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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/21/2025

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By Lambert Strether.

Bird Song of the Day

Allisa Linfield, University Ridge – The University of Wisconsin Golf Course, Dane, Wisconsin, United States.

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In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Who were the strategists who put DOGE together?
  2. Should somebody check in on Elon?
  3. Meta’s original accumulation of training sets

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

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DOGE

“How DOGE cracked Washington: A focus on arcane agencies gave Musk and his allies swift control of government nerve centers” [CNN]. This is good reporting, worth reading in full. “CNN interviews with multiple government officials, plus a review of hundreds of court documents, employment agreements, agency directories and executive branch memos shed new light on the behind-the-scenes preparation and strategy behind DOGE, choreographed, structured, and executed to take swift control of Washington nerve centers…. That plan has undeniably – and intentionally – minimized transparency while also maximizing the free rein Musk’s allies have wielded across the federal bureaucracy…. Despite their relative lack of government experience, political appointees with deep ties to Musk, his companies or other major tech firms now sit in key leadership positions across agencies that comprise the federal government’s personnel, technology, property and acquisition operations. The organization that works day-to-day at DOGE’s official home hasn’t been publicly laid out by the White House. But according to multiple sources familiar with the organization, the operation is lean by design, with its central office populated primarily by lawyers and younger staff members…. A cadre of young technology engineers have fanned out across multiple agencies over the past month, appearing in organizational directories with different agency-specific email addresses. Some of those engineers, according to disclosures made public in court filings the last several weeks, are detailed to operate in multiple agencies simultaneously…. Their work has been accelerated by political appointees who took control of agencies including the General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management on Inauguration Day. OPM in particular has served as a cornerstone of a carefully calibrated interplay between Trump’s expansive executive orders and DOGE’s role in carrying out – or in many cases, enforcing – their intent.” Critically: “Musk’s official position as a special government employee operating within the White House and not tied explicitly to DOGE, appears intentional in its design. A special government employee is allowed to maintain their private sector employment – which in Musk’s case include a collection of space, electric vehicle, AI and social media companies worth billions of dollars. While DOGE may be ‘overseen’ by Musk, as [press secretary] Leavitt says, the official DOGE apparatus is outwardly leaderless and under the umbrella of the White House. The effect is an operation difficult to penetrate through public records requests, difficult to pin down for lawmakers pledging oversight, and more complicated to challenge via the legal process.” • Again, worth reading in full. And I do wonder who the Republican strategists were who crafted the parasitoid entity that inserted its ovipositor into OPM’s head. (Trump does have the ability to pick highly competent people and leave them alone, as for example his excellent Texas-based national polling operation in 2016, only reported after the election; so it looks like that happened here). This is not the Project 2025 blueprint (contrast Project 2025’s views on USAID with what DOGE actually did). I don’t think Susie Wiles has the resumé. I don’t think the Peter Thiel axis has the knowledge base, though of course Thiel (or Musk) can buy whoever he wants. So, who?

“DOGE’s Millions: As Musk and Trump Gut Government, Their Ax-Cutting Agency Gets Cash Infusion” [ProPublica]. “Most of DOGE’s money, records show, has come in the form of payments from other federal agencies made possible by a nearly century-old law called the Economy Act. To steer those funds to the new department, the Trump administration has treated DOGE as if it were a federal agency. And by dispatching members of its staff to other agencies and having those staffers issue edicts about policy and personnel, DOGE has also behaved as if it has agency-level authority. The use of the Economy Act would seem to subject DOGE to the same open-records laws that cover most federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department. However, DOGE has refused to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, saying it operates with executive privileges. Musk has also flip-flopped about whether DOGE’s staff members are paid. Initially he said they were not, but earlier this week he said some of them were. The conflicting stances put the Trump administration in a bind, legal experts say. If DOGE is a federal agency, it can’t shield its records from the public. If it’s not an agency, then DOGE’s tens of millions of dollars in funding weren’t legally allocated and should be returned, some contend. ‘The administration can’t have it both ways,’ said Adam Grogg, a former deputy general counsel at OMB and now the legal director at Governing for Impact, a left-of-center think tank. ‘Either it’s an agency covered by FOIA with the authority to do what it’s doing, or it’s purely advising the president and can’t be directing agencies in the way it now is.'” • Again, who was the strategist who worked this out? I mean, decapitating the Federal Government is an enormous techical achievement, so who’s the technician?

“Pentagon seeks to shift $50B in planned funding to new priorities in FY26” [Breaking Defense]. “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a review of the department’s fiscal 2026 budget plans in order to shift funds from legacy programs towards President Donald Trump’s priorities, including border security and the Iron Dome for America. The goal: Find roughly $50 billion, or 8 percent of the FY26 plan, and reprioritize it.” I had tbought 8% was to be cut (CBS). Oh well. More: “This effort would seem to be a parallel but different one from the cuts expected to be pushed by the Elon Musk-led DOGE office, which arrived this week at the Pentagon. Those in defense circles are bracing for a wave of personnel cuts, perhaps as soon as this week, as probationary employees in the civilian workforce have been early targets of DOGE during their other stops. How the idea of cuts lines up with proposals in Congress to increase the department’s budget by either $100 billion or $150 billion through the reconciliation process is unclear, nor is it clear how members of Congress will react to having programs — potentially major ones — in their districts impacted. It’s also uncertain when the FY26 budget might actually be delivered to Congress.” • No, totally not clear…

“DOGE Staffer Behind Racist Posts Reinstated at Social Security” [Bloomberg]. “The staffer with billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency who resigned after a report that linked him to racism and eugenics has been reinstated at the Social Security Administration, according to people familiar with the move. Marko Elez, who reportedly advocated for a ‘eugenic immigration policy’ and argued against mixed-race relationships in posts on X, received support from Musk, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance after his departure earlier this month.” Because who doesn’t support eugenics, especially for the very rich?

