Lambert and I, and many readers, agree that Ukraine has prompted the worst informational environment ever. We hope readers will collaborate in mitigating the fog of war — both real fog and stage fog — in comments. None of us need more cheerleading and link-free repetition of memes; there are platforms for that. Low-value, link-free pom pom-wavers will be summarily whacked.
And for those who are new here, this is not a mere polite request. We have written site Policies and those who comment have accepted those terms. To prevent having to resort to the nuclear option of shutting comments down entirely until more sanity prevails, as we did during the 2015 Greek bailout negotiations and shortly after the 2020 election, we are going to be ruthless about moderating and blacklisting offenders.
–Yves
P.S. Also, before further stressing our already stressed moderators, read our site policies:
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***
The strawberry supermoon will brighten skies this week WaPo
The Autocrat of the Dinner-Table In Medias Res
Lawyer Quits To Become Pet Psychic… Makes More Money Above the Law
Palais Intrigue The Baffler
Ozette: The US’ lost 2,000-year-old village BBC
Oui, the People Literary Review
Diving brothers found the wreck of the Gloucester 300+ years after sinking Ars Technica
How the Amish Use Technology Wired
How science helps fuel a culture of misinformation NiemanLab
#COVID-19
Are these Cocoa Krispies-loving hamsters a key to cracking long Covid? Stat
Covid-19: Here’s what experts say on rising cases & concerns over new variants Hindustan Times
Beijing warns of ‘explosive’ COVID outbreak, Shanghai conducts mass testing Reuters
Accused NYC teachers deny buying fake COVID vaccine cards NY Post
China offers Covid vaccine insurance to win over jab sceptics FT
New York failed to put abortion rights in its constitution. Here’s why some states are hopeful. Politico
Google Is (Still) Directing People to Misleading Anti-Abortion Centers Gizmodo
Michigan’s abortion providers brace for a ban — or a surge Politico
Democrats Press Message of Abortion Access in Tight Gubernatorial Races WSJ
New Not-So-Cold-War
Ukraine: Any Reason why India should abandon Russia and Join the US bandwagon? Indian Defence Review
Finland has refused to meet one of Turkey’s conditions for joining NATO Hindustan Times
Ukraine Bits: No Ammo, More Casualties, Thin Lines, Propaganda And Passing The Buck Moon of Alabama
The Natural Gas Continues to Flow Der Spiegel
If the war continues going badly, there’ll be untold thousands of angry, bitter, extremely well-armed Ukrainians who’ll turn their rage not just on Russians, but on everyone internally & externally who they’ll perceive as having used them & sold them out.https://t.co/vAVvEyfri4
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) June 11, 2022
Sports Desk
Own-goal football The Generalist Academy
The Grotesque Sportswashing of the Saudi Golf League The New Republic
Will a Birth Certificate Change the Course of Soccer in 2022? New Yorker
Rethinking Prison Tourism Marshall Project
Class Warfare
New York City, Stop Hassling the Poor and Make Transit Free Jacobin
Its Workers Keep Unionizing But Does Starbucks Smell the Coffee? Capital & Main
SEC Is Investigating Goldman Sachs Over ESG Funds WSJ
The Hamptons Broker Whose Clients Think $60,000 a Month Is a Great Deal New York magazine
This is a big deal!!🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/HVYy1pHGTi
— Lori Wallach (@WallachLori) June 11, 2022
“A number of top lawyers from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have trickled to the exits over the past year, driven by not only a hot lateral market but also, in some cases, frustration over new leadership’s aggressive enforcement tactics.”https://t.co/aFZNiPWdsB
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) June 10, 2022
Gunz
Protesters pledge to fight for gun reform as long as necessary at DC rally The Hill
If Supreme Court Allows More Guns on NYC Streets, Will Anywhere Be Safe? The City
‘March for Our Lives’ protests against gun violence sweep nation following hundreds of mass shootings NBC (furzy)
Republicans pitch religious, family values as gun violence solution The Hill
Shortages
Climate Change
The aviation industry can hit its emissions goals, but it needs new fuels MIT Technology Review
Climate crisis is ‘battering our economy’ and driving inflation, new book says Guardian
Death Valley eclipses 120 F as Southwest sizzles AccuWeather
On New Mexico visit, Joe Biden faces residents’ fury over government efforts to tackle fires South China Morning Post
La belle France
France holds a parliamentary election this weekend. How does it work? Euronews
Old Blighty
Boris Johnson faces rural fury over post-Brexit food strategy Guardian
UK food supply ‘vulnerable’ after fertiliser factory closes permanently Telegraph
As the fella said, freedom ain’t free—not if you take a wrecking ball to public infrastructure for forty years. https://t.co/1WIwUJ5vVs pic.twitter.com/p3ZSjBUAt7
— Daniel Finn (@DanFinn95) June 9, 2022
Biden Administration
Biden’s ‘Summit of the Americas’ showcases failed Cold War-style worldview Responsible Statecraft
Top Democrats say Biden should NOT run for re-election in 2024: ‘To say our country was on the right track would fragrantly depart from reality’ Daily Mail. A malapropism to remember!
Biden tells Democratic donors “we need two more senators” AP
China?
US pledges to maintain military capacity to defend Taiwan FT
U.S. and allies trade barbs with China, Ukraine dominates Asia security meeting Reuters
Julian Assange
Julian Assange: Does Wikileaks founder have a powerful ally in new Australian PM? BBC
The Great Damagers: Why Pakistan will debate which dictator harmed it more, Musharraf or Zia The Print
There should be no obstacle in Musharraf returning: Khawaja Asif Dawn
As Bangladesh Protests Anti-Islam Remarks, Ruling Party Leader Says ‘Govt Under Pressure’ to Act The Wire
India
Falling rupee puts Modinomics in great peril Asia Times
India isn’t ready for a deadly combination of heat and humidity Ars Technica
Antidote du Jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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re: How science helps fuel a culture of misinformation
The first thing to realize is although the so-called “scientific method” itself is intended to produce an objective take on reality, the process of who/what gets grant funding and gets published and makes headlines in mainstream media is political and commercialized.
A layperson, keeping it simple (stoopid), says, “Hey, this study came out last week saying chocolate is good for you. Because anti-oxidants (or whatever the buzz term of the day is.) This week, another study comes out saying chocolate is bad. Because eating a bag of chocolate chips makes you fat. How can it be… chocolate is both good and bad? This makes no sense. It’s a contradiction.”
Maybe the “chocolate good” study is funded by the Hersey’s corporation to pimp their Wonka bars. Maybe the “chocolate bad” study is funded by the US Department of Agriculture, who isn’t a fan of chocolate because cacao beans are grown in South America. AmIrite? These corporate and political issues arise about who is “shilling” for what, and the layperson can see this…
The layperson’s cursory observation of the published research leads them to believe science itself isn’t objective because we keep hearing these contradictory statements that can’t possibly all be true at the same time. Controversy creates clicks and sells products, but it sucks as far as getting people to believe in objectivity. People don’t trust “the science” mainly because neither “chocolate good” or “chocolate bad” represents “the science” in and of itself, so it’s time to fight on Twitter about what “the science” says. “The science” becomes just another religious or political belief with Neil DeGrasse Tyson being the head car salesman.
So therefore, “the science” is no better than the rest of the political or commercial controversy one hears in the media. Believe what you want to believe, and “do your own research,” which isn’t actually research but rather motivated reasoning. Our motivated reasoning “research” is really driven by a Google algorithm that isn’t objective, but rather also designed to pimp certain interests.
This is the disconnect between scientists and the media and the public at a really basic level everyone can understand:
https://phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174
Until this disconnect is addressed in a meaningful way, more sophisticated analysis of what constitutes “peer-reviewed literature” and why studies are no longer done to confirm/disprove previous published results are probably of secondary importance in the misinformation of the general audience.
How do we fix this?
> How do we fix this?
“Adversarial research”?
One could imagine US National Science Foundation devoting a portion of its research funding budget to funding proposals for “reproduction of results”, with the requirement that the proposers have no financial interest in the outcome of the research.
Or perhaps there could be publicly funded and transparently governed independent laboratories set up exclusively for the purpose of attempting to reproduce significant recent results in the published literature.
There’s not a lot of glamour or fame in such efforts, but it might have large payoffs in terms of the public interest. If commercial interests knew that the research they were funding would be subject to prompt independent verification, there might be less incentive to pressure the researchers to manipulate study results to show what the funders want to be shown, since the verification studies not subject to that manipulation would expose the non-reproducibility of the original manipulated study.
—
This would also be a significant jobs program for science graduates.
I think something along these lines is necessary.
The incentives to get positive results are heavy in science, and the researchers themselves are all too human, so there needs to be a counterweight force to ensure accuracy.
Such efforts would also be consistent with the true nature of science as an empirical study of reality where all explanations and findings are provisional and subject to replacement with better data or more refined study. I find a lot of today’s rhetoric seems to treat “the science” as some kind of metaphysical-philosophical-teleological explanatory capability (like a religion, really) where the current “best” studies are the whole truth.
The problem is that Western people are trained to desire thrilling narratives, drama, and other idealism. As long as there is a demand for such forms of self-disinformation, there will be a ruling class to capture and grow the market for them.
>”How do we fix this?”
I honestly don’t think it can be solved…there doesn’t seem to be a precise boundary that distinguishes between, e.g., “agnotology, i.e., sophistry camouflaged as “science””, AND “agnotologists, i.e., sophists camouflaged as “scientists”…How could you eradicate the interchangeability? IIRC, didnt Dr. Fauci at some venue, proclaim himself as “The Science”?
What a buffoon that guy is…
As Fauci put it during a Face the Nation appearance on CBS over the weekend, his critics are “really criticizing science, because I represent science. That’s dangerous.”
https://bgr.com/science/dr-fauci-if-you-attack-me-youre-attacking-science/
No, what’s dangerous is when the Pope says, “I am The Church” and pretends The Flintstones is a documentary and The Church knowingly allows pedophilia to flourish.
Fauci is not “The Science” nor does he (or Neil DeGrasse Tyson) act as some sort of representative for The Science. Fauci is a politician and Tyson is a celebrity. They’re paid to pimp their policies and products, regardless of whether or not said policies and products reflect some sort of scientific consensus on reality.
And of course we’re supposed to criticize their take whenever our own critical thinking skills set off an alarm.
Stick’em: As the Italians say, you hit your foot with the hoe.
Got any links to these? “No, what’s dangerous is when the Pope says, “I am The Church” and pretends The Flintstones is a documentary and The Church knowingly allows pedophilia to flourish.”
Which Pope? Or will any pope do for your supposed counter-argument?
The underlying point is sound.
I would think Fauci’s claim he represents science, when in reality he has put politics over the scientific method, would be a bigger concern than what un-scientific thing the Pope has said.
Ya, I think that it was hypothetical, this Pope is pretty strong in science, in fact.
On liberal infallibility. After WW1 europe tried banning right extremists from political power by fiat.
The fascists crushed the flimsy democratic institutions during the great depression and ruled through naked violence in reprisal. The soviet union fared much the same, one party rule and internal purges.
Ouch. Or Auci.
It’s not a “supposed counter argument.”
The Pope can say anything and his statement is infallible.
For example, The Pope can say, “DJG is not the Reality Czar. He’s the Immorality Czar.”
And no one can argue with his statement, not even you, because he’s infallible.
https://research.reading.ac.uk/research-blog/pope-never-wrong-history-papal-infallibility-catholic-church/
So the Pope can say dinosaurs and humans hung out down at the bowling alley or there’s no pedophiles amongst the priesthood or whatever he wants to say. And this is reality because of the royal “We,” which means he speaks for God. It’s the official dogma of The Church.
Science is supposed to be the opposite of ^ this. Nothing is “science” just because Fauci says so. This Faucian appeal to authority of the “I am the Science” form is a religious belief. It has nothing to do with actual science.
It’s not dangerous to argue with Fauci, it’s expected, because science relies on fallibility.
Stick’em: The doctrine of papal infallibility is poorly developed and seldom used.
Wikipedia gives it two times, both on specifics of Catholic doctrine: “The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception proclaimed by Ineffabilis Deus in 1854 is “generally accepted” as being an ex cathedra statement. Since the declaration of papal infallibility by Vatican I (1870), the only example of an ex cathedra statement thereafter took place in 1950, when Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of Mary as an article of faith.[6] In Ineffabilis Deus and Pius XII’s cases, the popes consulted with Catholic bishops before making their declaration.[7]”
Immaculate Conception and Assumption–two aspects of the Catholic devotion of Mary, Mother of God. Note the special “ex cathedra” statements.
The Pope isn’t infallible in daily matters and not even in encyclicals. Francis can’t announce that he wants linguine with pesto sauce for dinner and declare it infallible.
But in the U S of A, Putin and Pope are just hiding behind every corner, scaring the living daylights outta god-fearin’ American’s, doncha know?
it is common knowledge that ALL the popes for the lifetimes of all the victims , who are around to describe what happened to them..have swept sex abuse under the rug.. so what is that? the last 100 years?
We know that for the last 1700 years since the romans created the church it has been a source of every type of moral debauchery, and the pope is just a figurehead, who if he were an honest man would end this fairy tale about jesus, and call christianity what it is…. a con. a superstition.
this way the protestants could come around and realize the bible they love so much, was made up/put together….by con artists, who just wanted to control people.
what year was it when the catholic church forgave Galileo? And admitted that the earth DOES in fact go around the sun?
Was it 1979?
