Convulsing cat in Thai TV show sparks abuse concerns BBC :-(
Masters of Horror and Magic American Scholar (Anthony L)
Punctuation is dead because the iPhone keyboard killed it Android Authority
Order Title: Amending Over-the-Counter Monograph M012: Cold, Cough, Allergy, Bronchodilator, and Antiasthmatic Drug Products for Over-the-Counter Human Use FDA. Bob H: “FDA begins its (slow) move against phenylephrine.”
California Dengue Cases Prompt Swift Response From Public Health Officials KFF Health News. I find the discussion of the dengue vaccine to be a bit nuts. This is an FDA issue, not a pharma issue. Those up to 60 can get a two-shot vaccination here even though dengue is not all that prevalent. The only reason for the age cap is that it wasn’t tested on people older than that (Yours truly got her US MD to Rx it, so I was able to get it administered. Medical arbitrage!). It’s a live virus vaccine, so also provides a general immune system boost. The chestnut that dengue is more dangerous to children is also questionable given outcomes in Taiwan, where everyone born since 1940 is considered to be dengue-naive:
Since 1990, dengue cases and deaths have increased disproportionately among adults >50 years of age compared with children <15 years of age, in whom the number and proportion of cases and, especially, deaths, have declined
Climate/Environment
World close to 1.5C warming limit according to new pre-industrial temperature estimate ABC Australia (Kevin W)
Extreme weather cost $2tn globally over past decade, report finds Guardian
Indonesia’s Small Islands Pay the Price for Nickel Mining China Global South
Windfall profits from oil and gas could cover climate payments, says study PhysOrg
China?
China, US militaries hold fresh talks to manage risks as South China Sea tensions grow South China Morning Post
China Approaches Record $1 Trillion Trade Surplus to World’s Ire Bloomberg
Africa
Putin offers African countries Russia’s ‘total support’ BBC
Egypt struggles with influx of 1.2 million Sudanese refugees Sudan Tribune
Moroccan Foreign Minister warns of Algeria’s intent to escalate conflict Yibalidi
European Disunion
The collapse of Germany’s government will delight Trump – and his European friends Guardian
The fall of the Berlin Wall: how West Germany colonised East Germany Thomas Faz
French farmers threaten to block rail freight service Rail Freight
Israel v. The Resistance
This is a video of me burying my 11 cousins. During the genocide in, the act of burial has become a painful experience that has lost all its traditional meaning. we are forced to quickly bury our loved ones in makeshift graves. Important customs like communal mourning, prayers,… pic.twitter.com/3WUESgrjuo
— حسام شبات (@HossamShabat) November 10, 2024
🚨In #Gaza, we carry the lifeless bodies of children, who sleep and never wake up. Israel ends their lives in a single moment, just like that‼️ pic.twitter.com/5N500Eu1Cc
— Nour Naim| نُور (@NourNaim88) November 11, 2024
* * * Live: Israel misses US deadline to boost Gaza aid, aid groups say Middle East Eye. Quelle surprise!
Contrast the story above with what Israelis are being told: Ministers approve steps to alleviate Gaza humanitarian crisis ahead of US deadline Jerusalem Post
* * * More embarrassment for Sky News, western media as Qatari govt busts fake news Janta Ka Reporter. WTF? The lead story in the pink paper that Qatar had kicked Hamas leaders out of Qatar leave was fake, and corrections were suppressed.
Perhaps the fake news was to cover for this? Qatar halts Israel-Gaza ceasefire mediation over lack of ‘good faith’ Guardian
* * * Not new to most NC readers but further confirmation useful: Viral video reveals Israeli hooligans attacked Dutch police while instigating Amsterdam unrest Grayzone (Kevin W)
The Eurocentric Colonialism of ‘Israel’ Should Never, Ever Have Been Created Orinoco Tribune (Robin K)
* * * Iraqi Airspace Closure to Enemies Discussed in Iran Tasnim
Not Israel related but of note:
Iran enforces rolling power blackouts as fuel shortages bite Financial Times
New Not-So-Cold War
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron pledge ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine Financial Times (Kevin W)
WaPo Putin-Trump call claim ‘pure fiction’ – Kremlin RT (Kevin W)
SITREP 11/11/24: Ukraine Scrambles for Diplomacy as Clock Winds Down on New Russian Offensive Simplicius. Note Mercouris had a section on Monday where he strongly disagreed that the current regime in Kiev was showing any interest in diplomacy.
Absolutely extraordinary "saying the quiet part out loud" moment. Remember Thierry Breton, who until recently was one of the top EU officials?
He just admitted on French TV that before Trump’s election, in the EU institutions they had “absolutely no right to speak” about… pic.twitter.com/QBpPZBNsps
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) November 11, 2024
Imperial Collapse Watch
NATO’s 2% military spending target no longer sufficient, German foreign minister says Anadolu Agency
Russia, India are early birds as Pax Americana is ending Indian Punchline
Trump, Xi and Putin: a dysfunctional love triangle with stakes of global significance The Conversation (Kevin W). Aside from ignoring a direct Kremlin denial of a story based on claims by anons (and Alex Christoforu itemized at the top of his talk Monday why the story on its face was dodgy), the personalization and sexualization undermine any pretense of objectivity.
Trump 2.0
Warmongers Predictably Slated for Trump Administration Sam Husseini
We Will Avoid War with Russia and China, But Iran is Still on the Table Larry Johnson
But: Trump Is Set to Elevate China Hawks, Deepening Beijing Rift Bloomberg
Trump expected to tap US Senator Marco Rubio for secretary of state, sources say Reuters
Trump picks Florida Rep. Mike Waltz as national security adviser CBS News (Kevin W)
Trump’s military “purge” and next defense secretary Ken Klipperstein
More commentary on this story which broke yesterday:
🚨🇺🇸 Trump could not make a WORSE PICK for UN Ambassador.
Elise Stefanik is a HARDCORE ZIONIST who wants WAR with IRAN.
She’s such a DEEP STATER, she called NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine: “PUTIN’S GENOCIDE.”
What happened to “no neocons” @DonaldJTrumpJr? pic.twitter.com/w8bZ8SD6dE
— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) November 11, 2024
* * * Congress Is About to Gift Trump Sweeping Powers to Crush His Political Enemies Intercept
Trump ‘border czar’ says administration will conduct workplace immigration raids The Hill
Trump says Senate GOP leader candidates must agree to recess appointments The Hill
Republican Euphoria Punctured by Tough Math in the House Wall Street Journal
* * * The Eighteenth Brumaire of Donald J. Trump Boston Review. Anthony L: “Boston Review has a breakdown.”
2024 Post Mortem
Harris falls short with female voters, stunning Democrats The Hill
Patrick Lawrence: Notes of a Non-Voter Scheerpost (Anthony L)
Mr. Market Is Schizophrenic
Trump will unleash a stock market boom – then an almighty bust Telegraph
We May Not Get Our Recession until the AI Spending Bubble Implodes Wolf Richter
Inflation worries seep back into US bond market Financial Times
Trump has promised lower interest rates. That will be largely out of his control NBC
AI
Beatles’ ‘Now and Then’ Makes History As First AI-Assisted Song To Earn Grammy Nomination Billboard
The Bezzle
Bitcoin surges above record $81,000 as Elon Musk warns of ‘financial emergency’ Independent
Q: Is JPMorgan Overinflated? Chris Whalen. Whalen is the real deal among bank analysts.
Class Warfare
The dislocation between the PMC and the rest of the working class – Part 1 Bill Mitchell
World Food Price Index Hits 18-Month High on Production Concerns Bloomberg
Antidote du jour. mgl: “Springtime in Wanganui park, NZ!”
And a bonus (Chuck L):
Does anyone need an AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW moment? Here u go pic.twitter.com/6wVYy30wkm
— boricuabc (@boricuabc2) November 10, 2024
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
230 comments
Comments are closed.
Died For Nothing
(melody borrowed from Time Of The Season by The Zombies)
(After every war, every grunt who was there comes down to reality, and will be unable to stop wondering at what he has done, and what price must be paid for those deeds. Judging from the current 25% AWOL and desertion rate of IDF regiments, that time has arrived for their soldiers. IDF soldiers are starting to take down all their pictures and videos celebrating their war crimes, now fearing that this world will track them down after the fighting ends, and punish them for their crimes. And always, always, the hardest thing to admit is that it was all for nothing, all for lies.)
From a wild lapse of reason
We chose to try
We’re beguiled by everything we see
All of it lies—we made demands
And now this war is done
We have no plans
Our soldiers choose to run
Everyone I have killed has died for nothing
We’re to blame (We’re to blame)
We’re the baddies (We’re the baddies)
(Bait and switch) Bait and switch on me
We’re forsaken (We’re forsaken)
All our crimes (All our crimes)
(They know) They know—and they will not forgive!
Murder isn’t holy
That door’s shut
So where are we to go?
Everyone I have killed has died for nothing
(musical interlude)
We’re to blame (We’re to blame)
We’re the baddies (We’re the baddies)
(Bait and switch) Bait and switch on me
We’re forsaken (We’re forsaken)
All our crimes (All our crimes)
(They know) They know—and they will not forgive!
Murder isn’t holy
That door’s shut
So where are we to go?
Everyone I have killed has died for nothing
So artful! I love how the new lyrics rhyme with the original lyrics. Well done! (and tragic).
‘Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸
@jacksonhinklle
🚨🇺🇸 Trump could not make a WORSE PICK for UN Ambassador.
Elise Stefanik is a HARDCORE ZIONIST who wants WAR with IRAN.’
