Bird Song of the Day
Sage Thrasher, Sierra Valley–Marble Hot Springs Rd., Plumas, California, United States. “Song including mimicry. Bird singing from a fencepost at roadside.” Eight minutes so grab a cup of coffee
In Case You Might Miss…
- Pollsters and polling.
- Getting to know Kamala.
- Election Trump’s to lose: Is that what he’s doing?
- Boeing’s “absurd litany of self-inflicted crises” plus brutal Senate report on whistleblower reports.
“Woman, 79, fell while hiking. A stranger carried her for hours on his back” [WaPo]. “[Ursula] Bannister arrived at the trail around 11 a.m. and made her way to the lookout. As she headed back down, she made a misstep, and her foot got caught on a hole in the ground. She fell forward…. [Troy May and Layton Allen.] two young men… came over to see what was going on. When they saw Bannister on the ground in agony, they immediately made an offer: They could carry Bannister to the bottom of the trail… Others pitched in as well: Shortly into the hike, May’s boots were giving him blisters. A man he didn’t know on the trail saw the situation and gave May his shoes… ‘I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that these people literally came out of the woods to help me and they were totally unselfish and kind,’ [Bannister] said.” • I left a lot of detail out, all of it encouraging.
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Trump Assassination Attempts (Plural)
“Aileen Cannon set to oversee apparent Trump assassination attempt case in Florida” [Politico]. “U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon — a Trump appointee — was randomly assigned the attempted assassination case Tuesday after a grand jury in Miami returned a five-count indictment against Ryan Routh in connection with the Sept. 15 incident at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.” • Life’s little ironies!
2024
Less than fifty days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
Once again, the Democrats must be very puzzled to have virtual unanimity across the political spectrum that “Harris is the one” — no doubt there will be another liberalgasm after Oprah — and yet the election is a virtual tie. How can this be? Perhaps a few more Republicans, generals, or celebrities will turn the tide.
* * * “Key things to know about U.S. election polling in 2024” [Pew Research]. “Adjusting on more variables produces more accurate results, according to Center studies in 2016 and 2018. A number of pollsters have taken this lesson to heart. For example, recent high-quality polls by Gallup and The New York Times/Siena College adjusted on eight and 12 variables, respectively. Our own polls typically adjust on 12 variables. In a perfect world, it wouldn’t be necessary to have that much intervention by the pollster. But the real world of survey research is not perfect.” And: “Preelection polls face one crucial challenge that routine opinion polls do not: determining who of the people surveyed will actually cast a ballot. Roughly a third of eligible Americans do not vote in presidential elections, despite the enormous attention paid to these contests. Determining who will abstain is difficult because people can’t perfectly predict their future behavior – and because many people feel social pressure to say they’ll vote even if it’s unlikely. No one knows the profile of voters ahead of Election Day. We can’t know for sure whether young people will turn out in greater numbers than usual, or whether key racial or ethnic groups will do so. This means pollsters are left to make educated guesses about turnout, often using a mix of historical data and current measures of voting enthusiasm. This is very different from routine opinion polls, which mostly do not ask about people’s future intentions.” And finally: “When major news breaks, a poll’s timing can matter. Public opinion on most issues is remarkably stable, so you don’t necessarily need a recent poll about an issue to get a sense of what people think about it. But dramatic events can and do change public opinion.” • Which is why “early voting” in any form, including mail-in ballots, is morally wrong in a democracy.
“Polling Error in 2016-2020: Look Out for Wisconsin” [Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. “To be clear, we have no idea whether the polls will be biased consistently one way or the other in 2024. Maybe Trump will be understated again: if so, he is almost certainly going to win the election given how close the polls are now. Maybe Harris will be understated: if so, she is in a great position to win given that she appears to already lead in enough states to win 270 electoral votes, albeit barely. Or there might be little bias either way, or inconsistent bias depending on the state, in which case this election will be very hard to confidently predict based on the current numbers. Polling error is not necessarily consistent from year to year—while polls understated Trump in 2016 and 2020, the longer-term history of polling errors is a bit more mixed, per this helpful chart from the Pew Research Center based on American Association for Public Opinion Research data. Our best guess is that because Trump’s polling position is better than 2016 and 2020, it’s likelier that he’s at least not being as underestimated as much as he was in previous elections, if he is being underestimated at all. For one thing, other indicators do not really suggest that we’re in the midst of an electoral environment that is much stronger for Republicans than the past two elections (those indicators include special elections in 2023 and 2024 and the recent Washington state top-two primary). While Democrats have now nominated three different opponents against Donald Trump, Trump himself will be on the ballot for a third straight time. It just doesn’t seem likely to us that he will do markedly better than he did in either 2016 or 2020, which is what would happen if the polls were biased against him again. The third installment of the Trump trilogy will likely look a fair amount like the first two installments as opposed to being dramatically different; this is why we’ve long expected a close and competitive election, with only the last few weeks of Joe Biden’s candidacy really making us seriously consider the possibility of Trump doing substantially better than his previous presidential runs. The close polls suggest a close election: That seems realistic.”
“Polling Whiplash” [Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect]. “[The indispensable Michael Podhorzer] astutely points out that all polling is ‘opinion journalism.’ Why? Because pollsters make assumptions about who is a likely voter and how to weigh or overweigh different demographic groups. ‘The ‘opinions’ are not about issues or ideology, but about methodological approaches,’ Podhorzer writes.”
* * * Kamala (D): Kamala’s mother wearing the sari typical of Black women of that generation:
I grew up a middle-class kid. I was raised by a hardworking mother, who like so many people across our nation, had big dreams and aspirations for her children. As president, it will be my top priority to bring down costs for working families.
Under my plan, more than 100 million… pic.twitter.com/Wz0ElwGbtv
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 25, 2024
(To anyone new: I have no objection to Kamala’s identity, whatever it may be. I do object to Kamala morphing her perceived identity to meet the needs of the political campaign du jour.)
Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris Needs To Get Out More” [Ross Barkan, Persuasions]. “Still missing from Harris is any sort of formal press conference or the regular television appearances that J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate, still makes. She has not allowed for an extended interview with any newspaper or magazine reporter, either. If she’s visited a local Philadelphia TV station, she hasn’t sat down with the Philadelphia Inquirer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, or any major print-based organization in a crucial swing state. It goes without saying she won’t subject herself to a grilling from the New York Times editorial board. Oddly, she has even dodged friendly outlets like MSNBC and pundits like Ezra Klein, who would ask probing questions but is fundamentally sympathetic to her project…. Part of the reason the election continues to be close is that too many Americans feel they know too little about Harris. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll that revealed a dip in her standing since the sugar high of the Democratic convention, 28 percent of likely voters said they felt they needed to know more about Harris, while only 9 percent said they needed to know more about Trump. ‘I don’t know what Kamala’s plans are,’ Dawn Conley, a 48-year-old small-business owner and undecided voter in Knoxville, Tenn. told the Times. ‘It’s kind of hard to make a decision when you don’t know what the other party’s platform is going to be.’.. Really, Harris should be everywhere. The Sunday morning talk shows, the newspaper sitdowns, and formal press conferences are a start. Podcasts, ethnic media, alternative media, and regional outlets should be added to the mix. If she doesn’t crave the mass heterodox audience of a Joe Rogan, she can spend extended time with the aforementioned Klein or Alex Cooper, who has become something of the young millenial/Gen Z Howard Stern.” • In my view, people do not know Harris because there is nobody there to be known.
Kamala (D): Get out more, but not like this:
Since the appearance is for an interview, I can’t really fault Kamala’s campaign for requiring invitations, but maybe a public rally on-campus too?
* * * Trump (R): “2024 Election Environment Favorable to GOP” [Gallup]. The lead: “Nearly all Gallup measures that have shown some relationship to past presidential election outcomes or that speak to current perceptions of the two major parties favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. Chief among these are Republican advantages in U.S. adults’ party identification and leanings, the belief that the GOP rather than the Democratic Party is better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, Americans’ dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, and negative evaluations of the economy with a Democratic administration in office.” • Handy chart:
Trump (R): “‘He should be doing better’: Even some Trump allies see him veering off course” [Politico]. “Donald Trump was meeting privately in mid-September with one of his oldest friends, Steve Wynn, when the casino mogul and Republican mega-donor delivered the former president a blunt warning: You’re off message, and it isn’t helping…. To drive home his point, Wynn showed Trump polling and suggested the former president would be better off focusing on policy issues where Republicans see his opponent, Kamala Harris, as vulnerable, according to two people briefed on the meeting and granted anonymity to describe it. The meeting underscored a key point of tension inside the Trump campaign. While polls show the race is incredibly close, some of Trump’s allies are concerned that his impulses and coarse approach to campaigning are undermining him against Harris, a rival who has proved far stronger than his previous opponent, Joe Biden. In interviews, more than a dozen Trump allies described the former president as reaching a crossroads — faced with the choice of continuing with the missteps that have overtaken the past several weeks of his campaign or embracing a more calculated approach aimed at appealing to a small subset of undecided voters who are likely to sway the outcome of the election. In recent weeks, he has brought into his fold destabilizing forces like social media provocateur Laura Loomer and his controversial former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, plugged commemorative Trump coins, and asserted that if he loses, Jews would be partly to blame. ‘It’s not that he’s going backwards,’ said one Trump ally granted anonymity to speak freely. ‘But he should be doing better.'” • False dichotomy, to me. It’s not (media-driven) mis-steps vs. calculated approach; it’s populist vs. non-populist. If Trump gives the populist approach the oomph only he can give, he wins (and yes, deep six Laura Loomer and the effing cats immediately. Work the grill at MacDonalds. I mean, does anybody think those Undecideds are PMC?).
