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What turns an ant into a soldier or a forager? It may be all in their heads Science
Abandoned Apollo 17 lunar lander module is causing tremors on the moon CNN
Global equity funds draw big inflows as inflationary pressures ease Reuters
What if Jerome Powell pulled off a soft landing and nobody noticed? It’s the economy’s Groundhog Day Fortune
What is jamais vu? The eerie opposite of déjà vu ZME Science
Climate/Environment
NASA confirms summer 2023 was Earth’s hottest on record Space.com
Floods in Libya’s Derna: Worst disaster in 21st century Middle East Monitor
Greenwashing set Canada on fire Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic
Months of devastation: World battered by rising number of natural catastrophes Anadolu Agency
#COVID-19
2… rate of re-infection, combined with the data we have on the likelihood of sequelae of infection and Long Covid with each infection, makes it a near-certainty that a growing percentage of the world will continue to become chronically ill and / or disabled. The pandemic is…
— Conor Browne (@brownecfm) September 16, 2023
Sum 41 lead singer Deryck Whibley hospitalized for pneumonia as wife mentions risk of heart failure Los Angeles Times
Niger
Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso establish Sahel security alliance Al Jazeera
India
India’s Nipah virus outbreak: What do we know so far? Channel News Asia
China?
Don’t Be Distracted by Alarmism Over a Diversionary War Eunomia
We should not choose to fight a war with China if they invade Taiwan Daniel L. Davis, a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army, The Hill
***
China’s desperate stock traders keen for policy ‘bazooka’ to rouse US$10 trillion bear market from slumber South China Morning Post
Life as a Migrant Food Delivery Rider in Shanghai Pekingnology
Life in China’s American Dream Town The Diplomat
Chinese EV makers pin hopes on Europe’s fading auto dealers Business Times
European Disunion
Scholz’s dream of climate revolution to revive Germany is dying Business Times
EU unafraid of trade war with China Channel News Asia
Czech protesters demand government to prioritize citizens over Ukraine Al Mayadeen
New Not-So-Cold War
Ukraine lost around 85% of its initial mobilized force: Field general Al Mayadeen
Zelensky issues warning to EU states RT
Romania to shoot down Russian drones if necessary – top general Ukrainska Pravda
***
What The U.S. Will Learn, And Not Learn, From Its War In Ukraine Moon of Alabama
***
Berlin State Opera Intendant Defends Anna Netrebko Following Protest Threats Opera Wire
Hyping Ukraine Counteroffensive, US Press Chose Propaganda Over Journalism FAIR
Parallel worlds: what counts as news in the West; what counts as news in Russia Gilbert Doctorow
CNN:
‘The Kremlin is trying to use Orthodox churches in the US to recruit spies and intelligence sources.
They warn Russian Orthodox churches that they could be targeted for recruitment by Russian intelligence services”Coming soon : aliens are 🇷🇺 and 🇨🇳 spies . pic.twitter.com/N9WzKNyMFm
— Dagny Taggart (@DagnyTaggart963) September 16, 2023
First Russia, Now China: Turkey Set To Sign Deal With Beijing For Nuclear Power Plant – Reports EurAsian Times
US singles out Turkey with latest war sanctions package bne Intellinews
Syraqistan
US-Saudi arms ‘megadeal’ collapses over Russia, China links: Report The Cradle
Bloomberg starting to wake up to how bad the energy situation without the Saudis on side. https://t.co/aDlH4CceOt pic.twitter.com/yJZepxFC4E
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) September 16, 2023
Will a tripartite US-Saudi-Israeli ‘Deal’ make Any difference? Alastair Crooke, Al Mayadeen
Washington threatens further sanctions on Iraq if ‘misuse of dollars’ not addressed The Cradle
Imperial Collapse Watch
Antony Blinken and the diplomacy deficit Responsible Statecraft
Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them WSJ. The deck: The U.S. military is pouring resources into the superfast weapons but has struggled to develop them. China and Russia are far ahead.
Westmoreland Revisited Consortium News
South of the Border
The Mexican Question New Left Review
The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it STAT. “They’re also finding that healthy Hispanics who immigrate to the U.S. tend to get sicker the longer they stay — raising deeper questions about why our wealthy nation, which spends more than $4 trillion on health care, is far sicker than it should be.”
Spook Country
Biden Administration
Strikes and Bidenomics BIG by Matt Stoller
2024
Harris chatter leaves Biden allies seeking to shut down talk of replacing her The Hill
Trump tells conservatives: Don’t blow it on abortion Politico
Realignment and Legitimacy
Faith in U.S. institutions and each other takes dangerous drop Modern Diplomacy
I love very much that the actual, literal *spokesperson for the Bush/Cheney White House and re-election campaign” — who then was warning of the dangers of “Terrorist lovers” who criticized neocons and Cheney — now deploys the same rhetoric for the DNC, becoming a liberal icon: https://t.co/UnWG7I7MSN
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 16, 2023
AI
Chances of averting apocalypse rise! Robert Wright, Nonzero Newsletter
Healthcare?
After missing mid-year financial expectations, here are the ways big health insurers are going to get back into Wall Street’s good graces HEALTH CARE un-covered. “Hint: it will be at the expense of patients and taxpayers.”
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Revealed: Israeli Cyber Firms Have Developed an ‘Insane’ New Spyware Tool. No Defense Exists Haaretz
TikTok is tracking employee back-to-office attendance with new internal tool called MyRTO Insider
Police State Watch
Obama Legacy
The man who brought back open slave markets by destroying the wealthiest nation in Africa is once again asking for your donations for that nation. https://t.co/Ij6fa5WHDF
— Stan (@StanM3) September 16, 2023
Class Warfare
As Biden Scrambles to Save Suppliers, UAW Limits Strike’s Impact Payday Report
I’m seeing a lot here about General Motors CEO Mary Barra after her disastrous CNN interview.
Barra raked in $29 million last year as GM CEO.
But I want to lift up a few more things about Barra, and how she represents the billionaire class more than people might even realize 🧵 pic.twitter.com/MNEkzr19AK
— Derek Seidman (@derekseidman80) September 16, 2023
Social Determinants in Global Mental Health: Beyond Pills and Psychotherapy Mad in America
Americans who aren’t making this minimum salary could face ‘severe’ mental health issues Fast Company. $52,000 for “low-income” individuals, $75,000 for “average” American. A quick search shows that a little more than 52 percent of Americans had an annual household income that was less than $75,000 in 2021.
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
195 comments
Comments are closed.
Lots of thoughtful chin scratching today.
When people move to the US they mysteriously become less healthy. What could it BE?
Researchers say Americans are nearly always “mentally ill” if they are at a certain income level…how is this possible?
Who is writing these grants??
American “society” is depraved. You have to be a foreigner or long-term expat to see how damaging the American way of “life” is to the soul and body. Morris Berman covered it in his book, Why America Failed. Anyone who has followed this blog for a long time will see that the trend line for America is diving into the crapper. The US is basically the richest third world country.
Yet there are a long line of recently minted graduates even from Europe that wants to move there to work because they are young, healthy, and single.
My guess is that “most” immigrants aren’t “newly minted graduates”; who are heading for a well paid future, with all sorts of opportunities to imagine. My guess is that most “immigrants” are desperately seeking a life. Better than they left maybe, but with a lot of hard work between them now and their future.
And the “hard work” of the immigrants I see doing everything in north carolina, comes at the cost of the body that it takes to do it.
Someone who gets dressed up in the morning and stays clean….Why wouldn’t they want to go to the US?. They have the money to pay the bills. And maybe even a little extra.
Most of the people coming over and “working”, now don’t have medical care. they don’t have social support. And they work themselves to death….. If they do what the “boss” wants.
That is my guess.
Just like native born americans. Some people are born in heaven. Some are born in hell. Life isn’t the same.
Just like native born americans. Some people are born in heaven. Some are born in hell. Life isn’t the same.
some are born to sweet delight
some are born to endless night
Let them go. We’ll be better off if our fools self-select their way out of our societies.
“… young, healthy, and single.” Thus, they are classic aspirationals, and not at all stable family producing. How is a nation to continue and survive if it’s most “valuable” population is focused solely on economic goals? It is not.
I see the return of extended families as a probability for America. That and a “Great Revival” among the “lower classes.”
“Forward, into the Past!”
Back to the future with boarding houses?
My mom was on the slow slide to checking out just on the underside of a hundred, and we had time to kill-premeditated as it were and about 20 banker boxes full of photos to go through, and I got to some Canadian ones in the 1940’s, and mom was in a boarding house, and everybody dressed up for dinner and in a bunch of the photos was a Marilyn Monroe loookalike named Thelma Wellman.
Mom was going in and out of it, hardly responsive and I asked her who Thelma Wellman was, and it was as if i’d mentioned a secret code word to unlock her mind, if only for a few seconds and then she went back into the void.
‘Thelma Wellman was my roommate in a boarding house in Calgary in 1947, she was from Vancouver and I visited her there a number of times’ she uttered.
Yes, and long stay cheap hotels.
I do not count “group homes” which are treatment oriented rather than plain accommodations.
Maybe the mushrooming homeless tent towns are our new and improved boarding forests.
Most immigrants admitted to the US are educated and unlikely to make demands on its, um, safety net. Consider docs and engineers from India.
Hard to get a picture of the demographics of current immigrants.
