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Links 2/8/2025

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The Problem with Problem Sharks Nautilus (Micael T)

Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest Guardian (Kevin W)

The birth of naturalism aeon (Anthony L)

Alt Lit Sam Kriss (Anthony L)

A very American fear aeon (Micael T). How about it can create unrealistic expectations about bodies and sex acts and make it difficult to get aroused by normal stimuli? Why, for instance, have boob jobs become pervasive among actresses (if you know the telltale signs, it’s evident) and plenty of “not paid to be looked at” women with the money also buying them?

Why Doctors Test Too Much Nautilus (Micael T). Patients need to say no.

#COVID/Pandemics

IMHO one year of immunity is not much immunity, particularly given the many long-term costs of getting even one case of Covid. The “natural immunity” folks never factor that in:

Measles Outbreak Mounts Among Children in One of Texas’ Least Vaccinated Counties KFF Health News

Climate/Environment

‘Back to plastic!’ – Trump RT (Kevin W)

Indoor Marijuana Ops Are Consuming a Staggering Amount of Energy OilPrice

China?

Big companies see no China recovery soon, adding to trade tensions gloom Reuters

Pharmaceuticals become a battlefield in the Sino-US trade war Asia Times (Kevin W). We predicted this as a key leverage point for China a decade ago. Bizarre that Trump didn’t carve them out. Pharmaceuticals are routinely exempted from sanctions for humanitarian reasons. But Trump does not care about humans.

Donald Trump pauses tariffs on low-cost parcels in US-China trade reprieve Financial Times. More “Fire, aim, ready.”

South of the Border

Venezuela: “Superfluous people”? Multipolar via machine translation

Mexican border cities are in limbo as tariff threats spark fears of a recession Independent

O Canada

All bets are off Luke Savage (Chuck L). A Trump own goal.

Canadians Overwhelmingly Support Retaliatory Oil Tariffs In Trump Trade War OilPrice

European Disunion

NATO Secretary General: “We must prepare for war” – No, we don’t have to do anything! Nachdenkseitsen (Michael T)

Italy’s budget watchdog cuts growth estimates as problems mount Reuters

Union vice-chairman reported to police and warned: “Identified as a spy” Expressen (Sweden) via machine translation. Micael T: “Everyday life in vassal country.”

Old Blighty

Britain’s ‘grooming gangs’ under renewed scrutiny and investigations Le Monde

Starmer goes nuclear in hunt for long-term growth BBC (Kevin W)

UK food security in ‘precarious state’, warns National Preparedness Commission NFUOnline

Scotland in midst of ‘massive energy debt crisis’, charities warn News.STV

Israel v. The Resistance

‘Existence is resistance’: Palestinians tell Trump they won’t leave Gaza Defend Democracy

Bomb the area, gas the tunnels: Israel’s unbridled war on Gaza’s underground +972 (guurst). We said early on that Israel would resort to gas.

Did You Notice? They Admitted Possibly Killing Almost a Million Palestinians BettBeat (Dr. Kevin)

“All the gloves come off in Gaza.” Patrick Lawrence

Israel considers sending Gazans to Puntland – and the tiny breakaway statelet is keen Telegraph (Kevin W)

Whoever ends up rebuilding Gaza, this is the enormous scale of the task Sydney Morning Herald (Kevin W)

The Window for Diplomacy with Iran Is Closing Daniel Larison

Why Did Trump Threaten To Modify Or Rescind India’s Sanctions Waiver For Iran’s Chabahar Port? Andrew Korybko

New Not-So-Cold War

Ukraine Inches Closer to Final Call-Up Simplicius

Europe’s Ukraine Delusion Thomas Fazi, Compact

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Who Else Wants Access To Apple Users’ Encrypted Data? Moon of Alabama (Chuck L). This is why I do not use “the cloud”. Yet even after having disabled every Apple cloud service, the phone nags me constantly to sign in with my Apple ID. They really want to know too much about you.

Imperial Collapse Watch

F-35 Fails to Improve on Delays and Performance Issues: Key Software Deficiencies Persist Military Watch

Rubio to boycott G20 meeting RT (Kevin W)

Over 70 countries warn sanctions on ICC heighten ‘risk of impunity’ for grave crimes Anadolu Agency

Trump 2.0

Trump says he’s revoking Biden’s security clearance, ending intelligence briefings in payback move Associated Press (Kevin W)

Trump Signs Order to Fight ‘Anti-Christian Bias’ New York Times

People are feeling galvanized’: Anti-Trump protesters rally in cities across US USAToday. Anything less than a general strike or strikes that hit essential services is performative.

US farmers ‘prepare for the worst’ in new Trump trade war Financial Times

DOGE

Musk’s Treasury Incursion Puts Entire Financial System at Risk Bloomberg

Meet Elon Musk’s ‘baby-faced assassins’ leading Doge takeover The Times

Exclusive: DOGE Staffers Appear to Have Admin Accounts at Department of Education as Trump Seeks to Abolish It Zeteo

DOGE targets Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as Musk tweets ‘RIP’ Washington Post. The CFPB is funded by the Fed, not Congress, although it was set up by Congress. The Fed has not been bowing to Trump.

Judge blocks Trump from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave and giving them 30-day deadline Associated Press. Also halts evacuations from foreign countries.

Red states pursue their own DOGE-style reforms The Hill

Exclusive: ACLU asks Congress to investigate plans to fire ‘probationary’ federal employees The Hill. An investigation = wet noodle lashing.

Immigration

Huge Upward Adjustment to Employment & Labor Force as Wave of Immigrants is Finally Included, Unemployment Drops, Wage Growth Accelerates: The Annual Revisions Are Here Wolf Richter

Our No Longer Free Press

Austrian Police Detain Richard Medhurst; Accuse Him of Being Hamas Member; UK Extends Probe Against Him ConsortiumNews

Police State Watch

Watch: Senators and Witnesses Expose Biden Admin’s Debanking Scandal as New Operation Choke Point Evidence Emerges Reclaim the Net (Micael T)

The Bezzle

The US Needs a Sovereign Wealth Fund Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle Stephanie Kelton (Chuck L)

Class Warfare

The Race-Blind College-Admissions Era Is Off to a Weird Start Atlantic (Chuck L)

County workers wanted a raise, but got a 4-day workweek instead CBS (David in Friday Harbor)

Antidote du jour (via):

And a bonus (Chuck L):

A second bonus (Chuck L):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.

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332 comments

  1. The Rev Kev

    ‘Autism Capital 🧩
    @AutismCapital
    🚨JASON CALACANIS: “How USAID got to the top of the DOGE list is that Trump decided to pause Foreign Aid for 90 days — reasonable enough…’

    Wait. Didn’t it come out that a lot of the opposition during Trump’s first Presidency and his Presidential run last year was funded by USAID through various bodies? That alone would make them Trump’s primary target. Come to think of it, old Joe suspended his security clearance after he was elected back in 2019. Was this part of an effort to hide who Trump’s true opponents were from him and that it was just not the Democrats?

    1. Not Again

      The USAID is overseen by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
      The GOP took control of that committee on 1/3/25.
      Rand Paul – who has sit on this oversight committee for years – dropped the info on 1/4/25.
      Neither Trump nor Musk is bright enough to find this on their own.

    2. griffen

      Dropping a comment here and then further below, link to a recent article from mid week on Sen Ernst dropping a report on various programs supported and funded by USAID. This is a topic with a lot of news and accompanied with much noise as well. Tuned into the Michael Smerconish show this morning and this Sesame Street initiative to air children shows in Iraq was a lead….

      I wouldn’t or couldn’t tell Big Bird to pack and go home…I suppose it poses a valid and debatable question on the boundaries or reach of these efforts…

      https://www.yahoo.com/news/sesame-street-iraq-usaids-wasteful-201915069.html

      1. S Weil

        Thought USAID was talked up in P25 – also USAID narced on Israel for blocking Gaza aid – that was the kicker I think

    3. Es s Ce Tera

      While Americans are outraged with how USAID has been sponsoring or supporting this or that, including comic books, teen zines, LGBTQ groups, or condoms for the Taliban, etc., and here at NC we’ve long identified USAID as cover for CIA operations, source of color revolutions, the cause of the Ukraine war, etc., it strikes me that the main role of USAID has been, not (just) (neo)liberalism, but the export of US culture and ideology worldwide. Similar to the Christian missionaries, similar to what Americans thought Soviet Russia was doing, spreading “communism”. Similar to what the IMF has been doing with its paradropping US expeditionary corporate exploitation and resource extraction battalions into vulnerable countries, establishing American presence essentially via BDSM without consent.

      Is it that team Trump missed the memo that this is the purpose of USAID, a missionary group aimed at converting the world to the US national religion, capitalism and money worship? Or do they not agree with that purpose? Or do they agree with the overarching purpose but want to transform and tweak it? Or do they want to switch the purpose to something else?

      1. Camacho

        “Trump Team” just want to take things under their control. Normal program will resume after the break.

    4. Jon Cloke

      60% of all US aid goes to Ukraine and the vast majority of USAID ‘funding’.

      Isn’t that calling an end to the Ukraine war?

    1. Merf56

      “ Leopard seals have a well-documented taste for penguins and at up to 3.5 metres long and 500 kilogrammes, they outmatch any species of these aquatic birds. The seals patrol shorelines, often stationing themselves at colonies, waiting to ambush birds as they transit between land and sea. A 2009 report found that at one colony, 12-16% of the gentoo penguins were consumed by leopard seals.”

      1. PlutoniumKun

        Sealions are also known to occasionally sample one when their habitats cross (such as in the tip of South America).

      3. IntMarine

        The penguins impressively battled the polar bears off of Antarctica decades ago – the seals that fought with the bears went with them and until the seal farts started the global warming trend, makig the ice flows more distant than the bears can swim, they were being picked off. The seals that fought with the penguins and stayed now have the advantage.
        Natures Novelties – pg 124, and figure 816

        2. AG

          What the hell is this?
          Scientists waving to animals?
          And what does the seal actually DO?

          A heroic seal saves trapped penguins
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABX_iqKj5lk

          p.s. do you guys keep an eye out for that asteroid story?
          It would really by unfair to survive 4 years of bad Saturday Night Live and then get him by an asteroid.

  3. JohnnyGL

    That 972 article on the use of carbon monoxide as a weapon during tunnel bombings has some interesting bits on how Hamas seemed to be able to handle the bombings better than hezbollah, in some instances. Check out this quote:

    “According to Hazoot, Hamas soon caught on. “Hamas learned lessons from ‘Guardian of the Walls,’” he explained. “They purchased 1,300 blast doors and distributed them throughout the tunnels. They created multiple ventilation shafts to disperse the gases and also implemented new tunnel-digging techniques involving twists and turns” — techniques which, according to Hazoot, helped to trap gas and prevent it from spreading further.”

    So, it turns out that Hamas had seen this technique, and had already made adjustments. But, perhaps, hezbollah hadn’t. According to the sources, and this guy Hazoot is one of the big ones willing to be named and go on record, the IDF started experimenting with the technique in 2017, and really gave it a shot in 2021.

    It seems like the big strike on nasrallah got to him and the other top commanders through asphixiation/suffocation.

    I found that very interesting and thought I’d throw it out there for the nakedcap crowd.

    1. The Rev Kev

      Sooner or later Israel will decide to go with the old-fashioned methods with these attacks and just go with Zyklon B.

      1. Carolinian

        And Trump will look sorrowful and say it had to be done so everything can be “beautiful”?

        There’s lots of speculation going on since this time around Trump is a lot more efficient at doing whatever he is doing but so far what he is doing doesn’t seem intelligent at all.

        But maybe it is all just a ploy and what matters is not the words–so many, way too many–but the deeds. Meanwhile skeptics are certainly entitled to be so.

        1. Bsn

          Also, in the history of some of these flamethrower techniques, remember that the good ol’ USA was the first to use Napalm – against communist Greeks at the end of WW II.

          1. Giovanni Barca

            A little quick search says the US used napalm on both the Japanese (incendiary bombs) and Germans (in the Falaise Pocket in 44) in WW2.

          2. CA

            “USA was the first to use Napalm – against communist Greeks at the end of WW II.”

            I had no idea this occurred, but it did occur.

    2. jhallc

      The discussion of gas reminded me that one thing that has not been talked about much recently is the amount of oil & gas sitting offshore of Gaza, as well as potentially beneath the West Bank, that Israel would very much like to get their hands on. The Gaza Marine gas field is not huge compared to others in the area but, has an estimated value of $4.5B. This was discovered in the 1990’s and any development by Gaza has been by blocked by Israel at every step of the way. Here’s a piece from a 2023 article on the subject.

      “The Palestinian Authority was “granted” the right to exercise sovereignty over its own maritime territory by the Oslo Accords in 1995. Four years later, following the findings of the offshore natural gas, the PA gave the international consortium BG a 25-year, 90% stake in a license to explore, develop any discovered fields, and install the required infrastructure. Since that time Israel has consistently blocked this development.

      In 2002, the PA approved BG’s proposals to construct a pipeline to a processing facility in Gaza. However, the Israeli state delayed this development, arguing that the pipeline should run to an Israeli-controlled port, and that Palestinians would have to supply Gaza Marine surplus fuel to Israel at far below market price.

      When Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections in Gaza in 2007, Israel established a militarized naval blockade, prohibiting further offshore development. Around the same time, Yam Thetis, an Israeli gas consortium, challenged the awarding of the contract to BG, further delaying the process.

      In December 2008, in total contravention of international laws, Israel declared sovereignty over the Gaza Marine area, and BG closed its offices in Tel Aviv.

      Royal Dutch Shell bought out BG’s interests in the Gaza Marine fields for $52 million in 2016. By March 2018, Royal Dutch Shell backed out of their investment, leaving the PA to search for a replacement company to develop the field. (EgyptOil-Gas.com, April 5, 2018)”

      https://www.workers.org/2023/11/74864/

  4. Mikel

    Rubio to boycott G20 meeting – RT

    “President Trump said on Sunday that he is halting funding to South Africa, accusing the country’s government of “confiscating” land and “treating certain classes of people very badly.” The US leader declared that Washington “won’t stand” for Pretoria’s “massive human rights violation.”

    And he and his administration are okay with trying to expel the Palestinians because they are a different “class” of people in their minds.

    It’s not a negotiating ploy.

    1. JohnA

      I suspect it is more to do with South Africa playing a leading role in trying to bring Israel to international justice.

  5. The Rev Kev

    “F-35 Fails to Improve on Delays and Performance Issues: Key Software Deficiencies Persist”

    The F-35 may soon be under the gun as Elon Musk has referred to it as s***. He also said ‘American weapons programs need to be completely redone. The current strategy is to build a small number of weapons at a high price to fight yesterday’s wars. Unless there are immediate and dramatic changes made, America will lose the next war very badly.’ Here he is also talking about the F-35 and saying that funds should be taken from it to build a new fleet of drones instead. Needless to say, there is already a lot of panic in defense circles about this-

    https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/02/07/742368/Musk-warns-that-US-will-lose-next-war-very-badly

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          If you think there will be any meaningful reduction in margins, you are smoking something strong.

          The Russians have military production well controlled. They also have figured out how to adapt quickly to battlefield findings both of problems and opportunities. The US can’t get there from here. At best we might move to making more rugged, cheaper, less fussy weapons, but don’t expect the profits to fall much.

          1. Chris Smith

            I think Musk has the diagnosis right: our weapons are trash, which was the point Heh was commenting on and to which I was responding. Please clarify why you think I am “smoking something.”

            1. heh

              Everyone here knew that those weapons are trash years before Musk “discovered” it. It is not his diagnosis/point. Instead of saying that he got a point, and that he has the diagnosis right, you should say that Musk is slow in reinventing the wheel (and selling it at premium price).

              My initial comment is about his “wisdom” being only a means for redirecting cash into his pockets (instead of Raytheon et al).

          2. MG

            If this was true, then why aren’t the Russians breaking out and trying to grab as much Ukrainian territory as possible before a possible ceasefire/peace settlement freezes the line later this spring?

            Even the official Russian government statements, they have noted that casualties have been unacceptably high.

            1. Yves Smith Post author

              Please no Making Shit Up. Please provide your links with “official Russian government statements.” None of the commentators who watch the war like hawks have seen anything of the kind.

              People like you keep projecting badly outdated WWII tactics onto Russia, which is dealing with a dense, Ruhr-like area full of natural fortifications (factories, concrete apartment buildings, salt mines, slag heaps) which Ukraine fortified even more over 8 years.

              Russian doctrine is to destroy armies, not to take territory.

