Dear patient readers,
This post launched a bit light. Please come back at 7:45 AM EDT for a full ration.
#Sakurajima Volcano #Kagoshima, Japan, 29.07.2024, 16:46 local time
cam streamed by ZAIHO
Source: https://t.co/4jKC0AxMgJ pic.twitter.com/5oCDg0AQPF— Rita Bauer (@wischweg) July 29, 2024
A Fossil Named Tina May Rewrite the Story of Human Evolution Popular Mechanics (Chuck L)
Near-Grounding Incident in Great Barrier Reef Attributed to GPS Malfunction GCaptain (guurst)
#COVID-19
COVID surging in California, nears two-year summer high. ‘Almost everybody has it’ Los Angeles Times (Paul R)
Climate/Environment
How Soon Might the Atlantic Ocean Break? Two Sibling Scientists Found an Answer—and Shook the World Wired (Dr. Kevin)
Park Fire is now one of California’s largest wildfires on record, burning area nearly half the size of Rhode Island CBS (Kevin W)
Is Japan nearly cured of its nuclear allergy? Asia Times (Kevin W)
China?
US hands $500m military aid boost to Philippines amid China tensions Aljazeera
Justice Dept. Says TikTok Could Allow China To Influence Elections Fortune
Chinese EVs and the race for autonomous AI Asia Times
India
Winds of change in India-China relations Indian Punchline
India deploys army, air force as death toll due to landslides in Kerala climbs to 57 Anadolu Agency
South of the Border
Elon Musk had, out of his nearly 50k tweets, zero about Venezuela prior to April.
Now he’s tweeting non-stop about the “dictator.”
When I said Twitter is going full-circle back to the days of the Arab Spring, as a tool for toppling governments, this is what I meant. https://t.co/uFaNnk10em
— Alex Rubinstein (@RealAlexRubi) July 30, 2024
Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn’t Tell You Venezuelanalysis (Chuck L)
Olympics
Olympians called the food in Paris a ‘disaster’ — and one team is flying in its own chef Business Insider (Kevin W)
French Internet Lines Cut In Latest Attack During Olympics Bloomberg
European Disunion
Eurozone economy grows 0.3% over second quarter Financial Times
Säpo should be made responsible for censorship – that’s not very smart Aftonbladet via machine translation. Micael T: “SÄPO = Swedish Security Service”
Old Blighty
Winter fuel payments scrapped for millions BBC (Kevin W). Note his is a subsidy for pensioners and the poor.
Gaza
‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 297: Israel and Lebanon brace for new escalation after 12 Syrian residents of the Golan Heights were killed by a strike Mondoweiss (guurst)
* * * Patrick Lawrence: No More Silence ScheerPost (Robin K). Important. Key point: “….join me in asking what we are not supposed to ask: Is what Israel is doing in Gaza worse than the Holocaust? ” I brought this up with Lambert a few days ago, and not as a question.Up for discussion in the Israeli parliament: the legitimacy of raping prisoners pic.twitter.com/9KuqCW9ntK
— Hamza M Syed (@HamzaMSyed) July 29, 2024
“Dedicated to all partners in the purchase of our drones”
Israeli soldiers from the 5280 Battalion of the Alexandroni Brigade filmed the detonation of Palestinian homes in Wadi Salka, east of Khan Yunis, as a dedication to Israeli occupation army donors who provided them with… pic.twitter.com/O08M3ezd55
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) July 28, 2024
Erdogan Says Turkiye Could ‘Enter’ Israel To Help Gazans Sputnik. Erdogan has been all hat, no cattle but he might settle on a lower-risk way to assist.
At rowdy cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said to condemn mob breaking into IDF bases, but compare it to anti-government protests Times of Israel
New Not-So-Cold War
Putin warns US against deploying long-range missiles in Germany Guardian
Ukrenergo not planning power supply restrictions in Ukraine on Tuesday Interfax. Some improvement in operations.
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
China Ponders Creating a National ‘Cyberspace ID’ The Register
Why the left should care about privacy Current Affairs (Paul R)
2024
America’s New Political War Pits Young Men Against Young Women Wall Street Journal. So all this political divisiveness is now hitting the gender divide among the young. At the margin, not very pro-reproduction.
Biden
Biden decries ‘extremism’ on Supreme Court, details plan for term limits, ethics code for justices Associated Press. Has he not gotten the memo that he is a lame duck?
Most Americans want Biden to resign now – poll RT. Rasmussen is a right wing pollster. Even so, gap between approval v. disapproval of Biden continuing suggest there would still be way more nays than yeas even with different question phrasing.
Kamala
Kamala Harris, triumphant cat lady: The political family has lost its sparkle Unherd
Harris Puts Abortion, a Weakness for Trump, at Center of Campaign Wall Street Journal. This sort of thing infuriates me. The women’s rights movement and their presumed ally, Team Dem, did absolutely nothing to secure abortion rights, which would not have been hard during Peak Feminism, the 1970, before the religious right had much clout. In most nations, abortion rights have come about via legislation, not court rulings. The Dems continue to be merely performative on this issue. There is no way a Harris Administration could get any meaningful legislation passed. Yet this is why voters should prefer her? Seriously? Because she is selling an empty bag? I could see abortion as on the list since pro-abortion voters are mad at the Republicans for rolling back abortion rights, but the lead when the Dems have nothing real to offer?
Kamala Harris Collapsed in 2020. Here’s How to Avoid a Repeat. Politico
Exclusive: Internet Star Estee Palti’s Humorous Take On Kamala Harris Cackle India Today Global, YouTube. Li: “Estee goes global!”
Trump
Donald Trump Backs ‘Strategic Bitcoin Stockpile’ in Speech to Crypto Faithful Wired (Dr. Kevin). Kill me now. US continues its slide into third-worldism.
Our No Longer Free Press
The most chilling words today: I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you Jonathan Turley, The Hill. Obviously retaliatory. Disappointing that Turley does not seem inclined to sue, but perhaps he does not want to signal that’s an option until they dig their hole with their “report”.
Copyright Strikes Silence Paris Olympics Critics Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy Jonathan Turley
YouTube Escalates War on Ad Blockers Mashable
Woke Watch
Here’s Proof That Woke Capitalism Is in Retreat Crisis Investing (Micael T)
Mum jailed for forcing daughter into fatal marriage BBC :-(. But a reminder that “woke” is not always bad.
AI
Faisal Mahmood: A.I.’s Transformation of Pathology Eric Topol (Robin K)
From Sci-Fi To State Law: California’s Plan To Prevent AI Catastrophe ars technica
McDonald’s hit by first global sales drop since 2020 Financial Times
Crowdstrike 404
Delta Seeks Damages From CrowdStrike, Microsoft After Outage CNBC. I love these Godzilla v. Mothra fights.
The Bezzle
Sen. Cynthia Lummis announces bill for US Treasury to buy 1 million bitcoin worth $68 billion The Block (UserFriendly)
Trump Media Stock (DJT) – The 2nd Quarter Earnings Report Needs Explanation Forbes (furzy)
Tesla’s dismal results draw the shorts, and the tipsters, back out of the shadows Francine McKenna. The preview is informative.
News Site Says It’s Using to AI to Crank Out Articles Bylined by Fake Racially Diverse Writers in a Very Responsible Way Futurism (Paul R)
Class Warfare
Living through another great transformation… Branco Milanovic (Micael T)
Low-Income Homes Drop Internet Service After Congress Kills Discount Program arstechnica
John Deere under fire for laying off hundreds of American workers as it shifts manufacturing to Mexico New York Times (Kevin W)
CBDCs are a Threat to Liberty Reclaim the Net (Micael T)
Antidote du jour (Alena S):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
223 comments
Comments are closed.
UKRAINIAN AIR FORCE
(melody borrowed from Wild Blue Yonder by Robert Crawford, 1938, now the Anthem of the U.S. Air Force)
(July 29, 2024 ~ Only six Ukrainian pilots have finished their training on F-16 jets, which jets will be delivered in August. Because these planes can carry nuclear weapons, the Russians have repeatedly warned that they will be taken out immediately. Imagine being one of these six pilots, out on the runway, ready to go . . .)
Takeoff time this is no time to ponder
What the hell is it I’ve done?
Climbing fast I cannot help but wonder
Flying east into the sun
Satellites that we are flying under
Tell the Russkies our track and more
It’s not the same this ain’t no game
I think I’d like a refresher course!
Six brave men sent to pull off a blunder
F-16’s can carry nukes too
Mister Zee wants to impress his funder
Mom and Dad I will miss you!
My brief life soon will be promptly squandered
For an un-winnable war
One thing’s sure we’re all done for
The Russians say that we’re the main course!
We are thinking the most of the Holy Ghost all six of us will die
Lady friends this portends a last farewell we’ll meet you in the sky!
This task we chose means we shall turn to mold
What we die for is more or less a centerfold
We’d float in a boat but that’s all she wrote for the Ukraine Air Force!
F-16’s one by one torn asunder
Missiles flash out of the blue
All at once there will be blood and thunder
Tally-Ho! So much for you!
I should fly to the Moldovan border
There’s a world for me to explore
Where life goes on I’ll greet the dawn
I’m starting to feel a lot of remorse!
To hell with this I’ll go open-source!
«Lady friends this portends a last farewell…»
Very apropos today’s WSJ on ‘Amerika’s latest political war pitting young men against young women’. Sending young men off to war against Putin makes the Karens I know feel so much safer.
‘Alex Rubinstein
@RealAlexRubi
Elon Musk had, out of his nearly 50k tweets, zero about Venezuela prior to April.
Now he’s tweeting non-stop about the “dictator.” ‘
Musk is going back to his 2020 days when he tweeted ‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it’ about the coup in Bolivia. Is there Lithium in Venezuela as well or something? But he got too quick on his fingers when he linked to a video showing how Meduro ‘Colectivos’ gangs were stealing ballot boxes only it wasn’t. It was looters stealing aircom units instead. Idjut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55aot1LZJug – at the 25:5 min mark
Venezuela is blessed with huge reserves of heavy crude oil, that is it gives a lot of distillate fuel, good for those power plants going off coal. And we get to reset a lot of refineries once we decide we can profit off their oil.
The irony is that Venezuela used to send free oil to the US for poorer people to use but Washington eventually put a stop to that. They could simply buy the oil from Venezuela for a market price and maybe send technical experts there to improve their production methods so that more could be sent to the US. Not good enough and instead they want to own it directly and ship it to the US for a lower price – with some skimmed off for the right people. And that is what it is all about.
