Prevalence of processed foods in major US grocery stores Nature
On Meds? You May Be Able to Eat Grapefruit Again Someday. New York Times
Why Skyscrapers Became Glass Boxes Construction Physics
California Burning
Eaton Fire is at 33% containment as death toll grows to 16 people LAist
Palisades Fire death toll grows as containment inches up to 14% LAist
Four lawsuits filed against Southern California Edison over Eaton fire LA Times
How the Los Angeles Fires Became So Devastating City Journal
As LA wildfires burn, a corruption probe left the Senate’s insurance committee chair vacant Cal Matters
Climate/Environment
Supreme Court allows Hawaii climate change lawsuits against energy companies to move forward CBS News
Pandemics
“Covidians” & Cults: Jay Bhattacharya’s Immature Fantasies Pandemic Accountability Project
India
CEOs want us to work weekends without overtime. Don’t we ask the same of our cooks, cleaners? The Print
India’s billionaire promoters’ club surpasses 200 members in 2024 Business Standard
China?
China Discusses Sale of TikTok US to Musk as One Possible Option Bloomberg
TikTok says report of possible sale to Musk ‘pure fiction’ BBC
Xiaohongshu, China’s answer to Instagram, hits No. 1 on the App Store as TikTok faces US shutdown TechCrunch
Why China’s Ice Silk Road has Trump up in Arctic arms Asia Times
Old Blighty
Ministers mull allowing private firms to make profit from NHS data in AI push The Guardian
Grooming gangs inquiry ‘told not to investigate senior officers’ The Times
Starmer under pressure as second Labour MP breaks ranks to call for grooming gangs inquiry The Independent
Does this explain why Keir Starmer is all-in on the Ukraine proxy war?!#LabourPaedophileCrisis https://t.co/tLndrH1yxb pic.twitter.com/k4PHUvY9xY
— Kit Klarenberg 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻 (@KitKlarenberg) January 13, 2025
Syraqistan
Jake Sullivan: Gaza hostage deal ‘finally’ at the point of coming together The Jerusalem Post
Trump’s Mideast Envoy Forced Netanyahu to Accept a Gaza Plan He Repeatedly Rejected Haaretz
Smotrich calls Gaza deal ‘catastrophe’, angers captives’ families Al Mayadeen
Extremist Israeli settler leaders invited as ‘special guests’ to Trump inauguration The Cradle
Italy urged to arrest Israeli general for crimes against humanity Anadolu Agency
Biden includes Israel in graphics processor export restrictions Globes. “Israel is one of a group of countries that will have to obtain US government approval to import the advanced processors that are at the basis of AI and supercomputers.”
Due to a lack of tents, Palestinians in Gaza resort to digging holes for shelter The New Arab
***
Sanctions – Trump’s Only Old/New Iran Policies Moon of Alabama
European Disunion
Poland charges four soldiers and fires general after anti-tank mines end up at IKEA warehouse Notes from Poland
Polish government defends plans to allow internet content to be blocked without court approval Notes from Poland
StravaLeaks: Dates of French nuclear submarine patrols revealed by careless crew members Le Monde
Emmanuel Macron is unwise to pick a fight with America Philip Pilkington, Unherd
New Not-So-Cold War
Trump Admin: Ukraine Should Lower Draft Age From 26 to 18 If They Want Our Full Support Real Clear Politics
The Potential for an Anti-Western Ukrainian Turn to the East Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
***
Moscow Claims Ukraine Attempted an Attack on TurkStream Gas Pipeline in Russia Oil Price
Vital Pokrovsk coking coal mine halts operation, Reuters reports Kyiv Independent
UK to fund Ukraine’s production of air defense systems, long-range weapons Espreso
Sweden to send warships to NATO Baltic Sea patrols after ‘sabotage’ incidents Anadolu Agency
***
US Sanctions on Russia Ripple Through Tanker Market Bloomberg
Firstpost (India) Spotlight program: US Sanctions On Russia’s Oil Hit India Gilbert Doctorow
Russia’s economic dilemmas give Trump important leverage in negotiations on Ukraine. But will he use it? Chatham House
Russia’s Budget Oil Revenue Spiked by Almost a Third in 2024 Bloomberg
Remember: Russia Must Cannibalize for Chips? Think Again karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium
Russia’s Geoeconomic Shift from Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia Glenn Diesen, Glenn’s Substack
The Dismal Science
There’s Much to Say About Economics of War, But Most Economists Won’t Address It Truthout
Spook Country
FBI, DHS warn of possible copycat efforts following New Orleans attack The Hill
US finds no ‘Havana syndrome’ link to foreign powers, but 2 spy agencies say it’s possible AP
Imperial Collapse Watch
US tightens its grip on AI chip flows across the globe Business Times. Commentary:
See the insane cognitive dissonance at play here: simultaneously saying “we want the world to run on American technology” 👇 and making it much harder for the vast majority of the world’s country to get American technology.
Makes just about zero sense.https://t.co/wr7B1cp99b
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) January 13, 2025
Biden Administration
Crime of the Century: CBS’ 60 Minutes Exposes the Biden Administration’s Complicity in Gaza Genocide, Interviews the Whistleblowers Informed Comment
Biden says US is ‘stronger’ on world stage in farewell speech France24. Commentary:
Biden is bragging about how much $ he gave weapons companies: “We’ve significantly strengthened the [military] industrial base, investing $1.3 trillion…that’s more than America did in any four year period during the Cold War.”
He promised us social welfare. We got this instead https://t.co/31AK8midjU
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) January 13, 2025
Having a guy who is 15 months into arming & funding an active genocide brag about his human rights legacy is just about the most Orwellian and contemptible act of political theater I’ve seen in my life.
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) January 13, 2025
Biden Meant Well Foreign Policy
Trump Transition
Garland hands over special counsel report on Trump and 2020 election subversion to Congress CNN
Government Fears Liberal Jan. 6 Style Attack as Trump Inauguration Nears Ken Klippenstein
Are the very rich taking over American politics? Brookings. A little late to the party.
Trump’s Texas Tycoons Texas Observer
California Democrats approve $50M budget to help Newsom ‘Trump-proof’ the state The Hill
Healthcare?
Prospect Medical Holdings files for bankruptcy after owners took hundreds of millions in payouts CBS News. Private equity strikes again.
The CDC, Palantir and the AI-Healthcare Revolution Unlimited Hangout
AI
Why ‘Cost Avoidance’ Became an AI Buzzword for Holding Down Headcount Wall Street Journal
CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music 404 Media
Increased AI use linked to eroding critical thinking skills Phys.org
Police State Watch
Groves of Academe
Guillotine Watch
‘Pollutocrat Day’: the world’s richest have already burned their annual carbon limit for 2025; the poorest 50% will take 3 years Brasil de Fato
Class Warfare
The China Shock Revisited: Job Reallocation and Industry Switching in U.S. Labor Markets National Bureau of Economic Research
Phone books Internal exile
Antidote du jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
“Government Fears Liberal Jan. 6 Style Attack as Trump Inauguration Nears”
There is a simple solution to deal with this. Simply schedule the actual inauguration for brunchtime and none of them will turn up as they will all be too busy.
