Balloons detect mysterious sounds in the stratosphere below the human hearing limit. Scientists can’t explain. Business Insider
Saturn reclaims ‘moon king’ title with 62 newfound satellites, bringing total to 145 Space
Climate/Environment
Fire Risk in Canada’s Oil Heartland Surges Over Hot Weekend Bloomberg
‘We are a skeleton crew out here’: UCP cuts led to disastrous Alberta wildfire situation The Narwhal
GLOBAL CLIMATE REPORT: See the April 2023 Global Significant Climate Events Map and learn more about worldwide climate conditions: https://t.co/ngCtZ790X2 #StateOfClimate pic.twitter.com/t45uHz6m5b
— NOAA NCEI (@NOAANCEI) May 13, 2023
Water
California fights to save city, prison in peril from rising Tulare Lake floodwaters LA Times
#COVID-19
CDC just updated state pediatric death certificate counts
Great Infection is the period where over fifty million children were infected against their will with a BSL-3 vascular superpathogen — so that their parents got back to work pic.twitter.com/eZ2SEQgVON
— Gregory Travis. Make schools #DavosSafe (@greg_travis) May 13, 2023
Just days after retracting their statement that patients couldn’t ASK for provider masking—a violation of patient civil rights—now Mass General tells patients they MUST TRUST MassGen providers to DECIDE FOR THEM. Patronizing. Sorry, you lost trust.
Numbers to call:
— Yaneer Bar-Yam @yaneerbaryam@forall.social (@yaneerbaryam) May 13, 2023
Drug-resistant ringworm reported in US for first time; community spread likely Ars Technica
La belle France
Macron vs the French Workers – who is winning? The Left Berlin
India
Modi’s ruling BJP voted out in key Indian state of Karnataka Dawn
China?
Sullivan, top Chinese official meet to move ‘beyond’ spy balloon incident The Hill
Peace march held in Okinawa to call for removal of all U.S. bases The Asahi Shimbun
Unimportant Flying Objects
Hunt for suspected spy balloon as mystery object flies into Polish airspace The Independent
European Disunion
Poland criticises Hungary’s top general for “distorting WWII history” Notes From Poland
Hungary’s OTP Bank outraged that Ukraine listed it as international sponsor of war Daily News Hungary
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelensky, in private, plots bold attacks inside Russia, leak shows Washington Post. “…Ukraine’s leader has proposed going in a more audacious direction — occupying Russian villages to gain leverage over Moscow, bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary, a NATO member, and privately pining for long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia’s borders…”. An interestingly timed release from the Discord leaks. Not paywalled.
Zelensky receives assurances from Italian leaders ahead of meeting with Pope The Independent
***
Ukraine Uses 2 Storm Shadow Cruise Missiles, 1 US-Made Decoy Missile – LPR Sputnik
Russia ‘Shot Down’ Scores Of ‘Storm Shadow’ Cruise Missiles In Syria Using BUK & TOR Missile System – Military Expert The EurAsian Times
‘Moving forward’: Ukraine claims gains on Bakhmut front Al Jazeera
Russia Advance, 20 Bldngs Left; Ukr Flank Attacks, Storm Shadow Strikes; Egypt, S.Africa Defy US (video) Alexander Mercouris, YouTube.
According to Russian Sources today has been the Worst Day in Decades for the Russian Air Force with 2 Mi-8 Transport Helicopters, 1 Su-34 Fighter/Bomber, and 1 Su-35 Air-Defense Fighter being Shot Down over the Bryansk Region of Western Russia by what is claimed to have been… pic.twitter.com/bkStfvQCDf
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) May 13, 2023
***
They Are Propagandizing For Nazis But Won’t Tell You That Moon of Alabama
US Backs Effort to Document Ukraine Damages for Reparations Kyiv Post
Germany to send Ukraine €2.7 billion military aid package Deutsch Welle
***
China, Russia to accelerate grain corridor project Asia Times
Egypt ignored US requests to block Russian flights – media RT
US ambassador apologizes for remarks about South African arms supply to Russia: Foreign Ministry Anadolu Agency
Is Lukashenko dead? Intellinews
Erdoğan throws support behind Russia after Kılıçdaroğlu’s claim of interference in Turkish elections Duvar
Twitter Blocks Content In Turkey One Day Before National Election Forbes
Syraqistan
Gaza cease-fire agreement reached between Israel, Islamic Jihad Al Monitor
Pakistanis still unable to access social media after PTA lifts curbs on internet Dawn
South of the Border
Honduras will ‘soon’ launch trade talks with China as ties deepen Reuters
Biden Administration
Biden Is Letting Think Tanks and Dodgy Foreign Funders Get Cozy Again The New Republic
Hunter Biden Tried to Hide Foreign Business Deal from Wife, Emails Reveal Newsweek
You can’t make this up – Biden replaced the policy page on his website where he promised to cancel student debt with a page asking us to give him more money instead. pic.twitter.com/ct74MDlD63
— Holding Biden Accountable (From The Left) (@WaitingOnBiden) May 12, 2023
Secretary Mayorkas Remarks at a White House Press Briefing Ahead of the Lifting of the Title 42 Public Health Order DHS (Li). Mayorkas: “Since there are businesses around this country that are desperate for workers. There are desperate workers looking for jobs, desperate workers in foreign countries that are looking for jobs in the United States, where they can earn money lawfully and send much needed remittances back home.”
Mayorkas Runs U.S. Foreign Policy in the Western Hemisphere The American Conservative (Li)
2024
Ron DeSantis: The Fascist Weirdo Beast of Florida Politics Who Will Never Be President An Injustice!
GOP presidential candidate tells young Iowans US should raise voting age from 18 to 25 USA Today (Li)
GOP Clown Car
The Right’s Assault on Divorce Will Put More Women at Risk Vanity Fair (Kevin)
Police State Watch
Just to remind folks, the original Good Samaritan was not someone known for “stopping criminals.” He was known for selflessly giving aid to an ignored and badly wounded crime victim even though he, as a Samaritan, was a member of a distrusted and even despised group. https://t.co/SPdv2PoSsU
— Stephen Whitty (@StephenWhitty) May 13, 2023
Military-Style Drug War in Tenderloin Sparks Fears That More Drug Users Could Overdose San Francisco Public Press
Obama Legacy
Obama Urged Government Censorship Week Before DHS “Disinformation Governance Board” Launch Public
Can Michelle Obama’s Drinks for Kids Help Tackle Pediatric Obesity? MedPage Today
AI?
The Computers Are Coming For The Wrong Jobs Defector
Hackers Aim to Find Flaws in AI Insurance Journal
Screening Room
The IP Era’s Venture Capital Philosophy Has Poisoned Movies Paste
Imperial Collapse Watch
Defense Spending is Already Way Past $Trillion Andrew Cockburn, Spoils of War
The intoxication of war Chris Hedges, Salon
Supply Chain
As the trucker shortage deepens, some groups are trying to make it easier to become a driver Investigate Midwest
Class Warfare
NAACP urges Oakland teachers to end strike for children’s sake EdSource
Writers Guild Launches “Scab Tracker” Strike – LA Film Permits Down 51% – “Hit Squad” Formed to Shut Down More Production Payday Report
New Study Finds a High Minimum Wage Creates Jobs New York Magazine
The Bezzle
Tesla Recalls Virtually Every Car It Has Sold in China Caixin Global
Antidote du jour (via):
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The NAACP should be urging Oakland to accede to the striking teachers’ demands, for the “children’s sake.”
They show their true colors… follow the money?
The Oakland teachers are full of bullshite.
The district has already agreed to wage and benefit demand.
The teachers continue to strike for demands they call “Common Good”demands. They want, get this, reparations for Black students and they want houses for homeless students and their families.
Guess what?
Oakland school district can’t, won’t pay for that.
So the teachers are demanding what they KNOW they won’t get.
So really, they just want some time off and screw the kids and their families while they do that.
So tired of the greed and stupidity these jackasses try to hide under the guise of being performative activists.
Whoa. Do you have a link to any of those demands? That’s insane.
Insane, right? I really feel for Fiery Hunt, they’re definitely not just another angry right winger victimized by those big bad unions that control everything. When will the rest of us wake up and see what the all powerful left is doing with the reigns of power? /sarc
I’m an Oakland parent with a child in OUSD and can tell you that the teachers are striking without pay for a) better pay and b)for OUSD to follow through on moving towards goals the district has already committed to.
Here are agreements the district and unions reached last night relevant to the issues that have fiery hunt so hurt and aggrieved: Housing and Transportation; Community Schools Grant; Black Thriving; Community Schools ;School Closures
https://drive.google.com/drive/mobile/folders/1-TOPec6xXvwwksNcSSNyvOCDzW2sSmvF?usp=sharing
Here is the union info page on the strike:
https://sites.google.com/view/oeabargaining-2022-2023/home
No one is expecting the district to be able to solve every societal issue, just to use their position and power to work within the system towards the goals their board has already committed to.
Thanks for sharing those links to the goals and the files. There are some odd clauses in those contracts, like, why do they expire completely in June 2025?
I guess I can see both what you and Fiery Hunt said as true. On the one hand, that list of goals makes it seem as if OUSD is trying to become something like a city state with respect to its students and the students’ families. On the other hand, it appears that CA law that supports the Common Good framing gives them the ability to do this. I’m generally against schools and the state becoming everything to kids but I don’t live in CA and it does appear that’s what the citizens who voted for that language wanted.
Those articles also explain why the District really can’t agree to terms with the Union. Those goals would mean relinquishing a huge amount of control and adding massive new budget priorities. Even just the management of the fundraising for the reparations fund described in there would be a lot of work. And what would reparations even mean in this context? California wasn’t even part of the United States until after the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1847. It was never a territory. It became a state in 1850. Over what period of time are people in California claiming that they’re owed reparations? And who is doing the claiming? If anything we owe reparations to the Chinese and Japanese Americans who can trace some kind of connection to early California before we assist any other injured party.
Japanese Americans clearly have first dibs on reparations. These full US citizens had their property confiscated and their lives fully disrupted through internment after the attack on Pearl Harbor during WWII.
I wonder if anybody actually analyzed who personally profited from all those property confiscations? The records would all be there. And some of those properties would be worth a lot nowadays.