If I remember, RFK Jr. was at the head of an organization that helped distribute that cheap oil to low income homes, especially in the northeast.
Here it is:
https://www.masslive.com/news/2014/01/no_oil_for_citizens_energy_yet.html
That was Joe, RFK’s younger son. He used to live in a big house down the street from me in my Boston years. A decent enough guy, for a Kennedy. The Citgo sign still burns bright over Comm Ave, reminding everyone that Venezuelan oil kept them warm.
Venezuela used to send free oil to the US for poorer people to use but Washington eventually put a stop to that…
[ This was immensely important for low income families in New England, and long publicly supported by the Kennedy family. Of course, Venezuela supported Cuba with low cost energy supplies, and that was intolerable for the likes of a Senator Robert Menendez who built a family political career on trying to ruin Cuba. ]
Hate the Gell-Mann amnesia effect – Like the reporting done about other countries, yet as a Venezuelan I know the reporting shared here on my country is toxic and misleading.
Working long for (gag) cat lady:
https://unherd.com/2024/07/kamala-harris-triumphant-cat-lady/
What a friggin insult to cats. One would think a person would have to like cats in order to be a cat lady.
That was the only thing I looked for in the article, and it was not there.
I’ve noticed that many more women who give up on men and family are dog lovers.
same here, waste of time!
Fixing….thanks!
So the Bitcoin faithful cheer a Presidential candidate who proposes to make their libertarian and anti government fantasy currency a government backed and controlled currency.
A surveillance currency at that.
Not secret/anonymous to begin with.
And store of value my @$$.
Same type of bansksta bros from previous crashes who are looking for a bailout. (Exotic financial product headed nowhere without attaching itself to the govt teat). They just sold a BS story it was something different.
And, don’t forget it’s the freedom currency!
It seems Hillary likes Kamala. Because Kamala can be controlled/influenced? Or just that their cackles are similar?
>Low-income homes drop Internet service after Congress kills discount program
Well, that $30/mo was helpful to me, but after it was initiated my ISP raised its rate, so it was also an invitation to the corporations to up their looting game. States often forbid local jurisdiction broadband, which when done right can be better and a much cheaper service, like even free (except for taxes, which I don’t pay much of). How about Congress restricting State’s authority there? Oh wait, markets! For now, I just have to bite the bullet, or the cable, or my cat lady tale… or something…
what happened to all the free municipal wi-fi ideas from 20 years ago? wi-fi infrastructure on light posts—maybe a “freemium” service, free for basic, $ for streaming 1080p video.
At the very least it should be a no-brainer experiment for a square mile of a US city.
If Democrats can’t even deliver on this basic idea, no hope for health care.
Many cities have moved forward with those plans.
https://www.fierce-network.com/broadband/us-now-has-nearly-450-municipal-broadband-networks
NYC has free wi-fi on the streets in my neighborhood.
https://www.link.nyc/home.html
Kiosks also provide free phone calls, USB charging ports, and a directory of local services.
The piece says the Reptiles cancelled the program since most of the folks already had broadband prior to its initiation. It does not mention how many providers raised their rates after the program began. Mine went up $10, so a $30 credit actually turned into $20 net.
America’s New Political War Pits Young Men Against Young Women So the WSJ would like one to believe. And why not? Our political theater displays the intellectual capacity of an eighth grader. Never the less, only had to go four comments in for “These sample sizes are really, really small. I’m not buying the results.”
“Near-Grounding Incident in Great Barrier Reef Attributed to GPS Malfunction”
The Great Barrier Reef has been eating ships since Captain Cook ran aground way back in 1770. Would it be too much to ask to have ships keep lookouts until they are out to sea and clear of those reefs? For those interested, here is the official report on this near collision-
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2022/mair/mo-2022-005
The International Rules for Preventing Collision at Sea (COLREGS) require that all ships maintain a lookout by sight and hearing at all times (rule 5), but in this case, the pilot and bridge team of the Rosco Poplar were slacking – relying solely on their electronic charts and GPS. Not only that, they failed to configure their navigation to use multiple GPS inputs and have the system automatically compare them to identify errors and faults.
Back when I went to sea, reliance on electronic systems was a well known hazard and we trained against it, but it is a constant battle because ECDIS (electronic charts) is so easy when all systems are working right. Right as I was leaving, the USCG and USN were dropping the requirement to carry paper charts – this might be a mistake.
Not sure what the environment is in civilian maritime industry, but I bet it’s similar or worse since they are more minimally manned.
I understand that at one stage, the US Navy stopped teaching their officers how to use a sextant to ‘shoot the sun’ because everything was digital. But then they re-introduced it when it was realized that if GPS went offline, US Navy ships would be literally lost at sea with only the sun and starts to go by for directions-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextant
Yes they did, and the practice of taking the noon sight and compare plotted and true positions was coming back while I was serving as navigator. However, adherence to this depends upon the CO and navigator of the unit – I had to relearn it when I arrived at the ship.
Actually Hydrographers Passage is well lit and marked with fixed aids to navigation. It should be easily passable without any shipboard electronics, including the gyrocompass, if visibility is good. In fact, it seems like the pilot’s corrective action was made by his visual take on the sector light on Little Bugatti Reef and his close proximity to Bond Reef Light close aboard on his port hand. I find it remiss that the PPU (pilot’s portable unit) did not have it’s own dedicated GPS antenna. Normally these units have such an antenna and, on the end of a wire, are placed outside on the bridgewing.
The real fault here though, is that no one seemed to be looking out the window. It’s clear that the task was to “thread the needle” between White Tip Reef Light and Bond Reef Light, once clear of both, and the lights equidistant on each side of the ship, then turn to port, on a course that would leave Little Bugatti Reef Light to starboard. A proper Lookout, as per Rule 5 COLREGS, would have informed the bridge team that the ship was favoring the port side of the channel and that Bond Reef Light was becoming too “fine” on the port bow.
Healthcare
Wikipedia and other sources rank American life expectancy at 56th or there about, meaning 55 nations have longer expected life than Americans.
I noticed this and was shocked. I knew it was bad, but that bad? After having exchanges w/my Republican sisters, who occasionally mention the evils of “free government socialist” healthcare, I noted most governments with free health care live longer healthier lives that we do. That didn’t work with them.
The conversations went like this:
“Canadians live longer with better healthcare” – “I know someone who’s 5 children with cancer were put on a waiting list. All the children died because they waited too long. People can’t get healthcare in Canada.”
Explaining to them USA has a waiting list of 30-40 million people with no healthcare who are on a permanent waiting list – a number greater than the entire population of Canada – didn’t register with them.
“UK and Europe have free healthcare and live longer.” – “That’s not what I heard. We know someone in Britain who says the waiting list is long and they can’t get health care.”
Later I looked up national life expectancy and sent her the list. As I said, I was shocked how bad it was. Besides how low the US ranked vs other nations, what stood out was Puerto Rico which I expect is lower income and thus many more qualify for Medicaid (“free government socialist healthcare”) has higher life expectancy than those of in the States. So a simple not extravagant free access to health care in a poorer nation beats Exceptional America’s for profit health care. That really says something.
I sent my sisters the Wikipedia list, asking them if they knew anyone or have friends who have died due to being on waiting lists in each of the 55 nations with free government socialist healthcare, 55 nations with free government socialist health care, who live longer lives than we do in the USA?
I also sent them to start researching what health care they want when they reach 65, noting they must choose 3 months before reaching 65, explained the issues with Medicare Advantage and how even MSM is beginning to reports problems with it, and how it takes away their access to Traditional Medicare.
They probably won’t listen but try these two links. The first compares healthcare in Maine and New Brunswick-
https://x.com/CallForCongress/status/1516427312530608137
The second link is from 2019 and shows the reaction of the British to the costs of American healthcare-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kll-yYQwmuM (5:04 mins)
I think the one thing people miss about the life expectancy measurement is that they’re also winning in better quality adjusted life years too. The thing about guaranteed healthcare is that people actually get to use it, so minor problems don’t develop into serious ones.
Stick with why tax funded health care is more efficient for small businesses and make the US more competitive.
I have used that with MAGA types for awhile now. I usually get them to agree with me especially if they own a small business. So many people are against a “hand out” but they see reason when you talk about the financial cost of Health Insurance and it’s drag on the real economy.
Whenever I’ve been in similar conversations I almost always get the Canada argument immediately. Everyone has “friends from Canada” who just *hate* their health care system. And its always the “waiting list” issue. I was also given the cancer scenario just recently. Sometimes “they had to come to the US” to get taken care of. Then I realize that their friends were affluent. We do have pretty good health care here for major issues – if you can afford it.
I understand there are growing problems in Canada, as in other nations, due to increasing neoliberal funding pressures. But I can’t believe a rational Canadian who wasn’t wealthy would want our system. Canadian readers?
as an ex-pat canooker who’s also lived stateside, the canook system does have its issues (and is getting worse) but it covers everyone (eventually). as for canookers who go stateside for treatment, the thing that anecdote always misses is the canadian system pays for that. there are specialist hospitals stateside. thus your canook doctor sends you there.
also there are specialist hospitals in canada. americans often avail themselves of that expertise. toronto has some world class heart specialists, for example.
for all its failings, i’d still take the canook system over the insanity that is american healthcare coverage. and don’t get me started on the one bit of “socialist” medicine: medicare for old farts. what a bureaucratic nightmare!
As a Canadian I can attest that my family, friends and coworkers certainly aren’t complaining, health care is tax dollars well spent, we’re thankful for it.
The Canadian system would have to be completely non-functional before we consider setting up an alternative where we’d need to re-mortgage the house just for a visit to the hospital. We see health care as a basic human right and the government has a duty and obligation to provide it. What even is the purpose of the Canadian government if it cannot, it’s not doing much else?
Whereas in the US, the insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms and vested interests will spend billions to protect their profits, so misinformation and spreading misconceptions about and exaggerated claims around Canadian health care quality, wait times and the impact on taxes will ensure Americans stay fleeced for a very long while, if they ever see the light of day.
On the positive side, those American hospital bills provide considerable incentive for Canadians (and Europeans) to keep their universal health care systems intact.
I think you need to appeal to their patriotism, show how universal healthcare will position Amerikkka for the win! Also, part of the problem here is that it takes people a while to come to their own realizations. It took a while for women to vote, for gays and gay marriage to be accepted, etc. I wonder if riots would help.