              Russia is perfectly content to have Ukraine haul men and materiel across the county, throw it against the line of contact, which is logistically an extremely advantaged position for Russia (short supply lines) and bleed them to death there. Then when the Ukraine army is completely broken, advancing will be more like a parade than a conquest.

            3. AG

              May be of interest in albeit broader context – if the abstract nature won´t be too off-putting:

              First 20 minutes:
              Scott Ritter in conversation with Russian Col. in reserve Vladimir Trukhan
              70 min. simultaneous translation which makes it a bit slow.
              https://eastcalling.substack.com/cp/156576505

              I believe it points out well the known idea, “bigger arrows” of Russian geostrategic think, which is only a means to an end to achieving domestic well-being. It is very important to understand that that has nothing to do with genuine control of the territory of Ukraine as such.
              Considering that a Zircon missile covers 800 miles of distance, that new air-to-air missiles are good on 400 miles, that S-550 allegedly reaches space, makes it clear that territory has a totally different meaning today. Would e.g. German analysis and planning understand any of this we would be in a much better place. Which is why the „territory“ issue to be correctly contextualized is decisive.

        2. JustTheFacts

          Agreed. Don’t need to go to the current military industrial contractors to duct-tape explosives to a drone, or to build kilometers of optic fibre. Freezing them out of such simple contracts would do wonders.

          1. JustTheMusks

            Cease not freeze. Cash flow should not be stopped, because that would be bad for the economy. All the money needs to be redirected to good billionaires.

      1. RR

        Thank you for sharing these — very interesting indeed. Much alignment with the State Capacity movement, which has both liberal and conservative adherents but seems to have found a home at Niskanen:

        https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-how-we-need-now-a-capacity-agenda-for-2025/

        From what I can gather, Niskanen was founded by an ex-Cato Institute person who left over climate change. The think tank has since abandoned libertarianism and formed an alliance with former Obama technologists like Jen Pahlka, who founded Code for America and is married to tech publisher Tim O’Reilly.

        As someone who works in government, I found Pahlka’s book “Recoding America” and her former colleagues’ book “Hack Your Bureaucracy” to be thoughtful and very helpful in a practical way, though the latter especially almost intolerably smug. But the ideas take on a far more sinister tone coming out of the mouth of Palantir.

        Also worth noting these people were part of starting and/or adjacent to the US Digital Service which is now the (temporary?) institutional home for DOGE.

        1. Jhallc

          The “capacity agenda for 2025” is both interesting and scary. I’m still working my way through the 50 page report but, seems like the authors believe you must short circuit the bureaucracy to make government efficient and less costly. Sort of like “better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission” if you want to get something done way. If the”Capacity Plan for 2025″ is a blueprint, Trump (or Musk et.al.) intends to reform government in a significant way.

          1. RR

            I haven’t read the whole agenda but I wouldn’t characterize Pahlka’s book or Substack writings that way. She has a lot of respect for civil servants, understands the fragility of these systems, and is not anti-regulation. The accumulation of rules on top of rules has led to some genuinely absurd situations — often counter to the initial intent of the rule — and makes it near impossible to implement many policies. It’s a real problem, at least for anyone interested in actually governing (as opposed to looting). Which has led to interesting liberal-conservative alliances. DOGE is not following her playbook but it’s possible they are the demo crew and whoever is waiting in the wings for the next phase will. But more likely it’s looters all the way down.

      2. Mikel

        If people don’t think those links will be entertaining:
        An excerpt:

        “Everyone, including the Russians and the Chinese, have given up on communism except for Cuba and the DOD. The only problem is that we are bad commies.

        We run a centrally unplanned process that neither has the supposed advantages of a planned economy nor the (far superior) advantages of a free market. Bill Greenwalt explains the sins of our poor attempts at copying the Communists…”

      3. Mikel

        Interesting how they try to describe what they are doing as not being “centralizing”…Like one is supposed to think of “the cloud” instead of a box located in somewhere that someone controls, lording over access to your information.

        “This [ideology and management] approach, now deeply engrained in defense management culture, process, law, and regulation, is based on the concepts of scientific management that were once fashionable in the Soviet Union and at the vanguard of the 1950s U.S. auto industry before it was outcompeted by Japan in the 1970s. Centralized, predictive program budgeting, management, and oversight were then thought to be superior to the trial and error and messiness of time-constrained, decentralized experimentation and the seemingly wastefulness of having multiple sources rapidly prototyping potential solutions.”

        2. Mikel

          “Reforming the system means renouncing the communist conformity that’s slowing us down and unleashing the charismatic leaders who can drive outcomes — in the boardroom and on the battlefield.”

          This is funny. This is their version of the 1980s Apple ad. Everything about AI screams driving people to conformity, especially conformity to surveillance and their view of the world.

          It goes back to a comment I made some time ago, they think that problem with the Soviet version of American Taylorism was that it was government run. That privatization will make the result different. They don’t see the problems with many of the ideas altogether.

      4. MG

        Yes it is exactly that. These companies (and several others) have also formed a few defense groups and the old defense contractors were not invited.

        A lot of it is on unmanned or robotic deployment vehicles and platforms centered around AI. Heavy on verbiage and theatrics.

        Anduril has been pushing a lot of their autonomous drones as a key to stop Chinese landing craft from reaching Taiwan and pushing the message to US Admirals and war planners who are a lot more reluctant to risk high rates of destroyed attack subs the U.S. can neither rebuild quickly of afford to replace.

    4. Wisker

      I think Elon is more of a broken clock here. The best outcome for Russia and China is if the “disruptive” techbros get more involved in weapon development.

      The F-35 is a mediocre concept, true. But the real cat’s-ass-trophe is the ever-expanding software-driven mission with no clear doctrine. A farcical feedback loop of continual design, hardware, and software changes.

      Self-important idiot savants like Musk & Schmidt would produce this problem but x10. Opponents of US empire should welcome them into the MIC.

  6. Doug

    Performativity is widely understood as “fake” and “virtue signaling”.

    The vast majority of actions reported in the link are neither fake nor virtue signalling.

    Indeed, they are the sort of actions that make a general strike and/or strike against essential services more likely.

    1. Andouille

      Yeah, agreed – successful strikes don’t materialize out of thin air. You need a large enough base of support for the given context and a fair amount of organizational capacity. Developing and maintaining both of these things more or less requires you to be actually doing something, which will, necessarily, be something less than a general strike, until it isn’t.

      There are definitely reasons to be skeptical of some of the actors involved, but I think a blanket dismissal of these actions would be unwarranted.

    2. Mikel

      Probably better to make sure one is not talking to a bot about their concerns. And also considering some of the owners of mediated platforms. ..
      An early step in organizing these days.

    3. Objective Ace

      Agreed – whether something is “performative” or substantive can’t be known until after the fact. Were the MLK sit-ins merely performative? Was Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat performative? We only know after the fact that they led to substantive change, but they easily could not have. How many Rosa Parks were thrown in jail and never heard about again?

      1. Chris Cosmos

        It was a dramatically different time. One could appeal to conscience in those days. Nihilism and narcissism weren’t yet dominant in society. America considered itself as an “example” for the world and, in the main, took it seriously. Morality actually counted for something. In contrast, in terms of public policy, it counts for almost nothing.

    4. mrsyk

      There’s plenty of performing going on here. Anybody remember reading an (MSM) article like this about the campus protests regarding Gaza? Thought not. Long, well assembled from multiple locations, lot’s of view from the ground, different reasons to support these voices, lol, it’s almost like real reporting. I guess “save USAID now!!” is enough liberal over left to warrant the approval of the fourth estate.
      they are the sort of actions…, agreed, or at least they used to be. I’m not certain if this is still so. The norms fairy has been taking a beating as the mechanics of society shift fully into the digital age. The same reasoning can be applied to expectations were a general strike to take place.

    5. Yves Smith Post author

      No, your definition is incorrect. The first definition of “performative” in a web search: relating to or of the nature of dramatic or artistic performance.

      And the article makes my case right at the top:

      Groups opposed to actions by the Trump administration in recent weeks converged on cities Wednesday across the U.S. to loudly register their discontent, days after widespread rallies and street marches against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

      That is a wet noodle lashing. How does this accomplish ANYTHING in preventing deportations?

      What MIGHT rise to the level of seriousness would be physically obstructing removal operations.

      I refer you to a NC classic by Richard Kline, “Progressively Losing”.

      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/richard-kline-progressively-losing.html

      He documents how “progressives” in the US are entirely performative. They are interested in winning moral arguments. Remember the pink pussy hat demonstrations? What became of them? Merely saying you are unhappy via protesting, unless you rally the numbers that greatly exceed the ability of the cops to control them, accomplishes nothing. In NYC, in the cold, about 1 million people turned out to protest the imminent invasion of Iraq. The cops simply herded them up Second Avenue to Harlem. Admittedly the layout of Manhattan made them easier to contain/control but the point still holds.

      It is radicals who come from out groups and have actual grievances, generally but not exclusively economic, that provide the muscle to achieve change on leftist issues. So too few progressives have the tenacity to make real sacrifices to achieve their end.

      1. Andouille

        Yves, with respect, your attempted correction does not substantively rebut what Doug was saying. In general, pointing to a dictionary definition is a poor response to a claim about what a word will be widely understood to mean in a specific context, since it’s entirely possible for these two things to be misaligned. In this particular case, the definition you refer to especially doesn’t contradict Doug’s point – in this context, saying an action is “of the nature of artistic or dramatic performance” carries some pretty clear implications entirely in line with what he’s saying.

        I’m also a bit baffled you would object so vehemently to Doug’s characterization when it seems to agree with the substance of what you’re saying – when you say that US progressives are “entirely performative” and then follow up immediately with “They are interested in winning moral arguments.” as a clincher, isn’t your usage of “performative” accusing them precisely of virtue signalling, as Doug suggests? If not, what is the distinction that you’d draw between that characterization and what you’re actually trying to say?

        Regarding Kline’s article: I don’t come away from it convinced that the distinction he’s drawing between “liberals”, “progressives”, and “radicals” is particularly analytically useful, and indeed I think he’s even letting it confuse his thinking to some extent. The part of what he’s getting at with this distinction between “value-driven” and “economic” activism that’s probably true is this: People with skin in the game, who are materially affected by the issue in question, tend, on balance, to be more driven and engage in much more pointed and effective activism. However, in my mind he commits a huge conceptual error by allowing himself, at times, to situate this distinction in the issues and policies in question, rather than in the people. After providing a list of policies which hold for “progressives”, e.g., he says “A most relevant point is that these are value-driven policies. Notably absent are economic policies.” – but this is only true for a certain kind of person. “Abolition”, for example, was certainly a moral issue for some, but it also had a very real and pressing economic dimension for, e.g., slaves. (Also for unenslaved participants in a labor market which involves “competing with” slave labor, at that.) “Consumer protections” aren’t an economic issue only up until the point where a defective product maims you and you can’t work anymore. “Civil rights”, as well, aren’t really cleanly separable from “anti-discrimination in housing and hiring” (which he cites later as a “radical” policy), either conceptually or in terms of historical activism. I could go on, but – as I say, the point is that the actual meat of what he’s saying deals with particular motives and modes of engagement, and by conflating this with the issues themselves he’s leaving a lot of conceptual room for less-than-justified dismissals of actions on certain topics.

        To bring it back around to the protests described in the USA Today article: I do not think it is reasonable to suggest, as your post here seems to, that none of the people involved in these protests “have actual grievances”. I would be very surprised, for example, to learn that nobody protesting Trump’s immigration policies was facing the prospect of deportation or had been affected by the loss of birthright citizenship – simply put, I don’t think this divide is as clean as you’re drawing it.

        To answer your question (“How does this accomplish ANYTHING in preventing deportations?”): As I mention above, even seemingly symbolic protest actions play several important roles in building capacity for more serious forms of opposition. It is far easier to organize, say, a general strike if you know you have a large base of people who are invested in the issue you want to strike over, they know you, and you have practice mobilizing them for large-scale actions. To reach that point, you need lower-commitment (and hence lower-impact) actions to build momentum and numbers over time, to acclimatize people to taking action on an issue as a matter of practical reality. Going from “never having participated in an action” directly to “being the first one (or the tenth, or even the hundredth) to throw yourself on the gears of the deportation machinery” without intermediate steps isn’t something that people really do, by and large.

        Now, I do share your skepticism that many of the people and organizations involved here have the wherewithal to actually convert on the mobilization they have going right now in this way. However, what they’re actually doing in the present moment is largely the same as what they’d be doing if they did, and maybe there will be some who surprise us. Either way, having large numbers of people marching in the streets over these issues makes effective action more feasible and likely, as Doug says – even if all of the organizers of the present actions turn out to be irredeemably limp-wristed, at the absolute minimum these protests have the effect of demonstrating to people likely to take more radical actions that they plausibly have some broad base of support to draw on. Certainly the present state of affairs is far less demotivating to such people than the absence of protests would be.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          Did you actually read the USA Today piece? The protests were all in the mere hundreds. This is a joke. I can’t even believe anyone is trying to depict them as anything other that utterly pathetic in light of the astonishing Trump wrecking-ball-level actions on so many fronts.

          Second, as to the dispute over definitions, the terms Dave used was “fake” and “virtue signaling”. That strongly suggests the participants are insincere. I never said any such thing, nor does my definition. The notion of “performative” as a staged event, as in say a play, is designed to influence the mental state and perhaps even the beliefs of the audience, as opposed to take direct action to affect the course of events, like create physical obstacles to collecting detainees, or sabotaging ICE vehicles, or helping provide legal advice to those fighting deportation warrants or setting up and running safe houses. All of those take some persistent effort over time and some involve physical or legal risk-taking. Showing up at a protest does not. I protested the Iraq invasion knowing full well it was pointless except to be able to say later I had done it, that I was not on board with the war.

          Americans have had very little in the way of successful protest movements, and none since the 1960s. We do not have anything approaching the French or the UK/European labor organizing history, and the understanding of the sacrifices that are likely required, as in accepting the risk of being beaten or even killed. Think, by contrast the medics and journalists who went to Gaza knowing they were targets and many did die. Do you see any signs of that level of physical courage here? That is in the end what it takes.

          And this is consistent with what Kline says. DLG, from Chicago, now in Italy, which unlike the US has a history of serious protesting and is a serious student of Italian history and intellectual thought, thinks Kline has a lot of merit. By e-mail:

          I re-read at the piece. Brilliant as ever. His triad of progressive / liberal / radical (left) is still part of my thinking.

          The piece has aged remarkably well, except for, ohhh, Dylan Ratigan.

          Early labor organizers in the US were regularly lynched. That history is oddly just about never told. Part of Daniel Ellsberg’s reason for releasing the Pentagon Papers was he personally knew people who has been sentenced for anti-Vietnam protests and serving time in prison, and if they were willing to make that level of sacrifice, he needed to as well.

          So what have we had since the 1960s? Occupy, a two month campaign that was crushed overnight in a 17 city paramilitary crackdown, never to come back save as humanitarian relief (Occupy Sandy) and important reformist critiques (Occupy the SEC). There’s no memory or muscle on which to build.

          1. Andouille

            I did, yes. There was at least one that was claimed to reach “thousands” territory, rather than hundreds, but I take your point.

            I spent several years as a union organizer in the US. None of the history you’re pointing to here is unknown to me. As mentioned, I share many of your frustrations about the present state of labor and left organizing in the US, not least because I have personally had to deal with it on a practical level.

            However, what I am trying to get at, and what I take Doug to be trying to get at, is the following question: Given that state of affairs, how does one proceed? How do you advance from a situation where minimal memory and muscle remains (I wouldn’t go so far as to say “no”) to one where something can be accomplished?

            I’ll try not to reiterate too much, since I already talked about this at some length in my last comment, but the solution necessarily involves exercising – taking action to build that memory and muscle. While you are still weak, these actions will be correspondingly unimpressive – some might say “pathetic”, even. Despite this, they are still a necessary step in building the collective strength and organization necessary to substantively oppose the people in power.

            Now, I will say again: I do not think skepticism of the ability and inclination of many of the specific people and organizations involved here to build and use that power is entirely unwarranted. That said, intentionally or otherwise, many of your remarks so far come across as dismissive of them not on those grounds, but rather merely on the basis that they are not already at the point of being able to strike more telling blows, and to the extent that that is the sentiment you’re communicating to your readers I think you are making a mistake, and encouraging attitudes that are ultimately counterproductive. You can’t organize an action like a general strike if no one acknowledges it’s necessary, but you’re also not gonna manage it with people who dismiss all of the steps needed to get there for not already being the action itself.