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Is Elon OK (1):

Is Elon OK (2):

Is Elon OK (3):

Is Elon OK (4):

Yeah, but what’s with the sunglasses?

Then again:

Then again:

Democrats en déshabillé

“Democrats May Risk Their Own Tea Party Moment” [Split Ticket]. “The scenario I am speculating on here is one where a whole ton of established lawmakers, such as 80-year-old Dick Durbin, are forced to the exits and are replaced by younger, more outwardly-idealistic “fighters”, whether by means of retirement or primary challenges. You may call it a revolution on an age-based axis, or on a ‘combativeness’ axis, rather than one waged on the traditional, ideological ‘leftist vs centrist’ front.” Yes, because the left has been run out of the party. More: “The data suggests that an insurgency is quite possible…. To us, this is wholly unsurprising. For years, Democratic politicians have sold the public on Trump being a unique threat to democracy. Now that he’s in power, does it make sense to suddenly sit back, let him dominate the news, and “wait for him to screw up”? Regardless of the merits of the statement or the strategy, the new message is clearly at odds with what the party has done for a long time, especially as voting Democrats fear the potential long-term consequences of an unbridled Trump administration.” And: The Democrat leadership argues that “Trump isn’t behaving in a manner consistent with the smallest popular vote victory since 2000…. and this will likely lead to broad overreach and chaos that swing voters will quickly sour on. There are signs this approach is working — as Trump and Musk continue to make news, the President’s approval is rapidly decreasing and is now almost back to neutral, as per FiveThirtyEight’s tracker, which is down from the +8 he began his term with. And as a public opinion and polling nerd, I think this approach actually has the potential to create larger and more lasting gains, so I’m more understanding of it. What I also think is true, however, is that most Democratic voters are not okay with this approach. And right now, there are simply too many people that hate both Donald Trump and the Democratic Party for this equilibrium to remain.” • I think it’s pretty simple: The Republicans are directly assaulting the economic capital of the Democrat base, the PMC, by taking their jobs away. This is true whether the assault be on NGOs (foreign and domestic), DEI administrators, or government workers, including scientists (with more assaults on teachers to come). In addition, the PMC face the ascendancy, indeed the formidable combination, of two demon figures: Putin and Trump. We also have AI looming in the background, threatening to eat all the jobs, but especially those that involve the creation of documents (i.e., the work of trained, credentialled professionals). So PMC fear is existential, and they are demanding that their party protect them now, while they still have their jobs, instead of later, when the midterms roll around. For example–

“‘Cowardliness at the top’: Science agency staff revolt over cuts” [Politico]. “The National Science Foundation went beyond the staff cuts demanded by the Trump administration in a move that set off a frenzied backlash at the science funding agency. NSF fired about 10 percent of its staff at the end of Tuesday, removing 168 people who included most of the agency’s probationary employees and all of its experts, a class of contract workers who are specialists in niche scientific fields. The agency didn’t have to fire its experts but decided to in the interest of fairness, a top NSF official told staffers in an emotionally charged hybrid meeting Tuesday morning at its Alexandria, Virginia, headquarters. Fired NSF staffers were instructed to stop working by 1 p.m. Tuesday, at which point they would be locked out of the agency’s computer network. They had until the end of the day to clean out their desks. To avoid having the stain of a firing on their resumes, staffers were told they could resign. But then they would not be eligible for unemployment payments.” Ouch! More: “The announcement prompted outrage, confusion and concern from people at the meeting, resulting in a string of scathing all-staff emails from impacted workers. ‘You are presenting us as trophies in front of OPM,’ one angry employee said in the meeting, referring to the Office of Personnel Management, according to the transcript. ‘I don’t want to hear anything about how you are sad, how you feel bad for everyone who’s losing their job today.’ ‘You screwed people, hardworking people, who trusted the word of this agency, left their careers, wherever they came from,’ they added. ‘That’s on all of you. Take some accountability.’ An NSF official apologized to the fired workers, noting that they were ‘following orders’ from the Trump administration.” • “Only following orders” is a rather unfortunate locution!

“One Simple Question for Democrats” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. The deck: “What would the working class say?” And: “It needn’t be. There’s one simple question—a sort of test—that would illuminate the path forward for Democrats. What would the working class say (WWWCS)?” • The Democrats would rather die as a party than do this. NOTE Well… The counter-argument is that Democrats have a leader-shaped hole in their heads. A candidate (?) they accepted as a leader — changing direction all at once, like a school of fish, as they did with Kamala when given permission — could ask that. But nobody else, and probably nobody on the way up. Anyhow, highly theoretical, since I see nobody in the offing.

Republican Funhouse

“DOGE bites Republicans” [Politico]. “A number of Congressional Republicans are starting to flee the blowback of his Department of Government Efficiency’s slash-and-burn approach to federal budget cuts, driven by growing evidence of a groundswell of concern among groups of ordinary voters. And if you think this is only a dynamic in moderate swing seats, consider this morning’s newsletter a wake-up call.” And:

In an R+18 district: Speaking at a business luncheon yesterday in Westerville, Ohio, GOP Rep. Troy Balderson “described President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders as ‘getting out of control’ …. [and] expressed some pushback to the idea of sole decision-making power lying with Trump and billionaire advisor Elon Musk,” the Columbus Dispatch’s Samantha Hendrickson reports. “‘Congress has to decide whether or not the Department of Education goes away,’ Balderson asserted. ‘Not the president, not Elon Musk.'”

In deep-red Georgia: Last night in Roswell, Georgia, an overflow crowd packed into a town hall forum for GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, barraging him with pointed questions and accusatory comments about DOGE’s cuts. His staff “seemed caught off guard by the massive crowd of hundreds that gathered,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein. (This is a district Trump carried by 22 points just three months ago.)