I notice that Trump has also chosen at least one China hawk. Maybe he plans to play off each group against each other and point out that there is not enough military equipment for both theaters – which there isn’t. Both groups may end up fighting each other more than Trump to get their way.
Interesting thought. How did Trump come to that idea? Is this the way he has run his companies – pitting teams against each other but then no company would achieve anything?
I have read accounts from the corporate world where some of them do precisely this. Play one division off against another with the reward being more personnel and resources. Their thinking is that is a survival-of-the-fittest thing with winner taking all. In reality those divisions end up fighting each other more than the competition from other corporations – and of course customers are only an after thought.
The PMC geniuses at work.
I believe that was the formula for success at GE under Welch.
And K Mart as well.
I recall that being done at Sears as well.
Yeps. Even happens in academia. I had a boss who wanted us to compete against each other after she returned from some Harvard leadership BS course. We were librarians with different areas of responsibilities and unionized so no bonuses or raises could be a reward. She was a classic PMC boomer and the only librarian who wanted to compete was same vintage. The rest of were Xers who had no interest in competing with each other. We did our best work in cooperation and felt no need for the glory of being the best whatever the hell that meant. Competition in the workplace only breeds discord IMO. But many ladder climbers and sycophants will enjoy the game in Trumps Whitehouse, of that I have no doubt
It has been reliably reported that one Nobelist would put two postdoctoral fellows at work on the same project in his very large laboratory. The idea was that competition would lead to “his answer” faster than if the two postdocs were working together to find an answer. All this really did was produce a poisonous atmosphere replete with sabotage.
By some friend of mine i was surprised to see that this was quite a common practice in some labs working with Cancer in the nineties and flooded with grant money. Things on the sort of removing access to monoclonal antibodies to some post-doc who did not progress as fast as the other.
Known formally as the ‘Acquisitive Model’, which is subtly, but aptly titled. The humble need not apply.
I worked at a magazine in the 80s where the editor articulated this strategy. Let the cream rise to the top! I was appalled. Ended up getting fired.
Confirming tne Rev Kev, working at Citi technology in the 1980s and 1990s, that was standard in some areas. Teams would be created with the same mandate, often secret, and when executive management decided one team had gotten “it” right, the other teams would be dissolved. This probably contributed to, or was a result of, an unusual employment culture, at least in my history of consulting during those decades. Every year would be a period of sorority/fraternity rush. Your time as an employee ended if you were no longer on a team (or the team no longer existed – lost the mandate or completed one). To stay employed, you had to find another position. This could become more difficult as you aged if you had a higher salary or more unusual or automated position. Everyone at risk would seek to find out what employees were on viable teams that might be looking for talent, preferably in the same geographical area (especially if you had children in schools, mortgages, etc.), but as time passed, you might have to consider international positions. Back then it was amazing to discover that a person with an Irish name, for example, was based in Singapore. This period was also before/as the corporate intranet was developing, so people would grow their network as they relocated and grew their careers.
My particular deliverable was highly popular in part, I believe, because I included numerous names, projects, and locations of people working around the world. During that time I thought they were the most networked people around. Two events stand out that were in part a function of infrastructure based consolidation. One, when the Latin American infrastructure was optimized, resulted in most technologists (who survived) relocating to one FL site, where you had to know Spanish to literally get in the door. Second, was the consolidation of database centers across Long Island. Many people ended up commuting two hours each day to New Jersey to work in a new site there.
That’s Mao’s playbook
If it is true, isn’t it just a version of “divide and conquer”?
Yes, but divide and conquer is for enemy countries. Trumps isn’t invading and colonizing the White House, he is supposed to achieve things from there, like the list here
https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1854716187512651808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1854716187512651808%7Ctwgr%5E35ef445e78b27f2c4fca662129918dccf0184ccc%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2024%2F11%2Flinks-11-8-2024.html
yes, this is apparently a thing in corpseworld. second to last retired rich person i worked for(you know, those who think running a cafe in retirement will be oh so cool and relaxing)…had retired from 3M as a long time executive.
she pit my day shift against another chef’s night shift, and told neither of us that thats what she was doing.
dude would par-cook a whole box of asparagus, and then toss it all at the end of night,lol.
it was maddening.
when i confronted her, she stated explicitly…as if it were the most rational policy in the world…that competition was always good, and i should adapt.
so i put a lock on one of the big fridges and called it mine.
she didnt like that,lol.
i ended up walking out one day when her and her daughter were arguing loudly in my kitchen during lunch rush and throwing salad at each other….again….
>so i put a lock on one of the big fridges and called it mine.<
brilliant.
question to NC: can this type of action scale?
i brought a drill and everything and just did it.
she never paid much attention to what i was doing,lol…except what was represented in the symbols on her computer.
ie: proverbial by now “not connected to real world nitty gritty”.
but yelling and throwing salad during lunch rush was the last straw.
i walked out, and to the store on the corner and got a couple of tall boys and went back and in the front. sat in corner and watched.
them visibly and audibly having a row thru the little kitchen window, everybody watching.
someone noticed me sitting there.
“why are you out here, what about our order?”
me:gestures towards the salad fight and yelling:” would you work for them?”
“Team of rivals” redux?
I’m hoping you’re right but to me this sounds like more war. That Trump will be the “ peace president” has always seemed like wishful thinking.
I’ve said it before, but the people who bought the idea that Trump was some kind of anti-war, anti-establishment figure are even more naive and deluded than any liberal. Unbelievable really that anyone would believe a solitary word that comes out of Trump’s mouth at this point, let alone expect him to follow through on a campaign promise.
There are examples of Trump keeping campaign promises, see TPP. I don’t recall any actual promises regarding peace.
If he promised not to get the US into a nuclear exchange with either Russia or China, I would count that as a win. With old Joe, you were never quite sure.
The perception of American strength is at play. All these people fancy becoming the tough guys who conquered Pottsylvania leading to usurping Vance, being his running mate or running in 2032 as the person who Trump should have listened to; Hailey tried this.
Biden’s team did the thing. They just called for a nofly zone on the borders of Russia; this was completely nuts; and this choice stems from ignorance and eyes on the next prize.
The biggest problem is the low hanging fruit was knocked off by 2012 while the US weakened in real and relative terms, but very few voices have said the truth which is we hit those countries because we could. Now, we have a situation where neocon off spring and nepo babies want to recapture the old glory, but they never understood that guys like Rummy wanted targets for CNN who couldn’t hit back; it was simply purple fingers and freedumb fries!
If Biden thought he could be more aggressive, he would have been; it’s just aircraft carriers aren’t what they used to be.
IIRC, he had three main election promises. He did not achieve any of them, partly because he had no clue about how the machinery of government worked but also due to outright defiance and insubordination in the government. Remember the Pentagon simply ignoring his directives to withdraw US troop from Syria?
But he tried; he tried very hard.
I’ll add the he often makes no sense or is being reactionary. Like when there was discussion of the partical questions and cost of mass deportation, he just started announcing he has no choice, and Vance added some snakier BS about violent criminals.
Like Biden, Trump will try to rewrite the errors of the previous regime and try to show strength by being aggressive everywhere all at once, ignoring the long term damage done in the US.
It would be funny if Trump says in an interview or memoir that he is an avid reader of Doris Goodwin and loved her Lincoln book. Lincoln practiced this form of executive management (controlled anarchy between fiefdoms).
I doubt he’s an avid reader of anything.
I don’t know…watch how Trump sounds out a more formal, grammatically correct version of one of his tweets. That reminds me of someone who is a reader.
I don’t believe any of these ‘appointments’ have been confirmed as being true. It is all from anonymous sources. Some conservative sites say these rumors could be ‘leak traps’ to find out who in his circle of advisors is talking to the press about confidential information before he takes office. Let’s not get our panties in a bunch over rumors that may have no more substance than Qatar expelling Hamas and the phone call to Putin on Thursday while he was making a speech.
It is likely that his tilt towards war with Iran instead of Russia and China is true but Trump is squeamish about bloodshed by nature and to see him actually pull the trigger on war in western Asia is doubtful.
Sorry, Trump most definitely has selected Stefanik and that was the Rev Kev comment you disputed: https://apnews.com/article/trump-united-nations-elise-stefanik-ambassador-2b482fb39a8d6f03d389d27cc8820056
Please check rather than make sweeping and false assertions.
I’d like to make a sweeping assertion: being nominated by Trump doesn’t make him your friend.
With Stefanik, this seems to be a demotion. UN Ambassador is a job for someone who just lost an election. It comes with no personal authority, you are the SOS’s “delegate.”
If she accepts, Stefanik’s time as Ambassador is controlled by Trump. Frankly, I don’t see why she would want the job unless she’s tired of being in the House. This also takes her out of play for Rubio’s seat if he becomes SOS. Or maybe Rubio asked for her to be UN Ambassador.
So many variables! And it’s not a slam dunk that the Senate will allow recess appointments so it’s all hard to say this far out.
But it is fun to watch.
The Dems like to blame everything on Trump but I believe it would be a little closer to the mark to blame everything including Trump on the Dems since they’ve been ruling our cultural roost lately.
Meanwhile that WaPo Trump/Putin story raises the question whether the CIA spox outlet and the deep state are already messing with any potential peace feelers. Trump one was chaotic and Trump two may be as well but one shouldn’t discount the relentless quest by the Dems and their allies to make things seem as chaotic as possible.
Yes…Don’t forget that Obama gave us Trump, and then Obama’s VP gave us Trump yet again. Democrats – the gift that keeps on giving. It will be interesting see what Trump gives us.