>Harris Puts Abortion, a Weakness for Trump, at Center of Campaign – Wall Street Journal
A “liberal” friend sent me a link to the John Stewart clip below that attempts to counter all the Republican criticism of Kamala. This friend, I don’t know if “liberal” is the correct term to describe her, is pro-abortion and she will vote for Kamala solely on that issue. I didn’t even know the Democrats rolled John Stewart out of retirement.
Based on the clip I watched, you can tell he has some good writers. Personally, I find JS repugnant, almost as much as I do Stephen Colbert, it was a challenge just getting through first couple of minutes, but I felt a need to find out what makes some people tick. The clip is instructive in demonstrating political rhetoric pulling out all the stops in defending/justifying the undependable/unjustifiable. It’s done masterfully, the comedic/endearing patina JS provides is effective, especially for those who need a “logic” that allows them to vote for Kamala based on that single issue, abortion.
That “logic,” twisted logic, is necessary to assuage the cognitive dissonance from the Biden/Kamala;s complicity in killing thousand of innocent women and children in Gaza. To re-elect those responsible for allowing/abetting genocide takes a real skill set. That “skill set” is on full display at the Daily Show. That I enjoyed watching JS during the Bush the Lessor years, makes me wonder at the changes both in me and America.
https://youtu.be/YNu_Q11QFWY?si=v5DvR4H1Yhs_zkut
Malcolm X coined the term politricks. True then, true today.
Stewart has returned to Comedy Central for one night per week only. The rest of the time he has some kind of website. Back in the day he made much sport of Trump which didn’t prevent Trump from getting elected then and doubtful the snark explosion that Lambert talked about will have much effect this time either. It will take more than jokes to fill Kamala’s empty suit, but we shall see.
Is Stewart still a beardo? Or did they make him shave.
Harris Puts Abortion, a Weakness for Trump, at Center of Campaign Of course she has. The issue of abortion is a/the key fundraising tool. I’ve come to the conclusion that the business of elections has become more important than the results. The vast sums of money, siphoned off the public and redistributed to the political class has made winning irrelevant.
Another example of supply creating demand: ruling class media whips up a frenzy, generating monatizable attention.
Two other thoughts on the election. First, our overlords are in the lamentable position of having to attempt to politicize the populace, which, outside of election years, they are loathe to do. Second, the “issues” being centered show that, as about half the country doesn’t vote, and voters skew toward the higher end of educational attainment and income (the closest approximation we have to class), the target market is those comfortable enough to be polarized by trivialities, and polarized enough to be immune to the logic of logistics – as with the abortion talk, with no path forward.
Lord, deliver me from splenetic liberals with a sense of self-righteousness. The motivation of Trump voters becomes clear: throw a wrecking ball at the establishment these Democrats represent. It’s tempting. If I vote, however, I think I’ll write in Joe Biden, for the yucks.
Thank you. In particular, your observation on class and trivialities is a macro salient whiskey of distinction. I will quote in parse with glee.
The Democrats may think that this will be the killer issue – abortion – that they can nail Trump to the wall with but I am not so sure. If he was half smart, Trump could easily reply that the Democrats could have codified Roe vs Wade anytime in the past half century as it was passed way in back in ’73 when Nixon was still President but they just never got around to it.
not a duopoly voter here — but it would be delicious to see Trump do that
‘epic trolling’ as the kiddies say, informative too
Wrong Rev. Pointing this out to a single-issue pro-abortionist minded person is futile, I’ve tried it. Trump is more than “half smart”, to know this. A “rational” rebuttal is not the basis that will lead to victory, though it may be useful, the battle will not be won by appeals to logic or historical facts, it will be conducted on the rhetorical/emotional battle field.
Wrong audience. This wouldn’t be for the DNC brainwashed, but those still on the fence or who want actual policy discussion.
Working through the Politico article on Madame VP and highly presumed nominee for President, there’s a killer quote from the piece. Harris is giving a speech recently in Wisconsin.
“As attorney general of California, I took on the big Wall Street banks…held them accountable for fraud. Donald Trump was…found guilty of fraud”. I will concede to any speechwriter that would convey really well, but that’s the red meat she can offer to her base and any voters on the fence.
Added, it’s a speech that works better than say, “my opponent kicks puppies and pushes old ladies when he thinks no one is looking..”
She held them accountable, did she? Then she needs to explain how the grifter Steve Mnuchin was available to be chosen as Trump’s Treasury secretary. Because just saying “I deem you accountable for fraud” does not in fact actually hold anyone accountable.
Next you’ll be telling us that the “concern” and “alarm” expressed about Israel’s actions is also worthless!
Damn lucky for the democrats that they kept the issue of abortion simmering, jawboned to death but unaddressed, for 50 years. Without it, the they got nuthin’ and it’s obvious they know it.
I have supported the right to choose a safe and legal abortion all my life, but with the tsunami of serious issues facing this once great country in 2024, making “abortion” the “center” of the harris presidential campaign is a tremendous insult to every struggling american, and an absolutely unforgivable trivialization of their painfully acute domestic concerns. Not to mention the murder and mayhem being visited on those abroad by this desperate, failing hegemon.
It is as disgusting as it is repulsive that this vapid, unqualified lightweight and her handlers would run this abortion scam on the american public, in these critical times, yet AGAIN. I can only hope that neither Trump nor RFKJ takes the bait, and keeps the focus where it belongs in this “election.”
PS. While I did gag my way through it, that jon stewart clip should be rated unwatchable. IMNSHO, all that yelling and mugging is not “comedy,” and this election is not a joke.
Thanks. It’s too early to see how any of this will hash out and Harris may yet not be the nominee which is why she is so zealously pretending that she is.
But it could be that abortion a better issue for Congressional aspirants–as in 2022–than in a presidential race where the president won’t be able to do much about it other than pack the Supreme Court. The Dems are for that too, but as some have pointed out their term limits will then be struck down by…the Supreme Court.
Every move by the Dems seems to reinforce the reality that they are not, in fact, a natural majority. Even on abortion the public favor legalization but in a more nuanced way. Most other countries have limits and, as Yves points out, worked out these rules in legislatures and not the courts.
I think it is fairly baked in already that she will very likely be the Dem candidate. Already making presidential seeming speeches and campaigning thusly.
Which just leaves me speculating, who or which “Inner Party” collective is running this country from here until January 2025 ? We know that Joe Biden ain’t awake at 3am to answer that proverbial alarming phone call.
“Emergency, Emergency, We have a serious problem”…okay, please hold one moment for Dr. Jill. \sarc
Trump and his crypto boosting. Pandering to the Horowitz and the Winklevoss wings of the Bitcoin realm, I do suppose. I did find a part of his speech interesting, or the video clip of him saying “on day one I will fire Chair Gensler…”. Gary Gensler is the SEC chairman, whom I think is well qualified at the role. I will also add, Trump could also be tossing some red meat, to draw more support to his ticket. Perish the thought of doing so, in an election year.
CNBC yesterday interviewed a former SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton who served under the Trump administration. His comment was yeah it doesn’t actually work this way in reality. I’m still not involved in any crypto investing, and have no immediate plans to do so.
Hilariously, 2 days after T’s bitcoin boosting the B admin moved to sell off US govt’s seized bitcoin assets, causing bitcoin prices to drop.
https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/07/29/bitcoin-tumbles-below-67k-as-us-government-moves-2b-of-silk-road-tokens/
So bitcoin are like company shares then? That when a bunch of shares in one company is released on the market, this drops the price for all of them?
RK,
Perhaps you’re thinking of BitchCoin, whose value goes up every time you complain about the man not having enough strategic deposits of ether and/or in Humordor.
It’s an “asset” with limited supply and relatively shallow liquidity.
Increased supply leads to lower price.
Bought a ‘Limited Edition’ Snickers Bar the other day, and by the time I had my way, it became even more limited.
Bitcoin is kind of 1-size fits all Hummel figurine, but instead of the demand coming from childless cat ladies and forlorn single men as in the 70’s, it’s our proposed iMaginot Line.
I think that South Park really nailed it here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVYT8lX6saM (37 seconds)
It’s the future!
This hyper-financialized economy has to have a bubble asset – or more than one – always going.
It’s. all. they. got.
This is my thought. If anybody should be stockpiling bitcoin it should be the Fed Reserve. For price stability don’t you know.
If only we could get Trump to suggest that instead. That would be delicious. But even without that, it wouldn’t be too hard for people to wonder why the US runs a “strategic reserve” for bitcoin just like it does for oil.
It bears mentioning that KH fervently wants to be more “pro-crypto” than Trump. Not looking good for Lina Kahn.
While all the cash Bankman-Fried tossed around 4 years ago didn’t end up helping him much, it certainly appears today the Bitcoin nexus, where/whoever that may ultimately be, appears intent on turning the Fed into “the final fool” in their long running Ponzi.
With all our recent ructions, our politics is now well beyond Banana Republic territory having appeared to tip off an edge of the sea into the Game of Thrones universe (show me one mainstream narrative more plausible than dragons).
So, whoever’s playing in that universe has what’s coming to them lined up, pass the popcorn.
I bet the source for the Fed purchase of the 1 million bitcoins will just so happen to belong to the congress-critters. Nothing like giving yourself a hidden government put option as the door closes shut.
The Fed You mean us (USians). There’s no denying the political sphere has gone game, whether it be of thrones or hunger.
Well yes, of course, what coherent entity with actual agency would ever agree to backstop a Ponzi scheme built on pure, waste heat and despoiled nature?
It’s the kind of spell that works in our universe of Hunger Game of Thrones!
Tulips were and are at least sustainable…
Sadly RFK Junior is even more nuts on this topic. I read his speech from the event. He goes even further than Trump, calling for the establishment of a ‘strategic reserve’ of Bitcoin, which (given that the supply of Bitcoin is algorithmically constrained) would amount to a massive state-sponsored pump and dump scheme.
He also says (I kid you not) that his commitment to green energy and fighting climate change is a key reason why he supports Bitcoin. How, I wondered, given that it guzzles energy like a drunken sailor and diverts it all to useless blockchain verification? Simple: there are apparently endless green energy schemes out there waiting to get off the ground, but they can’t, because they can’t rely on consistent round the clock demand, so the business case doesn’t stack up. Bitcoin gives them that, so it’s green! You might naively think that a big battery (say, a pumped hydro system, or several of them) would be a better way to accomplish this – the energy would then be available to be used later, rather than vanishing into thin air in a crypto Ponzi scheme. But no, the market says crypto is what’s needed, so that’s what he supports! Let’s all pave the way to a green future and tackle climate change by finding ways to burn as much energy on useless stuff as humanly possible!
