By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
House/Purple Finch, Pine Plains; Stissing Ave. & Poplar Ave., Dutchess, New York, United States. “Could be a Purple Finch as well. PM is unsure what bird this is because of its uncommon song. This bird is perched on top of a Norway spruce. PM is 1/2 block from an appliance store. The bird took off with no flight call.” From 1975, back when birders added their observations to the recording.
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
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * Trump (R): “Trump fraud trial LIVE: Ex-president awaits blockbuster verdict as hush money court date set” (live) [Independent]. “Judge Arthur Engoron is expected to deliver a verdict in Donald Trump’s New York civil fraud trial on Friday that could see the former president hit with millions of dollars in fines and sanctions. The justice has already ruled that Mr Trump inflated his wealth on financial statements that were given to banks and insurers to make deals and secure favourable loans. New York attorney general Letitia James is seeking $370m and a ban on the defendant and his fellow Trump Organization executives from doing business in the state.” • This is the case about inflated New York real estate values.
Trump (R): “Trump to stand trial on March 25 in NY criminal hush money case” [Reuters]. • This is the case about a rich dude paying off a mistress.
Trump (R): “Trump-Appointed Judge Denies Ex-President’s Motion to Delay Deadlines in Documents Case” [Mediate]. • This is the case where the accused didn’t dump the documents in a box in his garage next to “household detritus.” Honestly, I’m all for the rule of law, I really am, but could there please be a single tier?
* * * Trump (R): “Fani Willis just gave Donald Trump exactly what he wants” [MSNBC]. “For those who generally have faith in Willis, she was understandably enraged and gave a master class in how to defend oneself in a public setting. For others, her protestations were over the top. Even so, the fact that there was even a hearing into Willis and whether she has a financial conflict of interest in the case was a windfall for Trump.”
Trump (R): “5 revelations from the explosive Fani Willis hearing in Georgia” [The Hill]. “Tensions exploded [(!)] Thursday during a frenetic [(!!)] hearing to determine whether Fulton County’s district attorney’s office should be disqualified from continuing its 2020 election interference prosecution of former President Trump and his allies due to a relationship between top prosecutors on the case…. At the start of her testimony, she railed against Roman attorney Ashleigh Merchant for filing the ‘dishonest’ motion to disqualify the district attorney, accusing her of spreading ‘lies’ and implying she slept with Wade ‘the first day [she] met with him.’ ‘When someone lies on you — it’s highly offensive,’ Willis said after McAfee asked her to stay on topic with the questioning.” • The “cash” stuff is interesting, too, but I don’t know what the norms are, in this context….
Trump (R): “Jack Smith is in a hurry, but he can’t say why” [Washington Examiner]. “The reason for Smith’s haste has been obvious all along: He wants Trump to be tried, convicted, sentenced, and possibly jailed before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Could anything be clearer? Everything that Smith has done since Aug. 1, 2023, when the indictment was unsealed, has been to rush the case to a decision before deadline — and the deadline has always been the 2024 presidential election. But here’s the problem for Smith. The Justice Department forbids prosecutorial interference with elections. The guidelines are very clear: ‘Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.’ It is now Feb. 15. The South Carolina primary is on Feb. 24, followed by the Michigan primary, followed by Super Tuesday. Trump has already won Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada and is the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination. Trump is also leading President Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics average of national, head-to-head polls. So it is fair to say that so far in this election year, Trump is the leading candidate to be the next president of the United States. And Jack Smith is frantically trying to put him in jail before the election. That might, just might, be what the Justice Department intends to prevent when it says federal prosecutors ‘may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.’ That is a bad thing, and Jack Smith is doing it.”
* * * Trump (R): “Sharp Elbows, Even Sharper Knives in Trump Inner Sanctums” [Philip Wegman, RealClearPolitics]. “While some detractors try to dismiss [Turning Point founder Charlie] Kirk as a young and inexperienced activist, the reach of the 29-year-old populist cannot be denied. He has a larger social media following than many of his critics, and politicians regularly compete for speaking slots at TPUSA events, which draw crowds of young conservatives in the thousands. His latest ambition: an eye-popping $108 million get-out-the vote campaign via TPUSA’s political arm in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin to swing the election. ‘I don’t think Trump is fully aware of that plan. When he finds out, he’s not going to be happy at all,’ a Republican operative in close contact with the Trump campaign said of the multi-million dollar effort. The cost is exorbitant compared to traditional door-knocking efforts, with little guarantee of success, the operative noted. When Trump learns of the ambitious spending plan, funded by donors who would otherwise give directly to his campaign, they predicted, the former president ‘will be pissed out of his mind.'” • Let’s wait and see.
Trump (R): “How Donald Trump Can Beat Joe Biden” [Louis Perron, RealClearPolitics]. “The first challenge for Donald Trump is that he has to make sure the 2024 election remains a referendum on Joe Biden. I say that because it’s in the very nature of Donald Trump’s personality to make everything about himself…. It’s been said that great campaigns are never a rerun of previous great campaigns. In that sense, Donald Trump needs to evolve and reinvent himself. He is no longer the outsider he was back in 2016. If public opinion were static, people like me would not have a job. Donald Trump needs to do something that has become unfashionable in U.S. politics, namely to reach out, and to do so in a meaningful way. One of the much-written about segments of swing voters that will be decisive in November is suburban women. Jan. 6 and abortion are just two issues that they want to see addressed…. One could argue that in 2020, Trump did a little bit of outreach with respect to black men, and it worked surprisingly well. (I actually think that if he had done more of it, he could have won reelection)…. ? No, I don’t. I have worked for candidates who were in their late 70s and early 80s, and I can confirm from my own experience what is being said: It’s difficult to teach an old dog new tricks. And this is particularly true for people who have won elections before. That said, it’s not impossible either. After all, Kellyanne Conway was able to make Donald Trump a more disciplined candidate during the final months of the 2016 campaign.” • Hmm.
Trump (R): “Trump world considers having the former president deliver the official GOP State of the Union response” [NBC]. “Aides and allies close to former President Trump have discussed the former president giving the official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address, according to five people familiar with the talks. Two of the sources said that Trump himself has discussed it, but both said he is leaning against the high-profile gig. The decision on who will deliver the response rests with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. A source familiar with the planning of the State of the Union address said there has been no outreach by the Trump campaign to those planning the GOP rebuttal…. Nothing smacks of Washington politics more than the official out-of-power party response to the State of the Union. That’s at odds with Trump’s message that, as much as he understands the nature of politics in the nation’s capital, he is not a creature of what he calls ‘The Swamp.'” • As if Trump couldn’t alter the setting to avoid this!
* * * Biden (D): “Democrats Are Too Resigned to Biden” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. Arguments against a change in candidates in italic. “It’s too late. Lyndon B. Johnson, the last president to decline to seek a second term, dropped out on March 31, 1968. There was still time for contenders to launch and fund races. The primary rules have changed since then, and ballots have been printed up. Mr. Biden can free his delegates, either from the day he steps aside or at the convention. Only political romantics think an open convention is possible. You can’t know it’s impossible. Now and then in life you have to say, ‘History, hold my beer.'” • I don’t think there’s any mechanical or technical problem that a smoke-filled room can’t solve. The issue is introducing the candidate to the country; that takes either a genuine, professionally run campaign, or a celebrity. While it is true that nobody (normal) pays attention to the election until after Labor Day, an August start gives an awfully short runway for a professional campaign (and a level of intensity, ferality, and unity — “total commitment” — I am not sure that Democrats, as a party, possess). A celebrity, on the other hand, does not need to be introduced to the country; that’s why Oprah is not an insane idea as a type, regardless of her inclinations personally. (Celebrity-hood was also one of Trump’s advantages, let us recall.) No doubt a certain generation of Democrats would love to run Martin Sheen, but please, no.
