The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind The Atlantic (dk).
Jay Powell urges patient approach to rate rises as taper begins FT
Opioid makers win major victory in California trial The Hill
The nation’s last uranium mill plans to import Estonia’s radioactive waste High Country News (GF).
COP26/Climate
Leaders vow to cut methane, protect forests at U.N. summit. Bolder climate action must wait Los Angeles. No doubt:
Remember your living beyond your means, you need to cut back on carbon and you are the problem! pic.twitter.com/pVgVXGzWhp
— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) November 2, 2021
‘End of coal in sight’ as more than 40 nations join new pact FT
Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth James Lovelock, Guardian
Water
Muddier Rivers Are Jeopardizing Dams and Water Quality for Millions Scientific American
Water Is Life, and Also a Trade Secret Boondoggle
#COVID19
We have had vaccination drive successes, but apparently it is impossible to learn from them:
How a Group of Black Doctors Got Philadelphia Vaccinated Bloomberg
* * * Covid didn’t vote Politico. “We’re going to need drugs to dig our way out of this.” Not a word on ventilation, naturally.
Molnupiravir: another Covid-19 treatment, another opportunity to recognize inequity STAT. We’re going to need drugs….
* * * Why scientists worldwide are watching UK COVID infections Nature. “As one of the first countries to trust high vaccine coverage and public responsibility alone to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the United Kingdom has become a control experiment that scientists across the world are studying.”
SARS-CoV-2 indoor air transmission is a threat that can be addressed with science PNAS. This article summarizes a National Academies of Science held in August 2020. Fundamentally, nothing will change.
SARS-CoV-2 Dose, Infection, and Disease Outcomes for COVID-19 – A Review (Accepted Manuscript) Clinical Infectious Diseases. Review of the literature. “We conclude that while there is an association between SARS-CoV-2 dose and infection, data do not support a relationship between dose and COVID-19 severity. Non-pharmaceutical interventions may limit the inoculum dose from an exposure, thereby reducing the risk of infection, but they are unlikely to individually have an impact on COVID-19 severity.”
China?
China’s Delta outbreak spreads to two more provinces, with 87 new cases South China Morning Post
Traces of coronavirus found on frozen cuttlefish slices imported to Hong Kong from Malaysia South China Morning Post. Finally, a case of fomite transmission?
China’s Climate Goals Hinge on a $440 Billion Nuclear Buildout Bloomberg
As Asia’s alternative meat start-ups fight climate change, let’s not forget about small farmers South China Morning Post
Myanmar
Myanmar Junta Aims to Wipe Out Armed Resistance in Three Months The Irrawaddy
Army Attacks Continue in Myanmar’s Most Christian State Christianity Today and Myanmar military assault in Chin echoes Rohingya crackdown FT
US journalist denied bail in Myanmar The Hill. Editor of Frontier Myanmar.
India
WHO green-lights India’s COVID vaccine as global cases rise Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy
The Caribbean
U.S. judge dismisses most money laundering charges against Maduro ally Saab Reuters
Venezuela’s November Elections: Washington’s New Strategy but Same Old Assumptions Venezuelanalysis
Syraqistan
America Is Playing With Fire In Syria The American Conservative
UK/EU
Irish trade with Britain plummets as Brexit impact drives down imports MSN
Jimmy Savile: Establishment Hero Tribune. Not exactly a Lizard Person. Nevertheless….
France unveils nuclear power overhaul – with an eye on China France24
France says Australia hits ‘new low’ leaking Macron texts AP. Malcom Turnbull on Scotty from Marketing:
Malcolm Turnbull in Glasgow overnight…doesn’t hold back… @7NewsAustralia #COP26Glasgow pic.twitter.com/l7N7VLfD3i
— Hugh Whitfeld (@hughwhitfeld) November 2, 2021
Democrats en Deshabille
It’s Not That Democrats Lost. It’s That They Lost Everywhere Governing
How a truck driver spent $153 on his N.J. election campaign to likely dethrone a political kingpin NJ.com. No final results yet.
Murphy reelected New Jersey governor by razor-thin margin Politico
Supply Chain
Truckers tired of taking blame for congestion crisis at California ports Freight Waves. A new angle:
“As terminal operators pushed for automation to reduce human interaction, a glitch in the system can render crane operators and truck drivers unable to move without further instructions, [Bill Aboudi, president of AB Trucking] said. ‘It’s the terminal operators that are not managing the workforce properly and don’t realize that they had a problem with a computer system until it’s too late,’ Aboudi told FreightWaves. ‘It’s often the longshoremen and the truck drivers that pay the price and are forced to sit because of the terminal operators’ mistakes.'”
And:
Steamship lines and terminal operators have relationships when it comes to which containers can be moved and which chassis provider can be used.
If a trucking company or driver returns or delivers an empty container at the wrong yard or under the wrong interchange company, some chassis providers charge a “misuse fee” of more than $1,000 per occurrence.
Some truck drivers say they have been ticketed and banned from a terminal for 30 days to upward of 180 days for returning a chassis to the wrong equipment provider, failing to understand a security guard’s instructions or other minor infractions.
Trucking companies say there’s no due process to appeal the tickets or bans imposed by employees at the port terminals, who scan or track drivers’ Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, card numbers. Often, if a carrier protests a driver’s ban, more days are added to the suspension.
Sacred things that can never be changed or discussed: The wage relation; rents and fees; contracts. Could it be — hear me out — that the problems with port congestion are not primarily technical? (Well, except for the IT. You can bet all these sacred social relations are built into the software.)
Liner Delays and Backlogs Spread Across Most Global Trade Routes Maritime Executive. Good numbers. Via SB. SB writes: “My husband took this photo yesterday afternoon of the ships waiting offshore of Long Beach.”
Lovely shade of blue. Is it Norwegian?
U.S. regulator expects to find abuses in shipping amid supply chain woes Hellenic Shipping News
Wall Street Lunch Hour Dogged by Bread Supply Crisis Bloomberg. Qu’ils mangent de la brioche….
Health Care
ACA Marketplaces Became Less Affordable Over Time For Many Middle-Class Families, Especially The Near-Elderly (Abstract only) Health Affairs. “In 2015 half of this middle-class population would have paid at least 7.7 percent of their income for the lowest-cost bronze plan; in 2019 they would have paid at least 11.3 percent of their income. By 2019 half of the near-elderly ages 55–64 would have paid at least 18.9 percent of their income for the lowest-cost bronze plan in their area.” Everything’s going according to plan.
Imperial Collapse Watch
Royal Marines force US troops to surrender just days into training exercise Daily Telegraph. “The Royal Marines’ success was achieved by targeting the US headquarters and valuable equipment, paralysing counter-attacks from the Americans.”
Class Warfare
The Hunger-Striking Taxi Drivers Won Curbed
Updated: Rejected deal was company’s ‘last, best’ offer Quad City Times. UAW v. John Deere.
Warrior Met Coal strike has cost company $6.9 million AL.com
‘This feels totally different’: Conditions in 2021 may help Kellogg’s workers sustain strike MLK50
Service, maintenance workers at Cabell Huntington Hospital vote to go on strike Wednesday WCHS. West Virginia.
Viewpoint: Beneath Striketober Fanfare, The Lower Frequencies of Class Struggle Labor Notes. Detailed and sobering.
California college allowing homeless students to sleep in parked cars The Hill
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
219 comments
Comments are closed.
We have a couple of CVBB’s here, overall everything from Bakersfield to Sacramento is the Central Valley Bible Belt, and then there’s the Central Visalia Bible Belt, perhaps the epicenter of evangelism in the state, as evidenced by the 46.4% double vaxed rate in Tulare County.
Probably not a good time to catch Covid around these parts, but no way are the evangs getting the jab, there’s a verse in a book written a few hundred years after events took place a few thousand years ago that certainly presaged the advent of hypodermic needles, er ‘mark of the beast’.
https://kmph.com/news/local/wave-of-covid-19-infections-spark-internal-disaster-at-kaweah-health
To the above summary, earlier this year didn’t a governor of a southern US state proclaim many state citizens were Christian/believers so they had little to fear? And by fear, I mean no need to get the vaccination. Evangelical leaders are doing a disservice here.
Then again, QB1 for the GB Packers appears to be unvaccinated against Covid-19 and has tested positive. Betting spreads adjust accordingly.
Oh boy are they trying to make an example out of Aaron Rogers as if being vaxed would have prevented him from contracting Covid. His apparent sin is shunning the vaccine (assuming he is not vaxed as big brother is insinuating).
Aaron Rodgers made an example out of himself. Being vaccinated does in fact lower the chances of contracting Covid. He let his team down, and cost a lot of people a lot of money.
So far there really hasn’t been a younger person of note in the public eye that has been infected with Covid and had serious repercussions…
Everything changed with AIDS when Magic Johnson contracted it.
Aaron Rodgers could incorporate getting vaccinations as a good ‘insurance policy’ on the insurance commercials he does on tv, but fat chance of that happening.
Being vaccinated does in fact lower the chances of knowing you’ve contracted covid–and are contagious–even when the family you live with is infected.
Just ask jen psaki.
Huh? That is a very strange way of saying that while being vaccinated doesn’t prevent you from transmitting covid, it does significantly decrease your chance of becoming seriously ill or dying from the disease.
Drawing attention to big pharma and governments promoting the vaccines as the one and only legit covid treatment option and calling out Fauci and friend’s flip-flopping and noble lying are all valid and I have no problem with that.