Trump at least is obviously motivated by naked self-interest. He clearly sees the potential of crypto for laundering vote buying, but he’s not a true believer, and he’d drive a harder bargain than RFK Junior would.
The Consortium News article on Israel by Patrick Lawrence is very good. It speaks with the necessary moral clarity, eschewing the ambiguity and “both side-ism” that much of modern media aspires towards. Palestine is the most urgent moral question of our lives. In no uncertain terms, I echo Lawrence’s call that, even if the genocide were to end tomorrow, Israel must end, more definitely than Nazi Germany, which wasn’t completely de-nazified.
The Notsies will never give up their aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
They never will.
Nonetheless, it shall be taken from them, just as Germany was taken from Hitler’s hordes.
I’m waiting from a hypersonic missile to focus their attention.
7 Oct, al Aqsa Flood, is the replay of the Warsaw ghetto rising.
IDF showing a lower level of effect than the wehrmacht.
Do red heifers hibernate? Or maybe wait to come out of their sophomore slump?
Yes, it’s an excellent piece. I feel humbled by it. I was struck by a lot of ideas in it but want to single this out:
I resemble that. I remember an Adam Curtis short I think titled “Oh Dearism”. I think it was played on Charlie Brooker’s show. I bet it’s on YouTube.
I agree, vidimi. The Lawrence article is startling in its clarity. He says the, up to now, unsayable. And, he will probably pay a price for that.
Daniel Davis on his Deep Dive Intel Briefing 7/28/24, (it says much about the realignments going on, that I have become almost addicted to an ex-military guy’s YouTube interviews, but that may be because I love the way he and John Mearsheimer interact) gives an eloquent and heart-rending plea to end the slaughter of the Palestinians and speaks of his shame at being a citizen of a nation whose Congressional Representatives give multiple standing ovations during the speech given by the leader of a country committing the acts of which Israel is culpable. Again, he speaks with moral clarity, calling out the action of Israel for what it is.
Amen.
“Copyright Strikes Silence Paris Olympics Critics”
This would have to be a reaction to the stuffed up Opening ceremonies. Nothing to do with them mocking the easy target of one of the world’s largest religions. So I’ve got an idea. Just to prove that they are really into diversity and are not mocking just Christians alone, how about this. Come the Closing ceremony they have a bunch of drag queens doing a tableau of the life of Mohamed. They could have the person that did the part of JC do Mohamed as well. It’ll be great as after all, what could possibly go wrong?
one minor detail that stood out for me in the article was the claim that, and I paraphrase, rain risked disrupting Lady Gaga’s performace. Except it didn’t, hers was pre-recorded…because they were worried about the rain.
Patrick Lawrence. No More Silence.
This piece is a polemic, a call to peaceful arms, by a writer at the height of his powers. I am impressed.
Some quibbles: One must be opposed to war and genocide all around, everywhere, just as one must always oppose torture and mistreatment of prisoners, no matter who they are.
So the moral crisis of our times isn’t only Israel and its policies of religious/ethnic/supremacy (sound familiar? Ask the American Indians…)
The crisis also consists of Ukraine and how the Western elites lied their way into a conflict that they had not even thought through. It is a conflict to satisfy bourgeois fantasies of investment opportunities. Likewise Iran. Likewise China.
We cannot chop up peace: When there is no peace, there is no civilization.
And that also means contradicting the very idea that something is unspeakable. As a writer, I know that there is almost nothing in existence that qualifies as unspeakable or ineffable. Things have names.
And it also means going to demonstrations. Whether you enjoy demonstrations or not. One must speak. One must manifest oneself in public for the powerful to see.
We must march, my darlings, to quote Walt Whitman.
If a march rolls through the streets, and there is no Network camera there to see it, does it make a sound?
We are cast in the role of GABAergic neurons. saboteurs, outnumbered 10:1, inhibiting a mad dash to Armageddon.
If a march rolls through the streets, and there is no MSM camera there to record it, does it make a sound?
We are cast in the role of GABAergic interneurons, outnumbered 10:1, sabateurs of a march to Armageddon.
I think it does make a sound, if repeated often enough. As today’s link “Why the left should care about privacy” reminds us once again, the revolution will not be televised.
“And protest can have an invisible ripple-effect that lasts for generations. A small group of women from Iowa lost their sons early in the Vietnam war, and they decided to set up an organization of mothers opposing the assault on the country. They called a protest of all mothers of serving soldiers outside the White House – and six turned up in the snow. Even though later in the war they became nationally important voices, they always remembered that protest as an embarrassment and a humiliation.
Until, that is, one day in the 1990s, one of them read the autobiography of Benjamin Spock, the much-loved and trusted celebrity doctor, who was the Oprah of his day. When he came out against the war in 1968, it was a major turning point in American public opinion. And he explained why he did it. One day, he had been called to a meeting at the White House to be told how well the war in Vietnam was going, and he saw six women standing in the snow with placards, alone, chanting. It troubled his conscience and his dreams for years. If these women were brave enough to protest, he asked himself, why aren’t I? It was because of them that he could eventually find the courage to take his stand – and that in turn changed the minds of millions, and ended the war sooner. An event that they thought was a humiliation actually turned the course of history.”
Johann Hari: Protest works. Just look at the proof
A country seals off a region and systematically starves, bombs, burns, snipes, and tortures the people enclosed to their extinction. Whether the country is Germany and the region Warsaw or the country is Israel and the region is Gaza — what words are needed to demonstrate their equivalence? What words or vocabulary could justify or excuse these barbarisms? I believe visual imagery might better than words convey some measure of the horrors. Capture the cacophony of suffering on the soundtrack and if it were possible to add smells the result would surpass the ability of words to tell the truth.
“When we face at last the reality that we have been deprived of any institutional means to mediate our politics, it follows that we are forced back upon ourselves.”
Lawrence suggests: “…there is power in language, in speaking of the unspeakable.”
I do not expect much success from speaking of the unspeakable or uttering the Truth. As individuals we are left no effective voice that can cross the barriers of censure, lies, and character assassination. As citizens, we have no influence over the government supporting this barbarism or the government perpetrating these horrors. As for demonstrations, how better to gather those the government would suppress and silence with violence.
“Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar”
These are dark days.
re: Harris Puts Abortion, a Weakness for Trump, at Center of Campaign Wall Street Journal.
I don’t think anyone can call themselves a feminist if they are supporting genocide and a Jewish-only ethnostate, which is to say they do not support equality and equal rights. In effect, in supporting Israel she is conceding to the pro-life movement that there should unequal rights and, further, along biblical/religious grounds. And in supporting Zionism, which in Israel is right wing religious conservativism, and in effect is state religion, she’s agreeing that men should be the heads of households.
Her stance has a major logical hole which deserves to be exploited, she is no feminist as long as she supports Israel.
A lot of feminists can’t support genocide.
This is the DN Headlines for July 26, 2024 with a brief bit on her meeting with Netanyahu. There is a photo of the two shaking hands [03:40 going forward]. I don’t know if boa constrictors smirk when they have caught an antelope (just for an example), but if they do, that is what Bibi looks like. Harris is not smiling, I’m sure she knows there are thousands of words to follow. This is the text:
That’s all I have. On Palestine, she could not be worse than Biden, but DT could, maybe. If she is elected and does much against Israel, and Mike Johnson is still speaker of the house, the first thing he will do (after visiting Israel of course) is try to impeach her. We’re family blogged.
The situation has since escalated. Considerably.
https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1818152941804470725#m
https://x.com/BarakRavid/status/1818093987724496948#m
https://x.com/MouinRabbani/status/1818144763524047001#m
https://x.com/ireallyhateyou/status/1817990464198558140#m
https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1818032302091297014#m
https://x.com/ME_Observer_/status/1818036049706369145#m
Right wing protestors joined by Knesset politicians, IDF reservists, and apparently serving IDF members have stormed the Sde Teiman base/prison camp to protest the arrest of several camp guards on charges of torture including rape of prisoners. The protestors stormed gates and were threatening to kill the remaining prisoners. There are also reports of a second protest at the military court/base in Beit Lid where the arrested soldiers were taken to.
IDF command has reportedly stopped Lebanon war planning to deal with the issue. Very frankly, it appears that GHQ officers have been drafted in to help man the gates against the protestors. IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari can be seen at a gate in one clip above. General Halevi is onsite in another. Reportedly frontline units have been diverted from Gaza. The prison is run by Ben Gvir’s interior ministry, as are the police who have been in no hurry to intervene. Though apparently the area has now been placed under full military control and protests have abated.
This is beyond extraordinary and can only be compared to 1930s Europe. This can only point to a complete collapse of discipline in the armed forces, and on the eve of a major war with Lebanon besides. Maybe late imperial Russia is a better comparison. One of the army’s largest issues is that it is receiving little support from politicians for punishing soliders involved in torture. Perhaps US forces will be on the ground in Israel sooner than expected.
There is only really coverage of this on twitter. To fully report this, the MSM will have to own up to the torture at Sde Teiman which they’ve already denied/buried.
Holy crap.
Balan Aroxdale. Quite a roundup.
Torture undermines the legitimacy of the government.
After the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the current form of the Ukrainian government engaged in torture and disappearances, turning a blind eye to the Right Sector and Azov Battalion and other neoNazi gangs. Hence, the government of Ukraine has little moral authority.
When politicians in the Knesset are praising torturers, the government has no legitimacy.
When the U.S. government sponsors still another speech by a supporter of torture, it has lost legitimacy, tattered as it was.
Will this cause Israeli society to collapse? Will it end the war effort? No. Torture can go on for years and years — because right-thinking citizens are not bothered by mistreatment of others.
After all, Kamala Harris told us that bringing up genocide at demonstrations is “unpatriotic.”
“Torture undermines the legitimacy of the government.” We wish, DJG.
April 28, 2004. Sixty Minutes revealed the torture and abuses by US Military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. It became front page news. I remember thinking that these revelations would change the course of the war. Well, silly me.
But perhaps the past 20 years have been leading to the political equivalent of reaching the angle of repose on a shale slope, preceded by years of occasional but increasing trickles of sand and pebbles, until one dark night, the entire hillside unmoors, slips and buries the sleeping town under tons of rubble; or perhaps analogous to the melting of Greenland glaciers, streams of fresh water running faster and faster into the northern Atlantic, feeding the AOMC, the ocean current that insures France has had vineyards rather than ice hotels, which is running slower and more erratically, until a final Niagara-like torrent brings it to the tipping point, from which there is no recovery, it stalls and endless winter engulfs the western continent.
Legitimacy is long gone, but efficacy remains.