            (On Kline: I appreciate that DLG may have a different take, but the existence of someone with a different take doesn’t really persuade me of anything on its own.)

            1. Yves Smith Post author

              I am not the sort that offers hope. The US has no muscle memory here. Tocqueville described how (more politely) that Americans even then were moneygrubbing hustlers. Unlike Europe, where protests have delivered positive change, there’s no belief in that here (even with the history of the Vietnam war protests; there’s a tendency, which may not be entirely wrong, to depict the war as becoming untenable due to TV bringing its horrors to American living rooms and the Pentagon Papers). Protesting is at most for kids and losers. Neoliberalism and now friggin’ cell phones have further weakened community and even interpersonal bonds.

              I have long predicted that the end game in the US is not organized protest or other forms of action, but more and more individual act of violence. As we know, that does not scale and justifies more and more aggressive surveillance and police state measures.

              1. Felix

                Yves, I must agree with your points here. There were numerous high school student walkouts throughout the Bay Monday, joining the anti ICE protests (Day Without Immigrants). Beautiful to see their enthusiasm, I was them back in the day. Realistically there are some organizing opportunities among the youth, breakfast programs and other work in the community. Even those with skin in the game are afraid to put our bodies on the line. There are few Annie Mae’s among us.

              2. Andouille

                And yet there was a time when the US labor movement was a force to be reckoned with. The protections US workers do enjoy today, eroded as they now are, exist at all because people collectively fought (and in many cases, as you point out, died) for them. I agree that present-day Americans disproportionately have a limited understanding of this point – the oligarchs’ versions of history, which tend to obfuscate the actual functioning of political power, are regrettably widespread. That said, these things were and, perhaps, will be again.

                I think probably we won’t reach consensus on this issue right now, but I did want to register that, in my book, the sort of totalized pessimism about collective action in the US you’re evincing isn’t useful or borne out by history.

                1. Yves Smith Post author

                  America had much stronger social ties then. And labor worked in manufacturing plants, which had a lot of capital costs and it took some training to operate the machinery. The early unions were craft unions; general employer/industry-based unions came later. So strikes could inflict a lot of pain in manufacturing.

                  The structure of our society and economy is very different.

  7. Wukchumni

    A very American fear aeon (Micael T). How about it can create unrealistic expectations about bodies and sex acts and make it difficult to get aroused by normal stimuli? Why, for instance, have boob jobs become pervasive among actresses (if you know the telltale signs, it’s evident) and plenty of “not paid to be looked at” women with the money to buy them?
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    This is Naked Capitalism, but don’t try hanging out in your birthday suit in most places in the USA, because I think we only equate being naked with the act of sex, there could be no other reason in our rather strait laced lifestyle.

    Janet Jackson exposed 1 breast about 20 years ago at the Superbowl-which is 50% less than you’d get with a page 3 daily tabloid lass in the UK. and caused much consternation… yeah we’re that prude.

    About a decade ago I was pulling into Arizona hot springs on my kayak on the Colorado River, when I spied 4 or 5 women on the beach in their 30’s with boob jobs that were much bigger than their body frames, and they had attractive males with them, and honestly my first thought was they were all from a porn shoot-it had the look.

    A little later I was disabused of the notion, as they were all ICU nurses from a Vegas hospital, and said males were ICU doctors.

    1. GramSci

      Kids who grow up on farms see lots of graphic animal sex. Not so many kids like that anymore. Of course, back in the day, just as today, many found it useful to insist, with biblical authority, that humans are not apes.

      2. amfortas the hippie

        aye.
        im watching a rather violent goose orgy right now while having brunch.

        and when i was late teens, early 20’s, mom raised goats.
        (for unknown, to this day, reasons)
        she kept the 2 boys separate most of the time.
        breeding day was a lot of fun.
        my buddies and i would get a cooler full o beer and some lawn chairs and sit out in the pasture when she’s turn em loose.

        1. Wukchumni

          Right at this very moment there is a ladybug gang bang going on like you wouldn’t believe in Sequoia NP.

          You have to hike a few miles to Ladybug Camp where they are most definitely getting it on-we’re talking hundreds of thousands of them writhing on the ground and not 1 with a stitch of clothing on, last time I was there one of the denizens had hooked up stereo speakers and this is what I heard upon getting close…

          Loves Theme – Barry White

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9G201XW4Js

    2. Mikel

      “Janet Jackson exposed 1 breast about 20 years ago at the Superbowl..”

      No, Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson’s 1 breast at the Superbowl.

    3. The Rev Kev

      I notice a lot of high class society women in videos coming out of America with a similar look – round boob jobs, high cheek bones, odd shaped lips. Melania Trump is kinda like that. I notice too a lot of Botox being used and it seems to improve the looks of older women but with younger women, it makes them look artificial.

      As for that ‘A very American fear’, I find it weird that a parent will forbid their kids watching a film as it has boobs and bums in it – but they will put on a Quentin Tarantino film for them instead.

        1. Expat2uruguay

          The link is to a foto collage of Miss Korea beauty contestants, wherein they all have the same facial features, likely due to aspiring to the same beauty standards in plastic surgery.

          Just imagine what this would do to facial recognition technology. If one of those ladies murders someone, or perhaps goes missing, it could really be a mess for all of the women who had plastic surgeries to arrive at the common beauty standards. I feel like there could be a near future mystery novel about this!
          The Case of the Murderous Beauty Queen(s), a case of which who done it! The various beauty queens could then realize that they have an opportunity to kill someone and not be uniquely identified by facial recognition.

        2. Leftist Mole

          I’ve been watching a lot of Cdramas and there are a number of interchangeable young actresses who look almost Caucasian. Huge eyes and huge lips and chiseled faces. I have half Chinese half Caucasian children and even they don’t look this white.

      2. griffen

        On older women…since I’m now in my early 50s there are various stars I grew up watching in the 1990s, and it is interesting but obsessively to follow how their career arc continues. Most would recognize immediately who I’m talking of..

        By one example, Jennifer Garner….she was recently in a vigilante movie called Peppermint which just made her look quite the bad a**, and given my streaming options are limited, well I can’t speak to anything else she might be doing. I’ll include Jennifer Connelly in that grouping as well…Now I think of it she was well cast as the wife of Noah in the movie …

        Adding here…I recently joked that a “legitimate” usage idea for AI was to have remote care via Zoom or whatever be delivered by a virtual Dr of one’s choosing…if one could choose a popular actor or actress at least healthcare would be “funner” than it might be otherwise…\ sarc

        1. anahuna

          One of the (many) reasons I enjoy watching shows from other countries (European, East European, Scandinavian) is the largely unreconstructed look of the women’s faces. You can actually read a history of thought and emotion there, along with minute instantaneous reactions. This is true of male actors too, of course, but the contrast is particularly notable in women.

      4. jonboinAR

        To me, I’m afraid, facial plastic surgery just looks friggin’ weird. I remember 2-3 decades ago, something, seeing a picture of Faye Dunaway. She was just starting to wrinkle up. I thought, there’s an extremely good looking older lady. Yes, my thought probably was “older” lady. Next time I saw her she’d had a bunch of work done on her face. She looked monstrous, to me. Ruined her looks, ruined them.

        2. Ken Murphy

          Back when I was working at BNP in NYC I would see the old Park Ave matrons out and about and their faces were horrifying to me. Part of that was my Asperger’s (wait, that’s not right…), but mostly it was the seriously waxen complexions, the drooping facial muscles, the weird eyes and worse, the makeup trying to hide it all. Women have a natural beauty; I honestly don’t understand all the effort to make it not so.

        3. Yves Smith Post author

          A few women have had plastic surgery and still look great. Jane Fonda is the textbook example. Nicole Kidman has apparently had some work but only very little, methinks. But IM Doc says there is a very small cohort of plastic surgeons, all artist/prima donnas, who do brilliant work but cost a fortune. So the dropoff to the “expensive but not catastrophically so” plastic surgeon, in terms of quality, is large.

          Plus I suspect many start with filler and Botox, not from a top or even supposedly really good guy, and that interferes getting real work when you get to that point.

    4. Camacho

      as they were all ICU nurses from a Vegas hospital

      They got a discount, and couldn’t let it go to waste.

    5. Carolinian

      Funny I was under the impression that the 1950s large breast obsession (paging Dr. Freud) was on the wane.

    6. Wukchumni

      p.s.

      Being naked in a hot springs in the USA is more likely the further away from what passes as society, but you’ll rarely see nakedness at private ones that charge an entrance fee.

      The aforementioned Arizona hot springs is a rare in-between case, they often get boy scout troops, and seeing one of my female friends in the buff might be one of their first opportunities ever to see somebody naked in their young lives. We’ve actually had scoutmasters try and shield their young charges eyes from being able to glimpse the human form, by raising a towel banner, gawd that was funny.

      Don’t forget a bathing suit if you’re going to any Utah natural hot springs, they’re sticklers against nudity and often you’ll see signs forbidding the practice.

  8. upstater

    Automotive technology hellscape…

    Our 2019 Subaru needed a new battery a few weeks ago and it was replaced. It was also due for NYS inspection this month and a warranty repair so we took it to the dealer. A hot mess ensued.

    Apparently as part of the NYS inspection a port is plugged into a NYS big brother data system to check operation of emissions controls. But… if the always-on innards get zero voltage, this wipes out emissions history. Because there is no history, the car “failed” inspection! This is obviously a Subaru design defect.

    The solution? The dealer told us “drive the car at least 500 miles to reset the emissions history”. WTF? we average 500 miles a month and it is winter. So I’m supposed to drive to New York City and back and then get the emissions re-tested? I guess it was a “good” thing to get inspected on February 7, so I have 3 weeks to run up 500 useless miles. There is no work-around. Things get worser and worser!

    1. .human

      LOL. My ’08 Ford Escape Hybrid stopped displaying the correct date in August ’23. A few sessions of search revealed that only the day of week and time of day could be set. The internal 10 bit register that holds the week count since January ’04 had become full. There is no way it will ever become useful again.

    2. Jonhoops

      Google drive cycle for your vehicle. Buy an obd2 device and check to see if the various monitors have set themselves. Hopefully the drive cycle isn’t too bad to do on your car.

    3. lcm

      Your dealer should have read the emissions data before changing the battery since your car was in for inspection. Or, like our local battery dealer, set up some kind of continuing charging system before changing the battery so that nothing electronic is lost.

  9. IM Doc

    As DOGE begins to set its sights on HHS, I think it is worthwhile to hear from a primary care doctor on the ground. Right now, the attention is focused on the $160K Fauci shrine in the NIH building being shelved. Those sorts of things are literally couch lint to the real problems. And our system has made every PCP in the country complicit in an a mind boggling swindle and fraud. A gun in the form of their patients’ life or death is held to their head every day. It is not just Medicare billing for visits that is a reason so many are refusing to see Medicare patients – it is something far more sinister. There is a reason for moral injury in doctors and what I am about to describe is one of the worst causes. I have watched as this problem has gained in wealth extraction since I was a young MD decades ago. The skim has been going exponential over the past 5 years or so. It makes you heartsick when you think about the sheer scale and simplicity of the looting every day.

    A bit of back fill is in order. The issue I describe here is all about durable medical equipment. Hospital beds, oxygen compressors, CPAP machines, wheelchairs, etc. Myriads of items. Medicare does not buy these items outright and then provide to the patient. No, the items are “leased”. And I as the PCP am sent orders that I must sign to activate the lease. The vast majority of these patients could never even consider buying any of these items – they are often thousands of dollars at retail. So, for example, one of the orders I signed yesterday was for an oxygen compressor. You can find these online at retail, the exact model, for about $2100 new. I saw the exact model online yesterday for $450 used. So, Medicare could purchase this item for 2100 for the patient to have the rest of their life or the unit’s life – usually 5-10 years. Instead, Medicare “leases” this from various pre-selected vendors. There is ZERO competition – these vendors are already chosen. The compressor I signed for yesterday for an entire year lease was 1850 a month. So, the company is going to make 22,200 this year on an item that will cost them about 2100 retail, or about 1200 wholesale. Every year of the lease after that the patient lives – and most of them do live for several years – is pure astronomic profit. Now, please realize – I sign 10-12 of these every day. 5 days a week. Now consider there are about 300K PCPs out there in America. The sheer amount of the steal is just too hard to even consider. All of this is completely “legal”. The checks are written every day – no human at HHS or CMS ever looks at them. There are, a few times, forensic audits looking back when patterns emerge after years of payouts that system gaming has been happening. These type of “catches” are very few and far between – and this is largely “illlegal”. You read occasional newspaper stories about companies stealing tens of millions and no equipment delivered. Again – this is backward looking – often for years-old transactions. A few people do go to jail but often large sums of millions of dollars is never recovered.

    And another big difference compared to 30 years ago. At today’s rates – in the early 1990s – the lease amount on a 2100 dollar item would have been something like 100 dollars. Now it is 1800. As I said above – the level of the skim has just gone exponential over the past 5 years.

    The amount of looting and theft of the treasury is just unbelievable. I have contacted Congress people, I have confronted them in town halls, I have called the Inspector General at HHS numerous times only to get as far as a clerk and be laughed off. I have filled out IG forms dozens of time – and not once ever had any response. I have sat across from hospital admin on numerous occasions and been looked at like a moron – with the untoward feeling that the person across the table was into the scam at a neck deep level. I gave up about 10 years ago. And I often have a very sick feeling every time I sign these off.

    Being the scientist I am – I decided this week to test a hypothesis – to see if this care about waste was real. So I applied the scientific method. I conducted an experiment. I gathered up a series of 5 random orders that came across my desk. I added up the retail cost of each item found on the internet – all 5 orders totaled 15,750. I then added up all of the “lease” costs for these items that were listed for the 12 months I was signing for – $121,832. I then called the IG office. For the first time in my life, I was immediately connected to an Inspector. I was listened to. I had faxed all this paperwork to her and she and I went over every detail. I was heard. I was listened to. And I was told – yes this is a huge problem. Please give us time – it is being worked on. I was then asked to fill out the formal papers for a complaint. And I am still awestruck today. And please note, this is just one tiny aspect of the medical fraud going on. I do not doubt this is going to take quite a while to work through. I am just thrilled at the new attitude.

    Back to the scientific method. When an observation occurs that has never happened before, you as the scientist must then make an accurate assessment of your current conditions – and begin hypothesizing. There are only 2 I can think of – 1) The advent of the Trump admin – 2) The advent of DOGE. And 3) is always present in any experiment – Who knows? —- That is it. I have no evidence right now to pursue these hypotheses – but my guess is evidence will start to flow in very short order.

    I would ask a question – How is this type of Treasury looting for 1-2 generations not a coup? How is it not a coup when just a very few people are looting the Treasury like this all of my adult lifetime?

    1. The Rev Kev

      The US is going into debt at the rate of about $1 trillion every 100 days. I would estimate that the majority of that money is going on the sort of scams that you just reported across multiple industries. It all adds up. The fact that you were listened to by an Inspector I find noteworthy. It may be that that department realizes that Trump’s mob will look them over sooner or later so if they can get on top of some of these scams right now, it will make them look better when this happens.

      1. Tom67

        Fantastically interesting. Am in Ukraine now and about a week ago the Guy i am sharing the Apartment with was deliriously Happy. Dozens and dozens of grantfeeders (grantosheri in Ukrainian) that is ultrapatriotic and lbgtq Bloggers were suddenly begging for money. Turned out that 9 out of 10 got money from the US. The commentaries below their begging were acidic. Schadenfreude was the least hostile reaction.

    2. Wukchumni

      My late mom was a Great Depression era kid, which meant you saved everything, probably drawing the line at belly button lint, but you get the idea.

      About a decade ago she gave me her mid 1961 to mid 1962 checkbook register, as a check for $190 had been written to pay for my coming out party.

      There was a series of checks for $6 and $7 to Dr. Evers-our PCP, with one whopper for $14 which I assume must’ve been for open heart surgery.

      The total health bill for a year not including my delivery was $88 for a family of 6. I asked my mom if we had health insurance, and she related that aside from the Kaiser Plan, nobody had health insurance back in the day.

      Dr. Evers probably had little in the way of newfangled expensive medical gear, a stethoscope here, an x-ray machine there, he really had to be intuitive in diagnosing patients.

      We’ve come a long way backwards, while greatly advancing the rise of machines.

    3. GramSci

      Docs wanted to put me on a CPAP ten years ago for snoring and sleep apnea. I lost some weight, but that barely helped. Instead, I started using three pillows piled into a bed wedge.

      Problem solved.

