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:
Please do not write us to ask why a comment has not appeared. We do not have the bandwidth to investigate and reply. Using the comments section to complain about moderation decisions/tripwires earns that commenter troll points. Please don’t do it. Those comments will also be removed if we encounter them.
Cat on the lam: Pet caught after weeks on the run at airport ABC
Scotland’s rare seaweed-eating sheep BBC
Hard or soft landing? (PDF) Bank of International Settlements
The Bank of England’s bizarre mortgage decision FT
The Nightmare Scenario For Central Banks TS Lombard
When Austerity Is a Bigger Problem Than Inflation John Authers, Bloomberg
Climate
Hot dry weather leads to numerous wildfires in Europe Wildfire Today. Commentary:
#BREAKING Temperatures rise dangerously in troubled UK as the reclusive, flavour-starved, tribally-divided island kingdom prepares for far-white extremist ruling party to pick new corrupt strongman to replace disgraced ruler, Boris Johnson, who has been offered asylum in Rwanda.
— gathara (@gathara) July 18, 2022
Silurian wildfire proxies and atmospheric oxygen Geology (AL). Earliest evidence of wildfires.
At Peak of Its Wealth and Influence, Arizona’s Desert Civilization Confronts A Reckoning Over Water Circle of Blue
Water protector beats bogus charge, case raises questions about biased law enforcement Healing Minnesota Stories (DCBlogger).
#COVID19
I did a little research below based on this comment by ChrisRUEcon. I’d be interested to see what the Brain Trust thinks. Obviously, I can’t give medical advice. And generally, what seems too good to be true generally isn’t. But this approach, assuming the mechanism proposed to be sound, would seem to be risk-free, low-cost, self-administered, and of potentially great benefit. Big if true! In other words, exactly the sort of no-brainer the medical establishment wouldn’t look twice at. Readers, thoughts?
Disinfection of SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) in Human Respiratory Tract by Controlled Ethanol Vapor Inhalation combined with Asprin [sic] Journal of Vaccines & Vaccination (ChrisRUEcon). Iranian. From 2020, still germane: “COVID-19 virus contains genetic material Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) packaged in a protein coat called the capsid, which is surrounded by an envelope composed of a lipid bilayer derived from the host cell membrane. Ethyl alcohol is known to inactivate many viruses and constitutes the basis for many hand rubs and disinfectants used in healthcare settings [5] as well as in the general public. In fact, alcohol-based hand rub solutions have been shown to inactivate SARS-CoV-2 in as little as 30 seconds [6,7]. Siddharta et al. [8] also published data on the effective virucidal activity of ethyl alcohol against enveloped viruses, including Zika, Ebola, as well as coronaviruses. As late as the 1950s, inhaled Ethanol was found to be both effective and safe in the treatment of pulmonary edema [9,10] as well as Ethyl alcohol withdrawal [11]. In a recent publication by Shintake [see next link], inhaled ethanol was proposed as a potential method of inactivating respiratory viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 present in the respiratory tract…. We were able to find out the Clinical recovery time, and the decrease in patients hospital stay, mortality rate and severity. With a few side effects the components have shown high efficiency in the overall treatment…. Given the lack of a proven effective treatment, the proven viricidal efficacy of ethanol, its historical relative safety profile in treatment of other medical conditions, as well as a lack of evidence showing harm in mild to moderate, non-chronic, nonexcessive intake, the hypothesis was proposed that nebulized ethanol may prove beneficial in the treatment of COVID-19.” . Body of article gives self-administration methods.
Possibility of Disinfection of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in Human Respiratory Tract by Controlled Ethanol Vapor Inhalation (preprint) (PDF) arXiv. From the body: “Viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza are lipophilic, enveloped viruses, and are relatively easy to inactivate by exposure to alcohols… The author suggests that it may be possible to use alcoholic beverages of 16~20 v/v% concentration for this disinfection process, such as Whisky (1:1 hot water dilution) or Japanese Sake, because they are readily available and safe (non-toxic). By inhaling the alcohol vapor at 50~60°C (122~140°F) through the nose for one or two minutes, it will condense on surfaces inside the respiratory tract; mainly in the nasal cavity.” See Appendix I for dilution ratios.
Development and Characterization of Inhaled Ethanol as a Novel Pharmacological Strategy Currently Evaluated in a Phase II Clinical Trial for Early-Stage SARS-CoV-2 Infection Pharmaceutics. From 2021, still germane. Rat study. From the Abstract: “Inhaled administration of ethanol in the early stages of COVID-19 would favor its location on the initial replication sites, being able to reduce the progression of the disease and improving its prognosis…. Under these conditions of administration, the formulation has proven to be safe, based on histological studies of the respiratory tracts and lungs of rats.” Next: Phase II clinical trial for early-stage COVID-19 patients.
* * * Association Between BNT162b2 Vaccination and Long COVID After Infections Not Requiring Hospitalization in Health Care Workers (Research Letter) JAMA. n = 2560. From the Discussion: “In this longitudinal observational study conducted among health care workers with SARS-CoV-2 infections not requiring hospitalization, 2 or 3 doses of vaccine, compared with no vaccination, were associated with lower long COVID prevalence. Study limitations include that symptoms and duration were self-reported, and causality cannot be inferred.” Here’s a good popular summary of the issue, including this study: “Getting two or three doses reduced the odds of developing long COVID by 75 and 85 per cent respectively. Receiving a single dose did not.”
* * * New COVID Vaccines Will be Ready This Fall. America Won’t Be. The Atlantic. Well worth a read. Maybe the real pandemic was the shills we met along the way:
An important lesson of the pandemic is that the large majority of people were willing to adapt to save lives and elites ultimately responded by desensitizing the population to mass suffering, normalizing mass death, breaking solidarity, and promoting individualism and fatalism
— wsbgnl (@wsbgnl) July 17, 2022
AMA Victoria to call for Royal Commission into AHPRA Insight+. “Imposing restriictions” on “West Australian GP Dr David Berger because of his alleged conduct on Twitter.”
Rising tide of COVID cases curbs Staten Island Ferry runs in New York City ABC7. Well, at least we got rid of the testing.
Monkeypox
The US may be losing the fight against monkeypox, scientists say NYT
China?
How many aircraft carriers does China need? One analyst says at least 6 South China Morning Post
China expedites local government debt issuance to bolster capital of smaller banks Reuters. Commentary:
5/7
Resolving bad debt requires, among other things, that the losses be allocated directly to some specific sector or other of the economy (most likely, in China's case, to households or to local governments). But that hasn't happened.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) July 18, 2022
Socialist paradise:
Visiting a picture-perfect tourist site in Hunan – but there's trouble below the surface.
A thread🧵
Seems every couple months, Hunan's Furong Village goes viral on social media. It's been doing this for several years, on Weibo, Douyin, even Twitter sometimes.
Easy to see why: pic.twitter.com/EuijF0JU8M
— David Fishman (@pretentiouswhat) July 16, 2022
Pacific Islands are back on the map, and climate action is not negotiable for would-be allies The Conversation
Myanmar
Understanding Myanmar’s Spring Revolution The Diplomat
Myanmar leader shops for support, weapons in Moscow Al Jazeera
Syraqistan
UK/EU
Prime Minister contenders clash over tax cuts in TV debate International Business Times
EU’s chief executive heads to Azerbaijan in search of gas deal Reuters
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy wants to replace Ukraine’s top spy after security failures Politico and now Zelenskiy fires Ukraine’s spy chief and top state prosecutor Guardian
* * * EU keeping sanctions if Ukraine peace signed on Russia terms: Scholz Al Mayadeen
Germany’s Scholz Says EU Can No Longer Afford National Vetoes Radio Free Europe
* * * Putin is already at war with Europe. There is only one way to stop him Simon Tisdale, Guardian
The Imaginary War Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News
Switzerland, Playground of Russian Oligarchs, Emerges as Sanctions Weak Link WSJ
Biden Administration
The Pitchforks Aren’t Coming Stephanie Kelton, The Lens
Supply Chain
Don’t jinx it: Supply chains are starting to get back to normal Los Angeles
Storage hubs, ship transfers create tracking difficulties for Russian-origin barrels: analysts Hellenic Shipping News
Shortages
Computer chips face toilet paper hoarding moment as shortage turns to glut Reuters. Commentary:
HOW FINANCE IS HARD
Wheat is trading below where it was when the Ukraine war started.
Never fall for first order narratives.
{#FatTony made his fortune shorting oil after the First Gulf War.} pic.twitter.com/kvJbzcBwP0— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) July 17, 2022
The Bezzle
Crypto collapse: 3AC, Voyager, Celsius, and other DeFi casualties Amy Castor. “You didn’t lose money in the crash — you lost your money when you bought crypto.”
Leaked emails: Crypto exchange Coinbase is ‘temporarily shutting down’ its US affiliate-marketing program Business Insider
Inside Celsius: how one of crypto’s biggest lenders ground to a halt FT. “A reckless pursuit of high returns.” Well, I never.
Celsius Bankruptcy Filing Shows Long Reach of FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried Bloomberg
Crypto Crash Stalls WeWork Founder Adam Neumann’s Climate Venture WSJ
Gunz
Company that sold Tops gunman body armor left controversial digital trail Buffalo News
Police State Watch
“Systemic failures” in Uvalde shooting went far beyond local police, Texas House report details Texas Tribune. The deck: “In total, 376 law enforcement officers descended upon the school, according to the most extensive account of the shooting to date.” The obvious solution is to give cops more money.
Realignment and Legitimacy
Unsatisfactory Musings on the Rise of the Neoliberal Order Brad DeLong. The deck: “Trying to come to grips with the fact that post-World War II Global North social democracy failed its sustainability test.” Did it fall, or was it pushed?
Imperial Collapse Watch
With Few Able and Fewer Willing, U.S. Military Can’t Find Recruits NYT. “In recent years, the Pentagon has found that about 76 percent of adults ages 17 to 24 are either too obese to qualify or have other medical issues or criminal histories that would make them ineligible to serve without a waiver.”
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple review – the East India Company and corporate excess Guardian
Class Warfare
Alabama Wants To Use $400 Million In Covid Funds To Build New Prisons I Hate It Here And Never Want To Leave (DCBlogger).
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
220 comments
Comments are closed.
“You can’t spell crypto without cry”.