Institutions rot from the head but leave their extended bodies functional, to mix metaphors, until the social glue binding the collective sinew to the institutional muscle slowly renders and drips away.
The meat that remains can, while living memory persist, be re-animated, the fundamental difference between institutions and living organisms. But once living memory fades the tissue is only good for smaller organisms to feed off of.
Yaroslav Hunka was introduced to the Canadian parliament by its speaker who told the parliament that Hunka had fought Russians in Ukraine in WW2. Either everyone in the audience who then gave Hunka a standing O was too stupid to understand that what they had just been told meant that Hunka fought for the Nazi’s against Canada’s ally the Soviet Union or they understood and thought it a heroic thing that deserved a standing O.
Quickly swept under the rug.
Legitimacy doesn’t matter.
By the time the Speaker introduced Hunka the members had been bobbing up and down like deranged yoyos. They would have given a standing ovation to a passing seagull.
It was a bit embarrassing to realize the Speaker of the House was a total idiot and complete political ignoramus.
It must have, too, done wonders for military morale. The Waffen SS massacred Canadian prisoners of war it France.
What is wrong with Israel? One tweet said-
‘Pelham
@Resist_05
Israel could be the first country in history to start a civil war over the right of its military to rape prisoners…’
https://x.com/Resist_05/status/1818074767452422352
It’s a riot over Israelis’ right to impunity wrt Palestinians, which makes sense if you believe that (a) Palestinians are worse than animals that deserve death, and/or (b) you are so superior that whatever you do is just and right. To your question, I really don’t know what is wrong with Israel but that’s my best guess right now: beliefs. It’s not the first time that beliefs in superiority went so far that they justified such impunity.
The whole population wouldn’t mind abusing Palestinians to extreme. However, the leadership can be brought on the international dock with things like this. Ben Gvir doesn’t care if Bibi or Gallant are put behind bar, as long as the sub-humans are dealt with…
In this context, who are really the sub-humans?
Palestinians, of course.
Wow. Israel is doomed. How can a country recover after such things? It is astonishing and horrifying to watch this rapid descent. Or the mask rapidly being pulled off?
The USA has done worse several times over the last quarter century and so far has always managed to put the skeletons back in the closet and carry on. Idk if Israel can do the same with the civil rupture that this appears to portend.
Looks like this conflict is between two factions in society and politics that support different styles in “solving” the “Palestinian problem.” The liberal side wants to do it while maintaining the post-ww2 USA-style decorum of UN and international law, diplomacy, and Western consensus, i.e. what the West has been doing with Israel to the Palestinians all along. The illiberal other side wants to do it pre-ww2 European style.
So far the West has been supporting the other side by denying that they exist. When that’s not enough they use the Bad Apples theory, i.e. the institutions are liberal and just but need to work harder at eliminating Bad Apples that bring disrepute.
We’ll see what Israeli politicians do next. Idk if they can control themselves and bring sufficient order and information control to allow the West to continue believing that Israel is on a liberal and just course to solving its disputes with its occupied/colonized population. In the short term I think this can be PRed out of discussion. (Look over there: Kamalot! Trump!)
Longer term, as Blumenthal said, only “total victory” can keep the two sides from fighting a civil war. And I’m not sure Israel can deliver that victory.
I imagine it’s a bit like the Hemingway quote about bankruptcy.
Now would probably be a good time for Israeli civil servants / planners / officers to start reading up on the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Edit: The former Yugoslavia might actually make better reading material.
Wouln’t be the first time in history Jewish polities would be split…
Perhaps Spain pre-civil war might be good as well. The same dynamic of increasing demonization and ever greater atrocities is similar.
Apparently the country bombs Beirut and hopes the citizens will be too busy scrambling for the bomb shelters to wait for the inevitable rain of missiles to care about crimes the country has committed.
Thank you, Balan Aroxdale. That’s a valuable comment and collection of links.
Harris and the cabinet have been neglectful of their duty under the 25th Amendment!
Biden unfit for quite a while.
Harris’ “our democracy” is okay with a vapid president as long as the checks go out! The bombs fall…..
And yet Biden publicly proposes major revisions to the Supreme Court, as a lame duck dementia president. Every day brings new wonders.
Biden working extra hard to polish the
legacyturd that was his decades of selfless dedication as public servant and statesman. Hah.Or someone else is pushing hard, straining to avoid the stain and stench of failure.
Now, how about that
traveling and walking aroundLibrary money?He, or they, don’t have many cards left to play. The pardons should be fun.
Biden wrote what? When?
I would say his pentagon’s creative accounting and never passing an audit is neglect he can buy now, since he has been unable since Jan 2021.
Speaking of Biden, when is the last time he made a public appearance and said anything? I don’t recall seeing much of him, if any, since he was said to have contacted COVID.
If Netanyahu really does start a war with Lebanon and then Iran what then? Can a clearly spent Biden go on TV and croak out the decisions made by his aides?
Trump has been testing a new line “vote for me or World War 3” which, being Trump, is much too crude but heading in the right direction. The Biden foreign policy disaster is far more relevant than the much chewed over abortion issue.
yes, this is an interesting point. Over the last 20 odd years, congress has been more than happy to relegate its unique right to declare war to the president. Were Israel to tangle itself up with Iran and Lebanon, Biden no longer has any legitimacy to make such a decision given he is finally and correctly recognised as senile. This would force congress into resuming their responsability.
“vote for me or World War 3”
Catchy. But, even though most voters don’t want more money going to foreign wars, it’s not at the same level of bringing them out to the polls as abortion. They don’t seem to think it’s a problem that Congress is waving Ukranian flags on the floor or giving Netanyahu about 70 standing Os on the same floor.
Probably should leave “war” out of the slogan.
When USA Presidents have “war” in a slogan during a campaign, they usually end up in a big one. Yes, this happens if the context of the slogan is against a war.
In 1916, Wilson’s reelection slogan was “he kept us out of war.” That didn’t last long after the election…
There is no way that Biden will leave the White House early.
The Democrats need Harris to break tie votes for the next six months in the Senate. There are currently 48 federal judicial vacancies and every vote counts in getting Biden’s nominations confirmed.
As Vice President, Harris will oversee the Electoral College vote counting in January 2025. There is zero chance this job will be turned over to some Republican senator.
“As Vice President, Harris will oversee the Electoral College vote counting in January 2025.”
Oh, man, thanks for pointing that out. That could be real interesting. Just ask Mike Pence.
Also, were Harris to become POTUS now, her weakness would be on display to the entire world before the election, and she would be very likely to spectacularly [family blog] something up.
If biden is gone, harris would have to take over the “presidency,” and the carefully constructed Hollywood hagiography of harris as “president” that is about to be conjured up over the next several months and seeded into the public’s imagination would be worthless in the face of the reality.
Her only hope of becoming “president” is not being president. Until it’s too late.
>Patrick Lawrence: No More Silence ScheerPost
“Anyone watching this spectacle could only conclude that the United States of America has ceased to be a respectable independent state, as, indeed, it has been for many years already, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the State of Israel, with shared values rightfully rejected by the overwhelming majority of mankind.”
“All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined — 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined — doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza…. I’ve seen more incinerated children than I’ve ever seen in my entire life, combined. I’ve seen more shredded children in just the first week … missing body parts, being crushed by buildings, the greatest majority, or bomb explosions, the next greatest majority. We’ve taken shrapnel as big as my thumb out of 8-year-olds.
And then there’s sniper bullets. I have two children that I have photographs of that were shot so perfectly in the chest, I couldn’t put my stethoscope over their heart more accurately, and directly on the side of the head, in the same child. No toddler gets shot twice by mistake by the ‘world’s best sniper.’ And they’re dead-center shots.”
It is time to say certain things, readers. It is time to put aside the policing and self-policing of our views of the things we see and hear. Time to make good use of language to say what we mean. It is time to see in ThePryingEye all those “good Germans” who saw what was going on around them during the 1930s but turned the other way and went about their business. Time to say, “Actually, what we need to survive is to utter the truth and determine to act on it.”
This is the first thing we can do. Much stands to come of it.
It is time to say certain things, but not in “polite” company. Please don’t bring up politics at the dinner table, you’re going to upset your sisters. Make good use of language to say what we mean? I wish, most people I talk with when it comes to politics and current events, have pre-formulated, ready-made words which some neuro-linguistic script writer spent a lot of time refining, and which if successful ends up introduced to a gullible public by comedians like John Stewart. If what we “need to survive is to utter the truth” then we’re all sunk. The truth is dangerous as Nietzsche said long ago, and not too many people want to live dangerously.
>>>The truth is dangerous as Nietzsche said long ago, and not too many people want to live dangerously.
Dangerous to whom and from what? People keep saying that there are all these crazy people, but too often do not point to the lies that make most of them crazy. Honestly, the harder we all try to be “safe,” the more insane we all seem to be. What with all the police, guards, walls, metal detectors, cameras, drones, laws, rules, guns, and (self) censored thinking and feeling, are we any safer or even sane?
re: Copyright Strikes Silence Paris Olympics Critics – Reclaim the Net
Thanks for the link. Here’s a good companion piece, Due Dissidence guy and guest cohost on Rumble (because utube has takedown notices etc.). Jump ahead to the 3hr-26minute mark to start the Olympic opening segment.
https://rumble.com/v58uupm-caleb-maupin-on-censored-kamala-book-and-more-russ-strikes-back-at-acolyte-.html
High levels of PFAs found in condoms and lubricants.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/28/condoms-pfas-forever-chemicals
The article notes a recent study showing PFAs are absorbed through the skin at much higher rates than originally thought and that the penis and vagina have thin skins and lots of blood vessels. Also:
I just don’t get this whole argument about PFAS. Why doesn’t someone just name the factories producing them, then close them????
But that assumes a functional country not captured by neoliberal capitalism. Definitely not in evidence in the US.
I recall hearing about these dangerous forever chemicals back in the 1980s, maybe the 1970s. But Dow and Dupont blocked any successful attempts at regulating them.
That is pretty much how events unfolded with asbestos.
It had been known for a very long time that this was an extremely dangerous, nay deadly, substance. Nevertheless, the industry, with the active complicity of governments, delayed the ban on asbestos for decades until well after the health impact could no longer be ignored.
The arguments for the refusal to eliminate asbestos was the same as for PFAS: there are no substitutes and the economic impact would be devastating — which were incorrect. I remember to have read an article about a French firm that had developed, in the 1950s or 1960s, a substitute for asbestos in the building industry. It eventually went bankrupt, since the asbestos lobby was really powerful in France and always managed to impose its solutions as the standard.
