By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Happy Friday the 13th to those who observe. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
House Wren (Northern), 6681 Leaches Crossing Rd, Avoca, Wisconsin, United States. “With Common Yellowthroat, Song Sparrow, Mourning Dove, RWBL…”
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
The Constitutional Order
“Colorado judge strikes down Trump’s attempt to toss a lawsuit seeking to bar him from 2024 primary ballot” [Colorado Sun]. “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington claims in its lawsuit that putting Trump on the ballot in Colorado would violate a provision of the 14th Amendment that bars people who have “engaged in insurrection” against the Constitution from holding office…. Trump’s attorneys argued that a Colorado law protecting people from being sued over exercising their free speech rights shielded him from the lawsuit, but Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace said that law doesn’t apply in this case…. The trial to determine Trump’s eligibility for the Colorado ballot is scheduled to start Oct. 30.”
Biden Administration
A little war news, since the situation is overly volatile:
“Israel-Hamas live: Thousands flee but no mass exodus after Israeli warning” [Al Jazeera]. “Al Jazeera correspondents report that thousands have fled to the south, but there appears to be no mass exodus.” • Here is a handy map:
“South” is where the IDF ordered Gazans to flee, meaning south of the Wadi Gaza (map center), or “Gaza River” (plus wetlands). If I were a Palestinian, I would be very dubious about being even more penned up.
“Israeli military says troops make first ground raids into Gaza” [Reuters]. “Israeli military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops backed by tanks had mounted raids to attack Palestinian rocket crews and seek information on the location of hostages taken by Hamas.”
“Putin cautions Israel against using tactics in Gaza like Nazi siege of Leningrad” [Reuters]. “Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned Israel on Friday against laying siege to Gaza in the same way that Nazi Germany besieged Leningrad, saying a ground offensive there would lead to an ‘absolutely unacceptable’ number of civilian casualties. Putin said Israel had been subjected to ‘an attack unprecedented in its cruelty’ by Hamas militants, but was responding with cruel methods of its own. He said there had been calls even in the United States for a blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on a par with ‘the siege of Leningrad during World War Two’. ‘In my view it is unacceptable,’ Putin told reporters at a summit in Kyrgyzstan. ‘More than 2 million people live there. Far from all of them support Hamas by the way, far from all. But all of them have to suffer, including women and children. Of course it’s hard for anyone to agree with this.’ His criticism of Israel was made all the more stinging by the reference to the 1941-44 siege of Leningrad and the implied comparison between Israel and Hitler’s Germany, with potential for causing deep offence in Israel. Putin said, however, that Israel had the right to defend itself.” • I for one would be very happy to (1) discover any player who is agreement-capable and (2) imagine a good outcome (or rather a better outcome than the status quo ante).
“Chuck Schumer will lead a bipartisan trip to Israel this weekend” [Politico]. • Let me know how that works out….
* * * “WH Denounces Dems Equating Hamas Attack With Israel’s Response” [RealClearPolitics]. “On Tuesday, the White House condemned “repugnant” and “disgraceful” comments from members of Congress equating the terrorist attack by Hamas with previous actions taken by Israel. Notably, this rebuttal applies to Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Cori Bush of Missouri…. This was a continuation of a message the president stressed directly moments earlier in the East Room of the White House. Flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden said forcefully, ‘Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond, indeed has a duty to respond, to these vicious attacks.'” • Good to see Biden being “forceful.” That should bring him a little bump.
2024
Time for the Countdown Clock!
* * * “Donald Trump’s Israeli War Insight” [Wall Street Journal]. The full quote: “‘Two nights ago I read all of Biden’s security people, can you imagine, national defense people,’ Mr. Trump said Wednesday night in West Palm Beach. ‘And they said ‘Gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn’t attack from the north. Because that’s the most vulnerable spot.’ And I said, wait a minute, you know Hezbollah is very smart. They’re all very smart. The press doesn’t like when they say, you know. I said that President Xi of China, 1.4 billion people, he controls it with an iron fist. I said he’s a very smart man. They killed me the next day. I said he was smart. What am I gonna say?'” • Trump being Trump. Democrat aghastitude because demon figures are demons ffs (and of course only Democrats are smart. That’s why they’re running Joe Biden).
“Trump, in West Palm Beach, tells DeSantis: ‘I can never forget.’ And forget about 2028, too.” [Palm Beach Post]. “‘I think he blew it for in four years. You never know what’s going to happen, but in ’28, I don’t see it happening,’ Trump said to a crowd of supporters. “I can never forget because that’s such great disloyalty.’ Trump’s taunts came during a show of political force with thousands gathered in West Palm Beach for a meeting of a fan club created more than five years expressly for him during his presidency. It was an opportunity for Trump to demonstrate his enduring popularity in his home county and DeSantis’ home state. The Trump faithful did not disappoint by showing up in numbers large enough to fill the cavernous Palm Beach County Convention Center.”
“Trump lawyers claim special counsel seeks pre-election conviction in classified documents case ‘no matter the cost'” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]. “‘The fact that they continue to contend that it is appropriate and not a violation of President Trump’s due process rights to push forward with back-to-back multi-month trials in different districts with wholly different facts — over a defendant’s objection — reveals a central truth about these cases,’ the defense lawyers wrote. ‘The special counsel’s office is engaged in a reckless effort to try to obtain a conviction of President Trump prior to the 2024 election, no matter the cost.’ ‘The Court should not permit the use of the criminal justice process toward that end,’ the lawyers added. The lawyers repeated their earlier assertions that the government has not followed through on its obligations to make all the classified documents accessible and available for inspection by the defense. The special counsel’s prosecutors dispute that assertion, saying they have made secure facilities available to review the materials.”
* * * “White House knew Biden had his own document problem before siccing FBI on Trump, new timeline shows” [Just the News]. “Comer disclosed in a letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel that Congress has now confirmed that Biden’s aides knew as early as March 2021 that the current president had kept government documents at his insecure university think tank office in Washington D.C. They would later be determined to contain classified information. A year later – with the public unaware of Biden’s document predicament – the Biden White House instructed the National Archives to give the FBI access to 15 boxes of government memos —some classified — that Trump had located in his Florida home, kicking a criminal probe of the 45th president into high gear.” And: “According to the timeline in Chairman Comer’s letter, Biden White House employees first visited the Penn Biden Center—a think-tank at the University of Pennsylvania—to ‘take inventory of President Biden’s documents and materials,’ in March of 2021, more than a year before President Biden’s lawyers claimed that ‘what appear[ed] to be Obama-Biden Administration records, including a small number of documents with classified markings’ were first discovered at the center on November 2, 2022.” • Not earthshaking, but drip-drip-drip….
* * * “Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis duke it out for donors — but it may not matter against Trump” [NBC]. “As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley jockey to be the top alternative to former President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primaries, their campaigns will court a consortium of megadonors at a closed-door conference Friday in Dallas…. And even winning the donor jackpot might not make much of a difference. Many Republicans have concluded that more cash would make little difference in efforts to topple Trump. Between his campaign and the super PAC Never Back Down, DeSantis has collected more than $150 million. After it spent $4 million testing anti-Trump ads in Iowa, the Win it Back PAC — which has ties to the conservative Club for Growth — found it could do limited damage, with ‘diminishing returns,’ to Trump.” Wowsers. And these guys are used to buying whatever they want. New experience for them! More: “As of last week, DeSantis’ campaign had just $5 million in the bank for the primaries, a small number for someone who entered the race in May with expectations that he would be the field’s best fundraiser by far. A DeSantis donor said it’s a ‘huge problem.’ Haley’s campaign reported having $9 million available for primary season spending.” • Ouch!