“…a handful of the invaders are now eating avocado toast in Mike Johnson’s office…”
Hopefully they will all get a souvenir tote-bag at the end of the day. :)
For your one time donation of $50. To NPR.
An Inaugural tee shirt: I went to the Presidential Inauguration and all I got were these lousy handcuffs.
…maybe pull an Antoinette of Color move?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIBdZl2RqLk
That would be an excellent abortion rights poster. A photograph of AOC above the banner: Here’s why abortion rights matter.
Those would be the angry leftists, all of whom were thrown out of the party years ago and hardly any of whom have any money to travel to DC just to get arrested.
PMCs do not engage in civil disobedience as that leaves a mark on your permanent record.
I can see it now, Steny storming the Capitol Building…
At Angry Bear blog
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/01/in-quest-of-answers
Sad!
Oh that was truly hilarious. A screed containing the PMC Pledge of Allegiance couldn’t have stated it any better.
Blaming the voters for reacting rationally to the DNC/PMC program of Benign Neglect towards the populace is about what one would expect from symbol manipulators defending their silo.
Has TDS made it into the DSM yet?
TDS is strong among the many….
I find it sad.
My kin up over had TDS worse than anybody I know in the states…
What if both sides are right? Biden/Harris were as bad as we think, and Trump etc are as bad as the “PMC” think. Quite probable in a political system that gives us only two (bad) choices.
I await hearing about all the Congresscritters that got clobbered by rainbow flags and “Hate Has No Home Here” signs.
“Meet the $10k-a-day private firefighters who’ve ignited a burning resentment in LA…the city where the super-rich can pay to save their homes”
This reminded me of something that professor Garret Fagan mentioned in his course “the History of Ancient Rome” (recommended). Marcus Crassus (115–53 BC) was the wealthiest man in Rome during his time. Apparently he made his fortune by owning a private fire brigade (there wasn’t a public one in Rome). He would negotiate a price with property owners to sell the property to him for an ever lower price while these properties were burning.
Nothing ever changes.
There might be a bit of resentment going on with those wealthy people. For example, a few of them have been using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water more than they should be but as they are wealthy, just pay the small fines and carry on. It would be interesting to find out if these very same people also oppose taxation increases that pay for roads, police and oh yeah, firefighting as well.
When I read that (one of) Paris Hilton’s mansion(s) burned down, my heart went out to the thousands of shoes and designer handbags that must have perished in the fire. Yes, there is a bit of Luigi Mangione glee going on here.
Of course you don’t wish this to happen to anybody, and many of the victims are/were not filthy rich and lost everything. Fortunately, they will get $770 from Biden, which could easily cover the cost of half an iPhone or 1-2 days worth of accommodation costs at inflated prices, so they will be all right I guess.
If Paris was sporting a knockoff Birkin Bag, under the circumstances in these hard times-would anybody notice?
Juvenal
Updated Juvenal: “Every great House is full of haughty “servants.””
In every dream home a heartache
And every step I take
Takes me further from heaven
Is there a heaven?
I’d like to think so
Standards of living
They’re rising daily
But home oh sweet home
It’s only a saying
It reminded me of a movie about gangs,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6eDVsl8Kp4
This Japanese system would have done no good for those LA fires as they were so ferocious but for smaller communities, it would be something worth thinking about-
https://x.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1878467243635314824 (30 sec video)
Private fire-fighters. Greedy, profit-driven health insurance execs. Tabloids like the NY Post and the Daily Mail have always played to “populist” resentment, but they’ve really been fanning the flames lately (no pun intended). So which politicians do they support? Why, the worst right-wing defenders of “markets” and enemies of “big government, of course. What a sheep-herding racket. Are their readers actually that incapable of connecting any of the dots?
I guess now that the Post/Daily Mail regime has won and the Times/Guardian folks have lost, it’s time to go back to criticizing the right-wingers. What a depressing vicious circle.
Juvenal
Last spring I attended a briefing by a private firefighter company to our county Fire Department. Here’s what we were told. First, they (the company) never take anything away from the public fire fighters, nor do they interfere with them. Second, they don’t actually fight fires. They go onto the client’s property when there is a risk to that property (well before the fire gets to the client’s property) and take steps to reduce the risk. What they do is clean up around the property to remove potential threats like brush, plastic lawn furniture, and etc. They check the house for possible areas where burning embers can start a house fire and seal those off. I can’t remember the total list of things they do but they never actually fight the fires so calling them “private fire fighters” is a misnomer and attention grabber.
A quick search of the internet informed me that there is another group of private firefighters which do fight fires but these are community based and fill in where there is no public service or insufficient service, such as rural county areas. They are typically called on by the public firefighters when they need additional help.
https://www.frontlinewildfire.com/wildfire-news-and-resources/private-vs-public-fire-prevention-organizations/
I admit I only listened to a couple news broadcasts on the subject but I saw no evidence that private firefighters actually fought fires even though the reporters implied that they did.
With a few practice sessions I got pretty good with a gas powered pump and intake and outtake hoses with a nozzle good for 200 gallons a minute flow and a 200 foot range from the pump, this model we have on the all cats and no cattle ranch.
https://www.waterpumpsdirect.com/Pacer-SE2UL-E950-213-Water-Pump/p13822.html
It wouldn’t take much effort for a private firefighter to use a client’s pool with 30,000 gallons at the ready~
Biden includes Israel in graphics processor export restrictions
As noted the other day, relegated to the “Tier 2” is also the whole of Central/Eastern Europe, including Poland, Baltic states or Austria. One has to wonder who came up with that map, but it certainly will be fun to see EU to negotiate with Trump over this.
The conclusion of the China shock paper states the obvious after crunching data:
“On net, we provide evidence of significant reorganization of economic activity in response to the
import penetration both within and across establishments, firms, industries and local economies.
This reallocation was driven in large part by within-firm reorganization and was much more pro-
nounced in local labor markets with relatively high human capital, resulting in a net positive effect
on total jobs. In local labor markets with relatively low human capital and large manufacturing
dependence, by contrast, job gains in services did not outweigh manufacturing job losses. The China
shock therefore created winners and losers, not just across workers within local labor markets as
documented for instance by Autor et al. (2014) and Pierce et al. (2024) but also across regions by re-
allocating jobs from the U.S. industrial heartland to the coasts and large cities, thereby contributing
to the rise in regional inequality.”