So far I don’t see any evidence of a “team of rivals” strategy. I don’t think Trump is capable of such a thing. His primary qualification is personal loyalty to Trump. Stefanik is another miserable neocon who apprenticed with neocon think-tanks (including the Zionist Foundation for Defense of Democracies) and served the military-industrial-intelligence complex. But unlike Bolton or Haley she remained loyal to Trump and was a strong supporter of his in the House (as was Walz, his apparent National Security Advisor). The foreign policy picks announced or rumored so far are uniformly terrible. If Little Marco is actually named Secretary of State we’d be in full Mike Pompeo territory (though Pompeo is a lot smarter and scarier to me). Maybe they can bring back Operation Condor! A lot of his Florida constituents would love it.
It’s true Walz has made noises about winding down Ukraine. But some of these noises – getting “serious” about sanctions, unleashing Ukrainian missiles, etc. – don’t provide much comfort. Former Green Beret Walz is not a chicken hawk, at least. But his rhetoric as a right-wing politician has certainly been war-mongering. By the way, his wife’s profile is very interesting. She served briefly as Trump’s Homeland Security advisor, but she is *very* well connected – including serving as an intelligence officer, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow, the World Economic Forum Governing Council, and a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. Her bio makes interesting reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Nesheiwat
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that nothing will fundamentally change. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. I don’t think I will.
I believe Rubio was a big booster of Trump’s terrible Venezuela policy. I think you are right about Trump liking the people that like him. Everything is personal.
I thought Trump admired little Marco’s big maracas, not so much his ineptitude in Caracas.
However, Waltz is being labeled as a China hawk.
Trump should worry about the U.S. economy!
The erson to watch is Trump’s chief of staff: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-susie-wiles-chief-of-staff/
What she says…
Hawks, hawks everywhere. In a nutshell whether ruled by D or R, us dull normals in the US are ruled by the same cult of aggression. We are ruled by the Ferengi rules of acquisition. Who needs Deep State 9 when you have Wall Street.
https://projectsanctuary.com/the_complete_ferengi_rules_of_acquisition.htm
Ferengi are a species from StarTrek that was particularly highlighted in Deep Space 9. Their religion is commerce and their society is determined by profit.
Oh noes, Republicans is appointing Republicans!
>Warmongers Predictably Slated for Trump Administration Sam Husseini
As I said the other day, I suspect Pompeo and Haley — who were part of Trump con 1.0 — had their names floated to make the other warmongers Trump was set to name look more palatable.
Makes a lot of sense. I didn’t vote for neither Trump or Harris, but I feel disappointed/depressed even though I knew this was coming.
I was happy to see Harris and the Dems lose and get punished at the polls for Genocide in Gaza, Ukraine, CV19 Vax mandates and in being in the pocket of donors. But I think it’s a dialectical game the power brokers are playing on the population. Left/Right, Dems/Repubs, it’s clearly intended as a shadow drama, with the real decision makers/shakers safely out of focus. It’s just sad that fear/hate dominate. There was “Other” on the ballot for President but people just couldn’t opt out of the trap.
Even though it’s not surprising, it’s also left a bitter taste in my mouth. It could be some higher dimensional chess, but most likely it’s just Trump rewarding donors like Adelson.
She’s loathsome but, at this point, how could she be worse than our current UN contingent with regards to human rights? Maybe she is just a bone tossed to Adelson.
No issues with a bone, but it’s three bones if you include Secretary of State Rubio and the new National Security Advisor. So that’s a trifecta. It’s too much, it’s a clean sweep.
Elbridge Colby just had a great interview on Tucker Carlson’s show, he would have been great for national security advisor.
I think Trump is playing when the fire. If he appoints a total neocon cabinet, and maybe also excludes Vivek, RFK Jr, and Tulsi, his presidency is dead on day one.
Right now it’s in trouble.
Not good so far, but there’s much left to be seen: one would expect that Trump will want to reward his loyalists, even of different orientation, and he may even want to assuage them first, given the expectations. Still, if Rubio as SoS turns out to be true (I think that’s still unconfirmed?), that would suck bad.
I’m reminded of JFK picking LBJ for VP to get him out of the Senate.
Also isn’t the UN a dead end for Stefanik? Donor pressure relieved.
Could Rubio be worse than HRC? or Albright?
MOA had a great discussion on the “meaning” of the phone call. Sounds like everyone is playing xD chess. !st liar doesn’t stand a chance!
I’d love to know more about Colby on Carlson’s show. They seemed extremely compatico, almost as if Tucker were lobbying on Colby’s behalf. Colby sounded great but he also sounded too young for either job. I don’t associate diplomacy with enthusiasm or, frankly, any show of emotion.
My main interest is in seeing how much RFK jr, Gabbard and Carlson impact Trump’s selections. Musk, imo, is just there for the dinner parties. Trump sees Tesla’s problems and I suspect he loves Elon mostly for his money.
Yes. Somebody yanked the football away. Again. Maybe I’ll never learn.
Still hopeful we avoid ww3 over ukr. And imo nobody’s gonna go all out against Iran.
imfordoingawaywithitasusageofpunctuationisaclearwasteofspace
~~~~~~~~~~
Punctuation is dead because the iPhone keyboard killed it Android Authority
The American poet e e cummings would heartily agree with your sentiment.
I’m kinda rabidly anti-semicolon, but isn’t everybody?
Who knew back in the day when we learned to type on a QWERTY, that it would be a most useful skill later in life, but not in a way we would have ever suspected.
tl;dr
My brother had a semicolon but he had an operation. He’s been a perfect A-hole ever since.
Vonnegut, in an address to his alma mater, advised graduates never to use them, as to him all they did was vaguely signify that you went to college; I did not, and so delight in their use!
Their use seems to have dropped off in publications like The Atlantic and The New Yorker, which I suspect is at least in part due to college students reading less. The result, sometimes, is short, stunted one-clause sentances; some other times the result is flowing, comma-ridden ones.
We are all thumb typers now?
I’ve never been an Apple person but my brother gave me an iPad for my birthday and while it’s definitely a “beautiful machine” the illogic of some of the interface choices can be annoying.
Too late for me.
I was actually quite a fast typist at one time, though my typing “efficiency” declined (i.e. more mistakes) with the spread of desktops and then laptops and increased ease of editing. I’m still pretty good at a keyboard, but I have never got the hang of texting. It’s a slow hunt and peck process for me. I marvel at the flying thumbs of 10 year old girls who can leave me in their dust.
I also still edit my texts (old habits), which greatly amuses my daughter and granddaughter.
Semicolons are only for some kinds of writing but if you’re dealing with exceptionally slippery topics, they can be quite handy.
There are times when you shouldn’t start a new sentence because you’re not done with the one you’re writing. The front and back halves of your sentence are in balance, both speak to the other half, neither is dependent upon the other so dashes and commas aren’t in play. You break the sentence with a semicolon and the world is in balance.
Not for casual use, I use mine only when forced to but with relish when I do.
Note: using semicolons for lists is archaic. Reformat and use bullet points.
Semicolons are really useful for lists in place, especially if you have a list of lists and need something other than a comma as separator. You cannot text or email bullet points (unless you allow anything other than plaintext email through, which is a godsend to spammers and crackers).
Hey, I’m a semi-colon fan. The one I would like to see banished forever is the apostrophe, the single most misused piece of punctuation ever. You can almost always, like over 95% of the time, infer from context whether you’re seeing a pluralization, a contraction, or a possessive. The apostrophe used to be a slight but unnecessary help for that, but it’s so frequently misused now that it is no help at all. And the idea of adding a “‘s” to a name that ends in “s” to form a possessive is a case of looking ridiculous in order to be formally correct.
And don’t even get me started on names containing apostrophes. Even there it’s misused by too many people to fake the appearance of an acute accent because they can’t figure out how to compose an accented character on their keyboard. Get rid of it! Sorry, Mr. O Brien, but you don’t need it.
You can probably imagine the time I’ve put into decidering whether to use Walzes or Walzs or Walz’s. The former is correct (imo), the latter seems to be common usage but the middle option does damage to my eyes. The plural of success is not successs or success’s.
I distinctly recall that Bushes became the preferred option over Bushs when W pluralized the family. Therefore, ergo and what’s for dim sum, Walzes would seem to be the by now no longer needed but correct way of referring to more than one Walz. Or you can just list them by name, putting them in whichever order seems most persuasive to your intended audience.
Hater.
probably anarchy and methodibelle too the don has spoken
I see what you did there. I haven’t heard them mentioned in a cat’s age.
🪳🐈 👍
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_and_Mehitabel
I ; protest; with; judicious; outrage; ! (;)
I do like the somewhat odd Typewise thumb-board, although it doesn?t like English and French: I?ve gotta long press for a ‘, else I get ????s (I did also have to tweak the swipe speed in settings.)
>Viral video reveals Israeli hooligans attacked Dutch police while instigating Amsterdam unrest Grayzone (Kevin W)
But despite their apparent understanding that Israelis initiated the violence, officials in the Netherlands and elsewhere have instead followed the lead of the Israeli government, laying the blame entirely at the feet of mainly Arab youths who confronted the Maccabi fans.
It’s comforting (sarc) that the U.S. is not the only country where Israel controls “officials.”
As an aside, Amsterdam and the Jews warrants it’s own Wiki Page, a rich/checkered history there.
The History of the Jews in Amsterdam focuses on the historical center of the Dutch Jewish community, comprising both Portuguese Jews originally from both Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi Jews, originally from central Europe…The first Ashkenazim, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe, who arrived in Amsterdam were refugees from the Chmielnicki Uprising in Poland and the Thirty Years War. Their numbers soon swelled, eventually outnumbering the Sephardic Jews at the end of the 17th century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Amsterdam
The BBC even ran footage of mobs on the rampage claiming it was Maccabi fans being attacked, when it actual fact, the attacking mob was Israelis.