“Ron DeSantis hits new low in North Carolina polling” [Florida Politics]. “The Florida Governor has just 12% support in the poll of 600 likely Republican Primary voters, which was conducted Oct. 8 and Oct. 9. That puts him 40 points behind Donald Trump’s 52%, and in a statistical tie with Nikki Haley’s 11% given the poll’s margin of error of +/- 3.88 percentage points. An additional 12% of respondents were undecided, with Vivek Ramaswamy’s 5% good for fourth place among actual candidates. The pollster calls the results a ‘runaway’ for Trump.”
“A billionaire-backed think tank keeps sabotaging Florida workers. More attacks are coming.” [Jason Garcia, Seeking Rents]. “Dick Uihlein, the Midwestern billionaire and Republican megadonor who is the largest funder of the Foundation for Government Accountability. Uihlein, an heir to the Schlitz brewing fortune and the founder of the shipping supply company Uline, has been very good to Ron DeSantis Campaign-finance filings show that Uihlein has given more than $2.4 million to DeSantis over the past five years — including $1.4 million to a state political committee that DeSantis used to control and another $1 million to a federal super PAC now financing his campaign for president. Uihlein’s wife, Liz Uihlein, has given DeSanits another $1.5 million. And Ron DeSantis has been very good to Dick Uihlein and his Foundation for Government Accountability. Emails, schedules and lobbying records show that senior DeSantis aides have worked closely with FGA staffers while simultaneously cultivating Uihlein with perks like invitations to private events at the Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee….. With Uihlein’s FGA cheering him on and providing public-relations cover, DeSantis has slashed unemployment payments to laid-off workers. He has made it harder for public-sector employees to band together in unions and collectively bargain for better pay and benefits. And he has refused to extend Medicaid to an estimated 800,000 Floridians who don’t have health insurance — and is now presiding over a particularly callous purge of the state’s post-pandemic Medicaid rolls. The FGA is pushing for more. Records show it been working on proposals that could deny food stamps to more Floridians, evict some people from affordable housing, lock full-time college students into near-full-time jobs, and allow government contractors to pay their employees poorer wages.” • Not nice people at all.
* * * “How a Grinnell fender-bender fueled a misleading campaign narrative” [Bleeding Heartland]. A student jourrnalist is an eye-witness to Ramaswamy’s visit to Grinnell. “His interactions with students appeared to follow a formula. His goal was to evoke a reaction, often by remaining unemotional and uncaring while discussing important topics to students. Whether it was LGBTQ+ activists, public school supporters, or Ukrainian students, he knew how to solicit visceral responses, carefully documented by campaign staffers recording every interaction from multiple camera angles. With content in hand, he could take to social media, mischaracterizing interactions and ignoring facts.” Which he did. And: “With that in mind, I should not have been surprised when Ramaswamy and his campaign put forth a clear lie about the car accident that occurred prior to the event in Grinnell on Thursday, October 5. The accident took place when a driver backed out of her parking spot, incidentally contacting a campaign vehicle parked across the street. The campaign claimed that: (1) the incident was intentional, (2) the student was affiliated with a group of protesters, and (3) the driver fled the scene. In reality, the situation was vastly different. The driver was clearly distracted by Ramaswamy’s arrival and did not look behind her or in her rear-view mirror. As she backed out, she scraped her right bumper on the left bumper of the campaign car [diagram given]. It was apparent that: (1) the accident was unintentional, (2) the driver did not know it was Ramaswamy’s car, (3) she was unaffiliated with protesters, and (4) she remained at the scene to talk with police. And yet, the media ran with the campaign’s story, refusing to take the time to verify the account or talk to the involved parties. More than anything, I see this episode as a reminder that national media will choose speed over accuracy far too often. If local reporters had not been present, the truth of the situation may not have come to light.” And this little lagniappe: “Yet, as the Grinnell Police Chief told me during my investigation into Ramaswamy’s illegal parking, ‘Facts are good.’ Indeed they are.” • Do libertarians believe that parking can even be illegal?
* * * “RNC’s Election Integrity Department Gets To Work” [RealClearPolitics]. “At the same time, in the years since 2020 the concerted efforts of Democrats, left-leaning activists, and major corporate media to dismiss the risks posed by mail-in balloting and other issues in the 2020 election have proven misleading in key respects. Typical of this effort was the Brookings Institution, which asserted in 2020 that ‘there is no evidence that mail ballots increase electoral fraud.’ This is in spite of the fact that previous reports by The New York Times and Jimmy Carter, as well as a joint analysis by Cal Tech and M.I.T., all affirmed that mail-in ballots are more susceptible to fraud. Connecticut authorities are currently recommending criminal charges against campaign workers for the mayor of Bridgeport – the largest city in the state – over potential fraud involving mail-in ballots in that city’s 2019 Democratic primary election. Now local authorities are investigating again after fellow Democrats have produced a video apparently showing the same mayor’s campaign fraudulently stuffing ballot boxes to narrowly win another primary election last month. As a result, questions about the radical alteration of how Americans voted in 2020 as a result of COVID and aggressive Democratic Party litigation have never been settled, and Republican voters remain suspicious.”
* * *
Republican Funhouse
“Fear and loathing grips the House GOP” [Politico]. “The House GOP has entered an angrier and more bewildered phase in its leadership crisis. The fractious Republican conference has rejected a second speaker hopeful in eight days — this time, Kevin McCarthy’s longtime heir apparent, Steve Scalise. While Republicans appear to be turning next to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), some are already airing open doubts that Jordan can pull off what the majority leader couldn’t. The lesson Republicans have learned in the frenetic week since McCarthy’s fall: They have no clear choice for leader who can unite their ranks — no matter how long this drags out and their chamber of Congress is paralyzed. It’s not just GOP centrists sparring with the hard right. It’s not just McCarthy loyalists secretly fuming at Scalise or his allies. There’s mounting anger across the entire conference that no GOP speaker candidate, including Jordan, appears able to prevail under the current margins.” • Jordan, a Republican speaker wannabe wrestling with the same issues as one-time speaker Denny Hastert. Surely it’s possible to do better?
“Bipartisan talk grows as GOP fails to find a speaker” [Axios]. “Lawmakers in both parties are expressing growing openness, both in public and in private, to a bipartisan deal to elect a House speaker as Republicans are continually thwarted in their efforts to do it alone With House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) withdrawing despite winning his party’s nomination, some Republicans are concerned nobody can win the job with just GOP votes. “There’s a sentiment building around [a bipartisan deal] among Democrats and Republicans,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Democratic leadership who represents a swing district, told Axios….” • How about Oprah?
* * * “Wisconsin Republicans Walk Back Efforts to Impeach Newly Elected State Supreme Court Justice Protasiewicz” [Democracy Docket]. ”
On Thursday, Oct. 12, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) and fellow Republicans indicated that they would walk back their impeachment crusade against liberal state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz. This comes after last week when former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser advised Vos that there should be ‘no effort to impeach’ Protasiewicz over her refusal to recuse herself from an ongoing legal challenge to the state’s legislative maps. Today, in what appears to be an attempt to retract his threats, Vos clarified that any impeachment inquiries going forward would rest on what the justice does while ‘in office.'”
Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
* * * “Fetterman: America ‘not sending their best and brightest’ to Congress” [The Hill]. “Sen. John Fetterman said Wednesday that America ‘is not sending their best and brightest’ to represent them in Congress. ‘Sometimes you literally just can’t believe like, these people are making the decisions that are determining the government here. It’s actually scary, the Pennsylvania Democrat said during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert…. ‘[Y]ou have some very less gifted kinds of people there that are willing to shut down the government just as score points on Fox [News],” Fetterman said. As House Republicans struggle to elect a new Speaker after removing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this month, Colbert asked if senators ‘feel pretty good right now that they’re not the most dysfunctional part of the government?’ ‘Well it’s a low bar, really,’ Fetterman replied. ‘I just want everybody to realize just how truly dysfunctional it really is,’ the 54-year-old lawmaker continued. ‘And I always tell people, don’t worry, please don’t worry. It’s much worse than you think.'” • People are dunking on Fetterman for this, but if I fulfilled a life-long dream, made it to the Senate, and discovered what it was like, I’d be depressed, too. Now, this ought to be the standard “Republicans are stupid, we are smart” trope that Democrats deploy whenever they are breathing or waking, but Fetterman really doesn’t go there; “score points on Fox” is pretty weak, in any case I’ve heard (not sure if this is true now) that FOX is blaring everywhere on the Capitol. Also, remember the study I posted awhile back that said that the only personality type that assessed risk accurately was the depressive?
“The Democrats’ Immigration Problem” [Ruy Teixeira, the Liberal Patriot]. “[T]his influx has now spread across the country including to a number of very blue cities and states who are now complaining loudly about the strain on their resources, despite their professed policies of being ‘sanctuaries’ [no, not like that!] for such illegal entrants. Half of the hotel rooms in New York City are now occupied by these migrants and 600 more are arriving every day in the city. Similar stories of being completely overwhelmed by the migrant influx abound across the country… In short, the situation is out of control—exactly what most voters don’t want and they are reacting accordingly…. At this point, Democrats appear to be hoping that the immigration issue is just not very salient to voters in 2024 or that other issues are so much more salient (e.g., abortion) that their huge disadvantage on immigration won’t matter much. In what promises to be a very close election against a probable opponent who will be more than happy to demagogue the issue, this seem like a very unwise course, if not an outright gift to your opponent.” • “Half of the hotel rooms in New York City” is an impressive factoid, but it also comes from New York Mayor Eric Adams, who doesn’t cite to a source. Surely Teixeira can do better than that?
“Red or blue, Democrats have grand plans for diverse voters in your state” [Donna Brazile, The Hill]. “While only 41 percent of white voters in the 2020 presidential election cast ballots for Joe Biden according to Roper Public Opinion Research, Biden was elected president on the strength of majorities he won among other voters. These included 87 percent of Black voters, 65 percent of Hispanic voters and 61 percent of Asian American voters. In addition, Biden won 57 percent of the female vote and 60 percent of the vote among people 29 and younger (compared with 45 percent of the vote among those 65 and older).” • Ah, another classification struggle!
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Soros Closes Offices Across $25 Billion Philanthropy Empire” [Bloomberg]. “The $25 billion international network of foundations started by George Soros is shuttering offices around the world as it prepares to cut more than 40% of its staff.” • First SBF, now this!
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
“Something Awful”
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.
* * *
Lambert here: Back to tape-watching mode. It still looks to me like the current surge has some ways to run, given how wastewater flattened, with the East Coast up. Let’s wait and see.
Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, October 2:
Lambert here: Leveling out to a high plateau wasn’t on my Bingo card! Perhaps FL.1.5.1, high in the Northeast, has something going for it that other variants don’t have?
Regional data:
Interestingly, the upswing begins before July 4, which neither accelerates nor retards it.
• CDC butchers transition from Biobot to Verily:
I was expecting to provide an updated PMC C0VID-19 Tracker today, but Biobot has not updated their wastewater report.
At some point, we will transition to Verily, but I was hoping Biobot would continue to report a bit longer.
In the meantime (soon), I'll provide some… https://t.co/q3EFNJ29au
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) October 10, 2023
Why on earth is their a gap in coverage? Surely it would have been possible to transition seamlessly from one wastewater testing company seamlessly? This is our only reliable proxy for nation-wide case data. Why, it’s almost like CDC doesn’t want us to see it! (I am developing more on Verily, which looks very top heavy, full of Silicon Valley types, but really hasn’t delivered much of anything. Also, there was a really big layoff recently. I did go through the executive layer, looking for spooks, but didn’t find any. (If anybody has any corporate reports on Verily, please share or throw over the transom.)
Variants
From CDC, October 14:
Lambert here: September 30 is tomorrow, but never mind that. Top of the leaderboard: EG.5 (“Eris“), with HV.1 a strong second, and XBB.1.1.16.6 and FL.1.15.1 trailing. No BA.2.86. Still a Bouillabaisse…
From CDC, September 16:
Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).
CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, October 7:
Drop coinciding with wastewater drop.
NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of October 12:
Still decreasing. (New York State is now falling, too.) I hate this metric because the lag makes it deceptive.
NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. September 30:
Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, October 9:
-1.0%. Still dropping, though less than before. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, October 7:
Lambert here: I know this is just Ohio, but the Cleveland Clinic is good*, and we’re starved for data, so…. NOTE * Even if hospital infection control is trying to kill patients by eliminating universal masking with N95s.
NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, September 18:
Back up again, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers:
Now, BA.2.86 for two weeks in a row. Bears watching.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Iowa COVID-19 Tracker, September 27:
Lambert here: The WHO data is worthless, so I replaced it with the Iowa Covid Data Tracker. Their method: “These data have been sourced, via the API from the CDC: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Conditions-Contributing-to-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Stat/hk9y-quqm. This visualization updates on Wednesday evenings. Data are provisional and are adjusted weekly by the CDC.” I can’t seem to get a pop-up that shows a total of the three causes (top right). Readers?
Total: 1,178,704 – 1,178,638 = 66 (66 * 365 = 24,090 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease).
Excess Deaths
The Economist, October 13:
Lambert here: Based on a machine-learning model.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 29 Fear (previous close: 35 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 25 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 11 at 1:42:38 PM ET.
The Gallery
“Scientists pry a secret from the ‘Mona Lisa’ about how Leonardo painted the masterpiece” [Associated Press]. “Using X-rays to peer into the chemical structure of a tiny speck of the celebrated work of art, scientists have gained new insight into the techniques that Leonardo da Vinci used to paint his groundbreaking portrait of the woman with the exquisitely enigmatic smile. The research, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, suggests that the famously curious, learned and inventive Italian Renaissance master may have been in a particularly experimental mood when he set to work on the ‘Mona Lisa’ early in the 16th century. The oil-paint recipe that Leonardo used as his base layer to prepare the panel of poplar wood appears to have been different for the ‘Mona Lisa,’ with its own distinctive chemical signature, the team of scientists and art historians in France and Britain discovered. ‘He was someone who loved to experiment, and each of his paintings is completely different technically,’ said Victor Gonzalez, the study’s lead author and a chemist at France’s top research body, the CNRS. …. Specifically, the researchers found a rare compound, plumbonacrite, in Leonardo’s first layer of paint. … Finding plumbonacrite in the ‘Mona Lisa’ attests “to Leonardo’s spirit of passionate and constant experimentation as a painter – it is what renders him timeless and modern,” [Carmen Bambach, a specialist in Italian art and curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’ said by email.” • Surely “timeless and modern” is a contradiction in terms?