Yes, there’s the Silicon Valley labor hedge H1B crowd, but their’s also a passel of Venezuelans and Ukrainians being shipped to various Sanctuary Cities in honor of civic virtues signaled.
If someone knows a good real time data source, I”d love to see it. To my eyes, this is another vector of escalating chaos and incompetence.
If that’s the case why is New York Mayor Eric Adams speaking out against them and saying the city cannot handle them?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/biden-administration-worries-new-york-fumbled-migrant-problem-rcna103582
I expect conservative states to do this to score political points, but when liberal leaders are saying it, it may be time to start listening
Eric Adams is a liberal???
I know two families from Africa, all members now US citizens, who are rethinking their decisions to settle here. It is mainly fear for their children, especially from drugs, which have derailed the lives of other children they know in the diaspora. Secondarily its medical care, not cost but quality. One young mother needed a difficult abdominal surgery and had to go to Ethiopia to get it because her provider here (starts with a K) would not do it.
‘When people move to the US they mysteriously become less healthy. What could it BE?’
And yet is was not always so. If you look at photos from the 70s the people are mostly trim and healthy. And then junk food really took off and food no longer was food. What do I mean by that? A coupla weeks ago my daughter accidentally left a KFC mini-tub of mashed potatoes outside. After several days I found not one ant had investigated nor had it gone rotten. If it was food, ants would have swarmed it and the rest would have gone off. Therefore I can only conclude that it as not really food and am not sure what it is. So why are people eating it again? And what effect does it have on people’s bodies?
The bread I bake lasts 2-3 days at most in this humid subtropical environment, year round. After that I could use it as culture medium in a mycology lab. The industrial sandwich bread from the big grocery store? After 3-4 weeks, maybe a few colonies of the most intrepid fuzzy molds. As my biologist friends point out, if our cousins from the Fungi won’t eat it, or can’t eat it, we shouldn’t either.
Because it tastes good!
Reference this documentary for information! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090094/
I tossed fish sticks in the yard, after even the cat refused them–she is my ‘taste-tester’. They stayed uneaten and never rotted for months, as though made from plastic. No neighborhood cats or bugs touched them. I finally buried them.
I found some forgotten hot dog buns from a few years ago. Other than “stale,” they were unchanged in look.
“Edible” oil products and Frankenfoods …
Old organic-movement saying: ” If the bugs won’t eat it, its no good.”
Glenn Greenwald and Dr. Gabor Mate. utube, ~30 minutes.
On Rising Depression, SSRI Medications, and Spiritual Disease: Dr. Gabor Maté
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxFfhIlnAsE
To paraphrase the good Dr.: the Criminal Justice System is aptly named, because it is criminal…
The article about global mental health is very disturbing, and in particular, “Lund calls for a radical rethinking in the approach to global mental health. Shifting from primarily psychological and pharmacological treatments to address wider socio-economic determinants is not only a clinical imperative but also a matter of social justice“.
This is a stalking horse for a new campaign to wreak havoc on other countries. When the PR about the US bringing “democracy” to other nations is no longer believed even by western consumers of media, then it will be replaced by PR that the US is doing god’s work by saving people from depression and misery by overthrowing governments and installing regimes.
The concern for global mental health is just another form of colonialism.
This was a really interesting article also:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/our-collective-trauma-is-the-road
Memphis was tied for 3rd most dangerous place in America per capita, behind Monroe LA and Bessemer AL. Memphis is a city of PTSD. You can feel it in the air. It has always been a traumatized city but now it is spiraling out of control. We can’t even fake normal now.
These three cities compromise an “Unholy Triangle of the South.” Bessemer is 260 miles from Memphis, which is 260 miles from Monroe, with the long side of the triangle, Bessemer to Monroe, being 370 miles.
My best guess is that this triangle is just about the poorest region in the country. When Barry took away Hope, the poor people stared into the abyss, and saw Barry, Hillary, and the gang staring back.
When that much anticipated “better fascist” comes along, he or she will be from “outside the box.”
Isn’t there some “study”every year about the $75,000 a year needed or salary needed for this or that?
None of it is about DOING anything to fix anything. They’re just updates on how much more squeezing of middle incomes can be pursued.
“Researchers say Americans are nearly always “mentally ill” if they are at a certain income level…how is this possible?”
Quite often, to the degree that keeping up with the Jones’ has captured their imaginations.
I’m not talking about people struggling with the basics, who have already trimmed expenses.
April 13, 2023 – U.S. life expectancy has declined to 76.4 years, the shortest it’s been in nearly two decades, according to December data from the CDC
Some comparisons —
The current average life expectancy for Monaco in 2023 is 87.0143 years of age. A 0.14% increase from 2022, when the average life expectancy was 86.8951 years, from birth to death. In the future, Monaco’s average life expectancy is projected to increase to 95.7552 years of age, by the year 2100.
The current life expectancy for U.K. in 2023 is 81.77 years, a 0.15% increase from 2022. The life expectancy for U.K. in 2022 was 81.65 years, a 0.15% increase from 2021. The life expectancy for U.K. in 2021 was 81.52 years, a 0.15% increase from 2020.
The current life expectancy for Greece in 2023 is 82.80 years, a 0.2% increase from 2022. The life expectancy for Greece in 2022 was 82.64 years, a 0.2% increase from 2021.
Life expectancy in the ultra-wealthy US “democracy” is worse than China’s, that middle-income autocracy.
Draw your own conclusions.
SPR graph says a lot…Strategic Petroleum Reserve I mean to say. Something is going wrong in the offices of the US executive command / goldilocks economy world at 1600 Pennsylvania. I can recall earlier in this year, that an energy department official would opine about making purchases when the WTI cost per barrel was averaging between $60 to $90…Does not seem like that actually took place but I digress…I notice yesterday the average cost for a gallon of simple 87 octane was running about $3.45 (southeastern US).
https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/oil-prices-chart-forecast-inflation-biden
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to about 350 million barrels which does not leave old Joe much maneuvering room to do releases to bring down oil prices before next November’s election. When you consider that the United States consumes about 20 million barrels of oil per day while producing about 11 million barrels per day, the maths does not look good.
The Biden jettison has the added benefit of scapegoating the long list of disasters that will unfold in 2024. That is also why Harris and Mayo Pete are not legit alternatives. It will come from outside the admin, like the Gavin or some other billionaire sponsored ‘outsider’. Declaring the Powell soft landing victory is the kiss of death. By Q2 next year, the financial system is going to be a right mess.
California is a mess, he is hardly qualified to do anything, nor claim any successes.
A sleazy lothario, promoted by an oil billionaire family, handing over the state to illegals and housing developers, declaring a “surplus” ahead of his recall election, then declaring a huge deficit once he won, his affiliation with the mediocre D.A. Kamala Harris when he was mayor, a lead up to the Detroitization of San Francisco, all of this makes Newsom persona non grata for political reality.
Detroitization? care to explain that term –
That’s an exageration.
San Francisco will not revert to empty sand dunes and prarie like Detroit has.
“Baltimorization” should be the term used. Crime ridden, many or most businesses leaving, constant deficits due to social service costs, seething local corruption etc.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&city1=Baltimore,+MD&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco,+CA
From the urban dictionary: “Detroitification refers to the destruction of a city, state or nation through draining money from hardworking individuals to pay for the cushy compensation and retirement of unproductive public “servants.” When paired with corruption, Detroitification can skeletonize a city in just a few years.”
Seems like what has happened to SF
Yeah, but this is the Democrats — reality need not apply.
Pilkington tweet:
Reminds me of the way we’re always told “sanctions” work, when the u.s. uses them for regime change in “uncooperative” countries. Sanctions hurt the people not the rulers, so the theory goes, but that’s acceptable, desirable even, because the people will rise up to remove the powers that “offend” america.
Seems like somebody might have been taking notes.
The Saudis has known this since the 70s oil shock.
And that is still a third cheaper than some other nations that seem to have aspirations of becoming just as car dependent as USA…
Yes, but in the United States, one needs a car if they are to get anywhere for anything, such as a job. Increasing gas prices hit everyone except the upper, upper middle class and the wealthy with their EVs.
And the rot of the public and private healthcare systems, from CDC on down, should chill any enthusiasm about public transportation.
Public transportation, where it exists, is no longer viable with bums, mentally ill and thugs controlling much of it.
Thanks Soros, your D.A.s are doing a great job for ‘equity’.
I only know D.A. as an abbreviation for District Attorney.
What do you mean?
What’s comical here is that we’re seeing that, despite US-led sanctions on Russia, they’re doing just fine, thanks, and meanwhile Russia and Saudi Arabia together can effective squeeze the United States right where it gets its oil. It seems two sides can play at this game, but only one actually understands how to play, and it ain’t the Biden administration. Now if they really annoy the Chinese, we’ll be a world of hurt, given most of our manufactures originate there, in whole or in part. Oops.
I think they’re setting us, or the next administration, up for a crash. Disaster crapitalism. As L summers whinges how we need a severe recession to whip the plebes, german workers are being led to the abattoir,, and the current “ukraine is winning” BS, it’s obvious that there is no concern for those suffering, the rich must get richer. Funny how that kolomosky (sp.?) guy is an oligarch with a recently reported wealth of 15 billion…that would make him something like the 100th richest person in nyc. One dollar. one vote here in the thunderdome.