Trump as you are, as you were
As I want you to be
As a friend, as a friend
As an old enemy
Take your time, hurry up
Choice is yours, don’t be late
Take a rest as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
Come doused in win, soaked in success
As I want you to be
As a trend, as a friend
As an old
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
And I swear that I don’t have a pun
No, I don’t have a pun
No, I don’t have a pun
Memoria, memoria
Memoria, memoria
(No, I don’t have a pun)
Come As You Are, by Nirvana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vabnZ9-ex7o
Re: BTC 81k and Musk suggesting it can play a role in US debt relief:
How about this scenario: US Treasury changing the bond terms to pay out BTC, not dollars? People rush in to buy them, driving rates down and making embezzlers smile.
Then, the day after the bond matures and pays, BTC crashes down to 0.01. Technically, no default. Bondholders are stuck like Wile E. Coyote after the Road Runner hands him a big firecracker.
Hey, if they “Mint the Coin” I don’t really care what it’s made of, platinum or BTC…
If my memory serves me well, there was some support here for minting the coin. What if that coin were bitcoin? Would it act like a margin pool? Would having this pool between treasury and the national debt add security or risk?
You can’t pay back a debt denominated in one currency with another currency. That would be a default.
I would have liked it better if they had called it KeyserSözeCoin, but i’m along for the charade, and I understand there is a banquet of consequences when things come a cropper-all you can eat.
Isn’t this a version of the trillion dollar coin debt solution?
Pretty much … ” beep beep!”
Treasury – Road Runner
You & Me – Coyote
I like to call it: ‘Pt Barnum’
There is precedence for a high face value coin, here’s a 1923 1 billion Mark from Germany.
https://www.scoins.com/lot.aspx?a=21&l=186
Lol, nothing spells out hyperinflation quite like billion on one’s currency.
How about 500 billion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:500000000000_dinars.jpg
The trillion dollar coin was put forward for the most part as a work-around for the debt ceiling so as to not allow congressional deadlock to cause an involuntary US default. This, on the other hand, would seem to be some kind of bait-and-switch confidence trick to finesse a deliberate default. So not the same thing at all.
Through inflation, it would have to be a ten trillion dollar coin. After all, the debt is going up a trillion dollars every 100 days. Of course there are other alternatives-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRgRz3nSG7o (2:29 mins)
I think we are going to see unprecedented levels of fraud, lack of regulatory oversight, malfeasance, and incompetence over the next four years. The sort of baseline, background level that currently exists is plenty bad on its own, but it’s off to the races now.
“Unprecedented” or business as usual? I’m not sure Trump has the chops for the former, one reason to favor him in office. The here and now is we are in a period of a massive, mostly not visible power shift. Have the neocons successfully courted Trump? The mighty Wurlitzer plays on and on, and there are enormous rice bowls at risk.
We must wait and see.
Once the fraud really gets out of control, and is unchecked by reasonable regulatory enforcement, that’s when things get jiggy.
Remember that it wasn’t until we had a “perfect storm” of Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Shrub, and GOP miscreants that the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent GFC was born. Throw in Ben Bernanke for some spice in the rotten stew.
It’s actually self-correcting because the greed gets so extreme that it mathematically has to implode. AI seems to be the trigger for the next implosion. I can see so many fake AI companies coming to market then going bankrupt that it triggers another financial crisis.
I expect massive trillion dollar bailouts of Wall Street when the collapse occurs, as it most certainly will before Jan 20, 2029.
The alternative is raking over failed financial institutions. I can see Trump doing that.
re: China Approaches Record $1 Trillion Trade Surplus to World’s Ire Bloomberg
Have the minders instructed Bloomberg to substitute ‘World’ for ‘US’? Perhaps because otherwise the headline meant to say “How can those uppity [insert whatever racist term they use for Chinese people] be doing better than their betters?”
A trade surplus is not a sign of a country ‘doing better’. Its a sign of a domestic economy where there is an artificial shift of wealth from domestic consumers to exporters either by way of direct transfers or through maintaining an artificially low currency. A healthy trade account should balance (i.e. domestic consumers are benefiting from the wealth brought in by an efficient export sector). It is total productivity growth that leads to real growth. As Keynes pointed out decades ago, countries with very large trade surpluses or deficits are an indicator of begger thy neighbour mercantilist policies. China’s surplus is the flip side of the US’s massive deficit caused by the dollars exorbitant privilege, not necessarily an indicator of an inherently more efficient economy.
You will also find that the main concern about China’s surplus is not the US – its countries like Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Thailand, Vietnam, India etc., who are finding their new domestic manufacturing export sectors under extreme strain from what they perceive as unfair competition, especially in areas like steel and autos. In general its only primary product producers who are happy with it.
Well, the comparison that normally dances around in my head given how close we seem to be to
many hot wars mini-WW3 (being retired USN, then an engineer in a huge aviation company) is who was the Arsenal of Democracy in WW2, and who is it today? Paraphrasing old Joe S, being able to make $hit means you win.
That’s what the “balance of trade” used to be about. The rest you can fix on a keyboard at a central bank, and in an office that does competent trade policy.
The US has had the world’s largest trade imbalance since, as far as I can tell, 1977 (BEA). China has had a trade surplus since the early 2000’s (I want to cite WTO data but gosh..their interface sucks, sorry).
The US has been running a trade deficit for longer than China has had a trade surplus. I can’t help but feel this is just another made up reason to incite unwarranted anger at the Chinese, probably in a weak attempt to turn Mexico, Brazil, etc., against China.
As far as I understand, the US rejected Keyne’s Bancor proposal, so has not been required to achieve trade balance, so I don’t see why anyone would expect China or any other country to.
That “artificial shift of wealth” happened a long time ago. It’s called “increasing your exports of low-cost goods so that you can import machinery” and is the standard way of developing your economy; Russia used it in the first three Five-Year Plans.
Today, China’s massive trade surplus is largely because China manufactures vast amounts of desirable goods at low cost. If you don’t like that happening, the solution is to engineer your own “artificial shift of wealth”.
> Harris falls short with female voters, stunning Democrats – The Hill
It makes more sense if you assume that the comma, as is a common convention in headlines, is an abbreviated “and”.
I wonder if a major reason why so many women voted for the oppo is that they were the ones going to the supermarket every other day trying to stretch their budget until the next payday while prices escalated. More so if they had kids to feed and it would not have helped having the main stream media gaslighting them and saying how great the economy was going. So if people voted their purses and wallets, what else were they supposed to do? Take one for the team with a promise of more of the same? Yeah, nah!
This is I believe a good read of the election. Everyone’s inflation rate is different. If you’re in flyover country, and you have a household trying to make it on $30k per year, being told everything is fine doesn’t seem quite right.
Then Harris says she wouldn’t change a thing over the last 4 years.
Lower 98% cared about the weekly budget, not the MSM fudging economic data.
I think Trump will be busier on domestic problems than tilting with the Ayotollah
Clever links synergy there Tom. How about no comma?
Speaking of stunned Dems I can’t resist this one. / ;) Jimmy Dore, utube, ~5+ minutes.
Woman SCREAMS At Neighbor Over Harris Losing Election! (Live Rumble Time Show)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3uTuGMiG44
Some women are now making videos about poisoning Trump supporters – including their husbands – with aqua tofana because that is what always happens after a major election-
https://www.kfoxtv.com/news/nation-world/women-create-matga-trend-about-poisoning-husbands-after-trump-victory-presidential-election-make-aqua-tofana-great-again-white-house-kamala-politics
Some women in those videos show these rings with a secret compartment where the poison can be hidden until tipped into a drink.
A big wave of homicides could do a lot to keep the population down. Excess mortality could make a comeback in 2025. Defense lawyer’s phones ring off the hook. Prosecutors need to hire up as well.
Shorter lines at the liquor store.
Let’s always look on the bright side of things.
Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side….stay on the sunny side of life? Hat tip for the highly revered Carter family.
Is it not a rule of thumb to distrust anyone mixing your adult cocktail beverage when you’re not watching? Spoiler alert, that’s a recurring theme from the Netflix series on Jeffrey Dahmer.
Well you could always look on the bright side of life-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M (3:10 mins)
It’s been a week since the election. Some checked out for a while, but are finding their way back into the social media and the world. Not at all pretty. They are not happy and many it seems, want to lash out at anyone who doesn’t feel the same way.
I made the mistake of trying to have a civil conversation about the our educational system after some claimed it will be eliminated (the DOE) and ruined under Orange Hitler. I simply stated, as a teacher, I thought our educational system is a mess and I hope the adults in the room from all sides could gather around a table and have a much needed conversation about it’s future.
I was quickly admonished and attacked for being a Trumper, and how dare me not realize the danger we are all under due to Trump. Did you see what he did on Jan 6th (that one is going to be a hot one going forward)? Yada, yada, yada. The level of unhinged is still off the charts and maybe worse.
The next 4 years of these people acting like a second graders laying on the ground throwing a temper tantrum is going to be epic. And it will be very unhealthy for everyone, no matter what side, stripe, or color you are. If you want to make a lot of money it might be a good time to be a psychologist.
>The next 4 years of these people acting like a second graders laying on the ground throwing a temper tantrum is going to be epic
I just wish they would hold their breath until their face turns blue. It would be a few moments of silence about it all.
And I could not agree more about it being unhealthy for all. I try think it’s part of the plan to just keep us at each other’s throats, so the distraction keeps us from realizing the looting and open corruption from on top that goes on right in front of our eyes. But we’re blinded.