Trump (R): “Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files citizen criminal charges against Trump and Vance” [Associated Press]. “The leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community invoked a private-citizen right to file charges Tuesday against former President Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, over the chaos and threats experienced by Springfield, Ohio, since Trump first spread false claims about legal immigrants there during a presidential debate. The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm. Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio…. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled. Trump and Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, are charged with disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm that there is probable cause and issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance.”
Trump (R): “Donald Trump Has a Plan to Make America’s Children Healthy Again. It’s a Good One” [Robert Redfield, Newsweek]. “In 2019, the Trump Administration set a course to address chronic disease, funding earlier interventions to curb the growing crisis. Five years later, this issue is exactly where it needs to be: at the center of the presidential debate, now in a unique partnership. To heal our children, a president must see the possible and lead our nation to act. After more than 40 years in the public health arena, it might surprise some of my colleagues to know I think President Trump chose the right man for the job: Robert Kennedy, Jr…. Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture. A large portion of the FDA’s budget is provided by pharmaceutical companies. NIH is cozy with biomedical and pharmaceutical companies and its scientists are allowed to collect royalties on drugs NIH licenses to pharma. And as the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I know the agency can be influenced by special interest groups. But it doesn’t stop in the health agencies: the U.S. Department of Agriculture is a captive of industry, too. Created to help the family farmer and to ensure a wholesome food supply, today the agency often favors large corporations over the interests of small farmers and the public’s health. To cure our children, we must reevaluate our food choices and the underlying practices of the agricultural sector. We must prioritize wholesome and nutritious food.” • A populist opportunity here, too.
* * * Kennedy (I): Asking for my vote again:
Zelensky’s only strategy for victory is to embroil us in World War III. And VP Harris is all for it https://t.co/U1Dmlwtx7A
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 25, 2024
* * * NY: “Trump sets his sights on deep-blue New York” [The Hill]. “While Trump’s hopes of flipping New York seem lofty, Republicans point to other underlying reasons for his visits there, namely to boost four House Republicans in the state whose results may decide which party controls the House: Reps. Mike Lawler, Anthony D’Esposito, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams.” • “Lofty” doesn’t begin to describe it.
PA: “Pennsylvania poll reveals tight presidential race, inflation a key concern” [The Hill]. “Vice President Harris narrowly leads former President Trump in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, according to a new poll released by Monmouth University Wednesday. Data showed that 40 percent of voters in the Keystone State said they will definitely vote for Harris, compared to 38 percent who said the same of Trump. Eight percent said they would probably vote for the vice president, while seven percent said they would probably vote for the former president, according to the poll.”
PA: “In Pennsylvania tour, Trump hits all the right places and messages” [Washington Examiner]. “The visit to Kittanning was the second of three stops the former president made during his visit to Western Pennsylvania on Monday. He traversed over 100 miles throughout Allegheny, Armstrong, Indiana, and Westmoreland counties. Meandering through mostly back roads, all along the way, Trump’s motorcade was greeted by thousands of people gathering in front of their small towns, suburban bedroom enclaves, or standing in front of their farms with their tractors or cows, waving Terrible Towels, makeshift Trump signs, or official Trump-Vance flags. And even along the jersey barriers of the halted traffic on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, people stood on top of their cars or in front of them to wave.” • I’d say turnout won’t be a problem.
PA: Oopsie:
With bit more time, I’d authenticate the screen dumps. Nevertheless…
Our Famously Free Press
“George Soros taking ‘shortcut’ to buy 200 US radio stations, FCC commissioner says” [NBC Montana]. “The transaction, which was reported by The National Desk in February, would break a rule preventing more than 25% foreign ownership of U.S. radio stations, [Commissioner Brendan Carr of theFederal Communications Commission] alleges. Despite this, Carr claimed the agency was expediting its review process. ‘What we usually do is require people to file a petition with us, bring in the National Security Agency to review the foreign ownership—it’s probably no big deal here—but we review that foreign ownership and then we vote,’ Carr said. ‘Here, they’re trying to do something that’s never been done before at a commission level.'” • Curious timing.
Realignment and Legitimacy
Firesign Theatre as scorching as ever:
Hat tip to alert reader justme.
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Sequelae: Covid
“Post-hospitalisation COVID-19 cognitive deficits at one year are global and associated with elevated brain injury markers and grey matter volume reduction” (manuscript) [Nature]. From the Abstract: “We report the one-year cognitive, serum biomarker, and neuroimaging findings from a prospective, national study of cognition in 351 COVID-19 patients who had required hospitalisation, compared to 2,927 normative matched controls. Cognitive deficits were global and associated with elevated brain injury markers, and reduced anterior cingulate cortex volume one year after COVID-19. The severity of the initial infective insult, post-acute psychiatric symptoms, and a history of encephalopathy were associated with greatest deficits. There was strong concordance between subjective and objective cognitive deficits. Longitudinal follow-up in 106 patients demonstrated a trend toward recovery. Together, these findings support the hypothesis that brain injury in moderate to severe COVID-19 may be immune-mediated, and should guide the development of therapeutic strategies.”
“Long COVID and associated outcomes following COVID-19 reinfections: Insights from an International Patient-Led Survey” (preprint) [Research Square]. ” We developed and disseminated internationally a patient-centered online survey examining the outcomes of COVID-19 reinfections. The survey incorporated validated instruments on fatigue, post-exertional malaise, and physical function with questions about COVID-19 infection history, vaccination, and Long COVID symptoms, including symptoms related to immune and reproductive health. We tested whether the likelihood of Long COVID and related outcomes increases with COVID-19 infection numbers. Results: Here we show that reinfections increase the likelihood of reporting Long COVID, which increased 2.1-fold from one to two infections. Among 3,382 participants, 22% reported never having had COVID-19, 42% experienced it once, and 35% reported reinfections. Relative to those who did not report infections or experienced COVID-19 once, reinfections were associated with increased likelihood of severe fatigue, post-exertional malaise, decreased physical function, poorer immune health, symptom exacerbation before menstruation, and multiple other Long COVID symptoms. While vaccinations and boosters prior to infection are associated with lower likelihood of Long COVID, reinfections diminish their protective effect. The probability of reporting Long COVID remission is generally low (11.5%-6.5%).” • Yikes.
Morbidity and Mortality
Just a flu:
Excellent news! Covid is only 38x worse than influenza so far in 2024, so it's basically the same thing finally. https://t.co/szq9RJyk2G
— Radical Centrist,wrathful tantric deity🇺🇦🇹🇼🎗️ (@RadCentrism) September 24, 2024
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| Variants [3] CDC September 14 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC September 14 |
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| ★ New York[5] New York State, data September 23: |
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| National[7] Walgreens September 23: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic September 7: |
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| Positivity[9] CDC September 2: | Variants[10] CDC September 2: |
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| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 14: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 14: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading. NOTE The date seems to be wrong, but the number of sites has changed so this is new.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XDV.1 flat.
[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.
[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!
[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) What the heck is LB.1?
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
There are no statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “Boeing gives striking Machinists union more time to vote on latest offer” [Seattle Times]. “Boeing Co. backed down from a Friday night deadline for striking workers to approve its latest contract offer after union leaders refused to schedule a vote…. The sparring has injected new tension into the talks at a time when the cash-strapped plane-maker can’t afford a long, drawn-out strike. Boeing’s tactics have also puzzled some longtime observers of the planemaker’s labor relations. ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Leon Grunberg, an academic who’s tracked Boeing labor relations for a quarter-century. ‘I don’t know if it’s a misstep from the CEO or people further down.’… Boeing on Tuesday said that it had offered the union more time and ‘logistical support’ for a vote. It removed the Sept. 27 deadline, without imposing any new time frame for acceptance of the offer. ‘This strike is affecting our team and our communities, and we believe our employees should have the opportunity to vote on our offer that makes significant improvements in wages and benefits,’ Boeing said in an emailed statement. Union officials have said they wouldn’t schedule a vote on the company’s latest proposal, describing it as unrealistic and disrespectful in a fiery statement posted late Monday.” • Our “team.”
Manufacturing: “Striking Boeing workers would like the company to stop negotiating in public” [Quartz]. “‘Our members stand strong, and we remain ready to continue mediated or direct negotiations with Boeing,’ [IAM] said in an update to members on Tuesday. ‘This has been made clear to both the company and our membership. The only way to resolve this strike is through negotiations, and rest assured, your Union will not bargain through the media.'”