      1. Joe Well

        Also try taping your mouth shut, after first making sure your nostrils are clear enough to breathe through. Got me like 80% of the benefit of CPAP. In fact, if I cant breathe through my nose it’s hard use CPAP anyway.

    4. pjay

      This is a crucial, and extremely depressing point. My parents both went through long periods of illness before they died. No one who has serious examined itemized medical bills in such situations would disagree with your description. It is a massive system of wealth extraction first and foremost. And it is such a large part of our economy that it has completely captured and corrupted our political processes. The problem is that for many of us it is hard – impossible, in fact – to believe that the destruction of this corrupt government “safety net” in favor of a privatized system run by our financial and techno-feudal overlords will be an improvement. Will absolutely essential services for those who need them be preserved while the undeserving pigs at the trough are cut off? In my long life of observing these sorts of “reforms” it is usually the opposite that occurs.

      As always, I hope I am wrong. But I just can’t see Trump or Musk as actual populists who have the good of “the people” at heart. I do think Musk is serious in his comments about tremendous government waste and his desire for more efficiency. But how are “waste” and “efficiency” going to be defined by our genius Philosopher Kings? Are the actual needs of the superfluous masses really going to be of concern to these guys? Or is this just another “good cop bad cop” performance where the Red Team comes in and slices more of what’s left of the government and then the Blue Team comes back whining in a few years.

      1. IM Doc

        I would say to you the following…….I have had a lifetime to really think about this as the fraud just continues to worsen. I would love to hear alternate takes. I remind you, this issue is but one of many in health care that are just unbelievable swindles – Home Health Care, Hospice, Dialysis, Infusion Centers, Chemotherapy, I can go on and on and on. The hospice issue is probably the most depressing. Very few making big bank on the terminal suffering of others.

        How is having a few people at the top of these pyramid schemes looting the Treasury any different than “privatizing”? How is the system we have now actually not way worse. There seems to be absolutely zero oversight on any of this.

        I am afraid if this exposure is kept up – the American people are going to be shocked beyond belief about what has been going on. Their tax dollars, Medicare and insurance premiums, etc wasted and spent like this.

        And yes, this is potentially going to be a literally gargantuan economic hit. Lots of people are going to lose work from the on the ground people, those sitting at home getting a paycheck while playing video games ( not going to take any grief about this – it happens – I have patients who do this and laugh in my face about it ) – all the way to the exalted few who own these companies and the golf club memberships, massage and spa people and the millions and all the workers and employees to maintain their lifestyles.

        And unfortunately, as a Dem, I can see the current response of the Party – just blaringly ignorant of the exposures at hand, screaming about DOGE etc – again – when this all comes out – and the way they are acting now – they will be the ones blamed and more importantly, it will be all their fault for being this dense. Where I have chosen to live in the past has put me with my Congress people mostly being Dems. Over the years – and plenty of time when they had all the control and power – I told many of these Congress people TO THEIR FACE of the impending disaster and detonation that was coming. They often laughed out loud. Unfortunately, they did nothing about it. And I have very little sympathy for their screaming and wailing right now.

        I really think there is more than just cutting waste going on. I think there is a dawning realization of the financial dislocation coming for the entire country – and HHS and DOD are the two big whales.

        Buckle up friends – this is going to be a once in a lifetime spectacle. I among many others have been begging people to wake up for so long. Especially the Congress critters. This could have been handled decades ago – with pain – but handled. Now it has multiplied exponentially and along with the pain there will be sheer agony.

        1. Tom67

          Strangely similar reaction in Ukraine. People in opposition are at once delighted and elated at the downfall of the grantfeeders but also deeply worried. The US is an immensely powerful country and nobody knows whether this will not end in chaos. And this could be very bad.

        2. JustTheFacts

          When I see stuff like this, I understand why the Chinese sometimes apply the ultimate penalty for corruption. How is exploiting your country for your own benefit while knowing it is wrong any different from treason?

        3. AG

          Thanks Doc for writing down all this in such detail.

          While I took my mother to ER last night by car (- she is ok, fell from her fixie-bike crossing the city and hitting her head – she is retired but still working with kids – fortunately no lasting injuries!)

          – I was listening to Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi talking about DOGE etc. issues. And looking up your comments again in detail adding to Kirn helps a lot and it slowly makes sense in not making sense… in fact in one instance he uses they very same analogy of it all being worse than privatized and that it´s all a scheme. Interesting and instructive these parallels.

          While waiting in ER for about 6 hours without anything happening it was fascinating to see the expensive gear. Berlin Charité was using STRYKER produced wheeling beds which made me think of the US armored vehicle STRYKER. They really look impressive and as expensive. I told the docs there, of course they thought I am crazy. But they opened up and started to chat.

          I asked about their medical shoes and why one half of staff was instead wearing personal sneakers. So I was told, those medical shoes do not slip on the wet floor. But they are very unconformtable to wear. So why wear them in the first place? Answer: If you wear them and you slip insurance is paying. If something happens and you wear your own sneakers no insurance. The fact that these med shoes cause arthritis and for some are awful is apparently insignificant.

          p.s. While there I found out that an old friend from high school times who I haven´t seen in 30 years had been working at Charité as a surgeon until a few years ago but left town again. No happy unexpected reunion.

        4. Felix_47

          As an Oslerian I have to say nothing will change unless we move to salaried single payer with no bonus for satisfaction, extra surgeries, extra tests. (Satisfaction often means giving the patient what they want….not what they need.) We have way too many proceduralists. The only solution is to eliminate financial incentives. As you know half of our operations are unnecessary. The English NHS would be a good model if better funded which the US could do without any effort. The people best qualified to decide what is medically necessary and what is not are the people who went to med school and got a license. Osler once said the person best qualified to decide on surgery was not the surgeon. I think that might have been true in 1908 but not really now but let us hope Musk or RFKjr. are not the deciders. Like lawyers and dentists doctor greed is climbing off the charts and if change is not now the medical industrial complex will continue to devour American prosperity with crappy outcomes as well.

    5. griffen

      That is a remarkable recap of what one can label, well Federal government spending is always and ever a net positive so let this activity run it’s course….Feels likely if possible that the worm is turning and not just in the proverbial sense…

      I think it was a story on very sick emphysema patients who required an oxygen supply, and Medicare had previously been alerted to the likely and high potential for fraudulent billing. These anecdotes always seem isolated, but I have suspicion it’s widespread since what is the risk to an organization doing such nefarious billing for services…Also see, contractors and billing practices for services rendered in oh, say Iraq or Afghanistan…. Billion dollars here and there seem to add up…

    6. katiebird

      In the summer of 2017 both my parents (ages 90+) had falls bad enough that they needed wheelchairs. The cost was covered by Medicare – I think Medicare paid something over $100/mo for each. We were getting monthly reports from Medicare listing their claims and – maybe this was unusual? – the wheelchair company sent monthly statements also. The surprise to us was that after 6 months we got a statement from the Shop that the wheelchairs were paid for in full and now theirs. But this is all just earlier than your 5 year mark. I wonder if that shop has changed their pricing since?

      1. IM Doc

        And I would say to you – you were lucky enough to accidentally be placed with a company with ethics. There are a few still out there – and I do what I can to direct my patients their way.

        Also, wheelchairs and smaller priced items are often handled this way – at least by a few.

        1. katiebird

          I should say that my dad hated that rental policy and usually (he was lucky) he’d buy the item (the machine for mom’s asthma treatments for example) he didn’t do this with the wheelchairs because he was so sure they wouldn’t need them for more than a few weeks. Sadly, they did….

      2. jhallc

        My parents at a point later in their life needed various medical items. I believe that we were able to get a few of those, walkers, wheelchair etc. through their church for no cost.

        1. Ken Murphy

          That kind of good works that hew to the preachings of the founder of their religion is why this atheist is generally okay with the tax-exempt status of churches. Also soup kitchens and food pantries.
          But then I see the examples of the mega-churches and prosperity gospel preachers and much of that goodwill evaporates…

        2. Yves Smith Post author

          Funny, my mother was charged back brace by the hospital after she had a compression fracture, as in not a rental. I bought her hospital bed later, in part because Medicare would not provide an adequate one (we needed one where you could adjust the height for transfers, sit her up, and also fold in the knee area a bit). But they were going to charge her 1X too.

          The bed I got was $2300.

    7. Carolinian

      Thanks. And hope you are right that reform is the aim in much of this DOGE probing. We seem to be living in grifter nation so some of the objections could be coming from those who are on the take.

      There was a time when the press was supposed to uncover this sort of abuse but now they are on the take too–sometimes literally.

    8. Randall Flagg

      Dear IM Doc,

      Thank you for this comment and it’s wonderful to read that things may be changing.
      I hate to say this as you probably have such little free time for yourself and family to decompress and recharge, but your comments and insights are it seems worthy of a regular NC posting/column.

      If not in the medical world, IIRC you also mentioned the other parts of your life that I think many of us would enjoy reading about. The history of the changes in how medicine is practiced, community, your gardening, the other parts of life that make us whole.

      Your initial comments on the Pfizer and Moderna shots way back when were extremely helpful in understanding what was going on with the corruption of the whole mess.

      As always thank you for the time and thoughts you give to us here.

    10. Joe Well

      And the basis of the fraud is that durable medical equipment is so overpriced to begin with. Just let on at the cost of similarly complex non-medical devices.

    11. Bill B

      What we really need is DOGE to show us how private insurance is ripping people off, I believe that Medicare cost per person is significantly lower than the private sector. Or, maybe a DOPSE (Dept of Private Sector Efficiency). But, the objective of many (not all of course) is to make it seem like the private sector is better, when it actually is worse.

      I, unfortunately, have been seeing many doctors over the last couple of years. All of them take Medicare. I’m therefore surprised that it’s becoming a problem.

      1. IM Doc

        Go look up the concept of concierge medicine. Very few take Medicare. I would dare say that more than half of the general internists in any average city are involved with this type of plan or others like it. What has happened over the past 10 years has been devastating as this has taken hold. All kinds of seniors in big cities having to wait for often months for appts – up to 9 months, etc for new patient visits. This is because of the severe manpower shortage this has caused. When half the internists are opting out of Medicare and even insurance in some cases – the system gets very stressed for those who are left. There are pockets in the country where this is not as severe – and you may be in one of them. Yves tells me all the time this is not really an issue in Manhattan, for example. But trust me, this is a very serious problem. The docs do not want to take Medicare not only for the billing issues but also all this crazy stuff I have described above.

        1. Bill B

          Thanks for that, I’ll research it further. I’m in the DC metro area. I believe your concerns re improving Medicare. But I somehow suspect that emphasizing the problems with Medicare, discovered by the super billionaire, will be used to make the private insurance sector look better, regardless of the truth. Ideology. And thus the prospects for M4A deteriorate even further. But, that’s a different discussion.

          I had always thought that concierge doctors were primarily concerned with making more money by switching after my PC doc at the time switched to it about 30 years ago, and that only wealthier people could afford those docs.

          In my experience, the wait times didn’t start really increasing until COVID hit. It never seemed to fully recover. That has been a problem in my area, too. It varies, but getting that first appointment can take a while, then it’s a much shorter wait time to get the second, etc.

          Perhaps this is a digression, but isn’t it true that the private insurance sector is higher cost per person than Medicare? What kind of waste, fraud and abuse is going on in the private insurance sector?

          1. IM Doc

            That is NOT true. But there is a huge caveat and it is why Medicare was created in the first place. You have to age adjust the spending. And that is very very difficult. The older patients and the younger ones with all kinds of severe medical problems, that is the cohort on Medicare, are often orders of magnitude more expensive to care for than those on routine commercial insurance. So, the average spend per patient for Medicare patients is much higher. My Medicare patients see me often 5-6 times a year – they see all kinds of specialists, they are on way more drugs than younger people, they get admitted to hospitals much more commonly and end up in places like rehab units that are very expensive at rates that are 9 to 1 or so. There are all kinds of very expensive carve outs that just load Medicare up with all kinds of outlays – the classic example being dialysis – in order to get something like dialysis, you must be placed on Medicare. Private insurance does not have to face these kinds of things at all. Dialysis currently is an average of 20k-30k a month. And FYI – I was just told yesterday – that 68% of my private insurance visits for the year are 1 time only – usually for a physical. Trust me – I can say nothing close about Medicare patients. Believe it or not – I have many that have to come in weekly.

            This is why Medicare was created in the 1960s to begin with. Once the insurance companies had literally gutted the elaborate community hospital network in the USA, no one was able to or afford to care for seniors.

            Also, the blatant issues with the kind of fraud I described above just simply does not happen that easily with private insurance. Two reasons for that – every outlay is scrutinized to the max – but more importantly – they just refuse to pay for things all the time. But there is absolutely zero of all this markup stuff in private insurance. The orders and documents I see for private insurance are completely different than Medicare.

            And to your other point, I have written comments on this site repeatedly about the abuses people suffer with private insurance – especially after the deprivation started by Obamacare. It is tragic. The huge premiums, deductibles and outright refusal to pay for care that is obviously indicated. I fight with them all day every day.

            So in essence we have two extremes.

            One system – the government – that just has money flying out the door with no oversight at all.

            And the other – insurance – that makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a Sunday School teacher.

            Somehow, someway we as a society must find a middle ground and really work on this issue. Rah Rah Rah stuff like Obamacare literally made things orders of magnitudes worse.

            1. Bill B

              Points well made. But I was looking at this: https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/

              Key Findings
              Private insurers paid nearly double Medicare rates for all hospital services (199% of Medicare rates, on average), ranging from 141% to 259% of Medicare rates across the reviewed studies.
              The difference between private and Medicare rates was greater for outpatient than inpatient hospital services, which averaged 264% and 189% of Medicare rates overall, respectively.
              For physician services, private insurance paid 143% of Medicare rates, on average, ranging from 118% to 179% of Medicare rates across studies.
              Across all studies, payments from private insurers are much higher than Medicare payments for both hospital and physician services, although the magnitude of the difference varies (ES Figure 1).

              And, couldn’t a lot of money also be saved by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices?

              1. Bill B

                Of course, costs in total are higher for Medicare because older people need more health care. But the relevant comparison is for people 65 and older. So, it looks like Medicare performs better for those.

            2. Tom67

              FWIW a story from Germany. A friend of mine, a very smart lady with little money and eye trouble who is over 70 decided to visit a private doctor and rather pay 150€ (same like$) than go to a doctor that would treat her for free on her public plan. Why? Because all the ophtamologists in her area have been bought up by private equity and treatment is not according to needs anymore but according to what brings in the most money from the government kitty. Of course I got to mention that this doctor is ethical. 150$ for half an hour of examination is ridiculously little. Or how a doctor friend of mine said: often it is better for a patient to do nothing or very little instead of going the full monty. If PE is involved the latter is not an option anymore. Anyhow IM Doc thanks very much for your contributions. You alone already make it worthwhile to contribute to NC

            3. Procopius

              IM Doc, thank you. If you want a clear picture of how things fell apart, I recommend reading The Beer Game. All five parts. It’s a long assignment, but interesting. Every effort we’ve make in the last sixty years to rein in the costs of medical care has worsened the problems. Of course, the basic problem is the end of capitalism. Since 1973 the oligarchs have turned more and more to looting. IBGYBG is their philisophy. Another good source is The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One.

        2. annie

          It is definitely a problem in Manhattan now. Three years ago when our GP/Cardio doc, who did take medicare, retired, we could not find a recommended g.p. in the city who took medicare. The variables were how much a doc would charge per visit: We now pay $700 for our check-ups, but doc always orders extra tests that his office is equipped to perform. My annual check up this year ended up costing $1800, a shocker.

      2. Bsn

        It is a problem, a real problem. A good friend is an anesthesiologist (Med. Doc) and his wife is a nurse. They lost their primary physician about 6 months ago due to consolidation of the local Med. provider office. Neither can find a doc for them and their family. The fireman’s house is on fire and there are no fire trucks available!

    12. Boomheist

      Thanks, IM Doc, for this post and following comments and I echo another commenter that you should get a regular gig on NC. I also think you should spend a session or two on a 2Way video as well, Mark Halperins news outlet that is growing by leaps and bounds and is highly informative and intentionally non-partisan. There is little I can add to this except to say that for the last three years I have been serving as a SHIP or SHIBA volunteer, advising people about Medicare choices, in the PNW, and I confess to date I have had few people with DMI or durable medical equipment issues. I have however also been training to become a fraud specialist as well, such as it is, Senior Medicare patrol I think they call it, and it has been highly illuminating. I will mention two aspects: first, and most important, most of the fraud that happens is invisible, and by that I mean, the bills are offered and paid between supplier and Medicare or Medigap or a Medicare Advantage Plan, and the patient doesn’t see any of it. By that I mean, if they have an oxygen machine at 1800 a month and that is all paid by Medicare and their Medigap plans, ie no personal billing, then they aree likely unaware of it at all. They get quarterly statements filled with data and are only looking for “patient share” and if that is zero, well enough. Meaning, the fraud is in plain sight but never seen, nor worried about, and I, in my feeble capacity as a volunteer fraud person, cannot even be aware of this. I only become aware if for example someone who does NOT use an oxygen machine sees a bill for using one, and that does happen, and we report that.

