Are People Projecting Racist Stereotypes Onto Squirrels? Sapiens
Climate/Environment
We’re cooked on climate: 2024 virtually certain to be the hottest year on record ZME Science
‘Doomsday’ Antarctic glacier melting faster than expected, fueling calls for geoengineering Phys.org
Small cuts to beef production in wealthier nations could remove years of carbon emissions, study shows Agriculture Dive
Outrage sweeps Valencia as 130,000 protest Spain flood response Anadolu Agency
Pandemics
B.C. teen believed to be first human case of avian flu in Canada Vancouver Sun
Worsening bird flu outbreak in Tulare County, across California raising labor, trade concerns Visalia Times Delta
India
Marts of All Commerce London Review of Books
Africa
US cancels $1.1bn of Somalia’s debt in ‘historic’ financial agreement The Guardian
When the IMF and World Bank visited my father Review of African Political Economy. Commentary:
Incredibly thankful to my near team, Martin, Lewis, Marjatta, Tatiana, Mathew, for their tireless support during our annual meetings. They make every day of work so much fun! @TPecherkina24 pic.twitter.com/9TJdYN4yZ0
— Gita Gopinath (@GitaGopinath) October 27, 2024
China?
China as a Model Development Partner An Africanist Perspective
Old Blighty
Starmer appoints national security adviser who negotiated secret deal to free genocider Pinochet The Skwawkbox
European Disunion
EU’s opening bid to avoid Trump’s tariffs: We could buy more American gas Politico
Germany commemorates 35 years since fall of Berlin Wall Deutsche Welle
German Redemption Theology Critical Muslim
Syraqistan
UN finds majority of verified Gaza war dead women and children The New Arab
Cell towers and water lines: A closer look at Israel’s expanding foothold in Gaza Ynet. Commentary:
YNet says Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir are waiting for the hostages to die. The issue of the hostages in Gaza will be solved ‘naturally and tragically.’
They will then use these deaths as further pretext to permanently occupy and establish Jewish settlements in Gaza, YNet says.… pic.twitter.com/9ISDHaNzn3
— William Van Wagenen (@WVanwagenen) November 9, 2024
Shin Bet Warned Netanyahu of 10/7 Attack Hours Before It Began Tikun Olam
On-the-Ground Reporting Dismantles Israeli Claim Bolstering Case for War With Iran Drop Site
***
Iran denies plot to assassinate Trump, calls for confidence-building with US France24
Trump wants US troops out of Syria, says Robert F Kennedy Jr Anadolu Agency
In an Israeli settlement named after Trump, residents see opportunity after the election AP
***
UK, US carry out air strikes on Yemen, including Sanaa Al Jazeera
Yemen deals heavy blows to ‘Israel’s’ Nevatim base; new MQ-9 reaped Al Mayadeen
***
Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’ FAIR
Online Media Banned in Lebanon Craig Murray
***
Dutch king says his nation failed Jewish community during football fan attacks – like during Second World War The Independent
What really happened at the Amsterdam “pogrom”? Thomas Fazi. Commentary:
Sky News has edited and re-uploaded a new version of their video on the violence in Amsterdam, claiming the previous edit “didn’t meet Sky News’ standards for balance and impartiality.”
In other words, they changed it to be more sympathetic to the Israeli rioters who instigated… https://t.co/bP8HEbZoAJ pic.twitter.com/ZY6xHkZfE5
— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) November 10, 2024
Just in case: Mossad agents to join Maccabi Tel Aviv FC trip to Amsterdam Jerusalem Post. From Nov. 5, still germane.
New Not-So-Cold War
US to deliver over 500 interceptors for Patriot, NASAMS systems to Ukraine, WSJ reports Kyiv Independent
The Missile Race Policy Tensor
EU preparing 15th sanctions package against Russia, targeting foreign-made parts Kyiv Independent
***
Putin signs into law mutual defence treaty with North Korea Reuters
North Korea Enters the Fray: Must Ukraine Win a Third World War on its Own? The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
***
Trump ally: Ukraine focus is to achieve ‘peace and stop the killing’ The Guardian
The Game is Up: Putin has the upper hand, Trump and his advisers are on the back foot Gilbert Doctorow
Trump Transition
Wall Street Giddy Over Coming Merger Boom as Trump Expected to Fire Lina Khan Common Dreams
Susie Wiles Lobby Firm Helped China’s ZTE Escape Sanctions Lee Fang
Asia Investors Chasing Trump Bets Zero In on Trade War Winners Bloomberg
***
Could Rick Scott Replace Mitch McConnell? Senate GOP Leader Race Heats Up Newsweek. Commentary:
NEW: Tucker Carlson endorses Rick Scott for GOP Senate leader, rips Mitch McConnell.
“What the hell is going on in the US Senate?” Tucker asked on X.
“Hours after Donald Trump wins the most conclusive mandate in 40 years, Mitch McConnell engineers a coup against his agenda by… pic.twitter.com/dA9C1sBlRx
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 9, 2024
***
Trump says Haley, Pompeo won’t join his administration The Hill
Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders CNN
Trump team expected to accept feds’ help with transition after all Politico
Accountability for Nazi Crimes: Lessons for Democratic Transitions The Journal of Politics
Biden Administration
When you get under Antony Blinken’s skin Africa Is A Country
2024 Post Mortems
Patrick Lawrence: Notes of a Non-Voter Scheerpost
Dem Insiders Begged Team Harris Not to Campaign With Liz Cheney Rolling Stone
US election 2024: inflation, immigration and identity The Next Recession
***
Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won? TNR. The deck: “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.”
Glenn Greenwald: Dems Blame Latino and Black Voters For Kamala’s Loss System Update (Video)
Black People Across the Country Are Getting Racist Text Messages Saying They’re Going to Be Enslaved Futurism
AI
The thought doesn’t count Internal exile
Healthcare?
The Urgent Need for Social Justice in Mental Health Care Mad in America
Imperial Collapse Watch
The Case for Eurasian Multipolarity Glenn Diesen, Glenn’s Substack
The Bezzle
Creator of Crypto Mixer ‘Bitcoin Fog’ Gets 12 1/2 Years In Prison Gizmodo
Unsafe Bets The Baffler.“Polymarket’s great expectations.”
Class Warfare
Shame on the Elon enablers Disconnect
The Machiavellis of the Market: Entrepreneurs Against Democracy LPE Project
This Week In Skeletons Defector
Antidote du jour (via):
A bonus (via Chuck L):
I have no idea what is happening here but it is the best thing I’ve seen today! pic.twitter.com/xjQJ2eKzQU
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 8, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
239 comments
Comments are closed.
Is that squirrel in today’s Antidote du jour….in a superhero landing pose?
https://nypost.com/2021/07/08/black-widow-pokes-fun-at-classic-superhero-landing-pose/
It’s a squirrel recruit to the Yiga clan, in mufti, practising his Earthquake technique. It looks pretty good, to me.
Cats beware. Not much use against hawks, though.
It’s a ‘Palance’ing’ act.
Exactly my first thought.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g426J4Uh2m4
No. It’s a sumo squirrel.
Could it be a photoshopped picture?
Yep, I think this photo was in a Nikon funny animal picture competition in the last couple of years. Those are worth looking up for a laugh.
Sadly I don’t think it was caught in the act of landing from orbit.
3 Point stance. USA football term. Getting ready to tackle…….
I see Mitch McConnell is doing his thing (Colin Rugg tweet). I have mixed feelings regarding his effort to rig the senate leadership elections. It’s sort of a good thing if senate leadership is at odds with the Trump admin because less gets done. I figure Mitch’s driving motive is keeping Ukraine cash flowing, keep the war-bucks flowing in general, something I would like to see end.
Pass the popcorn.
He’s soon to shuffle off this mortal coil. I would lay odds that Joe outlives him, perhaps by many years.
If Freeze Frame dies on camera, how would we know it?
…a reprise
Freeze Frame!
I could see it was a rough-cut Wednesday
Slow-motion weekdays stare me down
His lack of reflex got around
There were no defects to be found
Video image froze without a sound
Thursday morning was a hot flash-factor
His frozen face still focused in my mind
Test-strip, proof of senility is hard to find
By Friday the spotlight will no longer grind
Stop-time for Kentucky if he lost his mind
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! Now Freeze!
Now I’m lookin’ at a flashback Wednesday
Zoom lens feelings just won’t disappear
Close-up quiet, no sweet-talk in my ear
His bot-spot moment was so strong
This freeze-frame moment can’t be wrong
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! Now Freeze!
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame! Now Freeze!
Freeze-Frame! Freeze-Frame!
Like a Freeze-Frame! (Freeze-Frame!)
Freeze-Frame!
It’s like the freeze, he’s a quiet breeze
Freeze-Frame!
It’s like the freeze, he’s
Freeze-Frame!
Freeze-Frame!
Freeze-Frame!
speaking of speaking in tongues, lol, thanks.
One of your classics.
He’s certainly not good for much neural activity. Maybe they’ll freeze his brain and replace him with AI.
‘Sit Awkwardly Still With Mitch’
Will never make it as a TV show~
Does this qualify as a :dad” joke?
His ultimate motive may well be staying above ground and not lying prone on a cold slab of marble…\sarc
in more seriousness, though, Mitch has kept the conch shell so he gets to keep his powers. What’s the proverbial line, about buying green bananas…
I once saw a bunch of green bananas give a press conference, and they were quite upset at being compared to our politics.