Yeah that is some high minded individuals, who still rule that women are inferior and not fit to be priests…
The catholic church is a joke.
Again, KISS in laymen’s terms everyone can understand.
I have a lifelong friend who is Catholic. We’ll call him Sam. For years we’ve discussed global warming. I say something along the lines of climate change is going to completely alter the way humans live on this planet. We’ve been talking about this in public schools since at least the ’50s:
https://youtu.be/m-AXBbuDxRY
Sam’s reply is “No, humans can’t do this. Only God can change the weather.”
Best I can tell, Sam is sincere in this belief rather than trolling us.
This type of argument goes on for years. Then one day, as if by magic, Sam starts saying, “Climate change is real.”
Dumfounded, I ask why this change of mind. Sam replies, “The Pope said so.”
Here it is, where the Pope says so:
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
The point is, this is a real example from my daily life. There are certain people in the world called Catholics. Sam is one of them. Sam will listen to everything I have to say, all the scientific studies I sent him and so on. And it’s as if I’m talking to a wall. Never changes his mind about any of this stuff.
And yet, when the infallible Pope says the same thing, all of a sudden it is reality for Sam. This is how infallibility works in everyday life. It’s real because the Pope says so.
This is an example everyone can understand from everyday life of what religious belief is and how it works. It is a belief in the infalliblity of an authority figure. In this case, the authority figure is called “God” and the Pope speaks for God, according to Catholics.
This is not how science works. Scientists don’t “believe in evolution because Darwin said so.” Science is not an appeal to authority. Scientists understand how evolution works because of empirical observations we share with one another over time. The conclusions we draw from these observations are fallible. This is not a flaw of science but rather it’s strength.
Dunno how to be more clear and real life on this topic. I find this type of religious belief person immensely frustrating to deal with sometimes, but that’s life.
Yeah, but there has been MORE than one study about mRNA and heart infammation – from more than one country.
So the “misinfo” article cherry picks and uses one example thus leaving the reader to think there should be no concern. Concern about “misinfo” is covertly “disinfo”.
So there is that TOO.
I don’t agree with your statement: “…why studies are no longer done to confirm/disprove previous published results…” Given the number of research labs working on a current specific hot topic, confirmation of previous results is common. How many times do we see statements like: “Our data confirm and extent the findings of youknowwho et al…” On the other hand we often see: “Our results are not consistent with those of whatstheirnames et al…” I don’t see this as disproving the first study but rather suggesting further studies to determine the cause of discrepancy that can lead to further understanding of the issue.
The National Academy of Sciences and other scientific organizations have addressed the problems of reproducibility in the Article:
Reproducibility and Replicability in Science
From the excerpt:
Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25303/reproducibility-and-replicability-in-science
You brought up more than a few issues. 1. Many in the public lack a sense of nuance (and the media panders to this), and by default seem to only think in gross binaries. 2. People are frequently biased, both the scientists who may selfishly misconstrue the truth for personal or institutional gain, and the people who read research and engage in confirmation bias for ego aggrandizement. 3. Awareness of these issues only muddies the ability to reach consensus even further.
I think you fix it by evolving humanity’s consciousness. This is either a spiritual issue or it’s going to take thousands of years of material evolution. I don’t know, what’s your bent?
“the science” is what is known as an appeal to authority argument, if I’m not mistaken, and there are several types of this logical fallacy commonly used against us.
https://www.thoughtco.com/logical-fallacies-appeal-to-authority-250336
I don’t agree that “Science” is an appeal to authority and neither does the author of the article you referenced.
He stated:
“A fundamental reason why the Appeal to Authority can be a fallacy is that a proposition can be well supported only by facts and logically valid inferences. But by using an authority, the argument is relying upon testimony, not facts. A testimony is not an argument and it is not a fact.”
Many areas of Science involve experimental procedures to produce data that may establish the basis for interpretation.
In the medical example in the article the author states: “Finally, there has to be some general agreement among other experts in this field — if your doctor is the only one using this treatment, then the premise does not support the conclusion.” Science involves that agreement among experts. The agreement may change with time as more or better data is produced. But it is not an appeal to authority.
You just straw manned, which is another logical fallacy.
There is no “the science”. Science is a method. Findings once viewed with great confidence are regularly eroded and reversed, see Kuhn.
“There is no “the science”. Science is a method.” exactly my point!
Straw man?? Did I misunderstand what Lawndart wrote? If “the science” is put in quotes does it no longer refer to science?
“Findings once viewed with great confidence are regularly eroded and reversed, see Kuhn.” I have no argument with this as I implied (obviously not well) in stating:
“The agreement may change with time as more or better data is produced.”
It’s really tricky, Yves. It is a bit of a semantic argument, but probably one people can wrap their minds around with some consideration.
Not only is there no “The Science,” there is no one such thing as “The Scientific Method.” This “universal general scientific method” is one of the many concepts they taught me in public school I had to unlearn once I got to college.
This is not to say there isn’t empirical, evidence-based methodology, because there is. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is wonderful.
Rather, this is to say the “one true scientific method” doesn’t really exist in the way most of us are taught in school and the way it is portrayed in the media.
Here McComas shows us why this is so:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ten-Myths-of-Science%3A-Reexamining-What-We-Think-We-McComas/e3e5b575a1d1eeed9e3fdeaf16ffe37fe7715d38
Climate and inflation–
From the article:
Yves pointed out in her introduction to last week’s article on inflation that Covid had reduced our economy’s productive capacity. This article points out that the climate crisis is doing the same, and that inflation is one way to allocate the burdens of that loss of productive capacity across our societies. Of course, this allocation method means that the poor and working class will be priced out of essentials, thus reducing demand in the short and longer term, the latter by reducing population.
Less brutal methods are being sought by at least a few in the political realm. Spain’s Izquierda Unida (IU – United Left) party, a member of the current governing coalition along with Podemos, has adopted a degrowth policy. Alberto Garzón, the party’s national coordinator and the government’s Minister of Consumer Affairs, has released something of a manifesto titled in English, “The limits to growth: eco-socialism or barbarism,” and he and party colleague, Eva García, were recently interviewed by 15/15/15, an interview republished on Resilience.org.
García explained the reasoning behind the leftist party’s position:
Indeed, as even a Georgetown professor of “law and economics” can perceive, climate change impacts are already eating away at productive capacity, and as this gets worse, the “bending of the curve” of industrial and food production will bring us to degrowth as projected by Donella Meadows’s team 50 years ago. The question is whether we will admit reality and begin planning for it in an equitable way that does not starve millions upon millions or whether we will choose Mad Max, or barbarity in Garzón’s terminology, by our stubborn clinging to GDP growth, “progress” and the “middle class lifestyle.”
I think as W. Catton mentioned, we in theory could make the downward path more humane, but we probably won’t.
Thinking about all the petroleum inputs, brittle supply chains, climate change refugees, modern building construction, minimum service levels transportation infrastructure requires, deforestation and environmental degradation, and a whole host of variables in the degrowth equation, it’s simply not possible at this juncture — mankind is a virus, sustained almost entirely on an energy system that transforms oil into things necessary for inhabiting a planet at this scale. On off-ramp isn’t possible without a massive die-off or deliberate extermination. Almost all of the degrowth proposals I’ve read assume that variables are static or have an achievable upper-bound that masks ugly realities. They’re wildly optimistic, bordering on delusion IMHO.
Agriculture requires an enormous amount of water, fertilizer, petroleum powered machinery and transportation, energy powered refrigeration that extends shelf-life. Drying of the Colorado and terrifyingly quick depletion of aquifers is a limiting factor in AZ and CO. Fertilizer and pesticides are derived from oil and nat gas, which will at some point dwindle precipitously. The manufacture of farm equipment is also energy intensive from the factory floor to the mining that provides things like iron. Then there’s the diesel to run it all. The diesel required to power the fleet of refrigerated trucks that transport food from farm to supermarket. Energy required to refrigerate food inside grocery stores. Topsoil quality and quantity is getting worse. Climate change is altering the grow zones for crops — just because it’s warmer and wetter somewhere doesn’t mean the soil is suitable for what you want to grow. It’s hard to imagine ME becoming a citrus state — or New England becoming a San Joaquin valley. We literally turn oil into food.
Housing is basically gypsum, vinyl, and glue — much of it is essentially disposable. Vinyl and much of the materials used to throw up new housing developments are all petroleum derived. Cheap quality and not particularly suited to long-term habitation — not even recyclable. Current population levels won’t bring back sustainable old growth forests. Harvesting the dimensional lumber and sheet goods in large enough quantities again requires gasoline and diesel powered machinery. I can’t envision a transition to gangs of burly dudes with axes, handsaws, and mules to clear mountain sides. Does anyone even know how or have the constitution for that kind of labor and animal husbandry outside of the Amish?
AZ, NE, and TX are uninhabitable without air conditioning. Solar and wind power require rare earth elements, which is yet more energy intensive mining in places where food insecurity will be a major obstacle. Solar and wind have a maximum service life of a couple of decade or so, then they become stranded assets in need of replacement. You can’t build a wind turbine without a crane to hoist the pieces. Vinyl jacketing on the cables connecting energy sources to the grid — yet more oil and mining of copper.
The long roads connecting endless sprawl have a minimum level of service to make them navigable. They need to constantly maintained with asphalt and more heavy machinery — yet more and more oil for materials and equipment power. An interstate with enormous fissures and cracks is useless.
Lake Powell will hit dead pool soon enough. Then what? The annual flow of the Colorado will fall below the level required to sustain the US southwest. And having pumped down all the aquifers that take decades or centuries to replenish, there will be a mass migration of US climate refugees to the eastern seaboard. And how does that work? On top of all the climate refugees fleeing Africa and India? Will the EU take them all? Spain and Italy are already seeing desertification.
Oil extraction in SA is hilariously difficult. Forcing an ungodly amount of seawater through reservoirs to sweep what’s left to the well heads. And that’s just one of many, many technological augmentations required to keep oil flowing. The same holds true for most of the middle east. No one even really knows how much oil is left in the ground. EROEI is falling. Unless the abiotic hypothesis is true, we’re screwed.
Modern medicine lives on plastic — one-time use syringes, plastic catheters. And rare earth elements — MRIs, etc. China and India manufacture almost all ingredients used in generic drugs. You think they won’t hoard them or hold the rest of the world hostage out of self-interest?
If you sit and think through each piece of the complex chain of precursors and processes required to make civilization possible at the current population levels at the current standard of living — and then imaging any of those faltering — you realize a lot of people are going to die and that “knowledge workers” or “creatives” or financiers or attorneys are all useless dead weight. And if you happen to be one of them, you should be a little nervous that the future has no need for you.
Here is a question: Is there any coherent explanation of what Erdogan is doing with regards to interest rates and inflation? I don’t think I’ve seen much coverage here, and his approach is . . . well. . . novel anyways.
The Grotesque Sportswashing of the Saudi Golf League The New Republic …
——————————-
In gasping hyperbole, the author tells us that the Saudi regime benefits by owning/funding professional sports (soccer, golf) for the Saudi regime but never really gives good examples of the regime really benefits from ‘sportswashing’ beyond some good PR. The fans who watch LIV or the Saudi owned Newcastle football club are not sitting around toasting Saudi Arabia or planning to go there for their next vacation. So, really, what is the real point of this so called ‘sportswashing’? The winner of this week’s first LIV golf tournament won $10 million dollars! Up until this weekend, he had won $20 million in total career earnings! Clearly, LIV will benefit the golfers. It doesn’t make me happy to see rich golfers making even more money from Saudi coffers. I don’t pretend to understand the pro golfers’ beef with the PGA but let’s be honest and ask whether or not all of the western corporate sponsors of the PGA and its golfers are squeaky clean. The NC community certainly understands that a narrow elite are the real winners in the western economy. If we’re going to question the source of the money that funds pro sports, let’s look to our own shores too.
You’re not wrong but LIV really is intensely tacky and lame (whereas the PGA Tour is tepid and lame). I’d love to see a better, more interesting competition challenge the PGA. But heck, I’d also like to see the golf ball rolled back for professionals. But there are all kinds of commercial interests at play there. PGA Tour is (was) pretty much a monopoly and golf equipment manufacturers are something of a powerful cartel.
I think the point – or what they consider to be the point – of the sportswashing is to accrue intangible soft power benefits, as Abu Dhabi has with its similar City Football Group sportswashing equivalent. I don’t think the benefits are really concrete, or supposed to be. I think the PR is what they want. But on the other hand, the Saudi dude running it just really seems to be into golf/the golf biz (just as Abramovich seemed to care more about Chelsea/being a football boss than laundering his
reputation, which I doubt he cared about much at all, even though Chelsea fans love him of course). So maybe it’s all just a big laugh for them and they don’t care as much about the sportswashing as is assumed.
Presumably they know what they’re doing in either case. The first weekend has apparently been underwhelming by all accounts – certainly everything I’ve seen has been tacky and lame like Insaid (then again, I consider Augusta to be tacky and lame, just in a different way. broadcast pro golf in general except maybe The Open is often tacky and lame) and the very strong anti-LIV faction has been very keen to stick the boot in. But they don’t seem to get it. LIV will keep putting on events until KSA gets tired of the endeavour, the success or lack thereof on the first weekend is beside the point, as is the pecuniary return on investment. If they keep throwing money at golfers, more will join, and if the ~product~ continues to improve, more people will watch. No amount of pearl-clutching will change that, and expecting sports fans to do a complete moral inventory of all their fave sports/teams, at some point they are bound to find something ugly, as you say.