      Second, as a fraud person I do reports and I think they go to the state Insurance Office and then the details and data go to the Federal government, the office of the Inspector General I think, and it is up to THEM to follow up. Do they? Can we track how they follow up? No clue.

      Everyone knows the level of fraud in the system is over a hundred bullion, but THIS fraud – false billings, etc -is pale compared to the LEGAL fraud that the whole system relies on. Every Medicare Advantage plan is paid anywhere from 900 to0 1400 a month for ever single patient in their system, our taxpayer dollars, from which restricted networks and, among other things, huge CEO payments and advertising (Joe Namath) are paid. My guess is if we went back to Original Medicare only we would save half a trillion dollars there alone….

    14. Rick

      Interesting to compare the graft you document with what happens for someone on Medicare who doesn’t need the extra equipment. My occasional PCP visits plus some physical therapy are paid an absolute pittance. It’s hard to imagine keeping an office open with the kind of discounts Medicare demands.

      Sure seems like this is a lot of corporate graft, but I can see individual providers becoming the target. If the current administration actually fixes it I will be amazed. If just 1% of the cost of the “stuff” graft went to the providers it would be great, but who knows what the wrecking ball approach will bring.

      Makes me disgusted with our country, regardless of political affiliation.

    15. wendigo

      Well, according to a few right wing websites, DOGE has been uploading data to the cloud and then using AI to analyze the data, allowing it to quickly find wasted spending.

      I took the time to ask Chatgpd why Medicare rents instead of buying when buying would be cheaper.

      Turns out there are at least 5 compelling reasons to rent instead of buying . The biggest being lower upfront costs for Medicare.

      So, as correct as your analysis is, it is wishful thinking to expect AI to come to your conclusions.

      1. IM Doc

        In so many of these items, the rental cost is already much more than the actual cost of the item I can find online – often in 2-3 months. That is so markedly different than when I was young, when the rental costs would take 18-24 months to catch up with the market cost.

        I can understand a rental type model when it is possible that the patient may die in very short order. But that is hardly ever what happens.

        And FYI, I do not use AI for anything medical. It is actually quite scary what patients bring to my attention every day. And I am now forced to use it every day on my notes. Scary is not even in the ballpark of how I feel about it. It is not very intelligent at all.

        1. wendigo

          That is the thing, you are absolutely correct. The answers I got did not reflect the real world.

          But, if the rumours are close to correct the young inexperienced Muskites are using AI to analyze the data. I used chatgod (deliberate spelling) to see what answer they will get when they query why so much is spent on renting equipment.

  10. bobert

    Thanks for the aeon article about the birth of naturalism. It dovetails perfectly with my reading of David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions, which takes a scalpel to the notion that the era of Christendom was an uninterrupted fog of superstition and religious oppression. Not to mention providing a few sharp kicks to the “angry atheist” mob of Dawkins, Harris, and Dennett, amongst others idiots.

    1. JohnA

      While Hawkins maybe somewhat in your face at times about religion, in what sense is he an idiot? Speaking as an atheist myself who has never been persuaded by any arguments in favour of a supreme being.

      1. Wukchumni

        I too don’t require invisible means of support as my deities are all too real when everything around you is godly.

        Atheism is the attack dog of dogma and vice versa, Pantheists merely befuddle fundamentalist followers.

        1. GramSci

          I think my Fiatnam draft board was seriously befuddled when I applied to be a conscientious objector as a pantheist.

          They gave it to me, though. They had no shortage of cannon fodder.

      2. jsn

        Orthodoxies require certainty, whether divine or scientific.

        We know next to nothing, and living with that requires a humility that offers only social space to certainty, which generally feels like coercion, whether religious or scientific. The best practitioners of various faiths understand this, even atheists in my experience.

        That doesn’t make one a “relativist”, life is real and a universe of mysteries. In our short lives we get to sort out some miniscule representation of it all to ourselves, to the extent we can, and are interested. This universe has plenty of space for some kind of divinity, though I’m not clever enough to see any “One”!

        1. Joe Renter

          Look in the mirror. You are a God to those in the lower kingdoms. It’s a hierarchical universe, IMO.

        1. Alan Sutton

          He may be a bad historian, or at least someone who simplifies history for his arguments. But that does not disprove his assertion that the contents of the bible were politically manipulated over the ages.

          I think that anybody who reads even non academic studies knows that “Gnostic” texts were removed from the bible over the ages because they clashed with the priestly hierarchy’s place in the order of religious authority.

          To say that Dawkins is a bad historian doesn’t not equate to implying “ the bible might be true”as this author does. Dawkins attacks religious belief as unscientific, which it is. That’s fine. Whether he is an accurate historian or not is somewhat beside the point. His historic generalisations are, broadly, true. The bible has been edited over the years to conform to great power censorship.

          One of the reasons that the Koran has more authority, if you believe that type of thing, is that it has not.

          1. dt1964

            ‘Dawkins attacks religious belief as unscientific, which it is.’

            But isn’t scientific belief religious?

    2. cfraenkel

      That article was … annoying? Piles of evidence and history tracing the source of the divide between “naturalism” and “supernationalism” and then jumping directly to the conclusion that because the ancients didn’t have a distinction between the two, therefore “Religion” is the right way to view the world. Great article for linguistic history of a very narrow concept. Awful, dishonest argument supporting it’s priors. 2/10

      1. anahuna

        I don’t see quite how you arrive at the conclusion that the aeon article is promoting Religion. It seems to me that it is examining the way a possibly false distinction between the natural and the supernatural arose and became codified, along with the invidious assumptions that accompanied that process.

        The recommendation is not that we all embrace monotheism, but that we recognize that neither it nor the naturism or scientism that has to some degree supplanted it is necessarily superior to what we would prefer to label as antiquated superstition.

        “We might go so far as to adopt a form of ‘reverse anthropology’, where we think how our own conceptions of the world might look if we adopted the frameworks of others. This might entail dispensing with the idea of the supernatural, and attempting to think outside the box of our recently inherited natural/supernatural distinction.”

  11. The Rev Kev

    “Indoor Marijuana Ops Are Consuming a Staggering Amount of Energy”

    ‘Indoor marijuana growing operations in the U.S. use more energy than all outdoor agriculture combined.’

    Did not see that coming. If they keep this up, how are they going to have enough energy for all those cryptocurrency and AI servers? Won’t somebody please think of the children? I suppose that you could force most marijuana crops to be grown outside instead on actual farms but if that happened, I can see the next headline-

    “Outdoor Marijuana Ops Are Consuming a Staggering Amount of Water”

    Stoners will kill us all. /sarc

    1. micaT

      OK let’s talk pot and power. The article is complete BS.
      For a professional grower ( retired) doing indoor it works like this.
      About 2 pounds per light roughly per sq meter. And at this point it’s been a while and the new strains might be getting more than that.
      Their idea of 2kw per meter is probably close takes a lot for the fans and filtration and AC to keep things cool.
      Lights have improved a lot over the years and many are using LED. But roughly 1000 watts per meter.
      Grow time is about 3-4 weeks of 16 hrs a day ( using 3.5 days average) 3.5weeks x 7 days x 2kw x 16 hrs = 784 kWh
      Bud time is 5-6 weeks of 12 hrs day. 6weeksx 7 x 2kw x 12 hrs = 1008 kWh.
      4# of processed = about 1792 kWh.
      National average for electrical usage per household per month is 900 kWh.
      So roughly 2 months of average household usage will get you 4# of bud.

      Some do a full cycle from clones to harvest in 8 weeks, some 12.
      There is some additional minimal power for the cloning works, which is low power so they don’t burn.

      No where close to using a whole years worth of electricity for #4 of bud.

      I am not in support and I think the laws requiring pot to be grown indoors is beyond stupid for all sorts of reasons, but energy use is at the top of that list.

      Oh as to the lighting, it’s right around 1000 watts per meter squared like I said which is the same as most places in the US for noon time sun.

      1. mrsyk

        That grow time number right? 3-4 weeks or months? There’s auto-flower FrankenWeed strains that have shorter grow periods, but four weeks of pre-flowering growth sounds off.
        When you say 2 lbs of product per square meter, is this 32 ounces of dry, trimmed flower?

        1. micaT

          There are a few options on growing. Indoor is usually with lots of small plants usually cloned so they are all female and this means a very short season, usually between 8-12 weeks start to finish. This is because it’s really really hard to keep the bugs out. Then there is outdoor with 2 versions, 1 is light depravation which is kinda like growing indoors and 2 full term or plant in the spring and harvest in the fall. In full term outdoor, plants can get 6-12′ tall depending on the strain.
          In growing indoor, the actual grow time is about 3-4 weeks thats it. What you might not know is that the plants only get 2′ tall. Then it goes to 12 hrs lights, which simulate the fall which trick the plant into flowering ( budding). From planting 6″ high clones to harvest is literally 8-12 weeks. And that amount 2#+/- per light is trimmed bud, not plant material.

            1. amfortas the hippie

              yeah…like tomatoes and peppers.
              and i think the diminishing light “switch” thing is pretty darned cool.
              not a week after the summer solstice and you can see the change coming.
              i havent purchased bud in 3 years, now.

              1. mrsyk

                I have a few times, more to support the local dispensary and see what the local talent has to offer. I prefer my own, use my own seed. It’s dependably not as strong.

          2. Allan Sutton

            We scrape around for seed every year. Grow our plants outdoors and kill all the males. End up with 1-4 plants a year.

            1 is enough for us and our neighbours. In all the other years when we have 2-4 we save for the future and give away shitloads.

            All the plants are at least 6ft tall.

            Nice to have all this technical discussion laid out.

      2. Wukchumni

        Tiny Town used to have quite the reputation of being where people grew marijuana, back in the stoned age before it was legalized.

        If you drove around Cherokee Oaks at the right time, you’d get a contact high from the smells of indoor grows leaking out through the garage.

        I have a few friends that were chancy gardeners and it used to be the only way to make a middle class income here, and it was hard work, with a constant devotion to your crop, forget that Bob Marley nonsense about planting a seed and letting it grow.

        They’d peddle their wares down in LA and it was around $3k a pound and then dropped down to $2k.

        I can legally buy a pound now for $800 including tax out the door.

        There are no indoors grows i’m aware of now, because it would be awkward with the AirBnB guests in the house when you’re tending garden.

      3. doug

        The major study quoted was published in 2012. A lot of LED’s since then for sure. Thanks for the details to debunk what I thought sounded off.

    2. mrsyk

      I grew a couple indoor crops. Not worth the hassle would be my main take away.
      Big Ag Weed. We manage to take the fun out of everything

      1. GramSci

        The only analgesic for an old commie living in Outer Pentagonia, besides proximity to grandchildren, is the legality of growing ~8 oz. of weed every summer. Enough for me and Juana and Xmas presents.

        No, IM Doc, we DON’T smoke it.

      2. playon

        I grew pot indoors for years, mostly for personal use and for friends. I lived where electricity was cheap. That article is crap, not sure what axe they are grinding but if we want to talk about electricity use, how about we talk about bitcoin mining and AI.

        Here’s a comparison from Vice from 2018 – https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-much-energy-growing-weed-vs-mining-bitcoin/

        The short answer is that it takes roughly twenty times more electricity to mine Bitcoin than it does to grow pot.

        Then we can talk about artificial intelligence, which uses way more energy than bitcoin mining:

        https://wired.me/science/energy/ai-vs-bitcoin-mining-energy/

        1. mrsyk

          Time to invent blockchain powered grow lights, lol, efficient, and think of the new crypto branding possibilities.

          1. Skip Intro

            The harvest counts as ‘proof of work’, and unlike crypto, when it goes up in smoke, the owners are happy.

  12. KD

    EU and war:

    I wish I could remember the source, but I recall reading about the great EU plan to issue EU-bloc war bonds to fund defense spending. This would represent a mighty step forward for the EU, even if the result would be an interminable bickering about how to spend the gravy.

    IMHO the EU is completely dead, being a ploy to create a soft currency to prop up German/Eastern European exports while allowing German banks to lend money at low rates on leverage to net-import countries while profiting on interest rate spreads, while “disciplining” workers in those net-import countries (and what progressive forward thinking leader of an advanced democracy doesn’t like “discipline,” at least for other people). Thanks to the Ukraine/Russia economic suicide combined with US/China trade wars, there will be no German/Eastern European exports, Europe will de-industrialize, and the EU will come crashing down when the economic foundations disappear.

    But Brussels can dream, and you can imagine all the gravy that these “war bonds” will create for bankers and defense contractors and crooked EU bureaucrats, but you can’t have “war bonds” without threat inflation and the fear of Russians hiding under the bed. So one can listen to public comments of EU officials, and on one level say their comments are crazy, ridiculous threat inflation and the EU or NATO has no real capability to stop Russia conventionally even if they wanted to, but that really misses the prize, which is the self-licking financial/MIC ice cream cone paid for by the average European working stiff when he or she is not being “disciplined” by her enlightened masters.

    My thoughts on how I stopped worrying and learned to love the tough-talking EU bureaucrats, who are just jealous at all the payola the Ukrainian oligarchs managed to steal over the Russo-Ukrainian war and are salivating at the prospects for replicating the grift at scale across the EU.

    1. The Rev Kev

      There is another “benefit” of Eurobonds – EU taxation. To back up those Eurobonds with collateral, it will let those EU bureaucrats to bring in their long-held dream to bring in taxation levied by the EU itself on EU citizens rather than the member States. Think about all that money flowing from Ireland to Cyprus into the EU coffers in Brussels. minus 10% for the Big Gal.

      1. KD

        My only concern is how the tape worms and the round worms respond when they realize how badly they are being out-competed by financial parasites.

    2. DJG, Reality Czar

      KD: Excellent comment.

      My impression is that the EU war bonds, along with the foolish talk of an EU army, are power grabs by Ursula v d L, Kaja Kallas, and the complacent / complicit Roberta Metsola, president of the Euro Parliament. I will also throw in Italy’s own Pina Picierno, the chickenhawkiest member of the Partito Democratico and, purtroppo, a vice chair of the Euro Parliament.

      It occurs to me, as I watch the many lady chickenhawks like Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland and Pina Picierno, that what they don’t understand that men do understand at a visceral level is defeat in war and its devastation. They think of war as a self-licking ice-cream cone and office politics. Defeat in war is rubble, rapes (of men and women), and mass murder.

      Meanwhile, in the links above, we see Italy’s economic stagnation. Fatto Quotidiano reported on the same figures. The 2024 estimate for growth in gross domestic product is 0.5 percent = stagnation. Industrial production has declined for 22 or 23 months in a row.

      Luckily, Italy has a good deal of wealth stashed here and there, so there is a cushion — or, if you are Musk and Trump and Mario Draghi, plenty still to loot. Here in the Undisclosed Region, people pride themselves on being good workers. And they do put in long hours at not-so-great salaries. I guess the EU won’t want to work them to death — oh, no, I’m wrong about that, eh.

  13. The Rev Kev

    “Ukraine Inches Closer to Final Call-Up ”

    Looks like Zelensky will end up forcibly recruiting 18-24 year olds after all. They might, might get a coupla weeks training, be issued a gun and be sent to the front. Puts me in mind of the 13th century Children’s Crusade for some reason – and that ended up badly too. Funny how nobody talks about Zelensky being the new Churchill anymore and how he can’t get any invites to anything but NATO meetings. He tried four times to get an invite to Trump’s inauguration but they blew him off. Still, they will compare him to historical figures-

    1775 – Patrick Henry: ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’

    2025 – Zelensky: ‘Give me NATO or give me nukes!’

    So inspiring.