Biden (D): “Yes, Democrats, it’s Biden or bust” [Vox]. “Other Democratic stars, like Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Secretary Pete Buttigieg, are also loyal Biden Democrats, poll worse than Biden, or are biding their time. And to bypass Harris for one of them also opens up potential ire from Black voters, without whom Democrats can’t win. Should a different, other Democrat emerge, with the vocal support of, I don’t know, Barack Obama and a core of Biden-critical strategists and politicians, and should first lady Jill Biden and other Biden confidantes approach Biden and convince him to drop out, we’d likely head toward a brokered convention with multiple rounds of voting. That also opens up the chance for even more chaos and disunity among Democrats. Does that seem worth it to anyone in Democratic politics right now? The simple answer is no. It’s too late.” • I agree on Doctor Jill Biden’s critical role. Too bad Gina Haspel isn’t a Democrat. She’d be ideal!
Biden (D): “Biden Can’t Win Without Help From Trump” [Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal]. “The Biden campaign took a torpedo to its engine room last week in the form of special counsel Robert Hur’s report. Mr. Hur wrote that he chose not to seek an indictment of the president for mishandling classified material in part because he thought a jury would see Mr. Biden as a ‘sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’… To win, Team Biden has only one option—an all-out attack on Mr. Trump, using every means of communication every day in an assault of unusual scope and expense. Victory would require Mr. Trump’s cooperation in making truly outrageous appeals to his hard-core supporters that alienate swing voters. Fortunately for Mr. Biden, the former president has done his best to help.”
Biden (D): “Biden Must Win. But How?” [Pamela Paul, New York Times]. “[Biden] needs to start making the threat of a second Trump term — in all its unbridled terror — real now. Lord help us, we’re relying on him to prevent that from happening.” • “Make [them] afraid some more, Shaddam. I shouldn’t enjoy this, but I find the pleasure impossible to suppress.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
Biden (D): “Biden Is Set to Visit East Palestine, but Is He a Year Too Late?” [New York Times]. Throwing a flag on the Betteridge’s Law violation. “But politics may be inescapable. Even as pro-Trump demonstrators rally on one side, others plan to hold a protest demanding that Mr. Biden bring additional aid to the community. And some residents worry that one year after a flurry of politicians turned their small town into a prop, it is about to happen again.”
* * * Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr.’s Libertarian play” [Politico]. “If Kennedy is the [Libertarian] Party’s nominee, his campaign and associated PACs won’t have to shell out millions of dollars and collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to get on the general election ballot in states across the country…. The Mises Caucus — a more radical libertarian faction organized around the work of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises — has been a power center within the party since its endorsed candidate, Angela McArdle, won the national committee chairmanship in a 2022 landslide victory with nearly 70 percent of the vote. It controls the majority of the delegates who will vote on the party’s presidential nominee at the national convention in May. While McArdle has suggested that the party may be open to a Kennedy bid, last weekend the Mises Caucus came out formally in opposition to his candidacy, making it unlikely that Kennedy has a real shot at the nomination. McArdle did not respond to a request for comment.” • I shouldn’t enjoy this….
“Joe Manchin suggests Mitt Romney, Rob Portman as potential running mates as he flirts with third-party ticket” [FOX]. • Dear Lord.
* * * NY: “5 takeaways from Democrats flipping George Santos’ House seat in New York” [PBS]. Undistracted by the liberalgasm because going Republican Lite on immigration might not be a loser in the ‘burbs: “Democrats also outspent Republicans $14 million to $8 million in this race, a massive sum for a special election…. Democrats hammered Pilip’s ethics, likening her to Santos. Over Santos’ face, this widely run ad begins: ‘Same story. New name.’ It then shows Pilip and says she’s ‘about to embarrass us again’ and goes on to drop the oppo file about ‘unpaid bills from her family’s business” and that she ‘also owed more than $100,000 in unpaid taxes to the IRS, even filing a false financial disclosure. … She’s an ethical nightmare.’ Suozzi is a known quantity on Long Island. He’s a former Nassau County executive and is a former congressman. Democrats essentially billed the race as a moderate, adult in the room vs. an extremist, MAGA candidate.”
NY: “Democrats Have Themselves a Victory in New York. But They Also Have a Problem” [Slate]. “The key to this race was the money. Democrats spent nearly $14 million, almost double the GOP’s $8 million investment in the race. According to AdImpact, the total ad spend for just this Long Island district totaled an eyewatering $21.4 million. That’s more than quadruple the outlay of the 2022 race that yielded Santos…. Waiting for the national party to airdrop a spending advantage of millions of dollars is not a sustainable way to win elections. The difficulty of this win and the price tag show the cost of the New York State Democratic Party’s refusal to reconcile with the failures of the party apparatus after the 2022 midterms. This district will also have to go back to the polls for this same race in November. How many millions will that cost? It could be a problem for Biden too. He may be old. He may be unpopular. But New York Democrats are a millstone around his neck, not the other way around. ‘This should not be a close race,’ said Klein, the progressive organizer, on election day. “It makes me very nervous for November.” • Lots of not-very-encouraging detail on NY Democrats.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Our Most Serious National Security Threat Isn’t Russian Nukes In Space, It’s Intelligence Agencies In Washington” [The Federalist]. “It was a busy day in Washington on Wednesday as the intelligence bureaucracy tried to foment a national security panic over Russian nukes in space in hopes of ramming through the Ukraine aid package and killing reforms designed to curb its power to spy on Americans…. What happened next is telling. Even though the House Republicans who were pushing for the [Section 702] FISA reforms [on ending Bush-era warrantless surveillance] appeared to be winning the debate, in the aftermath of the hysteria over Russia nukes in space, Speaker Johnson pulled the bill and canceled Congress for the rest of the week. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to figure out what happened here. Our intelligence agencies don’t want lawmakers getting in the way of their plans.” • Nope. And sadly it takes a reactionary to say it.
“The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” [Charlotte Cowles, New York Magazine (“The Cut”)]. The deck: ” I never thought I was the kind of person to fall for a scam.” Cowles the Cut’s financial-advice. Skipping the horrid details to come to the part where Cowles muses on the debacle:
It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said. When I posed this theory to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies coerced confessions, he agreed. “If someone is trying to get you to be compliant, they do it incrementally, in a series of small steps that take you farther and farther from what you know to be true,” he said. “It’s not about breaking the will. They were altering the sense of reality.”
So, like liberal Democrat party politics?
* * * “Republican resolution shows intent to bypass Az voters in 2024 presidential election” [Tucson Sentinel]. “Rep. Rachel Jones, of Tucson, is the sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 2055, a declaration saying that the state legislature already has the power — via the U.S. Constitution — to pre-appoint Arizona’s electors for the 2024 presidential election, to ensure that they would vote for former President Donald Trump, regardless of the results of the popular vote. The Legislature would then use the threat of ignoring the votes of millions of Arizonans to strong-arm Hobbs into signing an election reform bill that would eliminate early voting and allow only in-person voting and only on Election Day with no mail-in ballots, to be completely counted by hand. Hobbs would not have the power to veto the measure since the resolution does not have the power of law, but simply declares its backers’ intentions and what they already believe to be true, per federal law.
hile the Republican members of the House Municipal Oversight and Elections Committee almost always vote along party lines to approve proposed legislation from their own party, Jones’ resolution went too far, even for them.” • Indeed!
#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 (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, 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, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Look for the Helpers
Two, three, many Chicagos:
Cóvid-safer events in Chicago this week and next!
All of them will have at least one of our air purifiers. Some will also require masks!!