I like this quote from a several years back article by Matt Taibbi, when detailing his journalism period in a collapsing USSR…”Let there be bananas in a banana republic..”
Coincidentally, I overheard a Den of Vipers were hissing loudly at the suggested comparison to most of the nationally elected US politicians…
Trump makes for a perfect Anchurian Candidate…
…please fasten your seatbelts & bring your seats back to their full upright position and stow away tables as we are about to attempt a debt-stick landing
“… a debt-stick landing…” otherwise known as a Crash.
This time, the runway will be foamed with KY Deluxe “Personal Risk Assessment Natural Goo (PRANG.)”
“This is your pilot, Big Gretch speaking. We anticipate turbulence upon landing. Doritos for everyone after we land. Assume the position!”
…the Flamin’ Hot Doritos per chance?
Maybe you’re thinking of Larry Miller?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JYg59kfLkDY
Isn’t Rick Scott one of the die-hard Kill Social Security/Kill Medicare/Kill Medicaid people? It wouldn’t take much to be an improvement on McConnell, but Scott is not it.
Apart from implementing neoliberalism (reform and governance-drivel), I wonder what else Somalia had to give up? Maybe becoming a launchpad against Iran?
Naval bases.
For a couple of years already, there have been important moves about regional actors (such as Ethiopia, Turkey, UAE) and international ones (such as the USA) setting up a military presence in Somalia or its secessionist provinces (Somaliland, Puntland) in the form of naval strongholds. Just looking at a map and remembering what Ansarallah has been doing for the past year, one can understand why.
All this has been happening in the background; the Western media do not seem to have been very interested in those developments, though.
Well, they seem to be very interested in such developments when it’s about China. And they don’t even mind that in reality there is no single example of China engaging in such scheme of trapping country in debt and then start building military bases.
I believe that the seas around Somalia hold enormous unexploited oil reserves . Between 30 and 120 Billion Barrels .
Really?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puwoUKhZQbg
I am confident that someone will drill it and someone will sell it and someone will buy it and burn it and dump it up into the sky all around us.
Re: Haley and Pompeo not welcome in Trump Cabinet:
Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!
These two warmongers can go pound sand.
Without a doubt. I read that in a Tweet from some large account yesterday. Some were trying to get #NeverRubio to go viral. I hope it does, and I hope they are listening. We could make a list.
Certainly a good sign – if true. It would be two despicable neocons down, but a whole bunch more to go. I’m not counting any chickens just yet. But unlike a lot of the neocon warmongers who jumped to the bipartisan anti-Trump side, Pompeo kept his powder dry with Trump, clearly hoping to get back in. One of the worst, certainly, but there are a lot more where he came from.
I figure that he’ll get some appointment where he can get rich(er) but not affect foreign policy.
The best “Hallelujah” regarding this decision is that many were putting pressure on Trump to not include these war mongers in his admin. So, if he’s able to listen to sane voices (RFK Jr., Gabbard and the other X-Dem peple), we may have a chance at a few changes.
Yeah, if this turns out true and Trump actually does bring on some non-uniparty people like RFKJ and Gabbard, I think that’s about as close to the best-case scenario as we’ll get. Full disclosure: pretty much the final nudge for me to hold my nose and vote Biden in 2020 was because I really, really dislike Mike Pompeo.
While we’re at it, silly as it may sound, I always thought Marianne Williamson would be a natural for mental-health czar (partly because she’s completely free from the orthodoxy of psychiatry).
Anyways, even if this plays out, I’ll still be pessimistic simply because of the inherent character flaws in Trump, the people around him, and frankly America at large. “People may be policy” but “character is destiny” as Heraclitus would say, and all the conciliatory DC politics in the world can’t save us from our own hamartiai.
So Trump is not even in office and haven‘t put any tarifs on the table and yet does this traitor von der Leyen already offer gifts. Insane.
De-Risking – buying higher priced products from high cost producers and becoming their captive customer. Risking – buying less expensive products from lower cost producers operating in the broader market w/o being captive. “European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is suggesting that one way to deter U.S. President-elect Donald Trump from imposing new tariffs is for Europe to buy more liquefied natural gas (LNG) from America.” America and Europe deserve each other. The Europeans are completely irrational. Russia should spend zero effort trying to reach understandings or agreements with European leaders. Except the sane few like Hungary. They are too far gone, hopeless. They can’t even perceive their own legitimate self interest right in front of their noses.
Cap’m I need more de-riskium crystals, the shields, they canna take much more!
It’s Economics Jim, but not as we know it.
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!
Outrage sweeps Valencia as 130,000 protest Spain flood response Anadolu Agency
Once again, the press (Anadolu Agency or any other) makes the mistake of focusing in the hypothetical political consequences while at the same time ignoring the real causes of the catastrophe which have very little to do with some ignorant and idiotic political leader or the other. In Turkey OK, it doesn’t matter very much, and it is understandable but in Spain it is unforgivable. Please, we have to learn something. Apart from the obvious climatic considerations we should focus first and foremost on the mistakes made on decades of urbanization and infrastructures that didn’t leave any waterfall drainage other than the streets. Easily seen in this damage map.
Just now funding spurred by “allowing” (from the $20B issued to DoD/EUCOM) to “support” high tech US weapons sent to Ukraine over the past 30 months! Who’s been doing it since?
TDY US active duty troops?
What is TDY? Thanks from an ol’ school lady who’s not “hep”. Hip, but not Hep.
Temporary duty assignment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_duty_assignment
Are we sending US troops to Ukraine?
TDY: temporary duty. Orders received to do something (like training) away from your normal duty station.
Should add that IIRC for civilians, max TDY is 180 days. Then you have to bring them back and issue a new set of orders.
I agree with you about wondering who’s been doing it to date. But the more I look at “Biden administration to allow American military contractors to deploy to Ukraine for first time since Russia’s invasion”, the more I think a whole lotta people are gonna get sheep dipped. So when Trump shows up and says “All AD DOD out of Ukraine NOW”, nobody is going to leave.
regarding the IMF photo op:
How much manna can one procure out of A Chorus Line?
Soooooo, does that mean that soon we can expect to appear on Broadway “International Monetary Fund – The Musical?”
ANYTHING is possible in a world that offered us “Black Sabbath – The Ballet” https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1095031148231198
Lol, “lessons learned” and all that.
Looks like this ‘joy’ thing that Harris promoted is going viral, even though the rest of her candidacy flubbed.
The IMF has finally woken up to the fact that everything that they do is “performative.”
“Everybody wants to be a star and nobody wants to be an actor.”
I take it you never attended Arthur Murray’s finance lessons…
All I ever learned at the AM classes was the Gish Gavotte. I also learned that it takes talent to tango.
“EU’s opening bid to avoid Trump’s tariffs: We could buy more American gas”
‘…von der Leyen asked: “Why not replace it by American LNG, which is cheaper for us and brings down our energy prices? It’s something where we can get into a discussion, also [where] our trade deficit is concerned.”
Ursula doing some serious gaslighting here. American LNG is cheaper than what they are using right now? In your dreams. I guess that since her “re-election” she can say anything she wants now without any repercussions. But for the benefit of us plebs, Ursula should declare where the gas that the EU is coming from actually comes from right now.
Yeah, everyone who is buying fossil fuels from Russia, is doing it because they are… more expensive.
Anyway, avoiding tariffs by raising energy prices seems like very idiotic thing to do, because with tariffs only the trade with US will be affected, but charging more for energy will whack the whole EU economy and make it less competitive with every trade partner.
von der Leyen… You can see here the idiot showing plainly how she cares about high geostrategic concerns compared with how she cares about the welfare of EU citizens. Not that it is easy to do a comparative of NG prizes since we only see the pooled quotes used for power generation. I think this has probably something to do with the Russian NG imported via Ukraine (via Sudhza in Kursk, mind you) that many would like to close in next January. There are long term contracts of Hungarian, Austrian and Slovakian companies with Gazprom that some would like to end. (See here at Bruegel). These countries oppose to the closure of the pipeline and Bruegel says it doesn’t matter because it can be easily replaced with LNG from the Baltic (Poland mainly). What these geniuses forget to say in their analysis, even if we suppose their analysis is correct, which may not, is that for Hungarian households (for instance), heating costs might increase by a long order of magnitude, but who cares about households. Not von der Leyen, not The Bruegel.
Third Reich sensibility from a bananas republic.
File this under both class war and neoliberalism*: Glenn Diessen’s latest essay theme is decades of neoliberalism exhausted the US economy.
Goodbye to the liberal elites
https://swentr.site/news/607372-conclusions-trump-us-president-term/
* here’s a good, 2018 essay by Philip Mirowski explaining neoliberalism in America.
Neoliberalism: The Movement That Dare Not Speak Its Name
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/neoliberalism-movement-dare-not-speak-name/
Thanks for the Patrick Lawrence post: a real palate cleanser:
I have wondered for years why liberal Americans, to stay with the accepted term, nurse so visceral a hatred of Donald Trump. From the moment he glided down the golden escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, the animus has extended magnitudes beyond questions of policy. It has consumed many a liberal, indeed.
I draw on Otto Rank, one of the early figures in Viennese psychoanalysis, and a little from Freud, to reach tentative conclusions.