Hey mookie…
I’m your neighbor.
And I’m neither right-wing nor victimized by unions. My grandfather was a union man and I’ve supported them my entire life.
That said, Oakland teachers, like the city itself is an out and out grift.
Justify why the union is focused on reparations for only what? roughly 20 percent? of the entire student body.
Oh, that’s right…it’s not about the other 80% of students.
It’s purely a racist play by a small minority for all the non-work, grant money to “study” how to never improve a damn thing.
Progressives…never looking at the big picture, never fighting for everyone, always just getting theirs.
Their leadership sold Prop 22, to 1099 California’s most VULNERABLE at the worst possible time. Uninsured, no sick-pay, food/ drug assistance, rent-stablization, eviction protection, child support, overtime or unemployment; our LABOR loving former party forcing gig-serfs to work, infectious; with undiagnosed/ treated PASC damage. Now, they’re dying from preexisting comorbidity & poor lifestyle choices.
PS: just TRY to find BAR’s excellent reporting?
https://calmatters.org/politics/2020/09/california-naacp-president-helps-corporate-ballot-measure-campaigns/
I smell a headline rewrite, dear Winston. Tesla Virtuously Recalls Nearly All Cars Ever Sold in China. Out of the goodness of their dark souls. \sarc
That headline would appear to be a short seller’s nightmare scenario, for example if they have just closed their position out following the recent announcement of Musk actually hiring a CEO to run Twitter. Turn the Machines Back On!
It doesn’t make sense, either. What recall?
Ukraine Uses 2 Storm Shadow Cruise Missiles, 1 US-Made Decoy Missile – LPR Sputnik
Military Summary says Ukraine has/will get 800-1,000 Storm Shadow Cruise Missiles. With Russia having zero redlines and granting complete immunity to decision makers in Ukraine, things could get interesting. Russia better start deploying and ramping up whatever she has as air defense for these missiles.
I think that about 200 of them are in-theater right now with about several hundred more in the pipeline. But I note that in spite of all the targets that the Ukrainians could have chosen along the 1,000 kilometer long contact line, their first use of these missiles was against – wait for it – a civilian city. They just can’t help themselves.
Yes, also noticed it was a civilian target. But then, if you live in the “garden” not the “jungle” that Russia is part of, it’s totally ok to target civilians and wrong if you try and spot jungle civilians being targeted.
Everyone in The Garden knows that.
I would also point out The Duran is increasingly clearing it’s throat and questioning if Putin is wise in having zero redlines and that this could be inviting The West to escalate more and faster.
I believe the main “benefit” of that civilian target was that it was a factory not in use and far away from the front line, thus it had no air-defense at all.
As for the possible numbers, in 2017 UK invested £146 million for “midlife refurbishment” of the existing stock of Storm Shadows so that they would remain operational until the planned end of life in 2032. That is, refurbish the jet engine, update navigational computer, replace cabling, seals and gaskets. Basically everything but the payload. If that’s £500,000 per missile (unit price £2 million), UK has less than 300 of them.
“UK has less than 300 of them.”
Ah ha. There is something fishy going on here. If the number of “Storm Shadow” missiles available is about 300, then what are the rest of the 800-1000 missiles and where are they really coming from?
Secondly, who is ultimately doing the targeting and navigating for the missiles being used? (That’s almost a rhetorical question.)
So, I’d expect that the Russians are making lists of the rearward control and command centres that are ‘running’ these strikes. Eventually, a flight of Kinzhal missiles will descend upon those ‘Command Centres.’ Given the almost reckless disregard for international norms of behaviour shown by the West in this matter, Russia will probably deliver a decapitation strike against the NATO Command and Control troops in the near future. Keep an eye on the readiness stocks of the Russian Civil Defense organization.
We live in the Northern hemisphere. The proposed West vesus Russia nuclear winter will mainly affect the same Northern Hemisphere. No wonder so many Oligarchs are building “Emergency Sustainment Centres” in the Southern Hemisphere.
Stay safe. Practice your Mammoth hunting skills.
The “Storm Shadow” missile is produced by MBDA, which is a French-British-Italian corporation. Italy and France alone should have a total of about 900 of those missiles in their inventories.
This should give quite a lot of leeway for triangular deals (UK delivers missiles to Ukraine, which are replaced by stock from France and Italy, which reorder new ones from MBDA).
So, the lesson to Russia is that this a whole NATO move. The UK is just the ‘front’ for the others. This frees up a whole lot of previously reserved “military” targets in Europe for Russia’s “missileers.”.
I still say watch what happens in Kaliningrad. If Poland makes a move there, it’s “Game On.”
If I was a RAF pilot taking of from Akrotiri in Cyprus, I’d get very nervous when a Russian navy search radar pinged me from Tartus’ direction. “Mistakes” do happen in that part of world way too regularly.
so, what does a Mammoth mating call sound like? asking for a friend.
Like other members of the genus “elephantidae” Mammoths communicate their being prepared for mating, “musth,” through infrasound calls and a few other recognizable behaviours. Mammoth mating trumpets, being infrasound, are generally inaudible to humans. That’s why the small percentage of Terran humans who can detect infrasound are prized by the community and known as Mammoth Hearers. Mammoth Whisperers are another class entirely.
We should all be thankful that Mammmoths have not figured out the effect of 7Hz on Terran humans or we would all be s——g ourselves in fear.
The NIH is on the case: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/chem_background/exsumpdf/infrasound_508.pdf
As shown by the NIH paper, infrasound has a long and literally ‘storied’ history, going all the way back to Gavreau in the 1950s and the host of curiously lurid anecdotes concerning his research for the French scientific research organization.
Bon appetit!
And to me, any time Ukraine chooses to shell the civilians in Donbass, supposedly their own people, they implicitly validate the referendums of last year. So Ukraine wants the land, but not the Russian-speakers, nice.
“US Backs Effort to Document Ukraine Damages for Reparations”
I would guess that this register would be one that the US and the EU would use to justify keeping the Russian funds that they have confiscated. These would then be sent on to the Ukraine under the guise of repairing the damage caused by the war but there is little doubt that only part of that money would actually go to reconstruction. That is the problem with large sums of money – it’s sticky. And the more hands money passes through, the more of that money sticks to those hands.
That, and getting courts to approve the payout of various contract loopholes to US and EU companies should Ukraine fully fold.
They will probably streamline the process by just depositing the funds with Blackrock.
Ron DeSantis article, includes the statement he wants to make America like Florida. So, retirees and golf courses, orange groves and a big swampy enclave? Well, DC is literally a swamp after all so that makes a good start. Python snakes might be an improved species in comparison to what crawls and lurks around Washington.
DeSantis, Trump and Iowa activities are being discussed on weekly news this morning. The article does make a salient point, how the one key edge that Trump holds is charisma. Trump is a lightning rod of activity. DeSantis has a face that screams old school wrestling heel; and while I am not a Florida resident his governing style seems a bit, imperial and heavy handed. Like a miniature Palpatine, if you will.
DeSantis plays well with the DC crowd because he is a Jeb! type at the end of the day. His faux tough guy routine is too comical as his whiny voice squeaks demands. GOP voters (Team Blue types too) love a “tough guy”, but they can’t squeak.
In a way, DeSantis is a classic Disney villain.
Can you imagine DeSantis coming up against Robert F. Kennedy Jr?
https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1657142038620676096
Like Trump, he at least talks about the stuff that you aren’t supposed to talk about.
From the latest Gilbert Doctorow
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/05/14/italy-promises-full-support-for-ukraine/
Of course the problem is that when it comes to Trump saying and doing are completely different. Meanwhile the MSM are now doing everything in their power to suppress Trump’s saying.
But who can deny the sad decline of The Nation which was once at the forefront of the free speech fight? When rightwingers are the ones defending free speech then the world has truly been turned upside down.
Don’t forget the ACLU. Once they defended civil liberties. Pronouns don’t need defending.
Oh, that comment needed a beverage warning! Thank you for the giggle!
It can’t be un-imagined or un-heard ….
y’all seem to have better memories for details, but i recall one of Drumpf’s (sorry can’t write his name) press conferences toward the end of his term, and i believe the question was something about withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan and part of his retort was about defense manufacturers just want to sell their product – said to myself he ain’t getting reelected – i’d vote for RFK jr in a NY minute – y’all can slice and dice the details of the carnage, but the man succinctly told the realpolitik truth of the situation in Ukraine – don’t (family matters)ing care about his position on vaccines, some of which i agree, it’s irrelevant – i sure hope he makes it out of this alive – personally think JFK jr was taken care of too – he was too good looking and savvy and a definite threat without knowing it – but that’s just me –
Douglas Macgregor has recounted long form about how Trump went through all the steps procedure-wise for our troops to withdraw from Afghanistan in winter 2020-21. Macgregor points out that would have been a good time because tribal members leave the cities and decamp to rural areas around then, so there would have been easier to get the US forces out with little friction. The bureaucracy simple refused to comply.
Squeaky voiced candidates, take note…video clip from a Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show. I have to ponder, it seems Morgan Freeman was on board but reluctantly so.
https://youtu.be/FRKVQcbIByo
You can see that he really didn’t want to do it and was kinda being mocked by Fallon. Then again, I lost a lot of respect for Freeman when he did that Russia has attacked the US video about six years ago. Can’t find the original but found one video with some excerpts-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB9FDl1siS4 (2:29 mins)
Some talking head on CNN this morning said this: “The purpose of the Republicans is to defeat the Democrats.”
This is a verbatim quote. So sad and yet so revealing at the same time. He was admitting that politics, nay democracy as currently practiced in the US, is all a game. Forget talking about actual policies or ideas and the needs and desires of citizens. The goal is just “Win, baby, win!”, as if elections are some sort of football match.
And this kind of goop passes unchallenged on CNN.
If the Republicans have an actual agenda-load of items that their owners and sponsors wish to see achieved for the material benefit of those owners and sponsors ( such as preserving the last few rounds of tax cuts), then politics is more than just a game for the Republicans . . . . even if the Republicans do their part to make it look like a game in public in order to get more citizens to drop out of politics.