“The private GOP panic over the slash-and-burn DOGE firings” [Politico]. “GOP lawmakers unleashed a frantic flurry of calls and texts after federal agencies undertook the latest firings this past weekend, with Republicans particularly worried about cuts affecting public safety and health roles. Trump’s legislative affairs team, headed by former JD Vance aide James Braid, took the brunt of the frenetic fallout, according to four Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the conversations. For the most part, Republican members are publicly cheering the administration’s push to slash the federal government, which is being led by billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk with Trump’s blessing. But privately, many are feeling helpless to counter the meat-ax approach that has been embraced so far, with lawmakers especially concerned about the dismissal of military veterans working in federal agencies as well as USDA employees handling the growing bird flu outbreak affecting poultry and dairy farms. ‘I thought we were supposed to be in a new era of meritocracy. Not the indiscriminate firing of people,’ said one Republican congressional aide granted anonymity to speak candidly.”

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

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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!

Immune Dysregulation

“Immunological and Antigenic Signatures Associated with Chronic Illnesses after COVID-19 Vaccination” (preprint) [medRxiv]. Corresponding author kiko Iwasaki is sound, IMNHO. “COVID-19 vaccines have prevented millions of COVID-19 deaths. Yet, a small fraction of the population reports a chronic debilitating condition after COVID-19 vaccination, often referred to as post-vaccination syndrome (PVS). To explore potential pathobiological features associated with PVS, we conducted a decentralized, cross-sectional study involving 42 PVS participants and 22 healthy controls enrolled in the Yale LISTEN study. Compared with controls, PVS participants exhibited differences in immune profiles, including reduced circulating memory and effector CD4 T cells (type 1 and type 2) and an increase in TNFα+ CD8 T cells. PVS participants also had lower anti-spike antibody titers, primarily due to fewer vaccine doses. Serological evidence of recent Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) reactivation was observed more frequently in PVS participants. Further, individuals with PVS exhibited elevated levels of circulating spike protein compared to healthy controls. These findings reveal potential immune differences in individuals with PVS that merit further investigation to better understand this condition and inform future research into diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.” And from the body: “The molecular mechanisms of PVS remain largely unknown. However, there is considerable overlap in self-reported symptoms between long COVID and PVS, as well as shared exposure to SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein in the context of inflammatory responses during infection or vaccination. In susceptible individuals, vaccines may contribute to long-term symptoms by multiple mechanisms. For example, vaccine components, such as mRNA, lipid nanoparticles, and adenoviral vectors, trigger activation of pattern recognition receptors. Thus, unregulated stimulation of innate immunity could lead to chronic inflammation.”

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
★ This week[1] CDC February 17 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC February 15 ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 15

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data February 20: ★ National [6] CDC February 20:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens February 17: ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 15:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC January 27: Variants[10] CDC January 27

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25:

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) Down, 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) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.

[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

There are no official statistics of interest today.

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Manufacturing: “Tesla recalls 376,000 vehicles in US over power steering, shares drop” [Reuters]. “The recall follows a more than year-long probe by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after some Tesla owners reported steering failures. Some were unable to turn the wheel while others cited increased effort. More than 50 vehicles were allegedly towed due to the issue, NHTSA said last year. Reuters reported in late 2023 that tens of thousands of owners had experienced premature failures of suspension or steering parts since 2016, citing Tesla documents and interviews with customers and former employees. In a filing with NHTSA, Tesla said some 2023 Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossovers running older software could face an overvoltage breakdown, potentially overstressing motor drive components on the printed circuit board. Tesla said that if this overstress condition occurs while the vehicle is in motion, steering remains unaffected, and a visual alert is triggered. But once the vehicle stops, the steering assist may fail and remain disabled when it moves again. As of January 10, Tesla has identified 3,012 warranty claims and 570 field reports that may be related to the condition but said it had no reports of any crashes related to the condition. Tesla said the recall is not in response to NHTSA’s investigation of allegations of loss of steering control, which remains open.” • Oh no, of course not, because otherwise regulation might be a good thing.

Tech: “Meta claims torrenting pirated books isn’t illegal without proof of seeding” [Ars Technica]. “Seeding refers to sharing a torrented file after the download completes, and because there’s allegedly no proof of such ‘seeding,’ Meta insisted that authors cannot prove Meta shared the pirated books with anyone during the torrenting process. Whether or not Meta actually seeded the pirated books could make a difference in a copyright lawsuit from book authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Authors had previously alleged that Meta unlawfully copied and distributed their works through AI outputs—an increasingly common complaint that so far has barely been litigated. But Meta’s admission to torrenting appears to add a more straightforward claim of unlawful distribution of copyrighted works through illegal torrenting, which has long been considered established case-law. Authors have alleged that “Meta deliberately engaged in one of the largest data piracy campaigns in history to acquire text data for its LLM training datasets, torrenting and sharing dozens of terabytes of pirated data that altogether contain many millions of copyrighted works.” • The Bearded One refers to this sort of theft as “original accumulation,” and IMNSHO it’s the basis of AI, given that no training sets = no AI. Here is a massive thread of internal technical communication at Meta:

Worth a read!

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 41 Fear (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 44 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 21 at 1:06:14 PM ET.

Gallery

“Rooms and Buildings Have a Life of Their Own in Eamon Monaghan’s Uncanny Dioramas” [This is Colossal]. “In the artist’s current solo exhibition, Under the Floorboards at Moskowitz Bayse, the sculptures jump off the wall, angles jutting this way and that. Beams intersect with appliances; floor boards bend; stairways emerge from nowhere and terminate in open space; and radiator steam infiltrates everything in its path. ‘Foggy Pipes’ (2025), cardboard, tin foil, aluminum wire, epoxy clay, and watercolor, 34 x 70 x 18 inches Monaghan draws on the work of 20th-century underground legends like cartoonist R. Crumb or clay animator Bruce Bickford.”

Like MC Escher. But cute.

