By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Cape Island – Crewe House, Cape May, New Jersey, United States. “Night-singing from a single perch in the neighbor’s hedge at night; I walked right up and recorded it from just a few meters away.” Lots of variety!
“Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence” (press release) [University of Cambridge]. “Researchers have identified a remarkably well-preserved fossil bird, roughly the size of a starling, from the Mesozoic Era. The complete skull has been preserved almost intact: a rarity for any fossil bird, but particularly for one so ancient, making this one of the most significant finds of its kind. The extraordinary three-dimensional preservation of the skull allowed the researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, to digitally reconstruct the brain of the bird… Navaornis had a larger cerebrum than Archaeopteryx, suggesting it had more advanced cognitive capabilities than the earliest bird-like dinosaurs. However, most areas of its brain, like the cerebellum, were less developed, suggesting that it hadn’t yet evolved the complex flight control mechanisms of modern birds… ‘Modern birds have some of the most advanced cognitive capabilities in the animal kingdom, comparable only with mammals,’ said Professor Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, senior author of the research. ‘But scientists have struggled to understand how and when the unique brains and remarkable intelligence of birds evolved—the field has been awaiting the discovery of a fossil exactly like this one.'” • Neat! (The original from Nature, which I cannot translate into English.)
In Case You Might Miss…
- About those camps…
- Blame Cannons: Biden staffers, Axelrove, Fetterman unload.
- Boeing’s management challenges., layoffs.
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 Transition
“House Probe Into Matt Gaetz Relies On Witnesses DOJ Found Lacked Credibility” [Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist]. The deck: “A convicted felon said he was paying the legal fees of Matt Gaetz’s accuser and controlling her.” More: “Among the many powerful figures in Washington, D.C. opposed to the Gaetz nomination are some who are attempting to thwart it by releasing a report from the House Ethics Committee that will attempt to tie Gaetz to salacious allegations involving child sex trafficking. The report comes years after DOJ dropped its investigation into the same claims on the grounds that the two central witnesses had serious credibility issues. Yet these are the same two central witnesses the House Ethics Committee has relied on for its critical report of Gaetz—the same report it is leaking to compliant reporters as part of a coordinated effort to thwart his nomination as President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general…. The politicized employees at DOJ have shown themselves willing to explore novel legal theories and bend federal rules to the breaking point in pursuit of their most reviled political opponents, most notably former and future President Trump. Gaetz has a reputation as one of the most tenacious cross-examiners of DOJ officials from his perch on the House Judiciary Committee. Yet even the DOJ was unwilling to exploit Greenberg’s unsubstantiated claims — apart from leaking them to the press to hurt Gaetz’s reputation. They announced their closure of the investigation in 2022.” • Worth reading in full for detail on the accuser.
* * * “Here Come Trump’s Concentration Camps” [The Tyee]. From Canada. “[T]he stocks of private prison corporations have risen since the election, signalling that investors anticipate a flood of federal money to pay for building migrant detention centres. Whatever they might be called, concentration camps will be necessary under this new administration. Project 2025, the dossier of policy proposals to substantially overhaul the American federal government authored by Trump’s supporters, has a chapter on homeland security and border control. It calls for a ‘significant increase in detention space,’ noting about 100,000 beds would be needed on a daily basis — up from around 60,000 at present. Even if 100,000 deportees could be arrested every day and flown out the next day, it would take 110 days to ship 11 million people out of the United States. (And with perhaps 200 passengers per flight, that would require 500 passenger jets daily, or their equivalent in trains and buses.) They’d stay in camps until their flight was called.” • Let’s assume, as immigrants do, that only undocumented immigrants who are guilty of having committed crimes (other than being undocumented) are targeted. “In 2018, the illegal immigrant criminal conviction rate was 782 per 100,000 illegal immigrants.” Assuming we have 11,000,000 immigrants, that rate implies 86,020 deportees (430 flights in total, not 500 daily for 110 days). Now, I personally don’t think our government should be creating a three-ring binder for how to round people up and put them in detention facilities, because once we use that binder for one purpose, we’ll pull it out and use it for other purposes; I imagine any small-government conservative would agree (“Of all the works of Sauron, the only fair”). It seems to me that this issue would be better addressed through law enforcement at the firm, not law enforcement on the streets, despite any squawking from the American gentry who tend to do such hiring. Yves takes a look at our operational capacity for this project, and has other suggestions here. The entire issue is a good litmus test not only for Trump, but for his staff. Flaky pie-crust loons or nah? NOTE The “13,099 Illegal Immigrant Murderers” talking point that’s running around is a mess, per Cato.