As expected nothing about the oligarchs driving down wages in the US, and getting cheaper wages abroad, to massively increase their wealth at the expense of the working people. Nothing about the oligarch-serving courtier class being a big beneficiary from the “reallocation” of jobs.
Even now the truth cannot be fully told by an establishment organization. And the China Shock must be treated as an exogenous shock rather than a carefully planned transfer from working people to the oligarchy.
Re: Pollutocrat Day
Link to executive summary of underlying Oxfam study from Octobef 2024.
https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621656/bp-carbon-inequality-kills-281024-summ-en.pdf;jsessionid=9CD7B94A6688F9DDE24CD381259149CD?sequence=13
>California Democrats approve $50M budget to help Newsom ‘Trump-proof’ the state The Hill
“California faces two massive challenges,” Wiener said in a statement, noting the first revolves around rebuilding the lives of tens of thousands of residents in the wake of “horrific destructive wildfires in Los Angeles….The second challenge…is “an incoming federal administration that has vowed to make it harder for Los Angeles to recover, by withholding disaster relief and deporting immigrant Angelenos…”
I guess that poverty and homelessness isn’t a challenge. I wonder what really happened the “$20 billion over the past five years dedicated to the state’s homelessness crisis.” Corruption on this scale is truly impressive.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-04-09/state-audit-california-fails-to-track-homeless-spending-billions-dollars
$20 billion dollars??!? FFS, for that money they could have built every homeless person an actual house, burned them all down, and then built another. Instead, some NGO directors tasked with distributing (or not) the funds probably got themselves mansions.
I wonder if they were comparing takes with those who were involved in getting electric vehicle charging stations built for Secretary Pete and DOT.
“Hey we built five tiny homes for the homeless for a billion!”
“Our first two charging stations were a billion!”
“It is Time to get out and let others actually have to accomplish something since people have noticed that we spent 200 times what we should have on these projects…”
An interesting open access article I came across discussing the FAIR Plan, the insurance scheme that launched Jan 1st in California. How much will they need to asses from insurance companies to cover this years losses? How much will rates increase and will insurers stay in California?
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2025/01/10/la-fires-could-drastically-drive-up-insurance-premiums-and-test-californias-new-market-rules
Latest cost estimate: 250 billion +
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/accuweather-estimates-more-than-250-billion-in-damages-and-economic-loss-from-la-wildfires/1733821
This article from the SF Chronicle
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/fair-plan-insurance-losses-20025263.php
mentions the FAir plan had reinsurance options. “Over the summer, FAIR Plan President Victoria Roach disclosed to the Chronicle that the insurer only had about $385 million in unreserved funds available to pay claims.” Then they will go to reinsurance, and then asses insurance companies operating in CA based on market share.
Phone books Internal exile
~~~~~~~~~~~
It seems utterly crazy now, but I used to spend 3x what I paid in rent on yellow page adverts back in the day before this here contraption put paid to all of that.
Where else was I going to find those nice little old ladies hopefully exhibiting profound ‘purse droop’ as I let them through the electric buzzer door?
In the coin biz, buying was more important than selling, and a 75 year old in 1993 more than likely had a stash of old cash, coins and whatnot (you’d also see a lot of WW2 GI war booty of little value, Japanese Invasion Money was a common thing that came through the door, along with the chintzy unnamed medals every soldier received) versus today’s version of a 75 year old-who as my friends still in the business relate, they come in with a few Bicentennial Quarters, a well used 1957 Silver Certificate banknote and a few SBA $’s-they typically have bupkis.
A weird variant on Gresham’s Law in that bad money eventually drives out good money being offered on the aftermarket.
I digressed enough I guess, and back to the phone book, or should I say 4 or 5 phone books all vying for eyeballs?
Their salesmen would make the rounds and cajole you into paying $400 more a month for red lettering so it would stick out against your competitors-and size mattered too, and nothing made a first impression such as the yellow pages did.
I recall watching Vincent Price read the phone book and it was very scary…
Those YP ad sales folks had to move on to other pastures.
I was with my mom @ LAX picking up my dad from a flight circa 1973, and Vincent Price was there waiting for somebody, and both mom and I noticed and just observed, while 3 women in their 40’s next to us were getting up the courage to go ask him for an autograph-which they did, and then I got to listen to them afterwards tearing him down by saying stuff like ‘his films really weren’t that good’ etc.
I think my first brush with a celebrity in LA.
The first celebrity I ever saw was Tammy Wynette in the Beaver Valley Mall, sometime in the 1970’s. She was standing by her mannequin.
That is so sad. Price was a good actor, better than they were apparently giving him credit for. But even more so he was apparently an extremely nice, well educated man. I knew multiple people who had known him. They had nothing but lovely things to say about both Price and his wife. They were quietly active in multiple charities, and arts and education programs for young people.
I grew up with the Yellow Pages in the 50s and 60s. They weren’t the only source of information, but very often if you needed something they were the first place to look, especially if you were in a hurry. Newspaper ads were also important for becoming familiar with local establishments.
Now I mostly use Apple Maps to search for the nearest restaurant or other shop.
CEO of AI Music Company Says People Don’t Like Making Music – 404 Media
They just get more disgusting everyday.
Musician says Companies Don’t Like Paying Musicians – Any Random Musician You Talk To
CEO quote: ‘It’s not really enjoyable to make music now […] It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.’
Spoken like an ignorant cretin straight out of the world of Idiocracy and C. M. Kornbluth’s ‘The Marching Morons.’
I played professionally and semi-professionally for forty years. Getting really good was the whole point and satisfaction of it. The more one deepens one’s musical knowledge and capabilities, the more creative ideas one has.
Don’t forget that his whole business model is stealing all the music in the world and using some crap software to come up with muzak. Would not be surprised if the guy could not carry a tune but he sure seems to be tone deaf.
If I were to meet this guy on the street I’d behave very badly. I’ve been making music since I was 9 years old. Semi-pro for a long time. As my wife would tell you, I was out working New Year’s Eve for 20 years. Making music is what gives me solace in a world that seems bent on destroying itself.
“…working New Year’s Eve for 20 years…” makes me think of the dance band on the Titanic. There should be a monument to that group.
A pro drummer I know used the name “Maynard Handley” as his fake name in the hotels’ they stayed in (He was big time, and had to hide from the fans)
Maynard was the band director on the Titanic…
I thought the blisters sucked, but I feel like going through all of that made everything sound better.
Yea blisters. Us horn players get split lips. “Break a leg” “Split a lip” “Bleed a finger” “Smash a drum”
And people are right, the joy is in the process.
Just picking up my violin for the day, I’ll spend the next several hours calibrating my chops and then after that, making some music.
Usually I pick it up first thing but I had to go out.