News of the Wired

“Ancient switch to soft food gave us an overbite—and the ability to pronounce ‘f’s and ‘v’s” [Science]. “Don’t like the F-word? Blame farmers and soft food. When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like “f” and “v,” opening a world of new words. The newly favored consonants, known as labiodentals, helped spur the diversification of languages in Europe and Asia at least 4000 years ago; they led to such changes as the replacement of the Proto-Indo-European patēr to Old English faeder about 1500 years ago, according to linguist and senior author Balthasar Bickel at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The paper shows ‘that a cultural shift can change our biology in such a way that it affects our language,’ says evolutionary morphologist Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel of the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, who was not part of the study.” • Fast! Whether Jackpot-fast is another question.

“Reality has a surprising amount of detail” [John Salvatier]. The author begins with the example of building a set of stairs. But: “If you’re a programmer, you might think that the fiddliness of programming is a special feature of programming, but really it’s that everything is fiddly, but you only notice the fiddliness when you’re new, and in programming you do new things more often.” • This is why my aesthetic stresses depth of field; to capture the detail. Reality is more a like a super-detailed model railroad than not.

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From MV:

MV writes: “Fort Worth Botanic Garden.”

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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73 comments

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      The Covid mRNA vaccines should absolutely never have been mandated, and Biden administration figures should never have implied, as they did, that they were sterilizing. The public health establishment has a lot to answer for here, because the destruction of public heatlth is a high price to pay, despite the many, many lives that vaccines saved. What are we supposed to do if and when Bird Flu infects humans? Trundle off to the Applebee’s buffet, pretending everything is normal?

      My position is and has been that we did not mandate what we should have (non-pharmaceutical interventions like masks and ventilation) and did mandate what we should not have (Covid mRNA vaccines).

      Reply ↓
      1. CA

        https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/health/covid-post-vaccination-syndrome.html

        February 19, 2025

        Scientists Describe Rare Syndrome Following Covid Vaccinations
        In a small study, patients with the syndrome were more likely to experience reactivation of Epstein-Barr virus and high levels of a coronavirus protein.
        By Apoorva Mandavilli

        The Covid-19 vaccines were powerfully protective, preventing millions of deaths. But in a small number of people, the shots may have led to a constellation of side effects that includes fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, tinnitus and dizziness, together referred to as “post-vaccination syndrome,” according to a small new study. *

        Some people with this syndrome appear to show distinct biological changes, the research found — among them differences in immune cells, reawakening of a dormant virus called Epstein-Barr, and the persistence of a coronavirus protein in their blood.

        The study was posted online Wednesday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal. “I want to emphasize that this is still a work in progress,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who led the work…

        * https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.18.25322379v1

        Reply ↓
        2. Bugs

          It’s a small sample size, the researchers are still not convinced that it’s not actually Long Covid. Wait and see imho.

          Reply ↓
        3. CA

          The point is not to suggest the Yale study is at all conclusive, but only a necessary follow-up to a new form of vaccine introduction. As for the coronavirus, we left with a problem of lingering illness (disability) that needs comprehensive study:

          https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1vcDW

          January 4, 2020

          Labor Force men and women with a disability, * 2020-2025

          * Age 16 to 64

          (Indexed to 2020)

          Reply ↓
        4. dean

          Problems in trying to determine the mechanism of what they term Post Vaccination Syndrome (PVS) are potential confounding factors. PVS was characterized by reactivation of EB virus, fatigue, exercise intolerance, brain fog, etc. Long covid has almost identical characteristics so it is critical that the researchers eliminate the possibility that prior SARS-CoV-2 infection isn’t the cause. They took subject verbal history and analyzed for the presence of anti-N antibodies in plasma samples. 61.9 % of PVS subjects and 45.5 % of controls tested positive for anti-N antibodies. This left only 15 out of the original 44 PVS and 11 controls that had no evidence of prior infection. Is it possible that the remaining 15 had prior infections without anti-N antibody detection?

          From the authors:

          “While we used two independent approaches to ascertain previous infection with SARS-CoV-2, negative results cannot definitively preclude prior infection that occurred in the distant past.”

          i would be interested to see if this passes peer review.

          Reply ↓
  2. t

    I do think DOGE is basically 2025, with USAID being dumped in favor of a deeper darker nest of spokes and the dream of not having to fund any humanitarian work as cover.

    That said, plenty of 2025 goes back a ways. The Powell Memo and all the right-wing think-tank tinkering to date, and now with religious right and then crypto rolled in.

    This isn’t new, and it has been broadly supported by the usual cabals, even they have minor disagreements about how to eat our bones.

    Reply ↓
  3. t

    I went to get my front camera cleaned today at the Tesla Service Center

    Wait! Are you telling me he means the cameras that the cars use “like eyes,” instead of and without any other kind of sensor, need to be cleaned by service techs?

    How often…

    Reply ↓
  4. vao

    Regarding that tweet:

    I went to get my front camera cleaned today at the Tesla Service Center in Salem, Oregon today. This was happening. Glad no one was hurt. I get people are upset with Elon but this has gone way too far.

    I was totally unable to detect anything remarkable in that short video. Two cybertrucks parked in front of a (closed?) Tesla subsidiary. A couple more (non-Tesla) vehicles parked, one from the police (?). A bloke taking photographs (?).

    Can somebody explain what justifies the tone of the comment in the tweet?

    “This is happening” — as far as I could see, nothing whatsoever was happening.

    “Glad no one was hurt” — I could not see anybody in danger of being hurt. What is he talking about???

    “this has gone way too far” — what the hell is this all about???

    I am completely baffled.

    Reply ↓
    1. Emma

      I am guessing that he’s referencing the boarded up windows, probably the result of somebody throwing some bricks.

      A fairly pissed off Fed suggested parking shopping trolleys and rubbish behind Teslas parked in public. I think having to drive and pay off a Tesla is sufficient punishment.