But if you find yourself constructing convoluted and bizarre sentences in order to make the covid vaccines seem more sinister dangerous than they actually are, you might want to slowly back away from the internet, find a quiet place to sit down, and reflect on what motivates your own obsession with these vaccines.
The “vaccine hesitant” crowd has jumped the shark here. Too often these days anti-establishment critics begin with sensible and valid counterarguments but soon thereafter degenerate into a mirror version of whatever it is they are criticizing.
The binary thinking and lack of nuance that is evident in these debates suggests many people who felt betrayed by the msm have shifted their credulity to alt or right wing media.
It’s worth remembering that eschewing the NYT and mainstream media does not automatically make one immune to media influence. Uncritically accepting alt media (or Fox News and OAN) as deliverers of unquestionable truth is equally foolish.
The antidote to MSM propaganda is learning how to think critically, not simply swapping messengers.
@Josh
Citation needed.
Lowers the risk of an ICU stay over around 6 months, yet when trotted out with the coast is clear PR increases the virus evolutionary playbook options …. its so rational agent model e.g. savvy educated investors would never blow up the worlds financial system ad the ethical bar is constantly lowered for short term individual riches …. GFC BOOM …
and cost a lot of people a lot of money.
1.) so
2.)who?
3.)what do you consider a lot of money?
No, it does NOT lower the chance of contracting Covid. Covid has to have gotten into your bloodstream for you mount an antibody response, which vaccinations make more effective. That is why the vaccinated infect others. You are contagious 1-2 days before showing symptoms and when you first show symptoms. Infectiousness declines rapidly after that.
The vaccines enable you to clear the virus faster and avoid most really bad outcomes. But that nearly always takes place AFTER peak contagiousness.
And you have to have gotten Covid to infect others! Did you miss that a large scale study found NO correlation between vaccination levels and Covid outbreaks, including in counties and countries with very high vaccination rates?
You’re asking us? I think you need a link for that one.
There are plenty of evangelicals in my state. I’m not aware of anyone in our largely Republican officialdom denouncing vaccines. Indeed our governor is an ally of Trump who, just to continually remind everyone, played a role in creating the vaccine.
Some of our politicians are opposed to vaccine mandates and rightly so.
Didn’t Trump also play a role in downplaying the virus, and the resultant deaths, so that it wouldn’t hurt his re-election chances? The only mask that trump ever wore was the one he used to hide the truth.
Are you implying Trump would play both sides of an issue to maintain political ambiguity and proclaim himself a winner and genius no mater which way things went?
Lotsa evangs in Colorado, and they’re having the same issues as the CVBB, coincidence?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/04/colorado-covid-cases-surge
Quite likely. So all those “evangs” in rural California–would they mostly be elderly by any chance? Also your “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is getting increasingly out of date. We have an actual rural doctor who comments here and says many of his Covid cases are vaccinated.
I wouldn’t call where I live rural but there are some large evangelical churches and and no reports in the media that I consume that they are antivax other than people who seek their own info on the internet might be antivax. There have been hints if not outright reports that our Covid victims are often African Americans or Hispanics. So if I substituted “Blacks and Hispanics” for “evangs” would that be considered an expression of prejudice? Seems some stereotypes are more acceptable than others.
Would ‘chalcolithic era hypocrites’ not sound as discordant as shortening their name to save a few vowels and consonants from being associated with them?
The way it worked with the evangs, is a good many of them brought their dogma along en route from the Dust Bowl back in the day and it isn’t just old codgers, but a good portion of the population here of all ages.
To be certain, the link below is from mid-late August. So two+ months is getting a bit stale. But I do recall the MS guv making some pretty wild comments.
https://mississippitoday.org/2021/08/22/tate-reeves-was-non-equivocator-until-covid-vaccines/
Seems like I’ve heard the Miss guv talking point before. If it was from my brother then it was undoubtedly on MSNBC.
Just to repeat: Donald Trump–Rachel Maddow’s ultimate evil–is pro vax.
The really frustrating thing about Revelations is that we know exactly what it is. It isn’t prophecy. It’s poetic metaphor for the persecution of Christians under Nero. It literally tells you it’s about Nero: 666 transliterates from Greek into ‘Caesar Neron’ (in fact the oldest version we have uses 663, which comes out as ‘Caesar Nero’, even more on the nose).
And this isn’t just obscure specialist academic knowledge that never leaves universities. Pastors and preachers learn a lot about the academic consensus during their training. They actually know about many of these things, and then just…never communicate any of it to their congregations.
The (weird, creepy) Christian ideal of the shepard and his flock, well, how does that work when the shepard is lying to the sheep? Is that supposed to also be part of the noble ideal?
Been trying to get a colonoscopy scheduled at Parkview Hospital in Pueblo CO for a month. First cancellation? “We’re short staffed.” Second cancellation? “Outpatient services cancelled for November.” Trying to find a local doc here in Trinidad CO (about 90 miles south of Pueblo) now. Wish me luck!
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/coronavirus-covid-19-spread-map/state/colorado/county/pueblo-county
Mike Mc, Careful about the doctors in Trinidad. A lot of them do a different type of operation that you may not want! Just kidding.
Good luck to ya.
My PCP ordered a kit for me that uses fecal samples to detect colon cancer, instead of colonoscopy.
The test came back negative, so I am ok I think.
Something to consider.
You need to get them every year, but if you do so, their effectiveness in catching cancer is on par with colonoscopies, PROVIDED you are not in a high risk group.
You could also try a virtual colonoscopy. They can look but can’t snip.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/colon-cancer/virtual-colonoscopy-for-cancer-screening
There are different versions of the stool tests for colon cancer.
The guaiac-based fecal occult blood test (gFOBT) and fecal immunochemical test (FIT) tests are done once a year.
The FIT-DNA test (Cologuard) is done every three years.
https://www.cdphp.com/-/media/files/providers/toolkits/colorectal-cancer/colorectal-cancer-screening-with-fit-vs-cologuard.pdf
All the criticism of Christian Evangelism seems quite paradoxical seeing the virulence of the Covid Injection Evangelism which include threats, coercion, intimidation, loss of income, destruction of traditional family bonds, etc. I haven’t had any Christians doing any of that to me.
Even Matt Taibbi considers Covid Injectors to be a cult:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-cult-of-the-vaccine-neurotic
have you ever gone to an abortion clinic?
Traces of coronavirus found on frozen cuttlefish slices imported to Hong Kong from Malaysia South China Morning Post. Finally, a case of fomite transmission?
I’m not sure if the question is meant to be taken seriously, but no, there’s no suggestion at all of fomite transmission having occurred. The food and packaging never entered the market, and will be destroyed.
So far that’s what happened when this virus has been found on frozen pork or whatever. I think the point was the potential route. (I wouldn’t handle frozen food at that scale with my bare hands.)
Thank you, both.
Was there not an outbreak some time ago in NZ, involving a family who ran a cold storage and had not been out of the country for years, if memory serves?
Would this be the outbreak you were thinking of, in August 2020?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-18/source-of-new-zealand-coronavirus-outbreak-unknown-cold-storage/12568450
Dr Bloomfield said on Tuesday that a report on possible transmission through chilled services will be completed “imminently” — but it doesn’t look like that’s the answer.
“It seems clear now that the possibility is being ruled out from that investigation,” he said.
I didn’t notice any final report during a quick Google search, but all the stories on the first results page had essentially the same line – ruled out, or expected to be, as the source.
There have been many cases.
https://apnews.com/article/business-health-india-coronavirus-pandemic-global-trade-3de020064fdfc1a94c5424379ac815fd
Some argue China cases were concocted to put the origin somewhere other than Wuhan.
No evidence of any transmission there either.
Covid didn’t vote Politico.
I thought the article was going to connect CV19 mandates to Democratic electoral upset, instead I was blown away by some the assumptions/statements made.
“We’re going to need drugs to dig our way out of this. ” Wow, just wow.
How big a turning point is the vaccination eligibility for 5-11? A lot of parents have been so eager for this moment
The article concludes with: “That’s one of the worst parts about Covid still — the uncertainty”
I guess all other aspects of life are clear cut and certain. Uncertainty? is this a novel idea to the author? It penetrates all aspects of life , der Trottel.
TBH, introducing certainty and stability is what many political parties run on, because most population wants tomorrow to be at worst the same as yesterday, ideally slightly better but in a very certain way (like say, having a higher wage, while everything else is held the same).
You skipped the most interesting part, perhaps the only interesting part – that the name Molnupiravir comes from Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer. I had no idea before!
Yeah, but I remember too what happened to Mjolnir. Does Coronavirus dress up in black?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MymHJIgIEPc (56 secs)
I don’t think it’s interesting that a giant drug corp assimilates a cultural icon for profit
Wait’ll they find out Thor’s hammer has apparently been adopted as a symbol by some White supremacists. That should rev the conspiracy theories to a new high…!
Mjolnir or “The Hammer of Thor” was approved by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as an “Emblem of Belief” for use in the National Cemetery Administration in 2013.
Fun fact : Hans Schweitzer, a favorite cartoonist of the Nazis, worked under the pen name ‘Mjölnir’. Very distinct style, not quite as crude as his colleague Philipp ‘Fipps’ Rupprecht who was notorious for his work in Streicher’s Der Stürmer, but equally heavy with racist and chauvinistic overtones.
> data do not support a relationship between dose and COVID-19 severity. Non-pharmaceutical interventions may limit the inoculum dose from an exposure, thereby reducing the risk of infection, AND THEY ARE NECESSARY to individually have an impact on COVID-19 severity.”
