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
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Professional Bears Certify Equipment As Bearproof Cracked
You weren’t supposed to see that The Reformed Broker
Whistleblowers accuse EY of whitewashing suspicious trades at longstanding client FT
Opec oil production cuts bad for global economy, says Janet Yellen FT. Yves: “Oh, the US is fine with killing demand when the Fed and ECB do it, but not OPEC.”
Why Governments Go Off the Rails Foreign Policy. Case studies.
Climate
The Edge of Ice and Sea Orion
Lung Cancer in Nonsmokers? Study Identifies Air Pollution as a Trigger Inside Climate News
The ‘hurricane tax’: How Ian is pushing Florida’s home insurance market toward collapse Grist
#COVID19
As Omicron mutates wildly the virus shows first signs of convergent evolution New Atlas
Vaccines alone cannot slow the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 (preprint) medRxiv. From the Abstract: “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage worldwide, it is generally hypothesized that the next phase of the crisis will involve a widely-circulating disease with limited virulence. This belief, often articulated as “learning to live with COVID”, assumes that vaccines can be used to keep the fatality rate of COVID-19 infections in check even in the face of high levels of viral transmission. Over the past year, however, the rapid emergence of immuneevading viral variants of SARS-CoV-2 has cast a pall over this vision of the future.”
Few Americans get new covid booster shot ahead of projected winter surge WaPo
China?
The World According to Xi Jinping Foreign Affairs
A new model for Chinese growth FT. Commentary:
3/9
Specifically, it requires that China shift from a growth model in which households are structurally locked into transfers that subsidize government and businesses to one in which government and businesses are structurally locked into transfers that subsidize households.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) October 9, 2022
Global Impact: 20th party congress preparations enter final leg South China Morning Post
Tesla hits China sales record as Beijing praises Musk’s Taiwan proposal FT
Myanmar
Litmus test Asian Affairs
Syraqistan
Neom: Saudi Arabia sentences tribesmen to death for resisting displacement Middle East Eye
Dear Old Blighty
Brits are turning back to using cash due to cost of living crisis as Post Office reports record handling of £3.45bn in notes and coins in August Daily Mail. Thin on detail, however.
On John Lennon’s Birthday, a Few Words About War Matt Taibbi, TK News
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine military claims it shot down 41 of 75 missiles fired by Russia and Multiple explosions hit central Kyiv and other cities in wave of Russian attacks Guardian. As of this writing, from the Guardian live blog.
Donald Trump, antiwar spokesperson:
Trump on Ukraine: "We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in World War Three. And there will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn't have a clue… They don't understand the power of nuclear." pic.twitter.com/sCAqUVhQQl
— Phil Stewart (@phildstewart) October 9, 2022
Where’s the lie? Trump says the unsayable once again (unlike the Squad, Sanders, et al.).
* * * Investigative Committee: The terrorist attack on the Crimean Bridge was staged by the Ukrainian special services (translation) Aftershock News (original). Yandex will do what Google will not….
Attacks Expose Vulnerability of European Infrastructure Der Spiegel. Finding the real killer….
Patrick Lawrence: Sins of Silence ScheerPost
* * * Zelensky: Russian officials starting to ‘prepare their society’ for use of nuclear weapons The Hill. From Mr. Pre-emptive Strike himself.
A Good And Righteous Proxy War Wouldn’t Need Such Cartoonish PR Caitlin’s Newsletter
The Origins of the Ukraine War Policy Tensor
Lula Vote Was Hit By Unexpected Abstentions. Are Bannon Tactics In Play? BrasilWire
Biden Administration
A New National Security Strategery is Coming! The Liberal Patriot
Trump’s shadiness doesn’t mean it was OK to give Hunter Biden a pass NBC
Activists Acquitted In Trial For Taking Piglets From Smithfield Foods The Intercept (Furzy Mouse). It seems Trumka was right about jury trials, though Smithfield will certainly appeal.
Democrats en Déshabillé
Why Nancy Pelosi Sabotaged Wildly Popular Bipartisan Legislation Slate
Healthcare
Study suggests how measles depletes body’s immune memory Harvard Gazette
Everything but #MedicareForAll:
Medical students at the University of Minnesota must now take an oath to "honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine" and fight "white supremacy, colonialism, [and] the gender binary." pic.twitter.com/DSiQz9BUx8
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 9, 2022
Tech
Why The Internet Needs the Interplanetary File System IEEE Spectrum
The GIF Is on Its Deathbed The Atlantic
Police State Watch
665 FBI employees left agency after misconduct investigations: whistleblower disclosure The HIll
Inmate in Georgia’s maximum security prison accused of impersonating billionaires to steal millions Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Class Warfare
The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here’s how to fix it James K. Galbraith, Guardian
Our very own New Zealand:
Data confirm what many Montanans have already noticed. Lots more "rich" people live in Montana. Between 2019-2021, the number of MT HHs earning over $200K increased by nearly 12,000, a 63% increase. In percentage terms, massively more than any other state. pic.twitter.com/XqmdmQxAmb
— Bryce Ward (@bryceaward) October 8, 2022
(HH = Head of Household.) Yes, bunker contractors.
Neuroscientists Unravel the Mystery of Why You Can’t Tickle Yourself Wired
William Shatner: My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness’ (EXCLUSIVE) Variety
The Right to Leave Harpers
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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So on the “Brits are turning back to using cash due to cost of living crisis as Post Office reports record handling of £3.45bn in notes and coins in August” article….
The Guardian had an article about it in early August (and now has one from 2 hours ago).
From the latest article (10 October) you get this: “The company said personal cash withdrawals at its branches totalled £805m in August, up 0.5% compared with July, while personal cash deposits exceeded £1.4bn for the first time.”
From the 8 August article you get an idea of the jump in July: “The Post Office said its branches handled a record £801m in personal cash withdrawals last month – an increase of almost 8% on June, and up 20% on the July 2021 figure of £665m…In total, more than £3.3bn in cash was deposited and withdrawn at its 11,500 branches. The Post Office said this was the first time the monthly amount had exceeded £3.3bn in its 360-year history.”
So, it’s more that the cash withdrawals are still on-going / slightly going up. The big shocker was in July / August.
What’s all this talk about withdrawing money from the post office? It sounds fishy because we can’t do that in the USA.
Various national postal services also offered banking in the past, so it may be that UK has retained that.
Some part of that recent increase will be (i) the withdrawal of some note series as legal tender, forcing people to cash them at banks for new ones and (ii) people wanting some new series that have the Queen on, before Charlie Boy appears (or, after the Purple One, THAFKAPOW, the Heir Apparent formerly known as Prince of Wales, see TAFKAP passim).
It does not explain the summer jump.
I wonder if the cash in hand economy has returned….
The cash economy never left in my house…the last big purchase I made was for a sewing machine and I paid in cash. I like cash in my grubby little mitts…they are not taking it from me as long as it is legal tender…and when it isn’t…then we will be in a really big mess.
But, but, but how are people to be forced to adopt digital currency when at the first emergency they straight away go for the hard stuff?
Using ‘Divide and Rule’ as a template, we can see the lineaments of a society divided along overtly financial lines of cleavage. The banked and the unbanked is already a “thing” being based upon the financial ability to manage artificial fees imposed on the banking “experience.” Now make being ‘banked’ a necessity for participating in the commerce of the society; such as food, utilities, housing, transportation, etc. etc. and you have further divided the population. Now demonize the ‘unofficial’ “hard” cash economy and your campaign of actual ‘liquidation’ gains impetus towards that well known and dreaded slippery slope to H—.
Short form, digital currencies will be mandated as the only “officially acceptable” currencies. all else will be criminalized and suppressed. It really is a war.
Ukrainian telegram channels (the ones that still have internet access) are strongly disputing the claim that Ukrainian air defenses were as effective as the link suggests. The mass of video confirmation of strikes also puts paid to that percentage of success. In fact, the word on the street is that there were essentially no successes (but confirmation of misfires of defense systems are out there). At least some of them are starting to point out that all Zelensky had for the Ukrainian population was propaganda and is at fault for not preparing the people. He’s going to end up with the blame for the fallout. As much as many Ukrainians hate Russia, the wake up from propaganda into reality is going to be harsh and unpredictable, politically.
> Ukrainian telegram channels (the ones that still have internet access) are strongly disputing the claim that Ukrainian air defenses were as effective as the link suggests.
The word “claims” was in the headline. Given that any Ukrainian statement, at this point, should be taken as a claim, the explicitness underlines the dubiosity. At least, it did for me.
Ghost of Kiev 2.0, except this time, the PR is obviously a disconnect.
“Claims” sure does a lot of work in that headline, as you like to say from time to time, what with the Ukreichland’s well-established track record of feeding lies and misinformation to its own public and to the world.
It’s why I repeated “claim” in my opening sentence.
Military Summary quotes RF MoD as saying 47 of 202 missiles were intercepted. He opines that after the first round, the defenses were exhausted, and the interceptions stopped.
