Links 10/31/2022

Haunting Audio Reveals The Spooky Sound of Earth’s Magnetic Field ScienceAlert

Light-analyzing ‘lab on a chip’ opens door to widespread use of portable spectrometers Phys.org

Requiem for a Telescope New York Times

Climate/Environment 

Finding safe haven in the climate change future: The Northeast Yahoo

Why climate change matters for pandemic preparedness Nature

Water

Battle of the Alps? Water Woes Loom Amid Climate Change VOA

Majority of Hawaii elementary schools test positive for lead in drinking water Honolulu Star Advertiser 

Mississippi governor extends Jackson water emergency order Clarion Ledger

#COVID-19 

A single-nucleus and spatial transcriptomic atlas of the COVID-19 liver reveals topological, functional, and regenerative organ disruption in patients BioRXiv https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.27.514070v1

 

China Braces For Covid Wave As Foxconn Staff Flee Zhengzhou Asia Financial

Covid’s Tell-Tale Heart Easy Chair

Myanmar

The Long Strange Story of the (Disappearing) Railway from Myanmar to Southern China The Irrawaddy

Brasil Election 

Lula’s victory in Brazil means leftists now lead Latin America’s seven largest nations by population and six largest by GDP. #PatriaGrande

🌎✊🏾✊🏽✊🏻✊🏿 pic.twitter.com/k1gGC8pW93

— Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa ✶ (@CDRosa) October 30, 2022

a cool feeling is when a rare good thing happens in the world and it rules but also there’s a nontrivial possibility that thing will promptly be met with catastrophic backlash and extralegal repression and your ability to celebrate vies with justifiable dread

— inverted vibe curve: burgertown must be defended (@PatBlanchfield) October 30, 2022

India

India bridge collapse: More than 100 killed in Gujarat BBC (Furzy)

India’s ban on Chinese video games proves to be a double-edged sword FT

Syraqistan

IMF loan unlikely to save Tunisia’s economy Al-Monitor

Biden administration considers hindering military aid to Saudi Arabia in a ‘punishing’ response to it cutting oil production, report says Business Insider

Is US-Saudi row giving China a chance to expand its role in Middle East? SCMP

Old Blighty

No 10 alarm as Boris Johnson plans to attend Cop27 climate summit The Guardian (Kevin W)

Homelessness: Rough sleepers in London up by nearly a quarter BBC

Ukrainian refugees in UK face homelessness crisis as councils struggle to find hosts The Guardian

Consumers using new money tools to cope with cost of living, survey shows Evening Standard

China?

US chip ban de facto declaration of war on China? Asia Times (Kevin W)

US Air Force to deploy nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China grow Abc

Home rents drop by 20 per cent in Shanghai as expats and wealthy mainlanders leave the city due to psychological scar left by a citywide lockdown SCMP 

 

Chinese banks to pivot to high-tech borrowers in search for next growth engine S&P Global

The message from China’s party congress Indian Punchline (Kevin W)

Pentagon Warns U.S. That They Had Scary Dream About China The Onion

New Not-So-Cold War

I’ve spent the past couple weeks reading US press coverage of the Cuban missile crisis at the time and it’s hard to really articulate how extreme and unhinged today’s media discourse is by comparison, even as we similarly inch toward nuclear catastrophe.

— Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) October 25, 2022

The Official Narrative On Ukraine Caitlin Johnstone (Kevin W)

Ukraine says Iran’s help for Russia should push Israel out of neutral stance The Hill

***

LNG ships play waiting game off Spain’s coast as higher prices eyed Reuters

Qatari Energy Minister: European Moves to Cap Gas Prices Are ‘Hypocritical’ to Bloc’s Past Rules Sputnik (Kevin W)

Oil and gas giants making record profits during Ukraine war ‘given unprecedented access to EU leaders’ The Independent

EU admits new cold war is not ‘democracy vs. autocracy’: ‘On our side, there are a lot of authoritarian regimes’ Multipolarista

2024

Election deniers should be disqualified from holding public office Nevada Independent

Imperial Collapse Watch

Guantanamo’s oldest inmate Saifullah Paracha freed after 19 years Al Jazeera (Mark: “Another proud day of empire…”)

Realignment and Legitimacy 

“I don’t know how to sugar coat this so I’ll just say it: It seems clear that the Democratic Party is over…You could drive a Bronco through the gap between [Obama’s] campaign promises & reality…”https://t.co/MO6rkPwL4V pic.twitter.com/yg1rsDmIC3

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) October 28, 2022

Democrats en déshabillé

CNN Exclusive: Suspect in Paul Pelosi attack had bag with zip ties, source says

And the post that drew so much attention due to some interesting questions and an Elon Musk deleted retweet: The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning Santa Monica Observer

Was Nixon’s Reelection Ted Kennedy’s Fault? Politico. Readers?