      Reply ↓
  7. herman_sampson

    So Elon is a “public official” ? And I have “concerns” about his unqualified staff having access to my personal info and Social Security records.

    Reply ↓
  8. IM Doc

    I wrote a version of this comment this AM and I kept getting error messages – so I will try this again this afternoon. This is about the link this AM from The Daily Wire about the COVID vaccines possibly being pulled.

    Has this been a wild ride or what?

    Now that Dr. Birx and Dr. Offitt are doing apology tours this week, basically each stating in their own way that no, we did not follow the science, I thought I would add a few things to what was going on. There were and are many of us out here in medical world who did follow the science. Many of us were completely exasperated by the sudden censorship of all granular level data about COVID. Most of us were seeing things about COVID that were in direct contradiction to what was being said by our media and agencies. With their admissions this week of not following science, I would like to say to everyone that there are actually those of us out here on the ground who are doing our level best to follow science and its principles. Many of us have found ourselves deboarded, delicensed, harangued and harrassed for the effort. For a long time in this comment section on this blog – I was called all kinds of names – and comments were left in reply – “Real doctors don’t talk like this”, etc. And that is just it – real doctors DO QUESTION, they DO KNOW HOW to make observations, and they should be changing habits when data demands. OUR YOUNG DOCTORS ARE LEARNING NONE OF THIS IN MED SCHOOL – IT IS ALL TOP DOWN ALL THE TIME – CHECK THE BOXES. This has been excruciating to witness over the past 4 years as principles of medicine set down for decades/centuries have been completely ignored. All for money.

    As time has gone on, I have realized there are two big reasons why the members of my profession just rolled over. 1) “Evidence Based Medicine” – that sounds great – but the movement behind it is a stake to the heart of the scientific method. We were all told to ignore everything that was happening in front of us – that only Fauci, et al could make any kinds of decisions. We were told that only peer-reviewed work and randomized controlled trials counted. That what we were seeing in front of us was all anecdotal – and therefore worthless. But the thing is – from the very beginning of my training, I was taught by the best to follow the scientific method, to remain curious, to follow and chase down leads. When things are acute, to learn to trust my own eyes and ears and wits and do the very best I can for my patients. I was told repeatedly during COVID that anyone doing this was rogue, “stupid”, off the reservation. WE HAVE TO PAY 100% ATTENTION TO CDC and FAUCI – this was where the “evidence” led. 2) The ownership of the profession in our world today by corporations prevented any independent thought. All these corporations care about is the flow of cash – and they were not about to have the lucre tsunami of vaccine inducements interrupted.

    My profession has done this to itself. There were those warning about the corruption and collusion years ago. It has now reached complete fruition – and the COVID disaster was the result in so many ways.

    The other big problem was POLITICIZATION of public health. RULE #1 in public health is do not let politics become involved. One of my mentors was in his day one of the leading infectious disease doctors in the USA. During rounds with him at the height of the AIDS crisis, he pounded this simple rule into our heads – DO NOT LET POLITICS INSIDE DURING A MEDICAL CRISIS, IT WILL BACKFIRE IN 1000 DIFFERENT WAYS. Most of the things he warned about have come true in spades, and I am so glad my mentors like him and my father are not around to see what has happened.

    From the very first days of the vaccine rollout, it was crystal clear to anyone paying attention who also practiced the basic tenets of science that there were big problems. It just kept getting worse as time went on. I have shared so much of this over time in these comments. Time and time again, things that were obvious by just keen clinical observation were derided as conspiracy theories only to be acknowledged months later as real problems. As but one of many examples – the constant assertion by agencies et al that only the unvaxxed were being admitted – this was a total lie to anyone paying attention on the ground – and yet this just went unanswered in the media and discourse until it became too obvious to hide.

    I have shared with the email group here every Labor Day that all of a sudden I see a mini explosion of pulmonary emboli, strokes, heart attacks and blood clots for about a month during the fall COVID booster rollout. I am by no means alone. This is now common knowledge and observation. Anyone who dared to say a word about this was immediately slimed and slandered and threatened.

    Now ever more concerning issues are coming out. I am fairly certain the COVID vaccine debacle that is incoming is going to dwarf dramatically the VIOXX and OXY-CONTIN scandals that preceded it. I am not sure that my profession survives this in its current form. I am concerned about all the firings going on, but I would want everyone not to really lament what is going to happen at the CDC and the FDA. The true scientists are likely not going to be too affected, the profiteers and the upper level management NEED TO GO. It is truly the only way.

    I have said many times to students residents and colleagues. We need to clean up our act, get rid of the corruption. Or one day it will kill us all. We did not have the will to do that on our own, so now it will be done for us. And there is going to be lots of screaming and wailing. But this must happen if we are ever going to have a functional medical system again.

    Reply ↓
    1. Carolinian

      Thanks Doc. Your expertise is always invaluable.

      I will say in defense of NC that most of your concerns were aired here before the vaccine was rolled out and that’s one reason why some of us, who had the option, declined the shot.

      And yes the Orwellian “disinformation” craze is scary indeed when applied to health care. Believe nothing until it has been officially denied–another reason not to get the shot.

      Here’s hoping the vax doesn’t turn out to be some giant disaster from those who talk more about science than practice it.

      Reply ↓
  9. lyman alpha blob

    In today’s links there were a few articles about the fecklessness of the Democrat party, and without feck, they most certainly are.

    I will just add that I know for a fact that one high ranking Democrat member of Congress has decided that the last couple weeks would be a great time to do some fundraising and then go on a tropical vacation. That’s the “fightin’ for” they’re giving us now.

    Reply ↓
    1. steppenwolf fetchit

      If we see particular Democrats obstructing and/or derailing something so that it is actually obstructed and/or derailed, then we could keep supporting those particular Democratic individuals as individuals.

      The rest of the Democrats can be abandoned and walked away from at this point at the National Level.