An s-300 battalion has 48 missiles, so actually, thats pretty bad ass performance.
Just thought about this in the shower and I take it back, I was assuming all 202 were fired at a single city. Normally you fire 2 SAMs per incoming target.
Multiple reports apparently confirm that offices of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU)–indisputably a military target- –suffered a direct missile hit(s).
On the other hand, Nato Sec. Gen. Stoltenberg has accused Russia of “ horrific and indiscriminate” missile attacks on civilian targets .
Now, about 40 minutes ago, Ukrainian police reported a total of 10 civilian deaths as a result of the waves of missile attacks (Guardian Live Blog).
Dozens of Russian missiles deliberately aimed at civilians, and only 10 civilian deaths? That can’t be right.
Stoltenberg assumed that the Russkies operate with the same wonton disregard for cities as NATO does. Given Ukreichland’s propensity to place military targets right next to and even inside civilian infrastructure, the civvie death toll, while tragic, is infinitely smaller than what the US and NATO would produce.
Wake me up when Russia bombs a wedding
Is NATO dumpling down on its strategy with its wonton disregard?
I am indiscriminate. Pierogi, pelmeni, gyoza, shu mai, wonton – I be dumpling them down with extreme appetite :)
Ouch! This is like ordering from General Franco’s Chinese Restaurant. One from Column One, one from Column Two, one from Column Three, one from Column Four and, Good Heavens, there’s a Column Five on this menu! It must be an inside job.
The guy is a blob puppet, and likely has been since his days in Norwegian politics.
Russia’s “SMO” is being reformulated as an anti-terrorist operation, whether the “SMO” title is ditched or not. The missile strikes on the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) exemplify that change.
Putin’s remarks at the recent Security Council meeting make that abundantly clear:
Pointing the Nord Stream finger at Ukraine.
Offering Biden an off ramp?
Of course the blob will view this as timidity, validating their “Putin’s going to blink first” priors.
‘¡Bienvenidos amigos!, may I start you with an endless supply of chips?’
Obviously this was an inspiration early in Bernanke’s career of doling out while he was a waiter @ a ‘Meskin restaurant, and in this day and age it is good enough for a Nobel prize in economics… congrats about conjuring up all those Benjamins, Benjamin.
The award shows the sorry state of affairs in the economic world.
My vote was for Dr. Hudson, not that anyone asked.
My favorite 5 minutes with Bernanke…
He’s as squirmy as can be when confronted by Alan Grayson…
Alan Grayson: “Which Foreigners Got the Fed’s $500,000,000,000?” Bernanke: “I Don’t Know.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0NYBTkE1yQ
As a special sign of the esteem in which the Committee holds him, Bernanke will be paid in Bitcoin. Perfect. An illusory reward for illusory accomplishments.
Seeing how the Nobel prize money is based upon the proceeds of the manufacture of explosives, giving some of that to someone who essentially “blew up” the West’s economy is fitting.
It wasn’t tight antics that made them load the lifeboats with as much lucre and then some for a precious few, as the good ship lollyprop founders on the shore of you ain’t seen nothing yet, inflation.
These are liquidity swaps. Foreign CBs needed dollars, and they get swapped back after a set number of days.
Grayson was upset that Bernanke didn’t know what the foreign CBs did with the money, but I”m not sure what the overall point is. Is he saying that Bernanke should have had control over the foreigners who get the money? Or that we swapped it in the first place?
FWIW, the SNB just took our their largest swap ($3.1 Billion) since the height of the pandemic. Not a good sign when a global money center is short on USD! Tracked here: https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/desk-operations/central-bank-liquidity-swap-operations
>”…congrats about conjuring up all those Benjamins, Benjamin.”
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022, which is what Bernanke was awarded, is not strictly a Nobel Prize as I’m sure the astute readers of NC are aware.
But who cares? The Nobels were completely discredited in 2009 when Obama got the Peace Prize. As some cynic wryly said, “That was like giving a Hollywood director an Oscar in the hope that he would make a good movie.”
It is as much a Nobel Prize as the Patriot Act is patriotic. Establishing the fake Nobel Prize in economics is one of the historical milestones heralding the beginning of the post-truth era.
>The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here’s how to fix it James K. Galbraith
All great proposals but the problem is not finding solutions, it’s finding the will; or if you like, translating the General Will (Rousseau) into public policy instead of it being subverted, perverted and highjacked by a very small and powerful minority.
In essence, in his subtly subversive manner, Galbraith is advocating revolution. Good for him. Is the long awaited inter elite power struggle about to break out into the light of day at last?
It NEEDS inequality and insecurity.
Re: What Is The Secret To COVID-19 ‘Super-Dodgers’?
Article advances two scientific theories with little support for either, but perhaps it’s as simple as “they stayed away from people, limited the time when they had to be around others, had adequate ventilation, and wore effective masks — and continue to do so”.
None of the doctors I know have had Covid, including two who treat cases in hospitals. It has to be a genetic mutation – can’t be precautions. Then anyone could do it.
I actually know quite a few people who continue to avoid Covid. Well-off people, generally. Weird how this mutation appears to map to regions and income levels and professions.
My workplace is almost devoid of masks, and always has been.
My wife and daughter came down with covid recently, and they were not particularly careful about masking in our small house.
I’ve been wondering why I haven’t caught the virus yet, and have started to think I’m one of the asymptomatic few.
Asymtomatic few? Asymptomatic many?
Not meaningful trustworthy data to look to, as far as I can tell..
The lack of rigor. It’s so American. Who says America doesn’t export!? Ideas!
I mean, the notion of rigged elections. Its Genius!
Elections and Covid policies… a couple of the many diverse instances where emulating and aspiring to All Things American may be akin to a dangerous false Idolatry.
Yes, I regretted that choice of words almost at once.
I’ve heard some very large estimates for that group, and we don’t know if they’re immune or just asymptomatic, or maybe there two different groups?
Seems being in-curious as to the real situation is a requirement to join the anti-pandemic team.
Yesterday I listened to Michael Osterholm’s most recent podcast, from September 29, and was struck by two things he said:
“And I was struck by the fact with all these world experts there on respiratory transmitted viruses, rarely did I see anyone with any kind of respiratory protection on board. And to them, most of them, the pandemic was over also. ”
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE????
And the street is two-way: you wear a mask to prevent others from getting the virus from you and you wear a mask to prevent yourself from getting the virus from someone else. (To say nothing about those who do not have symptoms and can still infect others.)
That portion of the podcast has stuck with me too since I heard it. People are going to be surprised when this December is just as devastating as the previous two Decembers.
Neither I nor my wife have gotten Covid, as far as we know.
We (mostly) stayed home thru 2020 until mid 2021, and then we resumed a slightly more normal routine, including dancing Tango with a small group of our trusted friends.
I have been going back to my office since about that same time.
We are both vaxxed, and have been wearing N95 masks in public buildings, at my office, and when we are dancing.
Anecdata: We have danced with some of our vaxxed Tango friends, then the next day there have been occasions when some have told us they tested positive for Covid.
We dance close – faces only inches apart, which strikes me as a good test for mask efficacy.
So far, there is strong evidence that nobody has gotten the virus while dancing masked, but that they got it somewhere else. Airplanes and restaurants, most likely. There have been at least three occasions where I’d spent time up close with someone who tested positive, and I have not gotten infected. Thus, the vax won’t prevent infection, but masks have, so far.
As others here have noted, I have also seen near total rejection of masks at my workplace.
Has anyone heard of any people who are anti-vax but pro-mask?
This strikes me as one possible cautious stance, but so far nearly all the people I know seem to be basing their actions on some kind of team sports instead.
I think such pro-mask vax-sceptics (I don’t want to use the more loaded term “anti-vaxxer”) exist in the NC commentariat.
I know one here in Alabama.
I fear that there is a conscious effort on the part of “Officialdom” to conflate two distinct and different points of view. First are the ‘classic’ “anti-vaxxers,” who apparently eschew any and all vaccines, for various reasons. Second are those who reject the mRNA “vaccines” because of serious reservations about the effectiveness and side effects of those particular bio-medical interventions.
So, one can be as I am; supportive of ‘old style’ “sterilizing” vaccines, such as small pox, chicken pox, rubella, etc. etc., and yet refuse to submit to inoculation with the mRNA “vaccines.”
It’s a big world out there with more than enough room for us all to live a somewhat civilized existence without complete subjugation to the dictates of what often appear to be clueless at best and malevolent at worst elites.
Stay safe! Think for yourself.
Moi aussi.