Watch Stephen Colbert’s hillarious take down of Matt Damon’s crypto.com Ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSIbAD7AOO8
ha!
Damon and Larry David (of the infamous Superbowl ad)
went down several notches for this fan when they $hilled for this crap
pretty pretty bad
$4.01k update:
Let the haters have their say, but Bitcoin is doing a Catch $22k today laughing in the face of all the various crypto exchanges going the way of the Dodo, as if it isn’t connected to their woes whatsoever.
Some call it ‘knob HODLing’, but we true believers cling tight.
My new tulip bulbs still haven’t started coming up. :( Maybe I planted them at the wrong time?
Don’t know where you live, but, in most of the US tulips are planted in fall and come up in the spring. Your bulbs should be ok. They won’t come up till next spring. Usually you dig up the bulbs after flowering and keep them in a cool dry place till fall then replant. It’s ok to leave them in the ground all year, but you get more new bulbs if you dig them up.
The diseased bulbs are the most beautiful. Unfortunately, they die off after several years, so their value is low.
… they die off only after several years of exultation and grief…
Thanks, Return…
I just know that was a sarc reference to Bitcoin–the 17th century tulip mania/scam.
The director or producer of the ad, speaking for himself and Larry David said that they were only trying to make a funny ad. He further said that they’ve don’t own crypto and don’t understand crypto ( even after it had been explained to them numerous times.)
I’m cutting Larry David some slack.
Also, LD’s persona doesn’t seem like he would attract anyone. Would you do what George Costanza would do? Damon and a few others including the young tennis player seem much more pernicious in the approach.
Though I do dress more or less like David, except I have my hair (everyday is a blessing), and he said not to buy. I’ve haven’t bought any…hmm.
They don’t own crypto (anymore) because it lost all values. They own only the 00000000000’s
Hilarious takedown or a stab at rehabilitation? I didn’t find it hilarious and smell PR. Next move for Matt? An appearance on Colbert doing an ah shucks, so sorry, mea culpa, we’re only human, fill in the blank.
I have to wonder if anybody ever starts the mea culpa interviews with pointed questions:
“Were you paid for the ad in crypto currency?” “How much did you lose?” And “when can we expect to see documentation of that loss?” Along with “are you apologizing for being stupid and taking others with you or hoping that it will deflect from the exposure that you are just another self serving snake oil salesman?”
agreed — strikes me as a wily bit of image management
Yes, and then they can bond and laugh together about how Trump is a poopyhead… that’ll cure the illin’!
“With Few Able and Fewer Willing, U.S. Military Can’t Find Recruits NYT“
Big Pharma – ‘You know, if we can get doctors to prescribe unnecessary drugs to people starting when they are little kids, we can really make some big money here.’
Fast Food Industry – ‘Just thinking here, if we get cheap, non-nutritious junk food and doctor it with taste-enhancing chemicals, we can get young kids hooked on buying our junk food each and every day. Talk about profitable’
Police/Justice/Prisons – ‘Young kids on the street are worth zip but if we put them into prison, they are worth tens of thousands of dollars to us a year. There are all sorts of profits that cops and judges make too before we finally send them off to prison.’
US Military – ‘Hey, how come about 76% of young adults are either too fat to qualify or have other medical issues or criminal histories so that we can’t recruit them?’
regarding your last point, I think that Ukraine found a solution to the problem of too few people without conviction records:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/28/ukraine-leader-frees-convicts-with-combat-skills-to-fight-russia
all one needs to do, given the large US prison population, is implement an “early release for good behavior” program that requires participants to undergo military training while still in prison.
When I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s I remember men committing even minor crime wer given the choice of jail or joining the service. At that time it was the army.
Back then the young men had James Dean Rebel Without a Cause physiques, not, uhm, John Candy Caddyshack physiques.
John Candy was in Stripes. His character joined because his doctor told him he had something of a weight problem and he decided he might as well get paid for getting into shape.
Marines also took many. My co-worker, for example, told of being given the choice by a judge at 17- jail or military service. He asked for a brief period, until he turned 18, to get in shape before boot camp and then developed some leadership skills when pushed outside his own tendencies.
Back in the mid-late ’60’s, a teen acquaintance of mine, while still a minor, fatally knifed a guy at an outdoor dance. His dad had pull, so he was sent to the state hospital for the criminally insane rather than the state prison. While there he again knifed someone fatally, another inmate IIRC, and was shortly thereafter recruited by the army and sent to Viet Nam where his talents were well used.
Really good interview with Vietnam veteran Alan Volat, by turns funny and harrowing, and covering a wide range of topics both in the war, and away from it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3LG6G7DsI8
Volat was one of the men recruited from the courtroom.
Very funny guy!
Actually watched the whole thing so thanks for the link!
I bet there are some very nasty people in Russia’s prisons as well. Two can play at this game.
Gulp… while still in prison?
‘What is the life expectancy of a prison guard?
59 years
A recent study of the consequences of job stress in correctional officers revealed that the life expectancy of a correctional officer is 59 years, compared to 75 years for the national average.’
Maybe some push back from their unions on offering hand-to-hand combat training to inmates.
While of course CO murders drop the expectancy, I suspect that many people that get a CO job aren’t at the top of the longevity list anyway.
Link or citation, please? I have a (surprisingly sympathetic) observation about their recruitment and backgrounds, but…wld like a look at that report. Didn’t find the quote in either the posted Abalama story or Conner’s Al Jaz link. Thanks either way.
A link, really? First 4 hits from the duck:
https://nicic.gov/correctional-officer-life-expectancy
https://www.nnoa-camppendleton.org/officer/what-is-the-life-expectancy-of-a-correctional-officer-correct-answer.html
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/reducing-staff-and-inmate-stress
https://www.nnoa-camppendleton.org/officer/how-dangerous-is-being-a-correctional-officer.html
Thanks, Tim and Lexx.
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/reducing-staff-and-inmate-stress
CIA — ‘Success! one of our benchmarks for making the U.S. public helpless putty at the utter mercy of corporations has been reached, guys!’
Orwell’s Grave — ‘That was supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook.’
CIA — ‘We know. We took it quite seriously that you kept saying the only hope was in the proles, and cut off that route before it could even become clear to anyone else!’
ironically the readership demographics w/a low probability of having someone in the military and rah-rah, God Bless the USA! patriotism highlights the problem of fewer recruits.
the thee non-mutually exclusive traditional recruiting bases of the US Army—-a) urban bottom 50% of the income ladder, b) southern, conservative-leaning Whites, c) children-family of military and vets.
Social media viral stories about diversity training/wokeism has anecdotally cut into (b). Lots of overseas deployments has cut into (c). Strong job demand for non-college positions is cutting into (a) – (c)
There are a bunch of similar Youtube videos. The comments (typically by Americans) are scathing.
Army Recruitment Ads: China vs Russia vs USA
Mind you, I am against all militarism so it’s not necessarily a bad thing if military recruitment fails.
We went through a long stretch of those army of one and other “warriors arrgh us nonsense” as we blow up a poverty stricken village. I’ve seen one US army ad, and it’s how the army is fixing problems like building hospitals. This is the real problem. We don’t have a real country anymore, not that recruiting is ever easy. 3/4’s of young people aren’t fit for service is a frightening statistic.
I mean ads in another time were meant for people who didn’t know what to do, and to be honest, the army is a big place. As long as your knee won’t explode, they have a job for you. We get those cool space force ads, but half of West Point grads, an artillery school, become infantry officers.
Except for the absurdity of the Patriot missile system, the US ad is nice. Kids don’t always know what to do. If we weren’t such a cruel country, the army might make sense. Outside of gay rights, what is there to be proud about in recent history? Electing a black guy, and then…
I’ve long held that the US military is primarily a public-sector job training program. It’s our method of delivering a social welfare safety net, public education, public healthcare, etc.
“3/4’s of young people aren’t fit for service is a frightening statistic”
They think they have a solution for this one. (Old Red Eye)
I know we can in a slip a curse word or two on this family blog now but AAAHHH!!! Shaking my head in disbelief and dismay.
“And we can force the recruits to take a whole panel of taxpayer funded, resold by Big Pharma vaccines to enrich the stock portfolios of our congressional leaders, their family trust funds, the generals and the other insiders.”
“So what if they get permanent heart problems? It’s not like those dumb cattle [Quoting the esteemed Dr. Henry Kissinger] are going to claim lifetime disability benefits and V.A. coverage.”
A couple years ago I listened to the entirety of Mike Duncan’s Roman history podcast, learned quite a bit i think . . . during the collapse of the Western Empire, the fact that the military ceased to be a place for increased social upward mobility was one factor in the empire’s inability to preserve its dominion over all its foreign holdings. This combined with “barbarian” demographic changes & poor resource production and allocation all spiraled into a collapse . . . (Caveat: I despise racist swine like Victor Davis Hansen, I am a Spanish as well as English speaker, spent a year living in Latin America and do not have any problem with the fact that refugees from the miserable poverty & wars the US created in Central and Latin America are entering the US southwest, historically connected to the area both racially and linguistically as they are. Most Mexicans I know (incl. Mexican-Americans) are harder working & psychologically saner than most US whites imo (your results or opinion may differ, anecdotal evidence only carries so much weight), so in no way should my post here be associated with “Keep the dirty immigrants out of the US” narratives.
Re: Phase II clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of inhaled ethanol in the treatment of early-stage COVID-19.
ALCOVID-19 eudract_number:2020-001760-29 is a double blind, placebo controlled trial that was approved 9/9 2020 (https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/trial/2020-001760-29/ES).
The primary endpoint was to evaluate 156 M/F individuals >65 years old for progression measured at day 0, day 13, and day 27.
The trial is listed as ongoing with no data available.
Pretty discouraging that no data is available. Especially as the trial is over 1 & 1/2 years old, required only 156 subjects, and the endpoint was 28 days after initiation of treatment.
I will keep using SaNoTize/NONS (nitric oxide nasal spray), sold as Enovid in Israel and Fabispray in India.
Backed by a few small clinical trials with a large RCT underway and wrapping up in November.
I have bought the relatively expensive Israeli product online, if anyone knows how to get Fabispray reliably from India, that would be a great help.
How long does a bottle last do you know?
A month at 4 sprays a day but their clinical trial is doing 6 sprays a day.
What service do you get it from?
