Chaos continues with Ohio teachers’ pension fund as second advisor quits Cleveland.com (JH).
Timing ‘Trump Trades’ With an Eye on GOP Platform John Authers, Bloomberg
Phases In The Life-cycle Of An Equity Order codonomics
Climate
Climate crisis is making days longer, study finds Guardian
Europe headed for mini-ice age as AMOC tipping point approaches – paper BNE Intelliinews
Mexico’s planned glyphosate ban helped show how agroecology can lead the way forward The Conversation
Artist punches holes in UN climate report six hours a day for Dutch installation Guardian
Syndemics
Opinion: Prevailing myths about public health hinder advancements that could help Coloradans Colorado Sun
Book Review – The Ecology of Collective Behavior The Inquistive Biologist
China?
China’s population crisis demands ‘dynamic monitoring’ of households, more support: adviser South China Morning Post Commentary:
5/5
If China can transfer roughly half a percent of GDP every year to households, the Chinese economy will continue to grow, more slowly but far more sustainably, and the improvement in household income will more than exceed the decline in working population.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) July 16, 2024
Xi Jinping’s Great Economic Rewiring Is Cushioning China’s Slowdown Bloomberg. Commentary:
6/6
China's manufacturing and technology push has been formidably successful, but it has come at the expense of domestic demand. The idea that former can resolve the latter shows why we need to think about economies systemically, and not incrementally.— Michael Pettis (@michaelxpettis) July 16, 2024
Japan’s Hands-Off “Hidden Culture” of Stillness Nippon.com
India
US ambassador berates India following Modi’s Moscow visit BNE Intellinews. “[T]here is ‘no such thing as strategic autonomy.'”
Officer among 4 Indian soldiers killed in overnight gunfight in Kashmir Anadolu Agency
Hundreds of students in Bangladesh injured in protests over gov’t job quotas Anadolu Agency
Syraqistan
Gaza: Palestinian with Down syndrome ‘left to die’ by Israeli soldiers after combat dog attack Middle East Eye
Israel seeks to rewrite the laws of war Al Jazeera
Yemen’s Houthis target 3 ships in Red, Mediterranean Seas Anadolu Agency
European Disunion
Europe Is Not Ready for Trump Foreign Policy
France’s left-wing parties struggling to form govt, says leader of Socialists France24
Dear Old Blighty
Will Immigrant Workers in Britain Win Europe’s First Amazon Union? Labor Notes
New Not-So-Cold War
Zelenskyy on performance of Ukraine’s commander-in-chief and Russia’s breakthrough in Kharkiv Oblast: we will deal with details later Ukrainska Pravda
Ukraine War Day #872: Zelensky Not Irreplaceable – Part III Awful Avalance. Part I and Part II.
* * * Donald Trump has ‘well-founded plans’ for Russia-Ukraine peace talks, Viktor Orbán claims FT
The American State–Media Complex Is Escalating the Ukraine War The American Conservative
Pentagon explains why US does not allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with ATACMS Ukrainska Pravda
* * * NATO and the deadly strategy of neoconservatism Jeffrey Sachs, Pearls and Irritations
Biden Administration
The FDA Just Quietly Gutted Protections for Human Subjects in Research Newsweek
2024
Assassination and Trump’s Mentality Craig Murray
Trump assassination attempt: Fraternal Order of Police blasts Secret Service ‘failure’ FOX
The Trump Assassination Attempt: A Serious Audited Investigation is Urgently Needed Stephen Bryen, Weapons and Strategy
* * * Recap: Trump makes first public appearance at RNC The Hill
Bandaged Trump gets rapturous welcome two days after assassination attempt BBC
Republican convention aims for unity — but keeps some of the old red meat NBC
* * * How J.D. Vance got here Politico
Five Faith Facts About Trump’s VP Pick, J.D. Vance The Roys Report
J. D. Vance Changes the Subject n+1. From 2023, still germane.
* * *
We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority ProPublica
Antitrust
Inside the Mafia of Pharma Pricing Matt Stoller, BIG. The deck: “4% of all the money in America flows through a few mafia-like health care conglomerates. The FTC just released a ground-breaking report on how they operate. And it is gearing up to sue.”