(long-time reader who doesn’t normally post, thank you nc for reminding me regularly that we’re not alone in thinking everything’s insane.)
we are fervent maskers who are unvaccinated. i am “vulnerable”, and we’re both quite sure that we’re not interested in covid. (we may have already had it, but we don’t know for sure.) we’re also uninterested in mrna vaccines for a variety of reasons. were novavax / sinovac available *and* were we given no other choice, we might consent,, but they aren’t, so we don’t need to worry about making the decision.
we mask with our n95s whenever we go out, which is rarely now; mercifully we work from home. we even mask when the postwoman knocks on the door to deliver a parcel.
i’m increasingly astonished at the number of people who have simply turned their backs on covid. an in-law who has been 3x vaccinated and had covid at least twice (after having been vaccinated) suddenly has a massive aneurysm on his heart. he’s 43 and will need open heart surgery; the doctors are attributing the aneurysm to covid or the vaccines or both. there are so many heart / brain / lung / circulatory things popping up where he lives that there’s now been a specialist clinic set up just to deal with them.
i sometimes feel like we’re alone in the world thinking that covid still exists / is dangerous. i sometimes wonder if we’re just being paranoid. and i absolutely know that some friends think we are: we’ve even lost two friends because we said we’d be masked when they visited for the afternoon during the summer. we didn’t ask them to mask, just “warned” them that we would be. they chose not to come, and we haven’t heard from them since. we hadn’t seen them for a year; i don’t think we’ll see them again.
but then i remember china, and i see the posts on nc. we’re not alone, although i’m thinking we might be when everyone else has died of covid complications. :-(
anyway yes: stay safe and sane people. it is definitely not over.
The article states that, “According to the CDC’s most recent study results, almost 60 percent of individuals in the U.S. possess these antibodies, meaning almost 60 percent of individuals have had the virus.”
If they base that claim on antibody tests, then it is invalid.
An IgG antibody test can be positive—from the vaccine—without the individual ever having had Covid.
“Opec oil production cuts bad for global economy, says Janet Yellen”
Even Bernie Sanders went on a rant about this development-
‘Bernie Sanders
@SenSanders
If Saudi Arabia, one of the worst violators of human rights in the world, wants to partner with Russia to jack up US gas prices, it can get Putin to defend its monarchy. We must pull all US troops out of Saudi Arabia, stop selling them weapons & end its price-fixing oil cartel.’
https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1578470719180001280
He might have been better listening to what the boys at The Duran were saying about the whole business. Even they were losing it at how ludicrous the whole situation is-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QqzzU5COI (17:36 mins)
Yves – “Oh, the US is fine with killing demand when the Fed and ECB do it, but not OPEC.”
So true. – It is sort of strange too because US Fracking needs the higher prices.
Per Rev Kev youtube link: In my general opinion, Prince MBS, Putin, Biden, Pelosi, et al.. aren’t exactly a collection of rocket scientists, and I guess we can add Janet Yellen into the mix.
Back when Bush W was interacting with Putin, I thought they were rather similar in hubris/outlook. I may be alone in this, but I am struck by how you can compare Bush’s blinkered vision getting into Iraq, and then bungling the much easier task at hand at least as badly as Russian bungling in Ukraine. And while I don’t at all condone the Russian attempt to dominate the Ukraine, we were at least as bad with what we were trying to do in Iraq.
Russia is removing an existential threat to the survival of the Russian nation. The reason why the US went into Iraq were for other reasons-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVkjsjjtGlA (5:29 mins) – swearing alert.
oil is the modern “grain” dole of the US public…
The Romans had to subsidize external suppliers of grain. The US could do it domestically, yes shale :)
This is off topic, but the point you made about the grain dole being like oil is true in a way that you may not have been implying. It stabilized the Roman economy. It wasn’t a socialist ploy to win popularity. It also only provided about half the needed calories. The wealthy loved it too, since they had hundreds of slaves to feed. Most of their slaves were redundant, displays of wealth. Luckily we’ve progressed past that, and our wealthy now use their excess unearned wealth to keep think tanks and NGO’s as retainers. Far more cost effective then “guy that retrieve my sandals in the morning”.
Russia is not trying to dominate Ukraine. Russia is simply trying to de-militarize and de-Nazify Ukraine. Russia aims to end US- and NATO-armed Ukraine’s 8 years of genocidal attacks on the residents of Donbas; to end Ukraine’s neo Nazi infestation; to ensure Zelensky’s desires for nuclear weapons and for Ukraine’s membership in NATO are never realized. If you studied the Cuban missile crisis in high school, perhaps you can understand some of this.
I thought this article offered an interesting perspective:
https://unherd.com/2022/10/how-turbo-wokism-broke-america/
Thanks for that article. I cannot speak to the vision of history the author lays out but I certainly recognize the authoritarian utility of the absurdities of the Wokel. One point that he doesn’t mention: there seems to be a reaction forming to the blanket condemnations of working people as racists and the exploitation of children for the profit of Big Pharma and certain “healthcare” provider organizations.
And I mean reaction. I noted recently that Matt Walsh is or was on a recent speaking tour regarding gender ideology and it’s various permutations. Kanye was just on Tucker Carlson talking about “white lives matter”. I think both of them will be running for some kind of office and they intend on riding the pendulum’s bob to the Right.
So identity politics works as a tool of authoritarianism in both directions. It enables the synthetic, liberal-progressive “Left” to enforce it’s ever so bizarre morality codes and cement it’s power in certain bailiwicks. Then, when parents have enough of their children being told they are inherently racist and having drag shows at their elementary schools, it inevitably swings to the Right. Bottom line: the Powers That Be are fortified.
Same shit that has been going on since Irish were pitted against Chinese and newly freed slaves to avoid them coming after the WASP getting rich off their toil.
That’s a really interesting point. Didn’t the Progressive movement have it’s roots in racism? I wonder what a comparison between the propaganda of today and back then would reveal…
I don’t know about the Progressive era, but here are some links about white nationalist “replacement” propaganda in the 1910’s an 20’s, comparable to today’s identity politics on the right.
https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1027556417983668226
One observation is that the early 20th century Progressives were right: the hegemony of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite was replaced by the 1950’s with increasing numbers of 2nd generation Immigrants of the Catholic or Jewish persuasion, despite the immigration restrictions.
I’m reading a book Lambert recommended “Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics”. In the 19th century the New York abolitionist and reform movements were incredibly anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. At one point they even tried (unsuccessfully) to reinstate property requirements for voting. “Reformers” vs actual people is a long old battle…
Progressivism had its roots in scientific management, a movement which, we have seen, has ample room for gratuitous classification and prejudice, and a taste for the consequent systemic violence whether on a hard or soft shell.
This Matthew Harwood AmCon piece from 2016 (oh so very still germane) draws the line back to the Puritans, which I appreciated. Ehrenreich’s PMC paper had some choice quotes from the protracted reformers as well.
KD,
thank you so very much, fine article, i hope its linked for tomorrow.
you simply cannot affect the future, if you ignore the past. its why any attempt at reform will be quashed as long as there are people that think past polices are good for americans.
they will meet this smack in their faces, as the article plainly states,
“One of the impediments to getting this legislation passed is expected to come from lobbyists and trade groups representing multi-national corporations in the U.S. that don’t want to see any restrictions placed on their ability to improve their bottom line from outsourcing – regardless of its impact on American workers or national security. (There’s a good reason these corporations are called “multi-national.”)
Other witnesses testifying at the hearing included:ITI’s members include some of the largest multi-national technology companies in the world, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Testimony from ITI’s Robert Strayer at yesterday’s hearing attempted to straddle the fence between sounding supportive of U.S. national security while cautioning curbs on technology companies’ ability to make profits in foreign countries.”
the article plainly states accurately that you can go backwards to go forward.
Sorry but that article is incoherent. It promotes the narrative that the wokists are winning when in fact the Democrats – the alleged party of wokists – are routinely getting their asses kicked.
Speaking of wokism, I just wanted to add a word about the modern U.S. university. The notion that wokists are in control of the modern college campus is just completely delusional. At best, wokists control a handful of the (relatively tiny and completely not-powerful) humanities and social science departments, and student government. Meanwhile, wokism is not relevant in any way to the vast majority of the economic enterprise of the modern university (which is almost all science-research funding driven) and is actively opposed (though often given lip service) by enormously more important campus communities – business schools in particular but also economics departments (B-school and econ professors typically make 2-3 times what other profs make), and the fundraising operation.
In short, the modern US university is a completely neoliberal enterprise. Wokism in this context serves two important, though minor, roles: it provides the (otherwise completely irrelevant) humanities and social sciences a fig leaf of relevance, though only enough power to ban the occasional campus speaker, certainly not to influence anything that would challenge the status quo; and it provides a suitable punching bag for anyone else interested in taking peoples’ eyes off what is really going on.
yet the policies of the past are not being touched or addressed. so its working as far as the beneficiary’s of said polices are concerned.
the bill clinton democrats could care less if they lose, you could see that when bill clinton refused to support the democrat house and senate, and i watched obama do the same thing. when he lost the house i seem to remember him saying now i can get things done, and happily invited the dim wit paul ryan to the table.