Cóvid safety is easy when we do it together 🩵🩵🩵 pic.twitter.com/cSVLvBf65j
— Clean Air Club (@Clean_Air_Club_) February 16, 2024
Vaccination and Vaccines
“Could a nasal vaccine mean you never get Covid again? How it works, where to get one and everything you need to know” [Daily Mail]. “Could a powdered vaccine you inhale finally offer the chance to stamp Covid out for good? The vaccine is designed to work in the respiratory tract, where the virus first gets into the body. According to a study, the vaccine offers almost instant protection against Covid – compared to conventional injected vaccines, which take up to 14 days to become fully effective. The inhaled vaccine blocked both infection with the virus and the chance of spreading it to others…. The vaccine is made of tiny spheres that contain the protein that is unique to the virus which causes Covid. It is inhaled into the nose and absorbed by blood vessels in the respiratory tract, where immune cells called T-cells and B-cells (which produce antibodies), attack it and then remember it…. ‘An injected vaccine given into the muscle, usually in the arm, will also produce T-cells and B-cells, but these will mainly circulate in the blood and organs,’ he adds. ‘Injected vaccines only provoke a tiny quantity in the nose and mouth, so they aren’t ideal guards for the point where the Covid virus gains entry. ‘It’s like putting security guards behind a wall – with a nasal vaccine you have those guards where you need them.'” The Covid situation in the UK must be really bad if the Daily Mail is writing about vaccines (although kudos to their scientific reporting, as usual). More: “We already have them. Fluenz Tatra, a nasal vaccine that contains a live but weakened form of the flu virus is given to millions of children each year (but as it contains a live virus it is not suitable for older people because their immune systems are weaker). In terms of Covid, there are many nasal vaccines in development around the world, and at least two in the U.S. may be at a stage where they can be put before the regulators later this year. One of the contenders in the UK, called ViraVac, has been developed by Professor Munir and his team based on a vaccine originally sprayed around barns to halt a form of coronavirus in chickens. This had shown promise in animal studies but he says he’s has struggled to find the funding needed to move to the next stage of research since the World Health Organisation downgraded the status of Covid, saying in May last year that it was ‘no longer a global emergency’.” • Good job, WHO. (We ran the Nature original back in December; it’s paywalled, sadly.)
“New dry powder aerosol COVID-19 vaccine shows promise against multiple virus strains” [News Medical]. Mice, hamsters, and non-human primates. “Study findings revealed that this single-use nasal spray promotes the robust production of IgG and IgA antibodies and bolsters local T cell responses with the nasal tract and alveoli in murine and non-human primate models. The composition of the virus allows it to confer defense against both ancestral COVID-19 variants and the more recent Omicron strains. This novel vaccine could form the basis for a new generation of non-invasive vaccines against both COVID-19 and other respiratory tract infections…. Most encouragingly, this vaccine was found to be both single dose and multivalent – unlike conventional vaccines, the efficacy of R-CNP@M was stable against infection by conventional and Omicron COVID-19 lineages. Furthermore, unlike previous vaccines (including most aerosol-based ones) this vaccine requires administration only once.”
Immune Dysregulation
“Adelaide child reported with measles as cases emerge around Australia” [ABC Australia]. “Health authorities have warned travellers on a flight from Melbourne to Adelaide to be alert for symptoms after a toddler has contracted measles.” Oh good. More: “The highly contagious disease starts with fever, cough, runny nose, sore eyes, followed by a rash which starts on the head and spreads down the body.” • The rash begins three to five days after symptoms begin. But the symptoms are a lot like Covid, for which California, Oregon, and (possibly) CDC will force children back to school in one (1) day, thus guaranteeing transmission of an airborne virus with an R0 of 18, far greater than Covid.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Cases | |
| National[1] Biobot February 12: | Regional[2] Biobot February 12: |
 |
 |
| ★ Variants[3] CDC February 17 | Biden Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 10 |
|
 |
| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 15: | National [6] CDC February 5: |
 |
 |
| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens February 12: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 3: |
|
 |
| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 22: | Variants[10] CDC January 22: |
 |
 |
| Deaths | |
| Weekly deaths New York Times February 3: | Percent of deaths due to Covid-19 New York Times February 3: |
 |
 |
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) No backward revisions. The uptick is real (at least to Biobot).
[2] (Biobot) Biobot data suggests a rise in the Northeast. MRWA data does not suggest that, as of February 8:
Here, FWIW, is Verily national data as of February 14:
And regional data for HHS Region, the Northeast:
[3] (CDC Variants) “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.
[4] (ER) Does not support Biobot data. “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. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) A little slowing of the decrease could be a flattening, consistent with Biobot data. Let’s wait and see.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down “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†”.
[7] (Walgreens) 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.
[8] (Cleveland) Lambert here: Percentage and absolute numbers down.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Swift rise of JN.1.
Stats Watch
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing starts in the US slumped 14.8% month-over-month to an annualized 1.331 million in January 2024, the lowest since August and missing market forecasts of 1.46 million. It is the biggest fall since April 2020, following a revised 3.3% increase to 1.562 million in December.”
Energy: “How much electricity does AI consume?” [The Verge]. “The challenge of making up-to-date estimates, says Sasha Luccioni, a researcher at French-American AI firm Hugging Face, is that companies have become more secretive as AI has become profitable. Go back just a few years and firms like OpenAI would publish details of their training regimes — what hardware and for how long. But the same information simply doesn’t exist for the latest models, like ChatGPT and GPT-4, says Luccioni. ‘With ChatGPT we don’t know how big it is, we don’t know how many parameters the underlying model has, we don’t know where it’s running … It could be three raccoons in a trench coat because you just don’t know what’s under the hood.'”
Tech: “Air Force OKs Autonomous Cargo Flights Across California After Successful Test” [Times of San Diego]. “The U.S. Air Force has authorized San Francisco-based Xwing to transport time-sensitive cargo across California on autonomous aircraft. The authorization follows a two-week demonstration totaling over 2,800 flight miles to civilian and military airports, including March Air Reserve Base, Vandenberg Space Force Base, Sacramento McClellan Airport, Meadows Field Airport, and Fresno Yosemite International Airport. The missions involved a self-flying single-engine Cessna 208B Grand Caravan that can carry 3,000 pounds of cargo.”
Public Relations: “Trading trust” [Seth’s Blog]. “Many companies, particularly tech ones, are deliberately trading trust for short-term profits. Amazon and many other companies went from investing heavily in being reliable, trustworthy and fair to taking persistent steps to trade these valuable assets for quarterly results. It’s worth being clear about this–they did this intentionally. They decided that the confidence consumers had placed in them wasn’t worth as much as the shortcuts they could take to increase profits instead. While the survey focuses on widely known, large institutions, the same could be said for the local pizzeria. Once you burn some trust, it’s almost impossible to earn it back. It took Harvard 400 years to become Harvard, Google about twenty to earn its position. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for–to become the one that earns the benefit of the doubt. Being the low-trust option is hardly a spot worth fighting for.” • Enshittification viewed from another angle. Handy chart:
I love Twitter’s position at the absolute bottom, but I think Brooking’s is missing something: I don’t trust Twitter, the firm, in the slightest, no matter the owner. But I trust my curated list of follows very much (distinct from Facebook, whose feed is so [family blogged] to trust anyone or anything on it).
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 76 Extreme Greed (previous close: 76 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 77 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 16 at 1:24:38 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
Not a nice person at all:
NEW – Klaus Schwab Says ‘It Will Be a New World’ in Ten Years
“I think we have to be prepared for a world where we see a fusion of our physical, our digital, and our biological dimensions…So it will be a new world…In ten years probably it will be completely different from… pic.twitter.com/ZePU37XC1V
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 16, 2024
I don’t mean to sound dystopian, but doesn’t this imply a trade in body parts?
The real and the fake:
However, the version of the show hosted on the NFL's official YouTube page has the audio cleaned up to remove Keys's sour notes (link: https://t.co/IutG4l7Eka).
Bootleg clips containing the original, authentic audio are being scrubbed from YouTube at a breakneck pace. pic.twitter.com/F2Esr4ozmE
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) February 13, 2024
Class Warfare
“The identity of revenues and sources of revenue.” –The Bearded One
“It’s the Working Class, Stupid” [Harold Mayerson, Prospect]. Review of Judis and Teixiera, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes. “As Judis and Teixeira tell the story, two sets of culprits lie behind the Democrats’ economic and cultural missteps. They hold Wall Street and Silicon Valley responsible for the party’s failure to follow through on the populist economics that Carter, Clinton, and Obama at times rhetorically invoked. The true culprit for cultural radicalism, Judis and Teixeira argue, is the Democrats’ “shadow party”—advocacy groups, think tanks, foundations, and other donors as well as liberal media that have pushed the party toward positions that make no sense to working-class voters. Basically, Judis and Teixeira think that neoliberal economics and cultural radicalism make a deadly combination, appealing to an elite but not to the mass of voters. They want Democrats to move left on economics and toward the center on culture to recreate the politics that sustained the New Deal.” • Ah, the NGOs. Judis and Teixiera, then, are also attacking the PMC. Just like Rasmussen. How you can do analysis of the working class without making capital, named as such, part of the picture… It’s like doing astrology in a pre-Copernican universe.
