By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Tulare Ave., Contra Costa, California, United States. “In magnolia tree at approx. 8 feet off the ground, directly above microphone.” Barking dog, but energetic bird!
In Case You Might Miss…
- New Covid data, with wastewater increase.
- Mangione hit with Federal charges, death penalty possible.
- Biden wasn’t been governing the country, an extra-constitutional entity was.
- DOGE is another extra-constitutional entity.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Biden Administration
“How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge” [Wall Street Journal]. It took me awhile to get past the paywall. As of the 2020 campaign: “Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it. The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order. The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.” And: “Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.” And: “Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.” • “Circle” is an interesting word. Right after Biden slipped a cog in debate, I chose that word:
I’ve been trying to think of a word for this extra-constitutional entity, this small group that would play — or perhaps is already playing the same role in the Biden Presidency that the group around Edith Wilson played in Wilsons. The Axios URL shows the original headline was something like biden-debate-replace-advisers, but the editors jacked it up to read “Biden oligarchy.” But that’s wrong; oligarchy is an entire political system. (“Biden oligarchs” might have been OK, but to me, an oligarch is a member of the only small group that really matters: The squillioniares, and although Biden et al. may service the squillioniares, they are not, themselves, squillionaires.) I thought of cabal, milieu, gang, clique, crew, faction, team, troop, club, coterie, posse, and finally settled on the term “circle,” since a circle has a center (Biden), connotes repetitiveness and stability, and has allied terms “social circle” and “inner circle.”
So it’s clear that the United States has been governed by an extra-constitutional entity (Biden’s “circle”) for quite some time, possibly since Biden’s inaugural. Yikes! (“Presidenting is hard work” —George W. Bush.)
“The terrifying scandal is that Biden was NEVER president. The full truth about the cover-up, Bad Doctor Jill and all the enemies within must be exposed” [Daily Mail]. “Having been lied to for years by the Democratic Party machine and most of the mainstream media — who insisted Joe Biden was not diminished by his age but energized by it — well, it turns out we skeptics were right all along.” The Daily Mail is not wrong here. More: “And what we’re learning is terrifying. Infuriating. An unacceptable abuse of power, a usurpation of the presidency itself by a nameless, faceless cohort.” Or here. More: “Subpoena [Karine Jean-Pierre]. For real. Subpoena her – and all of Biden’s top inner circle, the ones who kept him ‘bodied’, as one source said, to a degree unprecedented for any sitting US president: Ron Klain (former White House chief of staff), Mike Donilon (senior advisor) and Jennifer O’Malley Dillon (campaign manager) to name a few.” Not a bad idea. Why not? And: “If there’s any justice, the post-White House book deals and board seats will vaporize as quickly as the Biden legacy.” • ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. And deliciously–
“How vengeful Jill Biden is urging ‘depressed’ Joe to ‘burn the whole thing down’ in their final days… with Obama, Kamala and Pelosi at the top of her ‘naughty list’ [Daily Mail]. “Between organizing this year’s White House Christmas decorations, staff holiday parties and a string of final goodbyes, the president and First Lady Jill Biden have been quietly sharpening the metaphorical carving knives, with their sights set firmly on the one-time allies they perceive as having wronged them….. ‘Jill views Democrats on Capitol Hill, the [wider] party, the Obamas, staff inside and outside the White House, the media, and all of Washington DC with such misguided resentment that I can’t imagine she [isn’t] encouraging [Joe] to burn the whole thing down, despite his better judgment,’ an insider said.” And: “One Democratic mega-donor, Floridian attorney John Morgan, is now wondering aloud whether Biden deliberately forced Kamala Harris onto the ticket – throwing his endorsement behind her within minutes of pulling out – to spite Pelosi and Barack Obama, who had also worked behind the scenes to push Biden out, and who both held serious reservations about Harris’s capabilities.”
“Joe Biden is going out quietly but with trademark decency” [Margaret Sullivan, Guardian]. “Biden remains himself to a large extent: decent, optimistic, patriotic and empathetic.” • Well, except for the genocide. I used to respect Sullivan until she started writing about politics.
Trump Transition
I haven’t followed all the twist and turns of the latest government shutdown saga because its just too stupid:
“Closures, Social Security checks, furloughs: What a government shutdown might mean” [Associated Press]. “Congress has until midnight Friday to come up with a way to fund the government or federal agencies will shut down, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal employees could be sent home — or stay on the job without pay — just ahead of the holidays. Republicans abandoned a bipartisan plan Wednesday to prevent a shutdown after President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk came out against it. Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson to essentially renegotiate the deal days before a deadline when federal funding runs out.” Importantly to some: “Recipients of both Social Security and Medicare would continue to receive their benefits, which are part of mandatory spending that’s not subject to annual appropriations measures.”