I don’t know whether to go slap Mikey Shulman for being so ignorant about the creative arts, or slap his parents for raising him to be so ignorant.
He is neither. He is just gaslighting people…
Well done to insert the Physorg headline after the 404 Media headline.
Thanks
they are a pair aren’t they –
just makes me feel like i’m bailing water on a sinking ship with a teaspoon
“Trump Admin: Ukraine Should Lower Draft Age From 26 to 18 If They Want Our Full Support”
And right there is what the Trump regime is all about. They want those kids to be drafted, given hardly any training and then thrown into the meat-grinder of the front where many of them will be killed, wounded, or suffer PTSD for the rest of their lives. And the reason why? Simply so that Trump can buy a few more months of time to strengthen his negotiation position with the Russians. He already realized that he has a weak hand. Several weeks ago he said he would end the war in a day, Kellog said recently maybe 100 days and now Trump is talking about maybe six months. He needs those young bodies to buy him those six months which is why he now sounds like Biden.
It’s hard for me to come to realization that Trump’s just going to continue Biden’s failing policies, both in Ukraine and Gaza. He may not change the flow of weapons and carnage one iota. Shall we call him “Triden?” Or “Brump?”
Every day, I am more and more proud of myself for voting Stein. Not that pride is a bad thing, but I saw this coming.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
As the Who sang in the song: “Wont get fooled again”
But we do, every 4 years.
I think that the fact that Trump has not spent one hot minute criticizing Biden’s foreign policies since the election is a very bad sign.
At a minimum, it would just be smart politics for Trump to start forming the narrative that Biden left him with messes, two wars, billions of dollars wasted, Pentagon audits needed, funds unaccounted for, etc.
The absence of any such speech worries me greatly. As does the laughing with Obama at Carter’s funeral.
Trump like Biden is constantly learning on the job. His basic proposal re Ukraine was always a non-starter but sounded light years better than the Biden rhetoric.
Events are moving too fast for Trump and his team to find opportunity. The hawks will seem like a safe exit for a guy who doesn’t want to surrender a big portion of the map.
He is learning on the job allright. First he was peace in 24 hours. Now he is send the kids to the slaughter. In a month, he will be taking 20% for the big guy, and getting into organ trade business in order to give those teenage body parts a new life.
Rasta, Lol, my friend, I think you get it!
I always appreciate your comments. You’ve aced it again. This will be another replay. I’m afraid he has joined the club and just like always we aren’t in it. And yes, laughing with Obama was a bad, bad sign.
Brump!
Brump’ll-kill-Palestins?
It’s not hard for those that have heard the words, that a great philosopher once said
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl7FKfl3O2Y
A reminder that early onset dementia isn’t only an affliction of number 46 … 43 did pioneering work.
With our present Gerontocracy, we can remove the “early onset” modifier from the term.
State Provides Quality Republicans
S.P.Q.R. ?
Was on all Roman buildings.
I’ll see your philosopher’s wisdom, and raise you this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
The saying in the old country was: The change of Princes, hapiness of fools…
Given the precedent with Trump cancelling JPCOA, I had absolutely no “good” expectation from Trump.
Trump should go back to ending it in 1 day. Day 1: “The President of Russia and I had a very meaningful conversation on ending the war in Ukraine and I’ve come up with a plan we can both agree on”. Day 2: Headline: “President Trump announces Ukraine is on its own there we be no further American support.” MAGA supporters estatic.
Trump is all about the peace, and the good deal. He is willing to fight for good deal, till the last Ukrainian. That’s how you MAGA.
Its all good until 18 year old Ukrainian draftees hightail it to Canada.
Meanwhile a depopulated Ukraine is perhaps easier for Russia to straightjacket. What a horrible, needless loss of life and waste of resources, on both sides. Whatever the conclusion, the result is a further weakening of the west, such as it is. I suppose this carnage has been very clarifying to those outside the west, in terms of what the west is all about. Incompetence and bad faith acting.
I seriously doubt Trump or his advisors have thought past the first 15 minutes after they deliver an ultimatum to Zelensky to kill off the last of his people. Nor bothered to consult the demographic data that show that 18-25 y/o’s are the smallest cohort in the entire Ukrainian population pyramid.
It’s all just a game of poker to them, with no clue on the real world stakes.
Once the 18 year-olds are dead, there also goes any possibility of future Banderite, Azov, Right Sector fash revival. There being no Hitler youth to work with.
I was disappointed to read the headline, but I’m optimistically hoping he’s just saying this as a) a negotiation ploy to end it (they will not draft their young, no money from us, no more war), or b) to keep himself alive until he’s in. I know, dream land. The blob gets it’s money.
In a week’s time the most hostile politician to us in the Golden State ever, assumes the mantle once again right as the woefully weak amount of monies available vis a vis the Ca FAIR plan becomes an issue that only Club Fed can ameliorate?
…what will the Donald demand of us?
C’est LA vie
unwavering loyalty
>Trump allies prepare bill to let him buy Greenland
The island’s pro-independence leader has said he is “ready to talk,” after Trump refused to rule out a military takeover.
Good discussion by Carl Zha on how the move to acquire Greenland precedes Trump. It has more to do with stopping China from striking deals. Trump is cover for plans that were hatched much earlier.
https://www.rt.com/news/610834-make-greenland-great-again/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hanyIbFID4M&ab_channel=CarlZha
Swamp Thing ™
Ooh … I smell a parody coming … Swamp Thing, sung to the tune of Wild Thing by the Troggs. Plus, the Tone Loc version. And Sam Kinnison … RIP, he could have done justice to it.
>>>>Biden is bragging about how much $ he gave weapons companies
Bidenomics = MMT (modern monetary theory) for military contracts + MMT for anything that can be green-washed regardless of efficacy, (eg. “green” corporate spending, $7500 for $50,000 EVs that can go 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds) + MMT for certain classes of migrants + MMT for semiconductor industry + austerity for native homeless, + crumbs for the bottom 85%.
I don’t see why you have to throw in gratuitous slanders against MMT. Insofar as there is a consensus and characteristic position amongst MMT economists as to what the government should spend money on to ensure full-employment and price stability, it’s a minimum wage job guarantee, and counter-cyclical universal social programs, not multi-billion dollar cost-plus MIC contracts.
My interpretation of the comment is simply that the rulers embrace the implications of MMT about the “federal budget constraint” when those implications provide cover for doing what they want to serve their own interests/intentions/desires, but reject the same implications when they are seen to provide warrant for programs that would benefit everyone. If that is what LF intends, I fully agree. I don’t see slanders, but rather ironic and sorrowful realities.