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I truly am bewildered by the CDC/California recommendation to go back to work after 1 day of positivity.
A little secret – for greater than 3 decades of my career span and for generations preceding that – the advice given to patients with ANY kind of cold/flu/URI way before COVID was be at home on the couch, hydrating, and eating and sleeping well – go back to work when you feel better, you are not febrile, and are not coughing and sneezing. The recommendations were never based on a “time frame” like 1 day or 3 days. No, it was when you could rationalize by symptoms whether the a) the patient was improving and b) was much less likely to spread the contagion all over the office.
I am not naive enough to realize that vast numbers of people ignored that and went in to work or school anyway – but at least the advice above was given.
I cannot for the life of me even begin to comprehend what is going on. My only thought is that they are convinced that the vaccines are working that well.
It’s very hard to make sense of anything when we live in a sea of nonsense. My neck is sore from shaking my head.
I think it’s the pressure from corporations and schools.
I don’t know about California, but in my state, schools receive funding based on attendance rates.
(I really don’t see how this recommendation fixes the absentee problem because it will just spread infection even more and make the problem even worse. I just think the corporations and schools are grasping at straws.)
This and in NYC, teachers were still getting five days of paid sick leave for Covid that did not come out of their negotiated sick leave. Anywhere that instituted paid Covid leave that is still on the books want it gone.
You just have to remember that we are the only first world country I know of that does not require businesses to give paid sick leave. We have always been brutal about employee health and safety.
IM Doc, antidlc, and Pat: Yep.
quoting IM Doc: “I cannot for the life of me even begin to comprehend what is going on. My only thought is that they are convinced that the vaccines are working that well.”
The vaccines are just a pretext. It’s the brutality (to quote Pat) of the horrible U.S. labor laws. People have to be forced to work, don’t you know?
And every election cycle, the Democrats promise to level the playing field with reform of labor law (Pro Act and such) that, how curious, never comes to pass.
I think it’s even worse, I think it’s the imposition of categories on every kind of material logic. It’s the bed of Procrustes supplanting everything because symbols have come to be equated with the real. It’s like the Borges story when the life-sized map ruins the city underneath it
I asked Mrs RoadDoggie the same, “What do they gain by doing this?” We have no answer.
Is it just that we think in terms longer than 3 months at a time, while they can only think in terms of this quarters gains? This quarters gains made while working/buying sick are worth losing next quarters gains to sickness?
I seriously thought hard about it for at least 5 minutes. I cannot come up with even a conspiracy theory that makes this guidance make sense.
Wait, wait, I know! I know!
It’s a conspiracy to get people vaccinated!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-may-change-covid-isolation-guidelines-in-the-coming-months-here-s-what-to-know/ar-BB1ikOQa
It has just made me more determined to stock up on “unapproved” drugs and interventions. But then I know that at best the vaccines provide only 50% or so efficacy for most Covid strains and much much less for JN.1. And the acceptable shot producers are always playing catch up because the virus is more agile and perhaps smarter than they are.
There’s reason to believe the current Novavax formulation is longer-lasting and wider-spectrum in effectiveness than the mRNA leading flavors. And unlike last year, now you can get it at some mainstream pharmacy chains.
I was delighted to find it (Novavax) it at Costco, and my standard Mecicare + AARP Plan F supplement paid the entire bill. Without insurance: ~ $195.00.
The one pharmacy we found around us with Novavax doesn’t take our insurance, huge surprise I know!
$205 each, I looked her right in the eye and said fine I’ll pay cash and her brain almost short circuited, you could tell she was waiting for another customer to start yelling at her. What a stupid system.
RoadDoggie: …while they can only think in terms of this quarters gains? This quarters gains made while working/buying sick are worth losing next quarters gains to sickness?
Financial elites are the rulers of Western societies — to a greater or lesser extent depending upon the specific nation — and finance produces nothing except an engineered edifice of credit/debt — contractual payments and rents to be made at regular intervals.
Hence, if those contractual payments are not made at the specified times, even individual big players — the Owners — can quickly be damaged and go broke, and the imperial edifice of finance — rent extraction — ultimately collapses.* Financial elites then cease to be the Owners, the rulers of our societies.
Commenters DJG, Reality Czar, antidlc, and ambrit in this thread have it correct, in other words.
Effective measures to deal with COVID in the US would have imperiled finance elites’ power. The temporary welfare regime instituted in the US under Trump would probably never have happened under a regular Uniparty administration, and was quickly terminated under the Biden restoration of finance Owner power. (Note that Biden has always been the preeminent political glove puppet of financial industry power in DC, a capital city filled with such puppets.)
RoadDoggie: I cannot come up with even a conspiracy theory that makes this guidance make sense.
My expectations/fears about how our rulers would react to COVID, conversely, have been mostly fulfilled over the last three years. A straight-out conspiracy theory is ‘over-thinking’ it. Very simply, finance rules our societies and finance produces nothing except regular rent extraction, so if that stops then the rulers ultimately won’t be the rulers any longer.
Lambert Strether: I can only think that depopulation is their collective intent, and they imagine that the working class can be replaced by robots and AI (which will fail, but just because they’re rich doesn’t mean they’re smart).
Much more relevantly, they think they’ll do what the Owners of America have always done from before a United States existed. First, they brought in indentured servants as labor; then African slaves; then ‘the poor, the weary,’ and everybody else that was funneled through Ellis Island in the 19th century; then the various immigrant populations up to the H1B visa workers from Asia who, forex, now make up whole towns’ populations in the SF Bay Area.
How big is Bay Area boom in India-born residents? Together, they’d rank as the region’s fourth-largest city
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/10/28/how-big-is-bay-area-boom-in-india-born-residents-together-theyd-rank-as-the-regions-fourth-largest-city/
And that’s what the Owners think they’ll do this time.
* The edifice of finance already collapsed in 2008, in fact. But the finance industry owned the US government, so the US printed more money to bail out finance and in 2024 the US national debt is 33.1 trillion.
It’s the same logic that keeps an understanding that airborne transmission is the problem anathema so as to avoid the expense of improving indoor air quality.
I don’t disagree with any of this. But it seems cheaper to mitigate spread and give people paid sick days, both in the short and long term. If your system depends on your oligarchs getting their monthly dues it seems like next months dues should matter as much as this months. That doesn’t seem to be their thinking though.
My best guess is, probably, no one is thinking. A combined slurry of lucky outcomes (silver spoon, useless education, executive disfunction) has rendered the oligarchic class effectively useless when it comes to decision making and risk assessment. Their forcing back to office, no sicktime, 1 day back to work if you feel “better”, because they have no answer and no clue and the system says it needs people in the office or else how will we know if the sprint points got completed and what did we pay all this rent for?
As proven in 2008, the oligarchs in the form of corporations are too big to fail, so we the proletariat suffer the pain either way.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m a tech-fk and until they lay me off I’ll be all right. Someone asked me the other day when I think I’ll eat indoors at a restaraunt again and I told em “seems like probably never”. If we all keep following the protocol that keeps us safe than the world will change whether the people in charge want it to or not.
> I cannot for the life of me even begin to comprehend what is going on.
This is the biggest political (and moral) issue going, IMNSHO, and therefore it is not being addressed.
I think about this a lot. It seems clear that the decision-making of the oligarchs who rule us is almost completely opaque. (It’s not all that hard to make a decent model of the hegemonic PMC who govern us). However Biden’s “vax only” policy of mass infection without mitigation was arrived at, it is of Wansee Conference-style import (if not equivalent institutionally). After four years, and the destruction of non-pharmaceutical interventions, the halting development of nasal vaccines, and the ideological destruction of public health as such, it’s very hard for me to believe that the actual result is not the intended result. What on earth did our rulers think would be achieved by serial passage of the virus through a population, not just in a lab? I can only think that depopulation is their collective intent, and they imagine that the working class can be replaced by robots and AI (which will fail, but just because they’re rich doesn’t mean they’re smart). But, as I say, I don’t know how this intent was formed, if intent it be.