I think that talking head on CNN was making a diversionary claim, not an admission. There is a goal for Republicans beyond ” Win, baby, win” and that is to use the victory to benefit the upper class further.
This is as good a time as any to ask whether or not anyone’s seen the recent EyesLeft/Empire Files vid on DeSantis (by Mike Prysner)? If true, very troubling. Basically the video attempts to outline the trajectory of DeSantis’s military career, about which there is little public info available.
Without repeating all the video’s accusations, the one I found to be most interesting comes from former Guantanamo prisoners, who, since their release, formed a support group. Then military lawyer DeSantis plays a particularly sordid role in their collective horror story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFonj6o0fTI [~37min]
I used to fear Dsantis as a competent Trump. No longer. In FL he has supermajorities in the legislature. This alleviates him of the burden of having to work with people to get legislation passed, no matter how odious it is. The odds of him winning with veto proof majorities in the Congress are slim at best.
Trump for all his issues knows how to work the room one-on-one.
A President DeSatanist would be able to fill up the Executive Branch departments, agencies, bureaus, etc. with militant DeSatanists in their masters’ image. That could be a problem.
Mayorkas: “Since there are businesses around this country that are desperate for workers. There are desperate workers looking for jobs, desperate workers in foreign countries that are looking for jobs in the United States, where they can earn money lawfully and send much needed remittances back home.”
And
As the trucker shortage deepens, some groups are trying to make it easier to become a driver Investigate Midwest
I wonder if there were reporters in the room when Mayorkas made his statement about helping immigrants get jobs to address the labor shortage. Because that reporter might have asked him “Mr Mayorkas, do you have any children or grand children 10 years or younger that could take jobs at, say, McDonald’s or truck driving to support your statement of helping to address the labor shortage?”
It occurs to me if I were to start life at 18 or 20 again I would take a serious look at the truck driver industry and earnings potential. Stuff has always got to be moved from A to B to C…now dealing with the reckless and feckless on the highway and interstates would be something to think about.
I have an uncle doing it. He ran out of choices at one point in life and that was what was left. Everything is on an algorithm now and they track his every movement. It’s a depersonalized cog in the supply chain. I suppose there are still some indies out there, lots of capital tied up in a rig. Probably others here drive and could comment.
Truckers are surveilled at all times nowadays. Being a trucker is possibly one of the most spied-upon jobs in the USA.
FWIW, a few years ago I talked to a truck driver who really liked his warehouse’s new computerized delivery system. Under the old system drivers would load as many deliveries as possible and only return to the warehouse when the truck was empty. The new system required them to make one delivery at a time and return to the warehouse to load the next one. “We’re really racking up the overtime” he said. Presumably this problem has been fixed by now…
His benefit was that he was paid by the hour.
As i understand it, many drivers are paid by the delivery.
My great uncle and however his kid is my cousin had a small trucking company. Due to circumstances, they could never really get greedy, and as a result, they never dealt with labor problems. The drivers had good jobs, but they didn’t have to deal with the corporate squeezing. The roads in that or of the world aren’t great, and they shipped everything. They would deliver to places like power plants. Then things like hay.
The corporate squeezing where labor and market share seems unlimited created stressful conditions.
I recently got a cdl on scholarship from the local community College. One problem the recent grad faces is related to the fact that there are only a handful of mega carriers that will hire a new grad. Almost all of the smaller companies can’t afford the insurance required for a new driver. Most of these mega carriers also have there own schools that pupils go into endentured servitude to attend. The turnover rate at one year at these companies is around 90 percent. The training is very short and the drivers don’t get much seat time and many have small or large accidents and then lose there jobs leaving them owing for the training. As a new driver, they are low paid and get the worst loads. Another huge problem all truckers face now is finding a place to park for the required sleep time. Learning to safely drive a truck isn’t as easy as many would think. Learning to back a truck into a space that Lea es you a few feet on either side is difficult, and if you make a mistake you lose your job and it becomes hard to find another.
Driving a truck for a living has a direct impact on a driver’s health. Poor food options, sedentary and lonely, not to mention very hard to have a family life leads to divorce. Another hurdle many drivers face is maintaining their dot medical card. Many develop obesity, and a pet industry around sleep apnea has developed. Many dot approved physicians will order a sleep study if a driver is obese. It might weed out a few, who are then required to use a cap machine, and I guess that could save life’s, but many feel that the clinics and Dr’s are colluding to make alot of money.
Many owner operators are going out of business right now because the freight market is really low and fuel has gone up so much. That business model is boom or bust. I think the ease of information and collusion among the freight brokers has increased to the point that many small and independent companies are and will continue to go under. If a person can navigate all these problems for a few years the salary at the better companies range from 80k up to 120k if you are willing to be on the road months at a time. Local home every day routes can pay quite well and seem to be hiring if one can make it through the first two years of low pay.
I’ve got family who have worked in trucking, both long and short haul. It’s debilitating on many fronts, as you point out. Thanks for the comments.
An alternative to truck-driving: I always advise my nieces and nephews (not that they necessarily listen) to learn a trade first. Everybody owns a house, your acquired skills will always be in demand, and you can be an independent contractor if you so wish. No danger of layoffs and no boss!
That accomplished, feel free to chase your dreams. Whether those be in the arts or crafts, organic farming, environmental activism, whatever, go for it. If they don’t pan out you’ll always have that precious skill in carpentering, cabinetry, electrical wiring, or plumbing in your pocket.
Then be good at your chosen trade and honest. You’ll never lack for customers. My brother, a skilled mechanic, is so in demand that he sometimes has to turn down potential customers. And that’s in a town with a population of ~5000. Take that, Midas Muffler!
Its all about remittances…
Want immigration to grind to a halt with the flow going in reverse? make the objection of their desire worth bupkis.
Of course there’d be a horror show domestically if the $ goes the way of a Dodo, but shift happens.
I like this quote from the DHS presser:
Compared to this quote, from the Governor of Arizona:
So which is it? And if all you need to do is scratch one layer deep to see that the Administration is lying, why doesn’t the press at least try to ask a question? I don’t have enough time or mental fortitude to treat all the information my government gives me with this level of cynicism and review. I’m just going to assume that everything coming from the federal government is a lie until proven otherwise.
With the introduction of CHATgpt, not even a well crafted lie either.
Imagine future AI politics. Decisions will be hashed out in ozone filled back rooms. Then the “voters” will be introduced to their new Bosses.
“You’ll take open borders whether you like it or not.
We’ll fill up what cheap housing there is with ukrainians and nicaraguans (ostensibly) from wherever we can make a sh!ft show and shut up you greedy plebes…send money to the democrats or else you stupid plebes, and then vote for dems you lazy plebes, and don’t forget that you are just a bunch of dumbass plebes who should be grateful to the natural leaders who are driving you into the abattoir”
the Big Guy
Free Immigration is the dark shadow of Free Trade. Both should be stopped.
Based on Mayorkas’s desire for Free immigration in order to destroy citizen-worker bargaining power here in America, I suspect Mayorkas supports Free Trade Agreements and Treaties for the same Clintobamacratic reason.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55000.htm
“In the Western World the legitimate national interest of people has become identified with racism and fascism. Corporate globalism requires open borders, and the left has aligned with globalism and has become the most zealous enforcer of open borders, which has come to mean the right of refugees with victim status to other peoples’ countries. The left has abandoned the working class and anti-war activity.”
‘The Right’s Assault on Divorce Will Put More Women at Risk’
It isn’t just climate that’s driving migration within the U.S.. There are a lot of Texas license plates in Colorado, in fact most of the out-of-state plates ’round here are from Texas. I haven’t noticed though that there are appreciably more good paying jobs available, or housing. Are these then political refugees, who have moved in with Mom and Dad?
Like the Western Tanagers in our backyard, I don’t think they’re just passing through on their way to nest in more liberal states. The tanagers decided to stay. I hope they survive the returning sharp-shins two treetops down. It’s not a good time to be a brightly-colored bird from the tropics. Best to dress down and blend in with the locals lest you get invited for dinner.
Moved to The People’s Republic of Colorado from increasingly bat guano crazy Nebraska in 2021. We have loads of Texans here too (SE corner of state) but nobody’s sure why – ask ten Texans, get ten different answers.
420 is legal, but jobs are scarce (unless you’re a skilled contractor), housing whether rental or SFR (Single Family Residence) is pricey, public schools are fairly awful (CO teacher pay is quite low) and altitude – we’re at 6,000 ft plus – will kick your flatlander’s butt for most of a year until you acclimate.
Political refugees? We’re retired old (ish) white folk with the the means to buy a house here, so hardly refugees (wife is a retired pastor who’s worked with REAL refugees) but kinda sorta too. Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota all seem determined to out-crazy the Old South, and after forty plus years of increasingly reactionary politics we said “Enough”! Of course, thanks to Denver Metro Dem redistricting shenanignans, our Congress critter is… Lauren Boebert! Out of the frying pan, into the fire…
Ah, you’re on the Western Slope… sympathies. We had Polis as our rep and now he’s governor. There’s a bit of confidence that comes with political representation that isn’t too embarrassing when the subject comes up on public. Polis was actually pretty good and not a bad governor. I’ve been wondering where he goes from here; I don’t like his odds as a short Jewish gay liberal Democrat making a run for the White House. I’d vote for him but so much about him would further divide the country and I doubt he’d get the party’s nomination. Pity… Polis doesn’t scare me and I think he’d make a steady president.
My sense is that Boebert is going to be voted out; she too nutso even for the Western Slope, so relief may yet come in the next election.
We muse and discuss here the possibility of a civil war and what the breaking points might be. As much as the media writes about what is happening with migrants at our borders, they could devote a few more column inches to what’s happening within. I can see folks in Texas (as you did in Nebraska) pulling up stakes like Okies during the Dust Bowl, not because they can no longer scratch a living out of the dirt, but because they can’t live in that sub-culture. They’re watching the direction their government is going and concluding it’s not for them and it’s time to live elsewhere, especially if they’re women. Not everyone in Texas is a right-wing Republican (including some of my relatives) and they don’t want to keep their heads down and just try to get along, or grit their teeth through another family get-together. It would start to feel like hostage situation without the handcuffs.