Obama Legacy

Looks like a small crowd: 

Supply Chain/Inflation 

Inflation And Recession: Where Are We Now? TalkMarkets

 

Blame Big Oil Heisenberg Report (Resilc)

Our No Longer Free Press

Meet the New Boss…Same as the Old Boss Scott Ritter (Micael)


Guillotine Watch

‘Criminalizing kindness’: US woman arrested for feeding homeless people sues The Guardian

Class Warfare

Job Markets Are Defying Central Bankers’ Efforts to Cool Demand Bloomberg 

YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: Amazon’s Anti-Union Campaign Backfires The Lever

Zeitgeist Watch 

Historic Drought Exposes Sunken Mississippi Riverboat Casino The Drive

 

Antidote du jour (via):

See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here. 

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152 comments

  1. Antifa

    BOMBS AWAY
    (melody borrowed from Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead)

    The nukes are hot in silos, on planes and submarines
    Little Johnny smiles and rides a wooden pony
    War is looming everywhere, rasslin’ with the Russian bear
    Moments from a world nightmare but it’s alright

    I will get by . . . I will get by . . . I will get by . . .
    I will survive

    Occasional elections, prearranged selections
    Doesn’t ever change a thing but it’s alright
    Years ago we went astray, now it’s all a puppet play
    Vote your choice we’re always stuck on ‘Bombs Away!’

    I will get by . . . I will get by . . . I will get by . . .
    I will survive

    We like to talk of whirled peas
    In every tiny country that we seize
    Our taxes blown up without a trace
    Our roads and bridges a disgrace

    (musical interlude)

    We’re falling down by degrees
    There used to be some guarantees
    We’ll fall down from a little shove
    A nation we are not proud of

    The bad news spilling from both ears, as choice and freedom disappears
    It’s even worse than it appears but it’s alright
    Go and get your next vaccine, keep your immune system lean
    Got to stop that spike protein but it’s alright

    I will get by . . . I will get by . . . I will get by . . .
    I will survive

    With nothing in the cookie jar don’t have the cash to drive the car
    Don’t know how we got this far but it’s alright
    Happiness looks far away, a working man’s got no leeway
    Tomorrow is another day and that’s alright

    I will get by . . . I will get by . . . I will get by . . .
    I will survive

    We will get by . . . We will get by . . . We will get by . . .
    We will survive

    We will get by . . . We will get by . . . We will get by . . .

    1. John Zelnicker

      ex-PFC Chuck is absolutely right.

      Full disclosure: I’m a dedicated Deadhead for over 50 years and this is one of my favorite songs from their later work.

      1. LilD

        This song got the Dead a lot of new fans. Some of us like hearing the twentieth different live versions of Bertha or Me and my Uncle, but for those who don’t or those who do, touch of grey is very accessible

  2. Wukchumni

    Gooooooood Mooooooorning Fiatnam!

    Keeping a presence in the highlands of the green felt jungle in lower Manhattan was a given, sellers would dominate the proceedings hacking away values with what looked to be a digital machete and HFT terminals were hard pressed to keep Dow Jonestown near 33k, despite everybody and their mother (yours truly’s truly too, no exceptions) being pummeled by price discovery to the downside in South Fiatnam…

    …and then came the Dếbt Offensive

    1. ambrit

      As that scurrilous scamp of a mascot for MAD (Mutual Assured Deflation) ‘Dry Powder Magazine’ Alfreda E Yellen says: “What, me lie?”
      “We had to destroy the economy to save it.”
      As the Helicopter Money Colonel in the beginning of the docudrama “Apocalypse Now” says: “I love the smell of margin calls in the morning.”
      This is such a target rich environment. I just wish that we weren’t well within the collateral damage zone.
      Go Long defensible positions.