My take is not that “wokists” are winning, but that they function as useful idiots for the oligarchs, and create a distraction from asking reasonable questions of political economy. W.E.B. DuBois in his writings on “white privilege”–by which he was referring to a system of legal segregation, not invisible backpacks–gave whites a sense of entitlement to make up for getting shafted economically. I think “woke” serves a similar function for the PMC-types, while creating a way to prevent anything from getting done by diverting everything into some kind of procedural battle intended to signify “victimization” points. You look at how they destroyed Occupy Wall Street, and you can see why it gets elite backing.
Russia: Mobilizing the whole society
Russia experts such as Gilbert Doctorow have regularly turned to Russian political talk shows as “an invaluable source of information about the thinking…of social and political elites close to the Kremlin.”
“Evening with Vladimir Solovyov ” is one of the most important of those shows. I watched last night’s 2 ½ hour program to hear some reactions to the Crimea bridge attack, but while that was certainly discussed, the main theme of the evening was a much broader one: the need for the total mobilization of Russian society in support of the war effort.
As during the Great Patriotic War, it was argued, societal mobilization had to include mobilization of the Russian intelligentsia, the Russian cultural elite–tv/film/ theater directors, artists, musicians et al.– and most pointedly, Russian oligarchs. Everyone had to contribute. The inertia of the Russian people had to be overcome; the Bear had to wake up. And without a doubt, it will.
Makes sense and ought not to surprise us, I guess.
Wars tend to create internal solidarity if they genuinely are a response to a true threat and that is the case for Russia. The idea that seems popular in the west that a bunch of peacenik liberals are waiting in the wings to stage a popular revolution is one of the more fanciful aspects of the mass delusion we see here.
Waking up the bear is never a good idea. The childlike and senile western politicians know not what they do. Despite the propaganda, I do feel that most people in the US and Europe struggle to see what is happening as an existential threat. They “support” Ukraine the way one supports a football team. Other people do the playing, or in this case the fighting, suffering and the dying. No one told them that they may have to do that themselves as part of the deal.
Even the Ukrainian elite do not suffer and clearly do not choose to fight, as the recent exchanges over Andriy Melnyk (former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany who was super bellicose) and his son’s presence in Berlin rather than on the front line testifies. Not that I would want to fight either, but I am not pushing a war agenda.
That is also the tenet of ‘big Serge’s’ latest installment.
As they say of your nation, it is slow to the saddle but fast to ride. Western leaders had all the slow to the saddle time to address these issues and find a negotiated settlement. Instead they took being slow to the saddle for weakness. It was a grave mistake. Do you think there’s still time for the west to come to its senses?
Not as long as congress is stuffed with senile corpses thinking they are giving them pesky commies a black eye.
It’s a shame, really. If the country (and many others, I should stress) had brought such similar patriotic flag-waving sentiments to bear against a relentless and remorseless adversary just two-and-three-quarter years ago, hundreds of thousands of Russian lives could have been saved (and if we’d all done it, it would have been over in months and readers wouldn’t have to put up with my annoying posts on the subject). As it stands, they self-sabotaged with all the usual bullshit and Russia’s pandemic response was marginally less awful than USA’s. Did the panelists not consider that they have to Learn To Live With NATO?
(I don’t mean to single you out and sorry to change the subject on you Sibiryak – I value your contributions and all others from the region immensely – but hypocrisy can travel in all sorts of interesting vectors. It’s funny which crises we choose to mobilise for and get all patriotic-communitarian about, and which we don’t.)
It’s funny which crises we choose to mobilise for and get all patriotic-communitarian about, and which we don’t.
True enough. (And most of the time, it’s not a choice “we” make.)
Health and money is personal responsibilities, while wars are a collective threat.
Or at least that seems to be the underlying thinking.
“Zelensky: Russian officials starting to ‘prepare their society’ for use of nuclear weapons”
It’s not the Russians talking up nukes but Washington. I saw an example today from CBS where John Bolton was saying that if Russia used a nuke, then the US should assassinate Putin. Of course unsaid is the fact that to do so, the US would have to use nukes which for some reason he skips over. He does manage to mention Navalny when talking about a new government so that’s nice. It all seems to be a message to Russia that this could go to a nuclear war unless they get rid of Putin i.e. regime change and Bolton come right out and says that there can never be normal relations between Russia, Europe and the US while Putin is in power and its all his fault or something-
https://www.bitchute.com/video/TAZYQteMD9Zt/ (1:32 mins)
I have to say that *elensky making those claims is something that can be understood as he knows how badly Ukraine needs more direct West intervention (and he personally) to survive. It is something I can understand. But Biden or others in the West saying something similar is totally different. Hypocritical fear and war mongering by the West is dubious geo-strategically, deceptive on the populace and idiotic.
There is a weird reversal of roles here, methinks. Long ago, the big question about possible nuclear war was whether US would risk, say, New York being nuked for sake of (insert European city here). Z seems determined to make sure that events escalate to the point that US gets glassed as long as that means Moscow gets hit, too.
Neom: Saudi Arabian death sentences
As a demonstration of western corporate hypocrisy I wonder how many of the corporations and partnerships who left Russia this year have lucrative deals assisting in the development of mega cities such as Neom.
Will be interesting if the current US hissy fit over Saudi Arabia spills over into corporate type “sanctions”. For example, no western firms being allowed to sign consulting contracts. My guess is that too many influential people have good business going on there, in comparison with Russia, for that to happen. So the hissy fit may be restricted to removing specific military bases or equipment, as seems to be happening.
RE: The World According To Xi
But Not For Me, Gershwin and Gershwin. Popularized (maybe somewhere) by Pinky Winters (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9DTRTw6MA)
But Not For Xi
Marx was only a shibboleth
But not for Xi
It was all out of breath
This ideology
Yet with greed to lead the way
Was such a state of play
It came back for political expediency
You’d be a fool to think
It wouldn’t work out this way
Hi-ho, alas, and also lack-a-day
Some might have thought
We have China bought
But not for Xi
Very good, C. Rogersen. I’ve added your song to the Naked Capitalism Songbook.
If you have any others worthy of publication, please contact me at zelnickertaxservice [at] comcast [dot] net.
Stay safe.
Honored and flattered, thank you. Will stick that in my rolodex.
Clever handle, that.
Professional Bears Certify Equipment As Bearproof Cracked
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Saw my 8th black bear of the year yesterday on Hwy 198 in Three Rivers near the St Anthony’s Retreat sign, it was a brown model about 150 pounds and only a few feet from the road where 40 mph 4 wheeled chariots whiz by, and it had been tagged (not graffiti-an ear tag) signifying that it had been getting into trash and eating human food (bad boy bad boy, what you gonna do when they euthanize you?) and further offenses might mean curtains for the bruin, but in the bears defense it appears they are getting the double whammy of greatly reduced amounts of both water and food in the higher climes, so that’s why they’re on vacay in tiny town, livin’ la vida leftover burrito (you’d think people would be considerate enough to leave some hot sauce as well, but no) in a trash bin near you.
Our bin is bear-proofed as are about half of them in town, but that still leaves a lot of pick-a-nick baskets, and its still a few months before hibernation and the big sleep comes and they have to find a long-term rental in the tall timber up top.
Bear canisters are pretty much mandatory in Sequoia NP for backpackers, but they’re heavy (an extra 3 pounds) and take up a lot of space in your pack and can only hold about 5 days of food, typically.
The old school way to thwart thievery is what is called counter balancing or ‘bear bagging’ and the way you do it is to find a dead limb on a tree about 20-30 feet up that couldn’t support a bear’s weight should they attempt to climb up the tree and get your goodies. All you need is 50 feet of parachute cord that weighs 3 ounces instead of 3 pounds of deadweight, and said cord doubles as a laundry line when drying clothes after washing them in a creek, river or lake.
You attach a rock or small branch to the end of the cord and toss it over the limb-which might take a dozen attempts or maybe you’ll get it on the first toss, depending on how high the branch is and how much wine you’ve consumed, and then you tie a compression sack that your sleeping bag goes in, full of food on one end and hoist it up to the top of the limb and create a loop up high on the other end with another food bag of equal weight and toss it up as the higher one comes down. If you do it right, both bags will be around 10 feet above the ground hanging out.
I’ve done it hundreds of times and you never have the same set up, variety being the spice of life. Nor have I ever had my food pinched.
* the first shit of the year after hibernation resembles, well-a can of corn.
Perfectly cylindrical but sans pull top, from being backed up for oh so very long
if your stuff sack absorbs the odor of food does your sleeping back also eventually?
All the food pretty much is in ziplock bags or freeze dried packaged, so there isn’t any issue with scents really, and i’ve found that in the southern Sierra at least, that bears getting to your food in the backcountry is not really an issue, and bears are pretty afraid of us and anything related to us.
The manager of the Silver City Resort in Mineral King has a dachshund named Gus-all 9 1/2 inches tall and 2 feet long of barking terror, who has treed 2 bears this summer.