Fixed that for you. See: Vitamin D, diet v diabetes and obesity, working outside, quitting your shitty job (short-order cooks and mortality)… etc.
Boosting D3 is a no brainer.
According to a recent study titled COVID-19 Mortality Risk Correlates Inversely with Vitamin D3 Status, and a Mortality Rate Close to Zero Could Theoretically Be Achieved at 50 ng/mL 25(OH)D3: Results of a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, the authors conclude:
For people with low levels of Vitamin D3, a simple plan from the NIH shows how easy it is to boost D3 levels:
Costing just pennies per day, Vitamin D3 supplements are cheap, safe, available and effective at reducing severe effects of Covid infection.
Why this information isn’t being communicated to the general public is just another glaring failure from our public health institutions.
Thanks, informative.
I’m overweight, take vitD3, but blood test showed I’m at the bottom of the normal range. I’m doubling my intake.
Make sure you are getting enough copper in your diet. Copper is important for maintaining a strong immune system.
I’m glad you found the information useful John K. Good luck!
rhymes with lamberts comment on ports…
“Sacred things that can never be changed or discussed: The wage relation; rents and fees; contracts.”
I wonder if they were taking a leaf out of the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), where the Home Guard HQ is taken in a training exercise by a new-fangled young commander – “it’s just not cricket.”:The underhandedness ties in with Blimp’s futile insistence that adopting the tactics of the Nazis would lead to a hollow victory.
The British Royal Marines were experimenting with a new tactical doctrine which helped lead to that victory. The US Marine commander, when asked, said that they were just winning in a new direction. This story did make me wonder however as to how motivated the US Marines were. Note that all those US Marines who refuse these vaccines are due for the chop in the next few weeks and I believe that local commanders will be given the latitude to make it a dishonourable discharge of those troops if they want. That would help send moral in the crapper. So I wonder if those British Royal Marines were facing a partially demoralized force. I am not taking anything from the Royal Marines. They are a fine, professional force – but I do wonder. Here is a subscription-free article talking about this debacle-
https://asiatimes.com/2021/11/royal-marines-lay-a-beating-on-us-leathernecks/
I saw the bit about targeting valuable equipment and it made me wonder about the fragility of a system that relies so significantly on high tech “solutions” that can be dead-lined when one crucial piece goes down.
Arthur C. Clarke had it right years ago.
Afghani fighters often have poor eyesight due to a life-long vitamin deficiency.
The 40 year old weapons didn’t help, but now they have ‘modern’ (1964-1969) weaponry.
Ugh.
Humans are still human, so those weapons are likely the peak projectile weapon for people operating out of garages and barns and not marching 30 plus miles a day and crossing a continent or without fairly complex maintenence operations or suspect training regimens. Then the Taliban probaby has more direct democracy in its units, so everyone really has to be a rifle man first, hence weapons everyone can use.
Your use of “…not marching 30 plus miles a day and crossing a continent..” immediately made me think of Alexander of Macedon’s (ca. 350 BC,) Greek troops performance when he conquered the Near East back in the days of yore.
Many of those same Taliban of today can probably trace their lineage back to one of Alexander’s troopers.
I am told that the name Iskandar is still a name to conjure with in the Middle East.
That barb that Afghanis have poor eyesight smells of lousy anecdotes that got spun into accepted propaganda….like that of near-sighted Japanese in 1942.
(not denying eye problems over there….but skeptical that their eyesight is no worse than the average Westerner…as our eyesight is wrecked by all the blue light from screens growing up…i know lots of 6 year olds in glasses)
Hasn’t the blue light stuff been debunked?
THE HOUSE OF BLUE LIGHTS ~ Chuck Miller (1955)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PksQGTCyLLY
I came across this paper on the subject the other day. ymmv
Non US NATO officers have been criticizing US units for years as being unable to function without full spectrum dominance, not being able to move under fire and so forth. It’s not dissimilar to WW1 Euro armies being composed of guys who don’t know how to start fires and all of World War One when they weren’t fighting basically locally based rebels.
It’s likely the same problem as the Navy. Over reliance on computers and satellites and not enough sailors at least among the officers. A friend of mine who has been on tour way too many times in special forces said most of what they did was go out and rescue incompetent units with guys trying to get action to earn promotions and such.
Then of course, the Millennium Games wasn’t dissimilar. To a certain extent, Ripper did really weird stuff that no one would do under real conditions, but he demonstrated the US military only operates under ideal conditions.
There’s also the fact that maintenance and training budgets are chronically short-changed by the denizens of the MICIMATTC. This was revealed to be a factors in two 2017 collisions in far eastern waters involving the the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain. Maintenance and training advocates, being mainly uniformed and civilian folks in the DoD, don’t have the financial clout to compete with the lobbyists for the contractors and consultants when it comes to influencing the largely clueless Congress critters.
Rev, the RM doctrine is decentralized.
Tasks or missions are assigned and the man on the ground decides how to accomplish the mission.
based on what is encountered.
The US Military is in love with what they call C4I ( It used to be C3I) and tech, it is very much top down.
How top down?
I recall reading about an op where the President of the USA spoke to a squad leader in the middle of a combat op.
No shit.
Helmet cams and radio communications were piped into the situation room in real time and senior commanders all the way up to the CiC were able to talk directly to those on the ground.
Disrupt those communications and the officers on the ground are screwed, it’s a “Zero Defect” organization and ANY action taken by a subordinate commander that doesn’t lead to a magnificent victory is a career killer.
Thanks for that comment. When you said ‘Tasks or missions are assigned and the man on the ground decides how to accomplish the mission’ that reminded me of how Wehrmacht soldiers were trained before and during the war which is why they were so successful. In fact, a lot of that Wehrmacht training was incorporated into US training doctrine after WW2 but going by your comment, it looks like it has been forgotten.
> … all those US Marines who refuse these vaccines are due for the chop in the next few weeks
> and I believe that local commanders will be given the latitude to make it a dishonourable
> discharge of those troops if they want.
Erm … no. The directives that have been reported in the press state that vax-refuseniks will receive an ‘administrative’ discharge. A dishonourable discharge is a ‘punitive’ separation which can only be given as part of the sentence meted out by a general court-martial. It is not within a local commander’s purview.
The Afghanis did it better, faster and more publicly.
A trillion dollar s a year doesn’t buy you much does it? We need a candidate who is willing to say “Yes” to the Department of Defense.
that is a point that Russian-American (i believe) author Andrei Martynov (blog at smoothiex12 dot blogspot dot com) keeps hammering….the US has never fought a war in which its rear area was continually under jeopardy and is wholly unprepared for such paradigm shift.
Russian/Chinese missile technology changes the “full-spectrum dominance” that the US has always enjoyed when fighting developing world militaries with no air force and antiquated projectile weaponry.
I believe the comment was made “Not only are the US carriers not safe in Honolulu, They might not be safe in San Diego..”
Hypersonic missiles seem to be a game changer.
>California college allowing homeless students to sleep in parked cars -The Hill
The “Safe Parking Program” program is meant to help unhoused students . Is this supposed to be one of those “feel-good stories” that you would see at the conclusion of the “nightly news” with [fill in the blank] .You know, like the story of an octogenarian finding gainful employment at the local McDonald. Or, some Go-Fund Me drive was able to garner enough donations so local 5 year old could afford chemo.
Yup, not a hint of irony… cruel or otherwise. I feel better already, knowing those kids are safe!
On ABC nightly “news,” that feel-good last segment is called “America Strong.”
So, I guess the “benevolence” of the school in not running these students off or shaking them down and arresting them would qualify.
But the real shocker in the article is in the very poorly written last sentence:
Holy shit! Can that possibly be true? 50%!!!!
Maybe it should read “risen by 50%,” but with 20% of California community college students experiencing homelessness (previous paragraph) I’m not so sure.
When you have to guess what a “news” source really means, it’s probably time to stop using it as a “source” for anything.
From the other link from “the hill” this morning, about the opioid makers’ “major victory” in California:
That sentence was such unbelievable nonsense I had to follow the link to the press release. Here’s what it actually said:
WTF????
That’s so out of context. Are we sure “AI” didn’t have a hand in this article?
If you read the MSM and lawyers you get the impression that everyone who takes opioids is both addicted and could get by on Ibuprofen. Both are lies. I have 40 years of deteriorating back problems worth of experience in this area. During the “Valium epidemic” I was restricted to as little as 12 pain pills a “year” for a while. During this “opioid epidemic” I’m again restricted (though not as much) and somewhat stressed that I may run out of prescription pills and have to resort to the black market. I’ve never been addicted, take only as needed (my third surgery was yesterday), and met only one who actually liked the opioids and his doctor cut him off. I consider anything that reduces the hysteria about opioids to be a clear win.
In my opinion this is more about legalized blackmail using insinuation rather than facts to squeeze money from a corporation. I see little in the rhetoric about actually helping anyone, addicts or otherwise. Taking away the strong pain killers from those with chronic severe pain pushes many into suicide as a last resort. I know a few people who keep their last pills for that purpose though the MSM and lawyers will say the opioids were the cause of the suicides while the opposite is the reality. And where is the support for those people? Nowhere, they don’t care about people only money.
‘College District official Mike Muñoz said that close to 70 students sleep in their cars each night.
“If we can help to keep our students safe so they can better focus on their student responsibilities, this program is absolutely worth pursuing,” Muñoz said in the statement. “Our goal at LBCC is always to remove barriers that get in the way of our student’s success.”‘
Remove barriers……. so letting you sleep in your car in a parking garage is removing a barrier?