I said when discussing this earlier this week with griffen though, the whole story has been pretty entertainingly comical: grown manchild type stuff, Greg Norman turfing reporters out of press conferences etc.. There’s enough material for a middling but entertaining cable series to be made about what’s happened in the golf biz this year a decade or so down the track.
But what could really make it spicy are the Majors (which aren’t part of the PGA tour). If they decide to exclude LIV players, there could be fireworks – and interminable legal disputes. A lot left to play out in this story.
That bit of tough guy stance from Norman and their security was incredible, and lame, by any standard. I used to read Shipnuck articles in Sports Illustrated quite often; looks like he can add a few pages to his pending book about Mickelson. ESPN featured the story and interviewed the author yesterday, at least in the states, on their 9am Eastern show Outside the Lines.
I’d like the golfers who are switching their alliance to the LIV tour to just state the obvious. I play golf really really well, and now I will be even richer than I was last week. Phil has dug himself into the deepest sand pit of them all. He needs all the best word salads he can manage.
Indeed Basil, the story has a ways to go. Who knows? With the open tap of KSA $ flowing, maybe Norman and LIV will be the exception to the general failure history of ‘second’ professional sports league start up attempts – hockey and tennis both had failures. And the Asian golf tour folded, ending with players winning lawsuits for fines accumulated.
And yes, griffin, Greg Norman’s ego aside, it is indeed all about the benjamins. KSA has more $ for prizes and appearance fees than does the PGA. I wonder what those PGA suspensions will really entail and whether or not the golfers who are playing for LIV will care? I guess we will have to stay tuned.
A response is needed here, as I caught part of the broadcast on CBS earlier today from the Canadian Open. The angle that is being missed and was under discussion is the matter of the view of those families who suffered loss or were severely harmed by the 9/11/01 attacks. Hard to believe that a mere player on the US golf tour would understand or comprehend that angle.
I will insist now, and in the coming weeks, this is a bigger story than the sport of professional golf in the US or elsewhere. I am sure this hits home for, I don’t know, say golf fans that cheered for Phil Mickelson at Bethpage Black in 2002 or at Winged Foot in 2006 when he should and could have won the US Open.
Greg Norman does not have a big enough broom to sweep away that angle. No one does.
> The Grotesque Sportswashing of the Saudi Golf League The New Republic
Henry Abbott of http://www.truehoop.com/ has been delving into the world of the billionaires behind the teams. After ESPN had its analytics purge, Abbott & friends turned towards independent journalism, which led to investigative journalism. The site’s excellent technical analysis of basketball has turned into a lure to lead people to important work.
Present company excluded around here, in the likelihood that trained legal experts chime in, but really the law firm putting a tight leash on the lawyers or legal staff. Business as usual in America, circa 2022. I have little sympathy. Corporate America has trended in this direction for decades.
On the “Hotel California” aspect – I happened to catch the Eagles on their recently or nearly concluded US tour. Highly recommended. But arrive early, as that hit does start the show. I don’t have a good bucket list but seeing them live was a treat.
Thanks for the Lori Wallach tweet. The whole thread is worth reading.
I depend on NC daily, but Sundays here are a pleasure and a reminder that much is still right with the world. Thank you, Jerri-Lynn!
“The Grotesque Sportswashing of the Saudi Golf League”
Not surprised to see Greg Norman’s name attached to these pr effort as he always was a huckster and this was brought home to me decades ago when the Japanese were ascendant. There was a golf course that the Japanese wanted to buy here in Oz and typically when they bought a golf course, they kicked the locals out and reserved it for Japanese only using sky-high fees. In this case, they were using Greg Norman and his fame as a golfer to lead this effort of offering this one club a great price. But the deal kinda fell through when one of the members pointed out to Norman that, yes, the Japanese were offering a great price but where would their kids be able to go play golf afterwards?
Greg is maintaining form, as in the first tournament just completed* had a noted incident where golf writer and author Alan Shipnuck was dismissed from an interview tent where Phil Mickelson was holding forth on anything not related to hisl new bosses. Or the status of his mind throttling payment in “blood money”, reported to be near $200 million. Guaranteed, I presume.
Pro golf has a history of players finding answers in the dirt (Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Lee Trevino) before making it big in the US. This is a somewhat revolutionary way to introduce competition; the PGA Tour is not all goodness or light, but these weekly tour events are largely charitable endeavors that provide long term benefits to local charities or local children’s hospitals. And a lot of that is driven by corporate sponsors.
I watch the PGA Tour, on a near weekly basis. I am delighted that Rory McIlroy has gone on record. If you make your decision solely based on money, that does not always work out the way one intended. I kept linking to this topic but glad it got picked up today.
The Daily Mail is always slow to load for me. Here is another link to the cat vs. coyote story if anyone else has the same problem:
https://abc7.com/cat-vs-coyote-wild-animal-attack-video-surfside-beach-texas/11943237/
Fierce cat. My only problem with the whole thing is that the guy watching by video didn’t do anything to help the poor kitty. That looked like a pretty small/young coyote.
It looks like that deck chair saved that cat’s life. The coyote had to make itself vulnerable to try to go in after it which did not work. The only time that it came near to succeeding was when the cat left the cover of that chair to get some height above that coyote.
I’m hoping the kitty made it after falling from post, that coyote could still be in the yard. But from its attempts to climb higher as it was slipping, I am not so sure the deck chair didn’t just delay the sad outcome.
I understand nature, but I don’t think I could take surveillance videos of my home showing me it’s brutality on any kind of a regular basis.
I’m pretty sure the guy wasn’t standing there shooting video, it was likely a surveillance camera on his deck. I saw a glint of the coyote’s eyes in the yard below but hopefully it left before the cat slipped.
It looks like what saved the cat’s life was the use of the deck chair. On open ground that cat would have been dinner.
I once saw a mouse hold off our two experienced cats. The cats weren’t hungry, more bored really, and it amused them to play with their Food. They had positioned themselves within about a foot on opposite sides and settled in for some entertainment, watching the mouse in battle mode (who knew?!) when escape wasn’t possible. One of the cats would raise a paw to terrify the mouse and get it to lunge and if cat’s could laugh out loud, I would have heard, ‘heh heh heh heh heh’, their eyes disappearing in narrowing slants of mirth. The mouse was running out of energy but it was going to go down fighting.
They let the mouse go. As I mentioned they were well fed and I think they were initially impressed with the mouse’s defense, but then within an hour they were bored again and walked away.
I’m a slow writer.
I’m a slower reader, so it works out well, over time.
I had a male cat born wild who was my best pal.We took long walks in the woods together. Often only knew where he was because he chirped to me. We lived in exurban country (40 acres). He disappeared for 2 weeks around puberty. We searched, posted pictures and offered rewards. One day in a thunderstorm he ran in the door with all his fur up and frantic; he had finally found his way home. I think it was a spirit quest. I didn’t ‘fix’ him until he had his adult body. Males castrated too early suffer badly from bully feral cats.
He always, even on the lawn, ran from tree to tree in open spaces. No coyotes there, but a lot foxes. I once watched him eat a squirrel from the head down – ate the whole thing; all that was left was half a leg, which he finished later. Great pet.
Then we moved to the Sierra foothills, and he disappeared a couple of months later. I cried. He was not at home and over 10 yrs old. I think coyotes got him.
Cats are amazing.
Our hair’m of 5 (and 4 before the current crop) in the Sierra foothills are indoor/outdoor free rnage cats-do as they please and for almost 20 years although I can hear coyotes a few miles away yelping in the wee hours, have never lost any of their nine lives to said jackals.
What a brave cat. It looks like it was a surveillance video which (probably) nobody was watching live – except the Texas police who were waiting for the keys!
I had no idea coyotes had spread to Britain!
“Top Democrats say Biden should NOT run for re-election in 2024: ‘To say our country was on the right track would fragrantly depart from reality”: A typo to remember!
So much crappy news. Can we do another garden thread?
This is the garden thread. Go out amongst the roses and distribute the crappy news evenly, then rake it in. Your foliage will go full Incredible Hulk in no time.
Just reflect that like the roots of the plants in your garden, that old Joe will soon be underground himself. Unfortunately as they say, the evil that men do lives after them. Just ask any student trying to pay off their student debts or people imprisoned for years unnecessarily.
That would be a prank. In the Plantidote section, run a picture of “Creepy” Joe Biden.
Suh, that is an insult. There is no truth to the rumour that old Joe has all the mental capacity of vegetable. Nor is there any truth to the rumour that they park him – between speeches – at the back of the Rose Garden where they water him twice a week.
I hope ‘they’ don’t refer to him as the “Tree of Liberty,” because ‘they’ are already ‘watering’ him with the blood of patriots, tyrants, and other similarly misguided individuals.
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
Amen.
Wrong track? What ever are they talking about? “Nothing fundamental” has changed since 2020 and at least since GWB and if we were on the right track since then what happened in between? Maybe they mean the wrong track being we haven’t been quick enough to do to Taiwan-China what we’re doing to Ukraine-Russia, because we do know for sure we are on the right track there.
I’m struggling to grow garlic. I’dve said something sooner but for my shame. Of all the plants growing successfully in my garden, garlic seems to elude me and yet I harbor some notion that this should be one of the easiest.
I planted the cloves in the fall. When we took the landscape cloth off in early spring, pale yellow sprouts were already pushing upwards. It has since put up two foot green stalks. Pretty much what happened last year. If the pattern continues, come late summer I’ll be pulling a plant up to reveal nothing but the exhausted and withered clove. I dug in more rock phosphate (and compost in both fall and spring), so there should be everything there the garlic needs, and yet… any helpful hints for growing the Stinking Rose?
‘Grow For Me’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSso4hhr7OM
Try cutting off the blossom as the green shoot grows. I usually take at least a foot off. Then the plant will put more work into its root. Growers used to throw these cuttings away or compost them. Now you can find bundles of them everywhere – garlic scapes. They make great pesto.
No blossom. I have nitrogen and phosphorous covered. Maybe the soil lacks potassium?
NPK = leaf, root, fruit
I’ve made pesto with garlic scapes purchased at the farmer’s market. Delicious!
Maybe. I’ve never known garlic to be fussy. How is your drainage? Everything else grow OK?
Zone 5, clay and pH have been the biggest problems here… and now heat. We’re using row cover this year to cut down the heat stress… but not over the garlic, too tall.
Even the strawberries are happy this year. I’ve read that garlic like even, continuous moisture. Could be too dry. I’ll try adding bonemeal and mulch. I don’t usually struggle with a plant that’s bulb-based.
Oh yes! I used to see these at farmers markets in Somerville. They’re massive! And delicious. I miss me some orange zucchini as well.
I don’t know where you are gardening obvio but why would you cover your garlic with fabric? Garlic is ridiculously hardy and a thick mulch is all that is usually required. Also, only a hard- neck variety will give you scapes, soft- necks won’t. Here in NW Oregon we normally plant in late Oct/early Nov and plan to harvest any time between now and mid July.
Northern Colorado… we’re at almost a mile high.
The garlic isn’t covered, most everything else is though. The high temp today is 94; tomorrow it will be 97. Recent rains allowed the plants develop tender tops that are heat stressing and accelerating them toward going to seed. The light fabric gives them some protection and slows them down. On days under 85 we just water and leave the cloth off. It’s something new we’re trying this year… we’ll see how it goes.
Here in the North American Deep South we are running into days in the high nineties, with high humidity. What is the average daily humidity there in the mountains? Your ninetyseven might be a case of the dreaded “dry heat.”
I have had similar bad luck in growing garlic myself. It has to be something I’m missing.
Stay safe! Stay garlicked up!
Hey, ambrit. I’ve heard that southern humidity is the worst-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVxXZhcpRfI (2:47 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zPKZP5821o (38 secs)
It’s a Southern Thing.
Cut off the tops/scapes after they make a curl like so: https://tinyurl.com/ycyzsycc
If you wait too long to do this the scapes become tough and fibrous, don’t let them curl twice. Garlic scapes are delicious, I’ve tried cooking them a few different ways but this remains our favorite recipe:
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018515-white-bean-and-garlic-scapes-dip
We make a big batch of it when the scapes are in season in June, and then put them in small jars, we put some in the freezer, it keeps extremely well. Delicious any time of year.
News I can use! Thanks!
I prefer “Dems throw Biden under the bus as Biden throws Ukraine under the bus” Kinda says all, no need to read the article only the headline.
“Ozette: The US’ lost 2,000-year-old village”
During that archaeological dig, it must have been like assembling a jigsaw puzzle to put those homes back together again. Fortunately, all the pieces were still there which was brilliant. Went looking and found a brief overview report by that archaeological teams showing some of the stuff that they found. I wonder what trade routes they maintained?
http://npshistory.com/publications/olym/oae-overview.pdf
The depth and scale of indigenous trade in pre-contact America is one that fascinates me, not least because of a seeming lack of knowledge of it, even in academic circles. It does mean the imagination can fill in the gaps, though, with whatever you like. I choose to believe that twenty thousand years of habitation led to trade networks that spanned the continent, and a rich culture of travel, art, song, theater and dance that was annihilated, literally, by the diseases of the Spanish that raced far ahead of their physical presence and killed 19 of every 20 people living. The tribes the Anglos and French encountered later were survivors of a Mad Max-style apocalypse centuries after unimaginable loss.
Who knows what was lost? Really, who knows? I personally don’t believe it is knowable. But I love to think about it, especially when traveling this country.
There’s a natural amphitheater near Abiquiu, New Mexico, that must have thundered with song and festivals for thousands of years before us. You can feel it there.