Elon’s happy dance on Wednesday:
Yesterday’s bill vs today’s bill 😂 pic.twitter.com/L3Omn964mw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2024
This is amazingly stupid, even for a billionaire. The measure of a bill is not its page count, but how successfully it provisions the citizenry (“universal concrete material benefits”), just as the measure for software is note lines of code, but functionality for the user.
“Johnson moves forward on spending Plan C: Breaking up the bills” [Politico]. “Speaker Mike Johnson has moved on to a Plan C to avert a government shutdown: Breaking up each piece to pass them separately. Under the House GOP’s latest plan, Republicans will try to pass three separate bills: stopgap funding legislation with a one-year farm bill extension, money for recent natural disasters and aid for farmers, according to two people with direct knowledge of negotiations. A shutdown deadline is now about 12 hours away — the plan would punt that deadline to March 14. ;We’re going to talk to the conference and I’ll give you the final decision when this is over,” Johnson said as he walked into a private House GOP meeting Friday morning.”
A nation that is sovereign in its own currency cannot go bankrupt. But here we are:
Either there is massive change or America goes bankrupt, therefore there must be massive change! https://t.co/JLDBbvt41w
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024
How true it is: “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” —John Maynard Keynes
“DOGE Can’t Do It All. Here’s What It Can Do” [Politico]. “But given the practical limits of DOGE’s power (it is not actually a government agency, despite its name), it will need to have buy-in — from lawmakers, from the incoming Cabinet as well and, of course, from Trump. ‘They don’t have any authorities,’ Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office who’s president of the American Action Forum, said to me about DOGE. ‘On my most cynical days, I think they’re just a think tank, and I run a think tank. I know how little power I have.’ Just look at a past, DOGE-like effort: the Grace Commission in the 1980s. It was the same basic idea — a private-sector advisory group designed to look at ways to make government work better. Almost none of that body’s suggestions were actually adopted, despite a mandate from then-President Ronald Reagan.” • DOGE certainly isn’t a thinktank, because a think tank has some corporate form, like a 501(c)(3). DOGE is certainly not a govenrment agency. Not is it advisory body, because it doens’t meet the requirements of FACA (as HICPAC must do, for example). DOGE is just two guys stirring up froth on social media. To the extent it has any real power, it is as an extra-constitutional entity. Didn’t we just go through that with Biden?
Democrats en déshabillé
I keep getting ads like this from Kamala:
President Biden and I are committed to building an economy that works for every American. We have taken historic action to create jobs, invest in small businesses, and forgive student loan and medical debt. pic.twitter.com/crBAUFiXP8
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) December 18, 2024
It’s like she thinks she’s still running. Or is this the best the DNC can do on messaging right now?
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Luigi Mangione Charged With The Stalking And Murder Of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson And Use Of A Silencer In A Crime Of Violence” (press release) [United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York]. But not terrorism, interestingly. “FBI Assistant Director James E. Dennehy said: “Luigi Mangione allegedly conducted the carefully premeditated and targeted execution of Brian Thompson to incite national debates. This alleged plot demonstrates a cavalier attitude towards humanity – deeming murder an appropriate recourse to satiate personal grievances. Through continued close partnership with the NYPD, the FBI maintains our steadfast commitment to fervently pursue any individual who promotes a personal agenda through violence.” • As opposed to a corporate agenda?
“Federal murder charge against Mangione could mean death penalty in CEO killing” [NPR]. “The federal charges against him include: one count of using a firearm to commit murder, which carries a maximum sentence of death or life in prison; one count of interstate stalking resulting in death; and one count of stalking through use of interstate facilities resulting in death (each carrying a maximum sentence of life in prison); and one count of discharging a firearm equipped with a silencer to commit a violent crime (which carries a sentence of 30 years to life in prison.”
“How Luigi Mangione’s notebook helped federal prosecutors build their case and what’s next as he faces mounting charges” [CNN]. “The push for federal charges came from the US Attorney’s office, multiple law enforcement sources told CNN. Because the FBI was already involved in the investigation assisting the NYPD with out-of-town leads, FBI agents were asked to draw up the federal complaint based on evidence collected by NYPD detectives working on the state charges and police in Pennsylvania who arrested Mangione. Federal prosecutors say they have jurisdiction in the case because Mangione’s ‘travel in interstate commerce’ – taking a bus from Atlanta to New York prior to the killing – as well as ‘use of interstate facilities’ by allegedly utilizing a cell phone and the internet ‘to plan and carry out the stalking, shooting, and killing’ of Thompson in broad daylight on a Manhattan sidewalk.” • Oh. Any crime involving a cell phone or the Internet is potentially a Federal case? Is that what I’m reading?