2024 Post Mortem
“EXCLUSIVE’It’s a blood bath’: Inside the White House blame game as backstabbing staffers and score-settling pundits rock a Democratic Party in crisis” [Daily Mail]. Fun stuff. This caught my eye: “As that same former Biden staffer put it: ‘[Obama’s staffers were] signed up as the saviors of the campaign only to run outdated Obama-era playbooks for a candidate that wasn’t Obama.'” And: “In the end, no matter who ends up with the blame, the Democratic Party will have to move on to [hopefully not] survive. A new generation of ambitious Democrats are already said to be plotting their 2028 campaigns – governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Maryland’s Wes Moore.” • That’s the bench for 2028? Really? “Stature” is not a word that comes to mind.
“John Fetterman says Democrats need to stop ‘freaking out’ over everything Trump does” (interview) [NBC]. “‘I’ve said this before, it’s like, clutch those pearls harder and scold louder — that’s not going to win,’ Fetterman, D-Pa., said. ‘And that’s been demonstrated in this cycle.'” Fascinating to see “clutch those pearls” make it into mainstream, idiomatic English; “clutch your pearls and head for the fainting couch” was a trope I encountered as a blogger c. 2003 (on the Democrat side. I don’t think Republicans clutch their pearls, but what do they do instead? Grab their guns?). Fetterman on the Democrat loss in PA: “[FETTERMAN:] I pointed out there were two very incredibly unique situations, and one of them was the assassination [attempt]. … [T]his never happened when it’s the year of an election and when the individual survived. And he responded in a very distinctive way of ‘fight, fight, fight,’ and it created very powerful kind of imagery. And I felt, ‘Hey, that’s definitely going to make things even more difficult.’ And then [Elon] Musk. Surrogates are common in our business, but someone like that is different, and I’ve maintained that he can move the needle, and I do believe he did … that’s why we’ve lost two of our colleagues in the House, and we’ve lost every row office statewide, as well.” • I don’t like Fetterman much on policy, but he’s worth listening to for the campaign he ran. (Fetterman tactfully doesn’t mention the Shapiro v. Walz controversy, but I think Shapiro would have gone down in the face of ‘fight, fight, fight’ also. There was absolutely no way the Pennsylvania Republicans were going to lose that race.
* * * “From New Jersey to Hawaii, Trump made inroads in surprising places in his path to the White House” [Associated Press]. “Common themes emerged in the AP VoteCast data. Voters were most likely to see the economy and immigration as top issues facing the country. More voters said their family’s financial situation was ‘falling behind,’ compared with 2020. When they voted, Trump supporters were thinking about high prices for gas, groceries and other goods and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“The Democrats’ Defeat” [Adam Tooze, London Review of Books (AG)]. Let me pull out some salient paragraphs: “The defining feature of US politics in the current era is how small the margins are. This election saw large movements in specific groups: Latino men to Trump; college graduates to Harris; better-off voters to the Democrats; working-class Americans to the Republicans. But it remains a matter of a few percentage points, with the vast majority of the electorate entrenched in two camps and most of the country barely contested. What moves those voters who do change their minds from election to election remains obscure.” And: “But in terms of defending existing rights and power positions, in terms of retaining the possibility of further change, in terms of preventing the worst, what was at stake on 5 November were the 270 seats in the electoral college. And to have a decent chance of winning them, it was not necessary to build a historic progressive bloc. It was necessary to run a competent campaign and to field candidates capable of presenting America’s reality, both its promises and its challenges, in language that was compelling and reassuring at the same time. Biden and Harris both failed to do that, and Biden’s outrageous refusal to step aside until the last moment robbed the party of any chance of finding a stronger candidate.” • I always enjoy Tooze, but for some reason this article reminded me of nobody so much as David Brooks (and his Irish setter, “Moral Hazard”). The trope that popped into my head was “‘You can’t buff a turd’ is fractal.” Is any kind of problem-solving in this environment really possible?