Cash price for regular in Sonoma County is $5.59, $.20 more if credit.
Since the US’ crude/refined product sanction DOE/EIA weekly report shows:
Crude imports decline
Crude domestic supply somewhat up
Refined product produced increase
Net exporter, well over million barrels per day from net importer!
Massive draw from SPR is covering Russian supply disruptions in EU
US energy security and retail prices set aside. Harmed?
Commercial crude stocks down last few weeks, but slight higher year on year.
Refill the reserve ?
I got a sense in the afternoon hours these questions were more rhetorical in nature than actual inquiries in need of a response. Alas, I will hasten to say the SPR is something my younger self would not have actively followed or cared much to know about ( and I can recall the inflation of the early 1980s as a young kid ). Short answer is Yes, making it an active plan on the part of follow through on the Administration plan to refill the SPR is suggested. There’s something of substance that is lacking from this Administration but I digress.
re: Fast Company.
the atticus researchers should try a $12k per year texas teacher’s pension.
(which only lasts another 4 years,lol)
why wouldn’t “anxiety” and “depression” be frelling expected in such a situation?
i wonder how much they spent to study this issue.
Along those lines was thinking today…how much do I spend getting a Subway sandwich every week, or a local restaurant chain (Zaxby’s) grilled chicken? It adds up. And to also add, I don’t do a Starbucks coffee and would sound quite the idiot if I did; “I just wanna large java to go, with nuthing added?”
I do have a good problem I concede, in working from home and not entering an office daily as presently requested…demanded. At present, I hover pretty near the median. And on the study and related expenses, I’d guess $500,000 to study? Point 1, Higher incomes are better than lower incomes. Point 2, Lower income levels are stressful. It does take a genius of an MBA student to report that, I am certain, and pilfer data in massive Excel or otherwise a spreadsheet product like Tableau.
>the atticus researchers should try a $12k per year texas teacher’s pension.
Or they could try a $12k per year gross. Wellie, at least I’m a little above that.
It is a matter of ignoring the Bernays’ Sauce and focusing on what you need and what you can happily do without.
My mental distress comes from the perverse mischief of our Overlords.
lol. that is my Gross.
of course, i expect to get all that is withheld right back, come february…plus my last go-round with EITC(we’ll see,lol).
still.
i read the Teacher Retirement System newsletter on occasion…and they are happy happy joy joy…everything’s Fine!
of course, i’m a mere “survivor”…not a retired teacher.
but i know lots of retired teachers…some of them 30 years on the job.
none of them report or imply that things are fine.
the switch to “defined contribution”, or whatever its called, had a big effect.
so did inflation(the real kind, not hamburger=steak).
and so did the 30 year campaign of hate on teachers in texas, which was scaled up to nationwide.
communist agents, and gay groomers, etc etc.
i was given a choice: 1. lump sum of i think 80k(dont remember).2.1100 per month after taxes for 5 years,or 3. something like 250/month for the rest of my life.
i chose #2.
i’ll get by…better than my peers in the same situation…because i grow a lot of our food, and am resourceful and tenacious.
and i also plowed most of Tam’s life insurance into the means of production on farm…which will eventually bear fruit(labor issues be damned).
my main point is that the folks who do these kinds of studies…well intentioned as they may be…aren’t doing their safaris with near enough depth.
and i suspect that most such studies rely solely on “data”…like the above mentioned ‘hamburger=steak’ trope.
and never set foot in the hinterlands and actually talk to people.
(ie,like: “let us now praise famous men”)
Thanks Hippie. Aging hippie here too, but also retired teacher. We (hubby and I) are doing fine. Part of it is the teacher’s retirement, true dat, but the larger part is the minimalization of life. Large garden for years, near zero distant travel, I could go on and on. Essentially, with our average sized American yard, with minimal output such as restos, plane flights and other “luxuries”, we do just fine and enjoy the last years of this empire (and our lives). Come to think of it, a simple life and simple health is true “luxury”.
yeah,lol.
I dont “eat out”, unless mom or one of the boys are buying.
and rolling my own whenever its a beer drinking or laid up day(boredom accentuates my most expensive remaining vice, at least half the expense of which is taxes, federal and state).
of course, being here practically all the time, i can do things like dry beans and peas and lentils and such…i’m here to watch them, adjust temp, and add water.
same with big cuts of meat, which then goes in to all manner of dishes for the following week.(pork has been cheaper than dirt, so we load up on big loins and boston butts and carnitas—beef has been ridiculous…half trimmed brisket $75+…all that storebought in addition to the homegrown)
plus home canning…including prolly 2 gallons of pesto,lol….and a large and growing distributed herb garden…
i know lots of people around here who are much worse off, even while working 2 jobs, and being on foodstamps and/or disability.
(i dont want to deal with those agencies any more, been there, done that…and i’m ineligible due to that 5 acres of inherited salt marsh, anyway)
what i experience…as well as what i know and infer about others around me…is not reflected in thing’s like the study in the article.
of course, how would atticus even be aware of me?
i’m almost entirely off grid.
Any tips for drying beans? I’ve been growing them for years now and never had a problem until the last couple years, both of which were pretty wet, especially this year. I’ve always let them dry in the pod on the vine then shell them and put them in a jar until I’m ready to make chili. Seeds saved for next year go in old tea tins. Last year I had a bunch get moldy in a Wex jar – they either didn’t dry enough pre-storage or the container was too airtight, or both.
Yesterday I went out to pick some after they’d dried on the vine for the 2nd time – earlier it rained before I could pick them for about a week or ten days. On several plants I saw some beans sprouting in the pod due to the moisture, some dried and ready to pick, some pods still green, and new flowers(!) blooming – four stages all on the same plant.
That seems to say something about the weather, not sure what, but it’s probably not good…
Given the condition, once I get them all shelled, even though they seem dry enough, I’m going to store them in a plastic tray with holes poked in the lid for a couple weeks or so before putting them in jars. Hopefully that will do the trick.
wet, humid weather is not conducive for those activities.
“normally”pretty dry, here…save for el nino years.
i have old window screens suspended from the roof of the little greenhouse, attached to the house.
and more under every roof at the bar.
as well as in what once was the “New Bathroom” on the trailerhouse/library…and which is now a teenage chickenhouse.
fans.
fans.
fans.
you can also save the little silica packets that come in drugs and vitamins…just dont let the dog get at them.
and paper bags for drying…so long as its not too humid.
i have yet to dry any of my own beans, save “leather britches”, for seed saving. i put fishin line on a needle for those and hang them inside somewhere….like a green bean ristra.
dry beans are cheaper than almost anything else, and i have metal trashcans(under cover) full of all manner of dry beans. 20 years worth, if it comes to that.
in that post, i was talking about the cooking of them…takes time, and being there…which is a luxury i have, but that most folks do not.
almost all my current drying is various squash and pumpkin, onions, taters…as well as seeds from everything.(i use cheap ass coffee filters to dry wet stuff like tomatoes and cukes.)
eventually, a solar dehydrator is in the works.
for sun dried toms, peppers, etc.
the upper level of the big greenhouse might be good for that…plan a catwalk down the middle, once we get the roof on.(for big tubs of soil for vines to shade lettuce, etc below.)
i can see hanging screens up there, where it gets hot even when its real cold.
my doctor buddy of almost 25 years finally talked me in to doing a youtube channel or whatever…but i must get past this infrastructure construction phase, first.
he’s been after me for years and years to do that…nurses get mad at him for yukking it up with me for 30 minutes talking about all the strange things i do out here,lol.
y’all will be the first to know about it.
I would like to do a similar thing, except I cannot afford to buy a house, as I am yet another elder millennial with no means of entry in the housing market, and as my apartment is in a very rural place twenty minutes outside of the town that I work in, the cost of gasoline adds up, and as there is no public transportation to and from my podunk little township, having a car is not a luxury but a necessity.
Housing is very cheap in the northern part of my state as is land, but jobs up there are very scarce. If I were to buy a house, I would move to one of the neighboring Midwestern states as Michigan is very similar to Minnesota, except it has some Zone 6 areas as Zone 4 really limits what you can grow, and my landlord does not let tenants have garden plots and my apartment unit has almost no natural light so I cannot really grow anything indoors. I wish I had one of those cushy “work-from-home” jobs that everybody keeps talking about, but they are very hard to come by for unlucky post-collegiate millennials stuck in dead-end retail jobs like myself.
One downside to living where I do are energy costs, as for as much as people complain about the cost of air conditioning in some parts of the US, heating bills during winter where I live can be enormous, especially when you have electric heat like my apartment complex does. As our winters can be brutally-cold, this can hit you right in the bank account every month.