“A whirlwind day for Luigi Mangione ends with new charges, revelations from a notebook and transfer to a federal prison” [CNN]. “The 26-year-old murder suspect began his day at a jail in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, his home for the last 10 days, and ended it in a notorious federal prison in New York…. Mangione has been indicted on 11 charges in New York, including first-degree murder as an act of terrorism. He has not yet pleaded to the charges. He also faces charges in Pennsylvania in connection to the 3D-printed firearm and false ID allegedly in his possession when he was arrested. Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks said he would not push to have those charges heard ahead of Mangione’s much more serious charges in New York. And a federal complaint against him was unsealed midday Thursday adding four new charges and providing new details on a notebook authorities say was in his possession.” • Mangione’s manifesto mentions the notebook (“The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it”). Now here it is. Why wasn’t it in the Central Park backpack with the monopoly money? And all the other paraphernalia, if it comes to that.
“Read the Luigi Mangione federal criminal complaint” [CBS]. From the Notebook as excerpted in the complaint:
(“Checks every box” sounds like some species of class analysis, although box-checking per se isn’t dialectical, as Bourdieu shows.) I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing the complete notebook anytime soon….
“Meet the Legal Insider Defending Luigi Mangione” [Wall Street Journal]. “Just a few years ago, Karen Friedman Agnifilo managed the Manhattan district attorney’s office and its fleet of more than 500 attorneys…. While Friedman Agnifilo has minimal courtroom experience as a criminal-defense attorney, her personal and professional interest in mental health, empathetic approach to clients and intimate knowledge of her former office will be key, colleagues said. ‘She’ll be able to predict what the prosecutors will do before they do it,’ said lawyer Danya Perry, who has worked with her in private practice… Her husband, the defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo, is expected to play a supporting role in the case. He is also representing Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs [(!!!)] at his federal sex-trafficking trial this spring.
“Luigi Mangione canonized as a ‘saint’ by crazed online fans after death penalty bombshell” [Daily Mail]. “Many online are claiming Mangione is facing worse punishment that hardened criminals and school shooters, speculating that the government wants to make an example out of him and prevent some sort of revolt against corporate America. One X post read: ‘They wanna give Luigi Mangione the death penalty. That’s the only reason they making him face federal charges. ‘They literally wanna kill him for daring to threaten capitalism and corporate greed. They don’t even do this to school shooters.’ Another X user added: ‘Very few school shooters have gotten the death penalty. Yet the U.S. is trying to charge Luigi Mangione so he gets the death penalty for killing one man. You can kill dozens of kids and get a lesser sentence because their lives don’t matter as much as a CEO’s. That’s America.’ Some are pointing out that the government’s handling of Mangione, which included a perp walk straight out of a Hollywood film, is only increasing the public’s fixation on him. One X user said: ‘luigi stepping out with a fresh cut/shave, possible death penalty charges, and an nypd photoshoot is the craziest thing in the world. are they actively trying to make him a martyr? whether you’re for or against him, they’re making it SO easy for everyone to lionize him.'” • The perp walk:
NYPD apparently sat around asking themselves "how can we arrange to transport Mangione in a way that makes him look to his supporters like Christ being taken to the cross" pic.twitter.com/psP9W7PDlx
— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) December 19, 2024
Of course Mayor Adams (center left, ha ha) has to get into the act…
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Transmission: H5N1
Long-lasting fomites:
Wow look how long #H5N1 can stay infectious on 🪶 feathers, soil & feces !!!
It's winter & colder temperatures keep the virus alive longer.At 4 C
Feathers 5 months
Soil,mud. 4 months
Feces 2 months https://t.co/fsoQhCcCVZ— Sphagnum Moss (@moss_sphagnum) December 20, 2024
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC December 16 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| ★ Variants [3] CDC December 21 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC December 14 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★New York[5] New York State, data December 19: | ★ National [6] CDC December 19: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens December 16: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic December 14: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| ★ Positivity[9] CDC December 2: | ★ Variants[10] CDC December 2:: |
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| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 20: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 20: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveled out.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States PCE Price Index Annual Change” [Trading Economics]. “Annual PCE inflation in the US accelerated for a second month to 2.4% in November 2024 from 2.3% in October, but below expectations of 2.5%.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing charts ‘aggressive’ 737 Max production ramp-up in 2025” [The Air Current]. “Boeing’s supply chain wants the plane maker to be boring in 2025. Boeing has other ideas… Now, the company is progressing with a steep production acceleration on its single-aisle 737 Max that will test its younger workforce, fragile supply base and its chief regulator in the year to come. Currently, Boeing aims to have its production lines building 737 Max jets fully transitioned to a rate of 38 per month in May 2025, according to multiple people familiar with Boeing’s planning inside the company and the supply chain. While Boeing said it is approaching its restart and ramp up “methodically”, one senior official at a major Boeing supplier told The Air Current that the plane maker is at risk of repeating past mistakes — accelerating its factory tempo too quickly and pushing the deliveries from its supply chain beyond what the suppliers and their production lines can accommodate. “That is incredibly aggressive, probably unrealistic,” said the supplier official. Underscoring the fragility of the trust between Boeing and its massive network of suppliers, the official said: “All I want is a year where they’ll do what they say they’ll do,” noting that the company’s production guidance for the supply chain has repeatedly failed to materialize since even before the 737 Max was grounded for 20 months starting in March 2019.” • Well, Ortberg is only betting the company. So what’s the issue?