      The same filter-choicing could be applied to state and regionalocal Democrats. If they effectively obstruct and derail the Trump Train to DOGE Station, then we can support them. And if they can use their positions to effectively TrumpnDOGE-proof our particular states and regional localities, then we can keep them for their proven value and effectiveness.

      The rest we can abandon.

      Meanwhile, we will have to be the obstruction and derailment we want to see in the world.

      Reply ↓
      1. Erstwhile

        If dems could only run, and not walk, away from zionism, then you might have something. But I don’t think that it’s gonna happen. Look at the oafish fetterman in yesterday’s WC; he looks more like a hulking member of the likud party, standing miserably in a dark hallway, impatiently waiting for his handler to drop the latest aipac windfall into his grubby hands. A former fetterman aide thought that the two most recent aides to leave his staff were probably upset that the only business f-man was conducting concerned israel. The Mon Valley is better left to God’s care, I suppose. F-man is knee deep in genocide blood, and doesn’t seem to mind it a bit. Derail trump? Not a chance. To so many dems, it’s too important to keep that blood money flowing.

        Reply ↓
        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          That’s why I did not say “the” Dems. I said “particular” Dems if they are observed to be productively obstructive and derailative.

          And meanwhile people alone or in groups finding other pain points and derailment points and obstruction points.

          Reply ↓
  10. Bill B

    Why Should We Care If the Trump Administration, and Musk’s DOGE, are Acting Unconstitutionally? Nathan Tankus latest. https://www.crisesnotes.com/why-should-we-care-if-the-trump-administration-and-musks-doge-are-acting-unconstitutionally/?ref=notes-on-the-crises-newsletter

    ‘Which brings us to the answer to the question posted by the title of this piece. We should care about the unconstitutionality of the Trump administration’s, and Elon Musk’s DOGE, because it is furthering the centralization and expansion of unaccountable power in the service of abrogating more of our rights. Our right to clean air and water. Our right to the already too-limited protections against discrimination. Our already too-weak right to privacy. Our right not to be scammed and looted from. Our workplace protections and our right not to die from the mishandling of the nuclear stockpile because of inept, dangerous and illegal mass firings. Our already weak right to an education. Most of all, our right to rebuild after the second Trump administration has smashed up so many of the tools of rebuilding. Ultimately, our right to make decisions about our own lives without being essentially micromanaged by venal billionaires. Hell, our right to have a truly different government after “King Trump”.’

    Reply ↓
    1. JBird4049

      What is worse? The fake competence, real contempt, performative outrage, and pseudo paternalism of the Neoliberal PMC or the incompetence, governmental chainsawing, pseudo transparency, and plain old lying hiding behind the Trump Kabuki Theater?

      Honestly, both are killing us, but people seem to prefer the one death or the other because it is somehow better. As both are lethal, I don’t see it.

      Reply ↓
      1. Bill B

        What Trump/Musk are doing hasn’t been done before, and they’ve only just begun. So, we are seeing how it’s crapifying peoples’ lives already, but we probably haven’t seen the worst of it yet. It may make the PMC look good by comparison.

        Reply ↓
          1. JBird4049

            Along with his deformation of public benefits? This means that the Trump Administration is likely to cut back on the benefits. Of course the .Com bubble happened right after making it easier for a while to get work.

            Any cuts today are going to hit the oncoming recession.

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      1. Bill B

        Wow, I’ve never met anyone who speaks Latin. The closest I myself got was Spanish. But to your point (I think):

        “Fine words butter no parsnips.”

        But, nemo judex in causa sua. Someone tell Elon.

        Reply ↓
        1. Wukchumni

          I could’ve done it in English, but where is the fun in that?

          A timely saying almost 2,000 years ago that bears as much weight today…

          Reply ↓
    3. bertl

      There are limits on the amount of personal information held on the vast majority of US individuals, and by the vast majority I suspect it is something like 99+% of the population. As a Brit, even though I do not have any kind of Cloud account, I’m a little more concerned about a government with a deep minority of the popular vote taking this action at a point where the public is becoming very restless for a change of government, particularly when it iis headed by Der Starmer: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/21/apple-removes-advanced-data-protection-tool-uk-government

      Reply ↓
  12. Carolinian

    Re Ars Technica

    In the torrenting world, a user who is currently downloading a file but has not downloaded enough of it yet to begin sharing with others is a leech. Leeching is an essential part of torrenting, and there is nothing wrong with it, despite the unsavory word. A slightly different term, however — leecher — is a label you’d like to avoid. Here’s why: Once you have downloaded a file, you are expected to allow your computer to be used as a source for others to download it. You do this by leaving your BitTorrent client running. Users who download from others but do not reciprocate are considered inconsiderate and are known as leechers.

    https://www.androidauthority.com/what-are-torrent-seeders-3232600/

    While uploading and downloading can take place simultaneously per the above that doesn’t have to be the case.

    At any rate surely the real issue is whether Meta is distributing copies of the books or making more than fair use of them. If they are not then it really is about seeding or not seeding although it sounds like there may be a California law that says differently.

    And just as a general comment books are trivially easy to copy. People even take cameras and simply photograph the pages of library books and turn them into digital files with OCR. For awhile there was even a Firefox extension that would turn library ebooks into non drm epubs on a computer hard drive. The publishers surely know this and have different contract arrangements with libraries when it comes to ebooks. Or they could simply decline to issue publisher ebooks at all.

    Reply ↓
    1. Bugs

      It looks like they were using any method possible to access training data and just grabbing as many magnet files or nzbs as they could and feeding them into servers for LLMs. With the torrents, they’re liable for distribution as well as infringement of copyrighted works when the p2p application is sharing bits until the download is complete. Unless they built their own software to get around that limitation, which seems like it might have been what the note was implying. As to what’s on the Usenet, there’s no getting around the fact that they know they’re infringing, but there’s no distribution.