  14. TomDority

    US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order sanctioning the ICC for “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel.”
    This is a formal declaration by Donald Trump that despite his public statements about wanting to be the peace president — he is in fact a biggly genocide supporting, human rights violator of the first order unbound or sidestepping our own laws ..
    .just as his predecessors going back to Contra Reagan, Diamond cocaine laundering Bush sr, Haitian Clinton, Torturer/Gitmo/BS/endless war sidestepper Bush JR and his following Presidents straight up to Genocide Joe and the big loop with Trump back in ….Gitmo/Genocide/Money Laundering/Fraud/non-accountability/……the list of normalizations just keeps getting longer and uglier –
    And do not forget the absolute bi-partisanship of all this……I suppose aimed to inculpate all Americans as to these actions.

    1. Wukchumni

      It’s getting bad out there, I was shopping for bread @ the supermarket and my wife wanted Jewish Rye, and I told her I didn’t care for it-which was overheard by the authorities, who immediately leveled me with willingly being anti-semitic, and only upon buying 7 loaves was I let off on my own recognizance.

      1. Erstwhile

        Once I was in NYC and bought a loaf of marble rye. It was early evening, and somewhat dark, and I was taking the bread back to my place, when Jerry Seinfeld stole it from me. I later learned, in a class on grifting that I took at Trump University, that Seinfeld had used a rope to hoist the bread up to George Costanza, through a third floor window, and that was how I lost my marble. And yes, I had only one to lose.

    2. Carolinian

      It’s not a good look. Perhaps he should propose Israel as the 51st state if that’s how he’s going to act.

  15. KD

    A very American fear. . . if people are worried about videos, wait until AI + advanced robotics climb out of the uncanny valley to consume humanity.

  16. Wukchumni

    We’re 19 days into the Bizzaro World FDR 100 Days, where under different auspices FDR started dragging America out of the Great Depression by creating jobs everywhere-an acronym alphabet soup worth!

    Out of nothing, the CCC was up and running with staffed camps a few months after his inauguration, get the country going!

    We only have a few acronyms for Trump’s 100 Days, DOGE, ICE & USAID.

    1. chris

      And yet, it dwarfs anything Biden did. The bar is so low but we don’t have politicians who are even trying to get over it.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Yes, because it’s far too kind to Murphy. He brags about harboring an illegal alien and according to him, out of the reach of the Feds.

      1. mrsyk

        I won’t defend Murphy. IMO, Your trouble and my trouble coexist, perhaps nurture each other.
        In other usage, “…harboring a jew”.

        1. IM Doc

          One of the most clear memories I have as a child is of being dragged to a large Evangelical Christian stadium by members of one side of the family and listening to a sermon by a woman named Corrie Ten Boom. She was a very important figure in the Evangelical/Billy Graham crowd during the 60s and 70s. Her book “The Hiding Place” was an international best seller and they actually made a movie out of it in the 1970s.

          In brief, she and her entire Dutch family during the Nazi occupation hid Jews in their home in Amsterdam. Their father had carefully crafted a place for them to hide when the police came around. It went on for years. They were eventually found out and the whole family was either immediately executed or hauled off to camps, and if I remember correctly, Ms. Corrie was the only one who survived.

          I have a very distinct memory of this sermon/speech because it was so radically different than most evangelical sermons. It was more of a history lesson and a profile in courage lesson. I must admit, we need more of these kind of people so desperately in our world today who can reach out and touch the mind of a 6 year old to the point they remember it when they are 60. And Murphy is not it, sad to say.

          I will always remember and cherish what I learned from that woman. And the contrast between her and the performance art in this Murphy video could not be more stark. There really is no shame in some of our leaders. I get the idea listening to it that he was making up the whole thing. An egregious example of the worst kind of virtue-signalling.

        2. Yves Smith Post author

          Bullshit. He’s hiring an illegal to exploit her by not paying her Social Security and Medicare taxes, and probably a lower wage too. This is not even remotely comparable to “harboring Jews”. It’s an employer-employee relationship with the employer cheating. This is no different than the local restaurant hiring illegal immigrant busboys or the meatpacker hiring undocumented workers because cheaper and more exploitable.

          Among other things, due to the perilous position of undocumented workers, they are often victims of wage theft too.

          If you actually believed that, you would regard him as endangering her by talking her up on TV to invite an ICE extraction.

          Murphy is an ex-Goldman partner. I knew him at Harvard as an undergrad. Frat boy type even though Harvard did not have frats then. He can afford to hire legal help and pay the related taxes.

          I had a friend who was an M&A partner at Lazard, later an MD at Citi. She had 2 shifts of nannies. She hired legal help and made all the required tax filings. If she could do so, so can Murphy.

          1. mrsyk

            My point has nothing to do with whatever Murphy is going on about. If you want to “define performative”, he’s a great example. His whole story seems made up.

            I’m troubled when the lexicon of authoritarianism appears amongst my team’s thought leaders.

  18. The Rev Kev

    “Austrian Police Detain Richard Medhurst; Accuse Him of Being Hamas Member; UK Extends Probe Against Him”

    I would have thought better of Austria than to pull this bs stunt. Well, maybe not so much the Austrians as the Starmer government are probably behind this. When Starmer was Attorney General, he used his position to try to get the Swedes to indict Julian Assange on a charge, any charge, and tangle him up in legal troubles. So I wonder if this is really Starmer using the same playbook but using the Austrians to do this. The one thing about the Starmer government is how they are cracking down on dissent and abusing the law something shocking, especially for journalist like Medhurst and if I were him, I would not be returning to the UK. It may work out in the long run that Starmer will likely end up in the House of Lords for his “services” while Medhurst may have to seek sanctuary in the Russian Federation like others have done such as Tara Reade, Edward Snowden and journalist Eva Bartlett.

    1. Fried

      The Austrian state and media are really really obsessed with Hamas, for reasons I have yet to figure out.

      1. Jorge

        The old joke about Austrians was that “they are more German than the Germans”. This may be another case of Austro-Deutch syndrome.

      2. Chris Cosmos

        Really? Think a little–what faction within the Euro-economy is Zionist and/or controlled by the US/UK intel services? That’s also why Europe is 100% for the Ukraine boondoggle.

  19. johnnyme

    Latest development in the DOGE / Bureau of Fiscal Services saga:

    Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued an emergency temporary restraining order (valid until the 14th) early this morning prohibiting the granting of access to DOGE staffers to BFS systems and requiring that any copies of the data that may have been downloaded be destroyed.

    ORDERS that, sufficient reason having been shown therefor, pending the hearing of the States’ application for a preliminary injunction, pursuant to Rule 65 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the defendants are (i) restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations; (ii) restrained from granting access to all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department, to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees; and (iii) ordered to direct any person prohibited above from having access to such information, records and systems but who has had access to such information, records, and systems since January 20, 2025, to immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems

    2. IM Doc

      My best guess listening to all those around me is this lawfare approach to this situation is going to be about as successful as the lawfare approach to Trump was – it may fare much worse.

      The genie is now out of the bottle. Just the few things that have been exposed have gotten the attention of the vast majority of the country. If the Dems were smart, they would begin immediately working with the GOP in Congress and come up together with ideas to go forward. Get this disaster back in the Congress where it belongs. However, the Dems have shown no signs of anything this rational.

      I guess it is too much to ask as a Dem and an American to actually possess a rational opposition party to the one in power. One that makes sense and that is able to communicate with people. And actually moderate what is going on.

      Instead we have screamers and cryers, drag queen shows and genital thrusting strip shows for 7 year olds, transgender bottom surgery and Casodex for little boys, 9 month abortions that are the equal to infanticide, men being allowed to parade around women’s locker rooms and compete with and steal scholarships for young women, screaming and crying about deporting illegal immigrants who are child molesters, and now this…..

      pulling out the stops in a doomed attempt to stop accountability and management of this horrific looting.

      You know what – I am tired of it. I have to sit across tables from people I literally cannot stand all day long. I grit my teeth and state my case with actual evidence. Sometimes I lose, but a lot of the times, everyone comes up with a plan that all can live with going forward. This is called adulting.

      It is time for the Dems to knock it off with the showmanship that is failing miserably – and start engaging and negotiating with the enemy. I have literally not seen a SHRED of evidence from anything they have said this week that is credible that this grift and crap is actually not happening. Dems, embrace the suck, start acting like adults, etc., admit to all the failures in the past.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        You act as if these problems will be fixed, as opposed to turned over to a new set of rentiers, or the programs gutted entirely, as opposed to run on a sound basis. It was the Republicans that set out to and have significantly succeeded in wrecking the Post Office, one of America’s great institutions, so that it will eventually be privatized or perform so badly that many will use private carriers instead. Look at how the VA has been starved into worsening performance over time.

        This playbook looks most consistent with the neoliberal shock therapy in Russia, which enabled a plutocratic grab of assets. I don’t yet see convincing evidence that this program is for anything other than for the benefit of the Trump billionaires. Either the programs like paying for Medicare hospital beds at home will be eliminated or some other privatized scheme will be put in its place, perhaps less grifty at the outset but I would not bet on it staying that way. See the embedded chapter from Death of a Nation here for how that worked out: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/03/an-american-in-siberia-gives-a-preliminary-assessment-of-the-impact-of-sanctions-on-russia.html

        1. IM Doc

          So we are just to let the looting continue?

          Or possibly work together to fix it before it is too late? The current Dem strategy is just going to let the GOP have it with a bow on top.

          1. DJG, Reality Czar

            IM Doc: The kernel of your comment, as I read it, is to put the responsibility back into the Congress. What you are pointing to is years and years of the Congress abdicating its constitutional responsibilities to control through the power of the purse.

            There’s a reason that the Congress is the Article I institution of government. It is supposed to be the representative of We the People.

            Ahh, We the People: I’m so darned old-fashioned and starry-eyed.

            Instead, we have had years of grandstanding, pointless hearings with grandstanding, lack of oversight, insider stock trading, paralysis caused by the so-called parliamentarian, and oh, delusions of grandeur of the likes of Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Nancy Pelosi, and soon-to-be-hated-internationally Elise Stefanik.

          2. Yves Smith Post author

            “We” don’t get to choose:

            We live in an oligarchy. It’s become even more so under Trump. Look at the composition of his Cabinet and inner circle.

            1. Mark Gisleson

              I’m already looking forward to 2028 when Democrats run to restore government under the banner of Build Back Bureaucracy.

              1. Jabura Basadai

                well aren’t you the optimist – i agree with Yves – or as the Who sang –
                And the parting on the left
                Is now parting on the right
                And the beards have all grown longer overnight
                Meet the new boss
                Same as the old boss

              2. griffen

                Hey it’ll be a long list, some meriting most qualified ever and ever to run for the office…Rebuild and Replace and Repeat..

                Pete Buttigieg
                Kamala Harris ( once more, but with feeling )
                JB Pritzker ( They are good billionaire family, they say )
                Gretchen Whitmer ( No Doritos chips were harmed )

                Or some unicorn new billionaire emerges that can remind us all that Hope was once a promising slogan for a lesser known Illinois Senator, Obama ran successfully on hope and change…That was then…long ago it seems.

            2. DJG, Reality Czar

              Yves Smith: Touché.

              My best witty comeback is that I tend to think of Game of Thrones as Lord of the Rings with Appendicitis.

              Living as I do a ten-minute walk from the building where Gramsci spent most of his Turin years (roughly 1912-1920), I will stick with the formulation: Pessimist because of knowledge, optimist by will.

              I am trying to discern if any of the democratic temperament still exists among Americans, or if that egalitarian mindset has been worn down by too many years of greed and slogans about self-esteem.

              1. flora

                A snippet I found that seems relevant to “democratic temperament” in the current US.

                …it is truly remarkable… how many deeply ingrained beliefs within our society originated from a PR firm being commissioned to instill the belief,… Likewise, it is immensely tragic that PR has transformed Democracy from being a form of government where policies are decided on the basis of how palatable they are to the electorate to one where they’re decided on the basis of how much the PR campaign to get the public behind them will cost.

                  1. flora

                    It’s from a very long article about something else entirely; it’s used to make a point about the power of PR in another field.This snippet is almost an aside in the long article, but seems relevant here.

                    It’s from the substack The Forgotten Side of Medicine.
                    I won’t link because the link would probably be eaten by Skynet, I think. / :)

            3. IM Doc

              I have had an issue for about the past 10 years. I constantly have echoes of classical history rolling in my head. In my mind, I am constantly reminded that life is much different now than it was for most of my life and it is not getting better. Also, how things said and written 2000 years ago now have a kind of resonance they have never had for me before.

              Like this little chestnut that was written by Livy who was describing the last years of the Roman Republic – from his prologue to what is now known as The History of Rome……

              “We can endure neither our vices nor their cure.”

              It seems to me we are really screwed no matter what happens. And again I never thought in my whole life I would actually be living through this. And I have no idea what is the best way forward. The intellect really fails.

            4. Mikel

              It’s that long time problem, many struggle with and fall into on occasion, of making sure the personalities and parties don’t overtake the critique of the systems.

            5. Alan Sutton

              Yves,
              I have only been reading NC for 2 or 3 years, admiringly all the time.

              I have seen some of your strict judgements on errant posters. I admit to being slightly intimidated.

              This is the first open call to arms I have seen you post.

              I don’t dislike it, I am surprised.

              1. Yves Smith Post author

                Thanks for the kind words but I don’t see how you read my comment that way.

                The reason for the Daenerys clip is that she thought of herself as a liberator (“mother of dragons, breaker of chains”) who would bring more enlightened rule to the Seven Kingdoms. As she got closer to achieving her goal, she became more wanton about ends versus means. She destroys much of King’s Landing. Jon Snow, in her final scene, calls her out about burning small children to death. She seems genuinely surprised that he would think that was questionable conduct. “Cerci hid behind their innocence” as in human shields meets GoT and then, “We can’t afford small mercies.”

                So the idealist became a tyrant.

                And I don’t hold libertarian ideology as anywhere near as high-minded as Daenerys when she started out. She did after all free a lot of slaves and even somewhat democratized the Dothraki.

                So this is more a “be careful what you wish for” warning to those who are cheering on DOGE.

          3. Mikel

            As if looting if out of the question for the people there now? I don’t think so.
            You don’t know if they are copying info to sell or what. People weren’t vetted.

            I see as much personal revenge going on…more so at times than any real desire to fix the country. They want to break it and what? Surprise people with the results? I don’t like surprises like that.

            1. Carla

              We know what the results will be: they will be immeasurably richer, living in garrisons and protected by armed guards 24-7. The 99 percent will be impoverished, homeless, sick, and hungry.

          4. flora

            I don’t know how what we are learning will be used.
            I do think sunlight is the best disinfectant,

            “If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.” – Justice Louis Brandeis

            The broad public seems disgusted by the information that has been released about USaid.

            More sunlight please. / .

                2. flora

                  adding: Mike Benz points out there are plenty of Republican pols who are just as interested as Dems in keeping USaid going and its doings secret. It’s bipartisan,

                  1. AG

                    actually… we shouldn´t be surprised. We should be surprised if it weren´t the case. So lets stop worrying and embrace the successor of USAID instead. Whatever its future names will be. Lesser known for sure, broken up and better embedded and disguised.

          5. Pat

            I would think the point is to fix it if even half of the group were forensic accountants and not just tech gurus probably far too dependent on AI and with little experience of actually paying for the necessities of life. It isn’t.
            What will survive will be that which is important to the guys who hired the techies, not what will make Medicare work and not just be a piggy bank for people they don’t like and don’t care about. And not even being in the Constitution as a government responsibility will save the Post Office, regardless of what its loss will do to the rural areas of this country.

            I am not against doing a deep dive into who gets paid what. But nothing about this is transparent and nothing about says that any great care is being taken not to break things while it is being done, especially not with a bunch of keyboard gurus whose backgrounds are already turning out to be deeply problematic. And no, nothing I have seen tells me that a Presidential order actually gets to override laws in place meant to make sure that doesn’t happen.

            1. Bill B

              Medicare already does work, relatively speaking, since it has lower per person costs than private sector insurance, for the 65 and over cohort. So, if there’s fraud in Medicare which increases its costs what the heck is going on in the private sector which has even higher costs? Could there be any fraud there? “Across all studies, payments from private insurers are much higher than Medicare payments for both hospital and physician services, although the magnitude of the difference varies.” https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/

        2. DJG, Reality Czar

          Yves Smith: Thanks for this comment. Yes, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Shock Doctrine has now come down like the proverbial ton of bricks on the U S of A. As you say, the deliberate plan to ruin the Post Office, one of the few institutions mentioned directly in the U.S. Constitution as central to well-governed country, was / is a signal.

          Get out your copies of Naomi Klein’s classic, The Shock Doctrine, and read along.

          I have been sending letters from the Undisclosed Region since my arrival here some 40 months ago. At this point, I am discovering that my U.S. friends simply aren’t getting them. As gk mentioned the other day in the comments, one simply cannot blame the Poste Italiane.