Class Warfare
“Kaiser Permanente, Unions Reach Deal on New Contracts” [Wall Street Journal]. “Unions and the health system announced the deal Friday morning, after the first full day of bargaining following a strike by more than 75,000 Kaiser nurses, pharmacists and other workers. The strike, which lasted up to three days, was the largest on record in healthcare. Neither side immediately provided terms of the tentative agreement. Wages and staffing across Kaiser hospitals and clinics were key issues in negotiations. The unions said Kaiser outsourcing was a sticking point. Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su had joined the negotiations to help resolve the disputes. Unions warned of a larger and longer work stoppage in November without an agreement. ” • There is no deal, and there is no contract, until the union membership voted on it. Why is this so hard for “journalists” to understand?
News of the Wired
“The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode in 2023 (Still No Excuses!)” [Tonsky]. • Fun stuff.
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https://t.me/intelslava/51895
— 🇮🇱/🇵🇸 JUST IN: Israel bombs a civilian convoy that was evacuating our of Gaza city, on the road they promised not to bomb
At least 70 killed and 200 injured.
A time honoured play. America did it to the Iraqi Army when they were withdrawing, supposedly with an ‘agreement’ in place from Q8.
Agreement incapable is just the tip of the iceberg of deception and deceit America and it’s housecarls are capable of.
Housecarl Ro Khanna is pushing for Biden to get those “humanitarian corridors” opened into Egypt in a not so subtle effort to aid the new Israeli Nakhba.
So what happens when Egypt decides to send them on in cargo planes to his own district in California? I would love to see him spin that.
Housecarls were formidable warriors, unlike Khanna. If only his ilk could be sent to the battlefields they create.
“Lord” Miles Routledge, a self-proclaimed “war tourist” from the U.K., was freed from Taliban captivity along with three other individuals.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3wqjx/lord-miles-afghanistan-free
Happened a couple of days ago and he says he’s going to take a trip to Palestine for a holiday….
re: Donna Brazile. Nothing in her classifications about voters’ economic interests, just idpol essentialist nonsense? (If I wanted to be particularly annoying I’d point out the old US Confederate states were politically idpol essentialists to the max. But I don’t want to be annoying. So that’s good. / ;)
Donna Brazile is another one of those people who should just be ignored. She admitted collusion with the Clinton campaign. Why is she even given a platform, and when she is, why does anyone grant even the slightest validity to her commentary?
Brazil represents a viewpoint. I record the Sunday AM news programs (Meet the Press, This Week, etc.) and ABC’s with Stephanopoulos, frequently has her on their roundtable discussion format. And when they do, they used to have Christie as her foil resulting in the program being reasonably well balanced because you get both sides going at it hammer and tongs (both are operatives, one Democrat the other Republican). Ever since Christie hit the campaign trail, he’s been a no-show and I miss him. So when she’s on and he’s not, I’ve learned to delete the program. Especially when they have some flyweight journalist at the table. This issue (flyweight journalists) being why I rarely watch MTP any longer. Politics gets tiresome when they all yap the same thing, and it’s always anti-Trump, and worse, at an incredibly shallow depth. For example, the story about the President’s men knowing about his having secret documents in March 2021 and lying about it in Nov 2022 is an example of stuff that shouldn’t get a pass by either side. The media has abrogated their responsibility to the 1st amendment in my opinion. Can anybody see the early 70s journos like Woodward and Berstein doing that? Me? I wish they’d just call balls and strikes.
To be fair, Brazile’s efforts to actually elect Democrats much less Mother indicate she’s really bad at her job.
There is video from some years back– maybe 2015?– of Brazile chatting cozily at some gathering with Karl Rove. Tells you all you need to know.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/13/health/hhs-project-nextgen-covid/index.html
First on CNN: HHS awards more than $500 million to study Covid-19 vaccine nasal sprays and more
As Lambert has said before, if they were serious about nasal sprays, they’d start by testing the ones already in use in other nations.
Like the ones I buy from Israel?
Glad to know I’m not the only one. Pricy? yes. But, so is missing work from being sick from C-!9 (or whatever version). So far so good, it’s been helpful when considering the ‘Layerd” approach.
Be well all.
I would add that a nasal vaccine that is mRNA based may present the same problems as the current “jab” since it focuses on the spike protein. Frankly, I don’t want anything to do with the spike protein and will continue the “layered” approach you mention which I’ve used successfully to evade the virus w/o the vaccine.
Reuters article, Putin and the Siege of Leningrad. The Reuters article is bare bones and doesn’t go into the significance of the Siege of Leningrad for Russians (naturally). One coincidence (I’m not sure if it is) is that Putin is from Leningrad. The Siege of Leningrad was a disaster for his family. From a history + biography site:
Normally, I don’t like mentions by keyboard psychiatrists and avoid making guesses myself. (And I truly don’t care if Hillary Clinton is a narcissist or a coprophiliac or if Trump is a narcissist or an anal retentive.)
Yet mentioning Leningrad has some resonances here, likely to be lost on the Anglo-American world, as ever.
Purely on the tactical level, Putin’s observation seems to be correct, too: We are witnessing a war crime.
When I visited Russia in 1999, there were still signs at movie theaters and the like allowing survivors of the Leningrad Siege to cut to the front of queues.
Again, the usual Western nonsense. From the “Between Two Worlds” site, by an American living in a Russian country town, who has read Russian sources extensively about Putin’s life. This is from a recap of his parent’s background (BTW both nearly died in the Leningrad siege; his mother had been placed in an open-air morgue!):
https://halfreeman.wordpress.com/2023/09/08/vladimir-putin-the-early-years-reposted/
“…timeless and modern…” is just a restatement of the Alchemist’s Creed (Second Iteration): “Everything old is new again.”
I wish the authors had spelled ‘modern’ “moderne.” That would have been ‘timeless.’
I rather prefer Bob Fosse’s version of the sentiment.
🇬🇧🇮🇱 British publication “The Spectator” calls for the genocide of Palestinians
In a recently published piece, the writer states:
“The Israelis will respond as they see fit – it isn’t for non-Israelis to give them advice. Maybe Israel will cut off Gaza and starve Hamas out. Maybe they will have a full-scale military operation to rescue the Israeli captives. Or maybe they will finally put an end to this insoluble nightmare, raze Hamas to the ground, or clear all the Palestinians from that benighted strip. A strip which Egypt owned but nobody wants.
It could be a good time to do it. Very few countries in the Middle East still pretend to care about the Palestinians. Few ever did. If the Jordanians cared, they’d have taken in all the Palestinians from the West Bank when they lost the last war. The same goes for the Egyptians. Why should the Palestinians forever be Israel’s problem?”
📝: Remember all the lectures the British gave about Ukraine? Here’s what their political class really thinks.
https://archive.ph/uRTF4
‘Why should the Palestinians forever be Israel’s problem?’