There are a lot of interesting plants I want to experiment with growing, but I do not have any land to do it on. One upside to the Upper Midwest, is that water is not scarce as we get plenty of rainfall and we have many rivers, swamps, and lakes, so our watertable is also very high. Plus, our soil is extremely loamy and fertile, so this gives me a lot of flexibility in terms what I can grow once the issue of cold hardiness is taken into account.
in reality, it takes as clean a break as you can make.
i’m where i’m at due to path dependency…choice i made, 30 years ago…because i had nowhere else to go.
as well as choices wife and i made when my hip died, and day care was too expensive…and so on.
she and i have been heading towards where i am now for a long, long time.
this was always the plan, i’m just finishing it using her last gift to me.
path dependency…having no further choice to take a different direction…makes it “easier”,lol.
but i still believe in it, regardless.
i’ll never get rich…but i’ll be able to pay the taxes, and hand a working farm to the boys, for when the feces inevitably hit the fan in a manner that noone can deny.
they are both reluctantly in agreement about that inevitability…timing is the only thing we disagree on.
after all, they’ve heard me ramble on with my doomer bs since they were little.
they reluctantly agree that much of what ive been warning about for so long has come to pass…but they still dont want to believe it.
rest of their world denies all that outright.
it was same with wife,lol…she hated it when i ended up being right…or when what i predicted happened, six months or a year later.
she’d side eye me mercilessly when that happened.
one of my favorite pictures of her is of just such a side eye.
radical times call for radical actions…i’m just more long term in my radicalism than most.
this is what i do, now…and who i am…i am a part of this place….extending well beyond property lines.
see: Steinbeck’s first novel: To a God Unknown.
know what you mean AtH – been here for 20 years and done everything i could to keep the place – even rented to a brother-in-law with 7 children that left the place wreck when i moved to Chicago for a while and while i lived with my Dad as he eased is way to the other plane, Mom went a decade previous – but nothing i couldn’t fix and have a nice small orchard – daughter and her partner have taken over the financial responsibility and i moved into in-law apartment – i’m the designated gardener/landscaper at the direction of my daughter – kept my Michigan real estate broker license current and able to do a deal or two a year that fortunately makes it comfortable and able to contribute –
cousin has been on to me to look into something called Xactimate.
turns out i’m forbidden by texas…without a lawyer, etc…to be an “adjuster”(whateverthehell that is,lol)…but i can be an estimater(again,lol)…but it’s like learning a new language…
catalan i could do relatively easily…but i find i dont have the bandwidth to even attempt this, now.
i also have moral qualms…i loathe the insurance “industry” as much as i do the rest of the FIRE Sector(that burned the real economy down)
but he’s making 60k per year for doing essentially nothing.
done so for going on 20 years, now.
it waits in the wings, in case i can find the bandwidth.
think i’d rather do the youtube thing,lol.
but with that, i worry about privacy…as well as alerting long ago authorities as to my whereabouts(most of those enemies are dead and gone, by now…but still..being on the lam is long habit)
ive got prospects, once i can get past this hump of the part of the construction i need help with(the ladder and scaffold parts..as well as the parts where a 6 penny nail as my helper just isnt enough)
cooking things for the wineries and the coffee shop…in my own kitchen, no less…and tending bar under the table at an isolated river icehouse twice a month.
but there again…hafta get past this hump.
HMMMMMM…..had a barn burn down with all the tools used to build the post and beam home – it’s not the one i live in now – but was going through some legal issues with a RICO thing and my attorney told me to get this guy who was an adjuster who formalized the claim for the AAA – if i had left if for AAA to determine it would have been up the gas pipe without lubricant – the guy was worth every cent – put together a freaking book that itemized everything – happened back in the 80’s wonder if that’s what your cousin is talking about –
weirdly, perhaps…Jabura…i’m finding that i like saying your name out loud tonight.
almost poetic.
where, pray tell, are you from…or your parents, as the case may be?
Michigan is a much better than Minnesnowta for growing anything – the Lake Michigan coast is all zone 6 up to Traverse City – a pal and his wife have a farm near Bliss north of Petoskey in a 5A zone and they use a hoop house to moderate the weather and even grow some cruciferous vegetables into the early winter –
https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
and see: Anna Edey…sp-2.
Solviva Farm.
lots of good stuff from her.
https://www.solvivagreenlight.com/about-anna/
and Eliot Coleman is a good go-to for y’all northern people, too.
absolutely, have 2 of Coleman’s books – daughter wants to put a couple of hoop houses up – also helps prevent the deer and other critters from munching thx for the link and will dig into what Anna has to say – very fortunate to have 3 CSA within walking distance and a store for the local produce on one of the farms – nice post and beam structure –
Anna is a hoot.
“the pee lady”, etc.
and animals in the greenhouse for heat…as well as compost in there for heat.
and waterwalls, etc.
she’s one of my heroes.
a regular sized chicken generates something like 4 btu.
lol.
Hepativore – Do you have friends or colleagues with a backyard that they don’t use? Have a cousin who lives a few hundred yards from a subway station in Toronto and she loans her back yard to some urban farmers. Gets fresh produce all summer and canned goodies in the fall in exchange for the land and water use.
CC – i’m going to assume you know about the folks at Narwhal
https://thenarwhal.ca/
spent a lot of time in TO – daughter was a student and the National Ballet School for high school and 2 years post secondary – actually been going up to TO since the late 60’s – saw John Lennon perform there at Live Peace in ’69 after he had left the Beatles – don’t know if it is still there but there was an incredibly funky cool diner called The Senator on Victoria near Eaton Center i would take my daughter to for breakfast, great french toast –
I am escapes from the rat race of Toronto but spent lots of happy time there in my younger days. Indeed I am familiar the narwhal! And further indeed, The Senator still exists. https://www.thesenator.com/ Rather a fancy place these days. Have listened to live jazz there.
Speaking of the means of production, which tractor did you get (brand and model)? How many horsepower? Manual, hydrostatic? What attachments did you get? A disk tiller, plow, what else? Quick hitch, perhaps? Weights? And did you buy any of these new, or 2nd hand? Tractors are very, very useful. I wish you luck.
i still dont speak Tractor…so i dont know numbers.
small to medium kubota with a front end loader, bucket and forks, and a rototiller.
latter is a pita to put on/take off…and this winter, i must, so as to disentangle all the roots and such.
not small enough to get evrywhere i needed, at least on this side of road…but it would hafta be small, indeed, for that,lol.
as it is, i can go most places on our place.
lifting telephone poles for fencing and construction…as well as stacks of plyboard to the second floor of the cabin…are where its come in most handy, so far. also done some road building over the old gully, and cleared a bunch of prickly pear that would have taken me weeks by hand.
rototiller has been for mom’s yard…which as always is an exercise in futility,lol.
really come into play when:1. i’m done with all the infrastructure/construction over here and 2. over at her place, and back pasture, etc…when she’s gone.
i’ll hafta take the roll bar off to get into the goat barn at her place,,,unless we rebuild the structure like she says she wants to.
ideally, i’d have this one and a much, much smaller one for all the tight spots and low clearance(trees)….and the big greenhouse, which i am constructing(doors) with this in mind.
but one does what one can.
I’ve named this one Rocinante.
my eldest is much more adept at it than i am.
we also built a man-basket from a sturdy pallet and scrap lumber.
that’ll be used to cover the big greenhouse.
cost me $27k, and i paid cash.
dude delivered it a few days later and gave me a sort of class.
well worth it…but i shouldve gotten weights for the back tires.
when dude comes back this winter for scheduled maintenance(free), i’ll see if we can put water or whatever in them.
that’s been the only issue… grabbing too much and goin for a ride,lol….ass end lifting up. very uncomfortable for me,lol.
eldest son takes that bucking and yawing in perfect stride, but he’s done this sort of thing for a living.
mom has been itching to spring for a brush hog/shredder…but i demure, because then she’d be on me to mow the front pasture all the time and make it into a desert, like the back one.
form over function, and all…esthetics trump pasture health…she wants a lawn, i want to grow grass.
There is a special antifreeze water for the tires. Be sure to use that.
yeah. tractor dude’s thing, there.
i wouldn’t know how.
i’ll be watching him with great interest.
This may help you learn more . . .
https://www.goodworkstractors.com/product-category/attachments/
Mental distress, says Oprah, just comes from people on social media feeling envy, don’tcha know.
https://twitter.com/RF_SoTX_956/status/1702396655922782346
Oprah can always retreat to one of her several homes, although finding anyone to help her there might get more difficult. People on Maui say No Mahalo.
Considering that most of Oprah’s wealth was achieved by stoking that life style envy, I would have no problem putting her in a place where she has to decide between keeping the lights on and eating in her only abode a 500 square foot rental. But since I don’t have magical abilities she’ll continue spending her days choosing between which overpriced lounge wear to wear and what massively over priced meal to get and flying private between obscenely large houses for her one or two person household. Oh and probably complaining about how many of those outfits and meals weren’t free. (You don’t think she actually pays to buy those favorite things she hawks every year.)
Her blaming mental distress/depression on social media envy is possibly one of her most obscene acts.
Then there’s the story about Oprah visiting a famous Paris department store and saying they were racist for not keeping it open after hours for her benefit.
She puts the “o” in egotism?
Happened also in Zurich, because they did not know who she was (she wanted the whole department store on Bahnhofsstrasse for herself) …
It could be the same story making the rounds. The web version I saw said it was the Samaritaine store in Paris. I once bought bike parts there.
Reminds me of a ~$6mm study that determined cats use cuteness to manipulate their owners/servants which was the source of much hilarity here a few years back.
If cats had opposable thumbs and wider ambitions the world would have new overlords.
TV series pitch:
‘The Six Million Dollar Cat’
A feral moggie fends for itself… wiping out 7 of its lives in the process, and due to the miracle of science is able to leap tall bounds thanks to bionics (nnnnnnnnhhhhh, nnnnnnnnnnnnnhhh, nnnnnnnnnnnnnnhh…)
Lol, here at my place there are two cats that have already taken over the kingdom. They own everything
And will not share.