IM Doc and Lambert Strether: Their decision making isn’t opaque if it is all about power and arrogating power. (Just as one can only interpret Hillary Clinton’s career and continuing marriage to the reportedly serial rapist as being all about power.) It’s power for its own sake. And then the riches follow (or, often, precede: See Trump. See legacy admission Robert Kennedy Jr).
When someone who is a clear thinker like IM Doc writes about not comprehending, I am reminded of this quote from Adorno: >
The confounding of truth and lies, making it almost impossible to maintain a distinction, and a labour of Sisyphus to hold on to the simplest piece of knowledge…[marks] the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power.
–Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life
We see the results: Class warfare. Declining public health. Pauperization of the populace. Divide-and-rule tactics. Endless induced panics.
Now, how does one break the power of this small group of people? What is to be done?
Alas, the surest way to “break” the grasp of the Oligarchs on power is to remove their sources of power. In a word, destroy the society that they rely on for looting opportunities. As the late Jane Jacobs predicted twenty years ago; “Dark Age Ahead.”
FDR had an idea that worked for 35+ years. Tax ’em. Tax their corporations. Close their tax loopholes.
Their money is the source of their power. / my 2 cents
Hurrah. I don’t mind them having money but having more political influence than me leads to bad outcomes for the majority.
On the industrial side, the tax laws during the Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower administrations should be brought back.
Exactly. The current assault by the elites is not primarily meant to make them richer. It’s to make them all-powerful by making all the rest of us destitute. As we’ve seen with the periodic pouting of the Wall Streeters, it’s not enough for them to be obscenely rich. They want everyone’s fealty as well. Nothing less than everything will do. It is a mental illness manifested through economic actions.
> Their decision making isn’t opaque if it is all about power and arrogating power.
That is, in my view, a correct model. Tracing decisions among the 1% collectively is much harder, especially since so many of them are “slaves to defunct economists” or other charlatans outside their fields (genetic superiority, etc.). That this decision-making process is not easy to trace is what I mean by not opaque. (Yes, we have the various conclaves, like Davos and WEF, but even those are facades.) It’s maddening to think of social policy being set by the aggregated family offices of unknown billionaires on upward, but that is where are.
“What is to be done” is not an easy answer. Lenin’s answer, which did in fact bring him victory, was a party of professional revolutionaries. Understandably, but unfortunately, it was not possible for them to “be the change” they sought.
I don’t know, Lambert. We have this discussion a lot in our household.
“What on earth did our rulers think would be achieved by serial passage of the virus through a population, not just in a lab?”
I think our rulers didn’t want to do what it would take to stop it — paid time off, etc., etc. They couldn’t let the working class get accustomed to social programs and benefits. Our rulers just can’t stand having money spent on stuff that actually helps people. If nasal vaccines were developed, for example, the vaccines would have to be provided free of charge to everyone, if there was a real intent to stop transmission. We can’t have that. So we have to just let it rip.
I think we are dealing with a confluence of stupidity and arrogance here. If we adopt measures to prevent COVID spread, that will cost a lot of money and be inconvenient to wealthy people/owners. It also implies liability for things that they don’t want to be liable for. And they’re wealthy enough and have access to medical care. They can just ride this out, right? The worst that will happen is the old, the poor, the mouth breathers making life difficult for people who know better, they will all die. And we can just import more desperate people to replace them. So why worry?
There’s a casual sort of beauty to their cruelty. Like watching a bored cat play with a mouse. They’re not really thinking about anything other than what they want to do. It hasn’t occurred to most of the “awful elite” that this is their problem too.
This is my self gratification theory of elite rule; All that concerns them is themselves in the moment.
> All that concerns them is themselves in the moment.
I don’t think so. Many of the oligarchs seem to organize themselves into clans (after all, the inherited wealth has to be managed somehow). Modulo family dysfunction, they have care for the clan.
> They can just ride this out, right?
I think that’s part of it.
Many years ago, I attended a Senate hearing where Tom Harkin made the comment, “Any time things don’t seem to make sense, you just need to follow the money and everything becomes perfectly clear.”
“Identity of revenue and sources of revenue” = “follow the money” :-)
It’s a simple as this. When Biden was caught telling the big donors that nothing would fundamentally change if he is elected, what that message was for the average American was
(NSFW)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pevli82AqBc&pp=ygUkSG91c2Ugb2YgY2FyZHMgdGhleSBkb250IGdpdmUgYSBmdWNr
Look at how many problems are solved by depopulation.
Shortage of nursing home staff? Kill the old folks. Done.
Exploding Medicare Medicaid costs?
Remedied.
Social Security insolvency?
Boom
Carbon emissions by humans a problem?
Give it a few years more of a pandemic and evolving Covid. Darwin wins again.
Hell, this will be on its way by 2030…
You are on your own.
My hypothesis is that from a short term policy making perspective – mitigation measures couldn’t outcompete natural immunity.
The “let it rip” states were able to go back to normal faster than the lockdown states bc when the lockdown states rolled back policy they had a much more vulnerable population.
And so as FL and TX did nothing and had case rates and hospitalization rates lower than strict states after a few months – the strict states simply gave up. Policy makers gave up.
Vaccines were excellent cover to do this.
Alex Jones ftw.
FACTS!!!!!!
>>>However Biden’s “vax only” policy of mass infection without mitigation was arrived at, it is of Wansee Conference-style import (if not equivalent institutionally).
Considering that the conference was the last major step before the slaughter of eleven million people (six million Jews and five million others) got serious, it is a serious accusation. The only reason why they did not kill millions more was because they lost the war, but I understand why the accusation is made. However, the conference was done on Reinhard Heydrich orders, and I do not see anyone who has the intelligence, competence, and drive that he had. Compared to him, they are all shadows.
However 43,000 gun deaths, 50,000 suicides, 100,000 drug overdoses, 250,000 deaths due to medical errors each yearly plus Covid is reaching 5000,000 deaths per year. The total deaths by guns, suicides, and overdoses has at least doubled since 1999. Maybe the powers that be are using a multi prong approach under the leadership or guidance of a cabal of bloodless Adolf Eichmanns?
Yes, it’s evident that there are tranches of lethality; Covid layered on top of the opioid crisis, itself layered on deaths of despair, and so on down.
I agree.
Why Depopulation? Because that solves the climate change and ecological overshoot conundrum. Our billionaires could never agree to, never consider the idea of, reducing consumption. Their utopia is a few very wealthy humans (and yes likely robots, ai devices), not an equitable world of many consuming moderately.
So may as well get to work. Any other ways to get to “our” goal? Easier to tear of that bandaid fast, get through the jackpot in a few years instead of decades. Maybe a few wars, famines with blacked out news coverage etc. But more pandemics will work. Long covid x measels x ?
Is it cost shifting?
They know COVID will be a cost — the question is how to keep it from hurting powerful groups and organizations. You make individuals do the paying. If they’re rich, well, they get better treatment; if not, they get sick or die. Things like the CDC guidelines are there to prevent anyone from establishing an organization is liable for damages from infection, and to ensure they are not obligated to prevent it.
They aren’t flinching over Ukraine or Gaza, and I bet they aren’t flinching over COVID.
Zients has done his job.
> Things like the CDC guidelines are there to prevent anyone from establishing an organization is liable for damages from infection, and to ensure they are not obligated to prevent it.
I think liability is a huge motivator (certainly at HICPAC) which is why nobody talks about it (not even the unions).
>>>I cannot for the life of me even begin to comprehend what is going on. My only thought is that they are convinced that the vaccines are working that well.
Maybe if they are insane, ignorant, or monsters as I have never read where a vaccine was 100% all the time and there are plenty of diseases for which we have no vaccine.
Saying that someone should stay home for only one day just ensures the spread of whatever it is, and then the emptying of whatever business or school that they go to. What is the point of the new rule beyond destruction, but then why have someone stay home for one day?
Because zero days is too obvious at this point. That’s next year.
This has been coming ever since the airline CEOs got the isolation period reduced from 10 days to 5.
It was only ever a matter of time.
> This has been coming ever
It’s been coming at least since Obama rebooted the financial system after the Crash.
If not Martin Sheen then who?? Kevin Kline would be good as would Michael Douglas. However my choice for an experienced actor president would be Morgan Freeman. I don’t think he’s ever played the villain–just wouldn’t be believable (ok maybe once or twice).