      Reply ↓
      1. Carolinian

        I rarely use Bittorrent–which isn’t just a pirate thing–but seems to me the clients always have a tick box to block uploading.

        In any case what about fair use? After all we quote copyrighted material here all the time and if it was up to Rupert Murdoch we’d have to pay for that too. Are Coates, Silverman etc merely using the narrow technical issue to go after the Meta deep pockets?

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    2. Acacia

      As TimH points out above, a BT client will share by default.

      The Ars Technica quotation is wrong.

      Once you have downloaded a file, you are expected to allow your computer to be used as a source for others to download it.

      No. The way BT works, a file being shared is subdivided into blocks — typically 16k bytes each — and unless you have completely disabled sharing, then as soon as you download even one block, it is available to be shared with others and the client will do so. That is how downloading and uploading can be simultaneous. Details here:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_BitTorrent_terms

      I would bet Meta is just flat-out lying about this and they are banking on nobody ever seeing their server logs that would show they DID share some of the data that they plundered.

      Their cover story is akin to “but I didn’t exhale”

      Reply ↓
  13. ChrisFromGA

    Game over, man … game over!

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-21/covid-like-bat-virus-discovered-by-researchers-in-chinese-lab?srnd=homepage-americas

    Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China said they discovered a new coronavirus in bats that enters cells using using the same gateway as the virus that causes Covid-19.
    This virus hasn’t been detected in humans, merely identified in a laboratory. Word of the discovery lifted the shares of some vaccine makers Friday.

    Meet the new pandemic, same as the old pandemic.

    Happy pan-niversary!

    Reply ↓
    1. griffen

      It’s a pandemic non miracle, polished and fresh right out of the bowl…I tell ya, the hits and body blows are like taking on the Champ Mike Tyson in Punch Out….

      Caught some discussion of this news in the 3pm hour on Cnbc, with frequent guest Dr Gottlieb adding some insights to the findings…He didn’t just shrug it aside but offered reasonable context .

      Always a good time or reason to quote the loquacious Hicks !! Sarge, how do I get out of this chicken ** outfit ?

      Reply ↓
      1. ChrisFromGA

        Appropriate musical interlude:

        Circle Jerks – When the [family blog] hits the fan

        In a sluggish economy
        Inflation, recession hits the land of the free
        Standing unemployment lines
        We blame the government for hard times
        We just get by, however we can …
        We all gotta duck … when the D.O.G.E. [family blog] hits the fan

        10 Oligarchs in a cyber truck
        Stand in line for welfare checks
        Let’s all leach off the state!
        Gee, the money’s really great!

        Soup lines
        Free stimmy checks!
        Someone moved your cheese
        Bags of groceries
        Social security … has run out on you and me
        We do whatever we can, gotta duck when the **** hits the fan!

        Reply ↓
  14. Wukchumni

    Its getting really interesting, a complete reversal of old yellow’s movements, let me explain.

    When FDR arbitrarily set the price @ $35 an ounce, it set off an unusual export boom in early 1933, in that vast oodles of American $10 & $20 gold coins were shipped to Europe on account of the arbitrage possibilities ($10’s have about 1/2 oz, $20’s about an oz in content) and when I plied my trade in Europe in the 1980’s and 90’s, that was the happy hunting ground for said coins, as the Banksters of the early 1930’s were looking @ getting 70% more than the face value by merely exporting them, it was amazing how many of these coins were in Europe compared to here, where rarely did little old ladies & men have any to sell in the USA.

    Now, the Unabankers realizing that the end game is near, came up with some cockamamie story about gold being worth more on the spot market in NY than in London, and thus they want it all back.

    Similar to Bitcoin, much of what was traded in the London Au market for eons since 1971 was ‘air gold’ and easily manipulated to the downside, but said Unabankers want the real deal-not trading gold.

    Reply ↓
    1. nyleta

      In the heydays of Sterling high interest rates were used during a crisis to attract gold to a country but that was when it was convertible . If I remember right 7% cash rate was what was needed to attract gold needed for international reserve settlement in those days. Wouldn’t think it would work that way now currencies aren’t convertible but maybe some people are able to demand convertibility on the sly.

      Remarkable how many of the tribulations of Joseph Chamberlain that Mr Trump has repeated.

      Reply ↓
  15. Pat

    I haven’t done links yet so if it was there I missed it, but did want to drop this here.
    SNL 50th Anniversary is a Covid spreader.
    I chose the People link because of Steve Martin declaring a SNL 50 Covid curse real.

    On my part I think it is somewhat ironic as SNL, along with many other late night television staples, went along with the vaccine/Covid is over boondoggle pushing it while still having protections in place. Now that they aren’t…

    Reply ↓
  16. Wukchumni

    Go hike a trestle!

    Always wanted to see the Goat Canyon Trestle down near San Diego, and its amazing-a nearly 200 foot tall and over 600 foot long trestle made entirely of wood which was built in 1933 in order for the ‘The Impossible Railroad’ to be able to go through.

    It’s a long day hike of about 15 miles with no shade aside from when you are in one of the 10 long to very long tunnels bored through the mountains-the amount of work involved nothing short of staggering.

    It hasn’t run for some time now and a few of the tunnels are caved in, and there are passenger cars along sidings that have been thoroughly graffiti’d up inside and out, perhaps by students of the Krylon School of Art?

    https://allaroundnevada.com/impossible-railroad/

    Reply ↓
  17. mrsyk

    A little history about Milei and chainsaws, The Chainsaws of President Milei Of Argentina, FireAndSaw
    the blogger further comments on this reddit post
    Chainsaw given to Musk from Milei was a custom TMC MT-598
    The MT-598 is a 59.6 cc, 2.6 kW chainsaw sold by Argentinian brand TMC. They’re plastic Chinese saws. It was customized and modified by Argentinian Tute Di Tella. Milei has not had great taste in chainsaws as I’ve previously shared on fireandsaw.”