After the first Trump win I read an article that said Trump is a shadow magnet – that character of our imagination that lives out our nasty sides that we dare not express. This is the Jungian perspective, of course. But with all that heavy-duty virtue signaling folks do, they (we) need some surface to project all the vices we’d rather be doing. Trump is a convenient choice for that.
I don’t think it’s universally true, but you’re right that it explains much of TDS perfectly.
A lot of us don’t like Trump, but when he provokes a nervous breakdown in people, it’s almost always because he loudly represents something they don’t want to acknowledge in themselves.
It’s a little less extreme than full-on projection, but Freud’s concept of the uncanny works similarly. Things that people subconsciously believe should remain buried can create unnerving, eerie feelings when seen out in the open.
Wonder if the inverse might be true for war hawks and ruling elite when it comes to hearing about socialism. Could there be a SDS (socialism derangement syndrome). Are they just in denial of their true, repressed, far more generous shadows?
The charisma of a sociopath
echoing Stephen’s thanks to NC for the article.
I’ve been seeing the fallout from the election on social media among Black and Brown and those who cater to us, literal posts on “we’ll get thru this” figuratively offering herbal tea and shoulders to cry on. si se puede, we got thru eight years of the deporter in chief and his bailout of the architects of the destruction of B/B home ownership. Trump is one more speedbump among 500 years of speedbumps. There are far worse things than speedbumps and we’ve gotten thru them too.
Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack?
Always and forever.
Al Czervik
Donald Trump in Czervik clothes and style would have gone over the top.
He’s a parvenu.
> The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots… Once the strongman takes office, no one can predict what will happen.
Trump is not a real strongman, and we know that lawyers and bond salesmen will have a party under his stewardship. Lina Khan will be fired and there will be a deals bonanza, and no one benefits from those more than lawyers and bond salesmen.
Who were the 17 million Biden ballots that showed up in 2020 that were not delivered for Harris in 2024?
In statistical analysis of a production machine some would say a “monkey wrench was thrown in…..
That’s what the Harris team is asking. Hmmm. Jill Biden dressed in red. A half point reduction followed by an additional quarter point. Did (Dick) Cheney make and then break a promise?
Sorry, my tinfoil hat is working overtime.
Does this dispel the relatively recent notion that Kamala orchestrated everything in the White House and Joe merely went along with it?
Ha, There I was thinking Kamala couldn’t run a laundromat.
I watched her fold, she’s got mad skillz in that regard.
And now she has been hung out to dry. Funny old world.
If you were in one of her driers, you would surely go “twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.”
She gave no quarters and asked none?
Omg. You win!
And I was so looking forward to her giving the State of the Union speech. I even bought the popcorn. (sigh)
What can never be, unburdened by what has been.
A special shout out to the main stream media and their ‘too close to call’ gambit late in the game. It’s all they had left.
“I’m proud of the White House lawn, every bit as much as you are, my fellow Americans. Because we – you and I and America – believe in values not policies.” Up next at the break: Sarah Palin to provide analysis and de-coding via word salad of President Harris’ State of the Union word salad address here at FOX News. If you’re not totally confused by then, stay tuned for our continued deep analysis with guests Liz Cheney and Victoria Nuland.
My tinfoil senses have been at it since the Butler, PA attempt. I still think there was a squib behind his ear to make the “blood” flow. Looking closely at his recent right profile photographs, I see no missing top part of his ear or evidence of scar tissue.
Who would have the resources and power to set up running Harris against Trump and my assumed fake attempt to make sure Trump would be back in? Mossad and Israelis, the Koch crowd? Adelsons certainly would have the connections and funding.
You know a guy in the stand took a bullet, died? And videos show bullets hitting the stands and the lights? Not to mention, there’s a dead kid who was the shooter?
So essentially what you’re saying is they brought in a dead body, plopped it on the roof with a gun hoping nobody would notice, prepared fake “eyewitnesses” (to call in that they saw a kid with a gun climbing onto the roof), prepared the stand with pre-made bullet holes and explosive pops, then arranged for a father in the stands with his kids to drop dead with a bullet to the heart, at this point Trump drops to the floor and squishes the squib which hopefully nobody would have noticed was there. Et voila, lights, curtain…
Thank you, well said.
Look at the World Trade Center. “They” didn’t have problem killing 3000 or so then so what’s a few now?
If my tinfoil instinct is correct, that was some damn good marksmanship to shoot around Trump. We’ve all heard the term collateral damage.
Squib could have been broken when he slapped his ear before he was taken to the floor. Someone in his Big Mac physical condition was able to throw off a couple of burly SS and get up for his photo op?
Again, collateral damage, do you think “they”give a fuck about a couple of dead supporters? Remember Horst Wessel.
Or the blood bath the the Israeli Samson Option and Israeli Gaza and south Lebanon slaughter houses have caused. More collateral damages?
If you were selling the idea that there was a conspiracy to assassinate Trump I might follow along. The problems aren’t with Trump surviving. The problem is with it happening at all. Did they just notice that the SS detail really didn’t care, and think this is our chance? Sorry, but the people coordinating his security was largely not the Trump campaign, but the people who were desperate enough to try to kick him out of the race that they started numerous clearly unreal criminal cases against him. Oh, and as someone with experience a wired squib is much harder to disquise than an earpiece.
But then I have had multiple people try to tell me that Trump is clearly more down the dementia road than Biden is. So I get that people like to look at things and see what they want to see. Trump is actually that light on his feet, still. Doesn’t make him a good President, or even a nice person.
And just for the record, I do believe that our current unitary leadership could and would have killed him if they could have managed it.
This has been a Dem talking point based mainly on his rally schtick. Lambert attended and later yellow-wadered one of Trump’s 2016 rallies. He compared it to recent rallies. He sees no change. Trump was never linear in these events, he’d riff off the cuff on a theme, judging crowd reactions, and then move on to another topic. The high level WAS structured, the rest pointedly off the cuff.
I may have missed it, but I have yet to see anything like Biden repeatedly wandering the wrong direction and having to have a minder corral him, or talking to a dead person in public.
I saw the recent behind the scenes video of Trump reacting to the Harris convention speech, with Oliver Stone and Tulsi Gabbard, and other worthies. (Sadly YT has taken it down, sorry). Anyway, suffice to say that there’s no way that man has dementia, sharp as a razor. Old, cantankerous and mean, but dementia? Christ save us from liberal cope.
I struggle to find the apparently correct search terms to obtain results as to the differential of Ballots cast compared to total votes for Presidential candidate.
Could there be 12-17 millions that left the top of the ticket blank?
Anyone else having any luck on that query as of 11/10/2024/
It might be necessary to download data state by state and then aggregate by precinct.
One would like to think that the question you want to answer would also be on the minds of people whose job it is to report on politics. But perhaps they don’t want to know. It’s entirely possible that there are a lot of “top-line non-votes” on both sides of the partisan divide.
Could those be votes for third party candidates, because I’m trying to understand how the Green Party, with a social platform not terribly dissimilar to say vintage Bernie, while promoting global peace, ending our participation in Ukraine and Gaza specifically, how could that candidate only receive 0.4% of the vote? Was there a memo I didn’t get?
Wink Martindale got my nod here in Tiny Town as a write-in, for the 3rd Presidential election in a row, and i’m guessing vast legions of disgruntled NC readers took my lead-giving the dynamic duo all in one name, perhaps votes in the extremely low triple digits? (approximating Kamala’s IQ)
I was dissuaded from drawing a Big Spaffing Cock on my ballot by a poll worker. It seems that they were ‘directed’ to list all votes for the BSC Party as votes for the Democrat Party. In the end though, I read that the national level response to the BSC Party was flaccid at best. The Party didn’t even wimp out. So much for “sticking it to the Man.”
Steely Dan Quayle could’ve outperformed Kamala…
Malaprop vs Word Salad
Word salad surgery?
And listening to it all is Brain Salad Suisurgery.
I never figured out the undercount in 2016. Since more people vote the top line than the rest of the ballot, you’re left guessing if the margin decreased. You would need to see the kind of statistics they don’t release if in fact they even bother to compile them.
There is no prize for compiling inconvenient data for political higher ups to consume. I do not think anyone knows the undercount for the same reasons no one knows how many died from COVID. When the people in charge don’t want to know, it stays unknown. Historians can guesstimate later.
And to mrsyk’s comment: so long as we use machines for voting and tabulating there will never again be a significant showing by a third party unless one puts up Jesse Ventura numbers which RFK Jr. failed to do. Once you crack 20% in polls, they can’t ignore you or casually flip your supporters’ votes.
In Hawaii per Office of Elections report 4 (most recent) there were 5,002 blank votes and 522 over votes out of approx 500,000.
Went back and looked at Hawaii 2020 certified results: Biden/Harris 366,130 vs Harris/Walz 312,384.
For Greens 2020 Hawkins/Walker 3,822 2024 Stein/Ware 4,372.
You have to go to the jurisdictions for the unofficial summary. Cards cast is the number of ballots. Total votes is the number of ballots that chose to vote in that race. Media doesn’t give you all this info. In Wisconsin, until the certification, you go to individual county websites. I can tell you the number of people not voting in the presidential was very low in Wisconsin. Also, the total of independent votes, about 48,000. Difference between T and H was just under 29,000.
The votes are still being counted. To keep general track search on election results 2024. Click the AP results.