That’s like asking why should native Americans forever be America’s problems. At least America did not make it a habit to bombard those native American reservations just because they could. Caitlin Johnstone makes the point that people should be very careful what they write about Gaza as when it is all over, their words will come back to haunt them as the internet never forgets. Calling for mass slaughter and genocide never looks good on your internet resume.
Ahhhh, the Uihlein family. The were heavily involved in the Rauner era in Illinois. What a glorious governorship that was. After they got done farting in elevators in Illinois, they decamped to Florida to evangelize the gullible.
Here is the donor list for the ultra-wonder-licious Illinois Policy Institute, which is louche even by the standards of partisan policy tanks. Yet IPI appears to have been instrumental in the notorious Janus case against public-employee unions.
https://www.desmog.com/illinois-policy-institute/
Wowsers. Uihlein, Mercer, and Rauner family foundations. It’s family values and union busting all around!
See under: Procedural History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME
Nice people. I’ll be inviting them over for dinner, all righty.
Don’t forget to put lots of aconite in the bar-b-que sauce.
And set out some fava beans and a nice Chianti…
I’m not surprised Republicans couldn’t buy enough ads to stop Trump but it did make me wonder.
How much money did the GOP spend on social media ads in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and did they actually get anything for their money? We barely learned about the algos and account suppression and then Musk booted the journalists. I wonder a lot about what we didn’t learn.
If the Blob is regulating social media that is cheating of a sort that would help explain the consistent deviation between what voters seem to be saying and how they actually vote. If only your side gets to do it and you don’t get caught, it really doesn’t take much to tip elections, not with the kind of powers our blobby friends have gifted themselves with.
I’m sure we learned about everything that was to Musk’s personal advantage and absolutely nothing that wasn’t. Journalists carrying water for oligarchs isn’t really any better than journalists carrying water for bureaucrats. For a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist”, Musk is pretty intolerant of any speech that might inconvenience him.
Only an idiot would actually believe that a privately owned entity like Twitter/X was ever an open public forum.
Well, ditto the blogosphere then because for the crime of blogging I got hit with a DDOS attack.
Even a proprietary platform can be used for good. Jack Dorsey wasn’t suppressing my Twitter account, the US govt was except not really. In this case the govt was just the tool the Democrats have been using to murder democracy.
And I doubt very much that Musk has begun to scratch the surface of this rat’s nest of embeds. He was right about one thing: Twitter runs fine without all those excess employees. The jitters and outages? Well, obviously that’s on Elon (a serial labor law violator who belongs in prison, btw) because he if he did as he was instructed, the govt and their friends wouldn’t have to hack Twitter so much.
This site has often been bumping through time wormholes in the recent past, and it would seem that the CDC page depicting the distribution of covid-19 variants is up to it too:
From CDC, October 14:
That is the date on CDC’s chart.
The CDC is a specialist in “pre crime.”
I wish more people were like me, but Schumer going to Israel frosts my behind. We have rising homelessness, the migrant problem is getting bigger every day, food instability and hunger are on the rise, and decent jobs are hard to come by, particularly upstate. We have failing infrastructure throughout the state. There are masses of problems facing NY state that should be the top priority for the senior Senator of the state. I get that there is a portion of the NY population beyond the media that may be focused on the chaos in the Middle East but they are not the majority of the population.
The unthinking double standard and possibly racist response from our political class is disgusting enough. I cannot say the grandstanding is worse, but if I hadn’t already sworn never to vote for Schumer again…
As I said in a previous comment, he was once talking about Israel and he said that so long as there are two bricks left supporting each other in America, that America will even then still support Israel. How does Israel feel about America? Do the words USS LIberty mean anything? Obviously not to Chuck Schumer. Schumer just left China the other day where he lectured them how they were not allowed to be neutral but had to denounce Russia and support the Ukraine. I’m sure they listened to him.
Schumer has had even more than that to say in speeches to AIPAC, but I think we have a living, breathing trope right here:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israeli-military-uniform-capitol-hill/
Schumer needs to get right on this before it gets out of hand, like he did with Omar.
Yves got out of here just in time. things are going to get really bad in the US in the next 12-13 months. When Putin demonstrates more moral integrity then any leaders in the western world, we are in big trouble. What’s happening in Israel is coming soon to an America near you, there’s just no question in my mind.
If you believe in karma, America has some nasty retribution coming.
Could not agree more. And, just for grins and giggles, it appears that the House drama will continue indefinitely.
It looked like Jordan might run unopposed, but at the last minute, they found a Kevin proxy, Austin Scott (GA) to run. He’s Kev’s chum, and sure to grease the skids for unlimited aid to Israel and Ukraine.
So, maybe no Zombie-Kev. But Proxy-Kev lives!
I can guarantee that Jordan’s “issues” would instantly become non-issues, the moment he adopted a more accommodating attitude towards Ukraine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/13/us/politics/house-speaker-jordan-scalise.html
Looks like Jordan is nominated.
>>>If you believe in karma, America has some nasty retribution coming.
Well, yes, but such karma on a national scale tends to hurt the innocent the most. It just does not matter who, whom, what, or why.
People say, even demand, that there needs to be a reckoning on country X because of what happed to Y, but without a full understanding of the cost. It is always those least responsible who pay the most.
For the United States, it has often been said that the Civil War was God’s justice for the sins of slavery. Something like six percent of the entire population was died by wounds or disease, crippled for life, or made insane by it all with most of it on the soldiers, or the civilians, often poor and then made destitute, not the slave owners.
I could say things of a similar nature for the Japanese and the Germans of the Second World War. I mean during the German expulsions from the East where some of them had lived since the Middle Ages, hundreds of thousands simply disappeared with maybe over a million dead in their running of the gauntlet; the firebombings of Tokyo, which were probably the deadliest bombings, period. Yes, more deadly than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Women, children, and old men. When reading about all this, the excuses given by people for these atrocities sound very hollow to me.
So, when I hear people demand in their righteousness that one the Palestinians or the Israelis pay for their crimes, I truly do wonder what if they know what they are saying. Really and truly wonder.
But too many people do not even try to understand what they are saying, and so, the bloodfest will continue. I just can’t wait to see what exciting new productions will be shown at the Revenge Theatre next year. Shall I bring popcorn when I visit? (Yes, /s)
When governments can successfully dehumanize large segments of people, really, really bad things happen. I don’t think any foreign actors are going to ‘do something’ to Americans. We are going to do it to ourselves. Biden and HRC’s comments on maga repubs are massive red flags, and frankly, it is disturbing it is at all tolerated. These are very dangerous people.
Oh, and did you notice the new provisional coalition government that is now in place permanently until the war ‘is over’? Coming soon to a North American country near you.
My father occupied Tokyo with the US army just after the Japanese surrendered and he must have seen the aftermath of the firebombing. He would never talk about it.
I have no idea of the actual contract dates, but this:
Makes me think that Biobot’s contract had technically ended and they were continuing to provide the analysis under the assumption that their contract would be renewed, possibly even negotiating in good faith. The announcement that the contract was going to Verily was either premature or the CDC didn’t get that they had just fired the previous company.
Oh and if being an Alphabet company wasn’t enough to give everyone pause about this change, this from further in the tweet should:
I guess this means Google approved peer reviewed papers won’t disappear down their algorithm rabbit hole and thus become immediately obsolete.