We briefly had a guy living in our travel trailer. He didn’t like the dinky fridge. He brought up a small fridge and put it outside for his over flow beer and such. When I saw this I asked if he was nuts or just wanted a pet bear. He just said he didn’t think there were any bears around. We live over the hill from you against the national forest. The very next day the refrigerator was on its side and the bear drank all the beer (bit the cans didn’t pull the tab) but I was most impressed to find the hot sauce completely consumed. The guy immediately moved back to Exeter.
I never use a bear canister but I have never seen a bear above 10,000 feet. I like the high country.
Yes, a bear can’t make a living above treeline, the pickings they are slim. You never see em’ up high.
Our issue is primarily short term vacation rentals and not all of them, but certainly some are to blame.
I keep seeing the same trash bins turned over with refuse scattered to and fro, and somebody has to clean up the mess-you’d think they’d get religion-these would be Hilton magnates leasing out their garage mahals.
My high school years were spent at a swanky prep school in Ojai, CA. (Thank you, Financial Aid Office.)There were school-wide camping trips in the spring and fall. My senior year, we went to the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the northwest corner of Yosemite. After doing the touristy thing in the Valley on day one, we headed up to Hetch Hetchy. After setting up base camp, I took a little exploratory jaunt, on my own. I came around a bend to see three bear cubs frolicing not 20 feet from me. I stopped dead, slowly checked behind me for Mama Bear, and retreated.
That night, we did the rope over the branch with two sacks of food routine. Around 3am, we were awoken by the noise, and then sight, of Mama and Papa Bear banging on the trunk of the tree. Our equally weighted sacks were not quite equal, and were slowly succumbing to the jostling, the heavier inching groundward. Much yelling and banging of pots, etc. ensued, which did drive them off before touchdown. The sacks were retrieved and redistributed, with much more attention to their weights. Thankfully, that was the extent of our Bear Adventures for that trip.
Is the antidote du jour of an angelic bear cub a metaphor for how the Russian bear has behaved up to now?
I suspect it is a less good metaphor for what may happen going forward.
It is a lovely picture.
Don’t forget the ‘via’ link to find the amazing story behind that bear and its sibling-
https://twitter.com/noeliachalfoun/status/1578843067087323136
Thank you for pointing out how this was a remarkable rescue story.
>>though Smithfield will certainly appeal.
What do you mean Smithfield will appeal? Wasn’t this a criminal trial? How could Smithfield do anything?
(To be clear: Smithfield was not on trial because we live in hell world where the good are punished and evil reigns. The activists were on trial. And they can’t appeal because they were acquitted of all charges so the process stops here.)
Huh? You can ALWAYS appeal a trial court decision. Does not mean you will get anywhere. This is basic rule of law stuff.
Appeals cannot contest finding of fact but they can contest the application of law, such as arguing the judge engaged in prejudicial rulings, gave bad instructions to the jury. I am assuming a jury trial. If this was a trial before the judge, the appeal can try to pick apart the judge’s decision.
Smithfield was not a party to the criminal charges. They have no basis for appealing anything. As for the State appealing a jury trial decision in a criminal case, that is not allowed in most States.
This is exactly what I meant, also wouldn’t any kind of “appeal” involve double jeopardy?
Maybe what people are thinking of here is that Smithfield will look for other victims to attack through law enforcement and the courts.
Sorry, missed the relationship of the parties.
Smithfield can file a civil case.
I had not planned on reading this article until the retired lawyer in me read these comments about the legal process. Well thank you, the article ended up being a gem. While these activists are engaged in a strategic program to develop/establish a legal defense for their activities, the litigation is also exposing some ugly behavior by FBI and prosecutors. They are being exposed as unabashed PR police for companies like Smithfield. They admitted to mobilizing an enormous amount of resources and engaging in an aggressive investigation and prosecution for crimes that amount to misdemeanors, all to defend Smithfield’s reputation. Yet one more example of how crooked and corrupted the FBI is.
At Consortium News:
World-Wide Backing as Parliament Encircled for Assange
And so Trump, whose DoJ brought the indictment against Assange (despite the abundance of his own faults, Obama did not), stands up and is right to demand an immediate move to negotiate for peace in Ukraine. That is how he won in 2016, he occasionally told the truth, though he generally seemed to forget about it shortly thereafter. What, I wonder, was the response of his supporters at that rally?
What will the response of the “hecklers” at the next rally be when he repeats his contention? If Trump continues along this path, I can see him running in 2024 as a Peace for America candidate. Throw in some domestic popularist policies and we can make that both Peace Abroad and Peace at Home, a winning combination.
Trump had better be very careful going forward. The “Gloves” are coming off.
Will the Globalist Great Reset include an American Regency?
Lung cancer in non smokers caused by fossil fuels. Get a grip. Go investigate geoengineering documented for years via soil sampling and visual striped skies. They are spraying particulate matter into our air column. Barium, Aluminum etc.
Hard to believe the media is capable of hiding this like all the rest of the realities out there but it is what it is.
Hmmmm
Nobody wants to believe it even when it’s in plane(sic) site. I have looked up at the sky on a beautiful blue and cloudless morning, next day I watch at the exact same time and the sky turns into to a pasty white veil after multiple planes mark the sky.
When I ask a neighbor for his explanation after pointing out that the commercial airplane routes, temperature, atmospheric conditions are the same for the two days, he says “oh it’s just the contrails from military jets.” After a while of similar responses, you become resigned and simply say to yourself, it is there for those who have eyes to see and a curiosity to dig deeper.
And yet, I’m assuming, you repudiate the science that supports AGW–the ultimate geo-engineering project. There’s so much that is out there to rail against without needing to get all tin-foily about matters which in the grand scheme of things amount to a small pile of dung.
Its a little under a month until the fade accompli by the Donkey Show and My Kevin (since ’07) speaks volume, looming large in a house divided against itself.
Kev’s an opportunistic dullard, a quite willing lap dog.
…who’s a good boy!
‘Our very own New Zealand’
The exodus to Montana has been slow and ongoing. I’m not surprised by it just wondering how they can afford it, since the migration seems to involve a lot of low income workers as well. I popped into my favorite butchery last week to pick up all of that weeks’ ham hocks* and there were no familiar faces, a whole new crew behind the counter. The guy cutting up meat full-time decided to go into the business for himself as a custom cutter for rich ranchers. The tall skinny gal waiting on customers had moved to Montana, and it has to be the second or third I’ve heard about just this fall. Rich people need other people to provide services, I guess. But where are the servants to live?
After southern Oregon (or what’s left of it) Montana was our second choice, but have you seen the real estate prices? I picked Bozeman because we like college towns:
https://www.zillow.com/bozeman-mt/
*We do most of our own meat and fish smoking in the fall, either because it tastes better generally or because I can’t find what I want at the grocery stores any more. Here’s a website I was scanning yesterday as I completed sausage batch #4. I suspect the reason is the influx of southerners to Colorado.
https://forum.sausagemaking.org
I think that it should be mentioned that Montana also shares a border with Canada. So perhaps at the back of the minds of the wealthy people going to Montana is that if things really go bad for them in the US of A, there is always the option of slipping over the border to Canada. And I found that ‘Montana shares 14 Canadian border crossings with British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan provinces along its 545 mile, 877 kilometer northern border’ so slipping across unnoticed would not be that hard either.
…those illionaires slipping up over would be Montana-nards?
I’m afraid that the song “I’m Living In My Own Private Montana” doesn’t scan as well as the original. Now, if it were “I’m Living In My Own Greater Idaho” it would have a chance. It could then also include MM’s brother up in the former Provinces.
‘Montana’ is a popular name for a posh RV, as it makes the occupants seem outdoorsy, damn it. Plus there is the name association-maybe you can’t afford a home in Montana, but you can time share there.
Almost always the high ticket RV’s have soothing monikers such as ‘Big Sky’ or ‘Wilderness’ and the like.
The toy haulers on the other hand always have aggressive names like ‘Scorpion’, ‘Raptor’ et al, funny that.
Me, I’ve always been partial to “Jeepster” ever since T-Rex made the scene.
See, when rock was fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPHKVWCxHtI
Is nobody here going to mention the Canyonero?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA (1:27 mins)
My brother farms five miles north of the Idaho-Canada border. He’s ready for any influx. He’s stocked up on bullion and bullets. “If the gold standard don’t work, the lead standard will.”
/Just kidding of course, but in every joke…
I guess it is no surprise that my Montana friends are now calling Bozeman Bozangeles.
Bozeangeles del Californeyyah Norte.
Actually, lotsa vehiggles from FL, TX, WA, NY, AK, CO. In short- everywhere. And they are not muti-panel-colored 20+ year old Montana-type cars. They are late model Tesla’s, Lambos, Portches, Range Rovers.
Workforce housing is a sh*tshow in Bozeman, many bidnesses are now limited hours by appointment, due to staffing issues. Including Clerk of Court and other County services.