I live in FL and voted for DeSantis. Learned my lesson during COVID. Voted for Trump twice because the Democrat Party isn’t running anyone I can get behind as an alternative. And from what I see, I’m destined to vote for Trump once again. And it’s not that I’m unsure of what he is, but I’m not being offered something better. DeSantis? Probably a nice enough guy, but I watched him during a brief news report of his pass through Iowa and the grin he forced for a selfie with an admirer was painfully obvious to me as forced. A people person like Bill Clinton, he is not. Were Trump not running, the Republican Party has choices. Sununu is an adept speaker with experience, as an example. And the Democrat Party bench could be just as deep if they choose to deploy someone other than Newsom. Anyway, all this happens FAR above my pay grade so it doesn’t really matter, but color me frustrated like many others.
I suspect that Byron Donalds, my congressman in Florida district #19, will be a figure to watch in the future. He will go places.
Given DeSantis’s JAG work providing legal oversight for torture at Gitmo and leveling Falluja, I would have to abstain.
Yep. DeSantis is a cruel and vicious little turd of man. There’s no basis to suggest he’s a good person.
Just started reading William Greider’s history of the Federal Reserve, banking, and money, Secrets of the Temple. Made me remember how many books I’ve been introduced to through reading this blog. Perhaps a topic on the blog list should be “book reviews” to make it easier for new readers to dig them up?
Perhaps the hosts could start up pages of books that influenced them in various areas with anything from an intro paragraph to a full throated review and let the commentariat further flesh it out? I’m just throwing an idea out there, not trying to put undesired work on them.
One of the things I like about the old Yahoo was that their website had humans directly picking the links, the downside being they often had strange ideas about what was fit to read or valuable. I have the same problem with goodreads, it’s only useful if you want to check out a book you already know about. Here I’d have confidence that books unknown would be of value.
I am currently listening through Ben Norton’s series on Aaron Good’s book American Exception, where they basically go through the book. I have so far listened to 16 episodes (about 1 hour each), and I think I will have to get the book when I catch up with their production schedule.
Essentially American Exception is a rewrite of Good’s PhD thesis, which in turn is going through the rise and structure of the US global empire, with a focus on the deep state, the overlap of the overworld of private wealth and state power. Really interesting perspective and deep dives on events, even if people here already know about the events.
So that is a recommendation from me.
Agree, I’ve already purchased it. I’m about 1/3 through it. It’s slow going for me because I’m constantly having to stop and cross reference it in other books.
I’ve been having basically the same experience and would echo your recommendation.
For most of my adult life I’ve had the idea that the “Great Man Theory” of history was childish and unsophisticated, and therefore had a sort of knee jerk aversion to the notion that the JFK assassination, tragic as it was, was of any fundamental importance in the history of the U.S. I tended to discount it as hyped up Camelot mythology over a standard issue Cold War Democrat, and sentimental nostalgia for a golden age that never was.
Listening to Aaron Good’s book and podcast has accellerated a re-thinking of that which probably began with Devil’s Chessboard by David Talbot (who, evidently is a close friend of Good’s). I’ve begun to think of the JFK assassination as more of a phase change from a period in which concentrated wealth and corporate power went from simply having an excessive and corrupting influence of American politics, to one in which they, through the CIA primarily in that case, would and could use the levers of government power to subvert the will of the people expressed through institutions which, though they had originally been constituted to be only very mildly and imperfectly small d democratic, through Progressive Era and New Deal (primarily) eras had evolved to be more functionally democratic enough to present a threat that, from their view, needed to be crushed. In short, by conducting a domestic coup.
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters ~ James W Douglass
1963 was essentially the year that the Western Empire took over and the USA was not a sovereign nation anymore. The Vietnam War was the Southern Plutocracy’s plus Deep State’s first Imperial War. The draftees’ Silent Revolt there led to the volunteer army and privatization of the US military. With the Reagan/Thatcher counter revolt, the Oligarchs officially resized power lost as the response to the 1917 communist revolution. It’s been government by and for corporations ever since. The crisis in Ukraine is that western rulers are so divorced from reality that they will never willingly give up their global hegemony and revert back to a multi-polar world of nation states. The proxy WWIII and climate change are simply incapable of being addressed by the current neo-liberal political/economic system. Only profits matter, not human life.
Same! I can’t count how many books and authors I’ve first learned about via The NC Commentariat. :-)
Perhaps if enough people either #1: donated enough money to pay for that or #2: read enough ads often enough that NaCap could sell ad space for more money, that more money might be able to go towards a Book Review category.
The news is still depressing, but that photograph of Cyanea capillata makes me smile. I once saw one that was at least two feet in diameter in the water off Friday Harbor, Washington. Beautiful creatures! But they will sting.
“NAACP urges Oakland teachers to end strike for children’s sake”
Would it kill the Oakland branch of the NAACP to put their full support behind those very same teachers? The same ones that, you know, that teach their children? They already said ‘We know that our children’s education should never be compromised, and education is critical to ending intergenerational poverty‘ but it would be nice if they could turn those words into actions. Just sayin’.
I think Michelle/Obummer should trademark that tag line: “take the second best option because the best option is impossible”
So Americans could not have universal healthcare and so had to settle for Obamacare?
Wow. Never thought I’d hear such high praise of Obamacare on NC.
settling is not praiseworthy, and I’m not surprised to see another backhanded swipe at universal healthcare.
Do you have something more straightforward?
I imagine that your ire is aimed at the line in the original comment; “..second best option, (Obamacare)…”
I agree with you if you contend that Obamacare, (a rebranding of the HeritageCare system,) is not even worthy of a “second best” in any timeline where rational thinking is allowed.
This is really an example “in the wild,” of the acronym TINA, which stands for ‘There Is No Agency.’
Stay safe.
Re RU air force losses yesterday near Bryansk–
Simplicius76 has a good summary and pretty much concludes that it was a ground-based missile system inside UKR that they secretly positioned near the RU border. Maybe RU became brash and over-confident that they had degraded most of UKR’s anti-air. The comments are worth a read:
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/black-day-for-russian-vvs-as-special
This attack was well played by UKR, but I don’t see that losing 4 aircraft (and crew) will change the balance of power in this conflict. That’s assuming that RU figures out what happened and learns accordingly.
Meanwhile, strange happenings while UKR raises the stakes by firing drones and downing aircraft inside RU proper. Zelensky is on an extended trip to the EU (last glance showed he’s here in Italy) and seems in no hurry to go home. Zaluzhny seems to have disappeared, or at least is keeping an extremely low profile. Ditto for Lukashenko. I hope Zelensky doesn’t overnight at his Forte dei Marmi villa; I would like to keep Tuscany out of this mess.
Zaluzhny is also keeping his head down…. Ukraine apparently officially denied that he was killed, so we now officially believe it.
We will probably find out eventually that this was a combined NATO/Ukrainian operation that took a lot of analysis and planning by some very experienced NATO officers. The same happened in relation to that Russian jet that was shot down by the Turkish Air Force in Syria. That too had a helluva lot of planning behind it. It won’t change the course of the war and is a hard day for the Russian Aerospace Forces but they will learn which will serve them well as they advance through the Ukraine. But some Russian commander allowed that vulnerability to develop and if they do not have a good excuse, they will be relieved of their command.
I distinctly remember thinking at the time when the Russian jet got shot down by the Turkish Air Force that surely Russia would retaliate.
Instead, it seems that Russia played the long game and here we are years later, it paid off. Assad must stay, and he’s now back in the Arab League with all the other cool kids.
Whatever the psychotics in the MSM want us us to believe about him, Putin strikes me as very patient and a long term thinker. Whether he can refrain from some sort of quid pro quo response to what looks to be an obvious NATO escalation (I don’t believe for one second that the Ukrainian military was or is capable of downing 4 aircraft in one attack) is another matter.
…unlike the NATO leaders he’s up against, who appear to have the attention span of goldfish.
Basic thing is that he has an approval rating most of the western leaders can only dream about. That allows him to indulge in long term thinking, as he do not have to fret about the next election outcome.
Stranger things have happened. After all, USAFs pride at the time, the F-117, got downed by an “obsolete” SAM battery over the Balkans thanks to a mix of US hubris, and clever thinking by the offiser in command of the battery.
It may well be that some Russian officer got careless, and a Ukrainian battery got lucky.
Back on May 9 links there were a number of queries about “Why on earth did the Russians wait so long?” in regards to using their air arm. Well, this here is the answer as to why they were only doing ground level attacks for the first year or so (at the rate of about 200 sorties per day according to RU MOD).
As noted, Buk(140 km / 87 miles) and of course S300 has a much longer reach than glide bombs. I intimated if an actual full on thrust starts that the RU MOD probably is expecting to lose at least 30 (fixed wing) aircraft. Rotaries will be going down like hush puppies to hungry wolves, after all, even degraded, the Ukraine Army still has a Soviet air defense, designed to defeat NATO. Hence the meatgrinder approach.
Seems to be relatively little comment on the big mushroom cloud explosions – last week in Pavlovgrad, which looked like a chemical detonation, and the one today outside Lviv. However clever the ambush of the Russian Air Force, surely those strikes are the game changers.
begob – Pavlovgrad is a major logistics distribution point for the Ukrainian army. It’s about 95 miles from Bakhmut, 80 miles from Vuhledar, and 70 miles from Orkhiv.
It’s most likely that the Pavlovgrad explosion was from an ammo depot hit by a Russian missile. Russia has been focusing on any concentrations of troops and materiel they can find.
Whether or not it’s a game changer is yet to be determined, but it’s a strategy that will certainly degrade the capability of the Ukrainians.
I haven’t seen anything about the Lviv strike yet.
There was a huge explosion in Tiraspol yesterday, too. Several images and videos of an orange mushroom cloud, so a lot of fast burning stuff went boom there.
There was some talk in the MoA blog yesterday that the new Ukrainian math works like this:
Cover up or deny successful missile strikes;
Count only those that are either intercepted or miss the target;
Voila! 100% rate of success in AD.
Such mental games will win the Instagram metaverse war, but spell serious trouble for the reality-based war.
And deflect any wayward strikes on own forces or population as Russian terror tactics.