          The Italian post office is light-years ahead of the U.S. Postal Service (I pay medical bills there as well as my city “tasse di rifiuti” (the trash-pickup service tax)).

          Letters are not arriving in the U S of A — let’s think of what that means for basic social life and for our ties with other people.

          1. mary jensen

            Same problem from CH. Absolutely everything I send to the US I now must sent by Registered Mail with track and trace. It costs me more but the intended receives what I send. It’s appalling and a one way street. What’s sent to me from the US arrives to me.

            My advice to you DJG is to send all post to a US destination by Registered Mail track and trace.

          2. Procopius

            Hmmm. Strange. I receive mail from the United States to Thailand. Not much — nobody writes to me personally any more — but I get notices about my credit cards and from Social Security (just got my notice of benefits for 2025 three weeks ago). And the few times I send mail to the U.S. is usually arrives — in a couple of weeks.

        3. JP

          So here we are moving from a period of distributed grift into a period of more concentrated grift labeled oligarchy or as I like to think of it, the restoration of aristocracy.

            1. ambrit

              I would rather characterize “Creepy” Joe Biden as a modern-day Sir Richard Rich. Slippery, slimy, and always ready to sell anyone out if it is to his benefit.
              See: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Rich-1st-Baron-Rich
              In the movies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPxHEVA1wds&ab_channel=Movieclips
              The Cromwell in this drama, played by Leo McKern, is just as slippery and untrustworthy. This Cromwell, served the aristocracy, Henry VIII, and was executed by the same.
              Psalm 146:3 puts it thus; “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”

              1. Alan Sutton

                The problem with that idea is, as you’d expect from the Psalms, there is nobody left to put your trust in except God.

                I am betting that won’t work for us. If it does, the solution isn’t one any of us are going to like.

                By the way, all Thomas Cromwell biographies have been updated and superseded by Hilary Mantel’s superb books, which have also been put on TV by the BBC.

            2. JP

              Let’s not confuse aristocracy with nobility. Classic noble strains of enjoyment of absolute power beyond money exhibited in the pettiness and arrogance of Trump and his enabled accomplice Musk.

              1. Wukchumni

                Who’s to say if Baron Barron assumes the lineage after King Donald has his way with the country?

          2. nyleta

            Situation is similar to the Great Depression period. You are looking for an FDR not a Huey Long like you got. There is a bit in one of the Phillip Marlowe books about Moral Re-Armament where a person says that the percentage will get whoever is running things to eventually return to the bad old days.

            The percentage came out for a while under FDR but here we are. To get the percentage out means a completely new financial system to change the incentives, no other way to do it and you can bet the old financial assets will not be honoured.

        4. ericFromGR

          my dear american friends. If this indeed the 90s russia playbook, the obvious question would be: How can you get a Putin to save you?

          1. Wukchumni

            It doesn’t work like that in Bizarro World collapse USSR vs USA style.

            Yeltsin was a raging drunk, Trump is a teetotaler.

            In theory our ‘Putin’ would be somebody with a similar background to Vlad’s such as John Brennan, that’s scary stuff kids.

            1. Kouros

              CIA works for the benefit of US capital and its freedom to pillage. Different philosophy than KGB…

          2. Yves Smith Post author

            Putin is a one in a hundreds of years leader, a phenomenal and tireless bureaucrat, on the level of Caesar and Napoleon. Don’t bet on what amounts to a deus ex machina.

            1. Alan Sutton

              Wow, Yves.

              A big call. Not one I would disagree with.

              Honest historians will talk about this in a hundred years. If there are any.

              1. Yves Smith Post author

                He turned an entire country around. GDP per capita rose 5x. The prison population fell from about 1 million to 300,000. And Russia is now beating the US + NATO.

                Tell me someone who can even turn a decent-sized company around. The closest we have is Steve Jobs restoring Apple when he came back as CEO, but even then, his rescue depending on the NeXT OS that he created while in the wilderness, which got Apple out of its OS dead end.

        5. Chris Cosmos

          I only half agree with you on this. It is possible for an oligarchy to produce an aristocracy or to put it another way, to create a ruling elite that care at least somewhat for the normal Jane and Joe. Julius Caesar, though an aristocrat was a populist and was killed. I believe rule by an oligarch who is brilliant and cares about the country is better than the thieve and gangsters of the Biden administration.

          In American history there are periods of reform and we are in one now–and it will probably make a difference or we all die at least metaphorically.

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            So you’d like a kingdom? That is where your argument goes.

            This is no different than arguing that there can be good king. You’d rather have no accountability like FOIA and balance of powers and tother checks and balances? You do recall that kings in the days before constitutional monarchies could execute anyone they damned well felt like? That the Magna Carta, which allowed for the nobles (but not ordinary subjects) to have some checks on royal power was considered to be a big democratic advance? Sorry, I am not willing to take chances like that.

            Your argument is also a variant of the family members of Sir Thomas More in the screenplay A Man for All Season, that the ends of getting a bad guy, or in your case, bad conduct, justifies the means of shredding protections.

            He’d give the devil the benefit of the law and so would I.

      2. Boomheist

        People complain about lawfare, and I get it, but the whole point of judges and restraining orders is to put a stick in the road when normal legislative procedures are too cumbersome and slow to act, to buy time to determine the validity of the complaint. Absent that, what do we have?

        1. JP

          Thus with the rise of autocrats we are seeing the sabotage of the court system in many countries.

          Absent that we have pitch forks and fires in the streets as the cost is borne by the greater populus. Of course, in these times, the people could actually vote intelligently but that would be proactive instead of reactive. Don’t see that happening.

          1. steppenwolf fetchit

            Vote intelligently among what? A set of stupid choices deliberately pre-engineered and pre-selected by malicious black-hat bad actors?

            That’s what the Evil Obama did to Sanders and to us in Sanders’s most recent primary effort. Obama conspired with the other minor Democrat PrezNom-chasers to all bow out in favor of Biden in order to outbloat Sanders’s numbers around one choice-engineered candidate.

            “Vote intelligently” may still be available at State and Regionalocal levels, and for referrendums and initiatives and such.

            (And in very rare cases such as between Harris and Trump where the Trump side made very clear to those with eyes to see how it intended to burn down any hope of present or future public governance in America.)

      3. Martin Oline

        “Nine month abortions that are equal to infanticide.”

        It is actually much, much worse than that as I am sure you are aware. That is why you use the term infanticide, but few parents would choose to put their babes into a blender, even if the blender was large enough.
        When I worked as a mold maker in California for a company that made disposable medical products, one item we made was suction curettes. The opening at the tip is about the size of a woman’s little fingernail. This product didn’t really effect me at the time until years later, when I realized the way they function. It hunts me to this day.

      1. steppenwolf fetchit

        I wonder what pre-positioned insiders within Treasury and elsewhere knew just where the secure things and areas were and could guide Team DOGE right to them. How long have the Project Catfood 2025 Republicans been planning and laying the groundwork for this carjacking?

    4. ChrisFromGA

      A judge also put a TRO on putting USAID workers on administrative leave.

      https://apnews.com/article/usaid-foreign-aid-trump-rubio-48f8460804d33bdaa18d7765c4b24f9e

      However, he declined to do anything about the funding:

      The judge also ordered USAID staffers already placed on leave by the Trump administration reinstated. But he declined a request from two federal employee associations to grant a temporary block on a Trump administration funding freeze that has shut down the six-decade-old agency and its work, pending more hearings on the workers’ lawsuit.

      So, nobody is getting paid. This will likely mean that the status quo continues until further hearings, which could take months.

      Meanwhile, back at the Clown Ranch, there is an information vacuum on what the heck Mike Johnson (House Speaker) is going to do with the must-fund bill to keep the US Govt from shutting down on March 14. Certainly he will try to zero out funding for USAID, right?

      If not, we know that there is some Kabuki theater going on.

      Edit: I know that there is a links story, but I wanted to add some additional info about the funding freeze still in place, as there could be fake news out there to the contrary.

      1. johnnyme

        Apparently, the affected USAID employees are still being paid. From Judge Carl J. Nichols’s temporary restraining order:

        When the Court received plaintiffs’ TRO motion, it was not clear how many USAID employees had been or would be placed on administrative leave, or even what precisely “administrative leave” entailed. The TRO hearing provided some clarity. The government reported that 500 USAID employees have already been placed on administrative leave and that, absent a TRO, 2,200 additional USAID employees would be placed on administrative leave by midnight tonight. The government also reported that employees would still be paid while on administrative leave. Plaintiffs, meanwhile, contended—as they had in their complaint and motion—that USAID employees placed on administrative leave, including USAID employees stationed abroad, lack access to the agency’s email, payment, and “internal security warning/alert systems.” Mot. at 20; see ECF No. 9-1 ¶ 18. As plaintiffs’ counsel put it at the hearing, overseas USAID employees placed on administrative leave exist within an “informational vacuum” with respect to possible threats to their safety.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          I probably painted with a bit too broad a brush. The remaining agency staffers are still getting paid; in fact, the nature of administrative leave implies that you’re still drawing a paycheck but sent home because there is nothing for you to do.

          But the grant money is still shut down. No dough for “Ernie and Bert” in Iraq or direct funding of the Ukrainian Pravda, or any other programs that involve sending money abroad.

          Essentially since most of the job involves shoveling out cash to various rotten foreign entities, these folks have nothing to do.

          A friend of mine who works in government mentioned that Trump has woken up. The only way to kill off a failed government agency is to move it into another one, and get rid of all the people. Then hire new ones who will follow marching orders, and not be poisoned by the old management.

          This is exactly what Trump did – moved USAID under State. All of the old staff are going to lose their jobs one way or another. The lawfare just postpones it for a few weeks.

          Note also that this scenario dovetails with the view that Trump/Musk aren’t getting rid of the swamp, just putting it under new management.

      2. Jorge

        The money is not going to Ukraine, which I think is the point. Cutting off the soft power info-ops in Ukraine and Georgia is a big favor to Russia, a case of pre-negotiation carrot.

        Clearly that’s not the only purpose. The US info-ops engine has metastasized. “5th-generation warfare” is a catch-all term for using modern IT/automation techniques, and mass-produced lies have become institutionalized in warfare. The Ukraine war has made it clear that drones and old-fashioned stuff like artillery matter a lot more.

        And, the soft power info-ops business is a major power center of the PMC. This administration is at war against PMC power.

          1. AG

            Thanks a lot for this link.
            Note it´s way before USAID disclosure of this month.
            Everybody knew all along.
            Nobody among the MSM mentioned it of course.

            I believe Lawrence Wilkerson stated Ukraine was first in civil aid provided by USAID.
            Military being provided by others. Which then puts Israel on top, all aid sources added.

        3. Skip Intro

          After that money going to Ukraine came back as regime change ops and election interference against Trump himself, this couldn’t be a surprise. I doubt it is worth much to Russia as a bargaining chip, given the recent major failure in Georgia and the upcoming massive failure in Romania, not to mention the ongoing self-destruction of NATO in Ukraine.

    5. playon

      There is no way Musk, Trump et al are going to give up the data they took. At this point I’m sure it has been saved to multiple locations.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if the kids who did this saved copies for themselves for future extortion purposes.

    6. Permanent Sceptic

      “Judge Paul A. Engelmayer has made his decision, now let him enforce it!”
      (with apologies to U.S. President Andrew Jackson)

      I fear that the entire system of checks and balances in various democratic systems is becoming obsolete as we rush toward oligarchy.

      1. Chris Cosmos

        ]We are already in oligarchy–I hope we rush into aristocracy, i.e., where the rulers are not nihilists only interested in exploiting us for their own pleasure and perversions. It is possible for ruling class people to care about the public. All the BS about “democracy” is exactly that–we are in post-democratic moment in history and it ain’t coming back, at least not for quite awhile.

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          It is also possible for ruling class people to NOT care about the public. History offers examples of that, too. And under a strict ” only the Ruling Class rules” system, the public has no say and no choice.

    7. judy2shoes

      Thanks, johnnyme.

      “and requiring that any copies of the data that may have been downloaded be destroyed.”

      I suspect that the horse is already out of the barn, out the gate, and well into the next county by now, but I hope not.

  20. Wukchumni

    Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest Guardian (Kevin W)
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    A plague of sorts thought to be Cholera characterized by remittent fever ripped through Cali in 1833 from north of Sacramento to the PNW, and it was all Hudson Bay Company trappers for the most part there, and in some Indian towns, said trappers mentioned how they had been through a year or 2 earlier and there was 1,000 Indians and when they went back after the pandemic there were none whatsoever, and not enough people alive to bury the dead-who laid on the ground.

    The same thing must’ve happened in South America, and Lidar what a clever instrument to find all those hidden away places!

    1. jefemt

      I recall Andy Russell’s Grizzly Country- great book on grizzlies in Alberta/ northern Rockies, an anecdote of bears that became habituated to eating humans, after a scourge of small pox ran through and pretty much killed an entire band of Blackfeet in a drainage— went on for decades mid to late 1800’s. The bears, opportunistic omnivores, took a liking to eating people.

      Great Book.

      1. Wukchumni

        Measles killed off 85-90% of the nearly 60 Yokuts sub-tribes here in 1868-69, so in response they held the first ever Ghost Dance in Eshom Valley in 1872 in order to bring loved ones back. Despite a marathon week long session, no dice.

        There were around 2,000 Wukchumni before Measles and maybe 150-200 now, they never were able to bring the population back, a common thread among the native populations we encountered.

    2. Erik Jan

      For a bit of history about “El Dorado”, I liked:

      Grann, David (2009): The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon

      About the last of the great Victorian explorers and adventurers.

  21. Lee

    Long Covid

    Can Paxlovid Relieve Long COVID Symptoms? For Some, Yes (17minute audio) Science Friday

    The title is somewhat misleading, as the discussion is more wide ranging. That Paxlovid is helpful in some Long Covid cases is similar to the effectiveness of some antivirals in some patients with ME/CFS.

    Joining Ira to talk about the results are two authors of the study, who have both had long COVID for years: Dr. Alison Cohen, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, and Dr. Julia Moore Vogel, senior program director at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California.

    Also see: About the Patient-Led Research Collaborative

    1. WL

      can it though? the studies so dar so it does NOT.
      As always maybe someone THINGS they respond to it. But if on average they respond no np better than placebo we say it does not work

  22. Wukchumni

    I never thought of Teetotalitarian Leader being a straw man, but there you have it…

    Trump made the announcement on Friday on his social media platform, Truth Social.

    “I will be signing an Executive Order next week ending the ridiculous Biden push for Paper Straws*, which don’t work. BACK TO PLASTIC!”

    When history looks back say a century from now at this sordid period of EMUscalation, head in the sand stuff, and how we blithely went along for the ride, wonder what they call it?

    * wern’t straws popularized as they didn’t leave lipstick on the edge of drinking glasses?

    1. jefemt

      In my minds eye, I have an image of Trump, a man of great assets, not having one, but a few plastic spoons in his brain, sticking out of his head, like a teletubbie…or Ray Walston as My Favorite Martian. Or was that Elon?

    2. Mark Gisleson

      I thought straws were to let you drink without ruining your lipstick? I may have been doing this wrong.

      1. Wukchumni

        Should have mentioned straws were aimed at women customers once upon a time in a country I hardly recognize these days, or something to that effect.

        1. Pat

          I am female, but rarely wear lipstick. I use straws for two things. Traveling my iced coffee or tea spill less. And when my teeth are sensitive it is easier to avoid annoying them while drinking anything, cold or hot. I will say that if you nurse a drink for a long time plastic straws hold up better, but then you should just take two paper straws and replace as necessary.
          But hey, what do I know.

    3. steppenwolf fetchit

      I suspect this is just one of those velcor tarbabies that Trump is standing up by the side of the road in order to trick people into engaging with it . . . . so that they don’t notice the Treasury Carjacking in progress.

      Users of paper straws can go right on using paper straws if they want to. If Trump decides to finger them in his social media accounts and target them for Proud Boy Mob Violence or so-called “lone-wolf” assassination, then we will know why Trump released all the violent J6 criminals from prison and gave them all pardons. They are now in the Godfather’s debt, and he may want them to do a little something for him at some future time.