There’s a site in Colorado, Paint Mines, that the interpretive sign calls “wind-blown hoodoos” but sure looks like a good place to mine out clay to me, with plenty of flattened tipi-friendly sites just outside the mined section with commanding views of the shallow valley entry, and suspiciously out-of-place chunks of colorful stone half-buried in the dirt.
They reckon the Wukchumni lived for 3,000 years around these parts, and their handiwork is scattered all over in the guise of mortar holes and bathtubs sunk into granite, which ought to look about the same 3,000 years from now as they do presently.
What will we leave to the future in 5025 as evidence we were here?
Plutonium, and other radioactive residues…
styrofoam
It will be our layer in the stratified ground millennia from now.
I have read about West Coast sea shells found in Kansas sites and Upper Peninsula copper items found down along the Mississippi. Who knows what was happening in North America before the Younger Dryas cometary disaster?
Im remember reading about some mamoth bones with clear signs of butchering dredged up out of several hundred feet of ocean water off the coast of the Carolinas. Before Meltwater Pulsee 1A, the coastline was way out from the Eastern Seaboard. Not so far out on the West Coast. Then there are the neolithic artifacts dredged up from the Dogger Bank seafloor in the English Channel.
There is so much we don’t know about Terran human pre-history.
Call me cynical but part of the problem indicated in that Stoller tweet about the SEC is that there is a lateral market for those lawyers.
We, as in the government, should have a form of a non compete clause that covers government employees from elected and appointed positions as well as hired ones. No SEC lawyer should be allowed to legally work for a law firm that represented or represents any bank or firm they investigated for a minimum of say two years. If there is no chance of working for the investigated, even by two degrees of separation, there might be less problem with aggressively pursuing, prosecuting and or fining them.
Ok cynical, I see those lawyers as having paid their dues in loyalty to their corporate charges, and now scrambling to cash in before the SEC changes from collaborator to regulator and crushes the value of their investment.
While the SEC has a different (and noticeably higher) pay scale than the normal federal civil service (https://www.sec.gov/ohr/sec-compensation), it’s still not high in the scheme of private sector compensation. The _maximum_ SK series compensation is $261,400 (which includes adjustments for experience as well as locality), but a fifth year associate at a big firm in DC or New York with a good securities law practice exceeds that, even ignoring the possibility of a significant bonus in good years.
As it stands, we’re expecting SEC attorneys to be willing to sacrifice significant earnings while working pretty much just as hard as their private sector colleagues (remember: more aggressive enforcement means more litigation, and litigation doesn’t respect a 40 hour work week).
Your proposed two year rule would, in a vacuum, probably cause the quality of candidates willing to work for the SEC to decline. However, if the SEC paid a significant percentage of private sector compensation (let’s say 85%, more akin to Singapore’s approach of giving bureaucrats high pay), then that likely would address the issue. (A maximum salary of $260,000 isn’t so impressive when a your colleague who made partner can draw $600,000 or more per year.) At the very least, because there’s a pretty low probability of a former SEC attorney finding a job outside of securities law (attorneys are specialized), the government would need to continue paying the departing attorney the same salary for the two year period.
I guess what also strikes me is that SEC attorney compensation should be enormously higher. Just to shoot from the hip, it seems to me that it should be something like $250,000 for individuals with 6+ years of experience and probably $400,000 for 10+.
I recognize these compensation numbers might seem shockingly high, but they’re all relative. The market pays elite private sector securities attorneys quite a bit of money, so the government has to offer a good enough value proposition if it wants to secure the services of equally skilled people.
in the attorney context, this reality means that compensation is key when litigation is involved. Litigation does not respect personal time, even for government lawyers, so the usual “quality of life” considerations for government positions do not apply to the same degree there.
I had a run with some of these attorneys (white shoe firms for some big hitter brokerages) during 2015, that is private sector securities and related prospectus offering documents. Behold, a room filled with people ready to rip your face off….again…for things that happened in 2006 to 2009. Do wish I could have afforded my own counsel, if only to purchase more time to prepare. It’s complicated to explain.
I weep little for the somewhat underpaid government or SEC based attorney. They are destined to always try to bag the bigger fish and need a bigger boat, in most circumstances.
Final point. See for reference purposes, Mary Jo White and Eric “No Jail for TBTF” Holder.
Sorry to hear, I can’t imagine it was an enjoyable experience to deal with the biglaw people.
The truth is, federal government attorneys (though state and local governments really seem to like lowballing professionals) with some experience aren’t underpaid relative to the US as a whole. IIRC, GS-14 and GS-15 civil servants should make $100,000+ (I believe attorneys start normally at GS-11 for around $70,000) and that’s well more than the average American. But they are underpaid when compared to their private sector counterparts in key regulated industries.
And the crazy part is that getting a federal lawyer job is extremely difficult (very competitive) and there’s quite an elitist bias in the hiring process.
The low salary plus extreme entry competition only makes sense if even the federal government itself tacitly recognizes that attorneys are using the positions for career advancement, rather than necessarily as a career in themselves.
How many hours a week are the government lawyers putting in? How much effort maximizing billable hours?
I take your point to be that government attorneys, on average, have less pressure and less hours. That may be true, but even then, you probably want to pay those professionals quite well by private standards to ensure they keep their expertise in house.
Moreover, in the enforcement context where litigation does happen, the hours, when a case is filed, become pretty much “whatever it takes” for both the government and lawyers employed by the target. If government intends to undertake these time-intensive actions (and I think we generally agree they should be), then the government lawyers and support personnel involved should probably be paid comparably to their opponents–because both sides are doing more or less just as much work.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that the expertise gained by working for a federal agency has market value. In certain areas (securities, clearly, but also other regulated areas like oil and gas and others), there is great interest in the private sector to purchase that expertise at a premium.
My basic point is really: Government has to ensure that it’s total compensation (after adjustments for quality of life, job security, etc.) is sufficient that good lawyers (who are members of a generally risk adverse profession–so “good enough” is fine here) don’t give serious consideration to private sector alternatives. The existence of the SEC revolving door suggests to me that this isn’t happening in the securities area–it would be much better for government to capture the services of some good people for 10 years at a time by paying higher salaries.
I don’t often comment back but thank you it is appreciated. Reviving and reliving what would be marked as a career low point (2009, that is), that particular meeting in 2015 was fine by me to get it over and done with. Professional recall after 6 to 8 years is really, really cumbersome.
SEC attorneys should be highly restricted, but receive a cash cut of the fines they collect and civil forfeitures they impose, tax free.
I think that could have a very salutary effect, indeed…maintain low salaries but give the attorney who wins a case a cut.
I would increase the time to 5 years. That would also apply to elected officials who take revolving doors to industry.
I’ve always felt that district attorneys and prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to run for higher office for 5 years: no more notches on the belt platforms.
“The aviation industry can hit its emissions goals, but it needs new fuels”
So their plan is to wait on technology that hasn’t been developed yet? That was roughly the master plan of the Oz Coalition government to deal with meeting carbon levels – and who were recently booted out of government. Their idea was to do nothing for about forty years and then wait on technology to be built that would let them meet carbon targets in the final ten years.
The “new” technology needed by the “aviation industry” to meet a “carbon target” of Zero (gross, not that cowardly excuse-word “net”) has been around for more than a century: lighter-than-air vehicles fueled (via fuel cells) by the same substance that gives them their lift: hydrogen. Alas, it is blocked by those two universal forms of mass insanity, encapsulated by the two words “speed” and “Hindenburg.”
Mary Roach’s book Gulp, about all things gastrointestinal, says that farts sometimes contain hydrogen, and this has caused explosions during colonoscopies. Just saying.
As long as they use that technology to build the next Air Force One. Let the Pres, whoever he/she/they is, try it out first.
Off topic, I know, but I went shopping yesterday. Rode the bike wearing the backpack. Of necessity, a limited load out. Taking the back ways is instructive. I met or passed at least six homeless, all middle aged or old men. Three were also riding bikes. The oldest was riding an old five speed bike, towing a baby rickshaw, which was loaded with his posessions. The older ones were the most friendly. The younger were sullen.
In the shops, you would think that there was no coronavirus circulating at all. Almost no masks to be seen now. It being a college baseball weekend here, (Mississippi State plays a triple header against the local Southern Miss team,) there were tailgate parties going on in the parking lot of the college baseball diamond. I mean big parties, as in dozens of people surrounding each of perhaps ten trucks, and several pull behind bar-b-que rigs. Lots of skin on display, of both genders. No masks. At this rate, the PMC will kill itself off with scant help from the ‘deplorables.’
Most troubling was my encounter with a twenty-something college girl while shopping in the Winn Dixie. The store was seriously ice cold. The air conditioning system was running full out. She had on a tee shirt, (Mississippi State,) gym shorts, and tennis shoes. She was coughing continuously. No mask. I offered her a mask, (one of my KN-95s.) She declined, saying that she was triple vaxxed. Why was she coughing then I asked. Oh, she replied, she had single pneumonia with some pleurisy. She had come in to refill her inhaler scrip, (this store has a pharmacy,) and was doing some shopping while waiting for the scrip to be filled. This is the future management class of America? I tried to enlighten her about non-medical things she could do to increase her rate of recovery. The usual suspects: Vit C, Quercitin, Calcium and Magnesium, NAC, and rest. Oh, she stated, I do sleep sitting up for now. She also stated that the Doctor treating her said absolutely nothing about vitamins or enforced rest.
Is Coronavirus going to become the new Consumption?
Corona of the Camellias.
All I can say is, stay safe yourselves.
Fear and loathing in Starkvegas.
ambrit, it’s graduation today here in Hanover. Woke up to a bagpiper playing. People have come in from all over the country and beyond. Masking is rare. The last day of employer-provided PCR testing was 2 days ago. My immunologist boss was not happy about the timing, as in “What idiot made that decision?” I wish I had the means to get off this crazy train.
Commencement and graduation were on May 13th this year for USM. Yes, Friday the Thirteenth. From this I will deduce that the Spring Graduating Class is doomed. Seeing what I have recently of the behaviour of the PMCs here, that prediction stands a non-trivial chance of proving out.
Just take care of yourself and any you might favour. Like many have learned to say: “We’re on our own now.”
If it comes to it, set up the tent in Mom’s back forty.
Sounds like Broadway Farms, Zabar’s or UWS’s Fairway Market? Except, virtually ALL e-bicycles & scooters going 22-38mph on the sidewalks? Skipped the Yuppie Farmers Market, three variants & PASC’s enough!
https://mobile.twitter.com/BeliTsari/status/1535835560421601280
It is the division I NCAA baseball tournament, super regional weekend. Theses are being held at 8 sites across the country, where the host team is the higher seed. Looks like the Rebels got the better of USM on Saturday, but lo and behold redemption awaits today.
A little unsurprising to find that Ole Miss is listed as the 3rd ranked party school. Never really sure how accurate such a listing might even be, to be clear. Not completely on topic to your point, but hey it’s a competitive world so start them young I say.
I don’t remember cws related breakouts last year. As for the girl in the anecdote, my first year dorm was a “walking pneumonia” disaster ward. Her story is familiar. And my roommate had mono. College is disgusting.
Not that I go anywhere without my kn95, but the young person’s symptoms seem familiar.
I am no fan of the NC State athletics program, of any sort, but they appear to have been hosed during last year’s tournament and near conclusion in Omaha. I forget the whole ordeal but the tournament leadership basically decided a crucial game against the Wolfpack.
As a UNC-CH fan I am properly forbidden to have real or faked enthusiasm for the competition on Tobacco Road.. But exceptions can happen when expanded further into ACC country ( or the traditional footprint, I’ll include Florida State ).
I finally bought a half-face respirator. Yves mentioned she has one from GVS, so I bought that one. With the straps it fits reasonably well. The P100 cartridges are rated for 99.97%. It looks like 3M makes their own variant of these respirators. With no one wearing any kind of ‘face’ mask anymore, the more filtration the better.
Raced through O’Hare today to make very tight connection between antipodal gates en route west. AA terminal was superspreader extraordinaire! Less than 1 in 5 masked, and packed. Was glad to settle into my comparatively safer 737Max seat after my 10 minute dodge/weave dash. On plane, even smaller ratio of masked. Flight crew in first unmasked, but crew were masked in back of steerage class with the lavatories nearby that I unfortunately had to visit because those in the terminal were too packed to have made my flight. Then Uber at destination with unmasked driver and minimal masks in the grocery store when provisioning. Meanwhile, 105 F here. Uggh all round.
105F with what humidity? I joke about the Devils telling the new arrivals to not worry because it’s a dry heat. We here in the North American Deep South are entering a heat bubble time. Upper nineties to perhaps a few 100 F days, all with very high humidity. I break out in a heavy sweat after about five minutes or less of exertion outside the house now.
I leave the house now with my cammo pants, with suspenders, white cotton long sleeve shirt to ward off the cancerous solar influences, and a floppy boonie hat. Phyl calls me her “Cammo Campesino.”
Stay vigilent!
“US to maintain ability” is a hell-uva step back from the loose talk of May
Gas prices present a glaring problem. Yep it is peak driving season, and what better way to start your summer with a family lesson from Mom and Dad on why inflation is bad. What are the chances anyone today that is native born in the US, under the age of 40, would even recall or know how bad inflation was getting in the late ’70s and early ’80s. I was pushing 9 years old the last time we marked an inflationary zenith in December 1981. And we hit that again this week.
Unleaded was $4.59 yesterday, but I expect it to be higher by month end, and would be shocked if it stays under $5 a gallon.