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 28 Neutral (previous close: 22 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 49 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 20 at 1:31:53 PM ET.
Permaculture
“Analyzing our 2024 Garden: peas, beans, carrots and greens” [The Re-Farmer]. Sometimes everything doesn’t go according to plan. On the beans: “With the bush beans, the first sowing didn’t succeed at all – and these were new seeds! I was able to buy more and tried again. This time, we had a nice, short row of bush beans emerge. They did quite well… Until they got eaten by deer. They recovered and started going well again. Then got eaten by deer again. Amazingly, they recovered again!” • Lessons learned, an interesting genre.
The 420
“Cannabis pollen dispersal across the United States” [Nature]. “For the recently legalized US hemp industry (Cannabis sativa), cross-pollination between neighboring fields has become a significant challenge, leading to contaminated seeds, reduced oil yields, and in some cases, mandated crop destruction…. Our findings reveal that pollen deposition rates escalate from summer to autumn due to the reduction in convective activity during daytime and the increase in wind shear at night as the season progresses. We find diurnal variations in pollen dispersion: nighttime conditions favor deposition in proximity to the source, while daytime conditions facilitate broader dispersal albeit with reduced deposition rates. These shifting weather patterns give rise to specific regions of CONUS more vulnerable to hemp cross-pollination.”
Gallery
“The Missing van Gogh Masterpiece” [kottke.org]. “I didn’t know that the whereabouts of one of Vincent van Gogh’s most important works, a 1890 painting called “Portrait of Dr. Gachet”, is unknown and that the painting had not been seen publicly since the 1990s.” And quoting the New York Times; “Four art world insiders said they suspect the painting is held by a private, very rich European family…. The question has grown more relevant as it becomes clearer that most museums can no longer outbid billionaire collectors for the greatest works of art…. ‘People are allowed to own things privately,’ said Michael Findlay, who was involved as a specialist for Christie’s in the 1990 auction sale of the Gachet. ‘Does it belong to everybody? No, it does not.'” • Says the auctioneeer.
I can’t believe it’s not butter:
'Mound of Butter.' (1875/1885) Émile Zola hailed Antoine Vollon as the first 'worker' painter to come along since Gustave Courbet. A star in his day. A specialist in still he was, 'perhaps, the greatest painter living,' according to one contemporary critic. 'He can paint with… pic.twitter.com/xGWGdfaLji
— Richard Morris (@ahistoryinart) December 19, 2024
“Polyamory doesn’t Liberate; Monogamy doesn’t Protect” [Carsonogenic]. “The classic poly delusion, is to think that via poly, you can get all of your needs met. Polyamory literature says you can’t expect one person to fulfill all of your emotional needs. This is true. The shadow implication of this statement is that you can expect a handful of people to fulfill all of your emotional needs. This is not true. Other people do not exist to fill our emotional voids. To quote Bo Burnham ‘If you want love, the love has gotta come from you…...” So and but: “The major monogamy delusion is obvious. It is simple: the idea that you possess your partner, or that you even can – the idea that by irrevocably binding yourself to someone, you can avoid any possibility of abandonment or heartbreak.” • Kids these days. San Francisco-based kids…..