Currently Trump has 74M votes (same as 2020) and Harris has 70M (11M not 15M) less than Biden 2020.
The CA SoS website estimates 4.9M uncounted ballots as of 11/8/24 4:58. Whatever the distribution of the votes will be, it will bring the total difference between 2020 and 2024 to 6M, not 15M.
Most (maybe all?) states are still counting a small percentage of their total vote.
https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/unprocessed-ballots-status
For additional links see my comments at 1:25 PM and 3:37 PM here:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/about-this-election-week.html
If they’re still counting, they’re doing it wrong. California especially is a disgrace. It’s been a generation since the hanging chads and our elections are still a national embarrassment. And that’s with all the Ivy League educated brain geniuses who are in charge of pretty much everything in this country. “Best and brightest” my sweet aunt Fannie.
Federal law created the concept of “provisional ballot”. Those have to be adjudicated.
If you want hand counted paper ballots, get used to waiting.
The French don’t need to wait. As Lambert said the other day, separate the presidential ballot from other ballots snd most of the problems will be solved.
To hk’s point, neither does the UK.
I think whatever votes were not there are people who wouldn’t vote for the adults in the room again, but also wouldn’t vote for trump.
That would be my guess as to the most likely reason. I tried a few searches to find some org that aggregated and analyzed undervotes in previous elections, but didn’t find anything except 2 media reports. One said their report was based on unofficial counts from a few states, the other was paywalled.
There’s also apparently the opposite: ballots with votes for Trump, and but no down ballot votes.
https://x.com/AstorAaron/status/1855409806330253810
I’m not sure about the vote count, but I’m beginning to conclude that it’s a pretty good way to tell if a person is so wealthy that they don’t have to buy their own groceries, pay their own bills or look at their bank balance and worry.
Those people that are SHOCKED, SHOCKED! Which turns out to be almost everybody in the MSM.
Must be nice, but I’m closer to this bunch:
Living Paycheck To Paycheck Statistics 2024
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/living-paycheck-to-paycheck-statistics-2024/
Hmm, I wonder how that happened?
Warren Buffett on Class Warfare, ‘It’s My Class, the Rich Class, Making War, And We’re Winning’?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/warren-buffett-class-warfare-quote/
rural america celebrating a trump win, but AG rejects rfk jr, his agenda at odds with current policies and practices and not likely to have much affect on outcomes, monied interests too big
In 2020 I used to see various squads of pickups with huge and well-anchorwd big blue Trump flags drive down long stretches of highway in Central Wisconsin, from Steven’s Point to Appleton down US10 for instance, or down I-39. First saw one in October, last in mid-December. Here in middle Michigan, I have only seen one such pickup in 24. It waa yesterday, the flag was red and much smaller. I sensed much more anger then than joy now. Perhaps “joy” (having been appropriated by the other party) is the wrong word–a range of positive, euphoric emotions. The Jesus related Trump yard signs came earlier and more often this time though. I didn’t see the old ladies on major street corners with the Jesus Christ (the words in the arrangement of Trump Pence with the poster or placard otherwise identical) signs held up to passer by untill December last time.
For whatever little it’s worth.
‘Doomsday’ Antarctic glacier melting faster than expected, fueling calls for geoengineering Phys.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~
…imagine every port facility out of business rather suddenly?
It wouldn’t pertain to every existing port currently, but why not build new port facilities just beyond the current one, if you have enough altitude to make a difference?
the only problem being that said new facilities would be the only ports capable of operating…
That’s a good point that. And as the sea levels will continue to rise, it may be that future ports will have to cope continuously with floating ports and terminals being the norm.
What’s up with genocidal people worshiping walls, and pretending to be victims?
The Berlin Wall kept East Germans in, while the wall in Israel keeps Palestinians out.
I remember a news from the days Israel started to build it’s wall about old survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto living in Israel saying (in disappointment): you can take he Jew out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the Jew.
He figured the purpose of the wall was to really keep the Jews inside and brew them in the Zionist broth – don’t know if what’s now happening was what he was afraid of.
Yes, perhaps in 35 years we’ll be celebrating the collapse of the Israeli “wall” and associated genocide.
I think the worshipped wall is a fetish object in Jerusalem. The other walls are just business in the mob movie sense.
If there be a Waylon Wall ought there not be one for Willie?
Re: EU’s opening bid to avoid Trump’s tariffs: We could buy more American gas
Yeah, so EU, in its infinite wisdom, ditched Russia gas “dependency” because we didn’t want to be blackmailed by Putin in some undefined future, and here comes Trump, even not being president yet, and the gas from US is already of surfacing as bargaining chip in geopolitical fight between EU and US. And the idiots in charge of EU signal their energy weakness in advance, just in case Trump somehow didn’t figure it himself.
I thought he wants to keep Syrian oil secure.
I think that he wants to settle a grudge. At one point he ordered those troops out of Syria and the Pentagon just up and ignored his demands, even though he is the Commander in Chief. I don’t think that he has forgotten that little episode nor would he be impressed by those generals that ignored his orders. Trump does not strike me as a forgiving person.
North Korea Enters the Fray: Must Ukraine Win a Third World War on its Own? The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
The RUSI in desperado mode? So it looks to me. Yesterday Mercouris was commenting on an article from some well known English commenter whose name i cannot recall saying that some UK generals telling him that there is no point continuing to send weapons to Ukraine and that there is no way the CW can change the tide in favour of Zelenskyy. Then we have here RUSI calling for WWIII openly. Because NKs. The only “proof” they offer on NK participation and for such crucial is some talk from John Kirby. Pathetic. Isn’t it?
Yes, love the fact that the author claims it shows Russia is desperate for more manpower as it is losing so many soldiers, not that Putin cares about that, and yet if Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, they will carry on and invade the rest of Europe.
But it’s true that there are North Koreans in the Ukraine. Just yesterday there was a report of a submerged North Korean submarine in the Dnieper river. Of course RUSI has brought discredit on themselves by featuring this article by a spook-adjacent Ukrainian-
https://www.rusi.org/people/danylyuk
At the end of the day it’s not one of RUSI’s “serious” pieces of analysis. The author is a former Ukrainian presidential candidate (0.02% of the vote in 2019) and personal participant in both Euromaidan and the 2014 military operation to suppress the Donbass rebels. Thus “The views expressed in this Commentary are the author’s, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.”
As always that’s a good Patrick Lawrence and a lot more persuasive, I think, than Michael Tracey suggesting that Trump secretly wants to bully the world in order to feed his giant ego. In any case we’ll know who is right soon enough. The news that Pompeo will not be back in power does suggest that Tracey is jumping the gun.
For now can’t we at least have a short interregnum of good feelings? Biden has invited Trump to visit him shortly in the White House. Good for Biden. One suspects Joe is secretly pleased at Kamla’s failure.
Trump needed the evang vote, but does he need to heed their dogma now?
Pompeo was/is a big swinging dick, in that regard.
‘Pompeo was/is a big swinging dick, in that regard’
Well, you’re one third right.
It’s called foreshortening.
Trump and Biden are fairly similar. That is a good description of Biden’s real foreign policy. It was rude and aggressive from the start, but the low hanging fruit of countries that could simply be thrown against the wall wasn’t there.
Like Biden leaving Afghanistan, Trump might make a few good noises, but like Biden, he will be too desperate to present a win. Surrender is effectively the only option on Ukraine. The leaks on Trump proposals are obvious non starters. I don’t know how Trump will react when he is told no, and I doubt he will be interested in looking weaker than Biden especially as his “economic” plans don’t get started or cause pain.
Biden demanding concessions from Iran to restart the nuclear deal strikes me as the blue print.
I’ve put out feelers to my NZ and French friends to see if they can adopt me, and yeah its a bit awkward as i’m older than them, but I don’t see it being a problem really.
I’ve been trying to get the cats to teach me how to time travel.
OK, I’ll be the bunny. So which time period would you travel back to? Pro tip. Avoid the mid-1300s.
I’d travel back to early 1800’s California, but I don’t think the hair’m is quite up to the task.
1850 California sounds like an adventure for me. The cats are lobbying for 1920, Paris, an idea I’ll entertain.
Lots going on in Paris in the 1920s-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers_in_Paris_in_the_1920s
I’m thinking circa 1804 California. the Sierra Nevada in particular, where i’d make first contact with the Yokuts tribes (in my variant of time travel, you don’t have any nasty viruses to spread) in the foothills, and walk their foot trails into the higher climes, to experience what it was like before we altered the scenery greatly during different epochs of despoiling things.
Aside from the contemporary deliberate genociding of the native population by the Americans often using actual hunting rifles, buffalo rifles in particular, the West Coast of the time would be a nice place to visit. Pre Great War Europe and America society also interests me. Western civilization really did commit suicide, but it’s taken a century for the dying to be nearly complete.
I don’t know where you could find (reliable) statistics, but I would bet a lot more Native Americans died from starvation than from bullets. And, of course, disease.
Age is an attitude.
‘The Interview’: Nancy Pelosi Insists the Election Was Not a Rebuke of the Democrats – The New York Times archive
Certainly no introspection or humility there! She’s a modern day Marie Antoinette. Caution, if you read it have a puke bag handy. “They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing”
King Trump: [after Trump’s cut off all 3 of the Black Knight’s arms] Look, you stupid bastard, you’ve got no arms left! Black Knight: Yes I have. King Trump: Look! Black Knight: It’s just a flesh wound.