Yep. Pelosi’s committee couldn’t have picked a worse start date.
“Remember Jan 6th, 2021!”
I do. Gas was $2.19 a gallon. Now it’s touching $5 /gal and still rising in flyover country.
In California’s 12th congressional district, represented by Ms. Pelosi, gas ( regular )
is now $6.70 a gallon.
Regular’s up to $4.94/gal this week here in Hanover, NH. Imagine it’ll break $5 this coming week.
Regular is $6.49 at the cheap station.
Tourism is a big part of Sonoma County’s economy.
VERY few masks anywhere.
Gasoline may seem to be expensive, but compared to price increases of many other products gasoline remains cheap in the US. I haven’t seen anyone cut back on driving. The commutes are jam packed, weekend driving is also a congested hell in many places near me. And I see more and more new jumbo SUVs and pickup trucks, so people continue to purchase them despite the complaints of high gas prices. Americans love to whine, but they loathe changing their high consumption lifestyles.
Goodbye, Joe, he gotta go, me oh my oh
He gotta go, price of gas & vittles up the wazoo
His Ukraine sleaze smothered in pleas, me oh my oh
Hunter’s his son, laptop revelations up the wazoo
Don’t run in ’24!, the internet is buzzin’
Demo kinfolk come to see Kamala by the dozen
In Donkey Show style they go hog wild, me oh my oh
Sum of all fears, she’ll end his term on the Potomac
Kamala & VP Pete and mumbo jumbo
Joe’s gonna be my Chernenko
Har de har they’ll both be stars any day oh
Son of a gun, we’ll have big fun deciphering the mumbo jumbo
Settle down far from DC town, get him in his Corvette
And he’ll catch all the ‘hey-nice car’ looks in Delaware
Swap him historically with Hoover, you bet
Hunter’s his son, he’ll have big fun riding shotgun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-BQpRqmwM0
“Biden tells Democratic donors “we need two more senators”
Does old Joe think that it is the Donors who elect Senators? I seem to recall that another group is needed to cooperate here – voters. And generally speaking, you usually have to give people a reason to vote for you. Or at the very least, you shouldn’t give people reasons to vote against you. But if gas hits $10 a gallon by November, all bets are off.
It was overlooked, but besides declaring what a swell guy Mitch McConnell is, Biden announced on Kimmel that he wasn’t going to do executive orders to not be like Trump. I woukd say most Team Blue donors aren’t dissimilar to local committee Dems, they just demand more personal attention. They still want to know where the money is going, and Biden announced he’s running out the clock.
Pelosi brought up Carville the other day. All I can think is she’s playing to the audience that thought CNN’s Crossfire wasn’t the most brain dead show ever made. The donors may not be hippies, but they want to know what is going on. They can show how see the collapse in youth support. Hillary’s line was she and Sanders agreed on everything except she could get things done. That wasn’t for me. It was for Team Blue loyalists who were concerned about her youth support. Back issue 2014, Politico had an article about ticked off donors and Pelosi promising them Hillary would be the fighter Obama wasn’t. They just needed to not get run off the map in 2014 to prepare for the coronation. One donor gripe about all the money she spent could have easily gone to the Boys and Girls Club and produced results.
“Biden announced he’s running out the clock.”
Biden’s 30 points down with 10 to play, and he’s running out the clock. Too bad college ball outlawed the Four Corners (i.e. the 30-second shot clock) after Dean Smith and Phil Ford effectively shaved five minutes off the game clock.
Is that because President Manchin is no longer a mere Senator?
I hate to tell him, but he needs three, not two. Manchin will be a Republican after the midterms and Sinema will officially become an Independent in order to run for re-election in 2024.
From Krystal and Saagar, a good recap of the Medicare premium hike, original story linked earlier at NC. utube, 10+ minutes.
Biden HIKES Medicare Prices, Insurers Reap Profits | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8L2zBCbmCY
The Democratic party needs to update their web page:
ACHIEVING UNIVERSAL, AFFORDABLE, QUALITY HEALTH CARE
https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/achieving-universal-affordable-quality-health-care/
I thought maybe this is an out of date dead link or something – no, I’m wrong:
We are the Democratic Party.
https://democrats.org
And in the fine print at the bottom of the web page: Copyright © 2022 DNC Services Corporation All rights reserved.
May I suggest they add a link explaining that they are lying cretin scumbags. But that’s just me, I’m sure they have a reasonable explanation as to why nothing can every get done despite them running two of the three branches of government.
So I’m starting to feel that I have a choice of two major political parties in America. One is a bunch of lying cretin scumbags owned by elite donors that routinely tell their voters to piss off, and the other is a bunch of lying cretin scumbags owned by elite donors that are somewhat afraid of their voters.
I’m a voter.
Thank you for this link, Flora. This story has been rather garbled in translation and I think I finally have clarity on this issue. To wit: The Biden administration hiked Medicare premiums by 5% to cover the failed Alzheimer’s drug. After maximum outcry about using Medicare to pay for a drug that doesn’t work, the Biden admin backed off paying for the drug. So the large increase in Medicare premiums was no longer needed and a recommendation was made to decrease Medicare premiums. However the Biden administration decided instead to give the extra money to the Medicare Advantage insurance companies with a whopping 8.9% increase in their payments. I wouldn’t mind that so much if a similar increase was given to the doctors who accept traditional Medicare, but that will never happen. Result: More doctors will now refuse to accept traditional Medicare and seniors will be pushed into the crappy Medicare Advantage plans. Mission accomplished.
Good morning from the purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain…
I can’t believe how dry everything is in the higher climes, saw flowers and fauna wilting en route to White Chief Canyon (if there was ever a name of a place in need of renaming-I suggest CEO Canyon) yesterday in the middle of June where everything should be vibrant and full of life, but turn off the water for 3 months with no snowfall to speak of in our winter of missed content, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
There was a mule wreck with a couple of the beasties dying unfortunately, and standard NPS policy is to blow up dead stock (maybe they took a page from Wall*Street?) and 30 pounds of Kinepak later and a mighty blast that echoed throughout the area, flymule (when you blow up boulders you get ‘flyrock’ or trees net you ‘flywood’) probably scattered for a good 1/4 to 1/2 a mile from where they met their demise.
Two comments on needing religion (which one, any one, all?) to curb gun violence: I noticed many times in active school zones (most schools now have flashing lights to alert for students passing to or from school) many cars with “In God we Trust” license plates speeding through the zones.(The motto is optional in Indiana.)
We also have Grit often on TV and sometimes there’s mention of a gun ban in a town or a law man requiring the surrender of a gun from a person he is not arresting, all with no push back from others about the requirements being unconstitutional. I think it tells more about the times the shows were made (pre-Black Panther gun laws) than about the times portrayed (although I am no historian).
‘In God We Trust’ was only added to FRN’s in 1957, as we needed a monetary bulwark against the godless commies, and now we need it to justify gun violence, what a hack country we turned out to be.
One of my late, great friends had this sign posted in his store:
In God we trust. All others pay cash.
During my active duty days (late 60s to mid 70s) I often interacted with the USAF Security Service and with NSA. Both had an unofficial motto: In God We Trust. All Others We Monitor.
Of course, that still applies today.
When I lived in Detroit in the late seventies there was a greasy spoon around the corner, owned and run by a very sweet Greek family. I remember their faces clearly to this day. They had that motto atop their cash register. It always made me smile.
The Christian alternative to *gun* violence (in the words of their messiah, Y’shua bar Abbas [Joshua, Son of the Father]): “Let he who has no sword buy one, even if he has to sell his cloak to do so.” (He also said, “I bring not peace but a sword.”)
Matthew 26:52 would also seem to be relevant, though I’m pretty confident that it is rarely cited by personal armaments enthusiasts.
This Gospel passage has occasioned much commentary – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sell_your_cloak_and_buy_a_sword
Ah, you are reading the bible as a literalist. Have you read the New Testament through? I have, several times, and I can promise you that if you read all of it (and not just a few lines that have been picked out), you will see that those two lines should be taken as allegories. Christ was a pacifist. He did not resist his arrest, and told his companions to not try to defend or rescue him. The early Christians were pacifists and were killed in great numbers because of their refusal to fight for the Romans.
We are to pick up an allegorical, spiritual sword. That is the teaching of the Christian peace church I belong to.
If you accept the biblical interpretations of fundamentalists, you will reach their conclusions. You are not obliged to do that and many Christians do not.
An interesting anecdote. I live in middle Tennessee and this year we have to get new license plates. No more sticker renewals. So I was asked at the renewal counter whether I wanted a plate with “in God We Trust” or without.
Same happened here in NC. The “First in Flight” plates we grew up with celebrating the Wright brothers are now just an option. We opted out of the “In God We Trust” plates last time in favor of keeping the traditional ones.
The ubiquity of this slogan on our money and license plates seems to be a McCarthy-ite reaction to communism/atheism:
https://psmag.com/news/americans-start-trusting-god-74456
My guess is ironically someone down at the DMV thought this would unite everybody to have “In God We Trust” on the back of the Chevrolet. Really, it’s just another wedge issue used to separate the goats from the sheep based in virtue signalling, best I can figure.
The intention of right wing christianists to arm against the rest of us is part of their “religious values,” though they probably don’t consider their own potential use of gun violence, or their contribution to a culture of gun worship as any problem.
https://religiondispatches.org/buffalo-and-uvalde-both-appear-to-have-involved-the-ar-15-the-rifle-revered-by-the-christian-right/
But I thought all those Darby-ites were supposed to be raptured into heaven before the Jackpot hit. What do they need an assault rifle for?
Evangs aren’t Catholics despite sharing the same deity, but if they blundered into the wrong pearly gates, might run into hostiles.
Then there is Mark Twain’s description of Heaven in his story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.”
One episode in it is when an angel and the Captain are passing one big closed door, the angel tells the Captain that that is the entrance to the annexe of Heaven for a certain very large Christain sect. “But we must be quiet passing this door, they think they are the only ones up here.”
I wonder what Teain would have made of America today? Being that he lived through the original Guilded Age, he would recognize it instantly.
Apparently they flatter themselves that their deity wants them to kill people who don’t agree with their particular “political and sociocultural” agenda.
“Members of the Christian Right tend to believe that the United States shares a special relationship with God and that current political and sociocultural trends threaten this relationship. They increasingly agree that a violent upheaval will be necessary to reset this relationship and that God will sanction this violence.”
Alas, the Christain Right is not alone in it’s sanguinary impulses. I read about this and that sect or cult, even a ‘real’ religion, holding heretic’s feet to the fire, literally.
I’m with Eric Idle on this. “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.”
See NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M
Since it is Republicans, it is safe to make a broad assumption on which religious faith they endeavor to encourage. Protestantism in it’s many flavored offerings*. But we can pay no mind to the flaws or conscious decision to ignore the rot of abuse and predation on the younger faith goers. AKA, see the current scandal in the Southern Baptist convention (just for starters). Many in pastoral or church leadership positions are not culpable or corruptible, but it can difficult to choose wisely.
I just don’t think we will click our heels and go back to the time of Leave it to Beaver or Andy Taylor. Which is really what they desire. And for one quote from the article, maybe it was Rep Scalise, who stated this is just a sudden occurrence. Columbine happened in 1999.
*Baskin Robbins has nothing on the many choices to make. I grew up in the most fundamental and independent baptist environment. No snakes, for that I am grateful. My parents were not devoted gun enthusiasts.
‘U.S. and allies trade barbs with China, Ukraine dominates Asia security meeting”
Maybe, just maybe, China did not take it well when NATO said that they were going to move into the Indo-Pacific region to show the Chinese who is boss. I miss the days when the whole Pacific was just basically a backwater. And there are few countries in this region that are willing to be turned into missile sponges on behalf of NATO. Not after seeing what Europe has done to itself that is.
In sweeping water curtailments stretching from Fresno to the Oregon state line, cities and growers in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta watershed have been ordered to stop pumping from rivers and streams.
The cutbacks, announced Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, will affect about 4,500 water rights in the Delta watershed, including 400 or more held by 212 public water systems, beginning Wednesday. But they’re concentrated around the San Joaquin River and its tributaries, where state officials expect “significant, very deep cuts.”
Water board staff called the cutbacks “unprecedented,” although similar curtailments were imposed in the watershed last year, just much later in the year, in August.
California’s water rights system operates on the basis of seniority — those with the oldest claims are typically the last to be cut back. But even those with rights in the San Joaquin watershed that date back to 1900, before California enacted its water rights law, are expected to be hit with the curtailment orders.
“This is now affecting water users that may have not been impacted in well over 100 years, or were affected for the first time just last year,” said Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. “This is not only a historic cutback, but we hope it’s not what is now the baseline for the future.”
https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/state/2022/06/11/water-rights-cut-amid-california-drought-san-joaquin-delta-watershed/7562085001/
https://beachgrit.com/2019/11/shocking-little-town-right-next-door-to-kelly-slaters-lemoore-surf-ranch-goes-thirsty/
Psalm Springs seems to have a huge surplus of water. There are a variety of water parks (including surf parks) being built there. In so many ways California is a very screwed up place. Golf courses and water parks in the desert. Is everyone insane?
My Kevin (since ’07) has laid the blame for January 6th upon the entire country, which I have to say is all encompassing in a party not known for such sweeping embrace of others not of their own ilk.
Your soon to be “Speaker Kevin”. :)
My Kevin (since ’07) is the longest i’ve ever owned a Congressman.