I swear that this is what’s really going on, from The Matrix: Resurrections…
2:30 in
https://youtu.be/1MfdDTxbZ9I
Perhaps instead of psychologists we may need many more clinical psychiatrists specializing in profound psychosis to deal with the future madness.
I think the No Child Left Behind Act has a lot to answer for. It produced the opposite effect that it was advertised as producing, imo. / ymmv
This from EPI , (you can find similar reports from NPR).
What went wrong with No Child Left Behind?
https://www.epi.org/publication/what_went_wrong_with_no_child_left_behind/
From NPR:
No Child Left Behind: What Worked, What Didn’t
https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/27/443110755/no-child-left-behind-what-worked-what-didnt
If you said it amidst Trump operatives, they would have attacked you too. Being a neoliberal policy goal, the privatization of education is a bipartisan affair. First they defund it, then when it falters, claim it’s because of government (ironic); (sorry Wuk) and hammers need nails, so break out the market solutions.
“some women”
Comments on X have mentioned (1) that it’s a good way to weed out the nut jobs when considering who to try to date, and (2) that the “4B” movement, if successful, is a great way of increasing the number of babies born to conservatives.
“It’s the economy, stooopid” Amazing that Democrats can’t listen to their own advice.
One use of TIkTok by micro-sized channels is as a secular confessional booth—-and oh boy, people were/are still livid about how $100 does not buy a week of groceries anymore.
You can’t undo that anger with pithy soundbites about “vibes” and “joy” and fawning from Oprah.
Joy dishwashing liquid has gone up 47% since Genocide Joe took over.
Oh great! Things are looking up!
And, some times I can’t even find it. Dawn has taken over the shelf space. Entire shelves!
Real life construct of the old kids joke about jumping for Joy? Or perhaps, kneeling for Joy?
I grabbed a dozen eggs at the nearby Wal Mart yesterday at about $2.25…much, much less than the nearby comparable grocery store brand at about $3.99 when I checked there this past Saturday…
Wal Mart also offers a case of 60 eggs for I think about $10.50…That is a lot of eggs, maybe if you drink a serving of raw eggs for breakfast ala Rocky I. Yes it’s a movie but in a scene when he’s training more seriously, I definitely do mean drinking, not scrambled or poached.
When younger I daily drank a glass with milk, a raw egg and some sugar in it after stirring it thoroughly with a fork. Of course you had to drink it quickly before the egg separated from the milk but it was delicious.
In my misspent youth one night in a “country bar” outside the Air Base, I drank an egg in a beer.
Seemed the thing to do at the time. Then we went to the dining room attached and had coffee and breakfast.
I don’t know what a 25 cent short draft costs today.
pre-Covid, factory-farm eggs were $0.79 to $1.29 per dozen in my neck of the woods. Right now it’s $2.99 to $3.99.
I eat/use a lot of eggs, lol. (at Costco it’s $7.49 for 2 dozen California-compliant, “free-range” eggs)
Obviously there are multiple factors going on…bird flu, labor cost pressures, transport, etc.
But Normie voters don’t care and the buck stops with whoever is in power.
Eggs, milk, bread, luncheon meat, gasoline prices are obvious barometers that no TV appearance can gaslight.
Have you seen the prices of Kraft American “cheese product” slices!
I trust your numbers.
Social media has been jam.packed, for at least the last year, with “moms” posting pic of groceries from the Moss Creek Walmart and making outrageous price claims, not showing receipts, and blaming Biden. These are followed by someone local showing that the online prices for the same brand of eggs, sugar, OJ etc at the Moss Creek WalMart for far less. And then the posters with receipts are mobbed as liars.
“NATO’s 2% military spending target no longer sufficient, German foreign minister says”
That sounds like some Annalena Baerbock maths that she is using. So 2% is good, then 4% must be better, right? But in an increasingly deindustrialized Germany, do they have the industry anymore to fit out an upgraded Bundeswehr? Can they design, build and deploy a new generation of tanks for the modern battlefield not to forget the armoured vehicles, APCs, artillery as well? How does modern German military industrial capability compare to that back in 1940?
Two percent of the EU economy works out at something in the vicinity of 400 billion dollars. Russia is the only conceivable direct military threat and their 2023 defense budget was only in the region of 85 billion. If spending four and a half times what Russia does doesn’t provide security, is spending 5 times as much supposed to do so, 10 times as much ? I’d be interested in Miss Baerbock’s answer.
Maybe she just wants to compensate for the shrinking of economy and rise of prices. In order to get the same bang you need bigger %-buck. 4% is the new 2%.
And if 4% was actually spent, and the EU alone was spending as much as the United States does, and more than 10 times what Russia spends, we’d discover that, according to Baerbock, it still wasn’t enough to attain the degree of security that we need.
The amount of money spent in Germany vs Russia is not apples to apples comparison. In the Collective West most of the money slips to hands other than those involved directly in the manufacturing and I am not talking only about power supply which is an issue in itself.
That’s true, but I’m more trying to make the point that if you’re determined, as I think Baerbock is, to make of nuclear-armed Russia an eternal and implacable enemy, then there is no arbitrary budget target that can be set which will ever be sufficient.
An it is a fair point. But this is how these people work. They put these numbers in spreadsheets and it has to work as they desire.
Ms Baerbock’s answer will be to have you shot as an anti-semite. Or, worse still, sentenced to a week’s corrective listening to the collected speeches of Ms Baerbock.
It’s tough in the Reich these days.
Europe’s problem is that the concept of national is so dead and the “consent of the govern” is so broken, no one (particularly right of center) is willing to sacrifice/fight/die for the likes of Baerbock or Scholz or Keir.
no amount of money can fix that
Once they EU equip the new divisions they have to have logistics to use them on Russia who has no logistics to send their stuff west .
If war company stocks were not so inflated they could be a good investment
Trump ‘border czar’ says administration will conduct workplace immigration raids
It’s already making me crazy that breathless reporting like this on Tom Homan’s provocative rhetoric fails to specify that he directed ICE’s enforcement and removal operations under Obama before serving under Trump.
The article identifies Homan as an
without acknowledging that he specifically promoted and implemented family separation at the border in *2013-14*, again under Obama. (Thus the photos of kids in Democrat-sponsored cages that circulated online and were misattributed to the Trump administration during the height of liberal indignation over the policy.)
I spent all 4 years of the Trump administration trying to educate activated liberals about the deep bipartisan roots of harsh anti-immigrant legislation and sentiment. Under Biden, despite his campaign rhetoric, the rightward ratchet continued; he sustained most of Trump’s border and anti-asylum policies and deported plenty of folks from the interior himself. Even I, a perennial skeptic, was a little shocked by the quick return to form! (In the immortal words of Lily Tomlin, “No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.”)
Anyway, it’s a small thing to get this exercised about, but I’m unsympathetic to postures of aghastitude over Tom Homan’s menacing words after he served as Obama’s enforcement & removal operations director during the highwater mark for interior deportations in this country, got a personal award from Obama for it in 2015, and was praised in a Washington Post article at the time: “Thomas Homan deports people. And he’s really good at it.”
Thank you. Team blue has been working overtime to have it both ways on immigration. By appearances “immigration” seems to have lost its effectiveness as a flag issue for them. I’m wondering if there were any ballot proposals on the issue that could be compared to the vote counts for president like with abortion.
I went out to try and learn more about this since I had heard that Obama was often nicknamed the “Deporter in Chief” only to find that Clinton deported the most followed by W, then Obama:
Yes, Obama deported more people than Trump but context is everything
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/13/politics/obama-trump-deportations-illegal-immigration/index.html
So the more I check right now, the more confused I get. Is this another MSM reporting what’s become highly politicized so we also have to filter for whatever?
Deportation Rates in Historical Perspective
“President Obama removed more people from the United States, no matter how you dice the numbers than any other president. But was President Obama’s removal record an anomaly? To answer that question, I looked at the number of removals per president going back to 1892 when the government first started recording them. Table 1 shows the presidents, the number of removals under each administration, and the number of removals per year.”
https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective
Thanks!
Check the numbers out in this article:
The Obama Record on Deportations: Deporter in Chief or Not?
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/obama-record-deportations-deporter-chief-or-not
Now we need to figure out who’s behind Cato and the Migration Policy Institute. (I’ve heard of Cato, MPI is new to me.)
This is (as I used to say at work) another opportunity to learn more than I ever wanted to know.
This is just breaking: 35 people killed in a hit and run in the city of Zhuhai, China. The perpetrator was supposedly unhappy with his divorce settlement, which I read to be some kind of economic dispute.
Just last month, there was a mass stabbing incident in a Walmart in China, again due to someone venting his anger over …… a personal economic dispute.
Hopefully this is not going to be a trend, because there’s just too many cars and too many people in China. Heck, the NRA might use this to point out that guns don’t kill that many people compared to what a car can do.
“Running amok/amuck” is a DSM diagnosis. The symptoms and triggers seem to me to fall right in line with the reported instances:
Amok syndrome is an aggressive dissociative behavioral pattern derived from the Malay world, modern Indonesia and Malaysia, that led to the English phrase running amok.[1] The word derives from the Malay word amuk, traditionally meaning “rushing in a frenzy” or “attacking furiously”.[2][3] Amok syndrome presents as an episode of sudden mass assault against people or objects following a period of brooding, which has traditionally been regarded as occurring especially in Malay culture but is now increasingly viewed as psychopathological behavior.[4] The syndrome of “Amok” is found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV TR).[5] In the DSM-V, Amok syndrome is no longer considered a culture-bound syndrome, since the category of culture-bound syndrome has been removed.[1]”
There’s more observations in the wiki article, filling out the picture of the behavior and placing it in the current context.