  23. Tom Stone

    An old friend, now dead, worked at UCSF Med Center as a programmer for 20 years.
    They had a lot of legacy systems and programs, some of those programs dated to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
    Yes Mainframes and yes COBOL plus several other languages.
    Those programs were OLD, they had been tweaked and patched over a period of decades and
    “Documentation” was a dream.
    If it hadn’t been for the oldtimers showing him how things actually worked he would have been lost.
    When dealing with systems like this Institutional memory is critical.
    Allowing Musk’s little Doggies to play with critical systems ( And not just BFS) is nuts.
    Take a look around, pay attention to how many “Important People” are acting.
    The risk taking and lack of consideration of consequences strongly argues for Covid induced brain damage.

      1. mrsyk

        Vegas now has “consequences” moving ahead of “sardonic” in the competition for word of the year. I guess that’s better than “extinction”, but there’s still ten months to work with.

    2. Socal Rhino

      One of the things I did at all my employers was reverse engineer existing systems to figure out how they actually worked, based on seeing things that didn’t make sense. In multiple cases, they behaved differently than what the oldtimers thought. Financial applications grow very complex over time and not all oral histories are accurate.

      The real issue is requiring analysis and testing before any changes go live. He may be misinformed, but Bessent has said that all changes go through standard control processes, and that the ability to change Treasury systems lies within the Fed, not Treasury.

      I have seen Musk call for some operational changes, with Bessent’s agreement, such as requiring that all expenditures be coded for purpose. I have fought that battle several times too, mainly around improving the ability to research cash reconciliation breaks.

        1. Mikel

          “So they’re they’re actively mining information and turning it into, solutions in in just a matter I mean, USAID, you said he did over the weekend.”

          Why aren’t the solutions up for debate? Priorities in a code still apply.

    3. Mikel

      “Take a look around, pay attention to how many “Important People” are acting.”

      It’s like they know their info and privacy isn’t being invaded.

  24. IMOR

    “Trump says he’s revoking Biden’s security clearance, ending intelligence briefings in payback move”
    Not a single retired or ex- military or civilian officeholder should ever have / have had these continued in the first g.d. place.

    1. Pat

      Pretty much my belief as well. You leave office your security clearance is revoked. Unless there is a specific need for consultation from a former employee or official in which case they can be read in on that and that alone, everyone can get their information from the newspaper like the regular citizen they are.

  25. Wukchumni

    Don’t tell him, but i’m such a Mark Knopfler fan-boi, probably saw the band play through about half a dozen times back in the day…

    I’ve arranged for everybody to have front row seats in 1979 thanks to the way-back machine to watch and listen to a Dire Straits concert. It’s about an hour and 20 minutes long.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oksphy2zJqQ

    1. mrsyk

      Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest, that line has stuck with me for 45 years now. A girder for a developing world view back in the day I guess.

    3. ChrisFromGA

      AH, the good old days when musicians were musicians and not models with auto-tune.

      VIdeo killed the radio star.

    4. Alan Sutton

      Dire Straits were definitely awesome but Mark Knopfler’s solo career since then has been even more impressive.

      Look it up. A truly great songwriter.

  26. Tom Stone

    Miriam Adelson and Musk are certainly getting their Money’s worth.
    $100 MM to Trump from Adelson, reportedly $240MM from Musk.
    Just the data Musk’s little dogies have exfiltrated should make him a nice profit…any backdoors would be icing on the cake.

  27. antidlc

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/health/cdc-bird-flu-cats-people.html
    C.D.C. Posts, Then Deletes, Data on Bird Flu Spread Between Cats and People
    The data, which appeared fleetingly online on Wednesday, confirmed transmission in two households. Scientists called on the agency to release the full report.

    Cats that became infected with bird flu might have spread the virus to humans in the same household and vice versa, according to data that briefly appeared online in a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention but then abruptly vanished. The data appear to have been mistakenly posted but includes crucial information about the risks of bird flu to people and pets.

    In one household, an infected cat might have spread the virus to another cat and to a human adolescent, according to a copy of the data table obtained by The New York Times. The cat died four days after symptoms began. In a second household, an infected dairy farmworker appears to have been the first to show symptoms, and a cat then became ill two days later and died on the third day.

    2. steppenwolf fetchit

      I wonder if the political commissars at CDC will punish the inside rebel who posted it in hopes that people would see it before the commissars had it deleted.

    3. mrsyk

      We know not the feline mortality rate, but my wife I are not liking the implications. What of farm cats? This is one of our oldest guilds. A disruption in the services provided might lever significant additional stress on an all of the sudden exposed to stress from all sides food supply.

      One more thought. If the avian flu taps into rodents as a vector all bets are off.

  28. chris

    Sitting at a cheer competition with my youngest, and there are five sets of parents around me who are sharing stories about teenagers they know, or who are their own children, who are currently going through chemo for aggressive cancers. Random set of people. 5 kids under 20 with cancer that needed immediate intervention. Yikes.

    I guess if we’re looking at COVID depleting Tcells I need to get used to this conversation?

  29. Jason Boxman

    From Why Doctors Test Too Much

    I recently learned that women admitted to the hospital to give birth still automatically receive COVID-19 testing even if they are completely free of symptoms. During the pandemic, such universal testing helped to prevent hospital-wide outbreaks of Covid. Today, the consensus is that only testing of patients with symptoms makes sense. Even though policies have been updated, our systems lag, the box remains pre-checked and testing continues.

    Completely false. COVID can be asymptomatic, and we should absolutely be testing everyone that comes into the hospital, full stop.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      But what is the reasons for testing these women giving birth in particular? It’s not as if you are going to hold up the delivery, unless by Caesarian.

  31. Mikel

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/08/trump-cuts-aid-to-south-africa-over-racial-discrimination-against-afrikaners/
    Trump cuts aid to South Africa over ‘racial discrimination’ against Afrikaners
    US president also offers asylum to Afrikaners and criticises law that allows land seizures without compensation in some circumstances

    “The US president, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order to cut financial assistance to South Africa, accusing the country’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners and offering them asylum in the US.“

        1. CA

          “Trump doesn’t really need anyone to remind him to be a white nationalist…”

          Well, before Donald Trump became President, the British had begun sanctioning Zimbabwe for precisely the same reason as Trump would sanction South Africa. Development for Zimbabwe must mean land reform, since British colonialists had taken control of most of the productive land from the majority Blacks.

          Zimbabwe must have land reform to develop. So must South Africa. South Africans discussed the need during the Truth and Reconciliation period.

          https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DlR6

          August 4, 2014

          Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China, South Africa and Zimbabwe, 1977-2023

          (Indexed to 1977)

  32. steppenwolf fetchit

    ” Very unwelcome news! H5N1 genotype D1.1 6 identified in 6 Nevada dairy herds. This is NOT the strain that’s been circulating on farms so far. It’s the strain that sent a 13yo girl in Canada to ICU, and that killed a man in Louisiana. Bad time for a public health comms blackout.”

    Very ‘unwelcome’ news? Only to normal people. If you are a Jackpot Design Engineer, this news is very welcome. It means this flu is evolving as the Elite Depopulationists have desperately hoped that it would, and which they have desperately been buying time for it do so it. Now more than ever, they will double down on the public health comms blackout. Even if Trump’s reason for the blackout is that having people know about the flu is ” bad for business”. People deeper and higher than Trump have a deeper and higher depopulationist agenda and ongoing project. And buying time and protection for this flu to evolve into a megadeath pandemic is what they desperately hope this flu can achieve with the time and protection they are so desperately giving it.

  33. griffen

    US needs a sovereign wealth fund…is a quick article to read through, and granted that Kelton has her share of supporters and as well, detractors….the US could very well maintain the recent pace of budget deficits spending but I really can’t see the point of establishing any sort of wealth fund at the moment…

    I’m reminded of different employers and the appeal for us all to pull together and pushing forward towards some remarkable goal post*….used to call them “BHAG” or from a more recent stop as “WIG”…For 2025 I’m not aware what the updated moniker or anagram might read…The phrasing changes every 10 or so years so I’m sure an AI or Tech Bro has the current version, but that is decidedly not my lane….A Trump administration that established a sovereign wealth fund will just dial up the need of bubble maintenance from 10 to 11….My opinion only.

    Big Hairy Audacious Goal
    Wildly Important Goal

    1. Samuel Conner

      Perhaps the point of establishing a US sovereign wealth fund would be to boost selected asset prices, assets that are owned by the people who actually wield sovereign power in US.

      Perhaps it should be thought of as “Sovereigns’ wealth fund”

    2. Wukchumni

      Sovereign wealth fund meant something altogether different once upon a time…

      The sovereign is a British gold coin with a nominal value of one pound sterling (£1) and contains 0.2354 troy ounces (113.0 gr; 7.32 g) of pure gold. Struck since 1817, it was originally a circulating coin that was accepted in Britain and elsewhere in the world.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_(British_coin)

    3. Jorge

      The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund (pension fund?) has a mandate of only investing externally to the country: no Norwegian assets, that’s it. It think it’s up to 1.7T now. They own little bits of stuff all over the world.

      This is the way to do it.

      1. Mikel

        “only investing externally to the country”
        “it’s up to 1.7T now.”

        Look out if that’s largely due to the Magnificent 7 and friends. Capture.

  34. Wukchumni

    LA Infernos burn scar is gonna get a few inches of rain this week and more in the mountains thanks to orographic lift. This is seriously no bueno, in the insult to injury index. Freshly scorched hillsides where the conflagration didn’t miss much and at such a freaky time of the year for major fires.

  35. Pat

    Caught up on the missives from my representative Dan. You will be happy to know that he has joined with others in sending strongly worded letters to REI insisting they negotiate, and to our new Treasury secretary asking that he protect the integrity of the IRS.

    Okay Goldman has done more than that and at least he is telling people to contact his office about various issues. According to him the Democrats are working hard. And his work with the Judiciary committee will be helpful too.

    He is having a virtual town hall about Trump’s executive orders this Tuesday at 6:30 pm EST for anyone interested. Link to register. They do ask for your name, email address and your actual address.

    I haven’t checked but his email updates of the last week have included an embed of his last town hall on immigration, so I believe any and all will be posted eventually.

  37. AG

    Vijay Prashad from Tricontinental with a decent piece:
    ‘Dreams Are Wearing Thin’
    https://consortiumnews.com/2025/02/08/vijay-prashad-dreams-are-wearing-thin/

    I very much doubt Prashad would agree with me using a quote from his text in this way, but that´s just my sad conclusion of the past 3 years: Why the arts in struggles for justice are meaningless:

    “(…)
    In Justice Robert Jackson’s three-hour opening statement at the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945, he said:

    “Civilisation asks whether law is so laggard as to be utterly helpless to deal with crimes of this magnitude by criminals of this order of importance. It does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law, its precepts, its prohibitions, and, most of all, its sanctions, on the side of peace, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have ‘leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the law.’ ”

    The line Justice Jackson quoted is from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Old Issue” (1899), which was widely read in the 1940s. Two years before Jackson’s opening statement, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill quoted from the same poem in his Harvard University speech to make the point that there are, he said, “common conceptions of what is right and decent” that endowed humans with “a stern sentiment of impartial justice… or as Kipling put it: ‘Leave to live by no man’s leave underneath the law.”’

    Churchill’s conception of what was “right and decent” is summarised in his view, two decades prior, when, dealing with the Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq, he wrote that he was “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.
    (…).”

    Art is turned into propaganda once it reaches mass level and becomes useful a tool for political organizing. Which automatically removes its specific features for reflection, doubt and consideration to counter imperial intent. From then on everyone can use it for the most heinous goals.

  38. Richard H Caldwell

    “People are feeling galvanized’: Anti-Trump protesters rally in cities across US” — totally agree that, in terms of likeliness to effect change, this outrage display is roughly equivalent to onanism. Actual and significant pain must be applied to actual and significant choke/pressure points to achieve any effect. Otherwise, this is an unfortunate squandering of resources.

  40. Mikel

    https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/02/08/us/trump-administration-news#trump-fires-the-nations-archivist-in-latest-round-of-personnel-purge/

    “The nation’s archivist, Colleen Shogan, said on social media Friday night she had been fired by President Trump, in the latest act of retribution against a perceived foe that the president had promised to deliver upon returning to the White House.
    It was leaders of her agency, the National Archives and Records Administration, who raised concerns about Mr. Trump possessing boxes of classified documents that he had taken after he left office in 2021, setting off a criminal case against him.”

    Ok. So now there’s a gap in leadership at the archives. Trump is satisified. Data is now for sale or “training”…(they’ll still try to convince you the box is “thinking”).

  41. Balan Aroxdale

    Red states pursue their own DOGE-style reforms The Hill

    Amidst all the politics, I think one thing we are witnessing is, at last, the cannibalization of the middle class finally reaching all the way up to the top of government departments. As the money dries up, the elites have begun to eat each other. Up to now, this was kept largely political, but now there is a decidedly expressly economic element to the purges.

    All this purging may indeed lead to cost savings, but this is simply not going to be passed on to the general population or turned toward anything productive. It is simply going to be eaten by the now smaller chorts of oligarches. Eaten and soon forgotten.

  42. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here, from the genZ subreddit, is a posted quote from six years ago from Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska.
    It predicted that a One Term Biden Presidency would be followed by a worse Trump Redux presidency. He didn’t predict who the even-worser Trump Redux would be. The fact that it turned out to be Trump itself does not invalidate Gravel’s prediction.

    So it is fair to say that the BidenDem Party created the vacuum which sucked Trump back into office.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1ikz2bh/former_alaskan_senator_mike_gravels_tweet_from_6/

    1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

      “Sorry this post has been removed by the moderators.”

      Apparently, Gravel has nothing to do with Gen Z.

      Check out the newest comment.

  43. ChrisFromGA

    Since it’s late and it’s more or less open thread time, I’ll just throw out the thought that Trump really can’t say he’s draining the swamp until he sics the DoJ on Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell’s insider trading and huge gains in wealth therein.

    Those two really need to face a jury. Even M T-G is day trading instead of doing her job.

    Come to think of it, mass indictments of Congress for fraud, insider trading, and abuse of office ought to be forthcoming. You could probably jail 50% of the place, and then hold special elections to get their replacements

  44. AG

    re: Putin vs. the West

    A really hard piece to read. Disgusting. To me. Because it does what it does in such a dishonest – should I say Rachel-Maddow-esque – way?

    Fear and Resentment in the Kremlin – How Putin’s Grievances Fueled Renewed Instability in Europe
    by Sergei Radchenko
    https://www.cirsd.org/en/horizons/horizons-winter-2025-issue-no-29/fear-and-resentment-in-the-kremlin

    The misrepresentation of facts, the malign misinterpretation, the fact that there has to be any “interpretation” at all, the hidden ad hominem mindset of Radchenko piling lies upon lies, picturing speculation as fact and vice versa.
    I don´t understand how mean-spirited these so-called VIPs of US academia can be. It´s just beyond me.
    They are totally useless. Totally.

    Radchenko reveals his ineptitude and arrogance when he seriously uses Nitzsche and Joseph Conrad to characterize Putin (your average ivory tower leasure time activity)

    To finish his piece with this:

    “Then, on December 19th, 2024, during his annual “direct line” with the Russian public and the media, I heard Vladimir Putin-Kurtz make a strange admission. “You know,” he said, smirking, “when everything is calm, even-paced, stable, we are bored. Stagnation. We want movement. Then, when movement begins, everything is flying… So we get scared. “The horror. The horror.” Ok, “The horror.” But not “horror-horror-horror.””
    And that’s how I knew: horror-horror-horror still lies ahead.”

    For me such an item is enough to abandon any hope on meaningful change and cooperation. It´s hopeless. But yet, under that kind of ongoing animosity the climate will not play along. Does Radchenko get at least that?

  46. steppenwolf fetchit

    Here is a twiXX on twiXtter featuring something from one of the AGs who won this very short-term judgement commanding Elmusk to stop certain things and do certain things. Followed by a typically nasty Elmusk reply. Followed by the AG telling Elmusk who to tell it to. I like the way the AG responded to Elmusk’s comment. It declined to bite the baited insult hook and instead diverted readers’ attention back to real issues.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/clevercomebacks/comments/1il46c0/elon_the_trustworthy/

    People may sneer at lawfare, but if that is the only thing which Elmusk’s opponents have to Stop The Steal with, then they do their best with lawfare.

    Lawfare is not necessarily for losers, nor a mark of loserdom. Donald Trump has been using lawfare all his life, as taught by the master lawfare warrior, Roy Cohn.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      It is depressing that the term lawfare is being applied to these suits. “Lawfare” means using litigation as a harassment/pain + cost infliction exercise on shaky legal grounds.

      These Trump/DOGE cases (at least the ones I’ve seen) are all legitimate controversies, either clear rule-breaking (firing US AID staffers w/o giving required 30 day notice) or on the extent of Presidential power.

Comments are closed.