I think allowing the repetition and memeification of formulations like “MMT for the MIC” and “socialism for the rich” is insidious in that it risks cementing in the average person’s mind (who doesn’t have much, if any, economics background) the negative connotation that MMT & socialism can be defined solely as and nothing more than deficit spending or the giving out of handouts to special interest groups. I’d prefer not to aid and abet the “capitalism can’t possibly have failed” crowd to do their usual “the oligarchical capitalism didn’t ruin the economy, it’s all the (virtually non-existent) socialism that did it” shuck and jive.
I wouldn’t worry too much. The average person thinks MMT is a small colored chocolate candy.
M MT, I N-V U S $ X L R 8 N
(…with apologies to William Steig)
OnceWere
“it risks cementing in the average person’s mind (who doesn’t have much, if any, economics background) the negative connotation that MMT & socialism can be defined solely as and nothing more than deficit spending or the giving out of handouts to special interest groups.”
You got it – that is the plan.
The rulers have never needed MMT (or any other rationalization) to provide cover to pay for anything they want, be it the MIC or tax cuts or bailing out their class. They only need balanced budget fairy tales to avoid paying for goodies for the rest of us.
So as MMTs value is to defang the Chicago schools ruling class mantra, throwing the term around as though it was to blame for the ruling class spending is carrying water for them. So, yeah, I’d call it a slander as well. Even more so when that usage is 180 degrees away from everything the MMT proponents have been arguing.
Concur …
“Poland charges four soldiers and fires general after anti-tank mines end up at IKEA warehouse”
I did wonder about this story. Accidents like this do happen from time to time and it was only when IKEA warehouse staff contacted the military that they finally found out where that shipment had gone. But that general is on the chopping block for not so much losing that shipment but for trying to cover it all up and pretend it never happened to his superiors. Like with a lot of militaries, that is not a good cultural sign. Instead of flagging it to his superiors immediately and sought to cover it up so was it because in that military no mistakes are tolerated?
I have been wondering recently to what extent COVID-induced degradation of executive function might be contributing to medical errors. But there are lots of other places where mistakes can have big consequences. Perhaps in future there will need to be more than one set of eyeballs looking at every decision. (Not that I expect that will be funded; more likely it’ll be outsourced to AI.)
And we’re doubling down on this, by adopting LLMs for all manner of critical things, and by students as an educational “aid”.
I don’t see how this ends well. This all goes back to what Yves Smith described in finance, that in the olden times, newer associates had to actually dig through financial reports and conduct actual analysis work, and now it’s all automated, and no one has any experiential learning. So you lose that intuition that you develop.
Like I was able to somehow troubleshoot and fix my silly wireless router, connect to the device, cleanup the database on a separate partition, and so on, because I spent way too much of my earlier life working on Linux systems. Muscle memory and intuition.
Today, you just ChatGPT all that stuff, you aren’t learning anything, you’re just copying and pasting and then copying and pasting errors and failures into ChatGPT, without the context to understand what the output is.
Not gonna end well, none of this.
From the Pseudo Onion (Our Motto: What’s That Smell?).
“Polish authorities search for the rest of the misplaced anti-tank mines. Several more crates of ordinance included in the “missing” munitions were claimed to have been sold by IKEA to an unidentified person last month. The only clue is the signature on the credit card receipt, one Al R Akbar. Reading this piece of information, the Deputy Head of Military Intelligence for the Polish Army allegedly cried out; “It’s a trap!”
More as events develop.
I’ve been trying to visualize the steps involved. What are the odds, perhaps sleepyheadquartermaster selected or typed the wrong address in their logistics app, perhaps started typing “IK”, a dropdown appeared with an IKEA warehouse address, selected it too quickly without looking too closely, has hundreds of orders to prepare and needed to get through them in 10 minutes or something, cuz dammit seems like everyone wants anti-tank mines these days. Or maybe there’s a new top secret base called IKEA.
In the warehouse we have several military crates full of mines, someone prints the labels. Someone else pulls from a sheet is affixing labels to a series of crates, hundreds of them! Lo, whats this, an out of order address to an IKEA warehouse – how odd. Oh, maybe it’s a top secret mission calling for staging weaponry there. Or maybe there’s a new top secret NATO base called IKEA.
Sleepyheaded quartermaster now submits to the usual rail courier an electronic form to fetch the crates and deliver them to their clearly wrong destination, instructions are sent to the warehouse floor for the forklift guys to grab those crates and place them on the railcar. The forklifters are squinting at the destination – huh, must be a top secret mission to stage equipment at IKEA, or maybe there’s a new top secret base called IKEA, scans the crates, job done.
There is a lot of effort in the write up to point out the mistake was caught even as it was noticed, that the railway people noticed someting amiss, the IKEA people noticed something amiss, and a distinct lack of curiosity about HOW this happened. Nothing to see here, move along now.
I wonder what else is available at IKEA? Or, what else is on that initial dropdown that starts with “IK” and which led to this.
IKEA people noticed that the mines are already assembled, and hence could not be theirs.
CEOs want us to work weekends without overtime. Don’t we ask the same of our cooks, cleaners?
Heh heh heh. Thanks Conor.
Following historic wildfire disasters in Southern California, a statewide dry spell intensifies and extreme fire weather conditions persist in the south Weather West
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniel Swain is a weather wunderkind, and can communicate what’s going on better than most in isobars and such.
His blog is California-centric, with lotsa weather geeks piping in to give you real time analysis of current or future conditions-a really valuable resource in times of flame wars, er wildfires.
We seem to be going through another RRR (Ridiculously Resilient Ridge) that blocks any precipitation from getting through-similar to what occurred in the 2012-16 drought.
There is no rain on the horizon here for the rest of the month, all sunny days on tap.
Just in time for the false spring warm-up. All the trees leaf out just in time for a heavy sticky snow fall.
Then we sit near the wood stove and listen to the sickening sound of large tree branches breaking.
“Moscow Claims Ukraine Attempted an Attack on TurkStream Gas Pipeline in Russia”
Not only that but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is accusing the Biden White House of ordering the Ukrainians to do this. Maybe even helping them to organize it. Lavrov said ‘I have a firm belief that the US needs no competitor in any fields, starting with energy.’ That pipeline not only feeds gas to Turkiye but also several European countries. If it gets blown, then that means that the EU would be totally dependent on the US and other countries for their gas at much, much higher prices. Yes, it wrecks the economies of those countries but that would be their problem-
https://www.rt.com/russia/610846-lavrov-blames-us-for-turkstream-attack/
Kit Klarenberg’s tweet that Starmer supports war in Ukraine in order to create a pool of refugee minors in Poland for British sex criminals to victimize is … not his best work.
By all means investigate Rotherham and other Rotten Burroughs and predators taking vacations in Poland but I think Starmer has other motives for the war.
I’m sure Klarenberg would agree, based on a large sample of his previous work. The refugee minors claim was not Klarenberg’s own, but a headline from the Independent. I took his tweet as simply a chance to sarcastically skewer Starmer, who richly deserves it.