Buyenov.com
Hoping to find a cheaper option.
Thanks! It’s a good place to start.
We’d a scare (after our 3rd case), exposure to someone “testing positive” going for heart surgery. Made up 0.5% Betadine (& Synapsin-style Nr, B12, Rg3) nasal sprays & prodigious amounts of C, A, Sambucus nigra, Quercetin, Bromaline, NAC… I’m just wondering, how many hippy-dippy snake-oil cases are being turned away from local NYC ERs as folks with cascading PASC panic with Nattokinase, Serrapeptase & NO precursors? Any input?
Betadine Throat Spray [0.5% Betadine Solution] is what my wife and I have been using twice a day for the past couple of years. No problem. Can put some on a Q-tip and swab out your nostrils twice a day too.
I thought that iodine exposure meant that you could only use for a week?
What iodine exposure limit are you referencing?
Now I can’t remember where I read that specific concern, but the label says not to use for more than 7 days.
Also:
“The maximum treatment duration of 14 days should not be exceeded. Prolonged treatment could result in a normal microbial flora imbalance in the oral cavity with a risk of bacterial or fungal dissemination.”
https://www.nps.org.au/medicine-finder/betadine-sore-throat-gargle
No, only if you have a hyperthyroid condition. 0.45% povidone iodine has been an OTC mouthwash since forever in Japan.
I saw a study (too lazy to find again…) that found that daily use of up to 2.5% of a povidone iodine solution (as in yes, more than 5x as much as 0.45%) as any of a mouthwash, nose spray, and eyedrops, used multiple times a day, had no ill effects after 6 months of use.
My partner’s Dr didn’t freak-out, at her sticking this shit up her nose, YET? We go get another PCR tomorrow, isolation after the preceding 2 1/2yrs, should be like a vacation. BUT, suddenly, you miss each-other’s COVID scent, more than I can convey, verbally? We shall see? Her Dr. agreed with my astute cardiologist about Nicotinamide riboside, Nattokinase, NAC, Quercetin, etc. NOT up one’s nose, however.
Hot toddies have been around forever as a cure for colds and flu. So has aspirin.
Good point.
Temperamentally, I’m quite taken with a simple and totally out-of-band solution doing what billions of investment dollars and the public health establishment cannot do. So nebulized whiskey up the nose really appeals to me.
That said, I in no way impugn Povidone. I am a regular and satisfied user.
We’d used the my Kraut oma’s zinc, C, A, D3 & Sambucus nigra (or Quercetin & NAC) nose swab or lozenges. Working sick; we’d try to make the “weekend” by using these & theyd been around since 1918?
Thanks all, for the sage advice. Just used iodine nose spray for long Amtrak trips or out-doors concerts. Bet’ya BA.5 gets past all this, until we get a REAL mucosal booster? Anybody going to Cuba yet?
Melatonin, CBD and Murphy’s Oatmeal Stout (Tadcaster) for sleep.
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. – Tales of personal anguish are the typical start of serious articles about Arizona’s conspicuous confrontation with scarce water. The distraught Chino Valley homeowner buying water out of a truck because her well dried up. The Pinal farmer losing income because his water-starved fields lie fallow. The Phoenix golf course operator, burdened by high irrigation costs and declining revenue, selling out to a home developer.
The dollar value of water is climbing to heights never before seen in the state or hardly anticipated. Arizona last year approved the sale of 2,083 acre-feet of Colorado River water annually to Queen Creek, a Phoenix suburb. The cost of the deal: $21 million or $10,000 per acre-foot. Queen Creek is anxious to pay. It needs the water. The city’s population — 60,000 — is 15 times higher than in 2000. Its water demand is 10 times higher.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When water is flush here, an acre foot is worth a few hundred bucks, and in the 2012-16 drought it got up to $1,500 an acre foot by Ag in areas such as Terra Bella in Godzone, which has very little in the way of well water underfoot.
Desalinated water is quite spendy, close to $3,000 an acre foot, which is one of the reasons for not implementing more desal plants along the Cali coast.
$10,000 an acre foot is akin to paying 3x the sticker price on a new car, which shows you the level of desperation in Arizona.
And yet, they’re still building new homes which use a heck of a lot more water than a golf course.
Each resident in Arizona uses 146 gallons a day, and you can see where this is headed.
The GOP used Az as it’s crass-test-dummy quite successfully, and when the residents start to flee to other red states, it’ll be interesting to see how it goes.
‘And yet, they’re still building new homes’
I saw that as well. How bizarre is that? No offense to the good people of Arizona but that State is going to be in for a rough ride if there is no water coming so may not be a good place to move to. Even two thousand years ago when the Romans were planning to build new city, the limiting factor in their planning was always the amount of water that that city would have available to it.
It isn’t just AZ but most of the southwest has a water problem. The push to overpopulate a desert is stupid. Also growing commercial crops doesn’t make sense.
True that.
A group of surfers was instrumental in knocking out a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach, as they’re the boards of directors for 20 million in the SoCalist movement.
Yes, permitting growing alfalfa (for export) in the desert during a historic drought seems like group clinical insanity… so glad that my REIT (Rust Belt’s Last Laugh, LLC) is busy buying lots in Rochester, Erie, Cleveland and other Great Lakes cities…
—Yes, permitting growing alfalfa (for export) in the desert during a historic drought seems like group clinical insanity…—
Simple corruption?
It gets even worse. Various surf parks are being built in Arizona due to skyrocketing demand for the thrill of surfing. If we build it the water will materialize. That is how things are in Arizona (California as well). They may well be right as water follows money. A new Build Back Better plan may include billions for massive new water conveyances – say from the Mississippi, Great Lakes, the Yukon, you name it. They have all been proposed at one time or another. President Manchin may even give his nod.
…surf parks?!? In the Southwest?
Almost with in throwing range of me is what is called the San Francisco Bay and right next to that is this largish body of water called the Pacific Ocean. I can personally attest to some fine surfing.
Maybe they can drive? California is next door. Hit the coast. Turn north and visit Santa Cruz.
I am joking, but I would have to drive half a day to the Sierras for the snow (if the drought ends). I wouldn’t demand that they put in a snow field along the coast.
Some people really want to escape reality.
> A new Build Back Better plan may include billions for massive new water conveyances – say from the Mississippi, Great Lakes, the Yukon, you name it.
You get to do that when you won The Civil War.
This morning’s link was a really good article, but it did skate lightly over the fact that 75% of the water goes to agriculture. And not to keep-the-kids-alive wheat and beans, but alfalfa for cattle, some of which apparently is exported, and nut crops, ditto.
The needed reckoning is not only whether another trailer park or tract of houses can come in, but whether they can keep mining what little groundwater they have to make sure somebody can export pecans to China. It’s forestalling the process to have Native American and Hispanic farmers on the frontline, we don’t want to deprive them of their heritage, but, how long can you have cash crop farms in a desert which is getting more desertified every year?
Fortunately Matt Damon has a solution-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IchQsSUAkBE (28 secs)
Matt Damon is in. Are urine?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reC00AKmTzU (28 secs)
Lmao. Don’t forget Super Karen!
“I…want…to…see….
YOUR MANAGERRRRR!!!!”
Glad South Park got funny again after the horrible Clinton/Trump Season went off the rails.
Why is the Irish famine coming to mind…
It’s the Money.
If you want to build a housing development you have to show you can deliver sufficient water to the State by providing a commitment from the County or City to deliver said water (Will deliver letter).
It doesn’t matter whether the water you promise to deliver is there ( Hey there Rohnert Park!), what matters is the money.
Aboveboard that’s a LOT of fees and an increased tax base.
Sub Rosa it’s the usual corruption.
Yes, land-use permits are local. Land developers dominate local politicos.
They’re part of the Real Estate cabal.
> A new Build Back Better plan may include billions for massive new water conveyances – say from the Mississippi, Great Lakes, the Yukon, you name it.
That’s why the land use committee is the one to join….
Google NAWAPA…
The Metropolitan Water District in SoCal always maintains 1 million acre feet of water availability beyond current demand in order to accommodate future development. Lakes, rivers, and streams can dry up, but real estate developers always have water.
And how about those new semiconductor factories eh?
This! Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is building a massive $12 billion fabrication foundry in north Phoenix. They broke ground in 2021 — well after this critical water shortage was a well known reality and affecting some cities, towns, and homes and some reallocation measures re agra were already in effect.
It is going up at warp speed. My last drive by count in June was 30+ cranes (up from 20+ in spring). It is a huge complex, multi buildings that will employ 2,000 and use
Not sure which is worse — seeing this being built or driving by as miles of fields are being SPRAYED with water in the middle of a 115 degree day in the desert.
Here is another fun one:
A high end consumer graphics card these days draw 500W or more on its own. A desktop computer used for gaming can easily draw as much power as a space heater or electric kettle. All in order to distract us from the real world.
According to AZ Water Facts — in Arizona:
Industrial water usage – 6%
Municipal water usage – 22%
Agriculture water usage – 72%
So the overhead spray irrigation for crops in the middle of a 115 degree day in the desert takes the prize. The waste through evaporation alone has got to be mind boggling. Many are converting to drip/soakers system, but it is a lot of pvc to lay down and take up each planting and harvesting – general 2 growing seasons a year.
Link for this and previous quoted material on water usage of semiconductor manufacturing.
And I’d add
Plus the push to add data centers which also need water for cooling. Although I know of one building in the West Valley that was built as a data center but has UPS as a tenant.
And AZ won’t know how much CO River water will get cut until late August. I suspect the Feds will have to make the decision as the Upper Basin states seem to want the Lower Basin states to take the brunt of the cuts.
From your link:
So, intel’s wastewater is “cleaned up” to “drinking standards,” but not clean enough to be reused to wash their ever so precious chips and cool their equipment.
Congratulations, Chandler. You get to be the next Flint. Because Must. Have. “Chips.”
Water for semiconductor manufacture must be much, much purer than drinking water. It’s not easy to get it pure enough so most of it is recycled, as it comes out still cleaner than ‘fresh’ water.
hackaday
“cleaner than ‘fresh’ water” is the pre-use requirement. That is the state of the water before it is used to clean away multiple chemicals contaminates. What they discharge back into the water system would definitely not be “cleaner than fresh”.