Col. Macgregor’s interview with Godfrey Bloom, which was linked yesterday, discusses recent Russian missile strikes on bridges and roads between Ukraine and Moldova and Romania. I haven’t seen this addressed anywhere else. He sees these as a tell that a major Russian offensive will start in that area soon. The whole interview is worth a watch but this part of the discussion begins at about 5:15.
>Macron vs the French Workers – who is winning? The Left Berlin
The link title is a perfect example of why CNN cut short Trump’s townhall and why AOC and other self-described progressive democrat’s and their MSM operatives were in a rage afterwards.
What Trump did when he answered the question of whether he wanted Russia to win and Ukraine to lose he taught, for those not schooled in the art, of detecting the falsity embedded in the question. He did not fall into the questions faulty framing. By the audiences reaction, the CNN controllers in their media bunkers were probably furious and frantically looking the ax to cut the power chord like Peter Seeger when Dylan pulled out the electric guitar..
I fell on this opening paragraph in Kenneth Burke’s Permanence and Change: an Anatomy of Purpose and in the section titled “Exorcism by Misnomer” I think he captures what this type of linguistic manipulation is all about:
Why is it so necessary that the patient be told the nature and origin of his disorder? Does on truly cast out devils by naming them? The notion of perspective by incongruity would suggest that one casts out devils by misnaming them. It is not the naming in itself that does the work, but the conversion downward implicit in such naming.
Looking forward to getting past the title of the link and reading its contents
From the article’s concluding paragraph:
Most revolutionaries here are convinced that single days of action will not bring us victory. In general, however, they believe that their role is just to do as much as they can, each in their own workplace, to encourage further strikes.
Framing the millions on the streets as “revolutionaries” is a stretch, most on the street protesting would hardly self-describe as such. Not sure that “single days” quite describes the situation going back now a couple of years, with the yellow vest movement, and no signs of ending. Not sure how the author can speak of “they believe that their role…” It is a very heterogenous grouping of various interest, classes, professions, and retired folks many who do not necessarily have a “workplace.”
A broader geo political/economic framing of what France is experience going on three years or more now would have been more useful IMHO.
Not forgetting that France and UK and Germany are facing the same enormous numbers of undocumented migrants entering their countries illegally. It’s almost like a Davos-WEF-wide project of the Build Back Better club. / ;)
re:
Mayorkas: “Since there are businesses around this country that are desperate for workers. There are desperate workers looking for jobs, desperate workers in foreign countries that are looking for jobs in the United States, where they can earn money lawfully and send much needed remittances back home.”
BINGO!
What Mayokas left out was businesses looking for “cheap and desperate” workers.
Meanwhile, in Chigaco….
From DailyMail:
‘We need to be taken care of first!’ Chicago community where 97% voted for Biden react furiously after finding out 500 migrants are heading their way – as some claim they have been bumped off housing waiting lists
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12079259/Chicago-community-97-voted-Biden-react-furiously-finding-500-migrants-coming.html
A conservative is a liberal that has been mugged by the waiting list? Although it is the Daily Mail therefore a grain of salt.
There’s also the thing that IM Doc talked about the other day which is that the sudden influx isn’t been screened for disease. As fans of immigrant sagas like Godfather 2 know even Ellis Island did that.
There are street protests in Chicago. I’ve seen video on “Peoples Dispatch” YouTube, which is run by Vijay Prashad’s Tricontinental Institute, a far left organization.
Two items from RFKjr.
“Earlier this year the government notified 30 million Americans of cuts to their food stamps, at a time of steeply rising costs.”
and
“Since 1970, the share of aggregate income going to the middle class has fallen from 62% to 42%. (Middle class defined as income from 2/3 to double the median). Meanwhile, high-income share has increased from 29% to 50%.”
—
Wall St. now wants workers willing to work for even less and no protections from abusive work conditions. / oy.
Most of those refugees coming here to ultimately take American jobs are here because the United States for generations laid economy waste to their countries; both of these things are interconnected and serve the economic interest of the elites.
I do have to wonder what will happen to these poor immigrants, if real civil unrest, which is very likely to happen, occurs as they will likely be targeted by many Americans. Heck, I don’t want them here either, but the immigrants are being victimized as most Americans and will be in great danger; the people who actually are doing the victimizing are likely to get away with it all. Unfortunately.
Most of those refugees coming here are escaping political instability induced danger and economic failure. A political instability that the USA purposefully injected into their countries to ultimately benefit USA elites exploiting their countries resources(including their educated workers)**. They now threaten to take those American jobs that can’t be exported and they compete for resources with the working classes, but Americans are incapable of doing class analysis and are easily bait and switched to race/ethnics “analysis”.
**The USA medical system would collapse as it is currently structured if it was unable to steal/expatriate highly skilled medical workers at all levels from the rest of the world, impoverishing these countries already stressed medical systems.
Spencer Snyder on Breaking Points. utube, ~10 minutes. (how neolibs blame their victims)
Elites Use ‘Financial Literacy’ To DISTRACT From Broken Economy | Breaking Points w/Spencer Snyder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmljyH7YUu8
The secretary was on ABC news this morning, and discussing the situation around the title 42 expiry and the administration’s response to the ongoing border dilemma. I’ll leave the link below which includes the video. High praise for VP Harris?
Added thought, we don’t have a legitimate way to handle the southern border and this has been ongoing for a long time.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mayorkas-defends-border-policies-bipartisan-backlash/story?id=99304785
>”…we don’t have a legitimate way to handle the southern border and this has been ongoing for a long time.”
That’s because, no matter what any administration does or says, none of the ways can be called “legitimate”. What’s happening now, and has been happening for decades in slow motion, is called in Spanish “reconquista”.
180 years ago the nascent American empire stole vast territories from Mexico in President Polk’s “Mexican War”. Now the Mexicans want their stolen land back and they’re determined to get it.
Polk is long dead, but memories are not. The consequences of his actions reverberate to this day.
Well, Mexico “stole” the land from Spain who “stole” it from some Native Americans who “stole” it from…who knows?
I heard an interview with a guy in California who said his ancestral family had lived in four countries without ever moving.
Is handling stolen property is legal in your location? That is an interesting view that you might not want to share with the neighbors. As to Mexican stealing themselves back from Spain, that doesn’t sound quite right, does it? :-P
The current mob seems to be Venezuelan. Cartels are making money.
How does Canada maintain their border?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-the-globe-on-your-mail-meet-the-editorial-cartoonists-canada-post-is/
“This cartoon from 1970 asks whether U.S. interests, depicted as a sinister cat, are hungrier for a Canadian goldfish or the water (representing energy) that’s keeping it alive. U.S. energy policy, and Canada’s role in it, was a hot topic in a decade when Americans struggled with growing demand and unstable supplies of fuel and electricity.”
Damn, that’s a helluva story.
California fights to save city, prison in peril from rising Tulare Lake floodwaters LA Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8,500 hardened criminals in one of the most notorious prisons in the country should be easy to parcel out to other penitentiaries, for when the levee breaks they’ll have no place to stay if Corcoran gets de-moated.
Charles Manson checked out a few years back, its that kind of place.
As far as other cash cows go, 75,000 of the 450,000 Bessies in Tulare County (the biggest dairy county in the country, sorry Wisconsin) have been relocated so far in Godzone, and wondering out loud… where do you put them in such a bovine intervention?
That’s a whole lot of water already, and the article then mentions the pending record snowmelt. If someone was performing a rain dance or praying for rain, then it worked really a bit too well.
Relocating livestock, that would seem like a difficult operation for the mere logistics of moving the heavy beasts onto higher elevations. Where is a modern day Noah when he is really needed?
Farms in Berkeley?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df272l0hzTk
After reading your comment, I was thinking of that prison that was engulfed by flood waters after Katrina and how there was a mass of them in their orange jump suits in waist high water on a highway being finally evacuated. I suppose that this time it would be easier to keep them in line. They would just tell them that if they started to get out of control, then they would be dropped off at an Amazon fulfillment center and chained to a bench.
Our prisons were woke before woke was cool (from 2013)
https://correctionalnews.com/2013/03/06/valley-state-prison-makes-full-transition-male-facility/
Gosh, hoocoodanode that area would become a lake,again?
That hadn’t happened since 1861-1862…
There was a Dollar to be made and IBGYBG , like a lot of Development in California.
A dollar to be made often by not spending the money needed to maintain and expand the necessary infrastructure.
However, IIRC Corcoran is one of those towns that did do so, but since it looks like nobody nearby did so, Corcoran is still vulnerable to some flooding.
NY subway good Samaritan? A person is dead, what is good about that? Someone help out here. Oh wait, I get it.
I noticed it said that a million had been raised for a defense fund. The man has a minor charge for a brutal act.
The term “Good Samaratin” apparently comes from a New Testament parable about a traveller who comes upon an injured man and then kills him for no reason.
Snark on.
That Original Good Samaritan was ‘purifying’ the gene pool. Anyone who allows themselves to be surprised and robbed is obviously of inferior breeding stock. This sort of Good Samaritan is Prime Neo-liberal.
“The Jackpot is coming! Be a part of this historical Great Reset!”
Snark off.
The only thing that stops a bad Samaritan with a chokehold going to jail is a good Samaritan giving to a defense fund.
Just who were the Samars anyhow?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans
I did not know that they are still around in Israel, and are considered schismatic Jews.
I agree that a comparison to a “Good Samaritan” is far off the mark in this case.
But I’m surprised that people are so quickly jumping on this as if Neely was some kind of homeless saint. He reportedly had a warrant out for his arrest due to allegations of violent assault. He had roughly 40 other similar violations. Multiple witnesses reported that he was acting violently and erratically on the subway. Video footage and other statements support that Penny put Neely in the recovery position after Neely was subdued, so that Neely could breathe easier. Multiple people were heard thanking Penny for subduing Neely on the subway.
So, what appears to be the story here is that a violent, irrational person alarmed multiple people in a confined area where there was no police assistance or alternative for the passengers to safely move away from Neely. That’s a good case for self-defense.
All that being said, it was a tragic death. You have to be incredibly careful when applying chokeholds on people. And most people who are trained in self-defense know enough to get themselves in a lot of trouble but they’re not familiar with the legal context of their actions. They’re not prepared for the repercussions of their actions either. Neely shouldn’t have been acting that way. Penny shouldn’t have felt he needed to act to protect himself or others. Unfortunately, here we are.