“Just a flesh wound” ….
If you look at the voter income stats, the Democrats are achieving their goal: the number of upper income voters voting Democratic has increased relative to previous presidential elections.
Once the party solidly represents the elite instead of simply pandering them, they will have completely transformed into the Republican party of my youth, when, apart from a few mavericks, the party stood for collecting donations and occasionally throwing sand in the gears of government.
The obvious villain in this transformation away from representing the majority of Americans to merely implementing the desires of the rich is campaign financing. Could the geniuses (sarcasm alert) on the Supreme Court have envisioned that the main consequence of ruling against all attempts to control campaign financing would be the Democrats’ complete abdication of their base?
As has been pointed out, neither Schumer nor Pelosi have lost a thing, and the highly-paid consultants and staff won’t have to worry because donations will increase to tsunami-like proportions.
President Barack Obama did say that if he were President 25 years ago, his economic policies would make him a moderate Republican so yeah, the Republican party of your youth has shifted that much-
https://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/Politics/obama-considered-moderate-republican-1980s/story?id=17973080
Ah, the old shift over a ton window…
…the Gelato Archipelago
I kind of agree with Nancy. I don’t think a lot of voters knew much about Democratic policies. There was huge anger about hot button issues. My aged mom in Michigan listens to these weird Nazi/Catholic podcasts that aren’t anchored in reality but get her really riled up. She’s so upset she has no emotional space to think rationally.
The only way voters would know about Democratic policies would be if the Democrats articulated any. But, in the past, policies that they boosted in their campaigns got quickly abandoned as soon as they had the power to put up a credible fight for them. This time the policies seemed to be “make our military the most lethal fighting force ever” (as if already spending a trillion dollars on the military wasn’t enough), “keep on with our economic policies because everyone serious says the economy is great for all of us”, and “save democracy” (by jailing opposition candidates or trying to keep them off the ballot). And, of course, “feel sorrowful about all the Palestinians being killed” (but keep sending more and more weapons to their killers). The rest is a bunch of woke/DEI nonsense that has a cult following but no mass appeal. So the Democrats have few policies that can inspire much interest or loyalty from anyone outside their shrinking PMC base, and those that might have appeal they’ve shown zero commitment to following through on once in office. What’s left to talk about but hot button Fox News stuff?
Wow, that’s really something. Love this part:
She’s been in Congress since 1987. She was there in 1991 when it was the “End of History” and America reigned supreme with Pax Americana. She was there voting yes on NAFTA in 1993 when that giant sucking sound of good middle class jobs started. She was there when Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act passed. (I don’t think she supported it.) She was there for the Patriot Act, the AUMF, and the start of endless war in the Middle East (Pax Americana Advantage Plan). There for the 2008 GFC, TARP, the ACA, (I could go on but Wikipedia is getting tired of me.)
Well you get my point. And now, that we’re wondering what happen to America’s industrial base, the American middle class, American universities, American healthcare and looking at the rise of BRICS and a new multi-polar world, she says the LEGACY is the Infrastructure Bill and the CHIPS Act? REALLY? Umm, that’s like trying to put a California wildfire out by pissing on it.
I’m very sorry Congresswoman Pelosi, but your legacy is inheriting a world empire you did not create (and no, Ronald Reagan did not create it either, but that’s a different discussion), and doing your neoliberal best
at wrecking that and your country. It’s been a pretty constant down hill since you got there. Own it.
But you did get rich…
Michael Tomasky in TNR:
This take is very hard to digest. It wasn’t our fake media, it was their fake media! I honestly don’t know how Tomasky can compare Blob edited “news” stories to three hour unscripted live interviews.
Maybe voters were too busy laughing at senile Joe and his word salad sidekick? People remembered that Joe once could speak about issues, even if plagiarized, while the sous chef was lost without that teleprompter. The failure to go on the Rogan show just cemented the idea of a lightweight media creation, unfit to lead.
The plowers that be in the Donkey Show valiantly tried to keep Kamala under wraps during les Cent-Jours, as there was obviously no there, there, she being from Oakland.
Well that is one author who will not change his approach…Hey here is one clue. The average cost of XYZ is not magically lower under Biden, in fact the prices are continuing to fluctuate month to month. Grocery shopping yesterday, noticed that a dozen eggs were pushing higher again, nearly $4.
Average cost for a dozen eggs. Your average family of 4 or 5 is less equipped even with the broad quoted CPI showing the right trend downward…Lying to most adults does tend to eventually fall flat.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111
The good news- pay went up commensurately with the increases in health care costs, real property taxes, and goods and services. No Problems!
I moved the decimal point a little to the left, and year on year 20% increases in insurance cost magically went down to 2%… easy-peasy it was.
Biden & company engineered the higher cost of eggs by blithely presiding over a “public health” establishment that steadfastly refuses to take bird flu seriously. (The Covid-19 pandemic was just for practice.)
So people worried about inflation because FOX news told them to, and not because they added up the numbers on their weekly grocery bills?/
While I do think that propaganda can be highly effective in certain contexts, for example in demonizing a chosen other – Russians, immigrants, etc. – I’ve never seen much evidence that you can use it to convince someone that a personal lived experience of increasing economic prosperity is really hardship or vice-versa that increasing economic hardship is actually prosperity.
I don’t know that independent media sets the agenda, but it certainly reflects the agenda better than legacy media.
Thanks, Mark Gisleson. I could barely make it past this paragraph:
“If you read me regularly, you know that I’ve written this before, but I’m going to keep writing it until people—specifically, rich liberals, who are the only people in the world who have the power to do something about this state of affairs—take some action.”
Rich liberals? Is Tomasky truly trying to channel the ghost of Marie Antoinette? (Who now seems to be a much savvier politician than Tomasky is.)
The idea that any USonian should defer to rich liberals is laughable. Plain stupid. I am past “hard to digest” (maybe you’re being polite) — Tomasky should resign to spend time with his family and make potholders.
I’ll stick with Patti Smith any day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPR-HyGj2d0
People Have the Power.
You are right to be upset because this is actually standard wisdom all over … NATO territory.
(my own friends…🙄 – it´s Ukraine and Gaza all over again, sigh.)
Not to mention that NYT and friends were rightwing before Joe Rogan´s show even existed.
But if Tomasky were to understand that he would pobably raise chicken in Ohio today.
And be doing less harm.
Tomasky is upset because he can no longer lie with impunity.
If only Joe Biden and Kamala Harris adopted the Valdai Discussion Club format for reaching out to voters…
Yeah, I’m nuts.
Just in case: Mossad agents to join Maccabi Tel Aviv FC trip to Amsterdam Jerusalem Post. From Nov. 5, still germane.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hey you!, be a smarty-come and join the Zionist party
Imagine trying to sell that line in cinema TODAY.
“Black People Across the Country Are Getting Racist Text Messages Saying They’re Going to Be Enslaved”
A harmful prank? I don’t think so. So why is there this little voice at the back of my head shouting ‘It’s a psyops, you dummy! A psyops!’ Do random hackers just happen to have the mobile numbers of users who just happen to be black? Yeah, nah! Somebody wants to spread Fear, Doubt and Uncertainty and keep Americans feeling all jittery and maybe even a bit frantic before Trump even becomes President.
If this came out of the blob, I would not be surprised at all. And how could you prove it? Easy. The US gives tens of billions given annually to all the spook organizations scattered both near and far. If they cannot find out the names and addresses of those that sent those text messages, then chances are they it was they that did it. But don’t be surprised if they say that Iran did it.
Indeed. It’s psyops.
But it goes on no matter the administration.
Same groups have been baiting “the white working class”.
It’s all about keeping people distracted from the systemic and structural rot.
Not exactly in the same vein of the article and I submit this portends a much bigger, intractable problem pertaining to both that story and my sole anecdote of a spam phone message.
Unknown area code, not ever answering these, and to be very clear the incoming call going directly to the voice mail…” Please call back or press XYX, we need your confirmation for an order of a MacBook or an Ipad… something something draft will be cancelled..”. Um okay Hell No. One more reason to weed out these scams. Damn fiends. Jason Statham was onto something in his recent film The Beekeeper?
The Beekeeper?
Why? Haven´t watched yet.
I can’t give the entire plot away, just suffice to say the movie’s tone is set by the first 15 to 20 minutes and goes pretty swiftly from there. Financial chicanery is handled in just the manner one can expect from his previous roles.
I don’t rank movies on any review sites… I’ll suggest it merits a 5.5 out of 10 though…
Thanks anyway because I had forgotten to put it on my list.
I had skipped it when in theatres for the reason you point at.
But will look into it now that it´s available in public library.
Beekeeper is ok.
Did enjoy the plot though.
It was hard for me to take Jason Stratham seriously tbh.
“Gotta protect the Hive.”
Indeed!
I watch the network news nightly to follow the propaganda line of the day. Usually I watch NBC. This story has been highlighted for three nights in a row. It also keeps appearing in the “national news” segment of our local NBC affiliate on our local news. Clearly this is a story they want to emphasize. Also emphasized: the “horrific antisemitic attack” on the poor Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam and the dastardly Iranian assassination plot against Trump.
Our Fourth Estate is on guard, keeping us safe.