Every day is more frightening. Went to the lone grocery store in my rural community and there was a food pantry truck distribution going on in the parking lot. WHY don’t we just give the people $$$ to go buy food in the grocery store???
It is all about shaming and control.
> so they can better focus on their student responsibilities
Like paying inflated tuition?
Only 40k a year, or join the military.
Healthcare optional. Even for soccer players, I hear. *in college*
BTW, John Oliver -so to speak- says homelessness will go up 46% in the next four years.
Oliver really is a good communicator. The recent clips for the Daily Show look like poor rip offs of Seinfeld stand up bits which work when you are Seinfeld good.
I saw a Smothers Brothers comedy revues HBO once from 1979. The young comedians were alright, but they couldnot touch the brothers, but then they introduced Jerry Seinfeld. He talked about buying white undershirts at the mall. One of the brothers couldn’t keep up the act and the next comedian stood like a deer in head lights. It wasn’t a high school game, so there was no slaughter rule. They needed to close up after that “did you ever notice” routine.
Oh, goody. Already there are over 500,000 homeless each night or over a million enjoying it each year, IIRC.
Great country we have.
On the way to vote walked past a church that has a soup kitchen and runs a pantry service. In the past when I was around there would be twenty or so people waiting to go in if the doors hadn’t opened yet, only occasionally would there be a few people waiting if they were open.
The church has apparently truly ramped up service. No one goes in. Information is taken at the side entrance, I am assuming family size. Packed bags come down a portable conveyor out the front door to be handed to the head of line. There were some racks of produce outside the church, that I assume was waiting to go in. There were easily thirty or so people between the side door and the front door and at least double waiting to get to that side door. And this had probably been going on for some time.
Magnificent and admirable and utterly devastating.
What an exceptional country. Hooray for the US. One hopes the students in these circumstances can persevere, get their grades and become a success story.
Someday, with a “can-do without”attitude, they may be sleeping in the parking lot of a Fortune 500 company!
Or sleeping in a nice new $70,000 vehicle purchased with zero down and a 120-month loan.
Might as well splurge on the beefed up van for living the best van life there is.
I’d mess up the vehicle makes/models. I just know that Dodge, Mercedes, Ford and maybe some others are marketing for the “remote work” life.
Dodge introduced a van that it ‘partnered’ with Mercedes Benz to build, called the Sprinter some twenty years ago. It is still being sold, now as a wholly Mercedes Benz product. It’s big, roomy, and pretty reliable. (At least, the older Dodge version I looked through was.) This has been given a “Van Life” version. The Winnebago ‘Revel.’ Models start at ‘only’ $196,000 USD.
See: https://www.winnebago.com/models/product/motorhomes/camper-van/revel
Never forget, self sufficiency comes at a price!
ambrit, I don’t expect you’ll see this as I am responding at 2230 Eastern but, here goes . . .
For the last 20 years, or so, I’ve owned an aluminum bodied box with an SBC (small block Chevy), think reliable as an anvil but with 8 cylinders. These are made by Grumman (think F-14 Tomcat) and used by package delivery services. Referred to as a stepvan, these are the near ubiquitous boxes on wheels from which UPS packages appear. Brand name for mine is Kurbmaster.
Terrible fuel mileage (9.5-10mpg) according to some. I’ve owned two Grand Wagoneers, so terrible is relative. Anyway, it cost a pittance of $1000, and over the course of 20 years I’ve spent $3000 on upkeep ($2000 of that being operator error requiring a used engine).
Anyway, variable costs are $600 for insurance, plus fuel at the aforementioned ~10mpg. Converting it to something livable for a week, or so in the outback would costs ~$200 (air mattress, portable gas cook top, plus a 5-gallon bucket with snap down toilet seat and kitty litter).
Anyway, I too have marveled at the idiocy of forking over $200k for a Mercedes van conversion. So how self sufficient do you want to be? Used step vans are plentiful. These days about $5000 because food truck operators bid up the prices, but . . . shop around and Craigslist are your friends.
Back during the 1990s, I worked in a bike shop here in Tucson. One day, a very interesting customer came into the store. I’d already heard about him via the news.
Said customer had been attending classes at one of our community college campuses, and, get this, he was doing so while camping nearby. He even had the misfortune of being struck by lightning — and was temporarily blinded — during his sojourn in the desert.
Eventually, the college and the media caught on to the story. ISTR that this led to a roof over his head while he was going to school.
He told me that he was about to graduate and that he was interested in a job in a field that would now be considered part of the security state.
As dire as things are, I suspect an extra (and mistaken) two-letter word in the last sentence of this article from The Hill. It reads:
“The study also found that K-12 students who experienced homelessness in the state have risen to 50 percent in the last decade.”
I can believe that “K-12 students who experienced homelessness in the state have risen 50 percent in the last decade.”
But I cannot quite believe that rate has risen TO 50 percent. (It’s a bad sentence anyway — should say ‘the number of K-12 students,’ etc.)
or, risen 50% from X to Y as a percent of the whole. (?)
I guess it’s true that college prepares you for life after graduation.
I wonder who will become the homeless coming queen this year in the big game?
You said something right there that you don’t even realize.
Imagine if they decorated their cars like floats and had a slow driving “Homeless Parade” as a form of protest with their homeless queen at the lead?
When you think about Munger’s design for stacked windowless boxes called a “dorm,” even what they call “housing” is in route ro more crapification.
I love it that Munger thinks a college dorm should be like a cruise ship. Minus the gastroenteritis outbreaks, I assume.
And what about the shared ventilation? Seems like a bad idea. Just like the cruise ships.
According to the school the private rooms in the massive building will each have its own ventilation system. How that will be designed remains a mystery.
The deliberate erosion of education – and it’s working!
Yeah. First from within and now without for all to see. It really is chilling to see college dorms look literally like a place to warehouse students, with the cruise ship vibe. The fancy “amenities ” make up for lack of natural light and ventilation for a healthy environment. We left our college town when the huge, high rise dorms were exploding throughout the greater university area, including downtown. They are monstrosities. The ironic thing is that a large number of available rent houses and apartments were in neighborhoods where there was a battle of owners decrying students party noise and disruption and the owners raking in dough, as beds were rented, not just bedrooms. Like 8 kids in a four room house or apartment. Suddenly, not enough rental to go around. Convergence of more undergrads accepted to university and some community colleges and more immigrants from other states moving to follow the sun. Read not too long ago, that with influx of PMC workers that at least one of the coldeye dorms was”converted” into “luxury condos or apartments “. At least the kids are not sleeping in cars, or are they?
Re: “The Enormous Hole That Whaling Left Behind”
Here’s the money paragraph which suggests an alternative title could have been appropriate:
“Surogate Defecators to Fill Enormous Hole Left Behind by Industrial Whaling”
The UK government’s onto it already:
https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/25/tory-mps-vote-to-allow-water-companies-to-dump-raw-sewage-into-rivers-15481391/
Re: Saab-Maduro
Charges dismissed at the request of the prosecution.
Probably because a brand new lawfare attack is being launched at Venezuela. The international criminal court (ICC) is opening a formal investigation into allegations of torture and extrajudicial killings committed by Venezuela which is the first time that they will look at South America. Normally, the sort of people that end up at the ICC are either black or ex-Yugoslavian. /sarc
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/venezuela-faces-landmark-icc-investigation-over-alleged-crimes-against-humanity
I’m sorry, why the /sarc? Have many non-Africans or non-ex-Yugoslavians ended up at the court?
The sarcasm is that no large country will ever have their people before this court, only smaller ones. The US, for example, passed a law that said that if any of their people or their allies were in the Hague, then the Pentagon would have the authorization to go in and take them out of those Hague jail cells. I don’t know the figures but every time I see a case at the Hague on TV, the guy is always black or ex-Yugoslavia. This new case is different as it is doing a case from South America but I would not be surprised to see the ICC open a case against the Syrians. The conclusion is that the ICC too is serving the empire in its work.
I’d have used the /sarc differently, eg.
The US has requested the ICC try its many war criminals (/s), being unable to deliver any kind of justice itself.
Is there a firm date by which pay-walls will have swallowed the last open website?
Try this to get around pesky paywalls.
I looked at this add-on and it comes with the following information. I don’t understand what if any problems this might represent.
Access browser tabs
Access your data for sites in the 360dx.com domain
Access your data for sites in the aachener-zeitung.de domain
Access your data for sites in the aamulehti.fi domain
Access your data for sites in the abc.es domain
Access your data for sites in the abendblatt.de domain
I happen to know that that ‘aachener-zeitung.de’ entry is for a newspaper in the German city of Aachen. That ‘fi’domain is for one in Finland while the ‘es’ domain is one for Spain. Any that end in ‘de’ are for Germany.
I use archive.is to get around paywalls. I have the bookmarklet and when I find a paywalled article I just click on it. Works 99 % of times.
JMM, Thanks a million. I just tried it and it worked. And regarding Lee above, the “access your data” is scary. In fact, an article in the Guardian this a.m. was about having to have a smart phone to access QR codes. More “control the plebes” rubbish.
France better get hopping on the modular nuclear reactor technology . . .
https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/china-unveil-worlds-first-waterless-molten-salt-re/
Do you happen to know if France has finally come up with any sort of real solution for long term (a few hundred thousand years?) storage of spent fuel? Do small reactors combined in numbers large enough to produce the same output as the big ones today, use significantly less fuel? To me, that is the real issue, not the output vs. expense of large size or the convenience and profitability of small size.
I spent a little time thinking about Zillow’s brilliant house flipping scheme and how it was sold to management and investors.