I’m cynical enough to think that we’ll get dismissal of any charges against Penny just in time to foster “mostly peaceful protests” to cover whatever new crisis Biden has unleashed.
Neely shouldn’t have been acting that way, but is not reported to have touched anyone. Meanwhile, three men held him down and choked him to to death.
Proportion, no?
Also, the “chokers” weren’t wearing uniforms. Thus, the upswell in “moral outrage?”
I have had similar encounters with “homeless” and “mentally disturbed” persons on the street recently. One pulled a pocket knife on me after I refused to show deference to his rantings. A pocket knife??? There is a sign of mental problems by itself. As I mentioned in comments a few weeks ago, this same person must have tried the same tactic on another homeless one who happened to have a bigger knife. Our pocket knife wielder ended up in the ER for stitches.
All this shows us a picture of a society in decline.
I knew that something bad was coming when Ronald “Family Blogging” Reagan started closing the Psychiatric Sanitariums and putting the former patients on the street. I wonder what circle of H— St. Ronnie inhabits today?
From 1981, the cover art is great. The music ain’t bad either.
https://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=518519
The swell on outrage is likely from any number of reasons. People who can imagine themselves in the same conditions. People who are angry there was no help for the passengers. People who are angry Mr. Neely was allowed to be free in the first place. People who are angry the police arrested Penny. This is an awful situation. It will not go down like George Floyd.
It is entirely possible with a chokehold that you can apply proportional force and still get this outcome. It’s also possible what Mr. Penny did was fine but once other people came to assist that resulted in the damage that killed Neely. There’s a lot more to find out here. Unfortunately learning more won’t help Mr. Neely.
I suspect we’ll learn more about whether he made contact with anyone prior to Mr. Penny engaging with him soon enough.
What is going to complicate this a great deal is that Mr. Penny had no way to retreat. Here’s a basic summary of legal self defense standards. It can change from jurisdiction to jurisdiction but this is a reasonable summary of it.
It matters that Mr. Penny was not a police officer and, based on available information so far, did not strike Mr. Neely. He attempted to restrain Mr. Neely and did not intend to use deadly force. Pretty sure in jurisdictions like Georgia he’d be fine with what happened. In NYC, I’m really not sure. It also matters to the law if you accidentally kill someone, in some jurisdictions that invalidates your self defense claim.
“… Penny had no way to retreat.”
That phrasing makes it sound as if he was under attack, which so far there are no reports of. Thus, your comment is misdirection
Neely is the one who is dead, held down and choked to death with, again, no reports that he brandished a weapon or touched anyone, however “menacing” he might have appeared.
No, it’s a fact. The question is whether Penny felt threatened and whether his response was appropriate. If you can’t retreat and someone is threatening you, you do have the right to do something about it. That typically excludes killing the someone doing the threatening. Which is why this is going to be a litigated matter.
Have you ever been on a subway????
Unless the car is packed sardine-tight. you can always retreat, FFS. You can get up and leave and go to an entirely different car. The idea that anyone who was felt threatened could not have moved away is absurd.
And the legal standard is not “felt threatened”. It is that there was an imminent risk of physical harm:
https://www.tilemlawfirm.com/new-york-self-defense.html
“About to be used” is NOT “fantasizes it could be used”. If your standard were legal, every itty bitty white woman scared of big men with tats or of color could go on a shooting spree on subways.
So what’s the alternative? Wait until Neely takes a split second to shove a concealed screwdriver into a passenger’s ribcage and THEN act?
Also, what Penny applied is not what is now universally and incorrectly being described as a “choke hold.” Rather, it’s a sleeper hold intended to keep the airway open but briefly deprive the brain of blood, causing unconsciousness. Police departments have outlawed it — perhaps justifiably — because it has sometimes been applied incorrectly. But Marines still train with the sleeper hold.
Oh, come on. He CRUSHED Neely’s windpipe. Whatever he did was not a trained move.
As indicated above, even conservative (as in law n’ order friendly) Judge Napolitano (who once was a judge) has looked at this case and deems it to fit the bill of second degree homicide.
Nope, the problem is trained or not you can kill someone using that chokehold. There’s no way to do it safely in that context. And when you add in the other passengers assisting…it was a bad decision. I understand why Penny is being accused of homicide.
FEAR …. lmmao …
Sorry but you can restrain people without cutting off blood or air supply to the brain and body. That Penny went for a high level incapacitating grappling hold just shows how ignorant they are and over the top aggressive in dealing with the situation.
The first rule in these sorts of conflicts is not increase the situation aggressively through words, body stance, or actual physical contact. The first order of acts is engage in in conversation with direct eye contact. More so ask questions and not be authoritarian, ask why, whats up, how do we resolve any issues.
I’ve noted before that I have train police in military tactics which are based on how you treat soldiers in conflict when advancing on a position and then after over running it reconsolidate it in a mad rush to offset any counter attack.
Penny would make a great brown shirt …. taking down and removing the trash from his personal utopia.
The Neely/Penny story really turns me inside out. As a frequent MTA client (victim) I’ve nearly countless experiences in the subway with the looming threat of violence upon me, my family or some other commuter. These situations are extremely tense, even if they’re directed at other people in the subway car. And there’s never been an instance of these in which I’ve thought that I’d render myself defenseless in order to redress some fetishized notion of systemic injustice.
I don’t imagine I’m alone as a New Yorker in seeing myself in Penny’s shoes. He doesn’t strike me as a man that swiped his metrocard in order to find the chance to dole out some vigilante justice. He was likely on his way to some mundane aspect of his daily life.
I can understand that Neely was a “victim” of a broken system, that in a more sensible society his addiction and psychological issues would be treated, his housing situation would have remedy. But this doesn’t absolve him of personal responsibility. It doesn’t erase his long criminal track record and force those that encounter him to submit to his aggression. If the system failed Neely, it also failed Penny. He isn’t an agent of the broken system but a victim also, a normal citizen that felt he had to defend himself and other pedestrians that day because the system that denied Neely care also denied Penny the most fundamental human right, that of public safety.
This isn’t to say Penny shouldn’t be arrested, a man is dead, justice, and the truth, should be sought out. I truly hope I never find myself in a situation like the one Daniel Penny was in, but the template seems all too familiar to my common experience.
Actually, Neely was getting psychiatric attention and had been in some kind of rehab facility before he walked out. I don’t know all the details, but if his care was decent and he simply refused to take advantage of it, there’s at least the hint of a possibility in this case that Neely bears most of the responsibility for what happened to him. And perhaps Daniel Penny — and the rest of the riders on that subway car and maybe even the rest of society — can just for one brief moment be absolved of collective guilt.
I do not remotely understand this defense of an unwarranted killing. I am an average sized woman who lived in NYC for decades, including in the early 1980s when the city was still perceived to be unsafe. Crazy people on the street and in the subways, as in screaming out loud crazy, were a not uncommon phenomenon. There is ZERO evidence anywhere that Neely represented a serious physical danger to anyone. Being loud and highly disruptive is not the same as posing a risk of hurting others.
Maybe I’m not following the story closely enough, but I haven’t seen anyone characterizing Jordan Neely as a saint, just that not having been a saint in the past isn’t justification for someone to kill him, and certainly not someone who didn’t even know what he did or didn’t do in the past.
I also haven’t seen witness statements or reports about the video that clearly indicate that Jordan Neely’s behavior on the train warranted some type of aggressive response short of murder. That will presumably be something for a jury to consider.
Oh no? All the mentions of his smile, how he was loved in the community, how he was a talented performer who could imitate Michael Jackson? They are absolutely characterizing him as saintly and showing pictures of him in a way to make him seem like an innocent child as opposed to a violent person with mental health issues. I think there is equal narrative shaping going on the other side with the local police clearly implying Penny is innocent. And as far as we know right now, no one tried to kill him, multiple people tried to restrain him as he became increasingly threatening.
The details about his past violent charges matters because it questions whether he should have been on that subway to begin with instead of in prison or a facility of some kind. It also speaks to his behavior. Seems reasonable a person accused of violent assault that many times was capable of being violent.
Here’s one summary of witness statements from the NY Post with some good pictures.
The other interesting thing about all this is the description of Penny being a “former Marine”. Such language would get you punched in the jaw from a lot of Marines i know. Penny is still a Marine. He’s just not actively serving.
Judge Napolitano, who actually was a judge back in the day, and is a conservative rule of law type, went through the facts of this killing and relevant law (and crime show fans would have heard the law part before). You don’t get to use lethal force against someone unless that person presents a serious threat of harm to you or to others. Even the Post in their yellow box summary says he was “harassing” passengers, which is only verbal. I note the NY Post does not back up the witness claim that Neely was a threat. Napolitano says Neely was being loud and extremely disruptive but was not meaning or doing other things that indicated he represented a physical danger.
There’s a problem with preferring to describe the one who killed him as not only a Marine but a forever Marine (!), as if it’s part of his essence, while preferring not to describe Jordan Neely as a talented street performer or part of the community. It’s an on-going problem in the how the story of vigilante “justice” in the US is told.
Here is a brief report following my recent trip to Moscow. Executive summary: situation normal, but an uptick in militarism. Longer version follows for those interested:
The airport (Vnukovo) was busy both coming and going, lots of flights to Turkey and Dubai (also saw a flight to Tunisia, probably a holiday resort), many families with kids. Security was much the same as on my February visit.
I saw my first AAA emplacement: atop a landfill (huge disused garbage dump, now covered in grass) close by the intersection of the outer ring road and Kievskoe shosse, not far from Vnukovo airport. It was too far away to determine what system it was, but the radar was clearly visible and it looked like a lot of equipment. Pretty good location, actually: the high ground near two highways and an airport. Don’t know about the smell, though.
There are a LOT of ads for men to volunteer for military service as contract soldiers. There’s even a free phone hotline (117). An acquaintance forwarded me a letter he received encouraging him to sign up for Wagner. The letter states that age 21-60 is acceptable, with monthly salary starting at 240k rubles (about 3000 $), which goes a long way in RU flyover country if you survive.