Leaded gas is another case, with the same arguments (“impossible to do without”, “too expensive to do otherwise”) and the same lobby+government delayed action in the face of proven toxicity.
Enough examples to get the definite impression that public health simply does not count.
Higher than thought but still very small. And how much is actually transmitted to the body via skin?
Also,
“In one study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, sex therapists found that intravaginal ejaculation latency time (IELT) — the duration of a typical intercourse session — lasts three to 13 minutes on average.”
“People in their 20s are having sex more than 80 times per year on average. That number declines to 60 times per year by age 45, and 20 times per year by age 65.”
One can calculate the number of PFAS molecules getting in the body during a lifetime. Also include the liver cleaning abilities. It all comes to a nothingburger, just clickbait and scaremongering.
A cure for such is watching “The Adventures of Figaro Pho”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2699588/
While much of the scares over PFAS and other things are mostly scaremongering, that is the problem; it is mostly, not entirely so. We keep pumping evermore new and exciting, wonder-chemicals into reality and then into our bodies, and I wonder just what is happening to us, our children, and the rest of the ecosystem.
Sorry, but from what I have read, PFAS have no safe lower level. We’re not talking about ionising radiation here.
It’s not scaremongering, just like asbestos, DDT, neonicotineoids, weren’t scaremongering.
Gooooooood Moooooorning Fiatnam!
The platoon had only recently begun training for the jumping to conclusions event in Paris, and only having watched a night of women’s beach volleyball, it was obvious that tattoos weren’t cool anymore, as none of the participants had any, that is to say, no dragons crawling up an arm, no pidgin Japanese on a shoulder blade, or anything on the oh so athletic small of their backs.
Do you suppose they (Olympic athletes) have to cover their tattoos? This is going to require extensive research…
They couldn’t well call it womens’ scantily clad & barefoot volleyball in an area the size of a kitchen, because that would be sexist.
That said, a hidden tat underneath their skimpy bikinis & 1-pieces would be way tiny.
While diligently researching the topic, I’ve discovered the existence of spray-on tattoo cover.
Or perhaps even more inksidious, similar to how the adverts change on the boards in an NHL game, or behind the plate in a MLB game, maybe the tats have been airbrushed out digitally?
There is also such a thing as a spray-on tattoo. What’s the difference between love and a tattoo? A tattoo will last forever. :)
Reminds me of anecdote from best friend from my undergrad days. Thoroughly Nipponised, Japanese wife, translated his (English) PhD on Japanese war memories into Japanese himself, is now a very very senior academic in Tokyo.
Early in his career he had to stifle laughter when the Vice-Chancellor of his uni in the sticks of Japan invited him over for BBQ. Wife of VC wears t-shirt with English writing “cause it’s trendy”. I don’t recall exact wording but it was akin to “I love to suck cock”. She had no idea what it meant. And she was never told.
Fast forward 10 years and VC breathlessly calls my friend in to tell him “hey I’ve discovered a way of surveying that won’t put us at risk of weird biases in answers…..it’s by one of you Brits…..guy called Terry Flynn”. That turned into the most amusing conversation my friend ever had with his Japanese boss ever. It also explained why google scholar has been giving me almost daily updates of citations to my work from Japanese articles that I could not read (pre-google translate days).
Dare I say it? In Japan you are in like Flynn. (For those not familiar with this phrase)-
https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/phrases/in-like-flynn
Haha, yeah I first heard that phrase as an undergrad in the early 90s. Back in those days I could avoid spelling my surname on the phone by saying “Flynn, as in Errol” and they would know it.
These days practically nobody in a call centre knows or cares who Errol Flynn was so I have to spell it out. Plus I get annoyed that once upon a time “Terry” meant male and “Teri” meant female but these days it’s mix and match….but now I definitely sound like archetypal old man shouting at clouds! ;)
hahaha. Dad.
I can’t find it right now, but there is very funny bilingual skit on this by YTer Dogen, a – it basically consists of a conversation between a weeb with a Japanese tattoo that doesn’t say what he thinks it says, and a Japanese guy with a t-shirt in English that doesn’t say what he thinks it say…
Yeah when I visited I saw plenty of Japanese people wearing English tshirts that said something they probably didn’t want to say…. So just as frequent as the anglos with Chinese characters as tattoos that actually said something stupid like “I do it with pigeons” etc
quite a lot of athletes, from archery to swimming, have openly displayed their tattoos.
This is why I think I’ll be on the podium in the jumping to conclusions event, only having watched unillustrated women knocking a ball around.
According to my AI, the official policy is thus, Athletes cannot feature sponsor names or logos in their tattoos, hair designs, contact lenses, or nail art. However, they are free to have tattoos, unique hair and nail designs, and colored contact lenses as long as no logos are on display
Re Newsguard. There is an advertiser that pops up regularly (when I use my tablet YouTube app rather than my PC ad-free sponsorship-free tab in Firefox) that purports to give you unbiased news or a “judgement” on the veracity of the story: GroundNews.
It claims to rate stories according to whether they are being pushed by “right wing” or “left wing” media outlets. That very wording is enough to make me click “skip” at the 5 second mark. I don’t need to know what this company purports to do. My default assumption is that 99.99999% of ads and sponsorships on YouTube are grifters. Eff you.
I am perfectly capable of getting bias-free takes on practically any major story by myself, thank you. I don’t need another corporate shill to dull my sensibilities. And what makes it doubly funny? I’ve just used google to try to find the name of the company. I can’t, despite using all the tricks at my disposal. You can’t even FIND the offender to name and shame them unless you encounter them as an ad and make note. I simply, when writing, had a “Eureka moment” in remembering the name of it. There are several YouTubers who accept sponsorships from this company….people I previously thought had critical faculties. Nope. Unsubscribed.
Made me think of “Scripps News.” I know someone who watches MSNBC/CNN and FOX and Scripps. Everyone know the orientation of the first three, Scripps, she thinks, is supposedly balanced. When I looked at the ownership/history of Scripps News, I don’t think her characterization is valid. Curious about ownership of Newsguard.
Yeah, this ties in with my comment below. First thing you should do when considering a sponsor is finding out “who owns it?”
Yet YouTube is getting an increasing number of “mea culpa” videos from morons who failed to do this when accepting sponsorship from bodies like Established Titles. Actually anyone who even CONSIDERED taking money from that outfit is, by my standards, a certifiable moron who should be in a strait-jacket. All YouTubers who accepted sponsorship from those people have been blocked by me: doesn’t matter if you know IT/physics/medicine inside out, you fail basic standards of either decency or common sense.
Please see Bsn’s comment (well down the page) for some “sponsorship” details. No surprises.
Yeah saw it :)
Why waste your energy thinking when someone else will do it for you. Geez.
Reminder, my sarcasm is always on.
Indeed! The thing that makes me really sceptical about the future is that there are a lot of YouTubers who I’ve watched and who genuinely know a lot about things like physics, space, psychology, etc but when they accept sponsorship from a company that 99% of members of the commentariat of this site would shout “RED FLAG!” you’ve got to wonder if they are either:
1) So desperate for cash that they accept grossly despicable sponsors without any indication of self-awareness, or
2) So “siloed” in their field that they genuinely lack the critical skills to ask basic questions like “where does money come from and how does the economy work at its most basic level?” or “how does YouTube’s business model work and what makes me think I can make a living out of vlogging?”
Neither of these makes me optimistic about the next generations.
re: Here’s Proof That Woke Capitalism Is in Retreat Crisis Investing (Micael T)
Decline in number of ESG mentions in earnings calls is not what I would consider proof of ESG decline.
Also, the author doesn’t realize ESG is in large part generationally driven. Younger folk care more about corproate responsibility and are driving it, it’s also more relevant for them especially with climate change for example, and there is an urgency to refactor the economy. Meanwhile older folks who don’t care are scheduled to move out fo the workforce.
Even before ESG was a thing, we in the fintech sector heard seminar after seminar from McKinsey, Deloitte, PwC, Edelman, Gartner, etc., showing endless stats about how if we didn’t adjust for the needs of the incoming Millennial and later generations, who studies were showing cared about XYZ, we would no longer be competitive. The point was made that these weren’t just the next generations of workforce but also the next generations of consumer.
And by the way, the same went for women – as more women became financially more affluent or independent we heard that if we didn’t adjust our products, offerings and approach accordingly, and more importantly gain a workforce that reflected more women, we would lose a large chunk of that market.
And it’s true. A woman doesn’t want to go to the bank about opening an investment account and hear from a middle-aged white male financial advisor, “this type of account is higher risk, does your husband approve?” Middle-aged men with antiquated views REALLY do have to go, they’re a serious liability.
Sounds like ESG is a top-down push from marketing advisors. Also, in terms of corporate responsibility, I see nothing about better wages for the workers or safer working conditions “cough – amazon warehouses – cough” . / ;)
‘does your husband approve?’
Things have not really changed since the 50s, have they? There is a documentary about the history of Tupperware which is interesting-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhrRRjgVfxU (58:33 mins)
The point being that when those women became highly successful, they could not go to a bank for a loan to finance any expansion of their business as banks would have rejected them on sight. So what they had to do was to go with their husbands to the banks and have them pretend that they were actually running the business in order to get a loan.
My wife was a design draughtswoman in UK in 70’s and 80’s. Couldn’t get a financial product without a man being there in the 70’s. And in the 80’s, one of her less-competent colleagues (male) got a pay rise and she didn’t, because he had 4 kids and needed the money while she was childless.
It amazes me how Britain gets away with selling the perception of being the country of fair play and reasonable attitudes, despite major scandals such as tainted blood, more recently Fujitsu/ICL Post Office, etc.
I knew a young married US couple back then in the late 80’s where the husband had a very good but not internationally transferable job and the wife with an MBA had a very good large corporate job with an international footprint . The couple were sent by her corporation to the UK for her to learn how the international side of things worked in the UK.
Long story short: back then her husband was in the UK on a visitor’s visa since he wasn’t working in the UK, and he tried to open a bank account. Denied. He was unemployed, you see. So she tried to open a bank account. She was making beaucoup big bucks at the UK branch of her corporation, big bucks even by UK standards. Denied. Her husband was unemployed, you see. Her employment and salary were not considered. They were shocked. They opened a Postal banking account. This was in the late 80’s or early 90’s I think.
I hope things have changed in the UK banking world.
All us Brits know that fairplay, gentleman, a man’s word is his bond stuff is bullshit.