  3. The Rev Kev

    Working link for “US Air Force to deploy nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China grow” article at-

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-31/china-tensions-taiwan-us-military-deploy-bombers-to-australia/101585380

    So Northern Australia is going to be turned into a nuclear attack base complete with fuel bunkers, repair facilities, etc. Thing is, if the balloon goes up and those B-52s head north to attack China, will Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines allow them to fly through their airspace to get there? Or will they send up their fighters to make them turn back? Not to do so turns them into nuclear targets as well after all.

      1. The Rev Kev

        At least in “On the Beach” Australia was the last country to die off through world-wide radiation poisoning. But both political parties here in Oz are determined that we will be one of the first to go and insist that we fight China (The Kangaroo That Roared?). Anyway, who wants to be the Ukrainians of the South Pacific?

        1. OIFVet

          The entire so-called “civilized world” wants to be the Ukrainians of wherever, at least according to the elites and their MSM scribes.

          In Bulgaria we have an inability to form a government due to a highly fragmented parliament. Yet, the very first proposal in the newly convened parliament is to send tanks and AD systems to Ukraine. This while people dread the high inflation which is eating up their savings and are worried about winter heating season.

          Just today, a media sponsored by an US NGO published an op-ed by a professor, who cites a letter signed by 792 members of the BG diaspora in Ukraine, who claim to represent all 200,000 ethnic Bulgarians there. The letter bemoans those ethnic Bulgarians who have lost their lives and argues that the way to save lives is for Bulgaria to send weapons in order for Ukraine to keep fighting. Utter madness devoid of all logic. Anyway, the good professor cites this letter (whose authors and signers are unknown, at least I couldn’t find any info anywhere) to argue that the national interest demands that the parliament botes we send our few S-300 systems and working T-72s to Ukraine.

          And you know what the truly funny part is? Back in May the same media published a report from Bessarabia, which stressed how most ethnic Bulgarians there are rather too friendly to Moscow, and two days ago there was another op-ed reprinted from the Bulgarian language section of DW, in which a well-known hardliner argued how Bulgarians abroad are not a monolith but rather diverse in their opinions and political affiliations. This was in the context of a rather unsavory nationalist politician heading the parliamentary commission concerning Bulgarians abroad. Apparently not so in the case of their opinions concerning weapons for Ukraine.

          I have received a veritable poo-storm being thrown my way for pointing out the editorial schizophrenia of this media (the go-to media for edumacated liberals who claim to be well-informed, smart and thinking). No one addresses the points I’ve made, it’s all a variation of “You are a Putinist.” Rather dubious accusation given my status of US Army War veteran.

          So Rev Kev, I imagine how the political and MSM elites down under are all eager for Australians to be the Ukies of the South Pacific, though I imagine that they exclude themselves as bearers of the consequences. I am more convinced by the day that several must soon hang from lampposts in every “civilized” country if we are to avert a worldwide catastrophe.

          1. The Rev Kev

            Lamp posts are so 18th century. For the 21st century they need to be strung up on CCTV posts. Sounds like you are having a tough slog in Bulgaria which I am sorry to hear about. We’ll see how people feel after winter really kicks in and people are being told to sacrifice even more for the Ukraine.

            1. Milton

              Speaking of lamp posts, what ever happened to all the civilians that were shrink-wrapped to the posts at the start of the war?

          2. chris#5

            Lamp posts? Did someone mention lamp posts?
            Victor Klemperer (1881-1960, cousin of Otto) was stripped of his position as a professor of Romance languages at the Technical University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power in 1935 (officially not because he was Jewish, but because French literature was deemed irrelevant). He wondered in his diary in 1936 what he would do in post-Nazi Germany if “one day the situation were reversed and the fate of the vanquished lay in my hands.” He wrote that he would “let all the ordinary folk go and even some of the leaders, who might perhaps after all have had honorable intentions and not know what they were doing. But I would have all the intellectuals strung up, and the professors three feet higher than the rest; they would be left hanging from the lamp-posts for as long as was compatible with hygiene.”

          3. lyman alpha blob

            Have any of the geniuses in these smaller European countries worked it out yet that if they send all their military systems to Ukraine they won’t have any left for themselves?