Seller’s pay the commission, usually 5% split between buyer’s and seller’s agent,if Zillow had a captive RE Broker “Write” the offers for a flat fee of $500 or $1,000 they could show an instant “profit” that would grow as the price did.
And the offer would be based on the “Zestimate”, .a “Value” based on their “Automated Valuation Machine”or algorithm.
Tanta at the “Calculated Risk” blog had a discussion of AVM’s and their weaknesses more than a decade ago, in short their utility is limited to revealing potential appraisal fraud.
If you go to Zillow and look at a property you can see what data is used by that AI.
There are links to county websites that provide square footage, age and effective age and in some cases construction quality.
They also pull info from the various MLS and assign a per Sq Ft value based on comparable sales.
Hard numbers! DATA! No messy human opinions!
And those comparable sales show TRENDS, hard numbers by golly.
Seriously, take a look at the lovely charts Zillow posts showing “This House” vs the “Local Market”.
Every house in that local market has an equal value per Sq Ft for each 3 Br 2 Ba house, each 4/2, 2/1 and so on.
And by golly if you look at 50 or 100 “Comparable sales” and divide the total square footage by the number of sales you can get a hard number you can use to ‘Value”each new home that comes on that local market.
Look at the trends which extend to infinity and you can calculate where prices will be in the future with unbelievable accuracy!!!
It’s INCREDIBLE, It’s FANTASTIC,it’s UNBELIEVABLE ( Literally) and no messy judgement calls by fallible humans are involved.
Or you could,maybe,take a walk through a 25 year old subdivision and look at just the exteriors.
Perhaps some of those homes are better maintained than others,maybe there’s a difference in the quality of landscaping, maybe some originally were bought with different upgrade packages or have since been upgraded.
No matter, because homes are fungible.
AND JUST LOOK AT THE TRENDS!!!
Which extend to infinity, when the market is rising.
Real Estate is priced at the margin, every time Zillow paid a premium those “Trends” looked more solid.
The acronyms that come to mind are “GIGO, IBGYBG and “Ass-U-Me”.
“And two to take him” also seems to fit..
Maybe the plan was to have Zillow be the financial backstop in the ongoing housing bubble, scooping up homes en masse?
If it was all financed with free money, what difference would it make whether their buying judgment was sound or not…
Wuk,it’s OPM.
No worries…
What I neglected to mention is that Zillow would buy and hold these properties and then sell them without doing any improvements,
Even so, there are carrying costs.
And costs of sale, if they had captive RE Broker’s doing the listing the total commissions ( Flat fee to the selling broker) would be less than a normal seller would face.
2.5% to the agent who brought the buyer, 1% to the selling office, plus carrying costs.
5% at an absolute minimum.
At a minimum taxes and insurance,lawn care and landscape maintenance.
I assume they are using the $ from suckers to buy at little or no cost.
Keep in mind that they are “Winning” the bids by offering all cash and buying “As is” and as far as I know did not have their own licensed contractors available to apply fresh paint or do any other work needed to make the homes more attractive.
You need to turn these properties over within 90 days at a 5% gross profit to break even …
If you bought at the right price and everything went smoothly, including 20% annual appreciation.
It’s more believable than “We Works” business plan, but not by much.
I would reject about 98% of the aged round metal discs offered to me on a wholesale basis by other coin dealers, some of their inventory was dreck or had problems associated with reselling such as surface damage, nicks on the edge or what have you. Sometimes it was just a matter of price and I couldn’t make it work, or a dozen other reasons.
Coins are graded from 1-70 so you could have 70 different valuations on a given coin based upon the condition. Imagine a given stock on Wall*Street having that many different possible values?
One of the keys to my business was flipping the object of my short term desire as soon as possible if not sooner, it was all about turnover and making money on old money.
Zillow didn’t appear to be a discriminating buyer, which sets off alarm bells in my mind.
p.s.
In regards to Zillow blaming AI for their woes…
Asimov
Vacant homes can be vandalized or have appliances stolen. Hard to blame a homeless person moving into vacant property.
Plus after previous owner leaves there are usually paint and at least minor repairs to be done or it might show worse than when it was all hidden with furniture, pictures and rugs etc.
A house protects its occupants, but the house needs protection and maintenance just like people do.
Buddy and his wife just sold their home of three years to Zillow. Paid $496k, sold for $735k, no closing costs for them. Not bad for three years, eh? Took their dough to Panama, near the border with Costa Rica.
If you look at the Redfin and Zillow valuations in the the bay area, a 2000 sq ft house with 5br, 2.5br on 6500 lot built in 1960 has higher value than a 2000 sq ft house with 3br, 4br on 10,000 lot built in 2010.
The valuation is largely set the the number of br.
My first example will likely have been upgraded without permits from a 3br, 1.5br original.
Tim,the number of people who undertook “Home Improvement” projects during the pandemic is enormous.
And the quality of the work has been uneven, to put it very mildly.
And permits? |
We don’t need no stinking PERMITS, we’re freeborn ‘Muricans.
In my area you’d best be offering all cash,over asking and no contingencies if you want to “win” the bidding on a nice property.
Permits? “Don’t ask,Don’t tell”.
There is NO economic basis for the prices nice properties are bringing here, it’s straight up fear based buying.
The number of heavy duty steel gates my friend Michael is installing tells the tale…
A house built in 1960 will be built out of real wood but have outdated utilities (electrical, HVAC, plumbing).
A house built in 2010 will have modern-era utilities but be built out of modern-era wood/plastic/cement composites.
Beyond the material differences, what those two sentences leave out is that craftsmanship really does matter. And that the half-century different eras have completely different labor pools from which those houses were built.
Pick your poison. I’m in with the old.
Yes, even reasonably well built new housing stock only has a problem umbrella of about 20 to 30 years, sometimes less. After that, it goes fairly steeply down hill compared to houses built a century ago., but they, the old ones, can have their own issues, as in a huge upfront cost to bring them into compliance (lead, asbestos, insulation, electrical, plumbing, foundation, roof, fire codes, HVAC as you point out, etc.). But it’s rarely all at once and when they are reasonably updated, they can’t be beat for the long run.
No, Democrats didn’t lose everywhere. They just ran the table in Tucson’s city council elections:
https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/110321_tucson_ballots/16500-ballots-left-count-tucson-with-mayor-council-pay-raise-balance/
OTOH, this is a Democrat machine town.
Good Dem candidates did well in Worcester Massachusetts as well, for what it’s worth. Dem machine politics there too but a pretty dysfunctional contraption.
Top Trump Allies Set Up A ‘Legal Fund’ For Jan. 6 White House Rally Organizers [Rolling Stone]
So, Matt Schlapp, an organizer of and a participant in the Brooks Brothers Riot, which successfully led to the installation of a president by the Supreme Court, is soliciting donations to a legal defense fund for
the organizers of, but not participants in, another riot which was unsuccessful in leading to the installation
of a president. Donors who will be rewarded when the next such attempt organized by some of the same people,
is successful and, since no quid pro quo, it’ll all be legal, courtesy of the same Supreme Court.
So you believe they are not entitled to a legal defense? Interesting version of the democracy that you feel is threatened.
Carolinian
November 4, 2021 at 11:01 am
And you believe that people in the US legal system who DO NOT have millions backing them have the same chance of prevailing in the US courts?
I believe, and people can disagree, that the US legal system is finely crafted, designed, and maintained to assure the poor are convicted and the rich are exonerated.
where did he say they weren’t entitled to a defense?
Then what’s the complaint?
see Fresno dan’s comment.
Big Fish never fry.
pretty clear that was the complaint OP made.
it’s almost like you’re being deliberately obtuse.
I find it interesting that outside of NC, pretty much no one is discussing the assaults that were covered up at the schools in Loudin County. I have noticed over the last few years in Austin, TX, that the woke liberal elite will not allow discussion of issues with violence and the unhoused population. Especially since 2019 when they removed the camping ban and things got really bad all over Austin. The result was a bipartisan ballot initiative passed to bring the camping ban back. People who opposed the ban claimed that any accounts of violence occurring around these camps was anecdotal, that only Republicans supported the bipartisan ‘Prop B’ to bring the ban back, and that allowing huge camps to build up all over the city was okay and working well. I received numerous mailers from a group called Homes Not Handcuffs that was covered in obvious lies. It seemed like during the campaign for Prop B, the city leadership and the activists were so dug in, they would say anything to keep Prop B from passing, and it ended up costing them the vote. It wasn’t even close, they lost horribly. I feel like the same thing has happened in Virginia. The woke bathroom policy was in danger because of these assaults and rather than deal with it, the left decided to pretend there was no problem and it cost them big. They still won’t discuss it because they would then have to listen to people who disagree with their bathroom policy. It’s so bad they had that father assaulted by police at the school board meeting. I know of people who have been on the news in Austin discussing actual crime that they have been the victim of and then getting death threats from activists on the left from around the country. I do get the feeling the liberal elite are going to continue to lose elections because they are so detached from the life of regular voters. Even in a time when Republicans are so obviously corrupt and ridiculous.
Because its a local news story, not relevant to a state wide race the size of Virginia. The uniform surge across the state wouldn’t be explained by it. Culpepper and Manassas might be, but Manassas had a fairly dynamic GOP in a relatively tight area. They likely still do. Organizing is easy there. If it carried water, we would expect spikes in the local section of the Washing Post area more like Manassas. The uniformity of the surge would indicate some other issue. Even if they were, why did we only see surges instead of spikes in Prince William County not spikes or even Loudon County?