Heh heh. We’ve got three. They pretty much own the place.
This is NOT an assignment! — just an errant thought.
I noticed this thread that Amfortas started is a very long thread. It quickly verges off topic to areas that I believe Lambert finds of interest.
As I scan through the daily comments I often cannot pass over what Amfortas has to say. I enjoy his unique style and his contagious enthusiasm. Is it possible that he might provide a post or perhaps he and Lambert might work on a post together. They seem to share many areas of interest. I am very ignorant about and very interested in ways to subsist and thrive as the Empire collapses – ways I might somehow convey to the children I hope might survive me in the future.
Dude!
I am honored!
and humbled.
come back from drinkin and smokin homegrown with my boys to this,lol.
made carnitas, in the giant dutch oven…and we got to meanderin
now this!
lol.
Thanks, Jeremy.
i remain pretty scatterbrained, tho…but if it will help the site, instead of $ i dont have…
pick a topic.
i do want to contribute.
my love to you all.
‘CNN:
‘The Kremlin is trying to use Orthodox churches in the US to recruit spies and intelligence sources.
They warn Russian Orthodox churches that they could be targeted for recruitment by Russian intelligence services”’
This is really bad this. The Ukraine has been destroying religious freedom over there by arresting priests and seizing churches. But they are a fascist country and that is the sort of thing that fascist countries do. But here CNN appears to be saying that the US should crack down on Orthodox churches in America too. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that everyone in the United States has the right to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all but I guess that CNN is saying that they should just dump those protections and go after Orthodox churches in the same way that happened with Islamic mosques after 9/11. I think that it is a given that if there was a full blown fascist government in the US (“It Can’t Happen Here”), that organization like CNN and MSNBC would totally support it.
In the coming weeks, CNN will run a report that the annual tradition of Halloween is a Russian plot to spoil our children and rot their teeth using American chocolate companies as a false front. Candygate 2023 ! ( sarc ). A weakened American, spoiled as a child with candy, makes an easy target.
On a serious note, I always revert back to the gift that was the initial Patriot Act and its ensuing progeny of surveillance and information gathering (collecting, snooping). Hooray and huzzah for the world we know today since that time. Once upon a time, I took Erin seriously when she was on CNBC…not so much anymore.
Further to your point, you may enjoy this magnificent piece of Orwellian doublespeak c/o Tom Daschle and Dan Sullivan:
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4204499-us-support-for-democracy-will-smash-the-new-rise-of-authoritarianism/
We are already there.
Jeez, Louise!
fta:”Investing in free media, healthy multiparty systems, civil society activists, an independent judiciary, inclusive political participation and electoral integrity can help those systems in other countries to withstand authoritarian subversion and fulfill their democratic potential. ”
like Gandhi supposedly said when asked what he thought about Western Civilisation:”
“sounds like a good idea, you should try it”,lol.
they then immediately quote Maddy Albright,lol
I mean, isn’t NED one of those cia regime change fronts?
c’mon man,lol
its always opposite day in certain rarefied environs.
and this reminds me.
Obama and Biden sent me a text…with a selfie.
“this selfie would be better if you were in it, Josef”(actually spelling my first name right…which no one ever does.
then something about a sort of sweepstakes where i could win an all expense paid trip to rub elbows with them both, and presumably take just such a selfie.
I texted back(FWIW):
“end the american empire, and we’ll talk.
Barack is welcome at my bar for beer, ribs and feral philosophy any old time. Joe’s attendance is negotiable, depending on if he brings sufficient minders, stays the hell away from my hair, etc.
Y’all gotta earn this vote, and a selfie aint gonna do the trick.”
surely someone is tasked to read replies,lol.
That op-ed was prolly the most spectacularly well polished turd I have yet seen. One hears about the universe of deliberately obscure think tanks that has beens like Daschle retire to, but this reads like something the Mother Ship has just dumped over the side to feed the krill.
And I agree with you, the “opportunity” to get a selfie with some demented war criminals is not as attractive a prospect as they might think it is. If there was ever a better opportunity to lower ones carbon footprint by not going, that would be it.
”Investing in free media, healthy multiparty systems, civil society activists, an independent judiciary, inclusive political participation and electoral integrity can help those systems in other countries to withstand authoritarian subversion and fulfill their democratic potential. ”
Are you one of those crazy conspiracy theorists who keep saying we do not have any of this?
:-)
why yes, yes i am.
ive met the Machine, many times…escaped more or less unscathed.
i am unapologetically anti-empire.
fie, fie, fie.
It has long been an open secret that those in power in the United States have seen what nationalism and manufactured ethnic hate can do in Ukraine and sought to harness thst power here.
” Zelensky issues warning to EU states”
Zelenski does realize that he is not yet an EU nation, doesn’t he? And yet he seems to be convinced that he has the bigger stick. Personally I am convinced that Zlenski get personal kickbacks from all that grain that was being sent west as was Brussels in how they sent it to other parts of the EU. But because the EU totally refused to uphold their end of the grain deal agreement, this has resulted in the present quandary.
Earlier in the week Links had an MoA summary of interviews Z gave to The Economist in which he threatened that if sponsor nations back UA into a corner, stuff could happen. He appeared to be threatening terrorist acts in retaliation if current levels of subsidies, equipment and assistance are not maintained. Presumably he hasn’t given much though to how a threat like that can misfire in various way.
As far as kick-backs are concerned, Ben Aris of bne IntelliNews and others said at the beginning of the war that all senior politicians are on the take in UA. They all get rich on the job. I remember Aris called Tymoshenko the Gas Queen because of the huge fortune she made on transit fees.
.Tom: As far as kick-backs are concerned, Ben Aris of bne IntelliNews and others said at the beginning of the war that all senior politicians are on the take in UA. They all get rich on the job.
Like calls to like, then. Because Kiev has that in common with DC.
Zelenskii acts like a spoiled brat because he can.
huh… So I go over to read The Automatic Earth and get a “404 Site not found” error. Tried a couple times to eliminate any typo on my part.
Even clicked on NC’s blogroll list link. Same response.
Whoa! Same from Germany.
Earlier today, the site was up. As with the sudden attacks on Russell Brand, it’s natural to wonder if this isn’t due to some busy little bees at work at MiniTrue…
Same here in Oz. The culling – begun it has.
Same here in SW USA. Donate to NC and keep it flowing!
Try a VPN, maybe? I was able to get to the Automatic Earth using. Actually, I need to use a VPN more and more often to get to some sites often by changing the country it is being routed through as well as being sure all my cookies and search history is both cleared and blocked.
I just tried it again and now it’s back. good. (Things sure are glitchy these days.)
A Canadian school is doing its bit to protect young readers from harmful literature written before the Great Financial Crisis.
School purges books published before 2008 in ‘illogical’ inclusivity push
https://nypost.com/2023/09/15/canadian-school-purges-books-published-before-2008-in-inclusivity-push/
Purging anything printed before 2008? So, the past five thousand years of Western writing is somehow tainted, including says the article, The Diary of Anne Frank? I assume this would also include 1984
I would suggest giving a tip to The Onion, but I am not sure how they could satirize this.
and this, my friends, is why i have an actual Library, with actual books in it.
i’m a back up drive for western civilisation.
i just wish i could afford an underground version for it, instead of this old trailerhouse,lol.
It’s stories like this that give credence to what conservatives call the lunatic left. So I would ask them – what great works of literature have been written since 2008? I literally cannot think of even one. I suppose the next step for that library is to get rid of books altogether and just go for digital books which have the advantage of being able to be “updated’ to the latest mores and fashions.
that latter “step” would certainly be in line with the ongoing “Orwell as Manual rather than Warning” kick they’ve been on.
add Judith Butler to the pee on graves tour.
(Petaluma, Hope, Arkansas,wherever Reagan hatched out , etc)
2008? The year the great David Foster Wallace suicided.
I’ve been having trouble getting the MOA feed the last few days but was able to read the link upstairs so site working. Elsewhere today Yves’ discouraging news and Counterpunch not too long ago seemed to be struggling. Then there’s the new EU law threatening huge fines over “disinformation” and the way the once neutral Google has embraced censorship.
In their latest talk Taibbi and Kirn discuss that White House pro censorship letter re Biden impeachment and how the MSM highlighted the letter and then did exactly what it demanded even in the same story–apparently expecting a “nice doggie” pat on the head for doing so.
The web started out as a libertarian project and now TPTB are trying to flip the switch and turn it into the opposite. Whether they will succeed may still be dubious but it could be that blogworld is in for some hard, or harder, times. However all the censorship in the world won’t change the “facts on the ground” of Davos man’s essential incompetence when it comes to working societies. These attacks on free speech are a sign of weakness, not strength. But it’s a dangerous weakness as we see with the irrational situation in Ukraine.
Don’t feel bad, I get a 403 error when I attempt to visit haaretz. Cleared cookies, no joy. I’ve given up.
I got the same earlier but just clicked on the site and it came up.
Nope. I get it with the last article, The Debt Rattle from 9/17, front and center.
“He’s Back!” Well, not him really, but Automatic Earth is back online. I wonder what happened, but in any case, let’s not let this happen to NC.
TAE is online now, as of 6:00 PM USA/CDT.