This is typical of his acumen, Kev is a contribution rainmaker-by no means the brains of the outfit, as evidenced by him placing the Giant Sequoias on the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada in a speech, not the western slopes where they happen to be in his Congressional district. You think somebody would have noticed this blunder.
https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/31615-congressman-kevin-mccarthy-speaks-on-supporting-our-forests-after-the-sqf-complex-fire-in-sequoia-national-forest-california-burned-up-to-10-600-large-sequoias
If “Gun Violence” is the problem exorcism is the answer and the Catholic Church has a cadre of trained exorcists.
If the problem is criminal violence committed by human beings perhaps the solution lies in a more just and equitable Society based on the Rule of Law..
If anyone here is curious about how “Sensible Gun Laws” actually work in the USA I’ll refer you to the fire dancing scene in the movie “Birth of a Nation.
It isn’t the guns that are responsible for the violence, I’d finger the index digit as the perpetrator in 100% of all maiming and murder via high velocity.
Always tickles me when someone says, “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”
Seems to me the bullet is what does the killing. From a cause’n’effect point of view.
As the great saint John Osbourne once replied:
Q: What do you make of the recent epidemic of violent youth?
A: I keep hearing this f’ing thing “guns don’t kill people, but people kill people.” If that’s the case, why do we give people guns when they go to war? Why not just send the people?
In my case, when I was a child, if my father had a gun, I would have f’ing used it. The temptation would have been too great.
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/28/magazine/sunday-june-28-1998-questions-for-ozzy-osbourne.html
Yep. I always have a grim chuckle when the news in a similar way reports that a bicyclist was ‘hit by a car’, as if the car had the agency or was an act of nature, like an asteroid. “A bicyclist was hit by an asteroid.” I grimace at those stories because I’ve had more than a few near misses riding my bicycle and needing to suddenly dodge an inattentive car driver.
End car violence now!
We need to ban car ownership of vehicles of racing,
especially in rural red areas.
Meanwhile, California legislators are pushing a law that prevents principals from calling the police on students who do sideshows in school parking lots, because it disproportionately affects minorities and exposes them to the justice and prison system.
Don’t forget “Doctor’s not washing their hands between patients violence” which kills a hell of a lot more people every year than Gunz in the hands of the rabble do.
Every Halloween to little press, more youngsters are dispatched by apples with razor blades hidden within, than all of the children killed in mass murder sprees with assault weapons.
“If the war continues going badly, there’ll be untold thousands of angry, bitter, extremely well-armed Ukrainians who’ll turn their rage not just on Russians, but on everyone internally & externally who they’ll perceive as having used them & sold them out.https://t.co/vAVvEyfri4
So now this is finally, slowly dawning on people.
Blowback. Books have been written about it. Think any contigency plans were made to deal with it? Or more like plans to find a use for it?
It will be worse blowback than that from previous interventions.
Wonder if the EU has opinion on that possibility? / ;)
Von der Leyen Says She Hopes EU Does ‘Right Thing’ for Ukraine
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-12/von-der-leyen-says-she-hopes-eu-does-right-thing-for-ukraine
It was already suggested that since Ukrainians are divided into three main factions, they will have enough reasons to be at each other’s throats when the war is over.
So plenty of violence directed at Ukrainians considered as “traitors” and against foreigners who “betrayed” Ukraine seems a likely outcome of a military defeat — “Dolchstoss” and all that.
I worked at the Tully Rinckey law firm as an attorney and had to sign their noncompete. I left within a year but they never sued me – not sure why, since they did sue colleagues who did the same thing as I did. They did hold on to the web domain that I had previously owned when I was a solo and then transferred to them, which was a really slimy move.
Nearly 20M watched Jan. 6 hearing: Nielsen – The Hill
I’m glad those 20M watched cause you couldn’t pay me to. My PMC friends act like this is the trail of the century and it will save democracy. The best part – the walls are closing in on Trump – this time they really have him, and the love for Liz Cheney is off the charts.
After 6 years they are still unhinged over Trump & Putin, who they blame for just about everything. It would be funny if it wasn’t so ridiculous.
I want to know what the drinking game rules are.
They had the same hopes to The Mueller Report. I wonder how that turned out for them. By the 6th installment only Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki will be watching.
Why do I come to NC for fearless political commentary?
Because of the total blindness of our media as evidenced by the takedown of this tweet from an MSNBC anchor….
https://twitter.com/cliftonaduncan/status/1535976872546381824
Completely and totally out of touch they all are. I now understand why this subset of MSNBC and NPR folks think so highly of The Jan 6 side show. They can focus all their energy on that farce because MSNBC and NPR are telling them the economy is great. The best it has been. Small businesses struggling? They are just making it up… vibes you know. It would be LOL funny if the tragedies were not compounding exponentially by the day for the Average Joe.
Dems, I being one, if you want to have a chance to survive, you must forget Trump, drop the farce of the Jan 6 crap you so enjoy all the while your own partisans are planning their insurrection in the coming weeks. You must begin to face the enormous issues being faced by the common man, and you must turn these media fools off.
We all used to look down on and mock Fox News. LOL. What a joke these liberal networks have become. What a total unlistenable out of touch mess NPR has become. They are often so much worse with truth than Fox News ever dreamed to be.
I subscribe only to three newspapers, all from the right. Gave up on the NYT and Wash Post long ago. Why? I do not read the news or opinion on any of them. I read the cultural and arts reviews, etc. And unlike the Times and Post, these arts section in right wing papers are spectacular, most notably the Wall Street Journal. Why right wing? They are the only ones who do not focus EVERYTHING through identity politics lenses. Especially arts and culture. I do not read the news and opinion there, but how many like me are?
Dems, please start to pay attention. You are about to lose it all.
Thanks for this comment. I agree. Dems seem mentally sequestered in their own Potemkin village.
IM Doc, there’s plenty to mock on Fox. Most of it is crap.
However, Tucker Carlson stands out as being the straightest talking, get to the point commentator on the air. I refuse to subscribe. His shows are all on Youtube.
His use of English is a great example for my middle school kids who have slipped into the phoneglish trap. My son asked me how to tie a tie the other day. I had to look it up on Youtube and practice it.
Tucker’s selling of Great Replacement Theory bigotry discredits his usage of the English Language, lest he wants his audience to be articulate bigots.
Never believe a rumor, or that a theory has some basis in reality, until the government officially denies it.
https://thehill.com/news/house/3516262-house-democrats-pass-resolution-condemning-great-replacement-theory/
>>>My son asked me how to tie a tie the other day. I had to look it up on Youtube and practice it.
On the rare, rare times I have to wear a tie, I find emptying my mind about tying and then just think to start tying. Rather like one does having a conversation or coffee just before leaving for work. I can’t remember (at first) how, but the muscle memory takes over if I don’t interfere with my fingers. It is an odd feeling. Like a ghost in my mind.
>You are about to lose it all.
lol, good
With regard to NPR, I listened yesterday to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…” – and was saddened to discover that it was taped before a live audience – it was the first time I had heard that in a couple of years. They seemed to be glad about it. As the refrain in the Taoist parable of the horse goes, “Who knows if it’s good or bad?” In the title of the Tolstoy story, “God sees the truth…but waits.”
I love your writing, Doc.
To paraphrase Ann Richards, you can stick a fork in the Democrats, they’re done. Can’t imagine at this point anything that could save them in November.
I have been keeping a collection of IM Doc comments. I call them his Greatest Hits.
They’ve been telling their base that Dominion’s voting systems are super secure and that claims that they are hackable are Republican lies that only deplorable Trumpists believe, so if they want to muck about with results in the general this coming election, their team is primed to believe that their Good Guys could and would do no such thing.
Erm… um…well…
Cyber agency: Voting software vulnerable in some states
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-technology-georgia-election-2020-a746b253f3404dbf794349df498c9542
Hand marked and hand counted ballots, as is often said at NC.
Here’s some criticism of the CISA advisory including from one of the authors of the report on which it was based.
https://www.startribune.com/activists-say-cyber-agency-weakens-voting-tech-advisory/600179056/
On the bright side for hand marked ballots:
US census says 43% of 2020 voters used vote by mail. Verified Voters says 2022 67.1% of election day equipment will be hand marked paper ballots, with BMDs for accessibility (65.5% in 2020).
https://verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#mode/navigate/map/ppEquip/mapType/normal/year/2020
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/what-methods-did-people-use-to-vote-in-2020-election.html
The Dems are alienating their own base at rocket speed. Their agents in the media tell the tale. Breaking Points covers this a lot. CNN+ died in the cradle. Psaki’s streaming show appears doomed. Brian Stelter may lose his job under the new owners.
We all know that Fox’s ratings blow away the PMC “news” outlets. Tucker’s re-runs at like 4 AM are more popular than Lemon at prime time. Tucker had a field day with the 1/6 circus.
I half follow a number of conservative YouTubers and more than one has claimed that they get comments and emails from Lefties all the time saying they tune into conservative news sources over liberal leaning outlets. I have seen some of this myself. And it makes sense, if you use some critical thinking to pick out the ideology it’s apparent that the Red team provide better analysis and more factual information.
And no one cares about vacuous identity issues. The Right commentators make mucho hay with that them. There is a big reaction brewing to that (rap.
No one wants to send money to the Ukraine while the US decays. It’s the bread and butter stuff that get people moving. Gas prices. The synthetic Left doesn’t seem to care one bit.
I’m convinced the Dems want to lose the mid terms and White House. They seem to be doing everything in their power to do so. Then they can sit back, count their donations, and “resist”. My 2¢. I’m going to listen to the bird concert on my patio.
While I’m at it, I found “Lectern Man’s” show. It’s called “Awakened with JP”. It can give you a sense of what the Walsh and Shapiro crowd are saying.
Not the WH. As a minority congressional party, they get all the perks and no responsibility, but the FBI could be turned loose without the WH.
Thanks, good point.
Trump will show them how to use the FBI in 2025.
HRC had using the FBI down to a science in 2016.
McCabe,Ohr, Clinesmith, Strzok…it’s a long list.
I think JP is hilarious. And, yes, this leftie subscribes to the “Awaken with JP” YouTube channel.
I also enjoy Tucker Carlson. Does that make me evil?
Ah, Tucker Carlson – Listened to him a few times lately – almost took the hook, despite his whiny unpleasant voice – I’m not yet buying into that creep. A worthwhile contrarian view to the Liberal whatever? I don’t think so. Then again, I despise Fox… Not that I watch MSNBC or CNN or even NPR anymore.
Still: Tucker not buying into the entire Ukraine good – Russia evil – does fit more along my view of this mess (both counties loaded with evil actors and victims) Or, maybe I am I wrong and did not hear him clearly?
I am reminded of my Chicago days – early 90’s – working in the darkroom – (I was a photographer) listening to the radio – and coming across the Rush Limbaugh show – At first I found his sort of comic pompous – self effacing windbag style funny – after awhile I suspected he was quite the clever manipulator – and got sick of the SOB. Tucker?
I dunno. A seeming facts-based argument is more appealing to me than a seeming feels-based argument. (Rush was a feels-based argument, imo, and the modern Dem estab has gone the ‘feels argument’ way, I think.) ymmv. / ;)
How do we get to the facts when they are being manipulated to smithereens? In political dialogue – medical info – Climate – You name it…
Not being an expert in any of these – trying to parse what’s credible? I’m frustrated (Aren’t we all?). I’ll keep trying to get a scope on these things – websites such as this one …what else is there to do besides drown in cynicism.
The only thing I can say is that the Dems are so malignant that Tucker doesn’t have to lie about them. It’s like saying water is wet but he does it in a way that cracks me up. Once he gets onto anything else it’s bull$hi+ city, baby. And his laugh is as weird as “Kackula” Harris’s.
4.5 million people disagree with you every night.
Meanwhile, the Slezwindbag Maddow gets 300K views once a week.
“I’m a homeless veteran, want to buy a street sheet?, help the homeless.”
“Listen man, I want you to remember a number!”
Homeless guy gets all defensive like.
“Twenty” I say
“?”
“Twenty billion, that’s what it would cost to end all homelessness in America. Congress just sent 54 billion to Ukraine, add to that the 38 billion to Israel over next ten years, that’s 92 billion, four and a half times what it would require to end homelessness in America…”
“I think I wuz fighting the wrong people!…”
Why am I suddenly thinking that the night of November 8, early morning of November 9th a lot of Dems might recall or even resemble that halcyon evening in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was sitting devastated in the Javits Center having to recognize that instead of celebrating breaking the ceiling she was supposed to make a concession speech. Unfortunately also like Hillary Clinton many will be unable to accept that their own tone deaf actions led to the outcome they met.
The thing that shocks me about the media, is that they still somehow think they are protected from reality. They have spent years denying the results of our industrial and tax policies on much of America, refusing to accept that many have concrete reasons to hate our policies. They have lived in their own bubble for so long they don’t even notice when their protections are threatened and their bubble is bursting. But then I guess much of this is that telling the boss that he is full of shit doesn’t keep you employed. And not just for employees of Bloomberg.
There are so many protections that were scrapped from Carter on, that almost weekly I pick a new one as the worst. But even if it is not tops of the list, the rules restricting media consolidation being jettisoned has to be a contender. It isn’t just the public that remains misinformed, our elected officials not being confronted with reality regularly helps them ignore reality so much.