The Supremes
Major Questions Avoidance and Anti-Avoidance (PDF), Daniel J. Hemel SSRN. From the Abtract: “This essay is the first to name the phenomenon of major questions avoidance and to develop a taxonomy of avoidance tactics. It identifies four broad categories of major questions avoidance: “splitting” a single rule into a series of smaller rules; “lumping” together regulations under different statutory authorities to achieve a common, far-reaching objective; “glossing” over a major rule in technocratic language that downplays its economic and political significance; and “bypassing” the rulemaking process via guidance documents, administrative adjudications, and enforcement actions. Agencies appear to be deploying various major-questions-avoidance tactics already—openly in some cases and subtly in others.”
Realignment and Legitimacy
America’s Coming Age of Instability Foreign Affairs
This Is a Test for America Yascha Mounk
Digital Watch
ChatGPT Doesn’t Trust Chargers Fans: Guardrail Sensitivity in Context (PDF) arXiv. From the Abstract: “Guardrails are also sycophantic, refusing to comply with requests for a political position the user is likely to disagree with. We find that certain identity groups and seemingly innocuous information, e.g., sports fandom, can elicit changes in guardrail sensitivity similar to direct statements of political ideology.”
New App Connects Users Too Tired To Get Out Of Bed With Gig Worker Who Will Turn Off Their Lights The Onion. From 2023, still germane.
The graying open source community needs fresh blood The Register
Sports Desk
Gunz
Is America’s gun fixation backfiring on its pushers? Al Jazeera. Commentary:
The belief that the US is a high gun ownership society because of a high guns/capita # is wrong. Actual ownership has fallen for decades and is close to all-time lows (they ticked up slightly under Trump). What has changed is gun owners now buy 5, 10, 20+ guns instead of 1-2. https://t.co/96eY43W0Xw pic.twitter.com/g7EWgGkW6g
— Quantіan2 (@quantian1) July 15, 2024
Imperial Collapse Watch
US Navy pilots come home after months of shooting down Houthi missiles and drones AP. “[M]ost of the sailors, including him, weren’t used to being fired on.”
Class Warfare
Inside a UPS warehouse that prioritizes super-fast shipping Marketplace
Mangled fingers, no time off: Why the women who make Samsung’s semiconductors are striking Hank Yoreh
‘Sensational’ Proof Delivers New Insights Into Prime Numbers Quanta
“I Told Three Big Lies That Changed My Life” The Honest Broker
Antidote du jour (National Park Service):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
Fist in the air with a determined stare
Our flag waving above his wild hair
Blood on his cheek
In a heroic streak—
A moment Trump just had to share
Many people have aimed to get Donald’s ear
Especially in this election year
Young Thomas Crooks
Enters history books
As the man who got ever so near
Any guy can get hold of a gun
To make his vote a permanent one
He will gain such fame
Such an immortal name
That his Dad might be proud of his son
Any candidate or nominee
Can get shot—that’s the reality
We let the NRA
Arrange things this way
Selling us what they call Liberty
On a bright sunny Saturday
A gunman came out to play
One bullet quite clearly
Nearly cost Trump quite dearly
‘Twas the luck of the draw you might say
“luck of the draw” indeed. Of all the theories and hot takes, this may be the only one that matters.
A particularly brilliant riff on an early Johnny Cash song!, Antifa
Tiabbi and Kirn live streaming from the RNC convention yesterday evening. They’ll be there all week, folks. utube. ~ 1hr, 15 minutes +
America This Week Livestream from RNC Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTSfKOcBGIw
Something Walter Kirn said reminded me that then Pres Herbert Hoover is reported to have said to aids when he looked out from the WH and saw US Army troops burning out the Bonus Marchers encampment: “This has just cost me the election.”
Fear and Loathing in … Milwaukee?? I hope someone’s going to provide us with regional “only fans” traffic numbers.
I feel positive that suds city is glad to not be the metropolis that made bier famous.
“US ambassador berates India following Modi’s Moscow visit”
Yeah, this US Ambassador is an example of why American diplomacy sucks. It is either an offer of very small carrots or the threat of very big sticks. This Ambassador is basically saying that you are either with us or against us echoing George Bush’s sentiments. Washington tried to get India to reschedule the meeting between Modi and Putin as it was happening at the same time as the Washington NATO Summit but India refused. But when that image came out of Modi and Putin giving each other a bear hug, Washington flipped it’s wig-
https://www.rt.com/news/600904-modi-putin-bad-optics/
Europe headed for mini-ice age as AMOC tipping point approaches – paper BNE Intelliinews
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yo! Europe, let’s kick it
Ice age, ice age baby
Ice age, ice age baby
Alright stop, collaborate and listen
Ice age is back with brand new cold convection
Something grabs a hold of land tightly
Flow like a frozen wave daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo!, I don’t know
Turn off the soil and on ice what can you grow?