So unsurprisingly, given the givens, we-all are likely to see more of this behavior.
Back in 2010 or thereabouts there was a spate of school stabbings in China – all unrelated, presumably a case of social copycat contagion of some type. The authorities in China are always very quick to suppress social media reporting of these outbreaks, so its hard to know how common they are. Those two seem to have been so big and so well recorded that they made the news. There is no doubt that the property crash is hitting a lot of regular people hard – particularly so I think with the generation in their 40’s and 50’s, as they grew up at a period when they would never have experienced a recession, growth would have appeared endless for the upwardly mobile classes. Suddenly having the economic rug pulled from under you in those circumstances must be quite a shock.
re: Harris falls short with female voters, stunning Democrats The Hill
Not a single word about war? Surely, Biden/Harris ramping up the belligerence scale, provoking conflict worldwide, threatening war with China, Iran, Russia, supporting genocide in Palestine, constant pro-war drumbeating in the news day after day, has made people a little bit uncomfortable? Prompting voters to want change in direction?
Caitlin Johnstone says that-
‘Biden’s Legacy Is Genocide, War, And Nuclear Brinkmanship’
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/bidens-legacy-is-genocide-war-and-nuclear-brinkmanship-e08ae8d2ecdb
Of course she followed up that post with another saying-
‘The Incoming Trump Administration Is Already Filling Up With War Sluts’
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/the-incoming-trump-administration-is-already-filling-up-with-war-sluts-f131693a3ab4
Harris fell way short on ballots deliver in truck, late at night….. 99% for her.
Pence should have put 2020 to the House.
It is now a full week since the election, and I am really surprised that I can’t find any stories in the news about Antony Blinken working tirelessly for a Gaza ceasefire. It is almost as if that whole thing was a ploy to make it look like Joe Biden cared. Can someone please help me understand? /sarc
I heard that the Zionists are going to name an overlook in Gaza after him, ‘Blinken Bluffs’
hehehe … thanks for the chuckle.
Antony is at home working on his memoirs, or maybe binge-watching Netflix. He needs some R&R after being used as Bibi’s beard for genocide.
Yeah. I read somewhere that Blinken is already up to the year 2029 in his memoirs.
That passage for 2025 about strange fruit swinging in the breeze in downtown Tel Aviv is almost lyrical.
I heard the working title is:
‘the Diecider’
Blinken’s memoir is sure to have a chapter on how he relates to Charlie Brown, as Bibi played Lucy, by yanking the football/ceasefire away at the last minute.
“My life as a field goal mis-kicker. At least Scott Norwood had a shot”
Not strange smoke coming out of West Bank smokestacks?
Seder Vacante?
Taibbi and Kirn, ATW. utube, ~1hr 50+ minutes
ATW Live on Monday 11/11/2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXK92JRHWvg
Walter Kirn is a treasure.
Absolutely! I’m reminded of the article in yesterday’s links about sentinel intelligence. Walter refers to his as “Gypsy blood.
And this is a very upbeat episode of ATW, it’s nice to see these guys experience some light-heartedness after the stress of the last several months. I suspect some of the reason that these guys are feeling so good now is because of the friendly and supportive Network that they connected with at the Rescue the Republic event, which they both spoke at.
This twice weekly show really helped me survive, and Walter Kirn is a national Jewel.
Casual conversation in American English is difficult to me. May I ask a question? I watched the short AOC clip and the reactions about it. It suggested me as if the questions or demands made by AOC looked like she, or the DNC, might be wanting to do a black list of sites, podcasts, influencers, whatever that should be… em… treated accordingly?
I think you understand casual conversation in American English. / ;)
Thank you flora. I just couldn’t believe it.
You shouldn’t. AOC is not that wired. I thought Matt and Walter were just using her curiosity to warn viewers about The Blob.
AOC already knows what shows you watch. The list she wants is of “safe” podcasts recommended by her fans. I doubt she thinks any Trump supporters are watching the show.
When you respond to such a podcast invite to submit info, it’s as if you just responded to a distressed Nigerian prince in need of ransom funding. I really do think the Racket boys got that one wrong but in service to a larger point.
Thank you Mark. So far I have seen so many reactions on those many “bad” media sites, influencers etc that possibly point to possible future actions. The jump from not recommending to attacking these one way or the other is not that long.
Especially liked Kirn’s commentary on the $1 million paid to oprah and $10 milion to beyonce by the harris “campaign.”
Per Kirn on oprah: “You’d think that oprah would have gotten to the point in her life where she’d fight Hitler for free…”
And on beyonce: “Here’s $10 million and you don’t even have to sing.” Kirn “postulates” that it’ll come down to something like “Here’s $10 million. You remember that party we were at? I was never there…”
P.S. Here’s a graphic, courtesy of The Automatic Earth, detailing each of the campaign’s spending.
Over a billion and still came up short.
These are the people who have been in charge of this GREAT economy for the last 4 years.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GcH1uKWWsAEuKSo?format=jpg&name=900×900
Doesn’t have to be that cynical, I think: savvy and successful celebs generally don’t want to get involved in politics–like Michael Jordan famously said, Republicans buy Nikes, too. I really wonder how much they paid Taylor Swift, since she notoriously kept her politics carefully hidden until 2016 and tried to keep a low-ish profile even after that.
Thanks so much for the link! I had thought that all of Matt’s stuff was paywalled, so I’ve been missing out.
FT.
I liked the phrase that Iran hadn’t improved their gas infrastructure.
Like it was just something they forgot to do vs that they are actively being sanctioned to death.
Now that the Middle East seems to maybe starting to work more together I would assume that the gas countries could run a pipeline to Iran in short order.
Iran can’t count on any country with officials that have put them in the position to obey US-led sanctions.
The interesting bit here is that Iran is in the BRICS now. And to be a member of the BRICS, you cannot be sanctioning any other country. So those countries that sanction Iran automatically put themselves out of contention of BRICS membership which will cost them.
Only when the countries experience what BRICS has to offer. And the benefits of that experience has to be sustained.
Iran enforces rolling power blackouts as fuel shortages bite – Financial Times
The post was was prefaced by saying ” not related to Israel”. I’d say it’s somewhat, maybe indirectly related to Israel. It’s the kind of infrastructure that would make a stronger resistance to Israel/US attacks.
Meanwhile, noticed this also in the FT:
Far-right Israeli minister’s call to annex West Bank sparks outrage – FT
https://archive.ph/sBqRj/
“…Bezalel Smotrich wrote on X on Monday that 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria”, using the Jewish biblical name favoured by Israeli nationalists for the West Bank…”
Smotrich says that he plans on doing it as soon as Trump takes office. I wonder if Trump will roll over for them they same way that he did in his first term.
Yes. They were going to do it whether Trump won or not.
There was no anti-Israeli settlements candidate scheduled to win.
Marco Rubio? ‘Little Marco’, really? LMAO
Are these ‘leaks’ or actually just BS like the Trump-Putin call?
Time for some Classic Throwback Trump: “Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet. I agree!”
“Rubio is totally owned by the lobbyists and special interests. A lightweight senator with the worst voting record in Senate. Lazy!”
And my personal fav: “Marco Rubio is a total lightweight who I wouldn’t hire to run one of my smaller companies – a highly overrated politician!”
As NFL great Buddy Ryan once said about a player he didn’t care much for on his team:
“I’d trade him for a six-pack of beer … and it doesn’t even have to be cold.”
Back during the Repub convention Kirn said that the establishment Repubs were heavily pushing Rubio for VP and at the last minute Trump picked Vance instead. So it is either another fake rumor or some kind of consolation prize to the neocons. For all his peace talk Trump does seem to have a fondness for some of the chicken hawks, our Lindsey being a prime example.
Still, what could be worse than Blinken?
I think Rubio would be worse. Unless you subscribe to the theory that it’s better to just get all your issues out on the table. An unfettered war freak who wants to see every Gazan dead represents the face of US diplomacy better than a sad man who pretended to be a diplomat, but was really just being used as a beard for genocide.
Think of Rubio as outing US foreign policy. We really do want brown folks to just die. No need to put up a cover story anymore. Die, die, die.
The cheerful version of Die die die!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACbVhgtx9I
There certainly seems to be a backroom frenzy going on right now of various swamp creatures maneuvering best they can to slither their way into the next administration. Ian Welsh made the point recently that Trump is like an arrogant and touchy king where behind-the-scenes court games are even more important than they normally are. Neocons are famous for their bureaucratic fighting skills, which is (partly) why they are so hard to be rid of.
It’s kinda sad because Trump’s victory margins gives him a golden opportunity to sideline these idiots and shove them over a cliff, and the loser Repubs could do squat about it. Yet here we go again, lol.
Not surprising mind you, but we all hope for better don’t we?
Can someone explain the rationale for Rubio taking this position?
Even assuming he lasts for the full four years (unlikely, IMO), he has a very cushy position in the senate and can more or less stay there indefinitely, raising his profile and campaign funds for when he decides to make a serious run for the presidency.
What’s the upside to taking a State job when the next four years are basically going to amount to “losing ground as slowly as possible”?
My best guess – ego.
Trump is a lame duck with a four year term. In the Senate Marco is one of 100 but as Secretary of State he has high visibility on the nightly news to elevate his name for a presidential campaign in 2028.
One thing to keep in mind: it’s easy to ignore/fire a Cabinet official. U.S. Senators can be much harder to deal with. Anyone Trump picks from Florida gets their replacement picked by the GOP guv.