Michael Moore & I seemed to be the only two working class UWS goyim who’d remembered the Electoral College & thought Hills was scared of being OUTED, over Debbie, Robby & John’s lack of subtlety, installing that orange Simpson character. My partner had Colbert on and I’d been up on ETrade, speaking with my boss about long-term gigs in France or Scotland. We actually had considered going down to Hell’s Kitchen/ Clinton, to take pictures, straight out of a George Romero shambolic zombie flick. I wasn’t particularly impressed by Steven’s acting?
I’m shocked to see this post from the NIH – and I wonder how long it will be until it is taken down. I’m only part way through the post and I can’t believe what I am reading.
Covid-19 pandemic: What is the truth? – NIH
It looks like the real NIH website as I have read some of their stuff before. I downloaded the file in case they do yank it. Here is a sample;
Again, I’m only part way through this but what is going on?
No, this is the articles section of their site, which if you look over time, I believe publishes pretty much all articles in peer reviewed . I ran that by the Brain Trust and they said the underlying journal, Surgical Neurology, is not a publication that has expertise in infectious diseases or their treatment. It looks like this guy is a regular author and has published dodgy stuff before, like an article defending the notoriously bad glysophate paper (the one where the animal research was clearly cooked, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26543672/) and articles arguing that vaccines are one of the factors that cause autism (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26543672/).
Thanks. I also noticed, after I posted, it is from December 2021. There is a follow up article, linked from this one, that is 2022. I only skimmed that one and it is similar.
I was just gobsmacked they would publish an article that stated some of the things it did – some of which is pretty damning to the narrative we were given at the time.
RE: Ozette
Another interesting article on west coast natives. Although I find the astonishment at the dating of the site to 4000 Y.A. to be uninformed. There are sites on the Chanel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara dated to 13000 Y.A. It is acknowledged that the ancient population came down the coast from the Siberian land bridge over 10000 Y.A. The reason many of the very ancient sites have never been discovered is that they have been submerged (destroyed) by the rising ocean (~300′) over the millenniums.
The article describes the tribal coat-of-arms as a Thunderbird above a whale. What I see is an Osprey atop (grasping?) a marine animal that is a combination of whale (flukes) with a ocean returning Salmon (crooked-mouth snout). In the real world an osprey orients its “catch” parallel to flight, but artistic representation (perspective drawing) is much easier without it.
Those sites are not necessarily destroyed, but more like buried under the ocean and the silt. It has taken much too long for people to put together the facts of the changing sea levels and human living patterns. During Ice Ages, the continental shelves with their unsubmerged rivers, lakes, and deltas are very good areas to live. And marine archeology is much more difficult than on land.
Probably, after we are dead, the researchers will get the resources and the technology needed to excavate these vast areas.
Am reading in addition to restoring pensions to Ukrainians joining Russia that Kiev cut off, and funding local governments and public works such as schools also defunded by Kiev, Russia just announced new citizens will have their debts canceled upon citizenship. It’s a shame items like this will never reach most Americans as it would give them to exposure to a competent or at least reasonably well run system by government.
As I read it, the concession is that any resident of a newly “liberated” area who owes money to a Ukrainian bank can forget the debt. There’s a practical side to that – those banks no longer operate in the areas under Russian control. And since Russia is excluded from SWIFT, there’s probably no easy way to transfer the repayments x I doubt that the Ukraine banks will be setting up rouble accounts with Russia’s central bank anytime soon.
This move certainly won’t help Ukraine’s economy.
Also, it certainly won’t hurt Russia taking Mykoliav and Odessa and maybe Kharkov if that is want she decides.
Here is a recent RT report with what is going on in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions-
https://www.rt.com/russia/556495-restoring-peaceful-life-kherson/
I don’t see those regions wanting to rejoin the Ukraine any time soon.
Mistakenly thought they were banned. Read about them here. Not one ad.
That’s going to be my regular news every night. You can get dubbing and subtitles in French, Spanish and other languages too, great for language building skills.
Re: Hamptons article. Insane people in absurd situations. BTW, whatever happened to Mark Blyth of “the Hamptons are not a defensible position” fame? Haven’t read or watched anything by him in a couple of years.
He’s on Twitter as @MKBlyth where you can find links to all of his output, including a new book he has coming out this summer.
I follow him closely because he’s as funny as he is perceptive.
>Lawyer Quits To Become Pet Psychic… Makes More Money Above the Law
Not about telepathically communicating with pets, but here’s a hilarious bit by the late Sam Kinison on pet psychiatrists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTT34o3QKQY&t=201s (7:10 to 8:00) Warning: Profanity
LOL. So maybe liberal Democrats and the Biden administration should, rather than sending guns, push for an immediate cease-fire that would, in addition to possibly stabilizing the global energy market, stop the killing?
But, no, there are no leavers for the Biden administration to use that might affect gas prices. None.
So what the administration really means is, the rivalry that the American elite have with Russia, and particularly the rage liberal Democrats have towards Putin, is more important to them than material costs to the working class in the United States.
Noted, I’m sure. And the bill is gonna come due in November. Good luck with that, Joe.
One thing is certain. The well followed elites and celebrities such as Bette Midler are incredibly proud of their effort and paying more for gasoline to help that cute little Instagram Ukrainian child. Whenever that was, like a few weeks after the war had begun. As for the rest of us, well I will be polite and say I really desire the price of nearly every damn thing to go lower as opposed to higher.
Joe already pushed the levers his first week in office. Just seeing what the administration did from the outset was a signal to drillers and fossil fuel interests. “Behold it is I, your master and you can not sway my decision as POTUS.” Well. Lol and come on man.
What should make for fun is when our racist, apartheid-loving, zionist “friends” attempt to take-out Iranian nuclear facilities later this summer.
At least the poor sods downwind will be able to experience self-popping popcorn as they watch the s#!tshow from afar.
I began to wonder about gas prices when I saw a graph of oil/barrel (WTI) over several years going back to ’08. Turns out oil has been as high or higher than now a lot of that time. Yet gasoline was NOT that high. So what gives? Well there’s a pretty good explanation here ( https://www.businessinsider.com/gas-prices-oil-company-profits-skyrocketing-energy-sector-earnings-charts-2022-5 ). Here’s a short clip from it;
“In fact, these five companies’ first-quarter profits alone are equivalent to almost 28 percent of what Americans spent to fill up their gas tanks in the same time period,”
A few years ago I recall here in Texas some outrage over gas prices going up right after a hurricane. Even our totally republican state government started huffing and threatening to “look into price gouging”. Which as it turns out is illegal.
Why can’t Biden or the DOJ investigate the oil companies for that?
I’ve heard some mamby pamby explanations such as “well taxes have been raised on gas since the last time” but here in Texas tax on gasoline is a fixed amount not a percentage and it hasn’t been raised in over 30 years. Same for the federal tax.
What I’ve heard the oil companies say is “It’s a world market so we HAVE to sell at the world rate”. In other words, they don’t have any choice but to charge what they are. The invisible hand has them by the short a curlies.
Here in Texas the fracking boom had quieted WAY down before this due to the realization of a lot of the Wall Street investors that got tired of constantly losing money, as several links on this site pointed out over the past couple of years. So the oil majors were just pumping gas at $40 to $60 a barrel and barely making a profit. Then this all happened. So they didn’t change a thing. Didn’t pump harder or drill more, just kept doing what they were and profits shot through the roof.
Now ask yourself, what will they do with all that money? Invest in green energy or other helpful investments? NO. They’ll do whatever they have to to keep the gravy train going. More investments in Senators. More buying off of local and state legislatures. This will NOT turn out well.
Why can’t Biden or the DOJ investigate the oil companies for that?
The senator from tax haven thinks that price gouging is a good thing?
BIg Pharma made a killing in the past two years, ukraine lets the arms maufacturers and oil companies catch up…it’s only fair…you need a balanced portfolio…
“This incident underscores a flaw at the center of the scientific enterprise.”
Um, no. The entire framing of this article is false. See the Merriam Webster definition of the word “enterprise”.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/enterprise
Science is not intrinsically difficult, complicated or risky. Neither is it by nature a commercial business. It can be a purposeful systematic activity, but often the greatest scientific advances come from allowing an enquiring mind to mess about with ideas in a leisurely fashion. Daring and difficult? Again, no.
RE New Not-so-Cold War
The commentator Alexander Mercouris posted a video on June 10 in which he quotes heavily from a May 22 article in “Euro Intelligence” by Wolfgang Muenchau, a former Financial Times editor. I’ll post the link below. In the article, Mr. Muenchau explores his doubts that “the West” has prosecuted sanctions against Russia in an effective manner. Here are some quotes:
– “The western sanctions were based on a formally correct but misleading premise, one that I believed myself up
to a point: That Russia is more dependent on us than we are on Russia.”
– “…when the largest exporters of those [Russian] commodities disappears, the rest of the world experiences physical shortages and rising prices.”
– “Did we think this through? Did the foreign ministries that drew up the sanctions discuss at any point what we would do if Russia were to blockade [sic] the Black Sea and not allow Ukrainian wheat to leave the ports?”
– “Economics sanctions work when the target is small…”
– “I can only see a single scenario in which the imposition of economic sanctions would work to our advantage: if we managed to get rid of Putin…”
– “I am not sure the west is ready to confront the consequences of its actions…”
And there’s a lot more. I invite you to check it out.
Here’s what I know. Naked Capitalism, both its writers and via links, predicted virtually all of these outcomes months ago. I have a list from mid-March breaking down the coming shortages: fertilizer, palladium, neon, etc. NC predicted the fallout of Nordstream 2’s cancellation, the lack of LNG capacity, all that, months and months ago. I’m not especially bright. No ministry anywhere would hire me, I’m sure.
But I read this article, and I wonder, is this what these people do for a living? The idea that they didn’t know (or care) the consequences of their actions, or even the notion that they simply started the sanctions without any plan, is stupefying. The Forex seizures alone – what will the consequences of that be? The propaganda effort alone seems effective, but that was initiated years ago, and it’s hardly sophisticated. I’ve always thought the Russophobes, neoliberals and neocons are malevolent, but I always told myself they have competent operatives in their ranks.
The idea that nobody thought this through is so appalling…that I had to come here and post about it! (Nobody I know wants to hear this rant, and I wouldn’t blame them.) I keep thinking, they must have a plan – but then you see the Finland-Sweden-Turkey fiasco, and you wonder, did nobody really talk to Turkey first? How dumb are they? It’s one thing to say, these people (EU leadership, NATO, US admin) are “nuts,” but to actually start to believe it, it’s pretty scary.
For instance, if they see Ukraine at the point of military collapse, and they understand how much face they will lose if that happens, what’s their response going to be?
The article: https://www.eurointelligence.com/column/the-west-and-the-rest
Mercouris video:
(article starts around 18:40)
You bring up a mental argument that keeps recurring in my head. The blowback from Ukraine seems so obvious. It’s easy to say the ones that got us here are stupid (or nuts), but how can they all be this way? Is the groupthink so strong that the lemmings are all willingly running over the cliff? Or is these the desired effects? But given the strong potential for chaos, how can anyone sowing these seeds be confident the they and their loved ones will not be negatively impacted.
We in the Palinstinian Movement had to switch from heroine past tense politically, to the Greene dream team and she’s more of a synthetic version of our darling doyen with the high wearing off a lot quicker, but you betcha she’s back in action dueling for the nod in not just any election, but a special one.
So what’s most interesting about the US Constitution is that, when it’s suitable, it is seen as the pinnacle font of wisdom in regards to republican government. As if no further wisdom in this area could ever be known, and this despite the founders drawing upon the experience of others’ in crafting this very document!
So when it suits those in power, certain things, like the Second Amendment, are sacrosanct, but in other areas, like say copyright law, some new wisdom (or I’d say avarice) was found, and Disney gets its copyrights for basically eternity.
Article I Section 8 | Clause 8:
(bold mine)
So the view of limited is quite expansive. Funny, that, is it not?
Meanwhile, a militia needn’t be all that well regulated, I guess. So instead, we get:
Senators Reach Bipartisan Deal on Gun Safety
But of course this is a lie:
No, what the real issue is Democrat senators that won’t move on gun safety laws, because this could be done with — what do we call it again? Oh yes — a simple majority, if the filibuster were simply removed. You’d think this might be an issue worth killing the filibuster for, except, of course, there aren’t 50 Democrat senators that actually support gun safety anyway I surmise.
Norms and selling guns are more important than lives, of course.
Please explain why it is OK to deprive citizens of their property without due process of law?
That’s not a precedent I am comfortable with.
I can’t say; I haven’t specifically advocated for that position myself. I assume you’re speaking about:
(bold mine)
Although, ultimately, if you take as a given that removing guns from those that might be a danger to citizens at large is an effective strategy, then the question becomes what has primacy? Is it the lives of the greatest number of citizens to be secure in their lives, or the rights of an individual to property, a firearm in this case?
Although you don’t even have to take that as a given; it’s actually not relevant to the question. I’d mention that rights aren’t unlimited, and it’s recognized you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, but that’s behavior, rather than property. But it is a recognition that freedom isn’t unlimited, and that the greater good matters. And there’s no guarantee that every single person with some particular mental health issue is going to use a firearm to hurt or kill.
And on this I guess we’ll probably just have to agree to disagree.
I’m sure this has been argued to death over the past few decades, with little result. In the end, support for gun ownership is strong enough politically that I don’t expect any movement away from the current environment of expansive gun ownership and availability.
In the end, this is about having a large enough block of support to exercise political will, not convincing anyone one way or another. This a foundational issue that some people will always disagree on, for various reasons, offered in both good and bad faith.
In any case, stay safe out there!