Yes, things have changed quite a bit in the US banking world in the last 40-50 years in terms of women being treated on equal terms with men when it comes to getting a loan without a male co-signer for a house, a car, or a business. Now the financial statement is what matters. Of course, women get worked over just like men when it comes to some banks’ malfeasance and being used to …er… “foam the runway” for the banks. / ;)
It may be different in other countries.
adding: in the US these goals of equal treatment were won in law long before this ESG thing became de rigueur. The changed happened in roughly the same 10-year period that redlining was outlawed as a banking practice.
Yeah, I have seen that in my “financial advisor”. Babbles all kind of useless things. I just use him to move money from chequing to specialised promotional savings accounts, via email or phone, for me or my wife… How to convince my wife of the investment decissions I make for her. SHe’s just happy to not have to make her herself… eyes galzing…
I agree that middle aged men with antiquated views shouldn’t be calling all the shots. But are middle aged white ladies lecturing about “equity” or some such corporate buzzword doing anything to counteract that?
Having been required to sit through many of those lectures, in my opinion, they are not doing anything constructive for society at large. However, being overpaid to lecture captive audiences with corporate approved platitudes that insult the intelligence of their listeners is surely beneficial to the lecturer’s own bank accounts.
Go long cat litter and boxed wine? /s
Back in the day, investment committees liked to see the presence of some gray hair on the borrower or investor side. That showed, maybe too simply, that some had been through a cycle or two. Such antiquated notions disappeared around the dot com bubble and youthful exuberance. Queue and cue the brash consultants lecturing the board.
Now the grays seem unpersonned, when they aren’t being vilified.
Gosh, I mean the ESG thing has worked out financially very well for Budweiser, Target, and Disney. / ;)
Aren’t there situations though where spouses are liable for each others’ debts, even if incurred without their knowledge? I only hope the “middle-aged white male financial advisor” asks the same question about the wives of the married men he deals with. If so then no problem.
US banking law does cover these situations and a competent bank loan officer will go there. Due diligence and all that. / ;)
Thanks for the link CBDCs are a Threat to Liberty – Reclaim the Net.
Right on all points about CBDCs. Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says the same things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnIVbVLAehk
Sen. Cynthia Lummis announces bill for US Treasury to buy 1 million bitcoin worth $68 billion Here’s a quote that seems explanatory, “Lummis has been a long-time supporter of bitcoin — reportedly buying her first tokens in 2013…” Ok then. Forgive me for thinking the good senator would like to execute a $68B pump and dump.
Can’t wait to see the earmarks, pork and all-around enshittification that would be attached to such a bill!
Maybe even some more EV chargers?
Or some rural broadband?
/s
Heh heh, pretty sure your intro made your sarcasm tag redundant. I’d wager that list is going to be a bit longer.
An Interior Department appropriations bill passed by the House of Representatives contains deep cuts for the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Environmental Protection Agency, and rolls back wildlife protections, according to advocacy groups.
As passed out of the House late Wednesday, the bill would cut the Park Service main budget by $210 million, or more than 6 percent, and the agency’s budget for maintenance and repairs by more than $22 million, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. The agency’s historic preservation budget would be cut by $20 million.
https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2024/07/house-appropriations-bill-contains-deep-cuts-national-park-service-wildlife-protections
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Went ‘Cloudchasing’ giant towering Hiroshima or Nagasaki-like mushroom clouds in Sequoia NP last week with a buddy, and happy to report no casualties were incurred in the chase, which abated at the Lodgepole market where my parched partner went in and bought a Coors tall-boy for $2.39.
Our NP’s are no different than a cloistered audience at the stadium or a concert, where said barley soda beverage magically is now valued @ $23.90.
You get the idea is to starve the crown jewels into becoming more in line with what you’d pay @ a Taylor Swift concert, not the liquor store around the corner.
The bookend to that legislation will come in a few years from now when those parks and services are run down and derelict. At that point these same politicians will then say that the only way to save America’s Parks is to privatize them and make them run on a for-profit model. I’m sure that a nice private equity corporation is more than willing to buy or lease Redwood National Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Which billionaire can resist buying furniture made of one of the last of America’s redwoods? I wish I was joking.
Most all of the infrastructure in the NP’s dates from the Mission 66* era, meaning it was built in the later 50’s to early 60’s and is pretty tired and hopelessly outdated.
At the Ash Mountain visitors center in the foothills, there is one urinal and one toilet, up in the main part of the park @ the Lodgepole visitors center, you get 2 urinals and 1 toilet.
We get about 2 million visitors, half of which are reliably male and if you can somehow find a parking spot if you gotta go while driving around fruitlessly, things may have gone south in searching for a resting place for four wheels good.
Without exaggeration, most of the buildings in Sequoia NP are tear downs~
* the idea was to have all new infrastructure for the 50th anniversary of the National Park Service in 1966. In stark contrast, if you were in Sequoia NP on the centennial day of the founding of the NPS in 2016, you got a 1×1 inch piece of cake and a round commemorative decal, boy howdy!
It seems that running much of the services at the parks and NF/BLM camp grounds has already been effectively privatized. We just finished our little camping trip and camped in more than a couple of NF and NPS camp grounds (in MT, ID, UT, CO and NM). All were effectively privatized. Only one of them actually honored the NPS card and provided a half price discount from what should have been free. I can understand why it’s being done – it’s probably one of the few remaining ways these government agencies can raise desperately needed funding. And the people running the camp grounds are hard working and really nice. I have a much lower opinion of the corporations they are working for.
IMHO a crime against the American people. America’s parks are beautiful, and deserve better everything.
Re: Why the Left Should Care about Privacy
TOO LATE.
TOO LATE. Indeed. Put it on a t-shirt. It’s “inclusive and intersectional”.
This sort of thing infuriates me. The women’s rights movement and their presumed ally, Team Dem, did absolutely nothing to secure abortion rights, which would not have been hard during Peak Feminism, the 1970, before the religious right had much clout. In most nations, abortion rights have come about via legislation, not court rulings. The Dems continue to be merely performative on this issue. There is no way a Harris Administration could get any meaningful legislation passed. Yet this is why voters should prefer her? Seriously? Because she is selling an empty bag? I could see abortion as on the list since pro-abortion voters are mad at the Republicans for rolling back abortion rights, but the lead when the Dems have nothing real to offer?
———————————–
There is a rationale for not doing anything. If it becomes law – then what will be the reason for those who want to see legal abortions come out and vote for the Democrats?
If it’s not law – then they have to come out and vote for you at every election. :D
Cynical, I know!
To misquote Harper’s Bazaar: You can never be too rich or too thin… or too cynical. / heh
Dunno. By the 70s the Democratic Party was already fracturing, over civil rights, Vietnam, bussing. I doubt the party was ever as united on abortion as we might think either. My recollection (welcome correction) is that there were some attempts at national legislation on abortion that didn’t get very far.
German Publisher Stops All Printing of JD Vance’s Book Hillbilly Elegy Jonathan Turley
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This is pure unadulderated trash!
One in a capitalist system, a private business can’t be forced to do anything.
Try asking a Catholic Hospital system to provide an abortion and watch what Jonathan Turley says.
Also when DT turns dictator, do you think Turley will suffer?
Do you think he will really care about those who will suffer?
Turley sounds like a white man – so I’m sure his star will be ascending in those circumstances.
I suppose then that being in a capitalist system, that J.D. Vance would be free to sell the digital German version of his book online for a nominal sum such as 5 Euros. You think that Kindle would carry it? Or that Germany, Austria and Switzerland would try to block it?
I believe the issue here is that the publisher who won’t print the book has the German rights to it, meaning that nobody else is legally allowed to print it in Germany now either. Why should one person at the head of this company be allowed to decide for the rest of Germany what they can read?
Time to get rid of the capitalist system.
This is ad hominem and a violation of our written site Policies. I trust you will find your happiness on the internet elsewhere.
Indeed.
“Turley sounds like a white man…”
Dude, that’s so 2020: you’ve got to update your rhetoric!
Re: Woke Watch
“Woke” and “DEI” may have more mishaps than gender reveal parties, but the hyper-financialization and crappification of so many things started long before those words came on the scene.
Park Fire is now one of California’s largest wildfires on record, burning area nearly half the size of Rhode Island CBS
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So far-so good here, with every passing day presenting a perpetual pregnant pause as far as pyrotechnics go.
The whole state has pretty much the same conditions on the ground as the ongoing Park Fire…
Sounds like it is a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Not a good feeling, especially when you can see plumes of smoke on the horizon and the wind is blowing hard. Could you keep us all posted?
The nearest problem child is the Borel Fire near Lake Isabella, which has torched 53,000 acres with just 5% containment, and it’s a good 60 miles away-so no concern other than smoke, which is all dependent on which way the wind blows.
They still allow camp fires here in the NP in the higher elevation campgrounds, i’d put the kibosh to that. That heatdome was the closest thing to a convection oven I’ve ever experienced in the golden state.
Dried everything out, let me give you an example.
Was at my brother-in-law’s for dinner and cocktails yesterday and asked his wife how their AirBnB was going and quickly a sad face told the tale of a dead branch that drooped about 4 to 5 feet onto power lines and started a fire at their STR, and luckily the renters were able to put it out, with fire damage being around $20k on the house.
It’s a double whammy for them, as the insurance company is claiming it was a wind event and 50 mph winds were the culprit (there weren’t any winds, I wish there were-something to break to scorching heat) and they are out income during the busiest time of the year for STR’s
I saw this same drooping on some of my oak trees, the constant heat preying on the weakest links of the trees~
The anecdote begs the question. What exactly is insurance for?
‘You’re in good hands with Weasel Words’
…might not be the greatest pitch for TV insurance company commercials, better stick with fowl play and coldblooded spokespersons
From my two years as a trainee actuary I’d say “to give a lot of alcohol-fueled lunches and dinners to actuaries”
/sarc but not sarc
Here in Hawaii I live in a townhouse but have insurance for contents etc. Several years ago the original insurance company went out of business, and I had to replace their policy with two separate ones, a “regular” and a wind (“hurricane”). I don’t know under what conditions one or the other would apply. Hope I never have to find out.
Glad to hear it. Hopefully you and yours (I’m thinking trees here, big trees) get a pass this year.
re: COVID surging in California
Oh, dear. Does that mean Bob Wachter will refrain from eating in restaurants?
Now now. We shouldn’t expect Bob to cancel his so hard to get reservation at The French Laundry.
He can double-date with Newsom?