I think Trump may be using his appointments to subtly reshape his Senate majority.
Just a guess.
True. And a Secretary of State can only be effective if they possess actual diplomatic skills. A warmongering chimp will just be ineffective. Other than as a cheerleader for genocide.
Kick ’em upstairs, as old Tricky Dick used to say.
I think Trump genuinely enjoys keeping his enemies close so that he always has someone around to kick.
The one thing I do believe about Trump is that he is kind and generous to his loyal subordinates. Which is why it’s good to have other folks around for when you’re not feeling very kind.
I hope I live long enough to see the miniseries.
Indeed, has anyone heard from Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III lately?
RE: The dislocation between the PMC and the rest of the working class – Part 1 Bill Mitchell
That one was a good read, IMO. Waiting for the second part.
I couldn’t help but notice that Bill Mitchell referred to the work of Catherine Liu at the end of his exellent essay. With the indulgence of the community, here is a review-discussion of Virtue Hoarders and an appreciation of the late, great Barbara Ehrenreich.
You are not only indulged but i think that you have timely and pointedly linked to your article to have it here for reference. Thank you KLG. I had forgotten!
Catherine Liu: Trump 1.0 : The Girl Bosses and the Gender Gap (paywall)
Bill Mitchell: But the concept of economic class was largely abandoned and the educated left felt that had more in common with a female boss who was repressing the workers than the males worker being repressed.
From the essay: “The question that I have been grappling with relates to the role of the educated class in leading social change. How do the concerns and interests of that class provide a communication bridge to the less educated people in society?”
This pair of statements from Mitchell’s essay raise this question in my mind: What assumptions underlie the notion that the educated class has, what the context appears to assume, should be some special right or reason to claim a — leading — role in leading social change? I believe I received sufficient education to claim membership in at least some lower echelon of the ‘educated’. In retirement, I enjoy both time and capacity to “research and reflect” on issues and technical matters. However, one thing I have learned through experience in my long life is that outside of technical matters related to the discipline of my specialization the ‘quality’ education I received in philosophy, and especially economics, has offered little that corresponds with what I have learned about the ‘Real World’. In fact, that glaring disconnect is what started me reading NakedCapitalism and reading works and essays by Yves and Michael Hudson. I have difficulty attributing any particular ‘reality’ merit to the inclinations of the “educated class in leading social change”. The meritocracy is built on a hollow ‘merit’ of credentials and certificates empty of Knowledge.
Yes. “The question that I have been grappling with relates to the role of the educated class in leading social change. How do the concerns and interests of that class provide a communication bridge to the less educated people in society?” is a question that is itself a marker of his admitted “super-elite” status.
“The fall of the Berlin Wall: how West Germany colonised East Germany ”
This will go down as a major tragedy for Germany. West Germany could have treated those in East Germany like the Russians treated the Crimeans when they came home to Russia. Instead, the West Germans pillaged the place and deindustrialized it in order to remove competition for West German firms. And the people there were treated as second-class citizens in their own homes. In some ways, it was like what happened to the South after the US Civil War but which featured German carpet baggers. I don’t think that the regions that constituted the old DDR ever really recovered. The result? The people there are jack with how they are being treated and have given up on the main stream parties. It is the AfD that is only really listening to their wants and needs. In fact, you could say that the AfD is a creation of this pillaging coming to fruition.
Germans that can act like Russians are aply named Prussians. A Venn diagram of West Germany and Prussia could explain a lot in this case.
There is something to that: After Napoleonic Wars, Prussia gained a lot of western Germany and the latter really resented the Prussian rule, as far as I remember (reading history thereof). The 1848 was as much a revolt against Prussians as much as an expression of romantic German nationalism. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, I wonder…
Yes and no. The military imperial element is gone and has been replaced by vassalage to another hegemon. So an aspiring hegemon has submitted to another one. After 85 million killed. That´s a huge difference between Prussia and Western Germany.
Industrially – I guess like in the US – the era of Prussia created the foundation for today´s wealth. And many of those companies still exist. (chemical industry, engineering, steel, pharmaceutical.)
p.s. I would disagree with Martyanov´s PR-ish history that Bismarck should have been a role-model. In an era where war was regarded as a normal means to settle certain issues the creation of a unified German Reich with all the industrial might that was condition for it and its guarantor was bound to cause trouble. Bismarck´s ensuing diplomatic games were not meant to last.
Instead, the West Germans pillaged the place and deindustrialized it in order to remove competition for West German firms.
There is one thing that often gets forgotten: the deleterious impact of the monetary union between the GDR and the FDR. To recap briefly:
1) The deutsche Mark was to become the single currency in reunited Germany. Conversion to the DEM was to take place rapidly, according to the following rate:
1.a) 1-to-1 for most economic elements: wages, rents, utility costs, etc, plus a limited amount of cash;
1.b) 2-to-1 for bank accounts and savings exceeding the amount in (1.a);
1.c) 3-to-1 for accounts belonging to non-German citizens.
2) At that time, many economists warned that this exchange rate was way, way too generous, and that given the productivity difference between the GDR and the FDR, it should have been at most 3-to-1 (3 GDR Mark to 1 DEM).
3) The German government held to the chosen, mostly 1-to-1 rate. Main reasons were:
3.a) With such a favourable exchange rate, the citizens of the former GDR got a windfall that enabled them to acquire the consumer goods they were craving. Since general elections were to take place just a few months after the currency union, Helmut Kohl was not averse to using this to boost his and his party’s popularity.
3.b) Helmut Kohl probably realized what was in store for the economy and the population of the former GDR — and thus sugar-coated the bitter pill of massive plant closures and unemployment that was bound to occur.
3.c) Maintaining two populations with widely different standards of living and cost levels in the same country under a currency union was viewed as unfeasible.
4) What happens when you suddenly increase the purchasing power of the population while production actually sinks (because of the closure of all those GDR firms)? Inflation. Since the impact was limited to the 17m or so people of the GDR, inflation did not get excessive, but at between 4% and 5%, it was 2-3 times higher than the figures preceding and following the currency union. That bout of inflation lasted only two years.
5) The massive increase on the demand side with a simultaneous collapse of the production in the former GDR accelerated importations. The traditional trade surplus shrank from approx. €55B in 1990 to €11B in 1991, and €17B in 1992.
6) Crucially, the overvalued exchange rate made the whole GDR entirely unattractive for industrial investments. Why invest in the former GDR, where the entire infrastructure and the entire productive apparatus have to be replaced, while paying wages, definitely lower, but comparable to those in the rest of Germany? Better invest in Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, or Hungary — the productive apparatus and infrastructure there must be entirely replaced too, but the wages in those countries are only a fraction of those in East Germany.
Add the shenanigans of Birgit Breuel and the Treuhand, a certain condescension of West Germans for their new fellow citizens, and the eagerness of West German firms to quash possible competitors (while gobbling their IPR), and this explains why industry has had such a hard time in the former GDR.
Thank you, Yves.
Further to the Thomas Fazi article about the former GDR, a friend and former colleague, now at the European Central Bank, started work at the Treuhandanstalt. One of his tasks was to man a stand at trade fairs around the world and, in his words, say “buy one (East German) factory and get one free”. He also implied that employees of these firms were not to be allowed to bid for any firms, factories.
Thirty years ago, former athlete Heike Drechsler has talked about the annexation, dispossession and immiseration.
One hopes that NC’s Germany based contingent, including Paul Greenwood, weigh in. Paul has often commented about ossis and wessis and their outlooks, including differences over Russia.
I met some people from the Treuhandanstalt in Dresden in, I think, 1991, just as they were beginning their atrocities. They seemed extremely naive about everything: one said that, whilst they had been gratifyingly successful in selling off East German factories to Western companies, they couldn’t understand why those companies promptly closed the new acquisitions down. Indeed.
Thank you, Aurelien.
Very short sighted of the Bonn government.
A quarter of a century later, when working for Deutsche, I learnt of that basket case’s inglorious role in the former GDR.
But how couldn’t they be naive? They possibly, and genuinely believed in the capitalist bonanza after the communist vacuum. Very much like the EU integration of each new country. In Spain we were totally naive. Myself included.
There was a joke making rounds in the nineties (I think in Russia): “we knew that everything they told us about socialism was a lie, but unfortunately we didn’t know that all they said about capitalism was true…”
They seemed extremely naive about everything
Dresden, huh? Not all members of the Treuhandanstalt were that naive.
Precisely in Dresden, there was a DDR Konzern that had its old plant within the city limits. The plant itself was worthless and doomed to be levelled, but the real estate, a sizeable plot, in a good location, was worth a fortune.
The problem: that firm, which, like all DDR property, was to be sold to the highest bidder, did not appear in the official Treuhand catalogue of assets to privatize.
Journalists investigated the issue; the enterprise to liquidate was well-known in Dresden, and the Treuhand employees were dubfounded when they realized that it was not officially available for sale.
It finally appeared that former DDR apparatchiks working in the city hall arranged things with former DDR apparatchiks connected to the Treuhand to have former DDR apparatchiks quietly buy, without competitive bids, the whole firm for €1 — its book value — and then resell everything to property developers.
It’s more than 30 years, and I no longer remember the name of the firm. That one attempt failed, but there was plenty of corruption going on during the privatization.
Buying factories for 1 coin a piece was common thing in freshly liberated Eastern Europe. Some call it naive, others call it premeditated theft.