2-5 May were not official holidays this year (only 1 May and then 8-9 May), but I noticed that 2 May (anniversary of the Odessa massacre in 2014) was mentioned several times in various contexts. Which makes me wonder if 2 May will eventually become a public holiday or day of remembrance.
The ruble has stabilized at around 80. Local food stores remain extremely well-stocked. My benchmark bottle of Malbec rose in price from 1200 to about 1300 rubles, but I found another very drinkable one for only 999 (about 13 $), so three cheers for competition and free trade.
My wife insisted on dragging me to OBI (German-owned hardware and garden center) to buy various items for the dacha, so as compensation I insisted afterward on taking a quick tour of the entire shopping mall (the appropriately named “Mega”, of which Moscow has three, this being the one at the southern edge of the city). I hadn’t been there since 2021. I estimate about 90% of the stores are in business. Some western brands have closed down and their shops are still vacant (most notably Ikea). Some have been replaced by competitors: Haier (Chinese domestic appliances) and Xiaomi (Chinese electronics) now have their own branded stores. Many western brands are still there, either openly or semi-openly. The Lego store is now called “world of cubes” (Мир Кубиков), with the same overpriced Lego sets for sale. Starbucks is now “Stars Coffee”, with the same overpriced coffee drinks, but I like the new Russified logo:
https://stars-coffee.ru/
While I was in town, Raiffeisen (where I have an account locally) announced that it is terminating its correspondence relationships with all other RU banks. Raiffeisen has also increased its commission on USD/EUR accounts; anything above 10k is subject to a monthly fee, with the amount charged increasing (sic) with the amount on deposit. I guess the idea is to encourage clients to keep their money in rubles, rather than in enemy currency. Japanese yen are also subject to commission charges (not that I know anyone in RU who has a yen for yen). There’s no charge for Chinese yuan accounts.
There was much talk about the Kremlin drone stunt and Prigozhin’s (first) video outburst, both of which took place while I was there. I thought it interesting that both of these started on social media but then migrated to the local MSM (newsprint and TV), and the authorities let both stories play out. As for the drone: this struck me as being an actual attack (admittedly a sloppy one) and not a false flag, and I expect that RU will eventually retaliate. As for Prigozhin: he is 100% a creation of the Kremlin, so I don’t think he would do or say anything without first receiving a green light from above.
As per my previous trips, the sense of normalcy was overwhelming, although the AAA system and the army recruiting signs gave me a bad vibe. Next visit this autumn, fingers crossed.
Thank you for the interesting on-site reporting.
Sometimes I wonder if Russia is making the same mistake of the USA in Vietnam, of trying to have normalcy at the home front. At least with Vietnam it was pretty clear there was no existential threat, so the thinking of making the pain limited to the unlucky few kind of makes sense if you’re a MIC profiteer or his proxies in government. IMNHO Russia should be doing more to shape that there is existential threat that everyone has to pitch in to address. Particularly as the world economy is very probably going to dive if not crash, and this should down energy export volumes as well as prices, best to gradually build up? Unless Russian people respond better picking up the pieces after slamming into a wall than to gradual approach to exigency? How much is it conscious in the minds of the people that this could be years, maybe decades of slow burn economic war?
Isn’t Raiffeisen an Austrian Bank, or did they sell off Russian branches? Did you see any international banks with open offices (if not doing much)?
Separately, having experience of mitigating methane fires hazards, I’m a bit surprised they’d put the AAA system on top of an old dump.
Raiffeisen is Austrian. They are really in a pickle, having invested hugely (and successfully) into RU and are now being pressured by the EU (i.e., by the USA) to abandon their thriving business unit. NC had a good summary of Raiffeisen’s unfortunate situation a month ago:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/04/austrias-third-largest-lender-raiffeisen-bank-international-rbi-is-trapped-in-its-most-lucrative-market-russia.html
Italy’s Unicredit is the only other big western commercial bank left in RU with significant activity. Don’t know about any others at this point. I think both Raiffeisen and Unicredit are desperately hoping to wait out this RU-UKR situation until things get back to normal, but I don’t think we’re going back to normal anytime soon. I expect that the pressure from the EU/USA will becoming overwhelming and they’ll both eventually sell out their operations to local management (or a local oligarch).
Thank you again. With the bank credit crunch going on, they may well be lucky in that curtailing business would have some impact on their reserves, as least that’s my ignorant guess.
Thanks for that report. Seems that life is carrying on as usual. And it certainly seems they do not have the problems with inflation like is happening in some EU countries. I wonder if things will change by autumn after the Ukrainians attacks have expended themselves. By then Russia may be doing their own counter attacks.
I suspect Yen accounts are more likely out east, where Russia has direct border with Japan.
The official Roman letter acronym of the Communist Party of China is CPC. Using ‘CCP’ disrespects China by invoking the ‘CCCP’ of the Cyrillic letters for Roman letter ‘USSR’, dilutes the validity of the author’s content, and marks the author as having neocon tendencies.
Words matter.
Do the neocons have their own pronouns yet?
Oh, apparently they do, it’s “Grr/Growl”
The military digs highfalutin really long acronyms such as HIMARS and once the neo-cons have 6 lettered ones to call their own, that’ll be the day.
They best hope they don’t get hit with a MANCHIN bomb…
Most Arrogant Neo Con Hacked Investment Neutron bomb…
It just takes everything of pecuniary value and stuffs it all into this big blob like noxious mass…pure poison, should be illegal…
Killer/Killeress?
Neocons is an abbreviation, so almost an acronym a lot of people think it stands for neo-conservative, but it’s actually stands for neo-con-artist. (;-P) Perhaps NCA?
“Do the neocons have their own pronouns yet?”
No, Neo-cons steal other people’s pronouns.
I have scoured this post and all the China links in it and I cannot find the instance of “CCP” you are referring and therefore cannot identify the author or the content you are complaining about. Can you be more specific, please?
San Fran–
Here’s another story about Frisco’s Doom Loop:
Covid is over, huh? Can the sniffles bring down Western civilization? Hard to know for sure because there are so many other possible straws that are breaking the neoliberal camel’s back: our harshing of the planet; endless wars; absurd levels of inequality; bought political and media “spaces;” And what few problems that aren’t ignored completely are treated ad hoc with no attempt to understand the interacting sub-systems that are producing these symptoms.
But heh, if we can just keep Trump out of the White House, all will be fine.
Re: The Murder of San Franciscan Bob Lee
For some reason this San Francisco murder has not been picked up by the MSM. The suspect is a tech entrepreneur by the name of Nima Momeni. A link from two days ago:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/12/bob-lee-stabbing-suspect-nima-momenis-life-unraveled-before-attack-friends/
A quote from the link: “…a one-time close friend of Momeni, Laurin Leske, countered that he never saw “anything more than the regular Bay Area executive sort” of drug use.”
“Regular Bay Area executive use of drugs.” LOL. These “executives” are supposedly the future of tech yet a lot of that venture capital seems to be going up their noses.
Up the nose as opposed to what? It’s when they “do things” to improve our life that I get worried.
A $1 billion Gates Foundation-backed education initiative failed to help students, according to a new report — here’s what happened
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-melinda-gates-foundation-education-initiative-failure-2018-6?op=1
Bill’s contribution to public education – why do I imagine a BSOD with whatever Bill “improves”?
It’s hell’: life under the American mobile home king who calls himself a ‘grave dancer’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/11/sam-zell-mobile-home-king-evictions-hell
So give this billionaire kudos for being honest.
Psychology’s “Dark Triad” and the Billionaire Class
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dangerous-ideas/201910/psychology-s-dark-triad-and-the-billionaire-class
Fill in the blank (it’s a verb): “See a billionaire, ______ a billionaire.
>>Military-Style Drug War in Tenderloin Sparks Fears That More Drug Users Could Overdose San Francisco Public Press
Fabulously symbolic.
The SFPD, which has been doing a work slowdown for at least a few years, is one of the least effective police departments in the state being used to cleanse the poorest district in the city. The Tenderloin has resisted all efforts at redevelopment aka gentrification, has had a bad reputation for a century or more, and saw its heyday in the 1940s and 50s as a nightclub district.
It is only full of the poor, the desperate, and immigrants. Let’s send in the army and see what happens. How unsurprising.
It would take imagination, desire, dedication, and real work, but City Hall could fix, or least greatly ameliorate, the real problems of industry or businesses, employment, housing, and healthcare. Seeing as how Nancy Pelosi, Diane Feinstein, Gavin Newsom, and Kamala Harris all come out of San Francisco political establishment, I will guess that will not happen. It is not that large mind you, roughly 800 thousand now and maybe 950(?) thousand at its height when it was a functioning city, produced such a corrupt, self-centered, incompetent, but politically powerful, and ultimately shallow group of people. A city of 800 thousand, in a state of 39 million people, in a country of over 300 million, all ostensibly governed by such bright emptiness. If they work together, it shows how far people can go!
I wonder how the two porta potties near the methadone clinic that’s between the Tenderloin and City Hall are doing. Now, I am making myself depressed especially when I think about the rest of the state increasingly being that way. San Francisco and Los Angeles are just the outliers. Wealth, greed, corruption, and incompetence, all moated by poverty and desperation.
A good story on Bob Lee in the WSJ. He seems like a really nice person. In spite of everything.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bob-lee-stabbing-sex-drugs-lifestyle-san-francisco-5a7da970?mod=hp_lead_pos7
““He was kind and generous—he saw the good in everybody,” said Ms. Lee in an interview, adding that they texted every day. She disputed that Mr. Lee was a “party boy” and said she has never heard the term “The Lifestyle.”
“He was a dedicated father. He was more mature than that,” ”
If his ex wife likes him, its good enough for me.
Great little roadtrip with a 2 mile hike…
Hiking possibilities are few and far between these days in my neck of the woods. Its gonna be 90 degrees or more for the next 10 days-which kills foothill possibilities unless you start real early, and anything in the higher climes is just forget about it territory, as either roads are wrecked or there’s oodles of snow still.
We drove to Eshom Valley where the site of the Ghost Dance was in 1870, and I can see it in my mind-the gathering.