Other thoughts: moar sarcastic exclamation marks pleaz. We need cheering up.
Well, there’s always Tom Hanks.
Yeah, about Morgan Freeman…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OnYgcb0djQ
….will he ever live this down? Ever since then I find the guy just unwatchable.
Oh stop. I don’t want to hear it about my Morgan Freeman. Of course a lot of actors would probably disappoint us in real life but that’s the point of hiring an actor. Pretending is their job.
Whereas lately we’ve been hiring mediocre politicians trying to act and one reality TV guy who defies categorization.
Makes me sort of want to find a Freeman impersonator and do one with Biden as the subject, only with less speculation.
That and a desire to know what he got paid for that.
Agreed, unforgivable.
Paul Robeson spins in his grave.
Morgan Freeman doing his part for the made-up Russiagate campaign.
> ….will he ever live this down? Ever since then I find the guy just unwatchable.
That’s a sign that the liberal Democrats would be completely on board with him….
Ronald Reagan has plenty of time on his hands.
Maybe in 2028 the tech will be good enough that they can just jam some electrodes into his ossified brain and then we can have Reagan 2.0 to join all of his fellow walking dead in our government.
Something to look forward to.
Ultimately the only way we may be able to get rid of these people is a Constitutional amendment that requires they must be cremated upon retirement.
Seeing as AI is “the wave of the future,” I nominate a DeepFaque(TM) Divine for Prez.
What? Hillary isn’t famous enough for ya?
“Morgan Freeman. I don’t think he’s ever played the villain–just wouldn’t be believable”
I’m surprised that a movie buff like you could have possibly missed this classic with Freeman playing the bad guy to our earnest young hero, Keanu: “Chain Reaction“.
(All filmed around Chicago and a frozen Lake Geneva–it seems the water not much above freezing in the summer)
I did say once or twice although I don’t believe I’ve seen the film you mention (but then I have a terrible memory for titles and a heavy diet of movie watching).
Just reading the K Schwab quote without more context, he could be referring to fusion not between individuals (“trade in body parts”), but fusion of technology with biology at the level of individuals. This is already happening for repair of damaged sensory systems (cochlear implants, perhaps soon retinal implants). At some point it may be done not only to restore, but to augment sensory (and ultimately cognitive) function.
That would be a two-tier world, even more so than what we now have.
Watch the twtr clip. He’s talking about artificial intelligence, quantum computing and big data. (Is that how the NHS plans to move lower trained medics up into positions usually requiring a great deal of training? “Here, young person, just put on this AI enabled headset/microphone/camera combo and you too can be more than an orderly. You too can be an expert without all that expensive and time consuming training. (And we can pay you less than we pay real experts).” I wish this was too ridiculous to even think. ) / ;)
I’m cynical about the WEF’s wondrous new world plans. Maybe the integration he’s talking about includes CBDCs and other such bad-for-us goodies. / ;)
Hubris. What could a Schwab know about ANY of this? Seems like it speaks to the skill of the countless TED talk tech bros he’s paid for at sensing what he wants to hear and then whispering it into his ears. The only take away is understanding that this is what our betters want.
> The only take away is understanding that this is what our betters want.
Yes. In the Third World so unlike our own there is a thing called Big Man Syndrome, which is a cycle.
The Big Man wins the battle for power and takes his place at the top of the heap. Precisely because of his enormous power, he becomes surrounded by sycophants and hangers-on who tell him only what he wants to hear. As a result, the Big Man gets worse and worse information, and ultimately becomes detached from reality altogether. At this point, he is toppled by the next Big Man. Rinse and repeat.
Enjoy:
https://marshallbrain.com/manna
My only problem with the story is the ending…
Now I’m thinking in fictional terms and my almost immediate reaction every single time is the Weyland – Yutani corporation from the film series Alien ( and yes those movies are personal favorites, but that’s not including every entry ).
In the first two film installments, in case it’s not apparent, the science officer is an android sent by the company who ends up wanting to help the parasitic creature. “Crew Expendable” was a scene nearer the end of the film, when two people are already killed.
As for the second, well that was James Cameron coming into his own. And an evil corporate toadie wants the creature for the bioweapons division. Some classic lines from these films…most not appropriate for a family blog, about the intent of the corporation.
> Weyland-Yutani
I went looking for some a propos Alien quotes, and ran across this page on “Working Joe.” The menace becomes less and less vague as the quotes go on:
Sounds like an AI….
I notice that all of what he says is predicated on virtually limitless energy. As if in the future world there will be no problem sourcing all that energy and having the grids in place to support it.
All scifi either ignore or handwave energy requirements.
> no problem sourcing all that energy
Depopulation might help?
I assumed the plan is we all have biometric IDs required to do anything in our daily lives
> we all have biometric IDs required to do anything in our daily lives
Go long secondary markets in retinas, for when the inevitable data breach happens
Pretty much.
EUs ID card standard builds on the passport biometrics standard introduced after 9/11, as best i can tell.
Or, it could mean this.
You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/respiratory/ukhsa-investigating-rise-in-tuberculosis-cases/
(bold mine)
hmmm….now why would TB incidence in 2018 and 2019 be lower than 2023? As Lambert would say, “‘Tis a puzzlement.”
Soo.. there were more TB cases in 2018 and 2019 then 2022? That doesnt support the narative that its due to Covid. It may well be, but one needs to admit there is a lot of noise going on here. I would look for stronger examples
Having gone through the many, errr, distressing headlines above, a worker has some questions:
Does it strike you that the report of RussiaRussia dangerous space stations with atomic fireballs has some resemblance to giant voracious Chinese weather balloons recording the actions of every right-thinking American? Do I detect a new panic?
As to dislodging Biden and coming up with a compromise candidate who can defeat Trump, does the name
Susan Sarandon
ring a bell? Who has her telephone number and can ask her to step in to fill Biden’s senile-shuffling shoes?
Answers, comrades?
The NY Democratic insiders and the PMC would have kittens about anyone even considering Sarandon. She is worse than Sanders, he at least got in line. She still supports more wrong political policies than Hanoi Jane in her prime…
Pat:
Viva Sarandon the Wrong!
> giant voracious Chinese weather balloons
“Now kids, don’t get excited.” “Who’s excited?”
Ritter discussed the “giant Russian atomic fireballs” today on a YT podcast. It was actually pretty interesting coming from an arms inspector.
Apparently we have been spending billions on a Musk type surveillance satellite net, and the Russians have found a way to eliminate that “full spectrum dominance” with just a couple of EM blasts in space. So, it is up for more funds and some Republican actually wanted to ask some questions about the value of continuing to fund the program.
It starts at the 35 minute mark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruv49PYBeds
A slight correction: nuclear blast in space does not generate EMP – that requires an atmosphere. In space it’s directly the gamma radiation burst that fries stuff (up to a distance, since the power dissipates to the power of three), or as rumored in this case, x-ray “cannons” (more like disposable lenses) powered by a nuclear reactor. X-rays are pretty much like gamma rays but weaker, so you have to focus them to fry the target.
Yeah, but just as effective is some c-4 and a literal ton of ball bearings. Anyone playing at war at that altitude better have a purely terrestrial strategy in hand cause everything in orbit will be demolished.
Simplicius the Thinker talks about this in hiss most recent piece as well (not for the first time) and points out that Russia knows very well how to fight “blind”, in stark contrast to the US relying on GPS for pretty much everything.
Weiss-ssssss!
It’s just a jump to the left!
Looks like the border fight is going to go on for a while. I don’t know which side thinks they’re more clever, the Democrats for tweaking reactionary Republicans on immigration policy (and using it as a negotiation piece) or the Republicans for sticking to their guns, torpedoing the omnibus bill that would have funded Ukraine along with who-knows-what-else and keeping their fingers crossed that nothing explodes before next January.
It is not a good sign that government-shutdowns-as-a-tactic has evolved into actual government dysfunction, with the selective enforcement of laws becoming a budget negotiation move. What’s next, corporate sponsorship?
This seems to be what therapists and conflict resolution specialists used to call a “level 5 conflict.”
https://www.simplilearn.com/levels-of-organizational-conflict-article#:~:text=In%20level%204%20of%20agile,on%20protecting%20one's%20belonging%20group.