This past weekend, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference kicked off in San Francisco. This is a big event in healthcare where all of the leading companies gather and give initial remarks about performance over the course of 2024 and expectations regarding 2025. All of the Wall Street analysts that cover insurers, biotech, pharma, and medical devices are in attendance as are much of the top company brass along with investors.
Notably, a few of the big insurers that are normally in attendance are missing this year’s event. Oscar Health, Cigna, and Centene are three of the private insurers that were originally listed in the draft agenda in mid-December but since pulled out of the event. There’s some speculation that those dropouts may be partly a reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance division, UnitedHealthcare, at the company’s investor day in December. The JPM conference is the first large gathering of industry since that event, and the insurers (or payers, as they prefer to be called by others in the industry) always form a strong contingent. The absences have been noticed by those in attendance.
California Burning: I will sympathize with the people who had no other choice (or severely limited choice) than to live in these areas: the working class people, the nannies, pool cleaners, bus boys, cooks, maids, lawn guys, who support the life style of the inhabitants of Pacific Palisades and similar communities (Santa Barbara, San Diego, Laguna Beach) that have burned or will burn. But I will not shed a tear for those celebrities who own multiple houses, whose money and fame allow them to live anywhere, but who choose the ‘prestige’ and, yes, beauty, of secluded canyons and magnificent Pacific views.
I am tired of hearing about their ‘resilience,’ yes, we will build back, but bigger and better. And this time, include a helicopter pad so we can get out fast. They don’t get my sympathy. Nor do the people who build, and rebuild, on the Florida coast.
The inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank get my sympathy, as do the people of Sudan. And fat lot of good it does them, unfortunately.(I am reserving a pool of sympathy for the 60k inhabitants of Greenland; they may need it.)
NC may have linked to this Yasha Levine article on California’s oligarch farmers, the Resnick’s, who are buying up California water, so my apologies if I am late to the game. Drive down I-5, the interstate that runs the length of the state; it is lined with hundreds of acres of groves and orchards: almonds, pistachios, citrus. All heavy water users. Levine calls it ‘ecocidal terraforming.’ (h/t Moon of Alabama.)
Whiskey is for lying under-water is for lying over.
The real issue isn’t so much the Resnick’s, but the idea that 350 million almond trees are all saying ‘Feed me, Seymour!’ simultaneously, and the groundwater agreement (SGMA) in the state was enacted to really have teeth, only by the time all those almond trees were dead or near the end of their lives-they being the hare apparent that lives a Logan’s Run life making it 30 maybe, compared to pistachio trees being the tortoise, as they take 15 years to produce commercial crops and can live hundreds of years.
Most every orchard uses groundwater and in drought years it might be the only thing keeping those 350 million almond trees alive, 1-time usage water maybe a million years old, so we can squeeze 350 gallons of fossil water into a pound of almonds and get $2 for it… while causing oodles of subsidence, what’s not to dislike?
Pity then that those fires could not have swept through all those pistachio orchards instead of LA.
Full Disclosure: Pistachio ice cream is my favorite
Where you’d really ideally want a little ‘global warming’ in pistachio orchards is Ridgecrest, Ca., where 1 fellow has 215,000 pistachio trees and is systematically draining the aquifer for both the town and China Lake NAS pretty much by his lonesome, a tragedy of the commons.
“Full Disclosure: Pistachio ice cream is my favorite.”
As long as it doesn’t become a penchant for Pistachio gelato, we’re jake.
I think we’re all Jake nowadays, as in “it’s Chinatown Jake.”
Is the ground water a common good in the strictest sense of the word? Or, since it is looted for the benefit of private property (the pistachio trees) and profit, does it become privatized?
The orchards on the west side of the valley are irrigated from the peripheral canal, which is regulated by CA State Water Resource agency. That water is delivered, from the north, to water districts that are owned by the users, mostly big ag,
The older heart of the valley is also largely irrigated by canal water but that is insufficient in drought years. In recent years the race has been to drill a well deeper then your neighbor. Only the bigger growers can afford to drill a two thousand foot well. So the small independent grower, like the one we used to buy almonds from direct will go broke. Wells have never been regulated in CA.
Much of the central valley had already subsided up to 25 feet way back in the 30’s. It is not a new problem. It has just gone wholesale. But it has limits. Under the fresh water aquifer lies a much older saltwater zone.
I lived in Southern California, both Orange and Los Angeles counties, from 1985 to 2007. We bicycled the roads and canyons of Orange and San Diego counties during those years and watched as housing developments and malls spread over the hills like a creeping fungus. Life was good; developers became millionaires. Stuff from China filled the luxury stores in South Coast Plaza. We added more lanes to the 405 and the 5 and the 55.
Lawn watering restrictions became normal. We moaned about only three days a week and never during daylight hours. No one asked the why we were planting lawns in a semi-arid climate whose water was all imported from somewhere else.
The writing was on the wall, so to speak. So, we moved to Colorado! And that’s a story for another day….
Colorado. Pronounced Crowdorado.
I’m with you. The working class has my sympathy. When I saw that Malibu beachfront property had burned to the ground, I thought maybe now some regular people can go to the beach. I’ve seen articles for years now about rich jerks trying to limit access to the public beaches – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/12/malibu-celebrity-homeowners-beach-battle-public-access
‘Arnaud Bertrand
@RnaudBertrand
See the insane cognitive dissonance at play here: simultaneously saying “we want the world to run on American technology” 👇 and making it much harder for the vast majority of the world’s country to get American technology. Makes just about zero sense.’
I can only think that it is arrogance here that the world cannot run without American technology. But it could very work out that the Chinese will spread their technology around the world at a bargain price and set world standards. Thus it would be only some countries of the Collective West that ends up using US tech which might isolate them from the rest of the world. At least the US is not demanding that those 18 allies and partners also adopt the Imperial system of miles, pounds and gallons.
It was because Edison transmission tower used Tesla’s transformer.
The Golden Horde of Khazaria was eventually dispersed, but not eliminated.
To an organized gang of parasites, war is a feeding frenzy with many profit centres, humans among them.
What’s not to love?
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-01-14/Xinjiang-s-new-energy-power-generation-up-over-30-in-2024-1A9YLKCd3lC/p.html
January 14, 2025
Xinjiang’s new energy power generation up over 30% in 2024
New energy power generation reached 116.16 billion kWh in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 2024, surging by 30.7 percent over the previous year.
The increase in new energy power generation accounted for over 80 percent of the total growth in power generation, with both the volume and proportion of new energy power generation continuing to rise, according to the State Grid Xinjiang Electric Power Co., Ltd.