The plan was to drive up on the road into the Whitaker Experimental Forest as far as we could go, and we went aways until we hit a road closed sign that had a nice gap where you could drive around said advice, and then a fallen tree blocked forward passage, as a 60 foot wide section of asphalt was missing, as a yeah whatever creek must have raged plenty during one of the atmospheric rivers. The chasm was 30 feet deep and we marveled at it, when a couple of fellows on motorcycles rode up, and after a lengthy chat I offered them each a Dollar to Evel Knievel the roughly 2 schoolbus length, but it was declined.
There’s another way in where you have to circle around on another road to get to the forest for the trees, and again all was going splendid until a 30 foot gap of missing asphalt on another no name creek and only a 20 foot chasm stopped us in our tracks.
How many of these complete blowouts of roads are there in the Sierra Nevada, we wondered?
Grant Grove was our backup plan in Kings Canyon NP and being the only place you can get to in Sequoia NP that has Sequoias, it was a mob scene of people circling parking lots waiting for their chance to park, and all around in the background was 3-4 feet of snowdrifts here and there, in mid May, yikes.
We had to vamoose that scene and about the only option currently @ altitude in the mountains is Hume Lake, conveniently below the snow line and with splendid views of snow capped peaks in Kings Canyon in the distance. A nice trail takes you around the lake and right by the dam built in 1908, where water was flowing out of 2 lower spillways and over the top of the dam.
p.s.
How could I have left out the ugliest Sierra foothill town ever, Fresno County’s own Miramonte, a disgusting coterie of dwellings that goes on for about a mile, where it appears there must have been a contest to see who could acquire the most cars/trucks/rv’s/trailers/5th wheels, etc. that are never going anywhere again. The winning entry looked to have at least a dozen maybe 15 of them rusting into the ground. The place sports around 6 homes in various states of collapsing unto themselves.
Now, to muddy the waters in a tale of 2 Miramontes, there is a community named Mira Monte near Ojai that is quite upscale-the flipside to the Fresno Miramonte.
Is this an example of a typical Miramontian homestead?
https://imgbox.com/OCcvI4W5
Man, I can smell the ether all the way from Silicon Valley.
A little disappointing that for a real taste of Miramonte, they actually have provided shade for one of the trailers that will never go on vacay again, ever.
Thanks so much for The Computers Are Coming For the Wrong Jobs. Sarc lives….
Husband sent me this one, saying ‘there are worse things out there than house flippers.’
https://www.propublica.org/article/ugly-truth-behind-we-buy-ugly-houses
Thanks for the link. There are 2 or 3 different “we buy ugly house” advertisers in my area. There used to be only 1. Have things gotten so financially distressed here that the area can now support 2 or 3 vulture advertisers? hmmmm…
I had to take a look… there’s one HomeVestors here covering two counties, and four in Colorado, but lots of other outfits competing to pay cash for someone’s house. So many sharks in the water.
Forewarned is forearmed?
Wow! That’s pretty bad. A must read to be lifted to Links. Just when you think that it can’t get any worse…
Holding Biden Accountable (From The Left) — You can’t make this up
The tweet is even underselling it. Not only is the “racial-economic-equity” page replaced by a 404, but demon/zombie-looking Joe Biden tells you to “get back on the rails,” while you mull purchasing an overpriced t-shirt.
There’s only one appropriate response… [Kisses fingers, exclaims “Galbani!”]
Ironic that Biden is using the phrase “get back on the rails” considering what he did with the railroad strike as well as the East Palestine disaster that happened on his watch.
There is an almost Panglossian attitude coming from the Biden administration as disasters pile up with no action or even acknowledgement from Biden most of the time.
Biden is one of the worst presidents we have ever had, not only because his actions, but most of Biden’s inaction on most of anything, and blatant hypocrisy without even offering a flimsy excuse most of the time.
The real question, is that is Biden too lazy to do anything most of the time, or is it because he is not actually the one one making the decisions, as he is not mentally cognizant enough to know what is going on? He probably just scribbles on the dotted line where his handlers tell him to sign.
Action on antitrust is a rare bright spot.
Don’t cast that line if you can’t do the time…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/two-fishermen-caught-cheating-at-ohio-tournament-sentenced-to-10-day-jail-terms/OSQ3J4NIGJD4BLKIWE3GKLDKMA/
I remember to have read about exactly the same kind of deceit (filling fishes with lead weight) in the same context (a fishing competition) being exposed — but it was years ago. This must be a common cheating technique.
Saw that on the news last night and NC had that story in a link. The article says ‘According to a police report, a prosecutor concluded that although the men may have cheated, there was not enough evidence to charge them’ but considering they were winning prizes worth thousands, I would call that fraud, not cheating. But at least their names are trash now and it will follow them for years to come.
Truckers – anything but better pay and better work/life balance.
you could easily change trucks to carry the same load making sure that the drivers are home with family same evening if you want to.
yes, just like so many other things, it could be a great job, doing something critical that needs to be done and having a decent life outside of work, but nooooo…gotta feed the socialist harkonens on top of the gleaming pile
https://www.cbr.com/lord-of-the-rings-dragon-killers-glaurung-smaug/
On New Study Finds a High Minimum Wage Creates Jobs
In other words, in a labor market that isn’t competitive, employers can and do steal wages in the form of underpaying for labor done. A capitalist will steal whatever isn’t nailed down.
As will a rentier.
Re: Peace March Held in Okinawa. Given the location of Okinawa and the decline of Japanese population, I’ve long thought that those bases will be occupied either by US troops or by Chinese troops. Which would Okinawans prefer, not that they will probably be given much choice? Am I being too knee-jerk here in some way?
Helmer has quite a piece up regarding the recent events in the SMO.
https://johnhelmer.org/the-imitation-offensive/
There’s quite the contrast with the Russian ministry’s extremely thorough and dry accounting of Ukrainian losses and the Langley Post’s interview-heavy op ed with the title, “How Ukrainian forces denied Russia victory in Bakhmut by Victory Day”, which seems to leave the door open to future and perhaps rapidly approaching defeat.
Jonathan Turley.
America’s state media: The blackout on Biden corruption is truly ‘Pulitzer-level stuff’
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4003066-americas-state-media-the-blackout-on-biden-corruption-is-truly-pulitzer-level-stuff/
Change the last name and watch the stuff hit the real fan. “Hunter Trump has been found to be on the payroll of foreign governments. We have his laptop and we have valid proof, a labyrinth of LLC and shell corporations designed to obscure and obfuscate…”
Yeah, instead we get crickets. Instead the Bidens can collectively shout “Republican Lie Republican Lie…” and some of the crowds applaud. NOT SARCASM.
If I assume that Wollensky will be on the Celebrity Circuit the next five years at $2MM per year and add $800K for her years of selfless service to the Nation how much is she being paid per scalp?
Between claiming the Vaccine preventing infection and transmission when she knew better and describing masking as the Scarlet letter she’s clearly earned her pay.
At almost 1,200,000 dead and 15MM with Long Covid we’re not even talking $10 each, a heck of a lot less than John Kirker and his boys earned.
https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/nuclear-fallout-russian-strikes-create
Russians cause massive warehouse explosions–British DU warheads on hand and thus radiation may have been released
If he says “radiation was released” that’s false. The DU emitted just the same radiation sitting there in the warehouse as it did after the explosion. Oh, and that is less than uranium ore.
DU emits mainly alpha radiation, which does not penetrate the skin.
The way DU is a health hazard is (particularly after it is used) is that people can inhale or ingest itty bitty particles. When they get inside your body they can mess up organs.
Maybe that’s where they were keeping the dirty bomb or material they were gonna use to try and blame Russia for using a nuke,etc.
Ok got it, there was a couple of medical scanners in there and they used Cesium as their emitter?
Not trying to be click baity. He does say these are preliminary reports and the below quotes one of them. What sounds certain is that the Russian attack has blown up a huge ammunition store.,
The DU isn’t a plausible source of gamma radiation. It just doesn’t produce that much.
All natural uranium isotopes emit alpha particles – positively charged ions identical to the nucleus of a helium atom, with two protons and two neutrons. Their beta and gamma activity is low. Alpha particles are relatively large, and do not penetrate far in tissue – they are stopped by the skin, for example. This means uranium only poses a radiation hazard if it is breathed in, eaten or drunk, or enters part of the body exposed by injury.
https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/depleted-uranium/en/l-2/4.htm
Gamma radiation does not go far, raising the question of how bona fide this “detection” was:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-e&q=how+far+can+gamma+radiation+travel+in+air
I have trouble believing that there is a regular measurement device within a “hundreds of feet” range of the blast.
You would be more concerned about the chemical VOCs than radiation if you were anywhere near, same as the recent train derailments. Fast acting stuff that does your whole body in, radiation takes time, decades maybe, young cop it the hardest in both cases.
Radiation levels are up near that munitions store.
https://www.saveecobot.com/radiation-maps#8/49.677/28.510/gamma
If depleted uranium were dangerous, we’d never be allowed to use it to kill people, right?
I think you meant McDonald’s.
See above – the chemicals are the big health threat near and far term, lots of nastiness in all that ammo. Lots of which is persistent and does not weather, sticks around for a long time.
To lighten your day.
“Engineers are competing (to see) who creates the worst UI on Reddit.”
https://twitter.com/volodarik/status/1657755496852475906
Oh, my goodness. Those were both terrible and hilarious.
This captures the same spirit as the classic “International Obfuscated C Code Contest” and more recent “Obfuscated Perl Contest”, except now with moving pictures and mouse clicks.
I hope it becomes an annual tradition.
for a moment i read that as “worst UI for Reddit”.
And given how bad their “new” UI is, and how they are trying now to kill third party apps, that would be quite the challenge.
Novavax Issues New Flu/COVID Shot Data
Of course COVID is not seasonal, so this is nonsensical.
this article seems to be sympathetic to the french people,
“Macron vs the French Workers – who is winning?
Protests against Macron are at a stalemate. They must escalate if they are to retain their momentum”
not one word yet about leaving the E.U., which is where Macron gets his marching orders, from the E.U. government and the oligarchs that pull their strings.
even if Macron is driven from office, he will view this as a win because the french people seem not to get it yet. he will go onto to work for the E.U. or some of the oligarchs that really rule. and the E.U. will just hum along reducing the deplorable into poverty and a short life span.