It ain’t the great resignation, it is wages versus housing cost– exorbitant housing that cannot be acquired -rent or purchase- for the service sector wage base.
There are plenty of places being built… but none of it is workforce wage-based affordable.
Our last real property assessment cycle saw a proposed land value increase from $362K to $819K. I did get a BS in poli sci from Montana State, but even I can see that is some percentage increase! I know no locals who saw income jump commensurately…
The part I really resent and think is dangerously wrong-headed: our real property taxes are based on current market sales. Thus, oh, you are sitting on a gold mine, yada yada. Well, all I have if I chose to not sell, is debt service and ridiculous taxes. Until the sale is realized, the gain, tax consequence should not be assessed.
And good luck trying to get a real property transaction tax in the waxing Cristian Radical Right Montana legislature.
My two pennies crying into the vanishing wilderness
I really miss Montana. That’s the exodus statement…
we moved back to Montana from Bozeman to…. (Butte, Havre, Malta, Glendive, Lewistown…)
Where YOU gonna run? The shoulder shrugging conversation of the old-guard locals.
The same old-timers I overheard being derisively assessed by a big money lycra clad ‘breeder’ couple riding their bikes with their grade school aged son who was on the fanciest bike I have ever seen a kid have… (smart business, that..)
The Mom grouses about several of us having a nice conversation along the liner trail on a glorious autumn sunday,
“GOD! Those boomer wimmin and their dogs!!!”
So, breeders, boomers, and builders.
Bozeman:
Wreckreate
Procreate
Disintegrate
Welcome to Montana. Now Leave.
Man nowadays you get in a fight at the Crystal and they actually call the cops.
Lol.
Depending on the time of day, the cops are already there. (Unless there is a doughnut shop nearby.)
Car 54 where are you?
Maybe an update to Zappa’s Montana is in order
https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/frank-zappa/montana
Bozeman? Hate to say it but you missed moving to Montana by 20 years or 100 miles depending on how you score it.
We’re in a still relatively untouched part of the state, but the past couple years has finally seen an influx of Californians and Seattlites. Even in our little town (population 200) We had some westcoasters show up this past year. But on paper our public school is in the top 5 in the state and the average class size is 10 students so it’s appealing to some.
But given the FEMA fall out maps if a nuke gets used in the Ukraine, we’re on a 12 hour drive headed to the aforementioned central Oregon coast. As long as diesel’s available in Missoula when we get there we can make Lincoln City on the tank and what we have in cans.
He who panics 1st sometimes panics best.
Also should have added I feel your pain on the pig’s feet. I ordered a free range hog and had it sent to a shop in Billings. When we went over the cut selection I told them to make sure the save the heads so I could make scrapple. At that point they informed me that they already discarded the head because people usually don’t want them and they take up lots of space.
I also blame this on the influx of outta staters ordering custom meats. Don’t they know you eat everything but the squeal?
T’was but a 25 year old dream now… I looked at Butte too for comparison. Butte seems to have an inventory of affordable fixer-uppers, but we’re too old to be taking on teardowns; the fixer-uppers look like money pits at a time when we’ll be looking to get shed of the work of a large single family home.
We’re interested in the area between Bandon and Brookings, maybe inland between Roseburg and Grants Pass. But I knew a homeless woman who seemed to get around the West a great deal — with her belongings piled on her bike — always moving then returning here, who said that the population of Roseburg and Medford had exploded since she had been there last. And of course, there are the wildfires.
Lincoln City is also lovely. I like the beaches there.
Out on the Colorado roads for the first time in years I saw more Texas license plates than I’d seen anywhere outside Texas itself. Also Arizona, Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma, California, and New Mexico, but especially Texas. I started to long for a sighting of a Colorado plate. Half the campers in the parks where we camped were from Texas… not that I can blame them for leaving. I’d want to be here too. It’s just that the rush hours are getting longer and longer and the stores are packed now. I’m thinking about grocery shopping first thing in the morning just for the luxury of being able to stand still and read a label without someone clearing their throat at me.
You weren’t supposed to see that The Reformed Broker
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a weird past coupla years, in theory it should have been a ‘buns in gutter’ economy, but nope-everything went up in value including the shocker of used cars-ye gads!
I was talking to a couple of Angelenos up in Mineral King the other day and they brought up the homeless issue that was rampant in the City of Angles, and I mentioned how i’d seen people with a net worth of $10 living hundreds of feet away from neighbors whose home is worth on average a cool million clams.
Its tantamount to nadir hanging out with zenith, to the universe and beyond!
The second post, You Weren’t Supposed to See That, is well worth a read.
Agreed. Well worth a read. I wonder if it’s true.
Could that be what biden’s open borders are about? The country “needs” more losers?
> everyone
I haven’t seen fewer tents in the park by my grocery store.
…intensities in tent cities in ten cities
The decimation of America.
++++++++++
at first I meant 10 plus signs but they look like crosses
40 acres and a mule has been whittled down to 3.5′ x 8′ x 6′, headstone optional.
Today, “Hubris” means that one believes that they are in control of the Great Reset Process. “Nemesis” as is usual, takes many, often unexpected guises.
I wonder…
We’ve had pretty full employment with rising wages before for an extended period, e.g the 50’s. And in spite of Vietnam, the 60’s, though that, with the moonshot, did finally start inflation that accelerated when opec embargoed oil.
And high taxes then that prevented inequality, and strong unions that meant that a union worker could buy a house and put his kids thru college.
Reagan/thatcher changed things, banks took over. Friedman was the new oracle, greed is good. Corps shouldn’t invest for future profits, they should buy back stock for bonuses. Us is hollowed out.
It’s not Harper’s, it’s Lapham’s Quarterly.
Was going to point out the same. Lapham was for so long associated with Harper’s that it was any easy mistake.
He is missed there IMO. Woke bs and way too many PMC voices.
Re Trump as peacemaker–IMO this is very smart in the same way taking on the neocons in 2016 was smart. Of course he may not be sincere (he wasn’t in 2016) but there’s no chance he’ll be negotiating a peace anyway. The lunacy of this administration and the rest of the establishment is begging to be punctured.
My guess is he really doesn’t want ww3. He nearly got us into the war with Iran that israel and the Nevada donor wanted but backed off.
And imo he was ready to deal with russ until deep went after him so hard. Plus he made bad appointments.
Imo this will be over long before 2024. And the pivot to Taiwan…
Military also doesn’t want ww3. Maybe things will calm down in dc after midterms, esp if reps take house. Lots of things reps anxious to investigate.
Ben, the Nobel committee need look no more
They found what they were looking for
With an economist to call their own
With the other 2 American winners, you’ll never be alone
And you my friend will see
You’ve got a friend indeed
(You’ve got a friend indeed)
Ben, you were always pimping money here and there
(Here and there)
You feel you’re not needed anywhere
(Anywhere)
If you ever look behind
And don’t like what history will find
There’s something you should know
You’ve got a place to go in Oslo
(You’ve got a place to go in Oslo)
I used to say all that money conjuring would ruin we
Now it’s time for the award speech, see
I used to say all that money conjuring would ruin we
Now it’s time for the award speech, see
Ben, most award committees would turn you away
(Turn you away)
I don’t listen to a word they say
(A word they say)
They don’t see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I’m sure they’d think again
If they had a friend like Ben
(A friend)
Like Ben
(Like Ben)
Like Ben
Ben, by Michael Jackson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7TTSzfs2kw
It’s really too bad that he went all-in with the religious right otherwise I could see a lot more people voting for him.
Silos being what they are, you will still see “…a lot more people voting for him [Trump].” Many people will look past the Evangelical Right ‘stumbling block’ when something that affects them directly is in play politically. “Politics makes strange bedfellows” is a truism for a reason.
Accepting the election results may have helped too. But he is opening up a small fissure in that “Total Ukraine support” so there’s hope that someone else in the GOP will watch the guy who won in 2016 and do the right thing. The pathway is lit, the roadway is known, will anyone venture down it?
I still think Trump missed his main chance to be elected for life, and that was during the ramp up for Covid. If he had announced in that crazy winter and spring he was “temporarily” instituting Medicare for All as an emergency response to Covid he would have won the 2020 election by miles.
Now we have the circumstance where the right wing is being accused of being Putin apologists for questioning our Ukraine support, and that for the moment is I think keeping an active anti war effort from rising, as logically the anti war base should be the left and liberals, but as this winter comes and the real disaster strikes in Ukraine and Europe then Trump as Peacemaker will look very very attractive, and maybe should….
I’m holding my breath.
The parties are reversing fields. Before trump spoke imo 15 rep senators voted against some ukr bills, not one dem did. Trump is following ground they trampled, but now taking the lead. Some are isolationists, this sentiment might be gaining… how many wars do we have to lose first? Ukr will be just one more, but bigger consequences, not least for eu but also ROW as new alliances accelerate.