A counter example would be Liberty University culture of rape cover up story re-breaking and being worse than known previously. Did that hurt Youngkin? No. Youngkin like Terry aren’t connected to either issue directly or the people involved. It may go on the litany of offenses committed by Terry per a Republican, but its lost amid “baby killing”. Liberty sure as hell isn’t “woke”. They aren’t even friendly to trans people. Weird.
Of course Liberty U didn’t affect Youngkin, he hadn’t just changed a policy (the unisex bathroom) and then have the republicans cover it up. That’s what the woke elite liberals did with the bathrooms, then covered it up to protect their woke agenda. People all of Virginia knew about it and it surfaced right before the election. I easily could have affected the entire state.
And, it’s the same thing that happens in Austin with homelessness. The woke liberal elite trashed the town by allowing camping under any highway overpass or other public space. When the inevitable attacks, feces, tents burning up (a lot of tents burned before the prob b election) started to snowball, the woke liberal elite tried to claim it wasn’t happening. They even accuse people of being threatening because they talk about their own stories of being attacked at or around these camps. It’s a real up is down type of situation the woke liberal elite have created and it’s turning off voters. And now it’s easy to recognize the massive homeless industry that profits from the tax money the city spends to “end homelessness.” And it definitely affects elections in the entire state of Texas. Republicans all over the state now have Austin to point at to demonstrate to people what the woke liberal elite will do to their city if they start winning election here. I keep telling my city council person that if the goal is to discredit Democrats, the leadership is Austin is doing an excellent job.
“Allowing” transgender people to use a restroom and sexual predators entering and assaulting people in restrooms are not the same issue. In the Loudoun case hadn’t the alleged assaulter also been accused at another school and transferred? The school didn’t handle that well and maybe that’s what they were trying to cover up.
The Liberty case is more reflective of the right wing approach to sexual assault, favorable to the rights of the accused, and, if there’s a resulting pregnancy, highly unfavorable to the rights of the woman. Apparently being able to portray the situation and the danger as issues of gender identity provides a justification for them for voting as they prefer anyway, for a right wing candidate.
On the state of our politics: Both sides use bright shiny objects to distract from business as usual. Be it bathrooms or abortions, the various blue and red tribes are squeezed through these framing issues by party and media so that the polity doesn’t mobilize around jobs, health care, education and the environment. Periodically, the voters become so disillusioned that the false framework fails to turn out voters. Loudin is one of those moments. The Red team is much better at controlling its tribe’s limbic system than Blue, which is why Red is winning. Blue’s just not good at distracting their voters. Blue insists on raising subjects (healthcare et al) that it will never act upon. Red just never raises those issues. Advantage Red. Blue’s gerontocracy does not realize that false concern over kitchen table issues is failing. Red’s focus on power is ruthless, consistent, and successful. Blue does not understand that Red has moved beyond antiquated concepts such as truth, facts and norms. Blue thinks that waving truth, facts and norms around is good juju. The vaccine mandate issue fails on trust. Blue lost trust. Red triumphs by destroying trust. Red wins.
Not much point in thinking that politics will do anything but hand power to those totally focused on obtaining it. What Red will do with that power is predictable: reward their paymasters, destroy trust in government, and move the society to a feudal arrangement unbothered by democracy and its performance theater overhead. Freedom is too heavy a burden for most Americans who are happy to hand it back to the best story teller.
> Blue thinks that waving truth, facts and norms around is good juju.
One word: RussiaGate.
That’s the problem in Austin, blue lies and lies and lies and then wonders why no one trusts them. The dems in Austin, inlcuding the DSA, are hopelessly corrupted by the real estate industry, and the homeless industry is coming up behind real estate quickly. I don’t feel like it has much to do with truth, facts, or norms.
red loves power
blue loves money.
they both will do what it takes to get what they want
I should have shared this yesterday when there was a link about Fauci, but I came across an astounding magazine cover. Apologies if it’s already been linked or discussed and I missed it, busy week.
“2021 Humanist of the Year, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci”
That’s almost as good as Obama and Kissinger winning the Nobel Peace Prize.
He sure isn’t going to appear on the cover of Dog Fancy any time soon.
I can’t resist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jARp24AJWLk
‘I’m a humanist!’
Makes me embarrassed to be a humanist.
In some languages, it’s close to 2020 Unhumanist of the Year.
I used to read The Humanist magazine a few years back, but it became duller and duller — and just preaching to the choir.
The Fauci cover indicates that I made the right decision. It has become very clear that he is nothing but a shill for Big Pharma, and funding the brutal dog experimentation was grotesque.
Apparently, National Geographic has done a fawning documentary about him — but I have not watched it.
Up is down. Truth is false. FEAR, false evidence appearing real. Fauci is the result of FEAR .
Hoo boy:
Biden sets a hard deadline for vaccine mandates (Axios)
Demodogs really want to get themselves canned in the next election, it seems. They got the car keys to Exceptionalstan and now they’re looking for a tree to hit at high speed.
Monday is deadline to get second shot for Feds to be fully vaccinated by Nov 22. Last I heard VA was around 30% non-compliance and TSA up to 40%. Safe to assume about 25% of Federal workforce won’t play ball? How’s that going to play out nationwide? Even allowing that those chickenshits may blanket approve every exception (for which, oddly, I’ll prolly despise them even more for wasting my time and emotional energy), how in hell are they logistically going to provide millions upon millions of tests, weekly, forevah? In the middle of a self inflicted supply crisis no less. They can’t even deliver the goddamn mail! And that’s assuming employees pony up to pay for their own tests. I doubt anyone is fooled by this punitive tax. Every week? Really?!? How long can this charade go on? Purely rhetorical, of course. I expect nothing less. They lost before they began, but like Afghanistan I have no doubt they’ll continue this farce regardless of political consequences.
Maybe this is another version of drowning the government in the bathtub? If a huge percentage of the federal workforce is fired then that’s a win.
A link from your link
https://www.braun.senate.gov/braun-leads-40-colleagues-officially-challenging-bidens-vaccine-mandate
It sounds like the rule is finally coming out and the Republicans are going to make political hay out of it.
This just in from Canada’s most populous province:
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-refuses-to-make-covid-19-vaccines-mandatory-for-ontario-s-hospital-workers-1.5650760
“Fully vaccinated OR tested weekly”
And the courts seem to have been peppering these mandates with religious exemptions, so we’ll see how firm these rules are in practice.
Can you get an exemption if you’re a Satanist? Or a believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Asking for a friend.
OSHA says employers are under no obligation to pay for the weekly testing. Nice touch.
OSHA also states — in direct defiance of the science — that only unvaccinated employees are required to wear masks. The fully vaccinated — who we know can get infected and spread the virus just as easily as the unvaccinated — are free to waltz around maskless, blowing their viral load all over the f’ing place. Smart cookies, those OSHA folks.
“who we know can get infected and spread the virus just as easily as the unvaccinated”
Citation needed.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-28/getting-vaccinated-doesn-t-stop-people-from-spreading-delta
You didn’t actually read the article. It does not support quoted statement.
He read the article, and he took away the message that was intended by its authors, which is that vaccination does not preclude infection and subsequent spreading of COVID. I believe you are objecting to the implication in his phrasing that the unvaccinated can contract COVID as easily as the unvaccinated, but you really do need to be more specific about your concerns if you want to have a conversation about them. More importantly, if that is your concern, it does not affect his point about reducing the effectiveness of masking policies – assuming we are not actually talking about N95s – if you mandate them for the unvaccinated but not the vaccinated.
yes, I think this is well understood here, but it’s more than a mere semantic point to ask for evidence of the “just as easily” part of the claim. Not because I necessarily doubt it (and I do understand the similar numbers of viral load), but because I think it’s important to understand the dynamics of infection/transmission, including over time (is this the case 2 days/2 weeks/2 months after vaccination, for example)
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/08/06/cdc_director_vaccines_no_longer_prevent_you_from_spreading_covid.html#!
CDC Director Wallenski
So maybe not just as easily, but about 2/3 as easily.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099%2821%2900648-4/fulltext
“My husband took this photo yesterday afternoon of the ships waiting offshore of Long Beach.”
Can’t fool me. That is merely a colourized photo of the 1944 D-Day Invasion fleet.
It has more the look of the span-ish armada.
The long line of ships reaching out into the Pacific Ocean are the first sea supports for a floating suspension bridge connecting North America and Asia for a u.s. designed and built transoceanic high-speed rail.
Are you referring to the Edmund G. Brown Jr. High Speed Rail?
I heard something interesting from a friend last night. He teaches at a small liberal arts university in Ohio. We talked about Covid protocol at the university, and he said the students there were acting pretty responsibly, particularly in terms of masks (at least in the classroom). There is a vaccine requirement, but students can apply for exemptions. The university surveyed a bunch of the students who were unvaccinated to understand why. It turns out about a third of the “unvaccinated” students actually were vaccinated, but said they didn’t want their parents to find out. I laughed and said in the 60’s the kids at college didn’t want their parents to know they were on birth control, and now at least some of the kids don’t want their parents to know they have been covaxed. Strange times.
A more critical take on the partiers in Scotland:
https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2021/11/4/scepticism-abounds-as-world-leaders-address-climate-emergency
It notes the fossil fuels industry is subsidized to the tune of 11M$ a fu(king minute!!!
so…it’s really just that simple?
pull the subsidies, and the climate problem is solved?
doesn’t sound like big oil has a viable bidness plan, if they need all that gubmit jack.
and that’s without even mentioning the hypocrisy of that (more or less)Class of the population(oil and it’s acolytes) who were, after all, generally the same bunch pushing for market solutions to everything….and wholesale against any gubmit jack for solar and wind(or healthcare, rens, etc)…again, because the great god market disapproved.