To the extreme, it’ll rock the AMOC like a vandal
Light up a stage and wax a tipping point like a candle
Dance, go rush to the money that go boom
I’m killing your brain like a poisonous nuclear mushroom
Deadly, when I play a climate zugzwang melody
Anything less than the best is a felony
Love it or leave it, you better gangway
You better hit bull’s eye, the atmosphere don’t play
If there was a problem, Yo!, I’ll solve it
Check out the free freezers while the ice floes hit
Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla colored Ice, ice baby
Vanilla
Now that the climate change party is jumping
When the frozen kicked in, with all that oil pumping
Quick to the point, to the point, no faking
Chill out the continent, a destiny of our making
Burning them out, if you ain’t quick and nimble
I go crazy when I hear there goes their status symbol
And hi-lo temps with a souped up tempo
I’m on a roll, it’s time to go Han Solo
Yo mankind, let’s get out of here
Word to your mother
Ice, ice baby, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice, ice baby, too cold, too cold
Ice Ice Baby, by Vanilla Ice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOQtzxPnoY0
We seem to be having our own mini-ice age at the moment here in Oz-
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/15/australia-weather-forecast-cold-snap-nsw-qld-vic-blizzard-winds
It’s bloody freezing down here and that biting cold wind does not help either.
Since we were discussing here recently, I just wanted to note that I saw my first monarch butterfly of the season yesterday afternoon in my neighborhood in Maine. Just one and not a whole flock of them, but still encouraging!
Nice. Will be on the lookout while walking the dog today.
Earlier this summer I noticed a black and blue swallowtail in my yard diligently doing something on a pile of scat. Whenever some flies would approach, it fiercely beat its wings to chase them away. It remained there for over an hour. Foraging, it turned out, for nutrients not found in nectar. The behavior is called mud puddling.
https://thewildlife.blog/2018/08/18/mud-puddling-the-dirty-truth-about-butterflies/
Antidote:
I’ll never forget my mountain lion encounter on the deck of the Silver City Resort in Mineral King almost 4 years ago to the day @ 4:20 in the morning…
There is no electricity in MK aside from the resort, and they have a wi-fi connection too, and waking up early is what I do…
In the dark I traipsed over to the front deck and there are a couple of rocking chairs on the left hand side and back then, there was a 5 foot wide Lodgepole sticking out of the deck (since expired and cut down-yet another bark beetle victim) with a cut-out accommodating it, which hid me away from sight…
The deck has ambient lights that barely give off any brightness, and I heard an animal on the other side of the tree and really didn’t give it any thought as the resort has a couple of house dogs who rule the roost, along with a little house cat in the guise of a mountain moggie, no biggie.
Then not 5 feet from me, a yearling mountain lion about 30% larger than a fully grown German Shepherd poked it’s head around said tree and looked at me, as I was sitting on the rocking chair peering at my open laptop @ NC, no doubt.
It did a ‘oh, one of those’ kinda looks at me and turned around to leave and I don’t know why, but I stood up to watch it go and witnessed the most sensuous saunter ever, with it’s tail completely erect where it didn’t move an iota as it made it’s way across the deck, where a 2nd yearling the same size was hanging out 25 more feet away.
I never felt any danger, nor did I think until afterwards, how I could have used the laptop as an ad hoc Claymore, slicing my adversary to pieces, well-at least ward it off.
It had taken me 58 years to see a cougar in the Sierra Nevada, and I hit the daily double.
Hmmm. Ever considered the number of times that cougars may have been watching you in the Sierra Nevada – but you never actually saw them because they were too well hidden? But they certainly look like beautiful animals.
Oh what an experience. This may be the memory I most envy of yours, so far.
Thanks for sharing.
I met a cougar once in Venezuela. We crossed sights for a while and It then went to the forest behind not in a hurry.
Used to lay in wait at Orange Julius @ the Puente Hills Mall, catty-corner from the Wild Pair, where you often saw cougars emerging with new footwear in hand.
They mostly avoid humans except, it seems, a human riding a bicycle looks a lot like a juicy deer.
Only ran into one in the outback. Felt pretty exposed but she just sauntered off. Got to look closely at an adult that had been depredated by fish and game but was frozen solid with eyes open. You couldn’t open that freezer door with out jumping back. That thing was solid muscle killing machine.
They often hunt in pairs and I have seen parallel tracks separated by 15 meters. I have also heard it said, the one you see is not the one that will get you. I have also seen solitary tracks in the snow near our house. Their very distinctive tracks are a definitive ID. They make a lot of noise when they mate. You can hear them for a good mile.