Taibbi
We Carolinians sure know how to pick ’em. As I have mentioned I once sat on Strom Thurmond’s lap in the Capitol subway. I was six. Scarring.
FWIW, you’ve managed to recover just fine :)
Thanx. Of course the irony of it is that if Thurmond had had his way Lennon might still be alive.
Carolinian
obviously, even then your insightful discernment saw the man clearly…
I only got to sit on the lap of another phony when I was 6, and he’d make promises not usually kept.
At least you got your ‘phony.’ All I got at that age were some ephemeral rainbows.
When I was a toddler in Minneapolis ca 1950 (I am told), Hubert Humphrey, already a Senator, was campaigning for another national candidate and doing the sort of campaign stuff pols do, kissing babies and what have you. Humphrey was a fierce anti-communist, but I learned later, actually color blind, which had kept him out of WWII. Well, I was served up for the ritual. Had Humphrey not been color blind, he might have seen that I was something of a red. :-)
‘Medical students at the University of Minnesota must now take an oath to “honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine” and fight “white supremacy, colonialism, [and] the gender binary.”‘
This will not end well. Years ago I knew gays and lesbians but never particularly cared as I was not looking for a date with someone from either group. But then in the 90s they came up with the term LGBT which I thought a bit pretentious but whatever. And over time they added more latters and the latest is I think LGBTIQA+. So here is the thing. They kept on adding more letters to make the movement more inclusive but from what I have been seeing, it is working out the opposite.
At a recent UK Pride parade for example, you had lesbians banned from taking part in it. In fact, ‘Ever since the trans movement decided that lesbians who reject sleeping with trans women are somehow morally deficient, same-sex attracted women have been harassed, defamed and abused in the name of trans equality.’ So now lesbians get little push-back from straights but they are actively being isolated by what used to be called the gay community.
So the point of this ramble is that with that Doctor’s oath, that it could very easily be subverted so medical services will be given on the basis of not who need it medically but who is more worthy of treatment. You saw a hint of this recently when Kamala Harris was saying that Federal aid for hurricane victims would be given based on the type of community that needed it. So this generation of doctors will not be so much medical professionals but medical activists which will be a bad brew-
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-lesbians-no-longer-welcome-at-pride-
“Why Governments Go Off the Rails”
Look the author may be from Harvard but I think that he does not have a handle on the present situation and is too busy trying to follow the narrative to do a proper analysis. Like it or not, we live in the Era of Neoliberalism where big business want to call the shots and have governments follow their directives. And I think that a way how this has played itself out is how in most countries, it is the big financial players who have decided what they do not want is a strong leader that might oppose them but a weak, pliable one that will do their bidding. Examples? Does anybody really think that Biden is of Presidential character in his present condition? And did voters really choose Kamala too? How about Macron? Truss? You look across the board and most leaders seem remarkably weak if not even second-rate. So I would assume that financial forces behind the scenes are ensuring a batch of weak leaders who will not oppose what they want. But then you get a crisis and it is these same leaders that have the job to deal with it but nonetheless are all at sea with only a pathetic range of ideas how to cope.
RK
I agree. A couple of days ago, there was a post at NC about the last 4 or 5 presidents, and how they all instigated (or went along with – does it matter?) US foreign intervention. Party had nothing to do with it. I used to think democracy was only a simulacra in the US, but recent events have demonstrated clearly that all the “democracies” have nothing to do with the will of the people.
It is not only the leadership but the entire political class and the higher echelons of governmental bureaucracies that have been neutered. And when I say higher echelons of bureaucracies, I say from the first rung of management upwards.
And then you have the justice system…
If you think Heracles had a difficult job with Augias’s stables, the amount of manure accumulated in the networked oligarchic republics and constitutional monarchies masquerading as free meritocratic democracies is immensely greater and that changing the leadership would solve the problems, I have a bridge to sell you…
Re>Everything
This shit’s getting serious.
Phil Stewart
@phildstewart
Trump on Ukraine: “We must demand the immediate negotiation of a peaceful end to the war in Ukraine or we will end up in World War Three. And there will be nothing left of our planet — all because stupid people didn’t have a clue… They don’t understand the power of nuclear.”
======================================================
Plate tectonics. That is what this reminds me of. Slow movement of massive portions of the earth, than an earthquake.
The Donald has gone all in on being a peacenik – and as The Donald doesn’t do anything that The Donald thinks isn’t profitable for The Donald, I can only assume that The Donald, he understood that there was a deep and wide breech in the dems (remember that it was the dem “wall” that allowed Trump’s electoral victory) that would not contenance Hillary. The Donald now understands that support for Ukraine is nothing but an illusion, that there is no downside to being against the war, and nothing but upside. The illusion of Ukraine support, by the usual suspects (WP, NYT, MSM and social media) may be the earthquake that will make 2024 transformative.
As much as I hate to admit it, if Trump had gotten his second Presidential term I do not think that we would have had the present Ukrainian war. No profit in it.
Trump was an abominable showman, and yet I too relish that hot dog in a scintilla of if you can believe it, common sense.
We certainly could not have had a worse Covid response under a second Trump term than what we have from Biden et al.
Even if Trump did exactly as Biden has, the Blue tribe would have been so incensed about it, we would at least have had half the country religiously masking and ventilating and all that.
> As much as I hate to admit it, if Trump had gotten his second Presidential term I do not think that we would have had the present Ukrainian war. No profit in it.
I agree. And if Clinton had won in 2016, the war would have come four years earlier.
If Trump runs from jail as a peace candidate, all I can say is I’ll be here for it
I really think most folks don’t put enough credence into this. For all of his shortfallings, Trump knows nuclear war would be very bad for the real estate business. Hill and the bros think they can make a business out of it.
There is no question the Syrian no-fy zone would have been Ukraine 2016 only likely worse with US directly engaged. This is the rationale I used to vote for Trump in 2016. I have two kids that were draft-able ages and there is no way I was leaving that up to her whims.
notabanker
I agee. Name another politician even fractionaly as prominent as Trump who is now as unambigiously on the side of deescalation in Ukraine.
Trump is maneuvering the anti-Trumpists as being allies of Joe Biden and the war mongering dems, MSM, and status quo. The only question is, is when will peaceniks realize that the dems are now the war party? When will Americans realize that war makes us worse off???
I did not think there could ever be circumstances that could make me vote for Trump, but Trump trumps war (I will not charge Trump for that clever bumber sticker – he wouldn’t pay me anyway).
> When will Americans realize that war makes us worse off???
Counties with higher troop casualties went for Trump in 2016. I think they already know.
Dennis Perrin wrote ‘savage mules’ in the early 00s, about dem wars. Nobody listened then, they won’t now.
Only if we can destroy or caponize the institutions and relations that got us into this dangerous mess, and make it impossible for them to act against the common wealth and general will ever again. First thing, let’s take a long deprofessionalizing march through the entire media sphere, social and public.
Lyin’ Losin’ Generals are first on the chopping block. The house cleaning starts at The Pentagon.
So, just to keep the record straight on Trump’s “peacenik cred” while in office, which some in this commentariat seem to doubt, this is from 11/13/2020:
As I said in response the other day, Trump did not (and does not) have the knowledge, allies, or will to resist the National Security Establishment. Your example illustrates this. Not only did they simply ignore him when he made noises about withdrawal, they easily duped him into firing missiles at Syria over a fake gas attack (I think the Pentagon actually reduced the potential damage on that one). Further, I can’t think of three more despicable human beings this side of Dick Cheney than John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams. Anyone who would appoint these three (and there are numerous other examples) to key posts is either too clueless to challenge the War Machine or doesn’t care. His “peacenik cred” didn’t seem to extend to Iran, Venezuela, or the Palestinians. He accelerated the weapons to Ukraine conveyor belt, and I can’t believe he did much to slow down the growing CIA/NATO presence there. He may not have *wanted* war with Russia, and in that regard Hillary and the neolib/Democrat warmongers are much worse. But Trump would have to be *much* more evolved than he was the first time, and have powerful allies that don’t exist, to be able to reverse our course. He would have to have the skill to fight the entire bipartisan Establishment. If he were *really* committed, he could use his one talent – his skills as a demagogic pseudo-populist – to rally the people behind such an effort. But I just can’t see him doing that.
But Trump crushed Bolton. Trump used him, abused him, and tossed him aside. Then Trump issued his contemptuous tweet about Bolton and “World War Six.”
I don’t think it was “clueless” to put dangerous people like Bolton in a place where Trump could keep his thumb on them. As LBJ said about tents…
Trump has been the only post-Cold War US president who did not start or escalate a war. He is the only major US statesman to denounce the Iraq War. Trump was also instrumental in ending the US occupation of Afghanistan.
The question of peace and war is the most important thing in all of politics. Trump gets it right more often than any of his opponents.