That AZ story is a good link while plowing sadly familiar ground. My friend who lives east of Phoenix has about had it with the place, although more due to the ever worsening climate and the ever rampant development than the always more expensive water. She had lived there before–before the huge population boom–and misses the one time small city appeal of fresh produce to eat and horse riders sharing the less crowded streets. By mid century both of our “sun and fun” capitals may have had it–AZ from not enough water and FL from way too much. Guess some of them will be headed here….
I remember reading somewhere ( Cadillac Desert? Killing the Hidden Waters?) that the early founders and kickstarters of the exponential development and population growth concept for the Southwest was based on the concept of getting so many people and so much money tied up in the Soutwest that the Southwest would be powerful enough within the American political system to extort all the water it wanted from the Northwest, from the Mississippi Watershed, from the Great Lakes, etc.
That is where they planned to get the water. That is still where they plan to get the water. Probably enough people in other watersheds outside of the Southwest know enough about handling explosives and blowing up pipelines that the Southwest will never get any of that other-peoples’-water.
> the Southwest would be powerful enough within the American political system to extort all the water it wanted
It worked for Los Angeles….
‘The Pitchforks Aren’t Coming’
If pitchforks were effective, only billionaires could afford them. There are better improvised weapons for moving vegetable matter from Point A to B, or just scaring the crap out of the wealthy. When the mob arrives at their doors, they won’t look anything like ‘country hayseeds’.
All the classes seem to suffer from cliches about each other.
Without some form of antagonism, how would classes delineate a class of itself or motivate a class for itself? (Elites need lower classes to be enclassed, too. Proletarian formation is not entirely a good thing.)
More than not entirely. How helpful is class analysis at this point? We can sure point out the flaws and point some fingers, but what else?
What’s needed is a worldview that doesn’t divide us into pieces. We’re already there, and the best thing you can say about class analysis is that it does a better job of sorting. The desperately needed magic trick at this point is to find what unites us. (I suppose it could be argued that class analysis seeks to unite workers otherwise living an atomized existence, but how successful has that ever been in Horatio Alger America?)
> What’s needed is a worldview that doesn’t divide us into pieces
There are several religions that do that. Also cults.
“When Austerity Is a Bigger Problem Than Inflation”
Just today started to read Mark Blyth’s “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea” and can already see the logic in his ideas. Note that if you hear our leaders start talking about “growth friendly fiscal consolidation”, that is austerity that they are talking about so be warned. Come to think of it, if there are any gardeners and farmers here, maybe should try austerity. Deny those plants most of the water that they need as well as nutrients and according to those that believe in austerity, it should lead to spectacular growth. Anybody game to try?
I’d be more inclined to give AMLO the benefit of the doubt than Authers was. Unlike the U.S., Europe, or Japan, Mexico doesn’t have the privilege of being able to print money without immediately suffering crippling inflation, and as Authers correctly notes, AMLO’s predecessors often regretted their profligacy. Unlike Authers, I’m not sure whether our decision to support the economy through COVID by debt-funded spending will be a net positive in the long run, although it may convert the sharp, short pain of the pandemic into the long, lingering pain of financial repression. In particular, the high percentage of COVID relief spending that was captured by corporations lobbying for handouts or lost to fraud seems problematic. For example, handouts to airlines do not seem to have preserved our air transport capacity, and can hardly be seen as a productive investment.
how about the laughable growth and stability pact. its anything but. only idiots signed up for being in the E.U..
Even though the mall murderer in Indy wasn’t able to reach the agreed upon amount in only killing 3, he was dispatched by a good guy with a gun, so we’ll call it a mass murder anyhow.
Although the press is loath to call the gun used by the murderer an assault rifle by that moniker, its pretty obvious eh?
Unless the shooter was using a select fire weapon he did not have an assault rifle.
One of the defining characteristics of Assault Rifles is that they are capable of full auto fire.
It’s difficult to have a productive conversation with someone who deliberately uses the wrong terms because they are virtue signalling and hand waving to demonstrate their moral worthiness rather than dealing in good faith.
Blah blah blah, I used the ‘wrong gun terminology’ so it didn’t happen, right?
You consistently refer to Semi Automatic rifles as assault rifles when you know full well that they are not assault rifles.
They are not select fire weapons.
You are not acting in good faith, and the virtue signalling is tiresome.
Considering the guns laws are written with very specific language I think it’s a good idea to use specific and correct language when talking about guns subject to laws. Shorter: I agree with you, Tom, about the importance of using correct terms.
The definition I have always seen is that “semi-automatic” means that pulling the trigger fires one round, without need to cock the gun except for the first round. If this dictionary definition is correct then a revolver is semi-automatic, as are many (most?) hunting rifles and shotguns, yet they are never referred to that way. Am I missing something?
it isn’t so much the semi-automatic feature that makes an AR-15 an assault rifle, but the bullets are of military grade and do quite the whammy on the victims.
Was anybody else surprised that there were no survivors from the Uvalde mass murder. That’s what the ammo does in ripping bodies apart.
All those law enforcement officers milling around outside the classroom door for over an hour instead of taking down the shooter, either through the window or through the door or both? I wasn’t surprised by the death count at Uvalde after watching LEO do basically nothing. (Some of them did use the wall mounted hand sanitizer dispensers while they waited, though, so they killed some germs. I guess. jfc)
semi-automatic vs automatic, snf the definition of an assault rifle in the following link. Tom’s comment about a ‘select fire switch’ references the assault/military rifle’s important difference from non-assault/military rifles.
https://blog.gunassociation.org/semi-automatic-vs-automatic-firearms-difference/
typo: “snf” should be “see”.
> Considering the guns laws are written with very specific language I think it’s a good idea to use specific and correct language when talking about guns subject to laws
Normally I’d agree with you, but too often word-chopping is used as a bad faith way to discredit opponents. I also feel that demanding terminological exactitude gives gun culture entirely too much deference, i.e. more than zero. (It’s as if, to use an analogy some, but only some, will find inappropriate, you couldn’t talk about dildos without demonstrating a thorough knowledge of sizes, materials, textures, motorized v. unmotorized, etc.)
It might be best if Wuk just invented his own term and used it consistently; others might then adopt it. (One thought I have had is that the AR-15 is not “arms” according to original intent; it’s too lethal. The Second Amendment says “right to bear arms” not “right to own cannon.”)
I must disagree with you on your points. Not understanding what one is referring to or muddling several things together as a uniform thing doesn’t help argument. imo.
> Considering the guns laws are written with very specific language I think it’s a good idea to use specific and correct language when talking about guns subject to laws
Normally I’d agree with you, but too often word-chopping is used as a bad faith way to discredit opponents. I also feel that demanding terminological exactitude gives gun culture entirely too much deference, i.e. more than zero. (It’s as if, to use an analogy some, but only some, will find inappropriate, you couldn’t talk about dildos without demonstrating a thorough knowledge of sizes, materials, textures, motorized v. unmotorized, etc.)
It might be best if Wuk just invented his own term and used it consistently; others might then adopt it. (One thought I have had is that the AR-15 is not “arms” according to original intent; it’s too lethal. The Second Amendment says “right to bear arms” not “right to own cannon.”)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You’ve inspired me to only call which used to cause so much caterwauling by caliberists… ‘Steely Dans’ in the future tense of mass murders utilizing military grade weaponry formerly known as assault guns by everybody except ‘hobbyists’.
A distinction w/o a difference. The gun folks love you; if it kills or hurts someone, it commits assault.
Not really. If we start talking about cars and I insist on labeling cars as ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) when they are hybrids, or even just electric, there would be a problem. Or sports cars, hatchbacks, full size sedans, and trucks. (What kind of truck?)
If every revolver was called a machine pistol, there would be a problem even if they both use handgun sized ammunition and IIRC a small machine pistol and a large revolver aside from the thirty to forty-five round magazine are the same size. Both can have the word “pistol” but one has six rounds and fires one shot per a trigger pull, and the other is fully automatic and 5-10 times the ammunition.
The definitions of words have meaning and refusing to be careful enough to use the terms or descriptions means not wanting to have an accurate or honest conversation. It is also a way to splatter the conversation with emotional buzz words. Words that confuse, blend together, and taint different things.
(My apologies for the very long sentence, but I am trying to make a point)
For example: Bolsheviks becomes Stalinist becomes Communism becomes Socialism becomes Democratic Socialism becomes unions, then (all) government, which means that the CDC, garbage collection, or public transportation is the evil Bolshevism, Stalinist, and Communism, which means the Gulags!
Laugh, if you want, but some political writings be it by researchers, business leaders, politicians, and so on are just as screwy. They usually take a paper or an entire speech or three to make the connections. Some of 20th Century writings are interesting. Like the John Birch Society’s. And this conflation and destruction of meanings is often done deliberately. It is a very common, ancient method that works.
My old Latin teacher used to say, “Now boys!” when we got a little rowdy. You could hear his finger wag in his voice.
a thing of beauty (and truth)
for anyone who missed this:
https://twitter.com/TheGrayzoneNews/status/1548403037491716096
The moderator person was pretty close to insufferable. I could only stand to listen in bits. I kept wondering where they found her, she appears to be associated with several rent-a-speaker outfits. This her search page.
Thanks. Max and Aaron were great. The people trying to silence critics are the same people who want no accountability for those who make bad US foreign policy decisions, (or bad economic/financial decisions or bad education decisions or bad [fill in the blank]…) My 2 cents.
Re: Putin is already at war with Europe. There is only one way to stop him Simon Tisdale, Guardian
>As previously argued here, direct, targeted, forceful western action to repulse Russia’s repulsive horde is >not a vote for a third world war.
So the plan is that we attack, but they do not fight back? Sounds promising.
“Repulsive horde”.
The language is getting pretty shrill. Thankfully the uniforms these days do not seem to be as rah rah about a nuclear war as LeMay was, and hopefully they can talk the chickenhawks out of blowing the coup sky high.
Bagging your clothes after a nuke goes off is not an option:
https://cnduk.org/the-effects-of-nuclear-weapons/
“The heart of a nuclear explosion reaches a temperature of several million degrees centigrade. Over a wide area the resulting heat flash literally vaporises all human tissue. At Hiroshima, within a radius of half a mile, the only remains of most of the people caught in the open were their shadows burnt into stone.” p.s. That was a tiny bomb…
“People inside buildings or otherwise shielded will be indirectly killed by the blast and heat effects as buildings collapse and all inflammable materials burst into flames. The immediate death rate will be over 90%. Various individual fires will combine to produce a fire storm as all the oxygen is consumed. As the heat rises, air is drawn in from the periphery at or near ground level. This results in lethal, hurricane force winds as well as perpetuating the fire as the fresh oxygen is burnt.”