{tweaked it a bit}
Outrage sweeps online as 130,000 protest western North Carolina flood response Anadolu Agency
Trump administration potential hires…okay off the bat it will not include a Haley, a Pompeo, or a Pence (unless there is a need to have the former VP be a dull, cardboard cut out to complete a photo op…)
It’s easy to forget that Pence was a Republican candidate during the primary build up of 2023. Oh, the lively interviews were just riveting to watch! \sarc
The inauguration will likely feature…a hologram of Toby Keith maybe? The ghost of the “Big Dog” lives on…I’ll venture Kid Rock appears again at the inaugural parties, making geriatric Republican attendees highly uncomfortable…
Mike Pence had fun once, but has deeply regretted it since.
is it just me or does Mike’s countenance appear as if somebody rammed a spent corncob up his rear echelon with what looked to be a croquet mallet?
Re: “…the real reason Trump won.”
I’ll take that a step further. It’s not just that right-wing media is prevalent, it’s that “left”-wing structures are complicit. How else does one explain not finding a replacement for Brandon till the last minute, despite four years of dramatic cognitive decline worthy of the 25th, then ushering in a politically weak, wildly unpopular, and similarly unintelligible (though for more concerning reasons than Biden) candidate. Operating a campaign that was a psychotherapist’s (a fatalistically liberal one) rendition of Hillary’s other basket; in fact, no less deplorable, and apparently held in similar contempt. Watching Megan The Stallion’s performance at the Democratic convention, of a song that, though trending has no emotional or cultural significance, all the political relevance of a lullaby, and performed by Maya Angelou’s nightmare… I was embarrassed… for the Democratic Party, and the United States of America. Someone told them all that was a bad idea, they did it anyway; and it worked. Watch, as Biden turns up the heat, and the MVP inherits the maelstrom. “It was a bad deal. A bad deal I tell ya.”
Policy outcomes were the goal. Nostalgia was a driver behind Hillary and Biden. The “others” didn’t make any noise except some old people in Iowa that Buttigieg listened to their stories.
The gap between the “generic democrat” and an elected Democrat is extreme. In the media environment, the Bill Clinton of yesteryear will be exposed as a Tyson Chicken toady.
To make noise, they would need to promise popular policies. There is risk the person who gets through would notice no one gives an eff about Bill Clinton and would want to make a lasting impression. They stuck with an ignoramus like Biden because anyone else was a risk to donations and jobs for idiot nephews.
Even though there may be noises about a primary they waited too long. I think they are just trying to distance themselves from Harris who is clearly going to be the subject of “It’s not my fault, Harris…” stories.
What I find most striking about these myriad takes on why the Dems lost, is that to some degree, they’re all correct. It’s the spider-man meme, writ party. If the argument is “we’d rather lose than elect a leader”, then my point stands. There need not be collusion for there to be collaboration. In the theater of politics, the Democrats now get to gracefully (considering!) leave their zenith, to assumedly brood and use the next four years to play Le Resistance. This, friends, is what it’s about… not simply the selection of government, but continuity of government, see: Jill Stein, Ralph Nader, Bernie Sanders, Henry Wallace, etc.
” It’s not just that right-wing media is prevalent, it’s that “left”-wing structures are complicit.”
EX: Well over a decade ago I stopped taking peaks at MSNBC. If I wanted to know what FOX News was doing everyday, I could have watched it myself.
Not quite news, but news product.
Like American cheese. Or Velveeta.
That final antidote is easy to explain. It is ‘obviously’ a parade by members of the “Partei Foie Gras.” They are often adjacent to the “Greens” on your political plate.
…what’s good for the geese is good for the gawkers?
Friends — apologies for the subject line, but it begs the question: why not? Wouldn’t a cushy co-branding deal solve Burning Man’s money problems in a hot minute?
After all, it’s standard practice in the festival business to make a big percentage of your revenue from corporate sponsorships. Along with additional income streams such as merchandise sales, food and drink vending, and premium VIP services, it’s how festivals stay profitable despite rising production costs.
But here’s the thing: we’re not a festival. And we’re not here to make a profit. Sure, Burning Man Project is a business, but our business is culture: creating spaces for art, innovation, connection and joy, and making the potentially life-changing experience of Burning Man available to anyone who’s willing to take the ride.
Back in the 90s when Burning Man’s early organizers were first figuring out what we wanted Burning Man to be, we used to joke about this. Who could we persuade to write us a big fat sponsor check? Home Depot? Bic lighters? Mercifully it stayed a joke, with enough cringe factor that it ended up being directly addressed in the principle of Decommodification.
As was so often the case in our history, we made a good cultural decision that was maybe not the best business decision. Would we be asking you for money right now if we had chosen otherwise? Perhaps not. But we wouldn’t be Burning Man anymore, either.
The other thing any sensible festival would do in the face of soaring costs is to jack up ticket prices, which we’re also not going to do if we can possibly help it. We are way behind the profitability curve when it comes to pricing tickets to the event, and have been for years. The actual per-person cost of producing the 2023 event was $749. Which means we are effectively losing $174 on every $575 ticket, $524 on every reduced price $225 ticket sold through the Ticket Aid Program, and the full $749 on every one of the more than 1,300 gift tickets we distribute to artists.
So what’s to be done?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It’s tragically funny, in that a place where money doesn’t mean anything once you are on the playa, the organizers are hurting for money?
And attendance was down in 2024 from 2023 by around 10,000 less @ Burning Man~
Prepping Readers to Accept Mass Slaughter in Lebanese ‘Strongholds’ – FAIR
Amd this is more news that Israel hasn’t been stopped and there isn’t much on the horizon to stop them.
As I mentioned last night, things are getting or will be getting tougher for people in their own backyards – with this major genocide sliding by as part of the reason in many places.
“Bring your daughter to the slaughter”
By Iron Maiden:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=m0J7XnbUN5o&pp=ygUwYnJpbmcgeW91ciBkYXVnaHRlciB0byB0aGUgc2xhdWdodGVyIGlyb24gbWFpZGVu
If you are Trump, your daughter and son-in-law bring you to the slaughter.
>”with this major genocide sliding by as part of the reason in many places.”
Which is something almost nobody in Western intellectual circles grasps.
For them it´s like trying to understand Relativity Theory.
Thanks, ex-PFC Chuck, for posting this video yesterday by Ome Bender, who covered the Amsterdam riots better than the adults did. (I am reminded of Bisan Owda and other young journalists from Gaza.)
Here is the version with English subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySHIOYyJ95A
Questions, brethren and sistren:
–During an “existential” hot war, a bunch of strapping young men wander off for a getaway weekend with Tel Aviv Maccabi? Am I expected to believe that?
–Hmmm. To Amsterdam, home of Anne Frank?
–Hmmm. To creatively stage a “pogrom,” even though said fans were repeatedly photographed tearing down flags, chanting the vilest of slogans against Arabs, shouting during the minute of silence for the dead of Valencia, and gathering beams, pipes, and stones, as Ome Bender shows?
–Just the usual soccer hooliganism…
–And the Dutch fold like a cheap sofabed? With the king apologizing even before the facts of the story have been established?
What gives?
–I suspect that Netanyahu and much of his government think that northern Europe may go soft on them. So stir up trouble in a zone where much of the news coverage will be in English. And voilà, more missiles for Lebanon.
squirrel? squirrel!
What an “Antidote du jour”…
re: Russia – the frustrating scholarship goes on
Wanted to give Doug Henwood a chance again. After all sometimes some good stuff.
He had an interview on de-colonisation, Russia and the hypocrisy of the West. And two gentlemen with strong local accents (one Scottish?) which made it fun actually, James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica (some English accent I think).
TC: 28:00+
https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2024/24_11_07.mp3
https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR09T_XX-5zXMtXYBl9LkJ1-3mQuNOohhX3fsYNp-aQa6iPe5GHcioSUpMA_aem_z71VXPeCsiEAoDoOa1aU2A#S240704
But then it happens, they compare Putin with Saddam Hussein. And basically since it was illegal to attack Iraq and kill Hussein, we should treat Putin/Russia not like an animal and apply self-criticism.
Does that make the total incompetence of the comparison any better? What are they doing all long in their university offices? This is seriously worrying…so I gave up.
I had had the intention to read their paper which was Henwood´s reference provided but I skipped after 2 pages and first listening to the interview.
In case anybody, their dense study:
Decentring the West? Civilizational solidarity and (de)colonization
in theories of the Russia-Ukraine War (handed in January 2024)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/14747731.2024.2399475?needAccess=true
CVs:
James Foley is a Lecturer in Politics at Glasgow Caledonian University. He received his PhD from the Uni-
versity of Edinburgh and is the author of Scotland after Britain and editor of Contesting Cosmopolitan
Europe.
Vladimir Unkovski-Korica is a Senior Lecturer in Legacies of Communism, Central and East European
Studies, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow. He is the author of The Economic
Struggle for Power in Tito’s Yugoslavia: From World War II to Non-Alignment and co-editor of a special
issue of Business History entitled ‘Socialist Entrepreneurs? Business Histories of the GDR and Yugoslavia’
with Saša Vejzagić.
Here’s a thought: If the avian flu becomes a human pandemic, how will Trump react? How will Vance, at the moment the heir apparent? How long would talk of a hoax last should it prove as deadly as many suspect it could, not even considering the mischief it might cause by mixing with Covid infected people?