Re: Milanovic on Polanyi
Inconsistency does not mean infinite malleability. This strange issue of Polanyi’s “…on how economic history should not be studied or understood using the concept of class, nor by focusing only on classes’ material interests, but rather on social recognition.” Recall that if Polanyi was anything, he was an Economic Anthropologist. In primitive and archaic economies “reciprocity” and “redistribution” were “embedded” in social structures. Not so strange in epochal terms. Speenhamland was certainly viewed by many contemporaries as a last gasp redistributional attempt to minimize the devastation of the enclosures.
Varoufakis describes himself as an erratic Marxist. I have always viewed Polanyi in much the same way. Of course Economic Anthropology is way out of fashion…when was it ever in fashion! Michael Hudson seems to share this attribute. That what makes him so fascinating. Anyway, read the book!
Good link for the article by Turley “I’m from NewsGuard and I am here to rate you”. Reminder that NewsGuard is funded by the State Dept. and the Pentagon. This article from June: NewsGuard Claims Not To Be Government-Funded, But A $750K Grant Suggests Otherwise
Yves, know your Kaiju.
Mothra (モスラ) is a good guy in the movies.
It’s Godzilla (ゴジラ) vs King Ghidorah (キングギドラ), or maybe vs. Rodan (ラドン).
Good gal you mean. Mothra is a she. ;)
I have dishonored myself through this error.
How does the value of being the President change for Kamala Harris over time?
I’m assuming the Biden Family is bargaining with the Harris campaign for pardons or commutation, plus cash.
I wonder how petulant and resentful Genocide Joe is?
Gotta be fun for the whole Family…
There’s a value prior to the convention, immediately after the convention when Cackling Kamala recieves the nomination to acclaim, and a diminishing value as the election approaches ( You can fire Lina Khan right away, however sending out $600 checks takes time).
If Harris wins the election the remainder value is nil, if she loses it still has some value in “Enshuring Kamala’s place in History” which may be worth more to Harris than the increased money over time, which would not be inconsiderable.
From COVID surging in California, nears two-year summer high. ‘Almost everybody has it’
Public health messaging in America. It’s okay to get people sick with other things.
So sayeth a chief of infectious disease, that it’s okay to spread non-COVID disease. What a stupid timeline.
At least the LA county department of public health isn’t completely clueless.
But we don’t understand asymptomatic transmission still.
I do not understand how people stay healthy. They wear nothing. They are inhaling the virus all of the time. I suppose that there is some threshold of virus that triggers a sustained flame of infection. I, however, feel sick all of the time, and I’m wearing an industrial respirator and goggles in all indoor public spaces.
If your typical commercial office building full of SARS-CoV-2 because the restroom air is mixed with the office air in the HVAC system, what difference does it make that one or two people in this office or that office are spewing SARS-CoV-2 out of their nose when they exhale? The building is already full of SARS-CoV-2. I put on my respirator and goggles in the parking lot.
Cumulative effects can really make it difficult for those of us who do/did statistics for a living. Now we are getting to understand just how many parts of the human system are affected by COVID, it becomes so much more difficult to “establish what a given person’s accumulated existing impairment was in January 2020”.
Lots of people had a value of zero and seem to carry on doing risky stuff without any obvious harm. In many cases we simply don’t have the bloods and scans to identify these people. Thus you observe the “weirdly staying healthy” brigade you mention.
Then there are people like me who has had a heart condition from birth but which went undiagnosed until I was 33. I’ll admit I take risks in not opening up another 3M mask if I suspect I’m in a low risk environment. However the new variant that NC has reported on that is rapidly overwhelming the USA is definitely here and I suspect I’ll be masking up all the time once again if I’m to avoid “another hit to my heart” and a long period of terrible brain fog. It’s like the exponential distribution (which is often the one used to explain disease spread): everything looks fine for a while until all of a sudden it doesn’t.
Taibbi brings the snark regarding the latest New York magazine coverage of Kamalamadingdong.
Heh –
“In a first in the annals of magazine design, New York fit everyone who voted for Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination on one cover.”
As to ad blockers… The article says that YouTube Premium now has just over 100 million subscribers. At $13.99 USD a month per subscription, that adds up to $1.4billion USD per month. As ‘they’ say, “..a billion here, a billion there, it soon adds up to real money.”
I would love to get a peek at YouTube’s funds flow data.
{Someone is getting rich, and it isn’t me.}
My conclusion is 100 million morons who haven’t installed Linux Mint along with the ad and sponsor blocks in its version of Firefox when using YouTube.
Come on! It’s EASY! Keep dual boot like me if you need Windows for a program that absolutely won’t run on Linux.
I am not “that arrogant linux guy”: I failed in transitioning in early millennium, again in 2015 then finally successfully circa 2021.
That’s not foolproof, I run Gentoo Linux, Firefox with uBlock Origin, no sponsor block and I’ve seen some (non-video) ads slip through in the past couple days. That’s the first I’ve ever seen on this setup. Of course uBlock will adjust and the game will continue anew.
Just to say that Linux isn’t the fix here, though I would recommend using it for most people except where impossible due to your employer.
Thanks for the anecdote. For the record, I too have seen the very occasional ad slip through, but like you I don’t see the same ad twice so the add-on is clearly adapting.
Plus I do feel sorry for people whose company keeps their computer in a Windows prison and I should have thought of those poor souls in my original comment.
> Winter fuel payments scrapped for millions BBC (Kevin W). Note his is a subsidy for pensioners and the poor.
Labour’s excuse is they don’t want a repeat of what happened under Theresa May’s government, when the budget plans of that government to increase the deficit resulted in yields on gilts going up. But that was driven by pension programs in the UK being based on LDI (liability driven investment) strategies which were forced to sell their gilt holdings into a declining market. The BoE stepped in to stop this from spiraling. Jeff Snider was also opining at the time that there was exacerbated by risk aversion in the euro dollar markets (which is still ongoing), as the ability to secure forward trades with quality collateral that wasn’t over pledged was becoming more and more of a challenge. But the result was the downfall of Theresa May’s government.
Anyways, there’s way to get creative so that a repeat of what happend to Theresa May’s government is avoided. But it looks like Labour sees the opportunity: basically keep the gun in place, the gun that was pointed at the head of Theresa May’s government (UK pensions using LDI strategies risking spiraling gilt yields) and use that gun as the pretext for inflicting austerity. Hopefully Labour gets sent packing before people end up suffering too much.
This is what happened to Liz Truss’s government. She was two prime ministers after Theresa May!
Also, some questions need to be asked about the decisions of the Bank of England not to calm the market. They stepped in very late. Truss had said she would reform the BoE among many other radical centrist, man-from-the-ministry-knows-best Austerian institutions (Treasury, Office of Budget Responsibility etc.). BoE had nothing to lose in selling the market the rope to hang her with….
Well that’s embarrassing. Need to subscribe not only to a grammar check, but a time line era check.
And yes agree on BoE. I was struck by that at the time too, that they could have played their hand differently. Seems they decided the Truss Gov (thanks!) didn’t qualify as too big to fail. In which case will they treat the new Labour gov any differently?
Labour’s austerity policies are probably going to push the economy over the edge after the disastrous years of Tory rule.
I’d love to see a detailed analysis on this topic about whether there are any ways around a gilt strike (or whatever you call it). Its a very real problem that often seems to be handwaved away by anti-austerity advocates. A core issue that is usually overlooked is the ‘impossible trinity’ of sovereignty, free trade and open capital markets. Something has to give. The UK is an almost uniquely open economy for a large country, this creates particular challenges that go way beyond ‘just tax the rich more’ solutions.
Of course, the problem with austerity, apart from the inhumanity of it, is the Swabian Housewife myth. Everyone seems to have forgotten their basic Keynesianism. Austerity only works in an open economy if someone else supplies your demand. So far, the UK seems to me to have gotten fairly lucky – there is sufficient worldwide demand for its services to keep the show on the road – I’m continually surprised at how consistently the UK has managed to keep up a fairly steady (if low, per person) level of growth over the past decade. But eventually I think the UK economy will run out of that luck.
It should be said that I probably shouldn’t opine too much on the UK economy as I’ve been consistently wrong about it. A few years ago I was pretty much convinced that a combination of austerity, Brexit, high interest rates, and an enormous amount of consumer debt would condemn it to a financial crisis – starting with a drop in sterling leading to bank collapses. But it hasn’t happened, and some normally cautious economists are even starting to sound quite optimistic about its prospects. So… its hard to say, but I wouldn’t be optimistic about a Starmer government having the courage to make hard decisions (and I don’t mean hard decisions like cutting winter payments in the middle of the summer holidays).
I agree with Philip on this, whilst UK is sovereign in currency it cannot make up for trade related issues. At this moment due to its and E.U. Russia dramas its increased base costs and now Labour is coming with Austerity to save the have wells.
Glad my girls are coming home form SE1.
Well it’s the same difference on why we can tell bond vigilanties in the US to go pound sand. It’s because we haven’t given them an effective gun to point at the Fed Gov’s head.
In the US some banks were stupid enough to be exposed to their balance sheets when interest rates increased. And the Fed Reserve stepped in to buy at par.
Is it the same case in the UK, where only some UK pensions are stupid enough to be similarly exposed when interest rates increase? Or is this some kind of endemic thing where UK pensions in general have exposed themselves to this risk (via signing up to LDI schemes)? If it’s the latter, then UK needs to eventually tackle this. Get them to migrate off these investment strategies.
But all in due time. Because I think UK and US are headed to a recession/depressions regardless. So rates will go down. Which buys time until the next bout of unnatural inflation. In the mean time, introduce governance to move the UK pensions off of LDI schemes or whatever it takes to remove them as a gun pointed at your head.
Until the UK Gov can ignore the bond vigilanties, give them creedance, by meeting their demands halfway. Along the lines of we’re not going to have austerity and we’re not going to be profligate either: we’re going to be responsible. As opposed to saying “we’re broke”. I think that’s all the markets require: jaw bone them. And this is what the UK Gov should be doing anyways, regardless of bond vigilanties. It’s not like Labour wants to be profligate anyways.
Even a Corbynist gov wouldn’t be profligate to the point of wanting to create inflation that is painful for their constituency. But they might be willing to create inflation that causes the capitalists to whine as it burdens their NPVs. Just make sure you have your ducks in a row.
Noticing that the 13 week treasury has broken out of the zone it’s been in for the last year or so and is down by 10 basis points or so in the last so many days. This I think presages that it’s just a matter of time before the Fed Reserve cuts rates.
Everybody has been clamoring for the Fed Reserve to cut rates, the thinking that that will boost markets. If history is any guide, cutting rates means we’re entering into recession if not depression. Be careful what you ask for. Anyways, just in time for the election.