“For airports, background music no longer is an afterthought” [Associated Press]. “Background music is no longer an afterthought at many airports, which are hiring local musicians and carefully curating playlists to help lighten travelers’ moods… Tiffany Idiart and her two nieces were delighted to hear musicians during a recent layover at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. ‘I like it. There’s a lot of people here and they can all hear it,’ said Grace Idiart, 9. ‘If their flight got delayed or something like that, they could have had a hard day. And so the music could have made them feel better.’ Airports are also carefully curating their recorded playlists.” • This does sound like a good idea. OTOH, my shadow side brings Temple Grandin to the surface…
“Ten Thousand Years” (podcast) [99% Invisible]. “The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation’s only permanent underground repository for nuclear waste…. Eventually, WIPP will be sealed up and left alone. Years will pass and those years will become decades. Those decades will become centuries and those centuries will roll into millennia. People above ground will come and go. Cultures will rise and fall. And all the while, below the surface, that cave full of waste will get smaller and smaller, until the salt swallows up all those oil drums and entombs them. Then, all the old radioactive gloves and tools and little bits from bombs –all still radioactive– will be solidified in the earth’s crust for more than 200,000 years. Basically forever. Storing something safely forever is a huge design problem.” I’m not sure what the solution was, but this one was proposed: “[Philosophers] Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion, folklore, belief systems. They may morph over time, but an essential message can get pulled through over millennia. They proposed that we genetically engineer a species of cat that changes color in the presence of radiation, which would be released into the wild to serve as living Geiger counters. Then, we would create folklore and write songs and tell stories about these ‘ray cats,’ the moral being that when you see these cats change colors, run far, far away.” • Filing that solution away….
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SV writes: “Emmi does Van Gogh. Cheers!” I try never post images of animals, because those are for antidote and Links. But today I’m breaking that rule — rules are, after all, made to be broken — because Emmi is pretty cute, and we’ve been talking about Van Gogh recently, and today. Also, a jailhouse lawyer would point out there are plants in the Van Gogh puzzle that Emmi is helping to assemble.
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RE: “For the recently legalized US hemp industry (Cannabis sativa), cross-pollination between neighboring fields has become a significant challenge, leading to contaminated seeds, reduced oil yields, and in some cases, mandated crop destruction.”
Just goes to show that no matter what, some people are going to be snobs. No need to be picky – smoke ’em if you got ’em.
Democracy was in such danger in 2020 that Democrats put up the one person least in charge of their own mental faculties to safeguard it with a woman who believes in nothing. Isn’t life grand?
Perp walk, tweeted or I guess from the X platform….just brings to my mind all those perp walks happening in late 2008 into 2010 for all the investor fraud, securitization fraud, foreclosures fraud …Oh that’s right. Bernie Madoff comes to mind, it’s been awhile so perhaps my recall is too fuzzy. And back in that post crisis era Mr. Mortgage king of Countrywide and CEO Angelo Mozillo was the more likely poster child for Orange Man Bad analogy.
Any excuse to find a rolling bus to throw the Eric Holder and other DOJ associates under…but I’m not bitter I swear…\sarc
Lot of heat being carried by those cops in the Perp Walk. Worried about all those folks happy with their healthcare or CEO’s with itchy trigger fingers looking for payback.
The federal charges are ridiculous, clearly the Feds are out of control and haven’t learned anything from the overzealous prosecutions of Trump.
This is a simple homicide that can and should be prosecuted under NY State Law, in a New York courtroom with a NY DA as the lead prosecutor. The notebook allegedly shows mens reas that he had thought out the crime. Motive should not matter. And as Lambert put it, we don’t seem to care about school shooters killing kids as much as we do CEOs.
That they’re going so far to hook in a death penalty sentence shows how they circle the wagons around corporate America.
The Feds should be focusing resources on prosecuting crimes that require Federal prosecution, not piggy-backing on state level offenses to make a political point.
In light of the previous state court prosecutions of Weisselberg and T, I would wager this Fed play is for narrative control.
We’ve seen what a Bragg special looks like. No need to further sensationalize the headlines and stoke public reactions with the circumstances and charges as hot as they are.
“LM is a working class folk hero” chatter is the last thing the ruling class wants.
griffen: I am getting a whiff of Chicago Seven trial, in which over-eager lawyers and police officers, who think that they are so smart, overplay their hand and end up with the larger public against them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Seven
To bring people up to speed. Or to contradict the “vibes” I am receiving.
The trial of Saint Luigi may have many, many unforeseen side effects on U.S. politics. The case already has had some: That notorious poll showing significant public support for Saint Luigi, especially among the young’uns.
Oops. I posted without a last wrap-up sentence >>
And charging Saint Luigi with terrorism is frosting a whole lotta people’s cookies.
So more drama from the House this afternoon, it looks like “Plan C” is to break up the son-of-porkulus (slimmed down from 1500+ pages to a mere novella of 116!) into three separate bills, with no debt ceiling increase.
I have to dissent from those saying its chaos, clown show, etc … this is a step forward in that Trump and Musk finally called out the gutless Mike Johnson on a terrible bill. Johnson promised no more omnibus bills passed under the threat of Christmas … he then idiotically agreed to set an arbitrary deadline of Dec. 20th for the last CR, despite knowing that would create the exact same dynamics that always lead to GOP capitulation.
Just getting the bill down to 100 some odd pages was a victory. I am sure there is still some awful stuff in there, but having read most of the bill yesterday, it looks like mainly defense dept. pork mixed in with extenders for some public health policies.