It is interesting that Jordan’s checkered past is coming out now. IIRC, it took decades for Hastert’s predilections to become politically debilitating. This was pretty fast.
Prior to my defenestration from FB over my anti-war positions re Russia, on my congressman’s page there was a fellow troll who gave Jordan the nom de plume of “Gym Jordan”. Prolly not original to him, but it proved very effective in suppressing his support on that page to the point where he ceased to be mentioned. I wonder what his nickname in the House cloak room is right about now?
I would like to say a few things about war, refugees, innocent civilians, veterans, and the effects of all this on society.
One of the most poignant stories in the entire Greek/Latin canon is that of Odysseus and his loyal dog Argos. Odysseus had spent decades fighting the Trojan War, and he left his favorite dog Argos to protect his home and family while he was away. Odysseus had not been seen or heard of since he left and was thought to be dead. The once proud Odysseus finally arrived back home incognito, a beaten and completely changed man – a veteran of war and all that entails. In the meanwhile, as Ithaca had descended into corruption, backstabbing and chaos, Odysseus’ wife Penelope had been living it up in their villa – one party after the other with the elite of the elite – all of whom had been responsible for the malaise in Ithaca. Odysseus arrived home dressed as a beggar, and at the sound of his voice, his dog Argos immediately recognized him, wagged his tail, gave him a loving whimper and then immediately died. Odysseus was home now and Argos’ lifetime job was done. Odysseus wept. ( Indeed , this homecoming weep account may have inspired the same homecoming weep account in John 11:35 – Jesus wept.) Odysseus found himself unwanted and unappreciated.
This, so many times, has been the lot of veterans from all of time. We as a species despite our iPhones have not really changed all that much. The vast inhumanity that is inflicted during war. Most often for no reason at all. And then as a physician, I get to look into the haunted eyes of the veterans for the rest of their lives. They have literally given it all – for all of the rest of us – so we do not have to experience the horror of it in any way. I feel the same about innocent civilians.
I have a special place in my heart for these people. I have a very special bad place for those who would abuse them. It is right up there with those who target civilians and kids on any side of any conflict.
It is for this reason that I despise the VA and what it has become. Even more so than Obamacare. But I despise even more the vast army of MBAs across this country in health care who refuse to let their doctors take care of these people. The veterans for the most part in this country get health care that is just a disgrace. This has become acutely worse in the past decade or so. There are those of us who do what we can to take care of these people outside of the system. This was MUCH more common before the advent of our corporate health care model of today.
When I lived in the big city, I had about 40 or 50 vets in my practice. I never charged them a thing. It was reward enough for me to take care of those who had sacrificed. They brought me as a reward so many things I treasure now – but also a lifetime of stories. Imagine my surprise one day when the MBAs showed up in my office to announce that I would no longer be able to do that. As a physician, not one single time in my career had I ever not met my financial quota. They could care less. I was an employee – I had no say in anything. And FYI – they are not YOUR patients, they are OUR patients. And we will fire them, turn them over to collection agencies, however, we choose to deal with it. You are never to do this again. IT IS UNSEEMLY for our organization to be engaged in this.
I absolutely despise what my profession has allowed the MBAs to do to this noble profession. One day, it will be viewed as the crime against humanity that it is. Until then, you have to do what you have to do. In my case, it was to turn in a resignation letter the next day ( to their horror) – and decamp to the fruited plain. I have never been more free in how I practice and have many veterans in my practice. My community desperately needs me – it is very difficult to find internists. So they do not mess with me. The priority here is indeed patient care. The same cannot be said in any of these corporate godzillas in our big cities.
It is my firm belief that medical licensing agencies across the country should impose a condition of licensure. Very simple. Each physician should demonstrate that they have taken care of some percent of patients that are veterans, some that are non-paying, and some percent on Medicare/Medicaid. In one fell swoop it would solve so many problems. And it would give us back our soul. The problem is there are too many high-priced specialists and MBAs who could no longer afford their Bentleys.
I am not certain why exactly I shared this today. I think I am deeply heartbroken about yet another impending event that is going to produce all kinds of casualties among civilians, veterans, and innocents alike. I would like to think we could do without this as a species. I am not sure that is even possible. And unfortunately, just as I detailed above, there are armies of people everywhere more than willing to take advantage and profit from everyone involved.
God Bless.
It took 5-10 years for my doctors and I to realize that I truly do suffer maladaptive neuroplasticity and extremely rare neuropathies. Perversely, one benefit of this is I get to meet all these very knowledgeable doctors. I liked some of my doctors so much that I asked them to write recommendation letters for my application for a PhD in neuroscience to study my own apparently unique disorder. (I didn’t get accepted, but I can try again next year.) My insurance unsurprisingly tried hard to deny all the specialist referrals my doctors attempted, but I eventually prevailed.
Likewise, I was eventually referred to some very skilled lawyers who were willing to take my disability case pro bono. I spoke with 7-10 disability lawyers, and they all rejected my case. Just like IM Doc’s suggestion that doctors be required to treat veterans and Medicare patients, lawyers are required to do a certain amount of pro bono work every year. My pro bono lawyers work for a fancy law firm, and they are undoubtedly well paid. As such, they are not going take a case pro bono unless the case involves some very complex areas of disability law. At the same time, my lawyers and others like them doing pro bono work get a good glimpse of a disabled working stiff like me. Even if my lawyers don’t get paid for their work, there is mutual gain. In addition to aiding me navigate the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of disability claims, I get a good view of skilled lawyers, who can, of course, choose to use their legal skills to exploit people or fight those doing the exploitation.
More generally, we could live in a utopia if wealthy people were “forced” to do community service but not as punishment. Community service in the sense of ensuring solidarity in our city or our country. The ordinary wealthy can and should enjoy a week off of work—which probably entailed some financial or legal loophole where profits are made from exploitation—and live among the proletariat. During this sabbatical, the wealthy should observe the life of the prole and figure out a way to improve his life. The ultra wealthy are so sociopathic that they are irredeemable. To these ultra wealthy, “helping the poor” usually means seeking political office or buying a football team (i.e. more exploitation).
–Pink Floyd, Money
When I saw Roger Waters in concert, some of what he said on stage was overtly political. He excoriated then PM Tony Blair and the warmongering policies of the US and UK. Waters specifically recounted his own experience traveling in Iraq or Afghanistan. Apparently, he went to the Middle East incognito, not playing the bass, not singing Pink Floyd songs. He went as Roger Waters the ordinary Brit. According to him, the Iraqis treated him well, and they had no clue he was Roger Waters the famous musician. He said it was inexplicable that the UK (and the US) would inflict so much violence on this nation, especially when considering the kindness he received. Thus, he wrote and sang a protest song.
By the way, I like David Gilmour’s solo career much more than Water’s solo career. Everybody loves the Waters lead era of Pink Floyd (DSOTM, Wish You Were Here), but the Gilmour lead era is pretty good in my opinion. I have listened to Division Bell numerous times, albeit not as many as Wish You Were Here.
IM Doc, thank you for your service. (I did not support the wars that most of your patients fought in, but you did a good thing trying to provide them the medical care they deserve.)
Thanks for the word “lagniappe.” I haven’t encountered that one before, but after looking it up, I like it.
It made me think of the Bayou Benny’s Liberal Lagniappe SNL skit.