This summer upper on Vance doesn’t sound very encouraging. He opposes Ukraine but supports an aggressive US foreign policy everywhere else.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-vance/
In short his views are very like Trump himself. Still, might Trump/Vance at least disentangle us from the NATO beast? Other than on Israel Trump’s previous FP was mostly unfocused animosity whereas the empire builders at NATO have always had a terrible plan with the, er, bullseye centered on Russia.
And add Vance to RFK jr. as an Israel supporter.That other third rail–Social Security–was about votes. The Israel third rail is probably about money.Taking the money out of politics would be the greatest reform but USA, USA has always been about money. Making it otherwise could be an “existential crisis.”
With all seriousness…The bible-thumping and ineffectual Pence is going to be missed.
Hail to the Chief!
I stand by my statement. Wait and see…
Mike Pence had fun once, and then regretted it the rest of his life.
Vance too soft on NATO!
The democrats’ adoration of NATO (defends our democracy aka MIC contributions), which broke the Yalta conferences to rearm Europe against Stalin, is irreverent to liberal thought.
Moving NATO up to Kursk is offensive and tightens the nuclear tripwires.
Offensive NATO is procreating the hundreds of years of internecine wars which George Washington warned about: unproductive (except to MIC) foreign entanglement!
What was Ukraine before Lenin and Stalin?
Besides Vance is younger than all my kids!
Chaos continues with Ohio teachers’ pension fund as second advisor quits, Looks like a reform minded board wants to eliminate fund advisors and invest in index funds. Seems like a reasonable idea to me. But nobody likes it when their rice bowl gets busted.
Money quote (heh heh), Eliminating bonuses could slash the income for STRS staff by half, which in turn could cause talented people to leave, he warned. If too many people leave, there won’t be anyone to actually make money for the teachers. “talented” is doing some work here. Seems like a job for AI to me.
> “I Told Three Big Lies That Changed My Life” The Honest Broker
Funny story about The Chicago Academy of the Arts. My first wife attended in the early 1990’s. She and her mother raised hell about an acting teacher who was using required personal journals to target victims to have sex with. This was a high school, remember. The school’s response was to kick her out mid-way through the year. Though they did award her a diploma, so she got that going for her.
More funny story. The perp didn’t last long there afterwards, though. Lost track of him til he turned up at the University of the town we moved to. (By that time she and I were divorced, young love gets complicated.) I was in a show and a couple of girls were in his class, I asked ‘Is he still f cking his students’ and got wide eyes dropped jaw look between them and ‘Yes.’ But hey, consenting adults and whatnot.
More funny story. I was offered a role in a semi-pro play he was directing. He really was a good director, which was why he was so sticky. Asked the ex, she said ‘Take the money.’
He gone to the Big Easy now, out of the playpens. Putatively for drinking on the job. Can’t have that now.
The Academy is under new management. I hope they’re not so venal, the place was a sanctuary. I really mean that.
“Trump assassination attempt: Fraternal Order of Police blasts Secret Service ‘failure'”
In all fairness to those US Secret Service snipers, it may have been that they were not sure if the guy on that other roof was local law enforcement and if it was a uniform that he was wearing. We may have to wait for the results of the investigation but I am going to guess that those snipers were trying to get confirmation if that guy was part of law enforcement that was tasked with that area’s security or not when the guy opened fire removing all doubt.
Why would LE put a sniper in a place that could shoot the object? You put snipers to cover those places.
In any event, someone would have put the sniper there, in a plan that a SAIC would control real time!
DHS needs to answer questions!
Old military adage: “No plan survives the first shot!!” Then the excuses come out.
There’s no way that would not of been coordinated earlier. Some dude in fatigues or a half-way decent ‘uniform’ would be dead meat pretty quickly if spotted.
I had thought that too, but yesterday I saw another video of people who had filmed the shooter on the roof for nearly a minute, with others trying to point him out to the authorities all the while. The Secret Service must have been in radio contact with local law enforcement and it shouldn’t have taken that long to call the local cops, ask if they had any men on roofs, and then open fire when the answer came back ‘no’. Also, I saw other reports that the shooter was seen suspiciously wandering around on the ground over half an hour before the shooting. No video evidence of that latter claim though.
Regardless, they all should have known ahead of time exactly where federal and local law enforcement would be placed.
Winant’s n plus one article on Vance should be a sticky here. One of the best examples of inspired and justified contempt I’ve seen. Thanks, lambert.