    Reply ↓
    1. Glen

      As a long time Stihl chainsaw guy, I was wondering what that was.

      So the guy that’s getting tens of thousands of American workers fired from Federal jobs is waving around a Chinese made chainsaw in celebration. All while he still has huge factories – in China.

      I know it’s just symbology, I just never realized they worked so hard to make it that accurate.

      Reply ↓
      1. barefoot charley

        Knowing their rep the first chainsaw I got was a Stihl. It was a pizza cr@p, not starting, breaking down, moody. A chainsaw guy explained that Stihl had joined the neoliberal gold rush and outsourced all its cheaper tool manufacturing to China. Somehow I missed that on the label. But Huskies still come from Sweden, and still work, now I know. And the future is electric!

        Reply ↓
  19. Tom Stone

    There is coverage of the demonstrations at TESLA showrooms in the SF Chronicle and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, however there has been no coverage of the demonstration last Monday at Santa Rosa’s Courthouse Square.
    I got there at a few minutes past 11 AM and there were already several hundred people there.
    I left about noon and the crowd was about 1,000 when I left, and growing
    I have been to protests and protest marches quite a few times since 1967 and am pretty good at estimating numbers.
    No coverage.
    Which is clarifying

    Reply ↓
  20. Wukchumni

    Been about 6 weeks since the LA Infernos, and Mayor Bass fired the LAFD Chief today citing:

    Bass said the chief’s removal was “in the best interests of Los Angeles’ public safety, and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department.”

    Who gets to fire the inept Mayor who was off at an all important inauguration of some African leader, when it was pretty obvious many days before that wildfires were a real possibility?

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev

      Waiting for a headline announcing that that fired LAFD Chief is now in the middle of writing his tell-all autobiography, especially with revealing the dealings that they had with Mayor Bass.

      Reply ↓
      1. chris

        The chief is a she. Part of the much derided class of alleged DEI hires in various California positions, although from what I’ve heard she had the bona fides to do the job. Bass fired her today. Which strikes me as craven. Bass waited until the news cycle shifted and fired her because LAFD and the chief had been very critical of the Mayor’s office.

        Reply ↓
  21. The Rev Kev

    Musk wanting to de-orbit the International Space Station in 2027 is just not about a spat he had with the ISS Commander. The clue is in the first name. It is a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), ESA (Europe), JAXA (Japan), and CSA (Canada) and that is what bugs Musk. With it gone, then the US – and others – must turn to the private sector for space-related activities and realistically you are only talking about one corporation – his. I tend to suspect that Musk and his ilk want to have only corporations with the ability to put stuff into space which means they have a throat-hold on all such activities and can charge accordingly. Maybe he will use his present power to gut NASA even more so that all it can do is support commercial activities and give up on such things as space probes and the like. At this point he may as well rename SpaceX as Weyland-Yutani. But his fanboys will still defend him and say that Musk is taking them to Mars.

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  22. Bill Urman

    Not an expert so maybe those with more knowledge can respond. From what I’ve read, establishing back doors to systems is relatively easy if you have access to the system. How much control over systems do back doors provide? Again, from what I’ve read, the control can be far reaching and difficult to detect. Is Musk doing this and if so, the ramifications seem unlimited to me?

    Reply ↓
  24. Wukchumni

    If a politician were to wear an old glory lapel pin on the right lapel in lieu of the standard left lapel, what label would that signal?

    Reply ↓
  25. skippy

    The best part about the Mexican terrorist[tm] list, not that heaps of Western agendas are not terrorist to other nations populations, I digress.

    Case in point. MS-13 is a home grown terrorist org based on US policies in Central America going back before Iran contra. This has been unpacked even in MSM back in the day, refugees from this area were immigrated to the US and plonked down into the worst part of L.A. between Crips and Bloods. No support what so ever and at the end of the day as a ethnic group had to adapt E.g. become more feral than the rest.

    Then the conservative sorts took umbrage at how they squandered the American Dream and started filling up the jails in Calif. Solution – send them back home. So en-mass they were sent back with newly honed skills in Mgt and survival of the fittest, hence took over the political system back at home. Then used its networks in US to advance making money.

    Its just getting silly these days with past US stuff and its blow back …

    Reply ↓
    1. Wukchumni

      Max Mad is a coming and things are not going to our advantage, and i’ve hit up my buddy in Auckland to adopt me, and the idea he’s a couple years older shouldn’t be a deterrent in moving me out of potentially harms way, but isn’t what Trump is bringing on is more of the end times for the Golden Billion as a force. A run of over 500 years was quite something by empire standards… and thanks for playing, there’s a consolation prize at the exit as you leave.

      Reply ↓
      1. JBird4049

        >>>and thanks for playing, there’s a consolation prize at the exit as you leave.

        Is it a handheld plastic Old Glory made in China?

        Reply ↓
      2. Ben Panga

        As Lambert says, get a passport while you can. There’s a whole world of possibility out here.

        I cannot imagine moving back to the USA. My homeland of England is circling the drain. And my other long-term base in Europe (Germany) seems determined to self-immolate.

        [From my comfortable Vietnamese perch]

        Reply ↓
  26. skippy

    “Golden Billion” such contrivances are interesting and sold by people with funny hair … see Javier Gerardo Milei or the comedian from Ukraine [attire]. The West had a nice moment post WWII and Cold war as Elites shared real wealth for a moment. Yet regardless of money stuff, at the end of the day, its all about contracts, whom has the power to shape the legal underpinnings, whom can afford playing that game, whom wins and how that shapes reality for everyone post it.

    You will always be welcome to my camp fire.

    Reply ↓
  27. ChrisFromGA

    Shameless plug for a new substack post I wrote (go gentle on me … trying to improve my writing skills.)
    I thought about putting it here in the comments, but it’s too long, plus after the NC comments hiatus, I thought it better to SMOFB.

    D.O.G.E. hunts!

    Reply ↓

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