP, but I just dropped it, cost cutting…
What is the likely scenario to happen with the ACA? That ACA is preserved but with the Individual Mandate/Tax “severed”, so that Biden can not reinstate back something like the 0bama-era Individual Mandate of (IIRC) max(2.5% AGI, $750)?
I’m sure this 11th hour policy by the outgoing president will be reversed forthwith by the Biden administration:
On Nov. 5, the Department of Labor (DOL) published a rule to freeze wages for farmworkers who are working under H-2A visas until 2023. The H-2A visa program allows foreign farmworkers to access temporary visas to work in the United States for approved employers.
The American Farm Bureau Federation, the agriculture industry’s major lobbying group, welcomed the new rule, saying it provides “stability during the uncertainty created by the pandemic and trade imbalances.”
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue praised the wage freezes in a press release: “This rule shows once again President Trump’s commitment to America’s farmers by delivering lower costs when they need it the most.” He added that, “Over the past several years farm wages have increased at a higher pace than other industries, which is why this DOL rule could not come at a better time.”
The move to slash workers’ wages follows Perdue’s department in September reporting that “net farm income, a broad measure of profits, is forecast to increase $19 billion (22.7 percent) from 2019 to $102.7 billion in 2020.”
NYT headline says that the election is over for you if you still believe that Saddam had WMD.
Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty for the Federal Equal Rights Commission!
The dispatch record noted that she wouldn’t get out “because it was cold and she was a woman and alone.”
That’s right, she could have slipped and fallen on that glass ceiling as soon as she got out. Equal pay for equal abilities, affirmative action job preferences, and victimhood preference. It’s +good to be a woman in the PMCS States of America.
Kamala’s career moves with Willie, so inspirational for little girls.
That was an interesting story. Hardesty has been a thorn in the side of the Portland Police Bureau for some time now, and I think they well deserve nearly all of the attention she’s given them. But it does seem as though she’s been caught out as a hypocrite: calling for another $18 million in cuts to the police budget on top of the $15 million in cuts already approved (IIRC), suggesting that city counsel members opposed to this action are cowards, and then calling for the police to intervene in a civil dispute of the kind that she herself has said they should not be involved in while claiming to feel unsafe at a well lit gas station located within the metro area.
Makes me think that BLM inspired reform isn’t going to go much further anytime soon in Portland. Her main ally on the city counsel lost a reelection bid to someone favoring a more “incremental” approach to police reform. And Ted Wheeler, perhaps the most hated mayor in the history of the city, won reelection, rather easily defeating his opponent, who seems to have positioned herself as the BLM candidate. As unpopular as Wheeler is, voters seem to have regarded the alternative as even worse. Looks like Wheeler actually managed to appear to be the law and order candidate. So, perhaps repeatedly attempting to burn down publicly owned buildings wasn’t such a good idea after all. Nor was repeatedly apologizing for such attempts by arguing that peaceful protest never accomplishes anything or arguing that violent confrontation with police is in and of itself worthwhile.
There is one more incident of note in the Portland area. Protestors clad in black from head to toe, wearing masks and carrying backpacks, attacked a church a few night ago, smashing windows and terrifying a homeless person who was sleeping nearby. They managed to cause enough damage to prevent the church from distributing various life-sustaining supplies to the downtown homeless population in the the following days. This was caught by multiple surveillance cameras. I’m sure some Twitter leftists are claiming it was an “op” even as I type.
Wheeler’s opponent, Iannarone, was basically a classic leftist who attached the social anarchist tag, which drew people away from her. Plus fabricating her entire education and career to seem more qualified than she was didn’t do her any favors. Wheeler is abysmal as a mayor and will do nothing but let larger scale economic factors decimate the city while having no ability to comprehend policy that is actually helpful. After the city approved $385 million for libraries but balked at a transportation package that would have allowed for serious ease in commuting and living without a car, I see no reason why voters would have continued to back Wheeler’s waste.
Like most things around Portland, BLM will end up fading away after a year or so as economic stressors remain the supreme concern and Hardesty will be a casualty of the shift, making more radical moves to draw attention back to the matter. She was great during the summer but as the attention has shifted, she has lost control of the narrative around her.
“Kamala’s career moves with Willie”.
Instructional to watch all the ‘feminists’, ‘metoo’, ‘women’s march’, types in the Democratic Party suck it up for Harris. Too bad for Harris/Biden that Ghislane Maxwell is in jail or they could have propositioned her to be their Secretary of Edjacation..
Wondering what wonderful “glass ceiling” lessons the gurlz are supposed to “learn” from Kamala’s “rise”? Maybe that she caused Willy’s to rise too? Per Teen vogue will there be new trends in fellatio techniques? Sleep your way to the top with a married man, with the nice “family values” twist? If this all seems unfair, it doesn’t if you lived in the Bay Area when Kamala was “rising” (presumably from her knees), they wrote it up in the local newspapers fer chrissakes. . Yep, “Suck It Up For Kamala” sounds about right.
How is it that Ghislane Maxwell is still alive in jail after all this time? What threat or power does she have that has made them too scared to kill her in jail?
is it possible that your view of How These Things Work is perhaps not completely accurate?
I’m sorry, she may have been a jerk with the driver, but he was totally out of line in trying to drop her off her where it was convenient for him. That has nothing to do with gender.
In NYC, a driver has to take a fare where they want to go, and on the route they choose too if they specify one, and the fare does not have to tell the driver the destination until they are in the car.
I once had a driver pick me up at JFK and try dumping me in Queens because he thought he could get away with it. I was the wrong person on whom to try that stunt.