Photovoltaic power generation surged by 65.7 percent year-on-year to 40.77 billion kWh, while wind power generation reached 75.39 billion kWh, up 17.3 percent compared to the previous year.
China has committed to a dual goal of achieving carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
Xinjiang, a region abundant in solar and wind energy resources, has vigorously developed its new energy industry in recent years, accelerating the construction of large-scale wind and photovoltaic power base projects.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/business/economy/forced-labor-list-china.html
January 14, 2025
Biden Administration Adds 37 Chinese Companies to Forced Labor List
The administration announced it would penalize its largest-ever batch of companies linked to Xinjiang, including major suppliers of critical minerals and textiles.
By Ana Swanson
The Biden administration said on Tuesday that it would block imports from more than three dozen Chinese companies, citing their alleged ties to forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.
The administration’s move is the single largest batch of additions to a list of companies that are barred from bringing products into the United States because of concerns about human rights violations.
The action was taken under a 2021 law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which prevents the United States from importing products that are made in whole or in part in Xinjiang, a far-western region of China where the government has detained and surveilled large numbers of minorities, including Uyghurs.
China denies the presence of forced labor in Xinjiang, but the U.S. government has said the Chinese government uses forced labor, mass detentions and other coercive practices to subdue the region’s predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, particularly the Uyghurs.
The 37 entities that were added on Tuesday to a special list created by the law include subsidiaries of a major supplier of critical minerals, Zijin Mining. The New York Times reported * in 2022 that Zijin Mining had links with labor transfer programs in Xinjiang.
The additions also include one of the world’s largest textile manufacturers, Huafu Fashion, and 25 of its subsidiaries. It’s not clear which retailers Huafu currently supplies, but H&M previously said that it had an indirect relationship with a mill belonging to Huafu Fashion and that it would cut those ties.
Companies in real estate, mining, solar and cotton production were also added to the list. Altogether, they bring the list to 144 entities….
* https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/20/business/economy/forced-labor-china-supply-chain.html
And about time too! Those Uyghurs need to be appropriately paid for jobs they do voluntarily – like joining Muslim radical headchoppers to overthrow governments the West doesn’t like – https://www.economist.com/china/2025/01/09/militant-uyghurs-in-syria-threaten-the-chinese-government
Lyman, I’m glad that you and many other NCers are aware of the Uyghur “situation”. It gets so bad sometimes, that propaganda thingy, that there were stories of Chinese “Commies” harvesting the organs of Uyghur slave laborers. It’s constant and subtle, and people fall for it.
I know almost nothing about the Uyghur “situation”, but I do know that situation is always opposite of whatever narrative CNN/BBC/etc are pushing.
https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202412/26/content_WS676d2d66c6d0868f4e8ee495.html
December 26, 2024
Xinjiang sets new tourism record with 300 mln visits this year
URUMQI — Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has seen a record 300 million visits this year, a 14 percent increase compared to last year, the regional culture and tourism department said on Thursday…
So, if you’re curious, on groceries, here is the actual GroceryDB referenced in the paywalled paper:
GroceryDB (GitHub)
From the README
And the web site itself:
TrueFood
Enjoy!
A food database, how yummy!
on the police state watch article,
giving cops, the DA’s, town and city boards immunity for their crimes, plus many other members of our society such as limited liability, breeds contempt, arrogance, laziness, brutality and lawlessness.
it gives these creatures cover by saying they did not know. but immunity means they can ignore laws, and that they know full well what they are doing is illegal and unconstitutional.
immunity is actually making the country ungovernable.
>>>immunity is actually making the country ungovernable.
Great wealth and income inequality creates immunity, which is why our country is becoming ungovernable.
Priorities.
Man arrested by citizens near Kenneth fire not charged with arson, police say
Law enforcement officers responded to reports of a man attempting to light a fire behind a van in Woodland Hills.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/arson-kenneth-fire-flamethrower-la-wildfires-california-b2677196.html
OT but popcorn-worthy:
A few days ago noted Libertarian/Plutocrat Peter Thiel writes an op-ed in FT…”A time for truth and reconciliation”. I read the piece and go, the guy is dangerous, but his analytical powers are pretty much intact. All hell breaks loose in the censorship/industrial complex, and no less a preening personage than Edward Luce goes ballistic that the piece looks ‘inside the mind of a Silicon Valley fanatic’. More butter, please.
Portrait of Dorian-a Grey
Thiel is about the scariest of the Silicon Valley set and that’s saying something~
It looks like they didn’t learn the lesson. I mean it isn’t as if Thiel hasn’t managed to destroy most of the media that was trying to warn us years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtnTMjnud6A
“PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MARYLAND – In what might be the most expensive apology tour ever, Prince George’s County, Maryland, has spent a jaw-dropping $54 million over the past decade settling cases of alleged police misconduct. For context, that’s enough money to pave miles of roads, build community centers, or fund public schools. But why invest in the future when you can pour it into hush money for lawsuits instead?
Repeat Offenders, Repeat Payments”
‘New World Odor’
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Biden says US is ‘stronger’ on world stage in farewell speech France24.
Countries with the most chess grandmasters:
https://x.com/stats_feed/status/1878878857660354613
Because USA has to be #1 in everything, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had to be carved up, and Russia is still considered too big.
Biden Meant Well Foreign Policy
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I’m gonna miss Genocide Joe and more importantly the First Son, who were such faithful fodder for many a ditty, so they got that going for them, which is nice-along with a pardon.
What becomes of them?
I’m envisioning Joe with a ballcap on and metal detector at the ready on Rehoboth Beach searching for lost treasures and/or small change, Hunter i’m less sure of.
There is actually a beach south of Rehoboth called Coin Beach, where a colonial era ship carrying pennies sank. My mom and I found a King George penny there when I was a kid.
Joe comes from found money, he’ll appreciate the tip.
Biden meant well? For which definition of well? Did he mean well to the residents of Gaza? Did he mean well to the million or more who are dead in Ukraine? How about those paying through the nose or natural gas from the US because he blew up Nordstream? I still live and am reasonably healthy and comfortable healthy. Seems he did not mean well for me.
I am not surprised that our benevolent reptilian overlords are ignoring Covid and Bird ‘Flu as well as the effects of an increasingly unstable environment.
Hurricane Helene and the SoCal wildfires are just the beginning, and so are the debilitating effects of multiple Covid infections on the population.
The predictions about what the Empire will do over the next few years ignore these issues, this is not a sustainable policy and reality will intrude, rudely.
At least it won’t be boring…
…will Flarenoble be the straw that broke the Ca.mel’s back?
If the billionaires among us wished to do so, they could raise $500 billion by assessing themselves a fraction of 1% of their assets to the relief of those who have lost everything in the Los Angeles fires. They could administer it through chosen representatives. It would be their baby. If they chose to do so.