“Outside the area of total destruction there will be a gradually increasing percentage of immediate survivors. However most of these will suffer from fatal burns, will be blinded, bleeding from glass splinters and will have suffered massive internal injuries. Many will be trapped in collapsed and burning buildings.”
Anyone advocating for a no fly zone over Ukraine is volunteering you and your family for this. You know what needs to be done with these politicians and talking heads.
But the PSA said “You got this!”
Note that it is an Englishman in England who writes this in a British paper. NATO is a Euro-British conspiracy against America, and this “tisdale” person clearly wants for America and Russia to fight in hopes that EU-Britain can emerge to rule the rubble.
Re: inhaled ethanol as Covid anti-viral —
There’s also this U.S. study underway on Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray:
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05109611
Brief Summary:
A multicenter, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, phase 3 clinical efficacy study evaluating nitric oxide nasal spray (NONS) as prevention for treatment of individuals at risk of exposure to COVID-19 infection.
Estimated study completion date:
November 30, 2022
And of course NONs is available from Israel now without prescription.
Hey, did you all ever wonder why, even though Human Recombinant Soluble ACE2 was proven to help people with COVID, that it never caught on?
It’s because the people with all the money do not care.
All these new treatments being talked about, they are pointless because they will never be given the funding.
Speaking of Soluble ACE2, did you know you can make your own? Inside your one body? No, no one wants to talk about this, because these totalitarians and authoritarians do not care about people, only profit.
@JAC — I agree with you. But NONs is available to Americans by mail order w/o prescription right now from Israel. It is being manufactured in Israel and India that I know of. It’s my understanding that to order from India you must have a prescription.
I received mine from Israel in less than 2 weeks. Hope it works.
“Speaking of Soluble ACE2, did you know you can make your own?”
link?
Zinc increases ADAM17 activity which cleaves ACE2 off the cell making soluble ACE2z
The problem with alcohol inhalation is that you have to do it BEFORE you have been readily infected, then it is too late for infection to progress. Then the problem is when and how many times to do it pre-emptively. My opinion is that if you do it repeatedly you might end de-hydrating your upper mucosae and then become… more susceptible to viral infection, ANY kind of viral infection.
I don’t see this as a solution.
> de-hydrating your upper mucosae
Hot toddy includes honey as an ingredient….
“Silurian wildfire proxies and atmospheric oxygen”
Years ago I sometimes wondered what forest fires were like in North America before people came onto the scene. I use to think of them sweeping across the continent in a massive wall of flame hundreds of feet high until they came up against a mountain chain or river or maybe heavy rains put them out. But now I am not sure that it was like that at all. It was Wukchumni that pointed out that trees back them were more spaced out and fires would often sweep through and burning off the fire-loading on the forest floors. So maybe they were typically not so fierce at all and just quickly swept through regions causing minimal damage and they in fact encourage growth in the months after their passing.
Indeed, take a look at the 1890 photo of the Mariposa grove in Yosemite NP and compare it to the 1970 photo. There has since been much thinning and prescribed burns in this particular Sequoia grove, but try and imagine other groves from 1890 where absolutely nothing has been done to alleviate the congestion of trees since then, aided by our stopping every fire and not allowing nature to run its course.
I was at a meeting of various fire agencies and NPS officials over the weekend, and one of them told me that Earth Island Institute that has used lawsuits to stop thinning and prescription burn efforts in Yosemite NP was akin to those 3% of scientists who don’t believe in climate change.
George Durkee who was author of this 2021 piece which I heartily agree with, was a backcountry ranger for 45 years, and is legendary…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walking among the Giant Sequoia forests of the west slope of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, visitors are struck by the peace and sense of profound age surrounding us. Many of these trees live to over 3,000 years old – the so-called Monarchs – and have survived extensive droughts, fire, the Little Ice Age, floods, and now, the greatest potential threat to their continued existence, modern humans.
There is now a fire burning on the slopes below one of the largest groves of Giant Sequoia at Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park. Many press reports are understandably concerned that this fire – and others – can wipe out these iconic trees as fire spreads through the groves. Using sometimes overheated prose, they describe fire as possibly devouring the groves. Unquestionably, fires are often dangerous and even tragic but it is important that, in this new fire regime, we begin to put all fires in perspective and use them more wisely
In the sequoia groves of our national parks (Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon) though, there is hope that the long-time fuel treatments of the Giant Forest Groves will prevent any significant mortality of large trees, should this or future fires get that far.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2021/09/giant-sequoias-are-no-stranger-fire
While there probably were huge fires at times, more frequent fires kept the smaller trees and lower brush,downed trees etc burned off with relatively low intensity fires leaving the larger trees intact. And without the great drying/warming the forests were more resistant to fire danger.
Native Americans did a lot of selective fires to create grasslands for wild animals that they then hunted.
California has a really large problem with huge amount of built up dead wood (mostly from well meaning but terribly wrong environmentalists) including beetle killed/climate warming killed and that coupled with climate change/warming events creating massive fires. I’m pretty sure even if we had been good forest stewards, there would be big fires but maybe less massive.
Forest ecologists know what needs to be done, but there is little political will and push back from environmentalists preventing some
Pretty agressive prescribed burn protocols. And the fact the wet season is so unstable/unpredictable it makes it hard to know exactly when to burn.
Case in point here in NM a huge fire was started from supposedly cold embers from controlled burns in the winter. Even though procedures were followed, the lack of winter precipitation didn’t actually put them out, and with a very dry and windy spring, the worst happened.
California had a staggeringly wet late fall and then it just switched off. Which probably made doing controlled burns all but impossible this year.
Years ago I heard someone tell me Smokey the bear did too good of a job. I think he was right.
We had a 700+ acre prescribed burn about a month ago in the Giant Forest Grove in Sequoia NP. It had been planned to go off last year, but it was too dry and conditions have to be just right to alight.
Went off without a hitch…
Scientist have tried to piece together the historical fire regimes across the country. Fire regime refers to the frequency, timing, and severity of a fire. It really depends upon the climate and vegetation types. In some grassland areas fire could occur every year and completely kill and renew the grass. In forested areas fires might be somewhat frequent or only occur once every 200 years. The following is a good summary of fire regimes: chapter 3 fire regimes
Absolute insanity: American Airlines will make you remove your respirator because it has an exhalation valve.
When masks aren’t required on the flight.
So, uh… what about all of the other passenger’s “exhalation valves” known commonly as “mouths”??
I feel like I’m losing my mind.
https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1548832453355196419#m
It is all hypernormalized kayfabe at this point.
Cases are spiking here in the SF bay area but Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is lifting its mask mandate as of today. On the up side:
“BART cars are equipped with “virus-trapping MERV-14 air filters and air in cars is replaced and filtered every 70 seconds,” BART said. The EPA says a filter rating of MERV-13 or higher will filter out virus particles like coronavirus.” SFGATE
that’s obviously not the real reason.
your ventilator makes the other flyers uncomfortable. either because they know they should be wearing one, or they believe you’re crazy for wearing one and don’t like the idea of being contained with a crazy hurtling through the sky for hours at a time.
never buy the story they give you. you’re showing up the airline’s lack of precaution. they can’t have that visible reminder of negligence for everyone to see.
>>the large majority of people were willing to adapt to save lives and elites ultimately responded by desensitizing the population to mass suffering, normalizing mass death, breaking solidarity, and promoting individualism and fatalism
Let’s not forget the contribution by all those on “our” side, above all Glenn Greenwald. He revealed a sociopathic streak I never would have suspected in repeatedly calling for the elderly to be sacrificed on the altar of The Children who supposedly wanted to have fun more than they wanted to have parents or grandparents. Or functioning hospitals.
Honorable mention to Matt Taibbi, Matt Stoller, and a whole bunch more. I at least will never forget.
yes, on a personal level too the pandemic and then the russia-ukr propaganda has felt like seeing the worst sides of everyone and everything more or less at the same time. it has been difficult to deal with when so many directly around me seem like they’re on another planet, in terms of their own beliefs about what has happened.
Here in Canada, during the early stages, the public showed excellent compliance with pandemic control measures.
The wavering and incohesion began at the top, and only then did the public solidarity begin to disintegrate into a welter of confusion and contradictions.
In my province, BC, the rot began in June of ’20. I remembered how dismayed I was when the gov’t began reopening. We had it down. All we had to do was keep it down for a few more weeks. But then our gov’t just decided to let it back up, as if a pandemic could be scheduled. It made no sense!
There was very little public pressure to reopen at that time. It was the leadership who failed. It was only after the gov’t failed that more and more of the public explored the irrationalities formerly found at the fringe.
It was the same in the US, or at least here in Massachusetts.
And to the extent that there was public pressure to ease controls, they were disproportionately (though not exclusively) coming from the upper middle class: small business owners and office workers who didn’t want to go back to the office but wanted to go back to the gym.
Which is why the attitudes of Greenwald, Stoller, etc. feel so unsurprising even if crushingly disappointing–they are all from that social stratum. We do not have much a working class Left in the US.
a pandemic WAS being scheduled.
for you to catch.
Exactly so in Australia too. We had tremendous social solidarity for about 18 months with only a few selfish gronks going against it (and being pilloried for it). Pro-covid media commentators (“live with it”) were mostly ignored.
it changed with the vaccine campaign (this was particularly egregious, the vaccine campaign exploited the social solidarity of the first year of the pandemic to make it feel like it a natural extension of it, when really it was only ever going to be used as a rationalisation for “living with it”), the strawman of “we can’t stay locked down forever” (Australian cities were hardly locked down at all, except for Melb due to gov incompetence), “but the economy”, setting up all these false tribalisms in an effective divide and conquer strategy when we should have remained united to defeat a common adversary (a few pissy strands of RNA in a lipid envelope) – which we were actually managing pretty well. Oh well.
This was mirrored in Ireland. I was pleasantly surprised by the social solidarity shown by the vast majority of people in the first year or more of the pandemic, and, after an initial wobble, the competent management of the crisis by the public health authorities and government in general. Mind you, the Irish governmental system has the huge advantage that everyone here can compare them to the UK under the Tories, so pretty much everything they do looks competent.