The dogs in my neighborhood are dying. First it was P; a sweet inbred fancy breed rescue. He had been sick his whole life, so it was sad but not surprising when he passed away of heart failure. Then it was W, a golden lab rescue; that was very strange; he was not old; I don’t know the cause. Then J, a very gentle labradoodle rescue; he had something that his vet thought might be covid, then he recovered, then he quickly succumbed to mouth cancer. Then D, a herding dog; she had been treated for cancer, it was in remission, then she suddenly died, also of mouth cancer. Then L, a young husky; she died in her sleep; her people had her autopsied but nothing was found. There’s one other that I just heard of whom I didn’t know so well.
Our golden retriever mix is 13 y.o.; her liver enzymes had been going up. The internal medicine vet thought it was probably just the steroids she is on, since her ultrasound two years ago was fine. But I asked for another ultrasound, and she had two giant liver tumors. They were benign, so she was in the dog ICU for eleven days to have those two lobes removed (dogs have six lobes); it was touch and go but she’s been home a month now and seems okay. Although they were benign they were oozing blood, so if we hadn’t found the tumors and had them removed she’d have been dead in a couple of weeks.
I don’t think someone is spreading poison through the neighborhood. Dogs catch covid; not as well as cats do but they catch it. Their life spans are naturally shorter than ours. I hope this is all a coincidence but I really don’t know.
Maybe ask around and get an idea what all those dogs are eating. A common factor might be one particular brand of dog food or perhaps there is some contaminant in the local environment that the dogs are drinking/ingesting. It does not sound like a statistical cluster but there is something that is going on.
They are definitely all eating different foods. But that is a good point about a contaminant. I still think it may be covid, but it is possible that something toxic is being sprayed. It’s not the sort of area where you’d expect that, but it is possible.
Had a 2 day heat wave, the first of the year and a mild one @ 102ish in the CVBB.
Hiked with French ex-pat friends and a former 7th grade science teacher friend who called it quits on account of Covid. My friend works for a French multi national firm that does automated fruit sorting and he travels to Or-Wa-BC-Chile right around harvest and is quite savvy, I asked him what maximum temperature a fruit or nut tree could withstand before dying, and he wasn’t sure which temp, but explained how the cell structure of a tree breaks down at a certain point…
…stay tuned
When the choo-choo went past Lytton, BC a fortnight ago, I couldn’t believe it hit 121 there suddenly last summer, shocking really.
Catch a wave and you’ll be sweltering in this part of the world
Don’t be afraid to try the greatest heat around (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
Everybody who tries it once
Hopes the grid don’t go down a bunch
You turn the a/c on to reduce the daze
And baby that’s all there is to the climate change craze
Catch a wave and you’re sweltering in this part of the world
Not a fact, cause it’s been going on so long (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
All the deniers still going strong
They said it wouldn’t last too long
They’ll eat their words with a fork and spoon
And watch ’em they’ll hit the road and all be sufferin’ soon
And when they catch a wave they’ll be hurtin’ all over the world
Catch a wave and you’re in a SPF-666 world
So take a lesson from a top-notch mountain boy (Catch a wave, catch a wave)
Who knows every escape ploy
But don’t treat it like a toy
Just get away from the exposed turf
And baby avoid some rays on the sunny surf
And when you catch a wave you’ll be sweltering in this part of the world
Catch a wave and you’ll be looking for another part of the world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLgWbH-qhVo
Line of the day comes from “Palais Intrigue” (The Baffler), where the author, criticizing a filmmaker whose films purport to be satires of the rich and powerful but have functioned more to help him join them, says: “If you bite without teeth, aren’t you just sucking?”
LawnDart mentions that our Zionist friends may take out Iran’s nuclear facilities later this summer. This info is confirmed by the Duran boys today in this video:
https://theduran.com/biden-white-house-on-bad-terms-with-both-saudi-arabia-and-iran/
And, lest you be insufficiently alarmed, Turkey is showing signs of ramping up its military for another shot at the Kurds:
https://theduran.com/turkey-plays-its-strong-hand-as-it-prepares-incursion-into-syria/
These are both short videos. Makes you wonder what other hotspot is going to go wonky next. Fun times!
Mind you, I have said more than once that Alex Mercouris and Alex Christoforu are providing valuable commentary and news aggregation on the Ukraine conflict. I have not looked at these videos yet, but The Duran cannot “confirm” anything. They do not do original reporting. I trust they cited sources, and if so, it’s the sources that provide the confirmation. They can’t independently verify anything.
The reason I’ve being picky is that overselling them, which it looks like you did inadvertently with your word choice, isn’t helpful to them in the long run.
I should have said “also noted” perhaps?
Jerri-Lynn, I want to thank you for the link to the review of David Cayley’s book on Ivan Illich on 5/30/22, which I reproduce here for NC readers who might have missed it.
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/05/the-corruption-of-the-best-on-ivan-illich/
I am deep into the book now and am astonished that I missed Illich during the period when he was most prominent – the 1960s and 70s. The exuberance, creativity and hope of those times shines through. Illich’s critiques of the institutional Catholic Church, which he calls “it,” as opposed to the Church transcendent, which he calls “she,” resonate for me within the Buddhist hierarchy of which I am a reluctant participant. The construction of big physical plants, the creation of glitzy programs (remember folk masses?), the support of a professional clerical class – all these things contribute to a loss of emphasis on the personal practice of internal silence, the acknowledgement of interconnection, and the creation of authentic community. Illich also places emphasis on the embodiment and enactment of spiritual practice as opposed to the passive spectatorship most common in the present day. Reading about Illich has clarified for me those lifelong uneasy feelings I experienced when confronted with bureaucracy in any form and validates my refusal to participate in them.
So far, I am exposed only to his critiques of religion and schooling. I anticipate more challenges to stodgy ways of thinking as I progress through the book. Thank you again, Jerri-Lynn and to all the NC team, for continuing to provide the NC readership with access to quality literature and commentary. I look forward to a new smorgasbord each Sunday and to more introductions to thinkers I have missed in the welter of information that surrounds us.
Jimmy Dore on the “blame game” over who lost the Ukraine:
https://youtu.be/eW96CGedmVQ
It was an “intel failure”, you see.
I’ve been fortunate to see a couple of Fishers in the Sierra Nevada, the first time it was on a steep trail and about 100 feet away and I froze thinking to myself, what is this Black Bear looking cub, but with a tail?
It’s stride was evocative of how a Dachshund walks, low to the ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 11, 2022 – By Cal Robinson – In May, biologists from the Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office visited Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Sequoia National Forest to observe current habitat conditions for the endangered southern Sierra Nevada fisher (Pekania pennanti). While the biologists observed healthy sections of forest used by the species, these lands have also experienced intense change in the past decade from major wildfires.
Fishers are medium-sized mammals classified in the same family as weasels, mink, martens and otters, and the population living in the southern Sierra Nevada is estimated to consist of approximately 100 to 500 individuals. Habitat loss and fragmentation resulting from catastrophic wildfire is one of the biggest threats to the species.
The Rough Fire in 2015 burned 150,000 acres across Sequoia National Forest, Sierra National Forest and Kings Canyon National Park, leaving large swaths of bare ground and dead trees. The more recent KNP Complex Fire burned almost 90,000 acres between September and October 2021, primarily within Sequoia National Park. In some locations, the heat and intensity of the KNP Complex Fire turned the forest to nothing but snags and ash. In other places, the fire burned less severely, leaving behind patchy habitat that can still be used by forest species, including the fisher.
“Some experts believe parts that burned completely might not return to forest in the near future—dry conditions may cause some of these burned landscapes to become chaparral,” said Ian Vogel, senior biologist with the Sacramento FWO’s Sierra Cascades Division. “This potential shift in the landscape could reduce the area that fishers can use for denning.”
Thanks to funding made available by an Endangered Species Act Section 6 grant to the Integral Ecology Research Center (IERC), a non-profit conservation research organization, biologists from IERC, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and the U.S. Forest Service have been able to pursue a collaring and telemetry project with the area’s fisher population. Information gathered through this effort is helping biologists understand how these animals are using the forest and burn scars left from the fires.
https://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/news/local-news/38980-examining-the-impacts-of-wildfire-on-fishers-in-the-sierra-nevada
Russia’s raking in billions in oil revenue, but running out of buyers. Here are the ways the country could deal with its unwanted oil — and what it means for the energy market
[Unwanted oil?]
Russia may be reeling in billions in oil revenue, thanks to sky-high crude prices that are the direct result of Western sanctions, but its list of potential customers is shrinking and it’s having to pin more and more of its hopes on top commodity importer China.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russia-oil-sanctions-crude-war-supply-new-buyers-cut-production-2022-5
It’ll pass. China is re-opening, and the newest imposed lockdown in Bejing will probably be over in a matter of weeks, and further contributing to high-demand of oil. Demand-destruction in the West hasn’t really begun and I doubt it will until into the Fall. Most everything else seems priced-in/cool/status quo… …except, what about ME/Southwest Asia?
Israel has successfully pressured its bought-and-paid-for US representatives to keep the Iran nuclear deal on the back-burner. Yemen is still a mess. And then of course that Je.. .. Palestinian question that’s again a-boil.
Just a spark, and it’s $200 barrel oil all day long.
What I find interesting is how it’s essentially becoming two global markets for gas and oil. There is so much opportunity to squeeze some juice out of this for the runners and middlemen players– like prohibition-era US/Canada stuff; corruption on steroids and speed. I’m almost tempted to seek a niche and to try to make some of that fast-money.
At $200bbl I get $7.14 per gallon average– ymmv (California, you’re totally screwed). For referrence, see:
How to Calculate Gasoline Price From Crude Oil Price
https://bizfluent.com/how-7571180-calculate-price-crude-oil-price.html
There’s a 752 acre prescribed burn in Sequoia NP that was ignited 3 days ago and is scheduled to go for a week or so, right in the heart of the Giant Forest, which the KNP Fire burned right up to the periphery on one side, and this burn is an effort to extend the fire line of Lucifer’s work from last fall.
One of the cabin owners son works for USFS, and he related that in the aftermath of the 500k fire in NM caused by an out of control prescribed burn, that the orders came from on high, NO more prescribed burns this year. Sad that, there’s always going to be the possibility of something going awry with prescribed burns, but to quit cold turkey all of the sudden because of the bad PR isn’t what is needed now with more of these burns than none at all.
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/8130/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/11/google-ai-lamda-blake-lemoine/
https://news.yahoo.com/google-engineer-leave-claims-ai-124338899.html/
(facepalm)
Believing the hype is driving ’em crazy.
This was always going to be the problem. The rest of us being smothered with the crapification of everything while a machine is blamed for the outright non-sense in our lives.
Staying in an abusive political relationship
The message was sent loud and clear. Do not challenge the Democratic Party. We will destroy you.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/10/staying-in-an-abusive-political-relationship/
Looks like Skynet is just a couple of years away: https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Google-Sidelines-Engineer-Who-Claims-Its-AI-Is-17236762.php
Funny how the dood was put on paid leave because he violated Google’s confidentiality policy, not for throwing a mental crankshaft.
It looks like Tom Feely is posting again at ICH after a long illness. It’s good to have his eyes and his voice back in our world.
From 1994, The Charlie Rose Show talking with James Goldsmith and Laura Tyson about GATT, the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs. 1 hr.
https://charlierose.com/videos/1563
How we got where we are today, imo.
Can you imagine where we would be if the TPP had gone through with the election of Hillary back in 2016? I seem to remember that parts of that treaty were to be classified until five years after the adoption of that treaty so it would be only now that we would be learning what was in it. Four years of Trump was a cheap price to pay to derail that treaty.
i watched it. its so fresh in my mind from decades ago. when i say nafta billy clinton sold out america to the chinese communist party and wall street, you watched roses interview with goldsmith, and you know what i say is true.
we cannot let these people slip away, otherwise any change we maybe able to pull off, will fail.
Larry “The Light-Bulb” Summers does it again-
‘Economist Larry Summers, an advisor to two Democrat presidents and treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, has found a new culprit behind America’s inflation crisis: Republicans who downplay the severity of the January 2021 US Capitol riot.
“I think the banana Republicans who are saying that what happened on January 6 was nothing or OK are undermining the basic credibility of our country’s institutions,” Summers said on Sunday in a CNN interview. “And that, in turn, feeds through for inflation. Because if you can’t trust the country’s government, why should you trust its money?” ‘
https://www.rt.com/news/557063-summers-capitol-republicans-inflation/
Wuk, I felt your pain-
Just spent most of a week with some friends, zig-zagging across the center of Ca., from unusually fog-free Pismo, to the Hacienda at Hunter-Liggett, over single lanes between 101 and 5 from King City to Coalinga, and then straight across to Three Rivers, avoiding the route laid out through Fresno, after we lost our leader in San Miguel due to vertigo (twisty roads don’t seem to improve the condition). It fell to me and my navigator to keep us on course, and as we’d previously been to the underground gardens (the only thing worth seeing in Fresno, as far as I can ascertain), saw no reason to further subject ourselves to that heat.
As I sat up to my waist in the gloriously cool Kern river, looking up at Morro Rock, the plume from the burn, and a single small patch of snow on Alta (?), I thought of you up in the cooler altitudes. We’d planned on taking the Yokohl and Great Western Divide to Kernville for the last days’ drive, but we bagged it, as the heat was more than we’d bargained for, and those old chariots have only windows for A/C, but it chased us all the way home to the North Bay.
The fog has finally, thank dog, returned.
(wrote this last night, and fell asleep before I could post it)