Of course the Donkeys are furious, because they’re used to stuffing all kinds of junk into these “must pass” fund the government bills. They sound like a bunch of sore losers, and barring some epic flip-flop by Johnson that looks politically impossible, they’re going to lose. The GOP can always shut down the government or punt with a bare-bones CR for 3 more weeks and leave this mess for January and a new Congress.
> Just getting the bill down to 100 some odd pages was a victory.
Page count is a ridiculous metric. Would getting the bill down to 10 pages be even better? How about 1?
As for “Porkulus,” I’m surprised you haven’t applied the same witty sobriquet to the just-passed Defense bill. Oddly, President Musk didn’t go after it either. One can only wonder why.
Fewer pages is objectively less risky – less room for mischief, less to read through, less chance of some obscure threat to our liberty being snuck in there. Of course, you can still do a lot of harm with single pagers … I see your point there. Repealing Glass-Steagall was likely a one-pager. Or could have been, I don’t recall.
I don’t like either party and wish they’d both go away. The NDAA was likely pork-filled garbage as well, but I haven’t read it so I ought to be reserved in commenting either way.
If I remember right, Glass Steagall itself was only 30-odd pages.
> Fewer pages is objectively less risky
Somebody needs to take the shovel out of your hand.
Sorry, shovel still in hand. I think you ought to view it in the totality of the circumstances.
Yes, a 1000 page bill that merely repeats the Bill of Rights would be less harmful than a one-pager that sends more money to Ukraine to kill humans. Or to Netanyahu to keep up the genocide.
But we have to take into account the behavior both parties. They’re opportunistic wolves who love to take a simple bill to fund the government at the same levels as 3 months ago, which ought to be 10 pages or fewer, and pile on all kinds of riders, clauses, and such, in an obvious attempt to manipulate the legislative process. How is it manipulative?
+ It gets laws passed that would not pass on their merits alone, because nobody has time to read the thing.
+ 1000+ pages is impossible for all of their staffers to read through, let alone we the people, on any reasonable basis. Sure, some fanatic might. But the average person won’t. It’s clearly a tactic done in bad faith.
The overall dynamic has existed for a long time, but has gotten worse each Congress. There are no heroes here. Trump and Musk have their own (bad) agendas. But Johnson promised to stop this nonsense, and then repeatedly didn’t. It’s about time somebody called him out (other than Marjorie Taylor-Greene.)
Putting shovel down.
> But we have to take into account the behavior both parties. They’re opportunistic wolves who love to take a simple bill to fund the government at the same levels as 3 months ago, which ought to be 10 pages or fewer, and pile on all kinds of riders, clauses, and such, in an obvious attempt to manipulate the legislative process. How is it manipulative?
Oh my goodness. You’re telling me politics are involved? On the bright side, you’ve dropped each of those silly metrics I shot down — which are even sillier when proposed by a squillionaire, who really ought to know better — and retreated to “the totality of the circumstances.”
Speaking of bad faith, I’m still waiting for the outrage on the defense bill….
Just sayin’ that in my tiny corner of the blue ball the parliament can’t pass a bill that doesn’t specify it’s scope as the first item and has no more than three sentence long preamble describing what the bill is trying to achieve.
Actually, the parliament can’t even process a bill that doesn’t state it’s scope so that it can be passed to the proper committee for vetting (and watering down).
There’s no way to have “riders” in those bills, and even a layman like me can read and understand what is the “will of the legislative branch” if that bill passes. And as I have to observe several laws in my job, I do appreciate that I can always go to the very source and understand the laws apply to my work and how.
Did I already mention I live in a civil law country?
> Just sayin’ that in my tiny corner of the blue ball the parliament can’t pass a bill that doesn’t specify it’s scope as the first item and has no more than three sentence long preamble describing what the bill is trying to achieve.
Which country?
Fine. Let’s rework the conventions by which we create legislation.. I’m all for it! I remember, back when I was a consultant, hearing a story about another firm that created a content management system for a legislature (legislation not being all that easy to manage), but the legislature rejected their work because they really didn’t want their process to be transparent. Not good.
But if we could discard the simple-minded, knee-jerking tropes — next, I suppose we’ll be talking about “welfare queens” or, heaven forfend, foreign aid — and take the process that takes place under Article I seriously perhaps some progress could be made. Maybe there are some conservative scholars who have done the work, idk. Certainly President Musk hasn’t.
Or we could do government by DOGEpile (hat tip to a reader, please raise your hand). I’m sure that would improve matters.
Sounds like a much better system.
Thanks for that observation. I want to say that the US Congress did not used to operate the way they do now back in the 80s, when Tip O’Neill ran the House. Everything tended to go through “regular order” which was closer to the system you describe, though not really the same.