“Democratic turnout plummeted in 2024 — but only in safe states” [Semafor]. “The vast majority of votes from this election have been counted, with just a few million ballots outstanding in western states. Total turnout is on track to fall just short of 2020, well ahead of some observers’ expectations on Election Night, when conspiracy theories about more than 10 million “missing Biden voters” flourished among Democrats. Harris will win fewer votes than President Joe Biden did four years ago — but the decline was significantly steeper in safely red or blue states than in swing states. Where there was no national campaign spending on turnout, and where voters knew that they were unlikely to change the outcome, Harris ran further behind Biden.”
Campaign Finance
“Political Ads Can’t Buy the Presidency” [Bloomberg]. The deck: “Democrats outspent Republicans by more than $300 million in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. Yet Harris won none of the swing states where the vast majority of spending went.” More: “Money doesn’t win US elections, but it often helps. In bids for the Senate, the candidate who spends the most is typically the victor. That pattern held this year: In 21 of 33 Senate races, the candidate who spent the most on advertising—generally the major expenditure for a campaign—was the winner…. The link between spending and winning has always been weaker in presidential contests…. Given that turnout had a large impact on election outcomes in 2024, [Adam Bonica, a professor of political science at Stanford University] suggests that, in the future, both parties should consider rethinking their spending. ‘Maybe it’s not advertising they need to do,’ he says. ‘Maybe they should be putting more of the resources into mobilization and registration and party building.'” • Money can’t win an election if you set it on fire and throw it into the air!
“Oprah town hall cost Harris campaign far more than initially claimed: report” [FOX]. “A new report revealed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign paid more than double what was previously reported for the Oprah Winfrey town hall event. FEC filings, first reported by the Washington Examiner, show the Harris campaign made two $500,000 payments to Winfrey’s Harpo Productions on Oct. 15, a month after Winfrey’s town hall with Harris and weeks before the pair appeared at a Harris Philadelphia rally. Now, two sources have told The New York Times the full price of the event with Winfrey was closer to $2.5 million…. The bulk of the extravagant spending reportedly went to celebrity appearances and performances and influencer partnerships meant to boost campaign events.” And: “Winfrey, a billionaire, insisted she was ‘paid nothing’ when confronted by TMZ. A Harpo Productions spokesperson acknowledged to Variety that the company took money from the campaign but claimed it was for ‘production costs.’… ‘Oprah Winfrey was at no point during the campaign paid a personal fee, nor did she receive a fee from Harpo,’ the spokesperson said.” • I don’t know how Hollywood accounting works, but that statement seems carefully engineered to me.
Republican Funhouse
“An Appeal to Democratic Voters” [Patria with Steve Cortes]. “[H]ere are the three most compelling reasons to at least consider joining our America First cause — and to vote Republican into the future. (1) The Democrat Leadership Disrespects You…. (2) The GOP Is Now the Party of Workers; (3) The Democratic Party Obsesses with Social Radicalism.” • I think “of workers” is telling. “Of,” as opposed to “of, by, and for,” which would imply quite a different party.
“League of American Workers President: ‘Arizonans realize that the American Dream has become out of reach'” [Grand Canyon Times]. “Steve Cortes, president and founder of the League of American Workers (LAW), today said that poll results released by his organization show Arizona voters no longer feel the American Dream is reachable. That poll showed 84% of Arizona voters say families in the state cannot live on a single income.” • More on the League of American Workers.
Spook Country
“CISA Director Jen Easterly to depart on Inauguration Day” [NextGov]. “Jen Easterly, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s stalwart champion and a figurehead among cybersecurity and intelligence community practitioners, will leave her post Jan. 20 next year when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated back into the White House, people familiar with her plans said… The future of CISA in an incoming Trump administration remains uncertain, as GOP allegations of censorship stemming from CISA’s interactions with social media companies — claims that Easterly has adamantly refuted — played a prominent role in a recent Supreme Court case, which the Biden administration ultimately won.” • More on Easterly here.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Axelrod: Democrats Can’t Approach ‘Working People’ Like Missionaries And Say, ‘We’re Here To Help You Become More Like Us'” [RealClearPolitics]. “”I do have concerns about the way the Democratic Party relates to working-class voters in this country. The only group that Democrats gained within the election on Tuesday was White college graduates, and among working-class voters, there was a significant decline. The only group they won among– Democrats won were people who make more than a hundred thousand dollars a year. You can’t win national elections that way, and it certainly shouldn’t be that way for a party that fashions itself as the party of working people.” • Not “fashions itself.” “Fancies itself.”