Manufacturing: “Another unforced error by Boeing is souring the new boss’ good vibes” [CNN]. “There’s an old saying for labor relations, says Art Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations: ‘You never want to negotiate in the press.’ ‘The bargaining team is responsible for negotiating with management,’ Wheaton said. ‘And what Boeing did is it say, ‘yeah, I don’t care.’ … They just sent it out to everybody.’ He added: ‘I don’t know what their game plan is. I think they were just not very bright on how they did that.’ It’s also not clear what role Ortberg played in the decision to take the offer directly to union members and the media. But it’s a clear departure from the diplomatic approach the CEO had signaled early on.
‘Everybody thinks unions strike over money,’ Wheaton notes. But often, it’s also about respect. ‘Obviously Boeing did not respect the union in this setup.’ Ortberg came into the top job with a big advantage: His predecessors were so openly hostile toward labor, even small gestures seemed to buy him some credibility. It’s not too late, according to Richard Aboulafia, a managing director at aerospace consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory, who told me he is ‘still hopeful’ Ortberg can right Boeing’s course, even with an absurd litany of self-inflicted crises playing out at the same time. ‘Diplomacy matters in situations like this,’ Aboulafia said, adding: ‘It’s hard to tell what’s Ortberg’s mistakes … and what’s just Boeing institutional arrogance.'” • Could be both!
Manufacturing: “Boeing Workers Felt Schedule Pressure Even After Midair Blowout” [Bloomberg]. “According to the survey conducted with about 2,100 Boeing workers in May — four months after a fuselage panel blew off a 737 Max aircraft shortly after takeoff — less than half of frontline manufacturing personnel stated that schedule pressures didn’t cause their team to lower standards. The revelation shows that workers continued to feel pressure to cut corners even after Boeing’s campaign to overhaul its safety culture was well underway.”
Manufacturing: “Preliminary Information from the Subcommittee’s Inquiry into Boeing’s Safety and Quality Practices” (PDF) [United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations]. “Whistleblower reports spanning more than a decade raise questions about Boeing’s ability to timely source and track aircraft parts and ensure that damaged or inadequate parts (‘nonconforming parts’) are not used in aircraft production. The tracking and disposition of aircraft parts that do not conform to their quality or design specifications is heavily regulated, and criminal penalties apply to knowing or intentional falsification, concealment, or materially fraudulent misrepresentation in connection with records documenting the disposition of aircraft parts.3 Aircraft manufacturers are required to maintain a written quality system that includes “[p]rocedures to ensure that only products or articles that conform to their approved design are installed on a type-certificated product…. In May 2024, Sam Mohawk, a current [i.e., still alive] Boeing Quality Assurance investigator at the MRSA in Renton, Washington, informed the Subcommittee that he has witnessed systemic disregard for documentation and accountability of nonconforming parts at Boeing’s Renton facility, where the 737 MAX is manufactured. On June 11, 2024, Mr. Mohawk filed a claim with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (‘OSHA’), which is attached as Attachment 1. This complaint has not been previously released publicly. Mr. Mohawk’s current role at MRSA includes handling nonconforming parts, work that he alleges became significantly more complex and demanding following the resumption of 737 MAX production when the FAA authorized the aircraft to return to service following two crashes in 2018 and 2019. Mr. Mohawk alleges that ‘[c]ompared to pre-grounding, MRSA was experiencing a 300% increase [of nonconformance reports]’ and that “the 737 program was losing hundreds of non-conforming parts.’ Mohawk feared that non-conforming parts were being installed on the 737s and that it could lead to a catastrophic event.” • Yikes!
Tech: Cheeky!
Make a splash with an 🍎 like your Apple never has using Instant Slow-Mo with Galaxy AI on #GalaxyS24Ultra.
— Samsung Mobile US (@SamsungMobileUS) September 13, 2024
Energy: “Cometh The Hour” [Doomberg]. This paragraph caught my eye: “A rock-solid adage of venture investing is that all the deals are undersubscribed except for the ones that are oversubscribed. As such, a handsome living can be made by simply slipstreaming behind term sheets negotiated by others when you know that everybody else knows that the underlying startup will soon raise again at a higher valuation. One need not understand financial models, technology trends, or even the language embedded in the documents signed. Get yourself invited into deals that others are eager to fund, and lucrative returns are sure to follow.”
Shipping: On the upcoming Longshoreman’s strike:
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 67 Greed (previous close: 65 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 25 at 1:55:41 PM ET.
Permaculture
Kill the lawn:
A good example of the tokenism that so often passes for 'action' on biodiversity collapse: a 'bug hotel', plonked in a garden of
a) Sterile lawns
b) Alien plantsIt's shocking, I know, but what wildlife *really* needs is actual wild, natural HABITAT. pic.twitter.com/TY6s6i9Cu6
— Eoghan Daltun 🌍 (@IrishRainforest) September 25, 2024
“Union accuses Waffle House of chronic wage theft” [Restaurant Dive]. “The Union of Southern Service Workers alleges Waffle House consistently underpaid workers by illegally claiming a tip credit on ineligible work. The union filed a wage and hours complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor on Thursday, and requested the DOL remove Waffle House’s ability to take a tip credit. The USSW, an affiliate of Service Employees International Union, based the complaint on interviews with more than 20 workers, and alleged the company engaged in other forms of wage theft. The Strategic Organizing Center, a labor federation including SEIU, released a survey of more than 400 Waffle House employees that, according to a press release, found 90% of surveyed workers experienced one form of wage theft in the last year. Waffle House did not respond to a request for comment on USSW’s allegations.”
“Diddy ‘isn’t eating in jail fearing he’ll be poisoned’ amid claims he kept ‘Epstein-style tapes of Freak Off parties'” [The Sun]. “The disgraced rapper is sharing a cell in a New York jail with crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried after his arrest last week.” • Birds of a feather?
“Diddy’s prediction about his wild parties from 25 years ago resurfaces after sex trafficking arrest” [Daily Mail]. “The rapper told Entertainment Tonight that he felt one day he would be arrested for his ‘crazy parties.’ His wild fetes – which are not to be confused with his lurid Freak Offs – were attended by stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez, Sarah Jessica Parker as well as Kim and Khloe Kardashian. ‘You’re gonna hear about my parties,’ said the 54-year-old rap mogul as he referred to his star-studded bashes. ‘They’re gonna be shutting them down. They’re gonna probably be arresting me, doing all types of crazy things just ’cause we wanna have a good time,’ Combs added.” • These “fetes” are the “White Parties” of the 90s (everyone wears white)–
“Inside Diddy’s debauched star-studded White Parties where drugs were snorted off bodies, topless women cavorted in the pool and little kids were told ‘one day y’all gonna want to come” [Daily Mail]. “But back in the day, before he stood accused of running a ‘criminal enterprise’ and was deemed a threat to society and justice, celebrities clamoured for an invite to Diddy’s era-defining White Parties held at his East Hampton home between 1998 and 2009…. According to former music industry insider Tom Swoope, who has recounted his own memories of ‘surviving’ Diddy’s White Parties on his YouTube channel, ‘First Off In My Opinion: Story Time’, the parties were separated into ‘tiers’ of access. There was ‘general admission’ then a series of ‘tiers’ ending with entrance to the inner sanctum where the ‘real’ partying went on. This allegedly included sexually humiliating male and female guests on the promise of record deals or money.” • Those “tiers” are interesting. There’s a rumor floating around that the Obamas attended a Diddy party; I’m not sure whether a fete or a White Party. Assuming both types of party were structured along the same lines, I think it’s very unlikely the canny Obamas would have gone anywhere near the inner sanctum. At the same time, it’s unlikely that it wasn’t perfectly obvious what was going on, exactly in the same way that Epstein bringing young women to massage his back at MIT meetings was perfectly obvious.
“On The Phone Live From Prison”:
Former record executive Suge Knight revealed to Chris Cuomo that a former Interscope Records employee's job was to deliver underage girls to artists and staff to have s*x with them, and claimed Diddy has been involved with the FBI throughout his entire career.
Knight also… pic.twitter.com/bFyBU9cfRr
— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) September 25, 2024
“How We Sort the World: Gregory Murphy on the Psychology of Categories” [The MIT Press Reader]. “We put an awful lot of effort into trying to figure out and convince others of just what kind of person someone is, what kind of action something was, and even what kind of object something is. We often feel that once we determine the thing’s category, then all questions will be answered about it: The person is qualified or unqualified; it’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing; the object must be made out of wood. But division into categories is often arbitrary — not completely, but in some respects. And every category is a simplification to some degree; it throws away information about the thing. If you call me an academic, that is no doubt true, but that doesn’t include a lot of other information about me, nor do I correspond exactly to your stereotype of an academic. (OK, I actually do, but a lot of academics don’t.) There are a number of different ways to make categories, and they don’t always agree with one another. At some point, we have to make a principled decision about what the category is and why that is the best way to think about it, because the world isn’t pre-divided into nice categories that we simply have to notice.” • Hmm.