Put New Orleans and Cajun country around Lafayette on your travel agenda. Great food, music and dancing. Mardi Gras in Cajun country (NO is a zoo then; my relatives left the city left the city if they could). It’s the closest you can get to another country without a passport.
Lafayette has a great Mardi Gras that is smaller and more manageable than New Orleans. I used to play with a famous Cajun musician and spent a lot of time in Louisiana, it’s a great place, especially the southern part of the state (northern Louisiana can feel more like Mississippi).
Geno Delafose, at Pat”s on the levee. Breaux Bridge weekend breakfast and dancing.
The T-P used to run the Lagniappe section on Thurs with all the week-end doings, which being NOLA was quite extensive. After my mom died my dad moved across the river to the westbank, in many ways a world apart. He ended up marrying a woman from “down the parish” (Jean Lafitte). It was rare for folks there to go “up front” (to NOLA).
Bernie Sanders, on tour promoting his latest book, is fêted as a charismatic celebrity in Berlin:
https://taz.de/Bernie-Sanders-in-Berlin/!5966354/
Oh.
* translation via https://www.translator.eu
My wife donated $7 to his 2016 campaign and received his then new book in the mail.
Is there anything concrete out there that gives a sense of how much the average Gaza Palestinian supports Hamas? There’s this old survey from 2021 that says 53% of Palestinians supported “anti-Israel” efforts. But 2 years ago might as well be forever, and the Hamas attack over the weekend was probably unfathomable to the average Gazan in 2021.
If Israel sees bombing Gaza as the only way to get to Hamas, then what recourse do Palestinians (majority of whom surely would prefer not to die of bomb or thirst) have? Do they turn over every Hamas member they know of? Make some show of wanting nothing to do with them?
And what does the incredibly vague term “anti-Israel effort” really mean? Does it mean supporting the appalling crimes that Hamas committed a few days ago, or does it mean something else? “Push polling” is a pretty refined art, and it doesn’t only happen in the good ol’ USA.
If Hamas were really confident of their support among Gazans, they’d have held regular elections (something that hasn’t happened since they took power). Personally, I hope the many, many innocent civilians in Gaza City heed the IDF’s advice and refuse to allow themselves to be used as human shields any longer.
I believe that Gaza is not in a position to have elections without the direct interference of Israel. The last time they had elections it was routinely said that Israel and the US “allowed” them to have them, with the resultant stories of Hillary Clinton first complaining that Hamas was “allowed” to run and then saying that we should just bomb them and start over.
And what if the IDF’s advice is just a pretext for them trading one “refugee camp” in Gaza for a “refugee camp” in Egypt without the right of return?
Without doing a deep dive into the internet, I recall that Gaza did have elections and the people chose Hamas as they were not so corrupt as the other party. And when this happened Israel and the US severely punished the Gazans for this act of democracy and pulled out all sort of subsidies and financial help to let them know to never dare to do that again. Not much incentive to hold elections under that sort of incentive.
Yes, they did once have elections that put Hamas in power in Gaza (but not in the West Bank). That happened in 2006, when George Bush was POTUS, Hu Jintao was President of the PRC, and the UK was a member in good standing of the EU. They haven’t had one since. The Palestinian Legislative Council (Palestine’s parliament) hasn’t met since 2007 although individual committees have convened from time to time. Both Gaza and the West Bank are governed by decree.
I’d say it’s reasonable to think that the Palestinian people are completely unrepresented by those who claim to speak (and act) in their name (both in Gaza and the West Bank). You are, of course, free to disagree.
So while I’m sure it’s true that most Palestinians endorse “anti-Israel efforts”, I’m by no means convinced that this constitutes an endorsement of Hamas’s publicly-stated genocidal aspirations or that they’d approve of the bloodbath that occurred last weekend. Perhaps my opinion of the average Gazan is just higher than yours.
Yeah, I’m sure that Netnyahu publicly stating that they were financially supporting Hamas to undermine support for the PLO just a few years back didn’t do wonders for their support among Palestinians either.
Correction: to undermine support for the Palestinian Authority.
what does it matter?! 40% of palestine is under the age of 14, 50% under 18, netanyahu funded hamas has been in power since 2007 which was their last election, and gaza has been blockaded since then. these children who make up half of the country were barely even alive when hamas was “democratically elected” and have known no other world than living in an open aired prison.
where is hamas (or any oppositional organization) supposed to fight for their sovereignty from when israel is roughly the size of NJ and gaza roughly the size of chicago? or are they not allowed to fight back apartheid? its “violence” if they fight back, but being subject to apartheid is acceptable to the west. i bet the west just wants them to march around with silly signs peacefully protesting since its so effective at making change.
and lets not forget that israel let this happen considering they were warned by egypt 3 days in advance. their 9/11 indeed…
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-intelligence-official-says-israel-ignored-repeated-warnings-of-something-big/
As I’ve been fond of saying for a long time, no one ever accused Washington of having foresight.
Putin just said a few days ago that the west is organized so that the sort of people that become leaders are not very bright. Have no idea what he is talking about as you have people like Macron or Biden or Trudeau or Scholz…
“America ‘not sending their best and brightest’ to Congress”
In other news, the sky is blue.
Well, I think I’m more with William F Buckley Jr on that one.
All I can say about Verily from first hand experience is that ~ 2016 they had an office in Cambridge, MA, atop the huge complex of buildings that Google used there in Kendall Square, and the small top floor area (12th or 13th floor), as I recall, that was reserved for Verily, used separate badging and Googlers couldn’t access it. No idea why, but it was very much its own special thing even then.
My dark horse for the Democratic party presidential race appears to be at the starting gate. In New Hampshire, no less. And this sounds significant:
“Phillips, meanwhile, drew his own primary challenger this week when Ron Harris, a DNC executive committee member, announced a bid for Phillips’ congressional seat.”
The DNC doesn’t like it. He has a safe seat, so it is not as though it could be taken by one of Biden’s “extreme MAGA’s” or anything. It is beginning to smell like there may be a race after all.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/13/dean-phillips-new-hampshire-dems-00121555
Taibbi’s latest. Paywalled, but you get the idea. Looks like the EU is taking up where the US spook-affiliated industrial sensor ship complex leaves off.
Europe, Get Off Our Speech Lawn
The European Union deigns to lecture America on free expression
https://www.racket.news/p/europe-get-off-our-speech-lawn
from the longer article:
Breton’s mention of “qualified sources” is a reference to the law’s most heinous and dystopian portion, the so-called “trusted flagger” program, which puts a clutch of elitist NGO busybodies in charge of poring through content to decide for the rabble what is untrue or “harmful,” as a means of “defending European norms.”
Does one of those “European norms” involve politicians spending a generation patronizing American-developed Internet technology (including, one presumes, porn sites) before turning around after decades and telling American Internet companies how and by whom they should submit to European-chosen decency committees? Silicon Valley execs should respectfully invite the EU to launch its own fully-policed Deutschebook platform, send a middle finger emoji back over the pond, and spend the rest of the day blowing up IKEA shelf units with M-80s in their office parking lots.
—-
My comment:
Did we in the US get a preview of the “trusted sources” bit after the 2016 election? Yes, yes we did. We were able to fight back on that bit of legerdemain then. But you know bureaucrats, once they get hold of an idea that promises to give them more control they won’t let it go, not easily. It’s too tempting a treat for them. / ;)
Daily I wonder if I’m going to lose my mind; At the improved local brewery, which just recently added back waiters/waitresses, so clearly not going out of business, which is nice, and doubled and triple prices, not as nice, with a sign asking people not to take too many napkins because costs are high.