I suggest reading in tandem the Roys Report Five Faith Facts and Gabriel Winant’s Vance Changes the Subject.
First, as a (bad) cradle Catholic, who knows that Saint Joseph is the Father of God, if there is a god, and who lives near the Basilica di Gran Madre di Dio, the Great Mother of God, I’m skeptical of a few things: I am always leery of politicians, like Newt Gingrich, who are adult converts to Catholicism. Too often, they are seeking “answers” and authoritarianism, in the form of admonitions from the egregious Viganò and Opus Dei. As the young’uns say, it’s “cringe.”
They are likely to be shocked by Catholicism-as-Hinduism (note the references in the Roys story). Catholicism is chockablock with saints, miracles, wondrous icons, holy springs, whatever it takes. You want paintings made by angels? We’ve got ‘em.
So: We’ll see what Vance’s Catholicism means. We’ll see if his Catholicism is in line with Catholic social teaching, given that Catholicism favors unionization of workers. (Well, maybe not U.S. Catholicism… which gobbled up Calvinism to punish the laity.)
Second: Gabriel Winant. Winant is good on class analysis, but it is a struggle to get through all of Winant’s psychobabble. Psychobabble is now a true impediment in the thinking of U.S. liberals as well as in how they want to discuss political matters.
I don’t care that you feel impelled to diagnose Trump as a “narcissist.” Sheesh, Americans trading charges of “narcissism,” now that’s rich.
To wit, from Winant: ” He is the senator from the unconscious, a voice in Washington for unprocessed trauma, psychic repression, and the monstrous outlets such potent forces can find.”
Sure. And I am the tsar of all the Russias and a Jungian archetype.
Would white liberals please try winning elections and governing? Is that too much to ask?
From dovish dove Norman Solomon on the Biden disaster:
“(…)
That situation was laid out with chilling candor in a detailed New York Times piece by longtime Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik, who was a senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and has advised dozens of governors and senators. The article makes for grim reading: “President Biden has spent much of 2024 with a more challenging path to winning a second presidential term in November than Donald Trump. But for reasons that have become glaringly obvious, that path has all but vanished.”
Biden “not only faces losing battleground states he won in 2020,” Sosnik wrote, “he is also at risk of losing traditional Democratic states like Minnesota and New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama carried. If current trends continue, Mr. Trump could rack up one of the most decisive presidential victories since 2008.”
(…)”
see:
“The Imperative to Reduce the Chances of a Trump Victory”
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-imperative-to-reduce-the-chances-of-a-trump-victory/
If I were a leftist in the US what would I be doing?
Does Solomon think about what another 4 years of Biden would look like? What it would do to the party base?
What if he were replaced by Hillary “I´ll be back” Clinton?
“Four! more! years!” with her?
So, yes, outlook is grim.
But what is worse is the lack of audacity to upset the Democratic Party and start a true alternative.
And the lack of expertise is astounding. Since economic facts will force a Democratic POTUS do what a Republican would do anyway domestically (dismantle unions even more, scale back court rulings of the Civil Rights era, push fossile fuels.) Sooner or later even the few”liberal” bastions would be destroyed by the “Liberals” themselves.
The left (or call it whatever you want) needs a plan. Because right now they have none, zero, zilch.
And what many in the media seem to not get: You don´t create foundation of long-term power by shutting down demonstrations or giving loud speeches. It´s about introducing countless laws, changing the structure of courts, and legislatures, freeing capital, suppressing workers´ rights. Things taking place in the “shadows”. Doing “boring” stuff. But boring stuff changes the structures of a country.
p.s. as a European Trump appears the lesser evil, if Craig Murray´s assessment would turn out to be correct that Trump has beef neither with RU nor CHINA.
“America’s Coming Age of Instability”
Could only make it about half way down when I gave up. The TDS was far too strong with these two authors who could not see that many of the accusation that they made about Trump could just as well apply to Biden. So I looked up these two authors-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitsky
https://politics.utoronto.ca/faculty/profile/95/
Thing is, people in their position should be by definition capable of being even handed and analytical. Not these two apparently and I do not know what they will do if Trump wins in November. Freak out probably.
RE: Musk “Iron Man” suit: my response would be “You first, Elon.” Can you imagine all the potential for Tesla’s famous quality to strike? Wasn’t there something like this in a Simpsons episode?
Tony Stark vs Tony Soprano?
Tony Stark and Batman may as well be a type of Tony Soprano.
All that brilliant technology and they somehow never get around to dedication to fighting white collar crime, with all the devastation it leaves.