But once the vaccination campaign was perceived to be a success, then it all fell apart with astonishing speed. With hindsight, its clear that private commitments were made to a range of interest groups, most notably the tourism industry, that come what may, 2022 would be ‘back to normality’. Mask discipline fell apart within a matter of weeks. Despite daily advertisements asking people to mask up on public transport, almost nobody does. I’ve been on packed trains and the only person wearing a mask apart from any Chinese or Filipina’s on the train.
Same in Germany. Once the levels came down to < 50/100000 new cases a day, the discussion started at the top, especially in the conservative and liberal parties, when we could lift the restrictions again. Just hanging in there for 3 more weeks would have solved the problem once and for all. But that was impossible, better to have recurring bouts of contagion for who knows how long. Complete abrogation of leadership.
It would only have solved the problem once and for all if you had closed the borders, and migration is a central tenet of neoliberalism.
Thank you for this comment. Greenwald and Stoller have been huge disappointments. They often defend the powerless, yet that principle seems to go out the window when it comes to a deadly virus that hits frontline and health care workers hardest.
If there are any scholars left to study it, this pandemic will be cited as another great crime against the poor, minorities, the elderly and people with disabilities.
Izabella Kaminska has been very disappointing too, all the more frustrating because she is such a straightforwardly capable journalist/commentator which is in stark contrast to a lot of journalists working today. But she seems to be making pivoting for a soft-right finance niche. She even contributed a piece for the execrable Unherd. The argument was actually kind of interesting: that lockdowns will come back in winter as a means of reducing energy consumption. You can’t rule that out entirely, but that’s only because the evolution of the virus and its rate of change is completely out of control and it remains a looming threat. UK Gov surely has other means at its control to ration energy consumption in the UK short of a lockdown with an ostensibly epidemiological purpose, especially given that the UK Gov has been advised by the pro-pandemic/anti-mitigation Great Barrington Declaration since pretty much the beginning. Anyway she decried these measures of disease control as anti-democratic, which is pretty much meaningless pablum and empty sloganising meant to agitate a readership. As democratic analysis goes it’s laughably facile. Is the argument that something is only democratically valid if we vote for it? Again, this is a laughably facile conception of what it means to live in a democracy. There isn’t a modern constitution that doesn’t provide for temporary derogation from democratic norms during an emergency (and courts/jurisprudence exist to make sure that there’s no overreach as a consequence), ditto for instruments of international human rights law. Are air-raid sirens and bomb shelters anti-democratic? rationing? Pandemics are emergencies, although through constant propaganda (and aided by the arguably fortuitous evolution of Omicron into relative “mildness”) we’ve been conditioned into thinking this emergency is now the “new normal”, without appreciating that the nature of this virus is such that it could explode into a new, acute emergency – more serious than before – at any time (and our behaviour in fact guarantees this to be the case). My feelings of this are summed
up by the meme I’ve seen of a London Underground bomb shelter from the war with surtitles from those sheltering bitching about “muh freedums”, “government control thru fear”, “we have to learn to live with the bombs” etc.
To play Devil’s Advocate for this cohort, they do understand intuitively and correctly that leadership during the pandemic has been atrocious. That Fauci is bad etc. But from this their position then becomes “therefore we obviously should have done less!”!
They also don’t understand the difference between TTIQ (culminating in “lockdowns” for an extremely transmissible pathogen with asymptomatic spread), which is proven to solve the problem of SARS2 and “mockdowns” of varying strictness such as those seen in the US and UK from the beginning (and Australia this time last year) – which are designed not to solve the problem but to merely temporarily relieve the pressures of the pandemic and kick the can down the road. The latter are obviously bad and stupid. But they make no effort to even try and understand these subtleties. Nor the obvious point about the need for social support for the people during these periods of disease control. In fact some of their reasoning seems to be “there was a shameless bailout in 2020 of awful corporate entities, therefore the pandemic is not actually a big problem and just a pretext for shithousery of this sort”.
The journalists among this cohort are really missing a trick. The avoidable man-made pandemic (NB I said man-made pandemic, not man-made virus), and the completely unnecessary decision to let it spread out of control, is one of the all-time great stories. A conspiracy that makes even the most unhinged vaccine conspiracy theories look like babytown frolics. Instead, though, we get Taibbi interviewing consummate fuckwit and cynical anti-mask degenerate Vinay Prasad, and that’s about it. Piss poor stuff. Again, they understand that western leadership has done terribly, but when it comes to contrary voices there’s only one group they speak to – the minimisers who, it turns out, have been completely successful politically, and who now drive pandemic policy worldwide. These (typically affluent) minimisers pretend to be for the ordinary working man when it’s just such obviously maliciously cynical bullshit in the face of a pandemic that is, of course, a universal human problem but is nonetheless disproportionately affecting – oh, look – the ordinary working poor.
There’s any number of people they could speak to who would calmly and clearly explain why SARS2 is such a serious problem; and don’t forget that many of these writers are indeed familiar with this very website. It’s not difficult information to come by or to understand. Instead they ignore the nature of the problem completely, and position themselves as sticking up for everymen in opposition to anti-freedom disease control, which in their submission is incipient librul tyranny (I believe the expression Chris Arnade used when referring to those advocating even just humble policies to protect people from the disease was “liberal safetyism”). One wants to give them the benefit of the doubt but (in stark contrast to this blog) I can’t help but think of them as wretched cynics.
Many thanks, awesome rant, worthy of being shifted ATL.
Among the many, many things that has made me even more cynical than I used to be about our overlords and social betters is the manner in which the professional public health establishment has not just abandoned the basics of good science and healthcare, but has quite deliberately sought to minimize and isolate those relatively isolated voices who object. As someone commented on twitter the other day, we are in strange times when highly credentialed academic virologists seem to think its ok to display a shocking ignorance of basic biology, and when challenged on it, simply gaslight (or in one case, accuse all those who object of misogyny). And to make it worse, you can easily find clips online of academic medical ‘experts’ openly mocking people with long covid.
And its particularly disappointing when otherwise astute commentators (I’d include Krystal of Breaking Points in this) seem unable to see this. Thanks to Ukraine, I’ve discovered a range of very smart voices on geopolitics and military matters, but almost all are united in mocking China’s zero covid policy. Why this has become common sense and received wisdom, even in radical political circles, I’ve no idea. Basic public health science should not be confused with political choices.
Inhaling ethanol sounds like it would be unpleasant, having had it go down the wrong pipe before or laughing and having it come out my nose…. 20℅ seems like it would still be in the “it burns” range.
Better than death or disability tho.
“Germany’s Scholz Says EU Can No Longer Afford National Vetoes”
Looks like Olaf Scholz wants to use the Ukrainian war as an excuse to cement in the bureaucratic control over the EU by the elites. I saw an example of how they want to do things in the EU going forward. So in the past few months, some EU nations cut off Russian oil on moral grounds – no matter how devastating the consequences for their people or their economy. Others, like Hungary, kept on filling up their oil reserves because they knew that winter is coming no matter what and they wanted to protect their people from what was coming. So yesterday I heard that the EU has ordered Hungary to take part in sharing all their oil into a common pool for the EU – which includes all those nations that deliberately cut themselves off from oil. And unless somebody is following where all that oil is going, I would be willing to bet that more oil goes to important nations & industries rather than lesser EU nations.
Brexit went “quietly”, but will the same be true for future exits?
The EU is similar to the USSR in so many respects. Undemocratic at the highest federal level. Ideological. Multi-state, multi-cultural. Technocratic. Out of touch. Unequal and divided by class.
They do let each fief run their own ‘competing’ pro-corporate state media. So there is that.
As long as the economy holds up, and no wild crisis of legitimacy happens – what could go wrong?
It is weird in that sense, as the highest level of EU is supposed to be compromised of the democratically elected leaders of the member nations.
Yet everything that comes out of there seems to be to the benefit of the monied elite of Europe, and their PMC entourage.
i thought they only appended the elected group afterwards, and those people can’t do anything except make “suggestions” to the technocrats?
they wanted the cover story of a “democratically elected” body to lend them legitimacy.
Direct election of the parliament was indeed not done until 1979.
In addition to that you have the council that is made up of the governmental ministers of the member nations. Thus also elected by the people of said nations.
These two bodies then go about picking the members of the commission, the effective “government” of EU.
And it is this commission that then create the directives that regulate EUs common market.
Then it is up to the parliament and council to either accept or refuse a suggested directive.
Once accepted by both bodies, it falls on the member nations to turn the new directive into law.
So why then, when so large a portion of the EU apparatus is elected by the people, does it seem to favor the monied few and their corporations?
The EU’s Architects: Nazis and Nazi Collaborators and Nazi credentials of EU founders like Schuman, Adenauer, and Hallstein
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/07/02/the-eu-architects-nazis-and-nazi-collaborators/
The EU’s Architects: Nazis and Nazi Collaborators
Wayne Madsen
July 2, 2016
…
Same thing from Josep Borrell:
“Many G20 diplomats are more concerned with their own national interests than punishing Russia with economic sanctions for attacking Ukraine.”
reported in Strategic Culture today.
“and a tantrum from the U.S. secretary of state who refused to be seen with Russia’s foreign minister.”
I find it oddly amusing how much that old bulldog Lavrov manages to rankle US politicians.
Well, ONE country, its central bank, and its now-expanding armed forces will still command- uh, have a veto.
Of course, Scholz represents a nation that will have its national veto taken from it over its dead body.
This is almost certainly not going to happen.
its why boris was a nut and a bad leader, but at least under your own soveriengnty, you might get better leadership.
the E.U. is heading into the the direction it was always intended to be, a design by fascists in the 1930-40’s.
any one staying or joining today, their leadership must be made to pay.
If Hungary rejects the share-oil order, will the EU send troops against Hungary in order to conquer and take the oil?
What if Hungary dares them to do it?
Interesting news from Tijuana-adjacent, where SD will limit the amount of short term vacation rentals in the midst of the real estate bubble running out of air, and the thing about AirBnB owners is they really have no skin in the game, as they don’t live there.