Aside from the political aspect, the potential health risks have been raised for a while by disease surveillance types so this isn’t idle speculation.
Note that Idaho just banned Covid vaccines. I think all, not just mrna varieties.
“Note that Idaho just banned Covid vaccines.”
“A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.”
(https://apnews.com/article/covid19-vaccine-public-health-idaho-76f1c29bf3f07a2c029175bf6c2180c4)
There are 44 counties in Idaho. That is hardly all of Idaho. Six out of 44.
Also, “not providing” is not the same as banning.
Iran denies plot to assassinate Trump, calls for confidence-building with US – France24
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi – he should be confident that Iran is still a target.
But, alas, credentialed at an NGO affiliated university in Iran and studied for his PhD in the West.
re: Biden administration to allow American military contractors to deploy to Ukraine for first time since Russia’s invasion
It’s just Pentagon contracts for mechanics to fix broken military vehicles, honest! “Far from the front lines”. And to sell bridges in Florida and such. Yeah, just gonna put some harmless oh so innocent Americans right thereabouts, in Ukraine, in some sorta complex.
This story seems a bit like a precursor, a balloon, to get the keywords “US” , “Pentagon”, “contractor” and “Ukraine” into headlines, therefore into minds, so as to shape some perception the minders are wanting to shape. Gee, I wonder what that perception might be.
I wonder what those “contractors” will be thinking. Lots of other contractors from other places have already been introduced to Mr. Kinshasa. Do they think they will be immune from the realities of a war in which the US is a de facto combatant?
One wonders whether the Mighty Wurlitzer has any scary chords left to impel another step up in the escalation ladder, should the “contractors” earn their hazard pay “the hard way…”
Most US military members and contractors think that Russians are weak and incompetent. Not a joke.
First they sent the contractors, and I said nothing as they were only contractors…
Old Joe is really spending his last days trying to escalate the war in the Ukraine by sending them everything that the Pentagon can shake loose as well as stage future provocations like with these contractors. And why not? If you get a full confrontation between Russia and the west in the Ukraine, it is no skin off his nose as he’ll be gone soon.
RE: Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders
The handwringing by all these brave warriors, all unnamed of course –
“Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.
“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?” ”
Funny, they didn’t have such qualms when they were “torturing some folks” over the course of many, many years.
My guess here – if Trump issues an order that might break a couple rice bowls, thy will defy it just like they did the last time when Trump ordered troops out of Syria. But if the illegal order (which all presidents give by the way – Obama droning US citizens comes to mind) results in more money for the military industrial complex, it’ll be bombs away!
You say “The handwringing by all these brave warriors, all unnamed of course”. Well, here’s a name, Joe Biden. His admin via the DoD beat Trump to the punch: ““As the U.S. prepares for one of the most controversial and closely watched elections in its history, a concerning update to DoD Directive 5240.01 has quietly been put into effect” (allowing troops to hit the streets).
It also includes all support to civilian law enforcement officials in situations where a confrontation between civilian law enforcement and civilian individuals or groups is reasonably anticipated.” Anticipated violence???? Projection anyone?
From what I see DoDD 5240.01 is about defense intelligence, not “troops hitting the street”.
They led with controversial then shifted to unlawful. They should refuse unlawful orders and resign if necessary. If legal, they need to follow them or Trump needs to fire them.
OK, it works like this. The military are obliged to obey “lawful orders,” which have to be not only consistent with the law of the country, but with military law and practice. But because you can’t stop every five minutes to have a seminar on legality, orders from a higher level are assumed to be legal unless they are obviously (“on their face”) illegal. In which case, by subtraction, they should be refused. But a sensible military doesn’t get into that situation anyway.
The political leadership should not require the military to do anything illegal, recognising that that is complex and tricky as an issue. To the extent that they arguably do, based let’s say on legal advice that what they want is in fact legal, then the responsibility, both criminal and political, lies with the political leadership, not the military. In this case, I assume there are laws in the US (as in other countries) that dictate how and in what way the military can be used domestically, and the political leadership is entitled to issue orders consistent with those laws, but not otherwise. The fact that the military may disagree with them is neither here nor there.
The droning during the Obama years were done primarily by the CIA, not the Pentagon. The word “illegal” is not in the CIAs vocabulary.
I thought that’s what the “I” stands for…
Aren’t they the organ for Completely Illegal Actions?
I think by ‘controversial orders’ they mean the use of force against American civilians on US soil. I doubt any of them care all that much what the US military does in foreign countries or to foreigners.
– ‘Dem Insiders Begged Team Harris Not to Campaign With Liz Cheney’ – Rolling Stone
Well, I see Rolling Stone has joined Bernie in providing a little bit of truth to the Democrats – AFTER the election. During the election, of course, it was hysterical warnings about the Orange Hitler. Better late than never? Uh, no. It is a lot worse. It allows the useless “progressive” sheepherders for the Dems to hypocritically give themselves cover, while we all know that the only explanations the DNC and their funders will hear are those provided by Third Way. About as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
re: The Game is Up: Putin has the upper hand, Trump and his advisers are on the back foot Gilbert Doctorow
“To anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, which already excludes all of the journalists in American mainstream media…”
Interesting, actually, that Putin never actually called to congratulate Trump but western media fabricated this. As in, were collectively fed this talking point to repeat.
This was super important for the minders. A world where Putin ignores the winner of the US presidential election is not a world they want (people to know about).
In other news:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to remain at post as some call for her to step down
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/supreme-court-justice-sonia-sotomayor-to-remain-at-post-as-some-call-for-her-to-step-down/ar-AA1tPSHl
Sotomayor is rapidly becoming my favorite justice.
> German Redemption Theology Critical Muslim
This article by Adnan Delalić is interesting, informative, very well written and quite worrying. It’s a historical, political, and philosophical deep dive into Germany’s current extreme weirdness regarding Israel, including summary of recent news. It’s worth your time. I’d be interested if anyone who lives in or near or who has recent experience would comment on the article. It’s consistent with what I’ve gleaned elsewhere.
I’m happy to learn that Pentagon officials will consider obeying the orders of their Commander in Chief…
Bless their hearts.
How a Trump presidency could lead to a purge at the Pentagon Reuters
“Syria” does not appear once in this long article.
A shame. Damn shame, really.
Pentagon officials discussing how to respond if Trump issues controversial orders
They had better say, Yes sir! Then act with alacrity. Or find other employment.
Spoiler: TNR thinks the culprit is right-wing media like Fox News misleading people. Neolibs continue to turn the blame cannons in every direction except towards themselves. H.L. Mencken explained this a century ago.
They are concerned always with “messaging” and not changing.
They think the economy is a “message” and not an experience people are actually dealing with.
Also thinks the economy was great under Biden, and if it strengthens under Trump it will be because ‘the fruits from the long tail of Bidenomics start growing on the vine’ (yes, that’s a direct quote).
He does not offer a single thing that he thinks went wrong or that Democrats should change, except for letting right-wing voters have their own media:
Take their media away, and they’ll come to their senses and vote Democrat. That is, honestly and unironically, his argument.
The irony of the “thought experiment” is that all of the establishment media was complicit in promoting Trump’s 2015 glide down the escalator at the DNC’s request. Remember, the super geniuses were boosting him because they knew he was the easiest to beat. Now, let’s blame Fox news. What a joke!
Has anybody ever wonder what Neocons like Bill Kristol think about their fellow Americans?
https://www.bitchute.com/video/Ig71XXmVsFlN (1:07 mins)
Hint. It’s not good.
Having not watched your link, I spent the afternoon hearing about how the hoi polloi have failed to understand how good they have it…
No lessons will be learned until the lash comes out, sure,
but the guiler shall himself beguiled be…
Or, as J. R. ” Bob” Dobbs once said . . . ” You have to pull the wool over your own eyes first before you can pull it over someone else’s.”
( Here’s some more other quotes, by the way . . . )
https://subgenius.fandom.com/wiki/%22Bob%22_quotes
and
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7435871.J_R_Bob_Dobbs#:~:text=5%20quotes%20from%20J.R.%20%22Bob%22%20Dobbs%3A%20%27I%20don%27t,ALL%20SHOULD%20COME%20TO%20REPENTANCE%E2%80%9D%20%28II%20Peter%203%3A9%29.
enHate me Dobbs, O enHate me!
It looks to me like the authors of ” DIVE BRIEF
Small cuts to beef production in wealthier nations could remove years of carbon emissions, study shows
Eliminating as little as 13% of total production could remove the same amount of total greenhouse gasses emitted over the past three years.” want to preserve and maintain CAFO livestock production and cause a diversionary reduction of cattle on range and pasture instead.
The claim is made that “forest and soil under forest” will suck down and sequester more skycarbon that “cattle-on-pasture and soil under cattle-on-pasture” will or does. I don’t have the science at my fingertips to weigh in on that. I don’t know if the science even exists yet. If it doesn’t, it should. It would be worth spending the time and money to really know.
What was the depth and carbon-percentage of soil under prairie under the vast herds of buffalo? What is the depth and carbon-percentage of equivalent soil under forest in equivalent climates? Does anyone really know?
How much burp-methane did the thundering herds of buffalo emit in their heyday? Or the vast herds of African antelope, elephants, etc.? The same amount per unit of animal body-weight as what cattle on pasture emit today? If so, then is cowburp methane a real concern or a diversionary moral panic to put the spotlight on cattle-on-grass in order to keep the cameras away from cattle in CAFOs?