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Kamala agrees to an interview! With…MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, who argued last week that the public doesn’t need answers from Harris. CNBC’s Joe Kiernan remarks that no one likes her “Rope-a-Dope strategy” of avoiding tough questions. So, time to have fun with new lyrics for The Rolling Stone’s “Honky Tonk Women”
ROPE-A-DOPE WOMAN
I met her…in some upscale bar with Willie
She climbed up on his shoulders for a ride
He juiced her up with power above her weight class
And said, “Girl…never say what’s on your mind”
She’s a Ro-o-o-o-ope…a-Dope woman!
That gimme, gimme, gimme, the rope-a-dope blues.
Obama…cut some backroom deals with Biden
He said, “Joe…you’re so god damn lily-white
“You need a…girl of color on your ticket
“And I know one…with a vacuum of a mind!”
She’s a Ro-o-o-o-ope…a-Dope woman!
That gimme, gimme, gimme, the Rope-a-Dope blues.
She showed Old Joe…the twenty-fifth amendment
And now she got her eyes upon The Prize
Runnin’ out the clock with talks on Oprah
Just sayin’…scripted lines stuffed in her mind
She’s a Ro-o-o-o-ope…a-Dope woman!
That gimme, gimme, gimme, the Rope-a-Dope blues.
She’s a Ro-o-o-o-ope…a-Dope woman!
That gimme, gimme, gimme, the Rope-a-Dope blues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqqkGxZ1_8I
Identifying parts of your identity that match the person you are speaking with and then emphasizing them is a very human trait and to require someone, even a politician, never do that does not seem fair in my opinion. Moreso if that person is racialized by our current hegemony. In fact, I believe there are many examples of that being a survival strategy.
We contain multitudes and, unless this is used to intentionally deceive, which I’m not sure it is, I think we should temper our criticism.
Aren’t you also describing sociopaths?
I am a caucasian male. If I affected an Alabama accent while in Mobile I’d expect ridicule. I leave it to my African American fellow citizens to decide if she is code switching or something else. Opinions likely vary.
Hadn’t thought of that, Bruce. Especially like the Whitman reference.
Reading Lambert’s note: I found myself wondering if this isn’t a variant of Freddie deBoer’s “deference politics” mentioned in yesterday’s Water Cooler. “The tendency of left-leaning people to substitute interpersonal obsequiousness towards “marginalized groups” for the actual material change those groups demand.” While she’s not necessarily being “obsequious” the Veep appears to have made a career of indulging in shameless pandering which is obsequious adjacent.
But then again, she is seeking to “rule the world” so I guess nothing should surprise us – unless she embraces Lina Khan, supports withholding weapons shipments to Israel, or pledges to make all of the remaining JFK documents available to the public. Any of those acts would qualify as supporting material change.
> Identifying parts of your identity that match the person you are speaking with and then emphasizing them is a very human trait and to require someone, even a politician, never do that does not seem fair in my opinion.
Nonsense. This is akin to the category error DeBoer describes: “[Privileging] the communicative and the emotional over the material and the actual.”
Imagine I were a candidate, and first I ran for office as a true-born Irishman, and then a few years later tossed out all the brochures with the shamrocks on them, ran as a WASP, complete with photos of my Episcopal church and Brooks Brothers clothing, and then a few years later ran as an “I don’t see ethnicity”-type person with hair like Gavin Newsom’s. People would rightly conclude that I was ridiculous and that there was something wrong with me, and not just as a candidate. It’s not as if I was exaggerating my profile on social media; I was a candidate. What Kamala is doing is equally shameless and cynical.
The actuality is that Kamala is running for office. When she printed her first campaign brochure running as an Indian (from India), she was making the implicit claim to represent that community*. Then she runs and represents as Black, albeit not as ADOS, I’ll give her that, all the liberal Democrats start playing the race card, but then it turns out her ancestry is mixed, and so now she’s a Woman of Color, except when the race card needs to be played, etc., etc. She’s doing all this to win votes, as a candidate (so yes, the intention is to deceive).
* This is not my theory of politics, because I reject identity politics. But it is the theory of politics that many Democrats share.
I would imagine that there is a more “constructive” way to do “identity” politics: if Harris could actually meaningfully reach out to the communities to which she allegedly belongs, she could actually talk to the Indian-Americans like an actual Indian-American and she can talk to African-Americans like an actual African-American, in a manner of speaking, being able to credibly show both a real understanding and empathy that the people on the other end can see, feel, and appreciate. I’m not sure how much of that, if any, has ever taken place in any of the campaigns she was part of. And, this is not an easy thing: to show that you are a credible member of the tribe that you allegedly belong to does usually require that you really are a member of the tribe who actually acts as part of that tribe (not easy nowadays), or you have such good understanding of that tribe that you might as well be a member (or, you’re fantabulously good at playacting, enough that you can fool the real tribals. If you can do that, you deserve props if only for being such a good liar.)
What Harris is doing, really, seems to me like she’s trying to convince the PMC that she is a member of the tribe she’s talking to. So she doesn’t really need to meet the requirements to convince the real tribals that she is one of them. She only needs to convince PMC that she is one of the tribe–b/c PMC loves symbolic tribalism. I’m not sure how Indian-Americans and African-Americans are reacting to these (in their many variations). But having seen this sort of playacting in my corner of the States often enough, vis-a-vis different tribes that I belong to, I tend to think that bad acting begets hostility and distrust.
Interesting point, although I’m not convinced that the “real tribals” exist outside of PMC fantasies. There are plenty of people who genuinely come from the racial or ethnic backgrounds that constitute tribal verticals in the PMC imagination, but they don’t seem to think and act the way the PMC expect them to. So yes, Harris is playing “code-switcher” to the PMC more than she is trying to curry favor with any actual racial or ethnic group.
This kind of pandering to the voters’ identities has long been a feature of political campaigning, particularly with Democrats. For example, here is Hunter Thompson in his book on the 1972 presidential campaign, quoting Donald Pfarrer of the Milwaukee Journal on Hubert Humphrey’s campaigning style:
“If you’re from Wisconsin, he’s your neighbor from Minnesota and he tells you so. If you’re old, he has an aging mother living in a nursing home in Huron, S.D. If you’re a farmer, he grew up among people like you. If you’re a union man, he carries a union card and defended the unions when few others would. If you’re black, he fought for civil rights. If you’re young, he was a teacher, and he was young once himself. If you’re from the city, he was a mayor. If you’re poor, he was poor once himself and had to quit school.”
The tribes may vary over time, but the technique endures.
As a curious aside, I think it was Hubert Humphrey who introduced the slogan “The Politics of Joy.”
“For every tribal we offend and lose in X, we’ll pick up two PMC symbolic tribalism lovers in Y. Repeat for Z, Q, R, etc.”
I don’t really get this: “… it turns out her ancestry is mixed”.
Her dad was always Jamaican, her mum was always Indian.
She’s always been both black and Indian (according, as Bruce has pointed out, to the current dominant racialized means of identifying people).
What if you have both identities?
I get why Kamala riles people but I think she deserves a break on this particular point.
“Kamaleon Harris.”
There is no there there.
She is unburdened by what has none.
She is unburdened by what was embarassing.
HidenBarris.
God hurt us if she wins.
You know, Marco Rubio allegedly does/did that: there was an article that pointed out that he goes to both a Catholic mass and an Evangelical service on Sundays (it’s from 2016, and I can’t remember where I read it.) The persons interviewed for the article did not seem happy to learn that he was doing that, but I have no idea what came out of it.
Personally, I would have found it pretty offensive.
I’m Methodist and go to Sunday Catholic Mass with my wife. Not really understanding the problem?
RE: Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files citizen criminal charges against Trump and Vance
Trying to blame Trump for threats other people made seems a stretch, but of course not unprecedented given the lawfare we’ve already seen against him.
Given a couple hundred years of US aggression towards Haiti after its slave rebellion, including in recent years destabilizing the country through US-sponsored coups, sending in foreign troops, and upending things enough for a cholera outbreak to take hold, it seems a bit surprising that these Haitians in Springfield would be more concerned about some dumb comments by Trump than all the US actions against their nation that caused massive detructions and deaths and forced them to emigrate to begin with. It’s enough to make one wonder whether this was the Haitian immigrants’ idea, or if perhaps someone put them up to it as part of the Democrat party’s any stick to beat a dog (or cat) strategy.
If you take a look at the Chandra law firm website, they do seem to have done some good work over the years. But I’ll leave this here, and do note the date – https://www.linkedin.com/posts/subodh-chandra-a1a76a6_i-just-gave-to-kamala-harris-activity-7220994531444375552-eNdt
I did a little poking around too, curious about the 501c3. It has been registered since 2016 it appears, so not recently, which my cynical mind wondered about.
Given the people from Haiti, according to what I have read, are not exactly assimilated in this country, I have to wonder too, just what’s behind this.