From census.gov, released 9/12/2023:
Real median household income after taxes fell 8.8% to $64,240 from 2021 to 2022 and the poverty rate after taxes as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) increased 59% to 12.4%.
These significant changes in after-tax income and poverty rates of U.S. households were much larger than the annual changes in before-tax income and poverty, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today.
Link: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-household-income.html
Well this might be good news but then maybe not.
https://www.modbee.com/news/california/article279373634.html
‘Stan
@StanM3
The man who brought back open slave markets by destroying the wealthiest nation in Africa is once again asking for your donations for that nation.’
The Obama Foundation? Will it end up having as good a record as the Clinton Foundation had in Haiti?
re WSJ hypersonics article: With nationwide math and reading scores plummeting, we are surprised that we are behind in rocket science?
I’m sure we still have enough highly competent engineers and mathematicians to solve this problem. The issue is that the system does not allocate them to this task. Perhaps this is symptomatic of late-stage capitalism, but I suspect the root cause is merely inadequate leadership.
I’m not so confident. Although anecdotal, based on my POV, the number of competent engineers and mathematicians that are both under 50 years old, and a product of the U.S. education system has dropped dramatically. A growing percentage of the competent class gained their pre-college education outside the United States. BTW, this is also true for Elon Musk.
Yes, the USA is importing these people. However, that doesn’t explain why the work isn’t getting done.
Under ITAR, in order to work on such advanced weapons systems, these imported experts must also be U.S. citizens, which narrows the pool even more. At some point, the lack of homegrown experts in the supply chain is a big challenge. I believe Mr. Musk raised this same issue once.
That’s a good point, but it should only lead to US experts being paid better money to work on this existentially important weapons technology, while foreigners work on less vital systems. That doesn’t seem to be happening.
For almost two decades, top engineering and scientists graduates have gone to Wall St. It is BIG MONEY compared to what can be made actually creating things and advancing our understanding of the universe:
Innovating in Science and Engineering or “Cashing In” on Wall Street? Evidence on Elite STEM Talent
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/16-067_3d306ef8-09a1-42b3-956f-a797846b9e3c.pdf
There are other factors which have also impede America’s ability to maintain high levels of technological advancement. Good colleges and universities are now much more expensive. The massive corporate consolidation have created monopolies which find it much cheaper to crush innovation than actually spend money on R&D. And it’s impossible to justify pure research and science if everything is based on a quarterly return on investment.
Let’s face it, creating new stuff is risky and expensive. It’s much easier to just do stock buy backs, and financial manipulation.
But inadequate leadership is also symptomatic of late-stage capitalism! :)
Yes, of course the problem in systemic. As Glen says, the money is elsewhere. I was just taking a dig at our system’s much vaunted efficiency in allocating resources.
Since everything changes somewhere between 4 and 5 mach (thus the name hypersonic), it actually requires a lot of fundamental research to figure out, well, the fundamentals before you can start throwing engineers and mathematicians to solve it.
And to do the fundamental research, you need stuff like hypersonic wind tunnel, so you need to do some fundamental research on those, before you get to do the research on the objects and engines in a hypersonic airflow.
Then there are issues with the fuel you plan to use, since it must not self-ignite in high temperatures inside the engine, while it has to burn really, really fast in order to burn inside the engine and provide thrust. At mach 5 the compressed air is moving through the engine about 1 mile per second, so there’s very little time to mix the fuel into it and burn the mixture.
Besides the engine, you also need to figure out the materials for the missile surface and structure that can take the acceleration, the friction and the heat protecting the payload and guidance system from the rather hostile environment the missile creates around itself.
From reading Stoller’s anti-monopoly posts, I’d say a certain amount of this is simply do to massive consolidation in the weapons sector that began in earnest under Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. Now there’s little innovation, and lots of milking huge contracts while failing to deliver, without any other vendors to turn to. We certainly see this with the F35 program, a plane with only a single purpose, to enrich supporters of said program. If we really do get into a hot war with Russia or China, we’re gonna be learning a very hard lesson very very quickly, and I hope that day doesn’t come. If not for two huge oceans, we’d be in worst shape. I think this gives Washington a fantasy about its competency that would not be in evidence if our chosen antagonists lived on our doorstep.
If you actually want innovation, R&D, good engineering in the weapons field, you cannot rely on the Pentagon procurement office and the for-profit-only so-called defense industry. They are not interested in that at all. What to do? Well, if Congress was not in the pocket of the industry, they could nationalize them, fire the management, break them up into competitive elements, decide what is needed, leave the researchers and engineers alone instead of trying to add a vacation home or a soda machine to a hypersonic missile. Then you might have a chance. But seriously, it will take an upheaval of revolutionary proportions for anything to change.
Not gonna happen until after we see mushroom clouds over American cities. If we survive the following nuclear winter it’s going to be hard choices between teaching kids to read and write and having them pull weeds.
I wonder whether it’s a matter of priorities.
For instance, hypersonics are expensive and really good at precise strikes on large but less-than-city-scale targets of far greater value — like aircraft carriers and military bases. The US leads the world by a wide margin in both categories, while other nations have trivial numbers.
So the US has little need of hypersonic missiles while countries hostile to us would find them quite useful against our 11 or 12 carriers and 750 to 800 overseas military bases. With hypersonics in the hands of our near-peer (now, perhaps, superior?) adversaries, US carriers and bases collectively amount to a 21st century Maginot Line. What the US needs more than hypersonics is a defense against them.
Good luck with that in the near term. You do not need hypersonics to demonstrate the obsolescence of a surface fleet. Sea skimmers, cruise missiles, swarms to overwhelm the defenses. You don’t need cutting edge, just good enough.
“Chinese EV makers pin hopes on Europe’s fading auto dealers”
Alexander Christoforou reports that half the cars to be seen in Moscow are Chinese cars. The EU will never get those car market back again. But for those Chinese EV makers wanting to go into the EU, I think that they can forget that one. A day or so ago Ursula Von der Leyen announced a probe into Chinese EV cars and whether there should be a hard financial tariff on them. Not to be confused with protectionism mind-
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-launches-anti-subsidy-investigation-into-chinese-electric-vehicles-2023-09-13/
That is just EU in a nutshell.
And yeah, i have seen an uptick in either resurrected brands with Chinese backing or straight up new brands out of China being advertised here in Norway. Do wonder how our EU-phile politicians will respond to any decision out of Brussels.
There is no way that 50% of the cars in Moscow are Chinese makes; I doubt they have more than 10% market share. But it is quite possible, given recent developments, that 50% of new imported cars sold there are Chinese, and the trend definitely runs in their favor. Recently I’ve noticed more and more ads for Chinese cars when I visit RU websites. Some of their new SUVs and EVs look pretty slick.
That said, Moscow still has an incredible number of high-end German cars: Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Audi. This particular consumer habit will be hard to break.
Regarding the article about jamais vu, I think comedian Steven Wright beat the authors to the topic by a few decades, although if I recall correctly he called it vuja de…
Yossarian talks about jamais vu, presque vu, and other vus in Catch-22.
“Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso establish Sahel security alliance”
‘The Sahel nations sign pact that will allow them to cooperate against threats of armed rebellion or external aggression.’
For ‘external aggression’, read ECOWAS – operating under Franc’s orders. I guess that Mali and Burkina Faso worked out that if Niger falls, then they will be the next targets, hence this pact.
At Imperial Collapse Watch, Barbara Koeppel wrote, “Westmoreland Revisited” and made a good case that out leaders have not learned any lessons from their failed wars without adding the lessons they should have learned.
First, the US did not lose the Vietnam War. It was not defeated, never surrendered or forced to accept terms surrender.
Instead, it was South Vietnam (SV) that was defeated and lost the war. SV was the imaginary country, or whatever you want to call it, that the US created and convinced the American people needed to be defended from North Vietnam’s aggression.
Afghanistan in 2001, the US bombed the country, removed the Taliban government, and set up its own friendly government.
Iraq in 2003, the US bombed the country for 30 days, removed the Hussein government, and set up its own friendly government.
Libya in 2011, the US led NATO attack removed the Qaddafi government but setting up a new friendly government didn’t work out so well.
We almost did something similar in Syria but the Russians, allied with the Syrian government of al-Assad, were invited in to help.
Ukraine in 2013, the US orchestrated a coup that ousted an elected president whose term expired in 2015. The US friendly government, following our advice, has just about led to Ukraine’s ruin.
Regardless what anybody thinks of George W. Bush or Trump, it is unlikely Americans would accept a foreign country bombing Washington and installing their own leader. Yet, US elites insist interfering in another country will somehow work for both the target country and the US no matter how often it fails. IMHO, this is the lesson elites are unable to learn.
Coup making has been very profitable for the United States’ elites with the failures being far less than the successes. This is why they keep doing them.
Money can be made but I don’t think it’s primary, nor do I think the foreign policy elites are evil people. I think their policies (ie the neocons) have become an ideology and facts don’t seem to make a difference to them.
I think they truly believe the US should use its power to interfere and remake the world in its image.
They seem unable to understand that most of the people in the world don’t agree with that.
In a lot of stores selling delicate wares, there is a sign saying if you break it, you’ve bought it.
And that is why the US is a rogue terrorist nation. Because they can go into any store with an axe and swing it around unhindered, and just walk out. Nobody sends them a bill for the damage because the US would go back and destroy them over again. The US knows nobody dares try collect.