Gabe Brown and some others claim that their soil depth and soil carbon and soil carbon depth have increased even more fasterer after putting cattle back onto their land than before they did so. Have their claims been irrefutably debunked? If they have, a link to those debunkles would be nice to have.
( And by the way, a week ago or so we were treated to an article about how wetlands cause global warming because the primitive archaea life-forms who live in wetlands emit methane. I suppose it is only a matter of time before clever “climate-warriors” suggest draining and abolishing every wetland everywhere on the earth, to stop those archaea from emitting all that methane.)
https://www.agriculturedive.com/news/small-cuts-to-beef-production-in-wealthier-nations-could-remove-big-carbon/732140/
November 6, 2024
Small cuts to beef production in wealthier nations could remove years of carbon emissions, study shows
Eliminating as little as 13% of total production could remove the same amount of total greenhouse gasses emitted over the past three years.
By Nathan Owens
That’s the very same article which was already posted up in the Links blogpost itself. My questions and suspicions remain the same.
I was only trying to be helpful.
I posted the reference to the article only to clarify what was being referred to. There is no “DIVE BRIEF” in links, so I wanted to be helpful to readers.
Thank you so much.
Good point. I don’t know where that ” DIVE BRIEF” came from and I should have erased it. That would have removed the possibility of crossed signals and confusion.
Meanwhile, I continue buying and eating transverse-cut cow-leg shank-sections, called
‘ soup bones’ by the farmer – seller. They are from Vestergard Farms which raises its cattle on its own pastures on its own land.
I have suggested to the grower-seller that somebody-or-other should be doing carbon audits of the soil under the pasture under the cattle. If indeed the carbon levels are measured going up, that would be a very important point to bring out in their sales literature. Just another bunch of useful science not yet being done.
I think your remarks important, and related to study on emissions on the alpine grasslands of Xizang (Tibet) as the density of grazing raised and wild animal populations increases:
https://english.news.cn/20240726/830c5fd48bf74ab38078c707bd61f44d/c.html
July 25, 2024
Chinese scientists research on protecting, restoring high-altitude wetlands
CHENGDU — Chinese scientists are conducting monitoring, evaluation and research on biodiversity conservation and ecological restoration of the alpine wetlands in southwest China, harnessing the significant role of the wetlands in carbon sequestration and climate change adaptation.
The Zoige Wetland Ecology Research Station, established by the Chengdu Institute of Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, went operational on Friday.
The station is expected to provide scientific and technical support and policy recommendations for regional ecological protection and sustainable socio-economic development in southwest China, and also make scientific explorations for global wetland protection, according to Gao Yongheng, head of the research station.
The Zoige plateau, one of the main distribution areas of high-altitude wetlands in China, serves as an important ecological barrier. With the backdrop of global climate change, the region is facing significant ecological challenges, including biodiversity loss and a weakened wetland ecosystem, scientists say.
China lacked long-term monitoring and research on the ecology of high-altitude wetlands. The systematic scientific research, technological development and promotion of sustainable agricultural and pastoral development in the Zoige region are still weak, said Zhu Dan, deputy director of the station, who has conducted research in the Zoige region for nearly two decades.
The Zoige region is the most populous area for yaks on the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau, and the yaks are a vital source of energy and materials for the local herdsmen, Zhu said…
Taibbi’s latest. public excerpt.
Ding, Dong, the Cult is Dead!
The national mass psychosis is finally dealt a blow, making it safe to be sane again
https://www.racket.news/p/ding-dong-the-cult-is-dead
I hadn’t heard the term “emotional labor” until this week. Was doing fine without knowing about it, too.
I admire Taibbi and Kirn’s optimism.
>”optimism”
Actually yeah. I don´t see any reason or indication why something should change. This will go on and 2028 we will have the same nonsense we had now with problems that haven´t changed or only increased.
In that regard it´s easier to change things in European countries which are smaller with a less powerful elite than the American.
So if I had a long-term project it would be to align Europe with BRICS, cooperate intensly and isolate US elites via cooperation with US labour (“ah, yeah? And how are you gonna pull that one off?” -Okay, I haven´t thought about that yet.)
ha-ha!
p.s. by Taibbi just came in:
“Note on Gloating
One reason to hesitate.
Humorously serious response to the rhetorical end question in today’s “Ding, Dong, the Cult is Dead” article. Is it safe to laugh? Some readers offered a cautious yes, believing the defeat decisive. Others noted outpatients still run universities, public schools, and the media, and will be difficult to dislodge from federal bureaucracies. I’d be more confident in siding with the first group, but the Greatest Work of Human Art makes me worry the cult is only playing dead.”
The greatest work of art being a clip from “Army of Darkness” which wouldn´t play in my area…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3H4GMA3YWE
Yes, the country is reliably right wing for the foreseeable future….
Collapse is the only way out imo
Haven’t heard from HMP for a while
Thanks for thinking of me. Typing is a bit of a challenge, making long comments especially tough.
And you know how I love long comments.
This surgery is proving tougher to recover from.
en
So sorry your progress is slow! I hope it picks up.
As much as this is a great Taibbi piece, he is wrong about emotional labor.
The barista at Starbucks who keeps on her smiling customer face and peppy manner even when the patrons are curt or worse is doing emotional labor. It’s a big part of service jobs, even high level ones (for instance, having to think about how to sugar coat things you can’t not say to the client, like “No you can’t have this by Tuesday” or “You have Stage 3 cancer”.
I assume Taibbi might instinctively just argue against our market-ideological practice to:
1) emotionalize every bit
2) categorize it
which both make the true cause for “emotional labour” more administrable without actually solving it.
And administering health problems it actually cannot really solve is what psychology and psychological treatment do more often than not. So instead offering a cure they invent a label, “emotional labour”.
Which is why CG Jung e.g. admitted psy.ana. – which, yes, is not entirely the same thing – would only work with educated people, not true uneducated labourers – “emotional labour” vs. “labour” (which simply is labour + emotional labour).
p.s. It´s a class issue. For Bezos to tell his vegan-milk man “No you can’t have this by Tuesday” is not a problem. The other way around it is.
Not my diagnosis.
re: trial over art forgeries
Berlin art dealer in court for fake paintings: The color betrayed him
On Monday, the trial begins at the Tiergarten District Court against a 63-year-old man who is alleged to have auctioned off fake Marcoussis works.
German BERLINER ZEITUNG
https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/mensch-metropole/berliner-kunsthaendler-wegen-gefaelschter-gemaelde-vor-gericht-die-farbe-verriet-ihn-li.2270187
“(…)
A Berlin art dealer is said to have auctioned off fake oil paintings by the Polish-French graphic artist and painter Louis Marcoussis and his wife Alice Halicka-Marcoussis through two auction houses. As a result, the 63-year-old man must appear before the Tiergarten District Court
on Monday on suspicion of commercial fraud and forgery.
A 44-year-old is also in the dock on suspicion of complicity in one case.
Between August 17, 2019, and February 19, 2021, the art dealer is said to have handed over five fake works by Louis Marcoussis to two auction houses to have them auctioned. There, the paintings were sold for proceeds between 12,000 and 21,000 euros.
The art dealer obtained a total of 91,000 euros fraudulently. The forged paintings are said to include the works “Nimes (II.)” from 1928 and “Cubist Representation, Preliminary Study for the Painting Lorelei” from 1932.
He is also accused of having auctioned another oil painting at an auction house together with his co-defendant . It is said to have been a forgery of the work “Nature morte cubiste” by the artist Alice Halicka-Marcoussis. However, the proceeds of 36,000 euros were never paid out.
Louis Marcoussis was a graphic artist and painter of Polish origin and Jewish descent. He lived with his wife, the painter and illustrator Alice Halicka-Marcoussis, in France, where he died in 1941; Alice Halicka-Marcoussis died in 1975.
It is apparently unclear exactly how the dealer got hold of the fake paintings. When the public prosecutor’s office filed charges in September, it only stated that they had been brought to Berlin from Poland.
The State Criminal Police Office first noticed the forgeries
According to the public prosecutor’s office, not even the auction house’s experts noticed that the works were forgeries. The fraud was only discovered through expert reports from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office , which were confirmed by forensic scientists from the Federal Criminal Police Office. After that, so-called anachronistic color pigments were noticed – in other words, paint was used that only came onto the market after the artists’ deaths.
The accused are said to have been aware of this. During a house search, numerous utensils used to make the pictures were found.
Four days of hearings have been scheduled for the trial at the Tiergarten District Court. A verdict could be announced on December 2nd.
(…)”
p.s. Remember, the fake Hitler diaries were discovered the same way by police too (not the famous art historians!): artist/forger Konrad Kujau had used glue only invented after WWII. Which gives you an idea of art, fetish and capital.
In my neighborhood it’s the red squirrels (which are smaller than the gray or black ones) which are by FAR the most aggressive.
Same in Germany. They claim red ones are pushed out by new grey type – dont know if its not a form of “anti-immigration” stance – but the grey ones are allegedly invasive specimen from the North American continent.
Squirrels of any kind however seem to have memory issues as of they keep forgetting where they hid the nuts.
p.s. As Peter Bogdanovich coined quoting Ernst Lubitsch: Nuts for the squirrels or may be rather squirrels for the nuts…