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!
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC November 11 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC November 9 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 9 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data November 15: | National [6] CDC November 14: |
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| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens November 11: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 16: |
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| Positivity[9] CDC October 28: | Variants[10] CDC October 28: |
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| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2: |
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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) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.
[7] (Walgreens) Down.
[8] (Cleveland) Down.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Recent Quality Issues: 5 Key Developments” [Simple Flying]. (1) “Executive resignation amid production restarts”; (2) “FAA mandates a comprehensive quality improvement plan”; (3) “Quality defects discovered in undelivered 787 Dreamliners”; (4) “Whistleblowers expose systemic safety violations”; (5) “Ongoing quality issues affect the 737 MAX program.” • That’s a lot.
Manufacturing: “Boeing strike post mortem: Ortberg has work to do” (excerpt) [Leeham News and Analysis]. “Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg’s performance during the IAM strike is getting low marks from the men and women who will do the work that turns Boeing around-–the mechanics, techs, and engineers in the factories, according to those LNA has spoken with. Ortberg came in talking about a “reset” in the company’s relationship with its unionized workforce. He took a good symbolic step by announcing he’d relocate to Seattle and work from there. But while Wall Street hailed the move, it didn’t land as well as it could have. Ortberg spent one day in the Renton factory before the strike. Boeing got a good photo of him touring the factory floor, but it’s unclear if he met with many workers.” Ouch! More: “Likewise, it’s unclear how much Ortberg was involved in one of the biggest crises his new company faced when he took over: the Machinists Union negotiations.” • Sadly, the material about Ortberg is mostly behind the paywall; however, it appears that he “went with Calhoun’s plan” (Calhoun being the previous CEO who was forced out).
Tech: “Maybe Bluesky has ‘won'” [Gavin Anderegg]. “When writing about Bluesky, I’ve seen folks mention that it’s either federated or decentralized. I’m here to tell you that it’s currently neither. This one really irks me because the service is getting the credit for work it hasn’t done….. All this to say: the Bluesky team seems like they’re earnestly working toward a decentralized platform, but they have a lot of work ahead of them. Years of effort, in my estimation. In the meantime, Bluesky is slightly more decentralized than, say, Facebook — but not by much. Yes, you can host your own data. Yes, you can scrape all of the content on the network. But you can’t do anything with it unless you’re attached to the Bluesky service. I believe this will change with time, but it will be prohibitively expensive and we’re not there yet.” • With discussion of the advantages of Mastodon’s simple ActivityPub protocol, vs. Bluesky’s complicated AT Protocol (“atproto”). I haven’t tried Bluesky, because I’m not sympathetic to liberal Democrats making themselves even more embubbled than they already are. I have tried Mastodon, but compared to Twitter it feels like a provincial backwater. That said, the PMC migrating to a Silicon Valley-centric, not open-source, and enshittifiable platform (yet another platform) is rather telling. Maybe it’s the “Blue” in “Bluesky” that triggers them.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 51 Neutral (previous close: 50 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 68 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 18 at 1:23:03 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes up one on Drought. “A very large area of the nation is under general drought conditions” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Do these people know something we don’t?
Permaculture
“The Way of Mushrooms: Russula, the Trickster Mushroom” [The Meaning of Water]. “It was early October on a warm gentle day when I chose to walk a different path in the Trent Nature Sanctuary forest. And there, in the cedar-birch-poplar forest, I discovered beautiful fanned-shaped saprotrophic mushrooms arranged like street trees on a boulevard and stitching an enchanting network of crisscrossing lines of creamy ‘flowers’ on the forest floor. I noticed that they were arranged in close to what looked like a fairy circle in the thick duff amid dead logs and branches of several fallen poplar and birch trees; no doubt obtaining their nourishment from the decaying wood.” • But how to identify them?