At this stage, both sides prefer to see the other destroyed rather than resolve anything. Complete destruction by mutual consent.
As such it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Biden Administration just release migrants into the general population or furlough border agents.
I’d expect an escalation on the other side.
Perhaps Johnson passes a CR until November 5 and adjourns the House until then.
Forecast: we have entered the debacle stage.
The GOP’s classic business interests don’t want a crackdown. This is the missing element. The GOP elites don’t want crackdowns especially now that they’ve figured out they can just bus migrants to NYC when they are done with them. GOP voters aren’t going to embrace a new found nativism from a party they consider traitors for being too “woke”.
Right now, Team Blue is throwing tantrums about the GOP being soft on immigration and will finally expose GOP elite hypocrisy.
>Team Blue is throwing tantrums about the GOP being soft on immigration and will finally expose GOP elite hypocrisy.
Wasnt it team blue who insisted on continuing to let in 5k migrants a day? Oh.. and they also tied this “compromise” to giving Ukraine another 100 billion dollars? I agree — the GOP elites benefit from the status quo, but the democrats are doing nothing to point out this hypocrisy
Republicans care about power.
GOP Pros:
-Biden is fighting against his official position and base.
-Republican voters already think Biden is trash. Biden is polling behind Trump.
-To a large extent, Israel and Ukraine don’t matter. Who cares?
-Biden will largely face outrage if things go too far south. The only people who are going to panic about Ukraine want Tucker Carlson arrested for an interview, not his right wing positons all these years. These people aren’t going to register a single new voter, and they can’t vote more than once.
GOP cons:
-Beyond the fevered dreams of Nancy Pelosi, what are the GOP elite really losing? A few actual rapture nuts might care, but Israel is losing standing.
-The GOP might lose Joe Scarborough?
Democratic Pros:
-Delaying the inevitable in the Ukraine. Regardless of what anyone claims, Moscow sees this as existential. Joe Biden’s fracking plans aren’t that important.
-Helping Israel avoid a ceasefire. The genocide of 2023/2024 isn’t going to help.
-The “sensible Republicans who voted for Reagan” will rise up and reclaim their party. This is the Democratic Party’s plan, relying on people who believe Reagan wasn’t a monster.
Democratic Cons:
-the men and material shortage in Ukraine is too severe.
-the genocide.
-Biden has three years of his presidency. He will never win any accolades for the border. It might be reasonable to offer something to the GOP if he was trying to hammer them on another issue. He’s actually trying to win it after calling “strong border enthusiasts” as deplorables who caged kids (which is true).
I’m convinced this swing to the border came from Susan Rice. Despite her Team Blue credentials, she raised a GOP son.
Bring back the Daisy ad? Or will Trump more credibly be using that one against Biden?
And just as an aside Dune part two has premiered in London and the reviews are raves.
https://deadline.com/2024/02/dune-part-two-first-reactions-timothee-chalamet-zendaya-1235827742/
I really like Villeneuve (and Morgan Freeman, obviously).
Dune part one was an awesome spectacle, but very much a stepped-down version of the book. I look forward to part two.
And I dread it. The best part of One was the visual production, for me the rest was uneven at best. (Not to mention I just don’t have the same appreciation of Chalamet or Zendaya as the people who cast them do.) Since I don’t expect anymore pleasant surprises from the production design I will happily wait to catch it at home on something where it would be part of my subscription whether I ever watched it or not.
Not a Chalamet fan by any stretch, but I can’t think of another actor pushing 30 who looks as much like the 15-year-old he’s portraying as Tim does.
Dune is certainly larger than 2001, but I feel like Villenueve’s Dune is the closest to a proper companion piece as Kubrick’s 2001 and Clarke’s 2001 are.
You are supposed to read then watch the movie. I haven’t seen part 2, but I FEEL this is what Villeneuve was trying to achieve.
I think as a space opera Dune is something from Rossini or Verdi but all the directors seem to think it’s Wagner.
I’ve read all the books (and my wife’s relative has the original Analog magazines!) as has my younger son – I hated the movie (not going to see the second one), he thought it was “ok” My older son hasn’t read the books and first hated the movie but now likes it. Go figure.
I won’t speak to the books since I don’t read a lot of Sci Fi (or any fiction these days). But I think Villeneuve is a visual genius in a way that Ridley Scott, for all his talent, never was. Guess we’ll see if this new film lives up to my hype. I agree with most here that Part One did not.
Villeneuve says that too in the Deadline interview and claims to be much more satisfied with the new episode. Says he is working on a Part Three.
Son that has read all the books is taking me the showing here in gold class – lounges/drink/food service as a late Xmas gift …
For all those of us that grew up during the time the books were published it can be a bit of a drama, as the small things left out can leave out critical points which then flow on an on … through out the entire series …
For my part I think the visualization, yeah I know proceeds everything else these days, does really lend scope to what the books portrayed in words e.g. scale beyond imagination …
Chaffing at the bit …
Saw a recent interview with Villeneuve in which he said Dune 2 will try to achieve Herbert’s original intent with the book, ie, be a warning against messianic figures. If he pulls it off then by definition the movie is better than the book?
I wonder when we’ll start seeing Zionist memes equating the UN/Iran/Hamas with Harkkonens.
In the interim, very highly recommend “Incendies”, Villeneuve’s adaptation of a play dealing with the Middle East.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1255953/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_incendies
Such and old dialectal trick to call your enemies – what you are – and then – make them defend themselves … sorta like watching a Plikington X post where an Austrian Econ sort accused him of hating them e.g. why do you hate us so much …
Messianic figures, they are as flames to moths. The power of the call to us from the fire bright seems deep in our DNA. It flickers, we follow, looking for greater lights far from what is nearer.
It felt like a poor restatement of the book. Without the author’s discussion of things it was just a film.
Books two and three made less and less sense to be. The last by his son was bizarre.
Who said it had to make sense on an individual view …
Who said reality had to make sense at the end of the day – ???
May I say that I honestly think the Lynch version is a better film.?
It may not touch on all the intrigue of the book but I think it captures the atmosphere more authentically. Especially the Navigators. And Kyle MacLachlan is a great Paul Atreides.
I wish the full version had been saved. Perhaps someday it will turn up. Lynch says it was destroyed.
There is a nearly-three-hour “extended edition,” as well as a fan edit of similar duration, though the latter disagrees with Lynch’s decision to make extensive use of internal monologue, simply removing much of it from the soundtrack.
I re-watched Dune Part One last night and think I liked it better the second time, when one can concentrate on the eye candy with the casting and other quirks out of the way. Clearly Villeneuve is making it his Dune just as David Lynch did but then theater people take all kinds of liberties with Shakespeare productions and the Bard survives. Dune fans shouldn’t be resentful IMO.
We’ve seen Newsom and Pritzker mentions as Biden replacements, but what about Christine Whitmer? Does she have any major strikes against her, other than maybe shady circumstances of the FBI kidnapping sting? Does she have enough regional popularity to snag any more electoral votes or is she a local lightweight (a la Tim Kaine and John Edwards as VP candidates)? Her name doesn’t come up very often in talk of Biden alternatives.
Well, when mentioning Biden, pere et fils, one must apply our Dread Lord Cthulhu’s dictum; “Vote for the greatest evil.” Since Biden Sr. is a literal embodiment of “The Undead,” one must accept that Biden, or his lich, will be the candidate. (Even if he were to physically expire, his fell spirit will carry on.)
To paraphrase Mz. Arendt, we are dealing with; “The Bidenality of Evil.”
“Bidenality of evil”!
That was really good!
Or, the
Bidenvenido to millions of “migrants,” Biden their time till the reBidening, when they get work permissions to replace you uppity Americans who expect livable wages, weekends off, profit sharing, benefits etc, or the
Bidengineered Border Crisis, thanks for the one important job you were given Kackala!
Then there’s the self proclaimed Bidenconomy with food prices almost doubling, you see, Joe just had to sanction all that food, fuel and fertilizer to boost profits for his U.S. corporate donors, let along the LNG producers.
Starting to look like a Bidenpression in the tech sector around here, the number of for lease signs, and suddenly closed restaurants and paper covered windows. “300,000 jobs created”, that means 100,000 gig workers each has three of them.