Don’t these people have children and grandchildren? The longer I live the more of a Farce it all seems. We are s(rewed if the Galactic Federation doesn’t intercede. Someone should start a political party whose main plank is reaching out to the Others and request help. Take over SETI and turn it into an S.O.S signal.
Read the Three-body Problem – it’s all about that. ;^)
Sweeney’s apparent demise in Jersey is a bright spot as far as I’m concerned. He’s been a key power broker for the sleazeball, self-dealing power network among Jersey Dems for years.
Collaborated with Christie on a state pension “reform” plan that left most state worker pensions highly at risk, and favored moving away from defined-benefit pensions for the future
Was instrumental in 2013 in greasing the wheels for Booker and Christie’s reelection, in a deal that involved both starving his own party’s gubernatorial candidate of funds and saddling NJ with 2 statewide elections a few weeks apart, so that neither Christie nor Booker would have to deal with the turnout generated by each other’s campaigns.
In the bait and switch dept he was a big pusher of the “millionaire tax” proposal (a roughly 2%increase in the state income levy on income above that level).
Made Christie veto it 5 times. As soon as Murphy was in, having included that in his platform, Sweeney now opposed it on the grounds that New Jersey was suddenly “taxed out”. I think it finally passed in last year’s budget package, but no longer funding Murphy’s original proposals.
He’s the kind of Democrat who was often favorably covered in pubs like NJ Biz and collected awards from the Business and Industry Association.
What makes this one particularly humorous is that if he realized he was in trouble he would have raised and spent 15 mil or more to swamp his opponent, as he had done previously. But he never saw it coming. I suspect that many recipients of previous shivs in the back from him within the Democratic party quietly voted for his opponent.
“America is Playing with Fire in Syria”
Actually America knows what they are doing in Syria – supporting terrorists. if you go to https://syria.liveuamap.com/ you will see a map of present Syria. That big green blob along the southern border is al-Tanf base where ‘moderates’ undergo training in sabotage, irregular warfare, etc. and then sent into Syria proper. All that area to the right in yellow is Kurdish-occupied Syria which is only made possible by the protection of the US bases in that region. The purpose here is to steal Syria’s oil and the crops grown in this breadbasket region so that Syria itself remains crippled. But the thing to note is those four small grey blobs (with red borders) that you see. Those are ISIS areas – which the US does not attack. Now those small areas have been there two or three years. So where are they getting their arms, equipment, munitions and recruits from so that they can keep up their mission of attacking Syrians.
Without the US presence, the Syrian would have years ago rolled up al-Tanf and freed the people in the refugee camp there, taken the rest of the east and put the Kurds back in their box, used the resources in that region to feed all of Syria and the oil to help rebuild it. It is also important to remember that Idlib province in the north has been labeled by US officials as the biggest concentration of al-Qaeda forces in the world. It is also the region where if the Syrians try to take that area back, that the US, UK, France and Turkey threaten Syria with war on the grounds that they are protecting the people there.
Not sure where to put this, but ‘America Playing with Fire in Ukraine’ seems apt.
“165 soldiers are saying goodbye to their families for a while. Members of the 53rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team are getting ready to deploy to Ukraine. The Florida National Guard hosted the deployment ceremony Tuesday. Team members will help train and mentor the Ukrainian Armed Forces to improve their training and defense. Brigade soldiers will work with Armed Forces Ukraine partners to develop and implement systems to enhance combat training and increase training capacity by delivering brigade-and-below collective training to four Armed Forces Ukraine Brigades.”
https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/53rd-infantry-brigade-combat-team-set-to-deploy-to-ukraine/
At least it’s not the AZOV battalion this time, so unlike the 101sts trip we should be spared the photos of their officers hobnobbing with literal Nazis wearing SS runes on their shoulders.
We’ll no doubt have the lads trained up to Iraqi/Afghani army standards in no time. I’m sure that has the Russians quaking with fear.
Curious as to what doctrine they’ll teach by. We have theoretical doctrine in the manuals for fairly balanced conventional wars, and training for the not-deployed still covers that, I think. But the situations our troops have actually dealt with in our colonial wars have all involved absolute air supremacy, a monopoly of heavy weapons, and opponents against which the formations deployed against enemies who have combined arms forces are irrelevant.
Recalls when I heard wives with husbands in the National Guard wailing at their workplace that their husbands were being deployed to the Iraq war. They thought husbands would only play at being soldiers on weekends. If wanted, get some college assistance. If called up for service it would only be for natural disasters or for defending the homeland. The shock was real. Now, probably not.
Al-Tanf came under attack recently, supposedly in response to an Israeli-US strike launched from there.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/explosions-rock-base-housing-us-troops-in-syrian-desert/
Jay Powell urges patient approach to rate rises as taper begins FT
Just another installment of the monthly soap opera, “As the Fed Squirms”.
Despite the $15 billion per month ??????? reduction in QE, it’s the same old same old from Jay. Always “caution, wait-and-see, must gather more data”, but always easing today and maybe tapering tomorrow.
And while I’m at my usual Fed-bashing, why does the FT insist on calling Jerome Powell by his nickname “Jay”. Are he and its reporters, shall I say, “cozy”?
Z I R P forever. Turning Japanese, I really think so.
Powell is a piker compared to the cunning demonstrated by Musk in head-fakes and subterfuge.
I was already in a bad mood and then you gotta bring up Musk. ;) Grrr… Why hasn’t that guy been indicted on multiple counts of securities fraud?
Judging by what happens to banks fiddling FOREX and LIBOR thingies, laundering drug cartel money, sub-prime mortgage scamming, etc etc etc, I wouldn’t think Musk’d have much to worry about if they did indict him.
“France says Australia hits ‘new low’ leaking Macron texts ”
Macron said that he liked Australia and Australians but his fight was with that lying Scotty from Marketing. Scotty immediately twisted it and said that Macron was attacking ordinary Australians. I guess that for Scotty, it is a case of ‘L’Australie? C’est moi!’
As I said before, and has been proven repeatedly in Glasgow, everything that he touches turns to crap.
Your Scotty sounds like our Biden–incapable of admitting blame.
Aussie, wa wa wa!
The timing of the Treaty of Versailles and COP26 about a century apart is on my mind after seeing that image of what passes for the world’s leadership under a chandelier.
With the former they tried to do too much to stop a menace from being resurgent, while the latter is attempting much ado about nothing to stop a menace still very much at war with us.
And the misinformation continues.
Except the vaccines are not sterilizing, so it cannot be like measles and thus no country will ever eliminate through vaccination only. Two years in and magical thinking continues to pervade.
Thanks Politico!
https://entertainmentnewsflash.com/2021/10/24/sunday-data-dive-dilbert-comic-strip-on-2021-10-24/
(apologies if I found the link here at NC!)
Sh88. Lets not do anything to really deal with the disease, because reasons. Track and trace. Masks. Ventilation. Quarantines with monetary support. Free medical treatment. Supplements and medicines like the Drug That Shall Not be Named. Put it all together and it would go away.
Some people are making a lot of money of this pandemic.
It’s Ok to name it, especially here. It’s Ivermectin. Was I right? Did I win? Do I get a prize? Yea, this whole sale attempt to squash Ivermectin and other non-vaccine interventions is so horrible it’s becoming funny, darkly funny. Thanks JB
I just realized, liberal Democrats are like chairdogs in the Dune series. Infinitely moldable and completely receptive to its occupant. Indeed, even the image of a donor smothering a liberal Democrat politician with his or her rear end is completely apropos to the moment.
Of all the insects, ladybugs get the most love-they look like a miniaturized VW bug or maybe mini M & M’s, how cute.
Well, when you’re subject to something Hitchcockian in a Birds vein as we were yesterday on the Ladybug trail, I wouldn’t say we were loathing the little beasties who would number many dozens on your person at any time, but it was a hell of an experience watching thousands of them flittering about in the air in kind of a frantic blur.
Non-pharmaceutical
interventions may limit the inoculum dose from an exposure, thereby reducing the risk of infection, but they are unlikely to individually have an impact on COVID-19 severity
Trying to understand this — when they say “interventions”, are they are talking about the vaccines or things like vitamin D etc?
I think non-pharmaceutical goes with interventions, so neither vaccines nor vitamins, or any other type of medicine, but masks, social distancing, ventilation and so on.
OK I see, thanks — so they are saying masks and distancing have no effect on how sick you get.
Yes – my read is that they’re saying that even if a virion breaches those NPI defences and reaches your nose/throat, it alone may not be enough to successfully infect you and bring on Covid 19 (which is good!). If it does, though, there’s no reason to think that the severity of the disease will be attenuated (which is bad :( )
And … “unlikely to individually have an impact on COVID-19 severity”
How the heck can that be correct? If I get infected by one (just one) Covid virus, they are saying I will likely get as sick as someone with 10,000,000,000 virus’ in their nose? I kinda doubt that.