I hope one day that there is a reckoning from all the countries that the US has broken, and that the debt collectors get to go into the US and take whatever they can to pay the debts.
*But taking only from the rich and the people who worked for them, and leaving the poor alone.
Re Consortium on Westmoreland and the second time (or is it the third or fourth) as even bigger farce/tragedy.
and
The article is dead on because it says the situation is all about money and the money-ed are not the ones doing the suffering and dying. At least in that British Empire the elites felt some obligation to go out and fight for their Downton Abbeys. Genuine patriotism, says the current Blob, is for suckers.
Moon of Alabama, reporting on a paper from the U.S. War College:
There is an important side to the last several wars that is pure white-lady office politics. You know, Madeleine Albright and all of those not-so-inconveniently dead Iraqi babies. Hillary Clinton and “He died!” Libya plus her war of revenge on man-spreading Vlad Putin. Throw in the rather creepy Angel of Death, Victoria Nuland, who sows discord for a living.
I say. Bring back the draft. Ladies first.
Women get draft cards first. Women get called up first. Frisky Lauren Boebert, frisky Krysten Sinema, and speech-tearing Nancy Pelosi–it’s olive-drab time.
Once the chicks at The View understand that the Army won’t be handing out Gucci knapsacks and Victoria’s Secret foundation garments, all wars will end. And after all, if America is to be the Shining Feminist City on the Hill, women belong in the trenches.
somewhere, here in the Wilderness Bar, it says:” a woman’s place is in the revolution”.
has yet to spark any dialog or debate…or outrage…but there’s rarely any womyn around when it’s quiet,lol.
they only show up when Eldest and Krewe are having a rager.
and…both boys went through a phase…due to whatever that xbox combat game is…that they wanted to join the marines.
i told them, “you will fight in my army, defending this place, or not at all…i’ll shoot you in the knee before i’ll allow you to join the frelling Legions”
the phase thus passed without incident.
they, to this day, express doubt as to whether or not i was serious about the shooting knee thing.
It is a shame that they use honest patriotism and twist it into jingoistic support for the empire with its permanent war.
But if you are not a jingoistic support of empire, only an American nationalist, why you are a hater and a traitor, maybe even Putin lover.
According to the Feebs one indication that someone is a DVE is that they are Anti Globalist.
So yes, being an American Nationalist is inherently suspicious and the “Federalist Papers” is one of the books that should raise concerns if found in a suspect’s possession.
Sometimes it’s hard not to giggle….
i have the Federalist Papers on the shelf.
also have most of Marx…and Che.
i suppose the anarchist cookbook and War of the Flea sends me over the edge with eventual condemnation and brimstone.
Mein Kampf is in there, too…i’ve been pretty derned thorough,lol.
My, there is enough there for almost anyone to have a good hate on you. I am slacking as I only have the Federalist Papers and Das Kapital although the War of the Flea is on my to buy list.
I’ve so far gone that I also have the Anti-Federalist Papers.
I need a new copy of the Anarchist Cookbook. My original copy died in Hurricane Katrina. However, I guess that by mentioning it I am now on another NSA database.
“… maybe even Putin lover.” Hah! I can imagine someone who is so far gone down the DNC rabbit hole that they would funnel a hundred buck donation to the Trump Re-election Campaign through the Bank of Moscow. Trump accepting rubles! The traitorous scum! Etc. The Fact Checkers would approve it as “real news,” I am certain.
Stay safe and don’t accept any wooden kopeks.
Yack it up, yack it up
Buddy gonna shut you down
It happened on the DC strip where the divide is wide
(Ooh, rev it up now)
Two political parties standin’ side by side
(Ooh, rev it up now)
Yeah, the fuel-injected Pachyderms & Donkey Show
(Ooh, rev it up now)
Revvin’ up their rhetoric, and it sounds real mean
(Ooh, rev it up now)
Yack it up, yack it up
Buddy gonna shut you down
Declinin’ approval numbers at an even rate
(Ooh, movin’ out now)
On account of one possibilities of a shutdown accelerate
(Ooh, movin’ out now)
Freedom Caucus is in delight-My Kevin is startin’ to spin
(Ooh, movin’ out now)
But the Donkey Show is really diggin’ in
(Ooh, movin’ out now)
Gotta be cool now
Power shift here we go
Any chance of a dodge is windin’ out in a bad row
But the fuel injected Pachyderms are really startin’ to say no
To get the traction they’re riding the Hunter clutch
The laptop isn’t helping that machine too much
Kevin to the floor, hear his masters speak
(Ooh, pump it up now)
And now their slim lead is startin’ to shrink
(Ooh, pump it up now)
He’s hot with impeachment induction but it’s understood
(Ooh, rev it up now)
Nothing ever gets done in this DC hood
(Ooh, pump it up now)
Shut it off, shut it off
Buddy, now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off
Buddy, now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off
Buddy, now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off
Buddy, now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off
Buddy, now I shut you down
Shut Down, by the Beach Boys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r91kBnm_Gvk
Sweet. That was the first 45 RPM single I bought with my own money. I know this dates me as a dinosaur…
Wuk, in honor of the UAW striking all three of the (legacy) automakers at once, I think a “Ford song” from the same era as your “Chevy song” is appropriate:
“Hey, Little Cobra” Rip Chords
Another “Car Tune” by the Beach Boys. “Little GTO”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgoDotf4mo8
This link is showing up on a number of (Twitter) X feeds:
From the Memorial Sloan Kettering library:
https://libguides.mskcc.org/CovidImpacts/Immune
COVID Impacts: Immune Dysfunction
Detailed information and resources on the long-term health consequences of COVID-19 infection and the broad social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic
That’s a good Doctorow on the incendiary tree farms of Canada.
When I was in Canada I was surprised to learn that they allow commercial logging in national parks like Algonquin since this is not the policy here. But one gets the impression that the Great White North has always been an extraction economy and serves as home to many mining companies. Given that it takes so long for trees to grow there it seems especially tragic to raze them with clear cuts. Where I live they grow back fast as weeds.
David Suzuki used to have a show on our public television an talked all the time about the dubious environmental policies of his native Canada. Is a price now being paid?
The Doctorow post will not contain many surprises for folks who read NC regularly, but it seems like it could be a pretty good consciousness-raiser for average Americans who are wondering why everything seems to be going to hell.
When I was 19 I planted trees for the Dept of Natural Resources for a summer. It was good honest work, we had a coop and so shared the profits from the gig – but it was the same deal, monoculture, one kind of tree. I might not have done it knowing what I do now… forests are not just a bunch of trees, they are complex systems.
RE: Kaiser Permanente potential strike
We had our health insurance for years from Group Health, a cooperative insurer based in Washington. Generally, it was competent organization. Group Health was bought by Kaiser in 2019 or 2020, and it has not been a good process. For example, Kaiser routinely takes over a week to process premium payments, sending out threatening collection letters in the meantime. This is such a basic facet of any business it is incomprehensible how incompetent Kaiser is in doing something so simple as timely processing cash receipts.
Something is not right in that organization, and this threatened strike also is an indicator of trouble. Which is too bad, because Kaiser is an actual cooperative organization, in an industry of bloodsucking profiteers. Too bad there seems to be a dearth of competence in its ranks, particularly management.
As in public universities, MBAs are now running the show at Kaiser I wager – professional bloodsuckers. I’m familiar with Group Health, but didn’t know about the KP takeover, that’s a shame, and I wonder why it was sold?
“Adele Makes Huge Changes to Las Vegas Residency Shows Due to COVID-19 After Her Friends and Crew Started ‘Dropping Like Flies’ Latestly
Nothing about any “huge” changes that will keep crew, fans, and friends safe from Covid.
She has the ability to increase her isolation and will.
Next…
It says she no longer goes out and interacts with fans in the audience. What a great loss for them. Also it’s not for their protection but for hers. Presumably if the fans shell out for tix and get Covid from other fans that’s ok.
Lifted from today’s MoA comment section, posted by what is very likely a pro Ukraine troll, but probably not without truth, a Bit of a probably necessary Antidote against complancy and too much certainly that Russia has Victory completely in the bag already:
*Russian Duma parliamentarian and former Commander of the Southern Military District (the headquarters of which Wagner soldiers surrounded in Rostov in June) Andrei Gurulev writes [t.me/agurulev/3756]
I will briefly report on the situation at the front without referencing specific directions. The information was obtained from primary sources, it was systematised, and the following conclusions were made.
The enemy, having properly faced our forces at the beginning of his counter-offensive, changed his combat tactics. They are no longer moving forward in large forces; they were obviously forbidden to lose heavy equipment en masse.
Today they have switched to squeeze-out tactics, they are massively using cluster shells, inflicting damage on the strong points of in our units, assault groups, they have a lot of ammunition, they are trying to burn out absolutely everything. Yes, this situation forces our troops to retreat deeper. Not far, but in some places they lost up to 10 kilometers of territory. The enemy has in places occupied our defensive positions, which were very well equipped with our own hands….’
Yves here. I do not like having to do this, but I e-mailed you privately and you do not seem to be responding adequately.
I said we CANNOT hoist material from other sites, save arguably in compliance with fair use, which actually is not a well defined concept. But generally 400 words is the max. Even cut down from what you tried to post this is too long. I cut material out from what you had tried to post above so as not to violate the law.