My recollection is that things started to go downhill here in the states in the 90’s, when the government shutdowns started under Gingrich/Clinton. Those shutdowns tended to backfire on the GOP, as Clinton effectively managed to portray the GOP (maybe rightfully so) as demagogues more interested in making political points than governing.
Then we had the last actual passage of all 12 appropriations bills under regular order, sometime around 2000 or so. Since then, every year, under Pelosi, Dennis Havig, McCarthy, and now Johnson, Congress has been unable to pass legislation to fund the government via regular order. I’d argue that this is their most fundamental duty, and they’ve failed miserably for something like 23 years or so.
This has resulted in the current situation where they end up every year with a huge omnibus bill to fund all the agencies. What Congress can’t get done during the year, they try to tack on to it at the last minute.
Johnson deserves to lose his Speakership because he promised to end this practice, or at least make some inroads. He couldn’t even deliver a bill that met the requirement of at least 72 hours of reading time before a vote – they’re voting right now on some new bill that supposedly looks just like the one from yesterday, but with no debt ceiling clause. We don’t really know what’s in it!
The old one had a NFL stadium and 12 new biolabs built into it. I’m happy to see that go.
> The old one had a NFL stadium
Oligarch goring the American gentry’s ox. You love to see it. That said, for all the sound and fury now, the project will doubtless advance….
As for the shopworn “waste and ineffiency” trope — corporate America isn’t wasteful? Really? — I once again register my amazement MR SUBLIMINAL Not! that the defense bill remains immune from criticism. Of course, President Musk, the working man’s friend, is, of course, a major defense contractor….
It wasn’t a provision for a stadium. It was to transfer ownership of the long-vacant former stadium site from the federal government to DC. (This is not an endorsement of stadium building, but in general I do support DC local control.)
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/rfk-stadium-site-provision-removed-from-federal-spending-bill/3796501/
I don’t know any thing about the labs, but here’s some detail of the Musk commentary.
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/inside-congress/2024/12/18/what-elon-got-wrong-about-the-cr-00195226
Flora linked this and here’s agreeing it is good.
https://www.racket.news/p/america-this-week-dec-20-2024-damn
Press criticism is all important. Who else is doing it these days?
No plantidote? ;-(
Whoops, done. Too many story-threads to follow!
Luigi should be so glad that he’s accused of federal charges now.
The one place you DON’T want to go is to a state penitentiary. (Think of the hard bunks for his backs.)
Where you DO want to go is a Federal pen. All the political prisoners, embezzlers and other elite federal criminals go to these country clubs. Lyndon LaRouche’s roommate was Tammy Baker’s husband.
My father said that the happiest year of his life was in Sandstone prison. He worked in the library, writing collections of proverbs and selections from the writings of Lenin and Trotsky. Luigi will have good medical care, good reading and research facilities, and a healthy lifestyle — and many interesting companions.
And all wire fraud charges are based upon internet and cellphone use being ‘interstate’ because of server and tower locations. If he got paid, they would have added it too.
Hear, Hear, Doc Hudson!
Some of the most illuminating months of my life were spent on the streets and jails of Colorado. I often heard the proverb that prison was much cushier. Ironically, I would say the metal beds with barely any cushion in jail helped my lower back.
We are all in this together!
A nation can’t go bankrupt. True but it can destroy the value of its currency. And you’d have to say, spending $3 of debt for every $1 of GDP growth is not a winning trend, particular when the debt doesn’t’ get invested into anything useful, just helping people next to the Cantillon Effect hose blow asset bubbles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cantillon
> particular when the debt doesn’t’ get invested into anything useful,
Why is so hard to see that it’s resources that matter, not the money?
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2024/October/weo-report?c=223,924,132,134,534,536,136,158,922,186,112,111,&s=NID_NGDP,&sy=1980&ey=2024&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
October 15, 2024
Investment as a percent of GDP for Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Russia, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States, 1980-2024
Investment as a percent of GDP, 2024
Brazil ( 15.9)
China ( 42.0)
France ( 22.3)
Germany ( 20.6)
India ( 33.7)
Indonesia ( 30.5)
Italy ( 22.1)
Japan ( 26.6)
Russia ( 25.0)
Turkey ( 25.6)
United Kingdom ( 17.1)
United States ( 21.8)
It’s an interesting day when I find myself agreeing with a Daily Mail article (the “Biden was never president” one) and considering the second link just below it worth reading.
Strange times we live in.
It’s interesting to see how successfully the Daily Heil — founded in 1896 and honed by Fleet Street’s savage Darwinian competitions for a century and a quarter — has now gone global and is feeding red meat to audiences worldwide. I note three links to it in Lambert’s 2:00 Cooler today.