Lots of garage mahals will come on the market as inventory swells from other San Diegans who actually occupy their own homes looking to get out, could be messy.
https://lajolla.com/article/san-diego-short-term-vacation-rental-ordinance/
“Systemic failures” in Uvalde shooting went far beyond local police, Texas House report details Texas Tribune. The deck: “In total, 376 law enforcement officers descended upon the school, according to the most extensive account of the shooting to date.” The obvious solution is to give cops more money.
=======================================
Soooooo…..you’re safer with fewer police? (quality, not quantity???)
In some ways, this is starting to sound like the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard in dock not that long ago. The results of the investigation came out and it turned out that nobody knew who was responsible for fighting that fire whether it was the ship’s sailors, SURFPAC or 3rd Fleet. And each of them was saying ‘It’s not our problem’ – so up in flames went over a billion dollars in ship-
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-uss-bonhomme-richard-fire-who-was-in-charge/
Same here. They had enough police to form a small battalion but as they were from so many police forces, were waiting for the other guy to take charge. Happened to see this episode of “Cops” once where some guy was doing a runner in a stolen car and by the time they arrested him, there were about half a dozen different sorts of police uniforms on scene from city police, Highway patrol, county troopers and god knows who else. And I think that most of those cops there forgot the principle of how it is better to ask forgiveness than permission.
So basically the bystander effect writ large.
What I don’t get about this is that for decades now we have used Incident Commend systems for crises, organizational structures whereby an Incident is declared and then all the agencies that might have skills come to the table (literally) and et up a Command Ceter to enable just the kind of cooperation and easy of decision maiing to resolve problems. I worked at the Sea tac Airport for several years and whenever we had a crisis – one was an earthquake in 2001 and then 911 later that year – Incident Command was called and everyone worked to resolve the issues. It was (and maybe still is) the case that people who worked in the agencies – police, security, fire, etc – had to take hours of training to participate and lead such things.
Of courser, IC events generally are long term events, things that might take hours or even days to resolve, like forest fires or floods or earthquakes, not an individual shooter killing kids in a classroom. My guess here is nobody thought to declare IC because that isn’t done with shooter situations, the goal is to stop him or her asap, and what happened here was more and more police showed up, milled around, and in the end nobody was willing to give the order to storm the door and get the shooter probably because of a fear that in such a storming some kids might be killed, too, which of course would look very very bad….
367 cops? This story reeks of bullshit and calls into question the waste of hundreds of billions of tax dollars on The Patriot Act enforcement, the DHS, School police, transit forces etc. The old saying “When seconds count, the police are minutes away” can be updated: “When The Second Amendment counts, police are the only ones allowed guns.” Great excuse for RINOs to vote for Red Flag laws however.
The first officer on the scene is always the incident commander until handed off to higher. Almost one bailout of illegals per day? Good job with our immigration policy Joe Biden/Kharris!
According to the article,
A “bailout” is defined as “when officers chase a vehicle containing suspected undocumented migrants, who then purposely crash and scatter to avoid apprehension.”
The frequency of these incidents supposedly led to complacency among school officials and, apparently, law enforcement, since no related “violence” ever happened.
I would have expected exactly the opposite would have been true. Constantly having actual incidents of desperate, unknown people running around the area to escape the “law” should have led authorities to at least take precautions like reliably functioning door locks or a reliable emergency communication system MORE seriously not less.
But that’s just me, I guess.
Say hello to The Boy Who Cried Wolf…
This whole thing is just terrible, all those cops and still so many dead. Mind boggling. Still, I can’t help but wonder if we’d be having the same but different conversation if the cops had acted and killed some children accidentally while trying to get the gunman?? Not saying what happened was right, just that gunmen, cops with guns and children just don’t mix. I know, Captain Obvious, I get it. Until the USA wakes up and admits their gun problem and really does something about it, I see these massacres happening over and over and over again.
376 cops who didn’t do anything, and teenagers able to buy weapons and ammunition suitable for massacre.
Neither of these particular “systemic” problems is due to “suspected undocumented migrants,” border policy, teachers and school officials not running the place like a prison, or whomever else cops or advocates of unregulated guns want to implicate.
Not until you disarm the police and pull back ALL the 1033 gear.
They prioritized officer safety above all else, end stop. That is where the culture failed. The other failures cascaded from there.
The first man on site should have pressed an assault, come what may. They were obligated to subordinate his personal interests to the success of the mission. Instead, they ran away, because they were scared of being injured.
It was pathetic, craven cowardice of the highest order.
I know it’s easy to say such things typing on a keyboard from the safety of an air conditioned office….but the police themselves have for decades promoted a narrative of the Proud Warrior Cop, armed to the teeth and trained in military tactics. Their own propaganda leads me to this conclusion.
The circumstances demanded personal sacrifice, and none was to be had.
We can blame “systemic failures” and “failed institutions” and “chain of command” all we want. But when it comes to brass tacks, each of these men made the active, conscious, personal decision to prioritize their individual personal safety over their mission.
I bring to mind a telling anecdote from the Battle of Rasibon. Quoted from Wikipedia:
“Lannes’ men could not bring themselves to advance into the maelstrom a fourth time and so, exasperated, Lannes grabbed a scaling ladder and renewed his appeal. Then, amid an embarrassed silence, he angrily shouted: “I will let you see that I was a grenadier before I was a marshal and still am one.” He took the ladder and moved forwards…
There were no Marshall Lannes in Ulvalde that day, and I fear there are few among the entire institution of Policing in the United States. I fear placing blame on “systemic failure” will allow the the individuals off the hook.
Or Henry the V, “once more unto the breach dear friends, once more…”
Cops are definitely taught to consider their own safety first, despite their PR machines telling us otherwise. I have seen police training videos (worked at a college – Canadian- that had a policing preparatory program) – keep your distance, under no circumstances let anyone close enough to disarm you and everyone is a potential threat and should be treated accordingly.
That video of the Scottish policing conference attended by American cops posted here or Water Cooler recently was ‘clarifying’. The American police chiefs can’t begin to imagine how to change their training from ‘everyone is a perp’ to figuring out how to help fellow citizens.
“and trained in military tactics”
Something that has been shown again and again that is completely unsuitable for policing.
Never mind that said training may well be nothing more than weekend classes, making these people perhaps the epitome of weekend warriors…
Maybe real military training would help twitchy cops be more calm.
Dude is very much what a cop should be.
There’s 376 yellow cops in Texas over in Uvalde
Nobody did anything for over an hour, you see
Moms & dads cried when apathy broke their heart
There’s 19 little kids who sadly did depart
It isn’t the biggest mass murder that Texas ever knew
26 were gunned down in Sutherland Springs, some in pews
You may talk about this or that horrific tragedy
But the yellow cops of Texas were a sorry sight to see
If one decides to start the ethanol inhalation practice, I would strongly recommend sticking to packaged alcohol of 80 proof or less. Please do not heat the alcohol separately or even heat the water dilution and alcohol together. Probably nothing bad would happen, but that’s almost boiling alcohol so it will be vaporizing fast and the Lower Explosive Limit is only 3.3%. (If you absolutely must directly heat the alcohol water mixture, do it on an electric or induction stove.) Room temperature alcohol with just boiling water should get the 1:1 mixture to the recommended temperatures.
If you’re the type who wants to “do it right” and demand using 151, 195 or reagent grade ethanol, then do the math to get a total dilution of ethanol equal to the 80 proof and 1:1.
Is the benefit of a hot toddy alcohol sterilization of the respiratory tract as much as the soothing honey?
Tell me about it. To this flyover observer obesity is becoming a rather amazing epidemic. One hates to be glib about a genuine health crisis, but perhaps our US society is telling the working class to forget about the work but please continue to consume.
I’ve said it before here… not so long ago, I watched the Woodstock documentary and I couldn’t get over how ‘skinny’ the kids in the crowd were. Things really have changed since then. It is amazing to me how accustomed we have all become to seeing obesity or being obese, whether slightly or grossly. It looks normal until something indicates that it’s not. I have a friend whose daughter has participated in dance, ballet, since she was a toddler. Seeing photos of her and her friends now at 16 yrs of age is like looking at a beautiful alien being amongst a bunch of chubby human teens. If she photoshopped into some Woodstock images, I wouldn’t be able to pick her out the crowd.
Incidentally, ballet as the world has known it now seems to be on the verge of being cancelled as white supremacist and this-ist and that-ist, and so on and so forth.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ballet+white+supremacy+chloe+angyal&ia=web
I find myself pondering if it could be down to a shift in diet.
Some quick checking, and it seems the “TV dinner” was introduced in the late 50s.
But those early ones needed a 20 minute heating in the oven.
Only in the 1980s did the microwave meal come about.
And as i understand it, these meals usually have quite a bit of salt added in order to maintain consistency (salt lowers the freezing temp of water, and thus reduce the creation of ice crystals etc).
Some years back i also heard about at least one family that basically sustained themselves on fast food takeaways, this in order to fit the parental commutes into the daily schedule.
I spent a month over in Norway and saw only one really overweight woman, but not up to Wallmart shopper standards. Amazing to see healthy slim active people everywhere. They don’t feed you like a pig either.
A couple of years ago, I parked my car 200 feet from the entrance of a Wal*Mart, and what unfolded in the adjacent parking space was about 682 pounds on the hoof both marbled just so-each around 30 years old, arguing over who got to use the electric mobility scooter for seniors that was within their grasp, er about 20 feet away.
In the end she won out and he had to go the distance on foot…
Yet if you ask a local about food they will call it boring and expensive.
In particular if they recently took a vacation abroad…
Can’t possibly be linked to all the Glyphosate (Roundup and Roundup-Ready seeds) used by Big Ag. Right? right?? …
Can’t possibly be the the use of cheap, high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) in place of more expensive cane sugar – cane sugar which is better for your appetite satiation signaling. (Not that any sugar is good for you.)
Big Food can’t be part of the problem. right?
Flora, no doubt there are many causes and disregard for us mopes and focus on profits over all else top the list/cause the rest but I for one remain shocked at the difference in the average human physique in 50ish years.
But those factors have been around for a long time. I’d argue the current, extreme obesity trend is something new.
We used to “work” for a living…meaning expending calories physically.
Not many calories burned in an office at the computer.
And if you’re not in the top 10% of earners, there’s no organic-veggie-eating, exercising-in-my-at-home-gym, plenty-of-time to cook healthy meals. It’s eat, collapse in front of distraction, go to bed, do it again.