The Musk-suit is actually a Musk-submarine left over from not saving those kids trapped in a cave. Since it no longer has to be airtight, it’s upgraded with an additional opening for hand to wave or fist-pump (depending on occasion).
Idk about that gun ownership graph. NC on 2023-06-03 linked a propublica article https://www.propublica.org/article/ryan-busse-explains-roots-of-us-gun-violence that talked about a lot of new gun ownership starting 2007, due to the NRA stirring shit about Obama. It gave big numbers. I would have expected to see a spike in the graph because of that, but I don’t.
I understand there are now direct flights from flyover to India where many gun fanciers with oodles of armament are undergoing radical surgery so their Vishnu may come true, and they can use them all at once.
I can see a sort of logic at work here. For decades people have been buying bigger and bigger vehicles and some of the newer ones look like you need a small ladder to climb in to. Somebody noted that this is the reason why so many people have their cars parked outside their homes nowadays – the cars are far too big to fit into their garages. The hoods of some cars is bigger than people. You even have monster size EV cars as well. It’s all about mine is bigger than yours.
So consider. You can’t do this with guns. You can’t have the guns also get bigger and heavier or else people would not be able to lift them up to fire them. But what people can do is buy more of them so that they can boast about the armoury that they have. So it is now my gun collection is bigger than yours. And just check out the length of my barrel. But maybe some of those guns never get fired. If they do, then they just become second-hand guns.
I know a few hand cannon types with far more firepower than is necessary, and they prefer that you call it ‘their collection’ which makes it sound as harmless as Hummel figurines, collect ’em all!
Having been in the collector business, they’re a weird mob-the ones really, really into it, going from a fascination to an infatuation.
‘they’re a weird mob’
I saw what you did there. But speaking of second hand guns earlier-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJHadAPNAo4 (1:15 mins)
It does corroborate what a local Maine police officer told me a few years ago. He used to work in California and said CA has nothing on Maine in terms of guns. You might see people with a handgun or two in CA, but in Maine he would go into people’s homes and see massive arsenals. And that police anecdote corroborates what I’ve seen myself. Buddy of mine is a hunting guide by profession and when he had to move a few years ago, it took a couple trips with the SUV to get all his guns from one place to another.
Why is Steve Keen not at the Leeds MMT Conference?
I intended to send this in as a link suggestion yesterday but life interfered.
Now it begins: banning and raiding an opposition media house and seizing its assets, by government ministry executive decision without a court proceeding. Just in time for three upcoming state elections in eastern Germany — and as trial balloon for a similar impending ban of the only genuine German parliamentary opposition party, the AfD?
https://apnews.com/article/germany-far-right-magazine-compact-banned-c284d76eb1a83f7c651299606d31337a
On COVID…
The Tour de France, its been a great race, reinstated masking requirements over the weekend. The peloton is struggling with the illness, they are trying to limit infections, trying to do all the right things (if the can). What is really interesting, of course, is there is no outcry about infringements on rights and all that nonsense.
I’m not sure if they really understand contagion. A friend who follows it told me a rider who tested positive but was asymptomatic was allowed to continue to ride. Now that is essentially the current CDC guideline so I can’t rag on them too much, but if true it throws a big hole in their protection strategy.
Curious about the inclusion of the simplified equity order flow outline, without context.
The best argument I have against this emerging multiple shooter hypothesis is the fact that Trump wasn’t hit any worse than he was. Moreover, if the whole thing was staged as a fake failed attempt to lionize Trump (I’m just covering all hypothetical possibilities here) then there is certainly no need for multiple shooters. Seems like you would only need multiple shooters if it was a serious, “legitimate” attempt.
Multiple shooters or no, the unsecured rooftop remains the glaring, unexplainable issue, from which one must consider the possibility, or even probability, that the USSS was in on the plot. It is a failure so basic, fundamental, and massive that I would be inclined to say innocent explanations are unacceptable.
I’m going with the Gassy Knoll theory, in that young Thomas’s aim was disturbed by an ill-advised release from the nether regions…
“This Is a Test for America: Yascha Mounk
“It has now been about 48 hours since Thomas Matthew Crooks, a socially isolated 20-year-old, attempted to assassinate Donald Trump…”
48 hours…it’s been decided he was “socially isolated.”
Problem is determining people’s level of “isolation” by social media presence and by interviewing people sure to try to put as much distance between themselves and another member of their community. How socially isolated would he have been if he’d saved a busload of school children from a burning crash?
Just spitballin’….