At this point, that would be my guess until proven otherwise. Even if not, it sure fits the narrative I’ve heard since they brought it up.
A distraction from Hillary Clinton’s non-profit that stole billions from Haitians?
Lyman Alpha Bob,
Re: “Given a couple hundred years of US aggression towards Haiti after its slave rebellion, including in recent years destabilizing the country through US-sponsored coups, sending in foreign troops, and upending things enough for a cholera outbreak to take hold, it seems a bit surprising that these Haitians in Springfield would be more concerned about some dumb comments by Trump than all the US actions against their nation that caused massive detructions and deaths and forced them to emigrate to begin with.”
Here’s a description from an NPR story dated Sept. 19th of what the Haitian community is dealing with in Springfield, Ohio:
Members of the Haitian community, many of whom have arrived over the past four years, are concerned about their safety, Viles Dorsainvil, who lives there and leads the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, told Morning Edition.
“We are asking ourselves whether to stay here or go somewhere else,” Dorsainvil said.
And:
Families are afraid to go out or send their kids to school or go to church, Dorsainvil said. He added that some are afraid to call cars through rideshare apps because they don’t know who will pick them up or their intentions.
And some are considering giving up major financial investments they’ve made.
“There are some homeowners who want to sell back their homes just to leave,” Dorsainvil said. “I was asking them to give themselves some time to see if we can navigate this together by the fact [that] we have the solidarity of the city officials and the police department and the local leaders and the church leaders.”
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/19/nx-s1-5114047/springfield-ohio-haitian-migrants-trump-safety-concerns
These certainly seem like real concerns to me, so your comment puzzles me; I’m not sure how the sordid history of US (and French and British) conduct with respect to Haiti makes these actual concerns by actual people in 2024 in Ohio about their actual safety any less salient.
Do you agree that it’s a bad situation when members of minority populations fear for their physical safety? Do you agree that demonizing minority populations based on factually incorrect fantasies is bad? Are Haitian migrants in Ohio supposed to not worry about their physical safety after the GOP ticket accuses them of eating pets because of the conduct of the Jefferson Administration or Charles X of France regarding Haiti?
I’m not sure I understand your point.
The NPR interview quotes sound typical for relocated refugees especially if they are not well relocated. Also uses the word concerns too many times (once is too many).
There’s a misleading graphic on Twitter showing the vast majority of refugees are being resettled in Red and not Blue States. The implication being that Harris is personally doing this. If the idea is that Red States are emptier therefore have more ability to take on refugees then the feds are being stupid. Springfield wasn’t empty, the smaller towns around Springfield have the empty buildings and no jobs. But refugees want to stay together and not get split up. There’s the rub.
MN news media has long congratulated itself on how well MN assimilated 60k Hmong in the ’90s. They did so by keeping them together and not by scattering them about, keeping them mostly in the Twin Cities.
What was done to Springfield was frankly obscene. No already economically depressed city could possibly take on that many refugees. It would be like Chicago being asked to take aboard a million displaced Ukrainians, a much better fit than Haitians in Springfield. Honestly, Haitians being sent to Springfield sounds like a deliberate time bomb meant to go off at some point before the election. If Trump hadn’t said something, an “incident” would no doubt have happened.
We’re seeing govt actions at a level that usually results in multiple life sentences. We are going to need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to sort this all out later.
This is meant to be a reply to LAB. Reading the comment “Given a couple hundred years of US aggression towards Haiti after its slave rebellion, including in recent years destabilizing the country through US-sponsored coups. . .” comes close to making $#!+ up. President Adams sold guns to Toussaint Louverture and the rebels. Without this help it is likely the machinations of France and Britain would have been successful. The failure of Britain’s attempt led them to outlaw slavery, something that would have been unlikely if they had succeeded. The policy of the U.S. likely changed with the Jackson administration but that does not negate the help we gave the revolution when it was in the cradle.
Thank you, I definitely could have been clearer. I didn’t mean to imply that Haiti rebelled against US control, just that since they threw out the French, the US hasn’t exactly been overly kind toward the Haitians. This is more or less what I had in mind regarding the US treatment toward Haiti.
John Adams thought money from Haiti was as good as anybody elses money. Thomas Jefferson however enacted an embargo against Haiti. In 1825 France sent a fleet and demanded reparations for the French slave owners. At the time Haiti was weak and didn’t want to fight another war with France so it signed an agreement agreeing to 150 million francs – many billions of dollars in todays money. The Louisiana Purchase was a result of France losing Haiti to the only successful slave rebellion in the history of the world. The “machinations” of FRance and England were sending 50,000 troops each to try to defeat the slaves. In 1915 US marines took over the country for 19 years. The US administration sent money to repay loans to New York banks like it did to many other South and Central american countries when the US marines took over. The Aristide presidency was overthrown twice by US instigated coups. Through US ‘machinations’ there is presently no legal president In Haiti. Somehow the money sent to help the Haitians after the devastating 2010 Earthquake was squandered by the Clintons in charge of it. The West has never forgiven Haiti for having its successful slave revolution.
I will respond more later if I have time, but my main point is that I do not trust that this is an organic, grass roots complaint originated by the Haitian community just because a biased news outlet says so. Do you think the AP or NPR are reporting evenhandedly, or are they perhaps exaggerating things to put their fingers on the scale for Harris? One of NPR’s own long time (now former) editors seems to think it is the latter in his recent complaint – https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/apr/10/npr-uri-berliner-reaction
In my town, we also have a large number of recent immigrants. One woman decided she wanted to put up a Rwandan genocide memorial in a local park. But of course she wasn’t an immigrant herself, just a virtue signaling white lady. When she petitioned the city council, it was just her making that plea and not a single Rwandan in sight. So based on stuff like that and the overall mendacity of the corporate media these days, I’m very skeptical.
While I am in favor of immigration overall, I’m not in favor of open borders or exploiting desperate people to keep US wages down.
@Martin Oline: that is a really important point. John Adams, my favorite Founder, was one of the most important friends of the Haitian Revolution.
@lyman alpha blob: I think one can be opposed to open borders and the use of immigration to keep wages down while decrying fear-mongering demonization of a minority group.
Given that NPR does not pass muster for you in terms of sources, since you view it as biased, here is a different source, the local newspaper in Springfield, Ohio, the Springfield News-Sun. In it, an immigration attorney who volunteers with the Haitian community, herself of Haitian and Cuban background and who moved there after law school at the U. of Cincinnati, describes what has occured to her son and another child:
But Perez hasn’t escaped the recent furor.
“My nine-year-old daughter is being asked in school if Haitians eat cats and dogs,” she says. “And a friend of mine’s son was being bullied for having a Haitian background. He moved here a year ago, so he speaks as a foreigner and he’s having a hard time with that. She had to pull him out of school.”
A positive, Perez says, is that city officials have been supportive in spite of the wider issues. “We have a great support system here, starting with the Springfield PD — they have been exceptional,” she says.
Here is Clark County Health Commissioner Charles Cook quoted in the same story:
Cook, the health commissioner, said a major concern for Haitian immigrants right now — no matter how long they’ve been here — is hateful rhetoric and vitriol from a small but loud segment of the community.
“To say that they aren’t apprehensive sometimes about being in the community and knowing that hate is out there, that would be naive. Of course they are a little bit, but I’ve continued to reassure them… If they’re vocal, I still believe they’re the minority. A bulk of people here in Springfield and Clark County want to understand more,” he said.
It seems to me to be a pretty detailed and well-reported story, from an established local source, and not just an invention of NPR et al.
Thanks for the local source. Bullying is, of course, not a nice thing to do. The article does suggest that the bullying is coming from a small but loud group. About 20 years ago there was a small but loud group of neonazi jerks who came to the Lewiston area in Maine to try to intimidate the growing Somali community there. They were met by a much larger and louder group of people from all over the state who let them know they were not welcome. The Somali community has gradually grown and become integrated with the existing community to the point there have been a few Somalis elected to local and state office already. It sounds like there is a similar dynamic in Springfield and hopefully it will turn out well there too.
That said, mass rapid migration causes problems no matter where people are coming from. I’m not a huge fan of the large influx of wealthy urbanites from surrounding states coming to my area recently and, while I’m sure none of them did it to deliberately cause problems, it has rapidly driven up the cost of living here. As for the current influx of foreign immigrants, it is being done with not a whole lot of forethought by a government that should have some sort of plan. If you’re going to send people to an area that is already short on housing, how hard would it be for the federal government to step up and build housing for those incoming people first, to name just one example? Instead they spend it all on bombs to destabilize yet one more country and create more mass migration of desperate people.
Thanks for your response, lyman alpha blob. As you say, bullying is bad.
I do agree that the effects of mass migration are real and significant, and in my neck of the woods, are being borne often by small towns that are typically responding as best they know how, but are nevertheless often overwhelmed (a neighboring school district found themselves, essentially overnight, with a significant influx of non-English speaking children who are often traumatized and that the district is only marginally-equipped to deal with). The Federal Government was really slow in helping the State and localities deal with this issue.