And it’s busy inside, and you’d think there’s no Pandemic without 1,000 miles of here; While the population density here is quite low, the only reason I’m here, there’s still a Pandemic, and this is a popular tourist area. It’s all hard to fathom. And you see Mandy in photo op after photo op, alive and well and not sick with COVID yet as far as we know. It’s amazing how much the world is pre-Pandemic, even during a Pandemic. I’m not sure when I’ll finally lose my mind. This is a peculiar kind of hell.
I wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my life looking for signs that caution is justified, beyond study after study showing COVID infections are bad, and each one is more damaging than the last? When do we actually get population level disability that’s impossible to ignore? Will it make any difference?
Stay safe out there!
> I wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my life looking for signs that caution is justified, beyond study after study showing COVID infections are bad, and each one is more damaging than the last? When do we actually get population level disability that’s impossible to ignore? Will it make any difference?
That’s the thing, isn’t it. It isn’t some big polio wave of people being paralyzed. Person A dies of a heart attack at a young age, person B can’t focus anymore and has to quit work, person C switches to a job that doesn’t require them to walk up a flight of stairs because otherwise they get out of breath. It’s just diffuse and varied enough to cover up, ignore and pretend away. In a way the manifold but inconsistent damage that covid inflicts is another one of its evolutionary strengths — a species that could perhaps eliminate or contain it has chosen not to try and this makes it easier to cover that implicit decision up.
Well, I’m still avoiding people for the most part.
> Well, I’m still avoiding people for the most part.
As I keep saying (and I know this is a crude over-simplification) “Extroverts are gonna kill us all.”
It all comes down to shared air. That’s what you have to “watch” for, even though you cannot see it (white phosphorus is an atrocity we can see; SARS-CoV-2 floating through a hospital corridor would be an atrocity, if we could see it, which we cannot).
In the meantime, all we can do is associate — share air with — with people of like mind: People who are disproportionately introverted, disproportionately “on the spectrum,” and obviously people unswayed by group-think (in a word, critical thinkers) will also disproptionately survive.
As your mother surely said: “Just because all the other kids are doing it doesn’t make it right.”
True. But entering the Pandemic without social relations. Life gets pretty bleak. Now we’re up to war number two. And executive function continues to deteriorate. And did you see climate this year? Lols. Staying busy helps, some. Avoiding lifetime disability seems worthwhile in America particularly. It’s all otherworldly.
> But entering the Pandemic without social relations. Life gets pretty bleak.
I’ve never had many social relations (deep, I like to think, but not many). But I’m an introvert.
All I can suggest (besides online) is look for a place or a space that masks, or, alternatively has very good ventilation, and make a connection there. They will be looking for support too.
And I do think there are more of “us” than “we” might think; there’s enormous selection bias against safety just now. I don’t know when it will break, as I think it must, or what form the break will take (more precisely, who will be blamed; the innocent, probably).
> When do we actually get population level disability that’s impossible to ignore?
I would imagine that in fields where $$$ depend on good data, there will be good data. Perhaps there will be good data on population health in the hands of the actuaries. Life insurance rates may change. Perhaps disability insurance contributions will be adjusted upward to compensate for increasing claims (assuming that claims paid do increase).
The thing that worries me is that I know people who simply “accept” that they will probably experience a shortened life-span and significant debility earlier than was customary in the past, and accepting this makes them comfortable with minimal precautions. It is not insane to not go along with this way of thinking. The insanity, IMO, is to stop caring about one’s own and others’ wellbeing.
Airlines track flight crew health. The airlines should have some good data.
> The thing that worries me is that I know people who simply “accept” that they will probably experience a shortened life-span and significant debility earlier than was customary in the past, and accepting this makes them comfortable with minimal precautions.
I can’t understand this thinking, or how it came to be prevalent. The words “death cult” come to mind. Why don’t we just fill our water with shit, as well as the air? Oh, wait….
Helmer is cooking with gas this week. The stuff about Roosevelt is amazing.
https://johnhelmer.net/sign-language-is-the-only-language-the-deaf-can-understand-giving-j-m-coetzees-new-novel-the-finger/
I don’t have solutions and not really sure where to put this but remarkable to me to recognize how depersonalizing these words can be: “the migrant influx” or similar. A “refugee”, a word that erases so much. It’s not inaccurate to employ that language, but remarkable to me in effect.
Refugee is actually a pretty powerful word, at least from a legal standpoint.
In the US we deny the label refugee to most people who successfully apply for asylum, even though they are refugees based on standards of international law that the United States has signed on to.
Happy 248th birthday, United States Navy!
https://nitter.net/dave_brown24/status/1712866752416063781#m
I removed a comment that gamed the tripwires in exemplary fashion. I am sure if the well-meaning commenter had thought for a moment, they would have seen how much work this would create for the moderators if they followed that lead, and such practices were universally adopted.
Would fifty lashes with a wet noodle self administered qualify as penitential self flagellation?
Point taken. Behaviour modification in progress.
As a general FYI: an archive of the hippie-era information resource par excellence — the Whole Earth Catalog and daughter publications (CoEvolution Quarterly / Whole Earth Review et cetera) — is now online:
https://wholeearth.info
https://www.wired.com/story/whole-earth-catalog-now-online-internet-archive/
@caucus99 — Wow! Brings back memories. Thanks!
> Whole Earth Catalog
Still, “access to tools.”
Was the WEC, heaven help us all, ground zero for the “access” trope?
It was certainly ground zero for a new iteration of American “can-do,” anything-is-possible spirit — not to say hubris:
“We are as gods and might as well get good at it” ?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=we+are+as+gods+and+might+as+well+get+good+at+it+whole+earth+catalog
I remember seeing the WECs when they were still new. I got some later and over time. I also have a long-ish run of the CoEvolution Quarterly which later renamed itself the Whole Earth Review.
I don’t think the phrase ” access to tools” was a trope at the time or in WEC’s hands. The catalogs and magazines really did offer information about very useful tools, books, groups, etc. and other things . . . . and how and where to get them. So it did provide access in the sense of providing knowledge of their existence and information about how to get them.
Only later did the Merry Tropesters turn “access to (whatever)” into a trope.
I also got a longish run of Mother Earth News issues . . . till they started seeming low-info relative to all the words they still contained. In more recent years it has become a high info magazine again, but there are limits so I didn’t get any of the recent ones from when they got good again. I got some of their books, though.
Still have a few “Mother Earth News” hidden away in “The Library.” There was a Golden Age.
” Do libertarians believe that parking can even be illegal? ” . . .
Maybe if non-libertarians do it. Certainly not when libertarians do it.
When Fetterman says the Republican House is “dysfunctional”, I think he is wrong. Based on the little I have read over the years and some Beau of the Fifth Column videos ( which is admittedly a dim weak lantern by which to guide my intuition) , I think the most hard-right Republican House members are entirely functional in their pursuit, shared by their fellow hard-right Republicans ( and their most Upper Class backers) at many levels of government; to make America ungovernable ( just as the ANC hoped to “make South Africa ungovernable” during their revolution period) in hopes of grabbing all the pieces after the smash-and-grab.