Please. Trump did not “crush” Bolton. Bolton ran roughshod over foreign policy for the year and a half he was National Security Advisor. He sabotaged Trump’s positive initiatives toward N. Korea, made sure the Iran deal was destroyed, did a lot of other damage, and then left (I’m still not quite clear if he was fired). Of course Trump ripped him after he left, and of course Bolton returned the favor (with much better press). That was pretty much the story with everyone who left the Trump administration. “Clueless” is *way* too polite a term for someone appointing Bolton as National Security Advisor. Bolton is a ruthless, experienced neocon in-fighter. Trump was a novice in way over his head. The “keep your enemies close” defense makes no sense in this case. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only case. There were many. Who did he appoint as his Attorney General to fight the Russiagate onslaught? F**king *William Barr*, CIA cover-up man extraordinaire! The outcome was preordained. Trump was a minnow in a shark swamp.
You may be right that with regard to peace and war, Trump “gets it right more often than any of his opponents.” That is because literally *all* off his opponents are Establishment warmongers who are brainwashed, bribed, or blackmailed by the National Security State. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean Trump has the capacity to turn things around.
I would not argue Trump can turn anything around. I would simply argue that of all the choices, he is the one who hasn’t started any wars. That counts for a lot on my ledger. Needless death and suffering from bombs and shit, that’s my pet peeve.
Trumps big Nevada donor got him to the brink with Iran, but he backed down and called it off.
And just not being part of the dem war party would be a good place holder until the tectonic plates between east and west settle down.
Beyond Ukraine, he wouldn’t go to war over Taiwan.
Sure, it was a given we had the germ’ans on the run, the President said it was so over, but little had we understood the schvitzkreig tactics soon to be unmasked on the front lines right in front of our very noses as we let down our defense…
…stay tuned
Aftershock News (original). Yandex will do what Google will not….
Happy to report that Brave handles the translation as well.
This led to fears that Steve Bannon-style tactics might come into play on election day, where the voting process is deliberately delayed, and abstentions generated through long lines. Such tactics were evident in the 2020 United States election, where Bannon had campaigned for Donald Trump supporters
It might be pointed out that the dems played the same game…
My personal feeling on this matter is that the US speaking through jake sullivan “cautioned” bolsanaro against crying about the voting machines because the good ol’ US (we’re the good guys!) didn’t want to impugn the voting machines. The US will jump on any scale to support a right winger.
Jake sullivan and john bolton are basically on the same page in this regard.
This article reads like “Nader was the reason Bush won in 2000” because Lula was “entitled” to those votes just like Gore was and Aunt Lidia was in 2016. I waited in a 3-hour line in 2008 to vote in Maryland because I actually thought it mattered. I was wrong. Today, I can’t even decide if I want to fill in and mail my ballot back.
Those people who left didn’t care because it doesn’t matter which of these guys wins. Simple as that.
Remember. It is not their fault that you could not vote. The vanished poll stations, the uncounted ballots “lost,” disappearing registration lists, the rigged primaries, the mountain ranges of money dropped from out of town, city, county, and state never happened.
You’re just a loser, crackpot conspiracist working for the wrong party. The traitor, commie, racist rethugulan, dimocrat, Who Hates America!™️ Don’t believe your lying eyes. Believe in us, because would we lie? Just look at our honest eyes over the gleaming shark like teeth in our embalmed face.
Actually, I don’t believe that there is that much illegal shenanigans as the legal shenanigans mostly work. I do wonder when a municipality or even a whole state refuses to accept an official count. Another Wilmington coup? And both parties would have no one to blame, but themselves. But they will find another Russia.
“Data confirm what many Montanans have already noticed. Lots more “rich” people live in Montana. Between 2019-2021, the number of MT HHs earning over $200K increased by nearly 12,000, a 63% increase. In percentage terms, massively more than any other state.” pic.twitter.com/XqmdmQxAmb
Now do the data on the price increases of things there….
I came across this interesting article which compares P.K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly with our modern surveillance state. I’ve never read it myself but, being Dick, it’s no doubt as prescient as the author of this article relays. A drug-addled society surrounded by high tech spy-eyes produces what kind of human?
https://unherd.com/2022/08/welcome-to-philip-k-dicks-dystopia/?=refinnar
A man has filed a class action lawsuit against Texas Pete hot sauce after he learned the product isn’t actually made in Texas.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/makers-of-texas-pete-hot-sauce-face-lawsuit-over-product-being-made-in-north-carolina/ar-AA12LY5c?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=ff9305b09b0446e393800a0e793c1890
I can’t wait until he finds out about Texas Toast, Philadelphia cream cheese, and Neapolitan pizza.
We don’t really have much food named after anything, Denver omelettes notwithstanding.
When I was in Aussie in the 1980’s, you could order Chicken Maryland @ a restaurant. The claim was the leg & thigh resembled the shape of the state was an answer I got when I asked why that moniker for tucker?
Not to mention American Democracy.
er, they didn’t call it Chicken Baltimore
Next you’ll be telling us about the draft riots there during the Indochina Adventure. (Baltimore has form concerning political riots.)
Early days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1861
Later times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1968
Today?
Considering all of the peaceful protests against various and sundry wars and police actions on the part of the American “Forces of Law and Order” that have been ‘disappeared’ by our stalwart patriots in the Main Stream Media, it is about time for some “robust” and “kinetic” civil unrest to appear. It’s not hard to suppress pictures of marching crowds, it is an order of magnitude more difficult to suppress information about cities going up in flames.
Hard Times are coming. Alas, the innocent will suffer along with the wicked.
>”A man has filed a class action lawsuit against Texas Pete hot sauce after he learned the product isn’t actually made in Texas.”
Hold on here y’all! Was “Texas Pete” from Texas? The brand name seems to imply that and nothing about the product itself.
New York City! Next you’ll be telling us about the blandishments of “Texas Pete” Sriracha sauce.
Remind me not to play poker with you. You said that straight faced.
Stay safe up there!
~”inmate in Georgia steals millions…”
Congratulations Mr.Cofield! It’s nice to see the truly privileged being taken down.
More power to you brother!
I know, it’s clear that NC is trolling with that one.
i wish the utopians like James K. Galbraith would quite saying cheap imports are good for americans. if you have to give up your standard of living and technology and pay other peoples prices, plus the carnage done to the environment, imports become a debit, not a asset.
try to fix finance, taxes, regulations, privatization, jim crow laws, health care, safety net etc., most likely not, because free trade opened the world up to a world wide oligarchy.
there will be no reform that he advocates for because these were unleashed on americans from 1993 on wards.
“One of the impediments to getting this legislation passed is expected to come from lobbyists and trade groups representing multi-national corporations in the U.S. that don’t want to see any restrictions placed on their ability to improve their bottom line from outsourcing – regardless of its impact on American workers or national security. (There’s a good reason these corporations are called “multi-national.”)
Other witnesses testifying at the hearing included:ITI’s members include some of the largest multi-national technology companies in the world, including Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Testimony from ITI’s Robert Strayer at yesterday’s hearing attempted to straddle the fence between sounding supportive of U.S. national security while cautioning curbs on technology companies’ ability to make profits in foreign countries.”
try to fix anything that affects the bottom line will be quashed instantly by the very same people that bring Galbraiths so-called cheap imports that are good for americans.
the new deal went backwards Mr. Galbraith.
https://sports.yahoo.com/paypal-tells-users-fine-them-111951288.html
They still actually thought about it and had meetings. Does this give the heebies to people and platforms that use Paypal?
I think that this subject has made an appearance around here once or twice:
What Donald Trump Got Right About Voting Machines
https://whowhatwhy.org/deep-state/what-donald-trump-got-right-about-voting-machines/
Not surprisingly, Trump isn’t on the level here, considering he was a key driver in the crisis. Put Pompeo and Bolton in his administration, upped NATO training substantially, spiked Nord 2, etc.
And we can do better than William Colby Hudson Institute acolytes like Rufo.
RE: As Omicron mutates wildly the virus shows first signs of convergent evolution New Atlas
This is important IMO. It suggests that SARS CoV 2 has explored most of its possibilities when “searching” or evolving for increased pathogenicity (do not confuse that word, pathogenicity = ability to transmit causing disease which is a quantitative trait, with virulence, a qualitative one). And now is more frequently retracing to the comfort of previous mutations/variants. In fact, Omicron is the hell of an infectious variant probably without comparison to other known viruses and surpassing measles as pathogenicity champion.
The appearance of a new very different lineage cannot be ruled out but it is increasingly unlikely. I interpret this as a positive.
“The appearance of a new very different lineage cannot be ruled out but it is increasingly unlikely.”
I still say wait until there is more uptake of the new booster and then see what’s what.
It’s still all in the early stages.
This is a really compelling article and has a very clear and succinct explanation of the “original antigenic sin” concept:
An interesting posting from Peter Lee, that is not under paywall, concerning China, Pakistan, US, and its debt collector goon, IMF:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/debt-trapped-war-73083912
Ah, the man who wanted to solve the hurricane problem by dropping nuclear bombs on them knows where of he speaks.