We also had the same issue with Neo-Nazis showing up outside the motel that the State has rented to house not just migrants, but American homeless families, as well (the Mass. law, as I understand it, requires families to be sheltered, though not individuals). Happily, in my observation, there was an overwhelming majority expressing revulsion and outrage at the Nazis.
I don’t know what the solution is, but a lot of this does relate to housing. We’re going to have to start building social housing again, in my view; this can’t be left up to private developers. I also think we will need time as a body politic to assimilate the many newcomers we’ve had in recent decades. Add to that the fact that with climate change, we’re going to see more migrants away from the tropics, not fewer, and I’m genuinely unsure what we do.
Incidentally, I do recall seeing traditionally attired Somali women in Lewiston during my most recent time there, which I thought was interesting. It sounds like a success story.
The Commissioner Cook stated that; “A bulk of people here in Springfield and Clark County want to understand more.”
I would disagree. From what I read about the region, the bulk of the people living there would want some of the resources being spent on the immigrants. Locating newcomers in an economically depressed area, to compete for scarce resources is asking for trouble.
When one is hungry and or homeless, one tends to focus close to “home.”
What I wonder about is the “sudden” emergence of multi drugs resistant Tuberculosis in America. That looks to this Cynic like a prong of the Jackpot Strategy.
I liked a quip today from Walter Kirn: You have to elect her to find out what’s in her.
I tweeted back to Kirn that the right-to-repair laws didn’t pass and that before he could look under her hood an AIPAC-certified technician would have to be called in.
#Trump
> I mean, does anybody think those Undecideds are PMC?
Nope. Not I.
See my comment (via NC) from just over a year ago … :) Those “undecideds” are likely Chris-Arnade-Dignity adjacent.
That’s almost certain. The reaction by the PMC when the book came out that Arnade was somehow finding the Trump voters was both wrong and true to the form: there’s rather little reason to expect that the people Arnade met were necessarily pro-Trump, although they almost certainly would have been at least very skeptical of the PMC. That struck me then, as it does now, as a very with-me-or-against-me attitude. Fitting that W and the Cheneys are with them now, I guess.
Did Dubya endorse?!!! 😮 I thought he was remaining largely neutral but content to have his former enforcer (Cheney) do the business.
> :) Those “undecideds” are likely Chris-Arnade-Dignity adjacent.
Very acute.
Cheers!
700+ dyed in the wool deep state actors or 700+ dyed in the wool epithet of your choice actors have endorsed KDH as THE candidate for president. Since my focus is on foreign policy, I know who she is, or to be blunt, who will be pulling her strings. I do not like what I see.
I agree. To have a supposed Democrat standing up on a stage espousing the Wolfowitz Doctrine to the plaudits of such people as Dick Cheney and and his evil daughter would seem surreal if we hadn’t had years of it already. They aren’t even trying to make the case that there is any difference between the parties anymore.
I read earlier today Jennifer Lawrence has now endorsed her. Warmongers, spooks, Hollywood – what’s not to like?
Yeah, well Jennifer Lawrence is not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Remember that time that she claimed that she was the first female lead of an action film ignoring decades of female predecessors?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YtSrTx7tMM (1:51 mins)
And how. Red Sparrow much?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sparrow
But she is nice looking if dumb.
Unfortunately, many of the same people are pulling Trump’s strings as well.
What a terrible pickle we’re in.
Bill Hicks had it right back in the 1990s:
https://youtu.be/fF9AOh4HKXQ
(Strong language)
I loved Hicks when I was a 16-18 y.o. angry young man. The first public voice that ever made sense or rang true to me.
Boeing was a great engineering company. It put finance guys in the executive suite. Boeing is in crisis. What to do? Go back to being an engineering company or is that an oversimplification?
Which of the Brit bookies are taking bets on whether Trump will face another serious assassination attempt, and what odds do they give that it will be successful?
I’d put the odds of another attempt at close to 100% and the odds of it being successful at a little better than 50% because the Secret Service is good at their job.
When they want to be…
Zelenski is walking around with a Secret Service detail right now. I bet that they gave him their best and didn’t skimp on the security budget.
I would not rule out anything though Rev. I can definitely see the utility (to a psychopath/TPTB) of a “Pro-Trump, pro-Putin gunman assassinates Zelensky on US soil” type op.
He’s be just 1 more Ukrainian sacrificed for the Hegemon.
I have added orts and scraps. I apologize for the long Tweet images, but they seemed not cuttable.
The long tweet images read well I think.
“Haitian group in Springfield, Ohio, files citizen criminal charges against Trump and Vance” [Associated Press].
“The leader of a nonprofit representing the Haitian community. . .”
A non-profit. I went to their website’s “About” page. It reads very democrat-adjacent. Not that there’s anything unusual about that given the givens, but mentioning democrat policies like DACA explicitly does make one wonder if they were encouraged to do a bit of lawfare? And yes it does sound foily but still….
A couple of other things made me wonder. For one, they received something called the Silver Transparency Award in 2023, and yet they list no information about their donors and board members, only the founder of the group, Guerline Jozef.
She has apparently been an activist for black immigrants since girlhood, but doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.
I don’t know, I guess I’m just too cynical anymore.
I understand the scandal that Bad Hombre has uncovered: The usual sock-puppetry, this time with even greater-than-usual transparency.
Deceptive advertising is a problem. The Democrats should get a pounding about this.
And yet. Bad Hombre can’t refrain from some free-styling art criticism: ” a film called “Hayride to Hell” at the far-left CentreFilm Festival in State College, PA in 2023 which featured films about interracial gay fathers who find themselves raising a child after one of the dad’s becomes a widower, and another about the struggle of illegal immigrants.”
Oh? Don’t tell Bad Hombre about that play with the interracial couple that got some bad marital advice from Iago, written by a guy who wrote sonnets to guys and premiered at the far-left Globe Theater.
And I won’t mention the play by that Greek guy about the Greek guy who kills his father and marries his mother and then becomes a widower after the (literally!) eye-popping scene and the wife kills herself from stress…
Let alone that play by that other Greek guy about Dionysos showing up on stage in inappropriate flouncy attire and driving the bra-less Bakkhai ladies nuts.
In short, Bad Hombre has to stick to his facts, which matter politically, and spend less time making himself look like a resentment-ridden mumbler about the Decline of Civility.
> Bad Hombre has to stick to his facts, which matter politically
The resentment matters politically too, but I think it’s fair to say that many, including me, find it off-putting.
And then there’s the other Greek guy who wrote a play about a woman who sleeps with her husband’s rival, then conspires with the rival to kill the husband. Son returns and avenges his father by killing his mother and her new husband. That English guy to whom you allude did his version of the story a few thousand years later. Kurt Sutter got 7 seasons out of it with “Sons of Anarchy.” I knew where things were headed after about the third episode, but I watched them all until Katey Sagal got it as expected.
Diddy: one thing I wonder about for Diddy and all the others doing similar things in similar circles – how good is their cybersecurity? I’d think they’d be a ripe target for some of these ransomware, or similar groups; or just a black-hat (or would they be a white-hat if they released things in such a way as prosecutions could be lodged as applicable?) who is up to some digging and maybe a little social hacking?
Maybe they’re smarter than I’m inclined to think and they have a solid setup, with good air-gaps and whatnot, but I somehow doubt it.
The Tweet Lambert linked is a dandy if you read through it. It’s under “On The Phone Live From Prison.” Quite a sample of what could have been going on and with who.
I don’t think this will go anywhere, even given the spooks should have anything that went through the internet, and even if hackers have dirt on them. It will be like the Epstein thing with the exception Diddy might get sent away. All the others? No chance, no names, no need to know. They are the untouchables.
Diddy parties sound like Hefner’s Playboy parties more than the Epstein type of parties. Though the outcomes of humiliation, blackmail, etc were the same for some participants in all cases.
All three of them were probably reporting back to some security agency.
If you get invited to something like one of P Diddy’s in this day and age wouldn’t you assume everything was being recorded?
It’s 2024 FFS, there is no privacy.
In this day and age, there are NDAs going around Hollywood parties before one can enter.
Personal take on Novavax: I had the updated Novavax shot on Monday and experienced very light side effects (drowsiness, sore arm, sensitivity) compared to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines I’ve received before. The experience and scheduling online at Rite Aid was also way easier than I thought.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball thinks Trump ran same campaign in ’16 and ’20 and that nothing’s changed in ’24.
I think putting RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard front and center is a very big change.
Tucker Carlson touring the country to arena-sized crowds just to do his talk show live is the biggest surrogate phenomenon I’ve ever seen. Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, Carlson is doing rallies for Trump (that’s literally what they are despite the format).
It’s hard to have an accurate crystal ball when the Democrats keep suppressing opposition speech making it difficult to measure how much negativity is out here. Ditto putting political enemies in prison which is hardly encouraging to what free speech they do allow. Compounding this real world context is the hard fact that the Democrat insiders are empty suits with no real insights (where would they get them from?) and the Trump insiders are, well, Trump insiders.