So her real sin was getting a ride share car as opposed to a regulated cab.
re:How Platform Co-ops Transform the Gig Economy – Grassroots Economic Organizing
That’s a great idea. A jointly owned and operated “hiring hall” platform instead of mega-corp control over a hiring hall via platforms.
I’ve kicked around the idea of writing a decentralized mobile platform for childcare and house cleaning, but I don’t have the time or means to run a cooperative around it and I think that is what it should be! I hope these take off on a local level all over the place!
As Day 8 of the ‘I Ran Hostage Crisis’ unfolds, the situation remains tense with negotiations proving fruitless, on account of no evidence-wishful thinking not being a persuader in the court of law.
Pouting that ‘But I have 70 million votes!’ seems to be next on the agenda.
Regarding the agency review teams, this twitter thread is enlightening —
https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1326387797347930114
Regarding the antidote, is that squirrel proof? I don’t have many, but don’t want to encourage, either. It looks like an easy and fun project to make.
No? My working theory so far is that no bird feeder is squirrel proof. If the birds can access the feeder, so can the squirrels given enough time and practice.
What seems to discourage squirrels around our house is a Schnauzer. To get to the feeder the squirrels have to drop to the ground from the fence or the trees, bound quickly across the heavily marked grass between the trees (aka, the schnauzer’s toilet, the grass there is a fantastic shade of green the year round), shimmy up the metal pole, and start stuffing their cheeks before the dog notices. The Schnauzer, though elderly, can hear and clearly identify the sound of toenails on the sidewalk from any large dog walking by (but especially Labradors, for reasons that remain entirely a mystery to his two humans) from half a block away. You would think a squirrel would be a lot quieter than a large oafish dog. I suspect it’s the cheeps of protest from the birds who just got booted from the dining hall. The Schnauzer can hear something is… ahem ‘afoot’…even with the door and windows closed, but sometimes even he misses the robbery going on in his yard, and some squirrels even when repeatedly chased out will return… for those we have an air rifle, heavy shot, and a crack marksman.
Oh, but why I stopped by… to express a bit of envy for those who get to enjoy such beauties in their feeders such as cardinals.
Biden and Putin:
“Joe Biden in Moscow, back in 1979.
No doubt ‘Russiagaters’ will use to suggest he’s been a ‘KGB asset’ for 41 years.
Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot, etc…”
https://twitter.com/27khv/status/1326136316837449728?s=20
Climate Change Will Make Parts of the U.S. Uninhabitable. Americans Are Still Living There. ProPublica
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The parts Native Americans inhabited tend to be climate change proof, for instance the Wukchumni sub-tribe of Yokuts Indians were here for thousands of years-including a drought that lasted over 200 years in that time span.
The obvious places were turned into big cities and look completely different, although the more rural keeps its qualities. The acorns have dropped or are in process of doing so, and it would’ve been a scramble between & betwixt humans, bears and everything else for their nourishment, the nutmeat within counting for 2/3rds of the clans food intake.
Probably not 1 acorn will be harvested & eaten by a human this year, here.
“Probably not 1 acorn will be harvested & eaten by a human this year, here.”
Because they taste like sh!t probably.
The Yokuts must have had some very special prep skills for sure.
There are webloads of articles on how it was done, and how it could be done again. It would take time to find the good ones.
Here is a historical-evidence one showing how possible it was.
https://sipnuuk.karuk.us/system/files/atoms/file/AFRIFoodSecurity_UCB_FrankLake_003_007.pdf
Present day indigenous young people are looking to do it again.
https://civileats.com/2019/11/15/indigenous-youth-reboot-acorns-to-revive-food-sovereignty/
And a little bit of how-to.
https://baynature.org/article/traditional-modern-methods-acorn-preparation/
under Labor, the United Association is a labor union (that my brother belongs to). Sadly, they are very pro-pipeline.
RE: Don Jr.’s declassification tweet. Forget it, Donny, you’re out of your element.
Not sure who else’s “element” it might be. Sundace at theconservativetreehouse.com has posted on this and I can’t find anything to disagree with. IMNSHO, Trump should toss a declassification grenade over his shoulder on his way out the door. Nobody else is gonna do it and it desperately needs to be done:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/11/08/donald-trump-jr-declassify-everything/#more-203587
john brennan is apparently so worried about it that he wants Pence to use the 25th Amendment to strip the pres of his power like right now! That’s reason enough for me to say, “You go, Donny.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/ex-cia-chief-under-obama-urges-palace-coup-against-trump-so-he-doesnt-declassify
> Not sure who else’s “element” it might be.
The quote below Don Junior’s tweet explains.
that NYT headline reminds me of Citizen Kane:
charles foster kane defeated
FRAUD AT POLLS!
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is looking for election fraud whistleblowers and snitches, er tipsters, and is willing to pay a million dollars US (not pesos?).
Get in line behind me, peasant! I’ve seen election fraud with my own one eye–I was using a pinhole camera)–all the way up here on Vancouver Island. Friends we have in Houston told me to keep watch because they’d be too close to see it themselves. That million will be at least 20% more up here in the (almost) frozen north.
“recolonization” of Hong Kong: the title assumes FT readers will see as self-evident that Hong Kong is independent (read under American control) and China is somehow messing up the arrangement by treating HK as if it’s part of China.
This misuse of language is on par with American media talking about having “lost” China after 1949.
About “Climate Change will make some parts of America uninhabitable: some Americans are still moving there” . . . the reality-based global warming acknowledgers really need a nationwide movement to help eachother help those among their number who still live in the future-unlivable zones to move out . . . and afford to do so by selling their houses to climate denialists who still want to move there.