I’d love to see the Mail and the NYT thrown in a shark tank together to fight it out till only one survives. I’d put my money on the Mail.
FYI, its owner keeps a low profile, but is Jonathan Harmsworth aka the Right Honourable Viscount Rothermere, Member of the House of Lords, and LordTemporal (which last sounds like Doctor Who.)
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-much-daily-mail-owner-lord-rothermere-worth-1628099
Helmer on the Putin Q and A
Quoting Putin
“And our position is well known in Lebanon and Palestine. Our position is not subject to the current situation. We have always believed so and now believe that it is possible to solve the Palestinian problem only by solving the causes of its occurrence. There was the decision made by the UN Security Council at the time that two states should be formed – Israel and Palestine. Israel is established; Palestine, in fact, has not yet been created. That’s the problem.
“Moreover, from its side Israel continues the so-called illegal settlement activity. I don’t know what Israel’s ultimate goals are in the Gaza Strip, but it deserves only condemnation. We have done this repeatedly at almost all levels, from the public level and our position in the Security Council United Nations. There’s nothing to add here. The same goes for Lebanon. ”
https://johnhelmer.net/the-russian-line-on-syria/
So it’s a hands off stance now that countries and not just jihadis are openly involved.
I don’t quite understand your last remark, Carolinian. Do you mean Russia is assuming a hands-off stance? If so, how does that relate to what Helmet is reporting?
Uplifting Water Cooler today compared to the gloom of the past few weeks. Winter solstice will soon be past us in the northern part of the globe and days will lengthen. Hope springs eternal.
Live debate on House floor – in case anyone is interested.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5049988-house-republicans-government-shutdown/
re: “A nation that is sovereign in its own currency cannot go bankrupt. ”
Something has always seemed missing in that formulation. I think what is missing is an unwritten clause that goes something like this:
“A nation that is sovereign in its own currency cannot go bankrupt”, provided that the nation is a an autarky or near autarky. That is to say, so long as it has national self-sufficiency and nonreliance on imports or economic aid.
I think the entire soft-war of sanctions on RU and others was/is an effort to bankrupt those countries and bring them to their knees. RU, however, turns out be a near autarky, able to provide for most of its own needs within its country, and so, able to trade in its own currency without resorting to Western imports or economic aid. This is a recent development and seems to have caught the West by surprise.
The US is no longer an autarky, imo, having offshored its heavy manufacturing. How much do we import from other countries to fill critical needs? The US does have the World Reserve Currency, which is powerful, but can be replaced. If the dollar is replaced as the reserve currency, then what?
/ my 2 cents.
I have always found that the desire to go after Russia and China is so prominent with so many of those attached to America is the top of the food chain types blackly humorous. Especially as that meanwhile they are also big on rewarding foreign operations of American businesses while ignoring or devaluing things that keep the production and work in the country. That they haven’t really figured out yet that the latter makes bloviating at Russia and China not just annoying and pointless to those countries, it actually endangers the American position in the global system because we aren’t able to feed, clothe, medicate etc ourselves or even produce most of our poorly designed weaponry without foreign products, parts or sometimes even knowledge.
Go Emmi, you are one beautiful and talented feline! And you and your human, SV, have great taste in jigsaw puzzles.
Lambert, I for one appreciate both the butter and the kittendote.
“to spite Pelosi and Barack Obama, who had also worked behind the scenes to push Biden out, and who both held serious reservations about Harris’s capabilities.”
I don’t know why this just hit me, but maybe this was a sweet Uno Reverse play… B pushed Harris as Pres because it was Pelosi and Obama who pushed her for Vice-Pres.
One thing about this plethora of information about how his inner circle kept Biden wrapped up in tissue that does amuse me, is that the timeline even in the story shows that this was going on almost from day 1 of his presidency. It makes me want to check on an old friend who kept trying to tell me the debate was just a bad night and that Trump showed more signs of dementia than Biden. Oh, and his was fine in the 2020 campaign as well. Almost all of which is getting demolished daily. Now I would have more of a chance of arguing it was media bias, but he was firmly in the NYT, Washington Post, major networks, CNN and MSNBC are totally trustworthy group which does sort of limit his ability to reject the new information as they slowly join the let’s notice the obvious crowd. Having gone through the realization that we are being conned and that our system is broken, it is not fun. He, I think will be fine.
But I do have to wonder how much the revelations of the past six weeks have shaken other even more invested people. Between the information that internal polling never had Harris winning (Biden, too), to the clear mismanagement of the campaign and outrageous waste of those funds, to Biden’s hideous pardons, to this… It has been one more hit on top of another for the folks who watched their sure thing lose it all on Election Day. It cannot be good.