Our illustrious medical system
So, OF COURSE, my cardiologists (there are so many affiliated with the hospital that I was seen at and who are somehow involved in my case that I can’t keep track of them) think I should be on Plavix instead of aspirin. Twenty five years of aspirin without a second heart attack or a stroke.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.118.009856
Thus, extrapolation from clinical trial results on aspirin versus clopidogrel in secondary stroke prevention to real‐world practice outcomes remains to be established. It has been increasingly recognized that real‐world practice outcomes or real‐world evidence may not be consistent with results derived from randomized clinical trials.24 Other studies have also raised concerns on extending clinical trial results of secondary stroke prevention to real‐world practice.25 Patients with older age and complex comorbidities are usually excluded from clinical trials, and up to 75% of the stroke patient population could be excluded based on preset exclusion criteria in clinical trials on stroke prevention.26 Clopidogrel is more expensive than aspirin, and most cost effectiveness studies of clopidogrel monotherapy in the prevention of vascular events were based on the data of the CAPRIE trial.27 The cost effectiveness of clopidogrel versus aspirin in real‐world practice is unclear.
I don’t know which is better. I do know people who stand to make a lot of money selling Plavix just happen to think its better…
This might be of use. [I really do have to introduce Boilerplate(TM) legal denialist language here. I am not a doctor, (just a sufferer of similar cardio-vascular disease symptoms,) and do not intend the following to be construed as the dreaded “Unofficial Medical Advice.”]
Read: https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2021/01/12/13/34/short-term-dual-antiplatelet-therapy-after-ischemic-stroke
The above is the latest article on the subject I could find.
I do want to point out that a fairly widely cited meta-study that encourages the dual use of clopidogrel and aspirin was funded by, I believe, Sanofi.
YMMV and “Caveat medicinae patientes.”
I hesitate to include this, but, a common saying in non-financialized fields of endeavour is “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
ambrit
November 4, 2021 at 2:34 pm
Thanks for that. And I am not a doctor. Or a statistician. And I never reviewed clinical data when I worked at FDA. But I did gleen a few nuggets from the group meeting of applications where the initial, frank assessments of the newbie statisticians were revealed (before they learned that everything eventually gets approved, and not to burn any bridges behind them)
1. relative versus absolute risk. it really is an eye opener
2. no deleteriuos affect, no therapeutic affect
3. if its that hard to discern a difference in affect, maybe there is no affect worth noting
4. too many people who mimic the actual people who will be taking the drug get excluded from trials
4. we are all the same, but we are all different. In all the trials in all the world, I doubt anybody is in the plavix trails who had Hodgkin’s disease when they were 25, had a spenectomy, radiation, and any other number of variables. And unless it is a trial with 10,000 people with exactly that history, there simply isn’t enough power to make the determination.
Its like Heisenberg uncertainty principal – with the data capture mechanisms available, it is not possible to determine if I will live longer, or better on one or the other. Too many variables. So I’m gonna use price to decide…
I hear you loud and clear Comrade Fresno!
Playing Pharma’s Advocate ( in the Latin, ‘Advocatus Pharma’,) here, but clopidogrel does come in generic now.
Be very safety conscious right now.
Oh, and several of the papers I looked at mentioned that combination therapy of clopidogrel with aspirin should be held down to a few weeks at most. (Something to do with increased incidence of bleeding episodes. [Said bleeding was not restricted to the stomach or intestines. Some mentions of ‘intracranial bleeding’ were seen.])
Things are very bad when one cannot instinctively trust the advice of one’s doctor. But here we are now; trying to do our own medical research.
The advertising and marketing of prescription drugs and other healthcare, when compared to other industrialized countries…
That’s what high prices in the US are funding, in addition to share buybacks, financial engineering, with executive bonuses as the cherry on top..
Here’s a slice of my world with exceptional eye candy…
https://jesswandering.com/complete-guide-to-backpacking-the-mineral-king-loop/
Very nice. Brought back memories and a smile to my face.
is that your girlfriend? ;)
no wonder you spend so much time up there…
She’s a fellow traveler in the game of life, but that’s all I know about her.
Looks like a challenging hike for several days, but rewards the endeavoring hikers to plan ahead. The backdrops and natural scenery looks remarkable.
It would be hard not to be a hiker and nature lover with so much beautiful scenery to admire. I perceive the mysterious hand of Gaia working to instill a love for Nature.
It’s the hand of Gaia and a couple sturdy legs on my part to be able to get to the crown jewels all over the back of beyond.
I’ve been everywhere she was in the link perhaps a dozen times and look forward to the next sojourn among such splendor.
Re photo of ships anchored off Long Beach. Brief article with excellent graphics by Marcus Lu in Visual Capitalist a couple days ago that discussed the growing backlog of containers at the Port of Los Angeles:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-congestion-at-americas-busiest-port/
Reminds me of the Red Queen effect in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”: …”A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
At least one ship and sometimes more are anchored here in our little bay on the west side of Puget Sound north of Seattle, waiting to offload their containers at the Ports of Seattle or Tacoma due to congestion at ports elsewhere on the West Coast. Seems to me that the welfare of the crews on the container ships anchored off some ports is a consideration given the wait times.
Neighbor told me that my Holiday gift is on the ship anchored here today, and that I should anticipate receiving it in March.
Chauncey Gardiner
November 4, 2021 at 2:27 pm
Neighbor told me that my Holiday gift is on the ship anchored here today, and that I should anticipate receiving it in March.
What a remarkable coincidence!!! I have sent gifts to all the NC commenters, but half of them fell off container ships on the journey, and the rest are expiring while they languish in port….
well, its the thought that counts
There’s always a Bitcoin gift card as an xmas gift possibility.
March? Although possibly getting it after the Spring equinox would probably feel strange at least you know you are getting a gift and roughly when!
Just tried to post Yale Medicine’s sensible precautions, on Gothamist’s article, cheering on $100 payments to force your kids’ inoculation (with <25% of NYC unvaccinated kids quick tested & the rest… well, it was removed as SPAM, go figure?)
“If you or a loved one experiences chest or heart pain after vaccination (or at any other time), seek medical attention. It’s always a good idea to have it checked out by a doctor. The CDC also says to be on the lookout for shortness of breath and/or a rapid, fluttering, or pounding heartbeat following vaccination and to seek medical attention if you or your child experience these symptoms.
While physicians are waiting for more information and guidance from the CDC and FDA, it may put minds at ease to know that cardiologists find that “in general, if the heart has a temporary inflammation, it gets better,” says Dr. Lampert…”
https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2477
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2021/10/6/22713416/covid-testing-consent-nyc-school
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/myocarditis-coronavirus-vaccine
https://gothamist.com/news/eligible-nyc-kids-can-snag-100-incentive-getting-covid-vaccine-city-run-sites
Correct me if I’m wrong, and eventually I’ll look it up, but IM Doc has said that myocarditis is a life long trauma to the heart. In other words, my words, not the Doc’s, one doesn’t “recover” from myocarditis.
We’d gotten to day 14 before inflammatory symptoms & it was VERY spooky, since April 6 was NYC’s worst period. Lots of folks were dying of stroke, heart attack & it wasn’t LIKE pneumonia; I could easily hold a very deep breath, no real coughing or congestion, you simply got very little oxygen. Lots of folks terrified of calling 911, died at home. The burning felt like LPR, then BAD inflammation head, arounf the heart, kidneys and a diverticulitis-like nausea. Neither of us had any fever. For me, it was worse after the 1st Moderna. By that time, dependable studies and our tests showed ample immunity (and we’d only cursory imaging & diagnostics of any damage, so I’d delayed my 2nd shot 5 months. Why would we infect millions of kids and chance auto-immune type damage in a totally arbitrary experiment, just to keep folks at work. Why would ALL media simply repeat agitprop?
https://fair.org/home/action-alert-usa-today-stokes-parents-fears-of-child-vaccination/ (check comments)
How a truck driver spent $153 on his N.J. election campaign to likely dethrone a political kingpin NJ.com. No final results yet.
*********
According to Breitbart, truck driver Edward Durr won:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/03/exclusive-truck-driver-edward-durr-how-i-took-out-new-jerseys-top-democratic-boss/
Forget all the Talking Heads, Journalists, Pol Perfs, here’s what this professional politician says about WHY HE WON:
““The main issue was rights,” Durr said, via phone. “People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on, but bottom line is rights. It’s family.
“When somebody’s messing with your family, you’ll do anything,” he said. “The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.”
Durr said that New Jersey’s harsh coronavirus policies had helped create a “perfect storm” that made his victory possible.”
So, as the Democrats continue with their threatening, intimidating, oppressive, coercive Covid policies, they will pay a price. MSM will of course censor that part of the story.
Footnote: Durr said the MSM even got the $153 part of the story wrong, he actually spent about $8000, good bang for the buck.
I have a neighbor who got injected and the next day, stroke. Then in hospital for ten days. Still sick and needs cardio followup but waiting list too long, will be 2-3 months. But the injection was free.
So, Public Health Injection Shills say everyone get vaccinated. I can just imagine showing up at Emerg and being given the Dead Parrot runaround:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9SMUzj-_4Q
Except it’s not a parrot, it’s your one and only Life.
Re: vaccinations in Puerto Rico
I believe that major reasons for Puerto Rico’s success are two things that residents not reared in the US itself don’t have–pervasive pseudo-individualistic acting out as a reaction to any new and difficult situation, or a strong, numerous Extreme political Right. Combined with the things their leadership did ‘right,’ things went nicely.
“Trucking companies say there’s no due process to appeal the tickets or bans imposed by employees at the port terminals, who scan or track drivers’ Transportation Worker Identification Credential, or TWIC, card numbers. Often, if a carrier protests a driver’s ban, more days are added to the suspension.”
dealing with the union can be fun, especially when u’r not in it.
this whole port mess is a creation of … can’t say it openly … but wink wink and get used to these things more often as these are supposed to be the solution our eggheads seem to provide.