I’m sure Yves will let us know when the markets start shifting suddenly in anticipation of a Trump win. Because if the establishment truly sees it coming — wow! — you’ll be able to see the economic flurry of activity from outer space ; )
> Tucker Carlson touring the country to arena-sized crowds just to do his talk show live is the biggest surrogate phenomenon I’ve ever seen
Bypassing “the media” entirely. Excellent point. Does Carlson have a touring schedule anywhere? I could look, but….
Sep 26
Tucker Carlson Live with Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jason Whitlock
Greenville, SC | Bon Secours Wellness Arena
•••
Sep 27
Tucker Carlson Live with John Rich and Russell Brand
Sunrise, FL | Amerant Bank Arena
•••
Sep 28
Tucker Carlson Live with Donald Trump Jr.
Jacksonville, FL | VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
•••
Sep 4
Tucker Carlson Live with Russell Brand
Phoenix, AZ | Footprint Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 5
Tucker Carlson Live with Vivek Ramaswamy
Anaheim, CA | Honda Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 6
Tucker Carlson Live with Tulsi Gabbard and Dr. Kevin Roberts
Colorado Springs, CO | Broadmoor World Arena
Sold Out
•••
Sep 7
Tucker Carlson Live with Glenn Beck
Salt Lake City, UT | Delta Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 11
Tucker Carlson Live with Dan Bongino
Tulsa, OK | BOK Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 12
Tucker Carlson Live with Megyn Kelly
Kansas City, MO | T-Mobile Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 13
Tucker Carlson Live with Charlie Kirk
Wichita, KS | INTRUST Bank Arena
Sold Out
•••
Sep 16
Tucker Carlson Live with Larry Elder and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Milwaukee, WI | Fiserv Forum
Sold Out
•••
Sep 18
Tucker Carlson Live with Jesse Kelly and Nicole Shanahan
Rosenberg, TX | Fort Bend Epicenter
Sold Out
•••
Sep 20
Tucker Carlson Live with Kid Rock
Grand Rapids, MI | Van Andel Arena
Sold Out
•••
Sep 21
Tucker Carlson Live with JD Vance
Hershey, PA | Giant Center
Sold Out
•••
Sep 23
Tucker Carlson Live with Alex Jones and Jack Posobiec
Reading, PA | Santander Arena
Sold Out
•••
Sep 24
Tucker Carlson Live with Roseanne Barr
Fort Worth, TX | Dickies Arena
It’s a freaking rightwing Lolapalooza and there is nothing like this on the Democrat side. Politics is about people going out and meeting other like-minded people. Sitting in the dark with your apps doesn’t win elections.
I cannot see anything happening that is helping Harris. She is unquestionably the second worst candidate I have seen in my lifetime. If I were working her campaign I would drink myself to sleep every night probably for the rest of my life.
Apparently the past dates were in the list so I mostly am giving you old information. Sorry.
No matter. I would expect more swing states.
We never got to see what Bernie-mentum would have looked like in the fall. This is not that, but it’s in the same ballpark.
People are paying to see a couple of people on stage talk. I think there may be some music but basically it’s an evening of politics. Every person in that arena arrived excited and went home happy. I think it’s fairly safe to say each one of them shared the experience and their enthusiasm with at least ten other people. That’s 100,000+ people being impacted by one event.
Not a Trump event per se which allows the attendees to get around standard D friend/relative objections. “What? You can’t even talk about the news?”
Not seeing any negative aspect to this at all. Around 200k attendees in 13 states with about 2 million voters having to hear about it directly from someone who was there.
I can’t even begin to imagine what Bernie’s rallies would have been like in the fall of 2016 but it would have put the Carlson talk shows to shame.
Soaking rains tomorrow for that first one.
I live nearby. My upper middle class neigborhood (plus me!) showing a few Harris signs and fewer Trump signs and tons of signs for the local Dem congress candidate. It kind of shows you where the local party think their hopes lie.
The Donald will doubtless take SC.
Schedule: https://tuckercarlson.com/events
Videos: https://tuckercarlson.com/
“Diddy ‘isn’t eating in jail fearing he’ll be poisoned’ amid claims he kept ‘Epstein-style tapes of Freak Off parties’” [The Sun].
I still think Hefner is just as good for a comparison – taping and all. Hefner just never got jailed and had better handlers.
its the rape and etc that gets me.
i dont give a hairy ass that people are having sex parties.
its what humans do….even us poors, in fact.
and always has been.
but it must include consent…and that means age of consent, too.
ive been to swingers clubs…mostly upper middle class normies in real life(because its rather expensive to go to those places)…cosplaying as freaks.(that whole “Lifestyle” originated in hyperconservative air force pilot communities during the early cold war…as a method of assuring the individual pilot’s wife and kids had support if he got flamed)
and as ive related several times, my band played that party that time…local elite, doing coke off painted naked feathered women.
that contained so much exploitation…of themselves as well as the naked help…nothing like the impromptu acid/Xtacy group gropes my people would get up to out in the woods….seeking transcendence.
blame monotheism…beginning with the incorporated catholic church…for driving all that underground where it could fester in the dark.(corporate, imperial church didnt want competition for access to ecstasy/divine ground of being…a good orgy can get you there,lol)
add in gross power differentials and the corruption and greed that comes with them…as well as the universal pretending that humans are not generally sexual freaks…and you get stuff like this.
and the spook aspect…compromat…as well…everything is mario puzo(senator with the dead girl in GF2)…and i reckon its the spook part that engenders the kiddie porn and pedophilia…given the spook history.
take something grand, and make it ugly.
Exactly. You struggle to make it to the inner sanctum, and find it a snakepit of extortion, blackmail, rape., etc. That’s our 1% (not to over-generalize, but in fact “there are not very many of the Shing,” and we are getting a lot of data points).
and the damned hypocrisy of it all!!
like that party i played long ago(as below), same with the real elite debauchery(so above)…the same people who lorded it over us little people about family values and morality and hate the gays and now “grooming”(!) and on and on…and turns out taht they’re so much freakier than us’n’s…to the point of actual Evil, in fact…not to mention doing all those drugs,lol….
that party was a real eye opener, for me…and one of the kernels of my radicalisation.
of course, i was already on the run from the law for saving that girl that time(Errantry is not allowed!)…so i was already considering running off…
that party made it a certainty…i didnt want to know what i knew now,lol…about the local rulers and fancy people with power.
Yes, and too often the rape is portrayed as “loose women partying” – whatever the era.
I don’t have any problem with consenting adults getting up to unconventional behavior.
“blame monotheism…beginning with the incorporated catholic church…for driving all that underground where it could fester in the dark.”
It’s about power. In both instances, there are churches and entertainment/business icons that are using attitudes about sex to control others.
The entire taping aspect of the encounters to use as blackmail means they don’t think of the sexual encounters as liberating or divine. It’s just like the churches that need the behavior underground in order to exercise power. Like two sides of the same coin.
hell, i wish i had all that on tape,lol…now, in my decrepitude.
but i’d never use it like that.
goes against the Ethos of the whole thing.
> ‘Everybody thinks unions strike over money,’ Wheaton notes. But often, it’s also about respect….
Funny, that is one of the big themes coming up in the slightly dated but still very good two part study David Mandel did on the Petrograd workers and their role in the end of the old regime in Russia and subsequent October revolution.
I am just about certain the pointer to this study came from somebody here several weeks ago, my apologies for forgetting your handle so as to fully give you your rightful hat tip!
oh…and i came across these folks, today:
https://www.lowimpact.org/categories/compost-toilets
glad i aint alone,lol.
like a monastic order.
and i also happened upon this:
https://x.com/anthonyzenkus/status/1838672315166642645
watch the whole thing…she’s awesome.
In light of (gestures broadly at everything), I’m so numb I’ve forgotten how to feel anything.
Tears welled in the short clip and I felt a little humanity again.
Thank you for sharing, Amfortas.
And don’t forget the Humanure Book by J. Jenkins. He also has a companion book on Compost Toilets. Jenkins examination of conventional sewage and water treatment in the u.s. covered in his Humanure Book is eye-opening.
Was out walking the dog this evening and a pea green old VW van puttered by. The tire on the front grill had a “Harris Walz” sign on it, there were Harris-Walz signs in the side windows, and in the back window was 1 Harris-Walz sign and next to that was another sign that said “For The People”. Heaven help me. I am not sure I can make it through all of this. sigh. Do they really believe that?
I don’t know if this is true everywhere but many of the Harris/Walz signs I’m seeing in my college town have a tag line just below the names in red italic: “obviously”
Odd.
A sign in my (NoFla) neighborhood has “Southerners for: Harris Waltz” with their names presented like the Waffle House sign.