Gallery
So few lines:
Fishing Boat near an Island #artbots #rembrandt pic.twitter.com/HnL3YxvB4w
— Rembrandt (@artistrembrandt) November 11, 2024
“Comment: Was Boeing contract unions’ last big win for now?” [Everett Herald]. “Yet these contract wins at Boeing, UPS, General Motors and the other two big Detroit automakers, and beyond, expose the limits of organized labor’s power today. These workers belong to unions organized decades ago, and they’ve obtained higher pay and much better benefits through collective bargaining on new contracts. But increasing the number of U.S. workers represented by unions remains difficult. The percentage of U.S. workers belonging to a union continues to shrink, declining to 10 percent of the labor force in 2023. As Joe Biden, arguably the most pro-labor president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, departs the White House, and Donald Trump’s team gets ready to move back in, I believe that prospects for the growth in union members in the near future appear exceedingly bleak.”
“Teach Yourself to Echolocate” [Atlas Obscura]. “fter losing his vision as an infant, Kish taught himself to move around with the help of echolocation. Like bats, Kish uses his mouth to produce a series of short, crisp clicking sounds, and then listens to how those sounds bounce off the surrounding landscape. (Our winged neighbors tend to emit these clicks at frequencies humans can’t hear, but Kish’s clicks are perfectly audible to human ears.) From there, Kish makes a mental map of his environment, considering everything from broad contours—like walls and doors—down to textural details. Kish now teaches echolocation, mostly to students who are blind…. Whatever your sightedness, there’s something to be said for learning to listen more attentively to sonic scenery. Kish believes that vision has a way of blunting the other senses unless people work to really flex them. Deft echolocators, he says, are able to perceive fine differences—distinguishing, say, between an oleander bush (“a million sharp returns”) and an evergreen (“wisps closely packed together, which sound like a bit like a sponge or a curtain”). They’re discovering sonic wonder wherever they go. We asked Kish to tailor a lesson for first-timers just learning to listen to the landscape.” • Interesting! And I imagine it would work in the dark…
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Principal author interviewed on most recent episode of Science Friday (9:31 min. audio)
> Principal author interviewed
Thank you!
I live in swing state North Carolina.
I saw, easily, ten Harris ads for every one Trump ad.
For me in a small-town county seat in Michigan, the ratio wasn’t quite that high — two or three to one, I’d guess. OTOH, one likely confounding factor was that almost all the ads I saw were on line (including many while I read NC) . . . at least, as long as we count the ones delivered via FiberNet with the eclectic mix of YouTube/Amazon Prime/Disney+/etc. videos my daughters watch.
What you were watching could be at play. This is part of the Harris Campaign didn’t know where to spend their cash issue. In 2016, the infotainment channel for Hillary was interrupted by HIllary Clinton campaign commercials. Obviously, it was a quid pro quo, but instead of going beyond the captive audience, they just threw money at one thing.
I saw a few good Harris campaign ads, but then they just kept coming and became a drone.
RE: Here Come Trump’s Concentration Camps
I’m so old I remember the talk about Bush/Cheney building internment camps and thinking it was a distinct possibility at the time. Well that never happened, at least not in the way it was presented at the time.
Will there be scads of federal money given to build even more prisons? Quite likely! Will elected officials come up with novel and potentially personally profitable methods to fill all those new cells? Yessirree! Because that has happened over many decades across multiple administrations now.
The first big hoopla about concentration camps I recall was after the 76 election when I was stationed in Germany. Larouche’s USLP had pamphleteers everyplace there was an army base (which at the time was pretty much everyplace) and their stuff was all about how Ford had really won the election and how Carter, the Rockefellers, and Leonard Woodcock (then head of the UAW, not sure what their real grudge against him was) were building internment camps for their political enemies.
I remember reading about them in the 1960’s, in The Guardian (US), an Old Left newspaper that has been defunct for years. Charles Mingus mentions them as he introduces Meditations On Integration on his Live at Town Hall date from 1964.
Thread that discusses the votes at the 11/14-15 HICPAC meeting:
https://x.com/TogetherWeMask/status/1857610298770812934
video of the meeting:
https://www.youtube.com/live/rnf2gWXMtNI
Thank you! Dare I look…
UPDATE Illustrates why airborne specialists were allowed into workgroups, but not given a vote on the Committee itself.