> Faith in U.S. institutions and each other takes dangerous drop Modern Diplomacy
Most people in this country don’t care if I (or others far more vulnerable) are infected with a deadly illness, and will not tolerate even the most minor of inconveniences if it would reduce the chances of such a thing happening. Why in the family blog would I trust them? Don’t even get me started on “institutions” which exist at this point mainly to be looted and provide legitimacy to the fantasy that things are under control.
For the sake of good order, and to hammer in the final nail on an old news story: the USA govt has officially admitted that the Chinese spy balloon (remember that one?) was not actually a spy balloon:
https://us.yahoo.com/news/bizarre-secret-behind-chinas-spy-132621162.html
WHEW!! What a relief.
UAW strike anecdotes, it doesn’t seem to impair the parent organizations they are striking against for their wage and benefit demands. Watching this afternoon’s edition, week 2, for the US National Football League and there are advertisements galore for Jeep, Ford, you know all the usual suspects and makes when there is a break from advertising the beer brands from United Beers of the World or SuperxTwoCorporate Beer ( sarc )
I will also guess that GMC parent company can afford to absorb the salary of their well compensated CEO and as well, to add, sponsor one of the prominent pre-game shows on Fox US or CBS US ( I forget which it was ). Rainy Sunday afternoon, so yeah my options are limited but still. No striking impact just yet! It’s a twist of reality in this American economy circa 2023.
And if you missed seeing the series…CBS is launching “Yellowstone” on their primary broadcast channel this evening. I found the first two seasons to be pretty strong. Ramble over!
a reminder, Pleb…you’re not supposed to notice such contradictions.
merely bask in the glow of the spectacle the Overlords so benevolently provide you.
another such infraction, and you might be looking at reeducation in cognitive dissonance as the best of all lifeways.
do you want putin to win?!
After watching the price for new cars rise dramatically, pulling up the price on used cars [the only car market I can reasonably afford], I cannot help but wonder that the u.s. government continues to allow the big three automakers to claw their overgrown and growing profit margins out of the u.s. Populace — especialy after it has lavished so many subsidies and bailouts on those automakers. However, I must admit I am hesitant to unfailingly applaud the efforts of the UAW to obtain a larger cut of the take for their workers. I doubt that old-time members of the UAW are all that poorly paid compared with other workers in the u.s. I do no know, but doubt, that the UAW demands include addressing the two-tier benefits packages — one for older union members and smaller packages for newer members. My initial impression of the UAW places it marginally above my impression of the Teamsters. I am not aware of any UAW characters like Jimmy Hoffa who might inhabit a New Jersey landfill, but that is hardly an endorsement for the UAW. My impression of the present state of the big unions — their leaders — is summed by this quote from Orwell’s “Animal Farm”:
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
So much work remains in the u.s. for a resurrected the IWW.
I have heard multiple times that the UAW demands precisely and exactly address abolishing the two-tier wage concept.
I also wonder what kind of thinking calls for UAW workers to be paid as badly as everybody else instead of calling for everybody else to be paid as well as UAW workers. Especially considering that better-paid UAW workers are able to buy more goods and services from other workdoers right around them at their level in the “economy”.
Thank you for your comment! Sincerely!
I would NEVER ask that “UAW workers to be paid as badly as everybody else”. I am very glad to see that the UAW demands include measures to “address abolishing the two-tier wage concept.” I do NOT and would NEVER oppose UAW workers receiving wages that support the “other workdoers right around them”. I DO question the bona fides of the UAW as a union supporting WORKERS. I believe the UAW is remarkably “flexible” in their support of workers. I also believe the UAW union leaders are difficult … extremely difficult, to distinguish from the Company Representatives they negotiate with.
As a former union member for a few decades I always hated automated dues check off which the union officials like. Members should have to go to the union hall, pay their dues and get their dues book marked. This would help the membership stay interested in what they are paying for and make the membership focused on leader performance. (I also hate automated tax payments, which should also be manually paid.)
As far as non-union people criticizing union members pay and benefits, well, that’s just crabs in a crab bucket trying to prevent any escapes, encouraged by the bucket owners.
Read my comments more carefully. I did not criticize union members pay and benefits. In fact early in my work career I enjoyed the same COLA as union members did even though I was classified as a ‘professional’ which meant I got no overtime pay. My comments do however criticize the companies jacking up their profit margins and I did criticize the UAW for not assuring full pay and benefits for both old and newer employees.
I also vaguely recall the exclusivity of the big unions, especially early in their creation. Unions should be for all workers instead of a favored few with the right connections.
been that way since the 30’s with the big unions, largely due to the influence of the various red scares…ie: no Wobblies allowed!
BTW,I’m Wobbly Adjacent…they won’t allow me to join because i’m a capitalist pig,lol.
because i own the means of production.
go figger.
The last few iterations of UAW leaders have been remarkably “flexible” in their support of workers, so much so that they were indeed extremely difficult to distinguish from the Company Representatives they negotiated with.
But I think the current UAW head and his leadership assistants are making a break from that recent legacy, being rather more workercentric and very much distinguishing themselves from the Company Representatives. Is my thinking correct? Time will tell .
I left a comment in the Urban Tree Planting subthread of a few threads ago, with what I hope might be useful and interesting information about urban-relevant microforest construction and establishment, in case anyone might be interested.
Here is the link to the relevant post which bears the relevant thread.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/09/links-9-15-2023.html#comment-3933603
find some sticky clay, collect it, wet it, mix whatever seeds you wish to plant in it(wink) ,roll it up into little balls, let it dry out…and then drive around tossing those clay balls out the window into places likely to get watered enough for whatever you’re trying to get established.
use a slingshot if necessary.
ive done this with…ahem..certain seeds.. for going on 40 years,lol.
keeps the mundane workerbees busy at the very least.
ahem…certain plants growing loud and proud in the cop shop parking lot, etc.
and even better, someone had to point it out to them.
because, for all their rhetoric, they didn’t notice(this was late 80’s, north of houston)
If there were no Amfortas the Hippie it would have been necessary for the late Cormac McCarthy to have invented one.
I remember reading somewhere that long-time traditional Chinese farmers in Taiwan and maybe elsewhere sometimes made seed-balls like this to sow certain crops.
The first place I heard about seed balls from was books by Masanobu Fukuoka ( ” The One Straw Revolution” and a couple of subsequent books).
Here is a whole bunch of Fukuoka Seed Ball images for anyone who might be interested in hours of url diving pleasure on the subject.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrEtOZBnQhlxh8AqEpXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=fukuoka+seed+balls+image&fr=sfp
About the article called ” The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ intrigues a new generation of researchers determined to unravel it ” . . . and especially the highlighted sentence which reads . . . ” “They’re also finding that healthy Hispanics who immigrate to the U.S. tend to get sicker the longer they stay — raising deeper questions about why our wealthy nation, which spends more than $4 trillion on health care, is far sicker than it should be.”
It has been said that if you can trick people into asking the wrong question, you can trick them into accepting the wrong answer. And one such method of trickery is the use of false words and false definitions to dis-name the actual reality of a situation. ( Disnaming could be considered a very narrow example of disinformation).
The disnaming I see in the quoted sentence above is in the false words ” health care”. The US does not spend more than $4 trillion on so-called “health care”. The US spends more than $4 trillion on sickness management and sickness containment.
If one realizes that major aspects of life in America are disease-o-genic, from polluted food designed to be carcinogenic, immunolytic, diabetagenic, antinutritional, etc., to health damaging electro-magnetic fields soaking down everyone to a greater or lesser degree, to the mass manufacture of social and individual stress, etc., one realizes that there is no paradox. American civilization is sickness-ogenic and health-o-lytic. Probably by design on the part of the social commanders who have designed it.
So Hispanic peoples in America should probably try to live as close to a pre-immigration old-country lifestyle as they possibly can, in order to reduce their exposure to American civilizations multiple disease vectors, causes, force-multipliers, etc.
RE: “The ‘Hispanic Paradox’ …”
I wonder how much the factor of what I believe is the relatively large proportion of Hispanics being of the Catholic faith might contribute to their relative longevity in that both suicide and divorce are anathema to Catholic Church doctrine.
RE: “COVID levels are so high, they’re hovering near 2020’s initial peak …”
How can wastewater surveillance and modeling by forecasters really know? The connections between their data seem too tenuous to support such statements … not that I question their conclusions. I regularly wear my P100 mask wherever I go in public. I remain appalled, flabbergasted, flummoxed, unbelieving … in the laxity, mendacity, irresponsibility and complete, total abandonment of ethics and principles by the u.s. public health establishment. We pay taxes to support lethal disinformation? [The u.s. Populace has for far too long and for far more issues than the Corona flu supported such odious malfeasance of public funds and flagrant disregard for the Common Good.]
Just caught up with that FAIR article on the MSM journalistic malpractice and the counteroffensive. Rather devastating and go FAIR.
One does wonder why Paul Krugman feels the need to have an opinion about Ukraine. Guess he’s part of that club we ain’t in.
Things are going swimmingly in the My Kevin (since ’07) fun raiser, he’s resorted to an f-bomb, and threatened that if the Caucus cuts him, Biden gets what he wants!
Comes with the territory when your super power is self-humiliation…
He’ll still have his hair. There is that.
After ouster, methinks he’ll do well with the double your follicle challenge.
Enough with the capillotomeric plugs now.