I guess that Bloomberg wants this heard. Non-walled content:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-12/michael-bloomberg-rfk-jr-in-trump-s-administration-would-endanger-public/
RFK Jr. Is Too Dangerous for Government (byline: Michael R. Bloomberg)
“It’s unclear what role Kennedy could have in a second Trump administration. Serving as secretary of Health and Human Services or commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration would require Senate confirmation. Senate Republicans, especially centrists wishing to play an influential role over the next four years, should quietly but forcefully deliver a clear message to the president-elect: Don’t send us Bobby.
Trump could still appoint him to an advisory role within the White House, but he ought to recognize how harmful that would be — not only to Americans’ health, but also to his own legacy.”
Knives out…
It’s really satisfying watching the MSM poop themselves over RFK, Jr. Go long adult diapers …
I did a quick search and did not see this posted. Sorry if I missed it. I haven’t kept up here on NC lately. (Good news — my injured rotator cuff won’t require surgery. )
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/rfk-jr-suggests-replacing-hundreds-of-federal-health-employees/ar-AA1tUkGM
RFK Jr. Suggests Replacing Hundreds of Federal Health Employees
The AP link to the report found in the Middle East Eye page in Links above:
Aid groups say Israel misses US deadline to boost humanitarian aid entering Gaza
By JULIA FRANKEL and SAMY MAGDY
Updated 10:48 AM EST, November 12, 2024
Now what is Biden going to do about it? Ignore another red line? 4-3-2-1…
Re: Ministers approve steps to alleviate Gaza humanitarian crisis ahead of US deadline
Also see:
Israel’s defence ministry says it has no plans for northern Gaza aid delivery
Spokesperson tells Middle East Eye ‘no directives received from political leadership’ as besieged civilians face bombardment and starvation
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-defence-ministry-says-no-planning-northern-gaza-aid-deliveries
Yesterday I learned that voting for Jill Stein proved that I was a misogynist, which seemed odd until I remembered that this is AMERICA!
Where Michael Jackson proved that a poor young back boy could grow up to become a rich white woman.
RE: The collapse of Germany’s government will delight Trump – and his European friends
Paul Taylor.
Paul Taylor makes here some good political reporting, yet contaminated with the usual “progressive” PMC view which offers no options to the very same politics that have brought Germany to the dismal situation it is immersed. The only political alternatives that might bring a change in the landscape (for better or for worse) are qualified as extremist, Eurosceptic, populist, anti-immigration (my goodness!) and blamed for the “fragmentation of the political spectrum, debilitating many European democracies”. Substituting “European countries” with “European democracies” is an elegant way to avoid using the terms fascist, or communist strongly suggested by the wording. When these individuals cannot help themselves, take a close look at their political rivals, and learn something in this way, but instead call for a “strong leadership” may be they are precisely the types causing the fragmentation and the real menace for “European democracies”. Too intransigent they are and unable to find solutions. Extreme centrists?
AI is not in play for serious music awards as the Grammys should know. “The Beatles”‘Now and Then is a terrible song, an awful afterthought not worth the time it takes to listen to it.
AI music stinks just as bad as AI art and almost as bad as all the newly remastered music where some idiot who burned out their hearing with headphones on high volume diligently scrubs all the high notes from older music and then adds more bass. Shop carefully when you see “remastered,” it’s not necessarily an improvement on the original.
Those retro AI videos are not half as bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmfIR12_Y2Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzGgjCgNEOs
P.S. Loudness war have been ruining music for a while.
The Dynamic Range Database is an invaluable tool for finding out which remasters are worth checking out and which ones should be avoided.
re: More embarrassment for Sky News, western media as Qatari govt busts fake news | Janta Ka Reporter
WTF indeed. An obviously authoritative source of information about this would be the Qataris themselves and it surely wouldn’t have been difficult to do a bare minimum check of the transcript of the announcement and official record.
It would appear that various news outlets including Sky, CNN, FT, are captured to the point where a story is received and goes straight to publication without even minimal fact checking. Otherwise Sky, CNN, etc., just fabricated this out of thin air, unprompted, which seems unlikely.
I’m curious if anyone has dissected/analyzed how this was done. It’s well worth a news story in itself, is a good representative example.
re: Rubio et al.
Moon of Alabama: new post, last phrase: “I for one will try to stay objective and to give him a chance.”
“But the fact that Trump is selecting these people does not mean that he will listen to them or follow their advice. His first term demonstrated that the people he selects often do not last. There is thus no reason to despair over this or that bonehead selection.”
Elections Have Consequences – We Just Don’t Know Which
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/elections-have-consequences.html#comments
I read this and was taken aback by its amateur-sounding goofiness. I agree that words mean nothing in politics and it is actions that count. But (1) Trump’s first real actions are his appointments to key policy positions, and (2) these people are the ones who will be shaping the actions of the Trump administration – and they all have their own histories. Why would Trump appoint a neocon warmonger to any major foreign policy position if he was not going to continue warmongering? And if he had really learned anything from his first term “bonehead” appointments, then why would he signal the opposite by choosing such people again? Perhaps Trump is playing another game of 11-dimensional chess, throwing off his enemies by masking his *real* intentions. And perhaps I’ll win the lottery tonight. It could happen!
If this plays out like the early signs indicate, I’ll be very interested in seeing how people like Rogan or Carlson react. “Tucker Carlson: anti-war libertarian or partisan sheep-herder?” Stay tuned.
Trump´s opposition to the D.C. blob to a certain degree still causes contradictory moves being an outsider surrounded mostly by insiders. Additionally you have to satisfy various masters. Officially Trump is the candidate of the same party as the Cheneys, Romney, etc. Who have openly supported his opponent from the other party. They are influential and this kind of trade-offs is normal to any political machinery, on local as well as national level.
All of that is rather messy business. So there might be an element of if not chess but poker?
May be this nonsense even is one reason it appeals to Trump. It´s fun for him? And what else can he do. He actually is what Americans would call a “loser” (although I hate that comcept personally.)
As far as I see he has not much understanding of business or economics. Scholarship? Military? Sports? Anything he could have done? He likes entertainment like most playboys. A serious actor he is not so you choose this. And may be his detached nature is the very reason of his odd success. (Oddly so because as a public persona I cannot take him seriously. He is an ok entertainer but that´s it. He is less convincing than I believe Bill Clinton was, if I remember correctly. But then – times and taste of the people have changed.)
So eventually none of this is real in a sense.
>” I’ll be very interested in seeing how people like Rogan or Carlson react. “Tucker Carlson: anti-war libertarian or partisan sheep-herder?” Stay tuned.”
yes.
All the discussions about Trump’s appointments suggest it might be an appropriate time to consider the U.S. Postal Service. The mechanisms of the Postal Service bureaucracy are occult to me … but perhaps Trump could do something to amend his appointment of Postmaster DeJoy. I respect the U.S. Postal Service as one of the oldest and most revered of all services provided by the Federal government. Would Trump truly wish to add the destruction of the U.S. Postal Service to his legacy as President? If nothing is done, I suspect such a blot might prove his only lasting legacy, in the hopeful prospect that he does not work far worse vandalism of the u.s. government before the end of his term.
Someone influential needs to appeal to Trump’s vanity and show him how he can make the US Postal Service great again. It might work.
Make US Postal Service employees go postal again.
> In others from which we recoil we see reflections of ourselves, if I am not oversimplifying Rank’s thesis in “The Double,” his 1914 book.
> tried to keep their prunings gentle, but the temptation to embroider won out.
> He added dialogue and description, kept the violence, cut most of the sex and all the incest.
> He is one of them and they, so to say, have Trump within themselves.
The Wolf in Grandma’s Cloak. The wolf you feed…
> But the archaic distinction remains in faint outline.
[Masters of Horror and Magic American Scholar (Anthony L)
[Patrick Lawrence: Notes of a Non-Voter Scheerpost (Anthony L)
From Taibbi. no paywall.
Note to Readers: Any Public School Teachers Out There?
Have a question or two, would love to chat on background.
https://www.racket.news/p/note-to-readers-any-public-school
No deadline for replying to his question.
Followed later by this note.
Thank You
Thanking teachers who responded today.
https://www.racket.news/p/thank-you-c4c
Iraq and Iran talk about no fly zone over Iraq!
How the world turns.
I wonder if those surprising radars will move to Iraq?
PS hush on the radars B-21 just got price reductions on their untested B-21 low rate production contracts,
Apologies if this is redundant
Middle East Eye:
US bill with bipartisan support targets charities and pro-Palestine groups
Those pro-Palestine groups could be anyone, including news sources or, I can imagine, even blogs.
Are these the organizations the US Congress is targeting for removal of their tax exempt status? Professor Michael Hudson is of the view that only revolution will change things. I agree with him. The American people aren’t ready for revolution, so things will get worse before they get better. Perhaps much worse as we are getting an inkling of now.
Congress.gov:
H.R.9495 – Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act
Supposedly being voted on this evening. The upshot is the Treasury Department can designate any organization as Terrorist Supporting, without saying why.
We’re so ƒ¨ç˚´∂.
Vote failed (needed 2/3)
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024458?RollCallNum=458&BillNum=H.R.9495
Whalen writes: “The end of the Biden Administration will certainly usher in a more positive environment for all types of companies. After four years of progressive madness in Washington, banks are likely to see more reasonable behavior from federal regulators.”
By “progressive madness” I assume he means Linda Khan? Please…
We’re headed for Bush 3. This explains why Trump had it so easy in this election. He was Washington’s man.
I have posted something like this before. And I am doing so again, to bear witness.
I grew up in apartheid South Africa. During a time of racist evil. I made it a point of retrospectively learning what was actually going on at the time, to get away from the “communists under the bed” narrative that was peddled by the government.
What I am witnessing now in Palestine pales in comparison. And I am outraged that it is being supported by the USA.