Trump; hindsight is 20-20!
Like the Nazgûl, Biden is neither living nor dead; he merely continues …
I’ve got a real zinger of an article from earlier today, per CNBC linked below. Student loan forgiveness with the most unique of outcomes I have yet to observe elsewhere.
I dunno, just something about the duality of the result here seems difficult to accept as a fact. And I mean to add here, yes our student loan debt is an apparatus that seems long in the tooth on how less-privileged and lower classes can attend a two year or four year institutions. But a life time of servitude in service of such a debt becomes a real hindrance. Glad I finished college when I did, and was able to find jobs to afford doing so before and during my college years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/16/he-got-his-student-debt-forgiven-and-then-a-56801-refund.html
No doubt a certain generation of Democrats would love to run Martin Sheen, but please, no.
How’s that working out for Ukraine?
Starr’s review of Texeira and Judis’s book sure stays within the limits ordained by the big funders.
In a review with “working class” in the very title, he sidesteps any discussion of economic policy with, “Judis and Texeira are knocking on an open door.” I guess that is what the losing 2016 presidential candidate meant when she said there would never be Medicare For All — that sounds like an open door to me.
Funny that Starr feels that the Democrat policy is doing just fine for the working class — hey, their incomes were better under Dems than the other party, isn’t that enough for you? You want affordable housing, tuition free college and trade school, and medical care? Sorry,not talking about that, gotta write about the “brave” culture war part of the book only. Funny how Starr — like Texeira and Judis — couldn’t predict losing coalition- of-the-rising-votes — but we’ll just have to ponder that while we wring our hands over the inexplicable Dem failure to prevent rising inequality and jobs offshoring, a mystery for us all. We don’t need to talk about the donors, the party structure, or any of that stuff, because the door is open.
So easily the most ridiculous of the Trump trials ended with a $354 million dollar fine, and a three year ban from doing business in NY. This is considering that no one he supposedly defrauded ever complained and similar Real Estate corporations have not been charged as this was SOP for NY real estate businesses.
Letitia James has done her part for the Democratic Party
I will be curious to see if there is a reward, or if she is left to run for state AG again. If so my bet is that it will be much closer this time.
From the article you linked:
So Letitia is recently from Mars or was born after 2008. Who was the complainant in this case? Did any party claim harm? If not, was it therefore an oxymoronically victimless crime? I wonder if the verdict will survive appeal.
Speculating further: I expect that if Trump is reduced by this fine to penury and then becomes a member of the precariat, it might actually enhance his electoral prospects.
To further speculate: Trump will cast himself as the American Navalny. Then, as suggested in a comment above, he deploys the Daisy ad with Biden depicted as the nuclear menace, Biden is toast.
These people are just living in an absurd universe. No one involved in the practice of lending the organization funds was harmed, I know that at least one DB ( Deutsche ) admitted they presume their bank clients valuation assumptions, are prone to varied outcomes and subject to interpretation….
That judge was just biding his time anyway, seemed to have his conclusion in hand regardless of what is typically accepted or routine practice…
Julian Assange news.
Australian parliament wants WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back home, not sent to US
Story by By ROD McGUIRK, Associated Press • 1d
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/australian-parliament-wants-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-back-home-not-sent-to-us/ar-BB1iiA9i#undefined
Wellie most in Oz now are either being flooded or bushfired like never before so ….
in all the talk about trump and biden i never hear about the obvious talk, the debate stage. just give it a moment’s thought. trump says such and such in his smarmy and ferocious matter. then it’s biden’s turn to answer. he opens his mouth to speak – and what comes out? an hour of this? what are the democrats (not) thinking?
They’re thinking there won’t be any debates. And indeed, neither party has committed to them yet. The RNC complains of bias, while the Biden campaign promises to check Biden’s calendar but never seems to return to the topic.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/presidential-debates-2024-make-difference/story?id=106767559
Biden’s strategy thus far has been to pretend there are no legitimate challengers. That may not be a winning strategy in the general election, but it might be difficult to change course now, especially after eight long years of Trump being labeled a traitor. (If Trump starts agitating for debates, then I predict that some Very Serious op-ed writers will begin intoning “Would Abraham Lincoln debate Jefferson Davis?”)
“Adelaide child reported with measles as cases emerge around Australia”
It may be hard to stop measles coming in from overseas but – and you knew that there was a but – too many parents are refusing to give their kids vaccinations for such simple things as measles and this opposition dates back before the Pandemic. Kids may shake off the measles but that is not the case with unvaccinated adults.
Mate … at a job in Waverly … HS age kid hacking his lungs out, still went to school, next two days at home and weekend only to go to school on Monday. Come Friday and mom hand to fetch youngest daughter 10 from school midday …
Any information politely put under moms nose and I could see the head gears grinding because – PLANS – would be messed with …
Everyone is dropping like fly’s around me because visions of ***NORMALITY*** – what a show …
Follow up on Biden’s visit to East Palestine,Ohio today. From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
President Biden commends East Palestine’s strength in first visit since 2023 train derailment
I got a kick out of this part, since I posted everywhere I possibly could telling them to give him a glass of well water and see if he drinks it.
At least he didn’t pull the stunt St. O did in Flint, Michigan.
RE. “The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger” [Charlotte Cowles, New York Magazine (“The Cut”)]
Worth a read… my takeaway was this is a 30-something PMC that fully trusts the organizations of the deep state and tech corporations. How else to explain withdrawing $50,000 in cash and putting it in a shoebox based on interactions with “Amazon, FTC and CIA” and handing it to a courier car without asking serious questions? I have elderly neighbors that have been scammed by handing off Walmart gift cards for a couple thousand dollars, but they had Joe Biden’s problem without supervision.
I blame her parents. My kid knew not to answer to that kind of stuff in grade school. We even had a code word, but I can’t tell you.
reply to upstater re: shoebox lady
Re patches:
The tweet on software patches sounds plausible (and I did have to use punch card decks back in day), but this anecdote is from my Dad, an electrical engineer, and running the “computer lab” back when he was going to college in the fifties. He told me the story of heading in one weekend day with his buddy to get their computer programming assignment done. The computer took up a whole, large, basement room in the engineering building on the Portland State campus. First you turned on the computer in a “warm-up” mode, and then you took the repair cart loaded with replacement tubes, and rolled it around through the computer looking for dead tubes which he said seemed to always look like these had been snuffed out by moths. The room was always super warm because of all the tubes when the computer was running so they left the windows open, and the moths got into the room. He said it always took and hour or so to find and replace all the dead tubes to get the computer running.
I always associated that with the use of the term “bugs” causing problems – not sure if that’s really where it came from or not.
Computer bugs? Here is your answer. The famous U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper was first credited with using the term on an official notice-
https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/the-origin-of-the-term-computer-bug
If that place that your dad worked at needed the windows open because of the heat but which brought in moths, you wonder why they did not install fine mesh on the windows to keep those moths out.
#Biden2024DumpsterFire
… in the spirit of throwing more logs onto the fire and the same grumbles from people whose political ideologies don’t necessarily overlap …
Not a fan of Maher and Costas grinds my gears a bit, but this (via FB) is pretty much an admission of the expectation of defeat. Everyone knows it.
I give Costas credit for the use of the words “hubris” and “feckless”, but he loses points for his failure to recognize that the Dems are a bigger threat to Democracy than Trump and that they really didn’t have loads of people to put forward. I will cut him a break on not understanding that the real decision makers do not want us to have multiple people to choose among, too likely that someone totally unacceptable (yes even more than Trump) to them might emerge victorious.
Joe Manchin b. Aug 24, 1947 is only – *checks abacus* – 76 years old. A youngster! A real go-getter!
Here is a very interesting article from Ran Prieur. ” February 12. Psychology links. Surprising link between time perception and wound healing revealed: “By manipulating participants’ sense of how much time had passed, researchers found that wounds healed faster when people believed more time had elapsed, suggesting a powerful link between our minds and our physical health.”
Here is the article itself which is linked to . . .
https://www.psypost.org/surprising-link-between-time-perception-and-wound-healing-revealed-in-harvard-psychology-study/