I mean the first thing I think is “waffle”. Then I think condescending. By the time I reached the corner my mind expanded and I realized: ‘they’re putting everything into little boxes!’
for 30+years, i see an old air cooled VW van, and i yell out the truck window..”Sell It!!”
in the south, cant find anybody to work on them(at least not back then,lol.
mine was a 1976 model, with a pop top camper and a little stove that we never used(open fires and dutch ovens).
impossible to find parts…had so much duck tape and baling wire and random wire jumpers holding the engine and tranny together it was just silly.
if we parked too long, birds would try to move in to the air intakes.(atchafalaya basin, with the swamp folk for 9 months)
went without a starter for almost a year…attempting to park on whatever rare incline we could find(mostly in the flat Louisiana), so as to roll start it without pushing the damned thing.
clutch gave out in florida panhandle, towards the end of that time…stole some rope from a farmer, hooked it to the little lever thing on the side of the transmission and tied the other end to the side mirror…yank that to shift gears.
went all the way back to houston thataways.
i suppose that those old ones are good vehicles for teaching things like self reliance and fortitude,lol
It’s kind of weird because I’ve never seen that vehicle before. Having been here a while I’ve gotten familiar with the older vehicles(mine is one). It’s a small town, small area. In 15 years I’ve never seen that van. Who knows.
https://www.grautogallery.com/vehicles/1471/1976-volkswagen-westfalia
this is the one,lol.
i paid like $500 for mine.
maybe i should have parked it in a pasture, or something….
lived in that thing for 5+ years.
all over Dixie and environs(including El Paso(cooked a turkey in the engine compartment), texas panhandle, into Oklahoma Indian Country, Kansas, Arkensaw(lived in my first cave, there), and back to West Lake Charles.)
My mom hauled me, my two brothers, and little sister all around the Western u.s. in a VW Microbus every summer. We camped all summer long camping at campsites in most every state West of the Mississippi [both my parents were school teachers]. The back of the Microbus was tricked-out with some wooden inserts my dad added to turn the back into the bed where my mom and little sister slept. I learned how to drive in that Microbus.
Indeed: Bonini’s paradox.
indeed.
this here flirts with hard determinism…but is more Nietzschean Amor Fati, in my thinkin…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X8eQIEhZAw
lyrics:
https://genius.com/Au4-everyone-is-everyone-and-everything-is-everything-lyrics
heard it in a scifi show(the canadian Continuum), years ago.
in my head right now, thinking about Tamster.
I had to go through all that bullshit to arrive in the place and time where she literally fell in my lap(accidentally on purpose, turns out…28 years ago this december)
WRT polling, one important fact is that the guessing process has become even more important now that certain demographics are extremely hard to reach (ironically, the demographics more likely to be “marginalized” and thus unlikely to turn out normally). Even when you know that the turnout among them is going to be larger than normal, you still don’t have reliable sample to go with: so you got a single Hispanic male in 20s living in rural Midwest in your sample of 500. You also expect that this demographic would make up 2% of the voters on the election day. So do you count this one guy as 10 voters, knowing that he is likely an unsual person (since he did participate in the poll, afte rall)?
I can’t remember if I’m remembering all the details correctly, but when people bring up bad polling and the Landon-defeats-FDR prediction made by the LIterary Digest magazine (the one that basically put them out of business), they don’t realize how good their polling was by usual measure. They polled a huge number of people (10 million!). Their history for decades was pretty good–they got the results for every election from 1916 through 1932. They were quite careful tracking down the people to be polled (using various public records etc–this turned out to be a major problem. People who could be easily contacted via public records, etc, or worse, by phone, were likely to be well-off people with stable lives and some leisure time–not typical people in the middle of Great Depression.). It goes without saying that there was a landslide in 1936 alright, but not the way LIterary Digest put it. The pollster who got the prediction almost exactly right was George Gallup, who had a far smaller sample, who did not do as much legwork trying to assemble a survey pool, but made a number of deductive choices about the kind of people who would be voting (and who would likely to be sampled in a poll), and how the people who didn’t get polled as often might behave differently from those who were polled. In other words, a lot of reasonable guesses that may not be rigorously defensible with numbers. This is where the polling, especially in a turbulent time where a lot of voters may not be easily polled, becomes an art rather than a science (although science can help deduce what you didn’t get right afterwards). If you don’t realize your methodology is flawed given the conditions of the times, and worse, if you double down on the bad methods, then you will get ever bigger flops.
OT, I recently read a book about the battle of Cannae which claimed that the exact location of the battle was not known.
Which surprised me because 50,000 Men being hacked to death in a limited area left a lot of food ( Blood) soaking into the ground, a feast for bacteria that would have changed the composition of the soils forever.
Lots of battlefields we really do not know where they were fought. There was one major battle that was fought on an island during the US Civil War but don’t bother looking for it as that island is now gone as the river took it back. And the place depicted in that film “Glory?” Much of that landscape the sea has claimed. Sometimes we find them. There was the famous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in which three Roman legions were annihilated by Germanic forces. The location was lost for some two thousand years until a British officer/amateur archaeologist named Tony Clunn with a metal detector found clues with finally identified that battlefield as being at Kalkriese-
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-ambush-that-changed-history-72636736/
I had a quiet celebration when I heard that that place had been found finally.
Speaking of permaculture, aka intensive gardening:
https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-french-intensive-gardening-5184736
thats how i roll, in fact.
plant thick…carrots under tomatoes, green onions and shallotts and elephant garlic under everything else.
i grow curcurbits, including pumpkins, in trees.
(challenge to harvest,lol–pole saw, and a catcher…whether one of the boys, or my big goosenet.)
grow everything all up in everything else, and the bugs will have a difficult time of it.
and planting thataway is like a zen artform…wander through with direct seeds, place surveyor flags.
once all thats up, come through with seedlings.
New nasal spray offers 99.99% protection against flu, pneumonia, COVID-19
The spray was developed using ingredients from the FDA’s Inactive Ingredient Database (IID) and Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list.
https://interestingengineering.com/health/nasal-spray-offers-99-99-protection-against-covid-19
However, mouth-breathing, knuckle-draggers are still SOL.
It sounds interesting but doesn’t help much considering it is not readily available or not available at all. The lack of human testing also leaves the 99% effective claim a little hard to believe without some sort of evidence beyond what the linked article provided: “Further tests in mice revealed that a single dose of PCANS nasal spray was able to block infection from the highly lethal PR8 strain of influenza at 25 times the lethal dose. In treated mice, virus levels in the lungs dropped by more than 99.99%, with normal levels of inflammatory cells and cytokines observed, indicating effective protection against infection.”
Sounds promising … but I have heard a few too many empty promises lately to get too excited.
Transcript for Harris Rhule MSNBC interview (From MSNBC itself so maybe scrubbed?)
Video of Harris Pittsburgh speech on economy (I can’t find a transcript and I haven’t drunk enough coffee yet to be robust enough to hear her voice)
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has a respiratory virus dashboard, here.
It says from 10/1/2023 to 9/14/2024 there were 4,842 COVID-19-coded deaths in California and 722 influenza-coded deaths.
There’s a link to download a CSV file of the data. That data set shows deaths by day from 1/1/2020 to 9/14/2024. I ran totals and got 109,161 for COVID and 2,433 for influenza.
This link is to another CDPH report, the Influenza Surveillance Report 2019-2020 Season. On page 27/31 there’s a table showing deaths from influenza for the five seasons from 2015-2020, i.e. before the COVID-19 pandemic. The worst season for influenza in California in that span was 2017-2018 with 1,666 deaths.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams indicted: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/eric-adams-indicted-new-york-city-mayor-live-updates-commentary.html
“Sources who are familiar with the matter told THE CITY that Adams is being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for taking actions in his official capacity after receiving donations from foreign sources.”
which of course begs the question “which foreign sources?”
Okay this is going to be interesting. But the fact that he was at an event with Biden, who introduced “Republican” Mike Bloomberg as the Forever Mayor on the same night this broke would never be believed if it were fictional. That whole section of the live update is almost too sardonic and humorous.
Reading some of the complaints about Trump 2024 vs the Trump 2016 campaign reminded me of Lambert’s comments and think that he had the better take. That Trump not doing the larger rallies as often as did earlier, for whatever reason – age and lawfare included, means he doesn’t get to do his own “ interest polls”. Not being in a position to read the room and a/b test positions is the problem. He doesn’t need to hear from Wynn or the newly hired Loomer, he needs to be in the room with people who will decide this election (and yeah, they largely aren’t PMC). And I say that as someone who thinks he is going to win based on things like prices at the grocery store and the notices that are beginning to arrive about the changes for Medicare Part D and coming premium increases alone.
Sports desk commentary, repeat concussion and it’s effects, retired star disease diagnosis edition. Famed quarterback and formerly an endorsement as a good old boy from Mississippi, Brett Favre was diagnosed earlier in 2024 with symptoms of parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Goodell to the PR courtesy phone….Roger, are you there, hello ?
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41438487/brett-favre-received-parkinson-diagnosis-january
Re: Antidote “droopy” tree: I agree, probably a hemlock. What killed it? I suspect roundup. Look at the field edges on the downstream sides of fields in ND and SD – many of the planted windbreaks are sick and dying – again, my strong suspicion is roundup.
Organic farming coast to coast is the only solution – at least spray-free as chemical fertilizers are not terrible if used with organic material replenishment.