It’s eat crapville, any day, every day.
The “Computer chips face toilet paper hoarding moment as shortage turns to glut” is sloppy journalism. As Wolf Richter likes to point out, computer chips aren’t interchangeable. The kind of chip used to control a fuel injection system in a car are not the same thing that NVIDIA uses in a GPU rig, and they aren’t the same thing used to connect your smartphone to the cell tower. It’s not much use to look at the SOX index and extrapolate to an automaker’s supply chain because many of the most notable shortages have been in old, low-margin products.
It was a sloppy article indeed and it did not address the specialized computer chips that automobile use.
Submitting the attached video clip, whereby a Biden energy policy official is discussing the recent SA and middle east trip by the POTUS.
Feel welcome to submit your very own thoughts, but I’d like a bit of what he is smoking.
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/07/18/presidential-energy-adviser-amos-hochstein-breaks-down-bidens-saudi-trip.html
He’s just spewing the same BS the administration is (of course, because that’s the pre-determined talking points). That’s all they have; BS, and lot’s of it.
The conversation about the guy that was killed was about what I would expect; yes, Biden brought it up, and told him yada, yada, yada, but we can’t say what MBS said in return. Of course you can’t, because it’s probably just more BS.
And the fist bump; sounds exactly like my PMC friends – nothing to see here, move along. And besides, with COVID, this is a good approach to be safe. OK, guzzle some more cool-aid.
There is a picture someone photo shopped with these people and Biden holding a gas can. That fits perfectly. Too bad they told him to pound sand. The price of crude today is up over 4% and now back over $100 a bbl.
I have come to the conclusion; if you want to know the truth, whatever the administrations is selling (eaten up by the PMC and regurgitated) believe the opposite. Kind of like the MSM.
And one more while I think about it; it is quite entertaining to watch the PMC twist their brains into pretzels defending all things Biden to the point it has to be painful, but they go on, and on, and on… Of course, when there is no denying or excuses to be made, they use the age old, worn out, trump card (pun intended), “but Trump!”
As is often quoted here, we are no longer consuming the steaming piles they give us. And let’s face us, each day just brings a fresh helping of the steaming pile.
Just today, and it’s quite possibly already covered herein – the Pelosi husband’s trading arm is acting independent of the Speaker. yeah, nothing to see here on the future of the CHIPS ACT. Move along, nothing to see.
Yea, Paul makes Jesse Livermore look like a piker, yet nothing anywhere about that.
Another thing that I just don’t get; when did so many on the left decide to join PNAC and worship at the turret of Bill Kristol? They are just salivating over this war. They want more weapons, more NATO involvement, and some even calling for “tactical” nukes. At some point, someone better snuff this out or things could get really ugly. It truly worries me the contempt and outright rage shown by some.
Makes me wonder what they would think if they weren’t still in total belief of Russiagate and half the congress being controlled by the Kremlin (and yes, some do believe that).
Scary times.
I don’t think those are leftists you see. The “mainstream” or “centrist” Democrats are actually pretty right wing. It’s just that the Overton Window has been moved so far since 2016. I guess some of them self-identify as left wing, though, which is a corruption of the language.
Fauci says he plans to retire by end of Biden’s current term
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/politics/anthony-fauci-retirement-plans/index.html
How about today?
Jeeze… announcing that you plan to retire by 2025?.. whats the point of such an announcement
Maybe he’s hoping the questions coming at him for the past year will ease off for a while. Old guy, almost out the door, says he’s retiring, cut him some slack, don’t demand he resign, etc. Except, if that was the reason for the announcement, I don’t think it will work to stop the growing interest in what he knew/knows and when he knew it. My 2 cents.
By 2025 he’d have cashed in on all his pharma stocks.
the Brad Delong article is a attempt at back sliding and pointing the blame cannons at others. he spoke like the market made us do it. that of course is neo-liberalism. to try to deflect what the bill clinton administration and Barack Obama administration did to americans and the world, is at best, totally dishonest.
their names should be dragged through the mud through out all of american history. no one made them do it, they were feverish believers, and the last jab at its all Trumps fault, is what Robert Reich tried to pull.
when people are so distraught and radicalized by really bad policies, Trump types win every time.
the german people by a wide margin did not embrace Hitler, it was the left and the center that made his rise inevitable.
thank god Trump saved us from the TPP!
he didn’t mention once lobbyists, think tanks, corporate (or their owners’) endowments, the Powell Memo, the Chamber of Commerce nor any other of the various forces that “forced the hand” of everyone and “made Clinton/Obama” come to the “right” decision about things.
so yeah, sounds like these things just magically came about because “social democracy” (is that really what we had here? i don’t think so. maybe in Europe) was “failing”.
really out of the loop. the things just happen because they’re inevitable. i’m going to remember that name and avoid wasting time on his writings from now on.
he sounds like another person who would take absolutely for granted that “communism doesn’t work. it’s been shown not to.”
try as they might, the clintonites simply are having a hard time erasing history:)
https://jacobin.com/2022/07/new-democrats-blue-centrist-clintonism-welfare-reform
How the Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market
By
Maia Silber
In the 1990s, the New Democrats trusted corporations to do the right thing. The results were disastrous.
“One of Geismer’s most damning accounts of the Clinton administration’s failures comes in a chapter on its response to human rights campaigns to eradicate sweatshop labor conditions in the garment industry. The Clinton administration, she finds, left the regulation of the industry to the industry itself, allowing domestic manufacturers to evade federal lawsuits by conducting their own investigations of subcontractors’ labor conditions. Meanwhile, the administration’s Apparel Industry Partnership established an international code of conduct that was both voluntary and unenforceable. Unsurprisingly, garment manufacturing conditions remain abysmal in the United States and abroad.
If it seems absurd to charge companies with their own regulation, that’s because it is. But it’s only a logical extension of the belief, central to the thinking of so many New Democrats, that the government can convince employers to act in the interest of the common good. Lacking means to legally enforce desired regulations, the Progressives often relied on what they called “moral suasion” to compel landlords to lower rents and employers to improve working conditions.”
Delong is smart, erudite–and hopelessly bound to his class and party affiliations.
He is smart enough to understand that the globalist neoliberalism that he supported in the 90’s has gone all wrong, both at home and abroad. He realizes that the net results were kleptocracy, authoritarian surveillance, and belligerency.
But being a partisan, he can’t accept that his own heroes were largely to blame.
Being part of the PMC, who made good under the regime, his diagnosis comes without prescription. All he can manage is a faint half-hearted moan of, “Trump bad,” along with a circuitous, laughably tortured defense of the TPP.
Reading between the lines, he damns Clinton and Summers with faint praise, and pretty much admits that Obama and Geithner were unequal to their task (when Protean politicking is the best that can be said about a President in the midst of a depression, that’s not saying much.)
But why must we read between the lines? Probably because Delong is okay with everything. He’s not equal to the task or the times, either.
if someone like me could predict how the free trade economics fiasco’s would end, what does that say about the brain trusts of Delong, Reich, Clinton, Summers, Obama and Biden, etc. ?
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/critical-congestion-levels-sea-freight-050000145.html
‘Critical’ sea freight congestion keeps prices high
Louis Ashworth
Sun, July 17, 2022, 12:00 AM
“Every problem has a domino effect that reveals how vulnerable the system has become. Where distributed production systems were once a strength of the globalised system, they have become an albatross for many companies.”
I stopped reading DeLong about the time I stopped voting for Dem Rats.
Good James Li 51-49 video:
Covid Policy REVEALS Why Our Institutions Are Crumbling | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQuvEmDBnGk
Ha, better watch this one before they yank it.
Gawd … barely 4 minutes in …
“Hope” is not a strategy, but they communicated “hope” as fact.
Just as “breakthrough”, a term which used to describe a technical or theoretical advance, now describes the lived reality of a failed but theatrical rollout of an untested product.
“We included asymptomatic infections in the acute infection group (they could not have long COVID by definition) to avoid overestimating the prevalence of long COVID”
So now asymptomatic = acute for our immediate statistical purposes, whatever those may be?
Amazing what one can find reading past the abstract.
Disinfection of SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) in Human Respiratory Tract by Controlled Ethanol Vapor Inhalation combined with Asprin
The link didn’t lead directly to the paper for me and I couldn’t find it on the page.
I did find a link to the .pdf here:
https://www.longdom.org/open-access/disinfection-of-sarscov2-covid19-in-human-respiratory-tract-by-controlled-ethanol-vapor-inhalation-combined-with-asprin.pdf
Aha! They used a nebulizer!!
#TYVM
Oceania
I’ve tried to explain the physics and chemistry of battery-powered vehicles disfavor anything larger than Compact urban-oriented electric vehicles. An example is Decarbonization Threatens To Strip-Mine Ocean Seabeds
And where would most of those deep-ocean seabeds be?
Oceania
Where the US and Australia are in a losing race for economic presence and political influence with China.
Paging Peter Watts.
“The Pitchforks Aren’t Coming” Stephanie Kelton, The Lens
Did I read that correctly? Was the writer actually expecting pitchforks to come from the Democratic Party establishment?
#COVID19 #AlcoholVapors
Thanks so much for upping my comment, Lambert!
> … this approach, assuming the mechanism proposed to be sound, would seem to be risk-free, low-cost, self-administered, and of potentially great benefit. Big if true! In other words, exactly the sort of no-brainer the medical establishment wouldn’t look twice at.
Exactly this!
Thinking about reaching out to Professor Shiitake, and possibly Stephen Ziliak for advice on how to get more data and a proper study done.
In other news, I should be receiving my Betadine+Carageenan today! Thanks again for the Nasal Interventions post!
It would be great if simple effective ways to prevent and mitigate nasal COVID entry were literally right under our noses. Sadly, we can expect little or no help from the “you’re on your own” crew running things.
“The Anarchy by William Dalrymple review – the East India Company and corporate excess” Guardian
East India Company: A blueprint for the current alleged “rules based” order.
For that perfect Christmas toy – you too can buy a Mig-29 model (1:72nd scale) in the colours of the “Ghost of Kiev” and it is already on sale in America-
https://www.themodellingnews.com/2022/04/preview-real-grey-ghost-of-kyiv-appears.html
Why did the chicken cross the road in Kiev?
…to go to another press conference wearing the same stupid t-shirt