RE: Gaetz nomination
Pretty clear that Trump’s election was a giant middle finger by the electorate to the Democrat party in the first place. Now Trump is giving a second [family blog] you by appointing so many of those the Democrats tried to cancel. Unlike several others though, Gaetz has always been a Republican as far as I know. Gabbard was a Democrat though. So was RFKJr. So was Musk if I remember right. And so was the Big Cheeto himself at one point in time. While a lot was made of a potential Liz Cheney cabinet position in a Harris administration, nobody seems to be mentioning all the Democrats on Trump’s team. Funny that.
One other note about Gaetz – the Democrat party has done a bang up job of smearing him again and sowing confusion. I’m a few minutes into the latest Useful Idiots podcast and they lead off with Gaetz and admit to not knowing a whole lot of the details. Aaaron Mate does mention the possibility it could be political retribution, and while they do mention that the DoJ already declined to press charges against Gaetz in a sex trafficking case, they fail to note that the Democrats latest accusations are the very same case. Spoke to a friend a few days ago who pays pretty close attention to politics and who brought up the Gaetz story, which had me confused at the time. I said it was old news and the case had been closed. Took me a bit to realize the Democrats were teasing their own Congressional investigation of Gaetz, which I didn’t even know existed (and why should it given the DoJ decision?!??). I’m not seeing much about the DoJ decision and the possible extortion against Gaetz in any discussuion of this story, except of course here at NC.
Here’s the podcast for anyone interested – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASNVbjn9CNE
Stoller points out that Gaetz is very sound on anti-trust (a “Kahnservative”). And yet somehow the populist aspect of Gaetz’s politics is never mentioned.
There was a meme passing around on Twitter of Trump, JFK Jr., Tulsi, and Musk standing together somewhere (It maybe is even AI generated but it doesn’t matter) and the caption said something along the lines of “hey, look, the democrats won” or “they all used to be democrats” or something like that. Of course most didn’t see one bit of humor in it.
It sure seemed like a giant middle finger, and then Trump rubs the democrats nose in it by appointing people they hate with a thousand suns. It worked. Many are in a complete tizzy and having their own meltdowns. A couple in particular I got a kick out of are Krystal Kolinski and Kyle Ball. I guess Krystal is rich and can do what she wants. I don’t know about Kyle, but how do he/they make a living out of publishing agastitute and calling people stupid all day on Twitter? But I digress…
There was some postings recently that Mitch McConnell said there will be no recess appointments. I don’t know if that is true or not to be honest. There was a video I watched of him saying this but he didn’t say anything – he was frozen at the mike. Did he say it or not? I have no idea, but I read it elsewhere too. Unless they can pull that off, I don’t see how some of his picks get confirmed. My guess, JFK, Gaetz, and probably even Tulsi will never make it. Maybe others as well. But who knows…
I added orts and scraps. Enjoy!
Russula, the Trickster Mushroom. The article is interesting, and the photos are excellent. One of the ways of learning about mushrooms is from well-taken photos from many angles, although experts like Patience Gray caution against too much reliance on photos.
The whole Russula family, and its cousins, the Lactarius, are problematicalicious.
Michael Kuo is quite funny about his exasperation:
https://www.mushroomexpert.com/russula.html
The only Russula that Patience Gray seemed willing to eat is Russula viriscens. Its jade-green cap makes it unmistakable. She gives the Catalan name as Puagra. I’m finding three Italian names. The Italian Wikipedia entry maintains that colombina verde can be eaten raw. The assertion is currently highlighted in pink by the editors — it is almost certainly wrong.
Lactarius also are a mess to figure out and eat. Gray maintained that northern Italians wouldn’t eat Lactarius, but that in her region, the Salentine, people gathered and ate some of the Lactarius species without croaking.
So one must learn one’s funghi. Mushrooms go way beyond micro-aggressions. They’ll just knock you out. My practice is not to eat any of them raw, not even the white buttons called “champignons” here in the Undisclosed Region.
I haven’t heard from Hillary Clinton in some two weeks. Maybe more. Did she go out a-mushrooming? Did anyone warn her about fly agaric?
Two dew claws up to Dusty. Great plantidote!
2.5 million to Oprah, but she wasn’t paid a fee. OK. I’m guessing Oprah is a smart lady, so she must know money is fungible, so I’m not buying what she’s selling. Just a little fib there Ops? Then again, I don’t trust her, Hollywood, or anything out of the Harris campaign.