That would be an act of grace. That would be a mitzvah.
Insurance companies about to get their hair blown back:
https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/14/art-collector-says-he-lost-warhols-and-harings-to-l-a-fire/
“…Rivlin estimated that more than 200 artworks had been burned in his home, with the losses amounting to millions of dollars. He said he had made the initial insurance claim on the lost works. Many art insurers are bracing for potential large losses.
In Los Angeles, where the threat of wildfires is always a concern, museums go to great lengths to protect their collections. The Getty Center, a Los Angeles art institution that was in the mandatory evacuation zone of the Palisades fire for a time, was built out of fire-resistant stone, concrete and protected steel and surrounded by well-irrigated landscaping. So far it has been spared.
But private art collections like Rivlin’s tend to be more vulnerable. And the scope of the art losses in private homes is only beginning to come into view…”
That’s a shame, like a double kill on the poor fellow~
If you’re into ancient Greek pottery, the Getty Villa is the place for you, amazing stuff in there-my favorite a Krater with Cerberus on it.
I’ve seen coin collections post fire, and if its hot enough rolls of silver coins melt into what looks kinda like an old metal camera film can, fused together.
Even a mellower fire can ruin the value of a given coin pronto, as the surface gets all pimply & bubbly, not to mention silver coins get black, yuck.
Dead Loss Angeles, by the Stranglers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5QfcsHQ-BM
I must admit that Biden’s speeches and actions in the last few days are threatening my recent conclusion that Obama was the worst President of the last four. But I have to remind myself that if Obama had actually prosecuted crimes instead of foaming runways and passing the health insurance legal racketeering act, Biden would not be President. Clinton wouldn’t have been able to run for President and thus we would have been unlikely to have Trump (as her favored opponent). And by looking backward and destroying the justification and jailing many of them – well the neocons and neoliberals who were essential to the Iraq invasion and our abrogation of treaties would have been out of the government. So Syria might have been dropped, and we might not have even had the Ukraine coup much less the war. Unfortunately I don’t know there was anything that could have stopped the Gaza genocide as the Israeli ownership of our political system was too deep to root out even then.
But I do find it amusing in a deeply black humor manner that supposedly Barack Obama is annoyed that Biden tarnished his legacy. And deeply depressing that we have another four years of the race to the bottom, and the ‘swamp’ spreading rather than being cleaned up.
If you’re looking back, you’d have to go back at least to Carter before you find the first shovelfuls of the hole we’re in. Hard to blame Obama for foaming the runway when Clinton repealed Glass-Steagal. Would we have Syria without Iraq without Kuwait without Iran-Contra? Would we have Ukraine without backing Yeltsin and shock therapy to loot the USSRs corpse? Makes you look back and ask, just what was so bad about Nixon?
(Have to agree on Israel though – that cake was baked in before our lifetime. If you had a time machine, you’d have to go back to Eisenhower to have a reasonable chance to change course.)
Oh, I know it was a swamp when Obama got in, but IF and we all know it wasn’t, he and the Democrats were actually being upfront with the electorate, they would have had not just a very good chance of actually correcting the course, but an almost unstoppable one. The financial shenanigans that Clinton and cronies made legal on his way out could have been made illegal again. And it wasn’t as if many of our biggest financial institutions hadn’t broken other laws still standing in the period between 2000 and 2008 so they could have been prosecuted anyway. Too big to fail banks could have been broken up. There was no reason to ‘look forward, not back’ about Iraq, no reason not to release the unredacted Iran Contra reports, and yes prosecute the war criminals that Chelsea Manning exposed as well as Manning… or… And the lost opportunity on health care is truly heartbreaking. They had an almost unsurmountable mandate, and large majorities in both Houses. And they tossed it in the round file and just continued the corrupt practices, the legalization of corporate rape and pillaging, and the insane war mongering foreign policy of the Neos (both factions)
And before I processed a lot of the reasons for my anger at him and his administration, I used to say that the day I knew I despised Obama was the day I found myself nostalgic for Nixon, the monster president of my teens. It is far more than that, but that was the early reason.
Same here….
As I have posted in the past, when I hear someone refer to Trump as a con-man, I respond with, “maybe so, but a truly gifted con-man is not called out this way. Trump is not good as a con-man.”
Obama is a truly gifted con-man, as I know people who will state “Obama wanted to do the right things, but was prevented by the Repubs.”
Some are still unaware of the Obama con.
So traffic fatalities are down, in 2022 and 2023. If COVID is afoot in brain damage, it isn’t in evidence here:
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813633
RE: The Potential for an Anti-Western Ukrainian Turn to the East Gordon Hahn, Russian & Eurasian Politics
Gordon Hahn might be right or absolutely err on what might happen in Ukraine when the stage of conventional war ends in Ukraine and it is somehow substituted by a different kind of conflict with its economic, social and political ramifications. Assuming here that a CW-Russia conflict goes on, and on, and on, which looks the most likely possibility in the foreseeable future. What I find interesting about Hahn’s assay is how easy you can find reasons, factors, complexities that make all your assumptions about possible future outcomes vanish like fumes in a windy day. The more intensely you try to control it the higher probability that things will turn in every unexpected way. Forcing the things in excess creates a need for escape. This is also discussed in Diesen’s substack article. This applies also to the “war on chips” (as per US tightens its grip on AI chip flows across the globe Business Times), or whatever other aspect you want to control tightly, particularly in an aggressive/punitive way. The aggressive use of the dollar etc.
A more gentle, less paranoid approach, would probably do much better to keep the advantages that the US has enjoyed for a few decades. If the US could be seen as the gentle hegemon which leaves opportunities for others to explore without constant and abusive coercion and threats it would possibly enjoy a longer lasting hegemonic position. You can analyse the Roman and other empires one and ten thousand times and that won’t help you very much. I find it quite weird this obsession with the Roman Empire as if it could provide with working end-of-history lessons which are Trump-proof, Putin-proof, Humanity-proof…
Going by Dr Hudson’s books, the Roman Republic was the original template for our oligarch led polity. They as a class lasted for a millenia if you count the Easter Empire, so maybe it’s just wishful thinking?
Could the Romans have controlled what happened in far-away steppes in Asia? The fall of Rome might have had its roots on things happening that far. Huns arrived to Europe and pushed the Goths towards an already decadent Rome. Today we see that by tightening access to lithographs and chips the West is pushing Chinese and Russians to develop their own technologies. It may take some time but the decadent West may find itself outcompeted in a not distant future by better technologies developed elsewhere basically because it tried to “tighten its grip” while being no longer competitive in new technical developments (decadent). Not that the first “lesson” of Rome applies very much today. Much worse than that, what we believe to “know” about the Romans, no matter how much we think it is, is only a shadow of the complex realities of those times. Possibly a very deformed shadow.