            Has it occurred to them that there might be other countries **cough* USA *cough* that would be interested in their territory other than Russia? What might a Germany weakened by the US do?

            1. OIFVet

              Perhaps you don’t quite appreciate the extent of capture by the US. To give you but a small example, Bulgaria has 16 fully paid for F-16s on order. The US is very late in delivering them. One would think that there would be certain compensations in the contract for failure to deliver on tume, but alas, there are none.

              Let’s also not forget that three IS senators led by John McCain came to Bulgaria in June 2014 and ordered the government to pull out of South Stream, which it did. Senators, not even the Secretary of State. So yeah, I don’t think that the local compradors of small Eastern European states care one bit about anything other than staying in the good graces of the imperial center.

        2. MaryLand

          On the Beach was the most chilling anti-war movie I ever saw. I will never hear Waltzing Mathilda without seeing in my mind’s eye a scene from that movie. So much truth about the human reaction.

          1. Alice X

            Which version did you see? I saw both the 1959 Gregory Peck version and the 2000 Oz remake. I particularly liked Rachel Ward in the latter, but I agree it was chilling.

          2. The Rev Kev

            Certainly the segment where the sub visits San Francisco with no people to be seen at all is very disturbing. You knew that everybody was dead but seeing no bodies was in a way worse.

    1. SocalJimObjects

      Malaysia’s Mahathir is rabidly anti US. Granted he’s now old and no longer the force that he once was, but you can bet there’s plenty of Malays that subscribe to his line of thought.

      Prabowo, the Defense Minister of Indonesia and a former Presidential candidate, gave a speech earlier this year during the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2022 that was very well received by the Chinese and other Asian countries. Not saying that he’s pro China, rather he is Pro Asian. The part where he mentions the common Asian experience of being bullied and dominated by the West has to be a sting to Western people in the audience. The speech in English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRNORHwSr5o

      The Philippines might swing either way at this point I think, but I think when push comes to shove, they’ll probably be Pro US.

    2. Michaelmas

      Rev Kev: Thing is, if the balloon goes up and those B-52s head north to attack China, will Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines allow them to fly through their airspace to get there?

      Don’t worry (be happy!). B-52s have been basically irrelevant to the nuclear delivery situation since 1961, when USAF Gen. Bernard Schriever and his ICBMs won the war with USAF General Curtis LeMay and his B52s at SAC, and LeMay got kicked upstairs to the Joint Chiefs to shut him up.

      If the balloon does go up, things will mostly be over after the B52s have been in the air less than half an hour. Basing them in Australia and talking about their nuclear capability is just saber-rattling and/or media hype.

      What those planes might conceivably use value is if they were placed up over a Pacific battlespace in a conventional war, and were doing surveillance and network relay, especially if the Chinese knock down US satellites, which are fairly indispensable to US military ops that far away. Even then, one doubts that the Chinese wouldn’t knock them down if it came to that.

      1. The Rev Kev

        With say, a Chinese sub lurking in the waters off Australia with anti-air capability? One well aimed salvo and they could take out that whole squadron of B-52s.

      2. Anthony G Stegman

        B52s are also based on Guam and Diego Garcia. Moving some to Australia may be just force dispersal since China likely would destroy Guam in a hot war. The people living on Guam and Okinawa ought to be very nervous these days, what with all the saber rattling from the Biden administration.

      3. Paradan

        B-52’s are used to launch MALDS, its like a a cruise missile that pretends to be a strike aircraft, also has some jamming capabilities. They carry 12 of them in a rotary bay. Other than that they can launch ALCMs both nuclear and conventional. Russians have been using Tu-95s the same way in ukraine, and havent lost any yet.

      4. scott s.

        Well, the NPR released last week continues to support deployment of the LRSO, so it doesn’t seem the B-52 is deemed irrelevant in nuclear warfare. (and no indication that any ALCM are being deployed in this instance.)

    3. Darius

      One of the things I most hated about Trump was the bizarre and unprovoked saber rattling with China. Then Biden just doubles down.

      1. NotTimothyGeithner

        Don’t you see the political brilliance. Now Republicans won’t be able to call Biden French! Its so obvious!

        (five minues later)

        Its totally unfair the Republicans are still calling Biden a super Frenchie!

      2. jsn

        What do you mean unprovoked?

        They want their living standards to eventually exceed ours!

        They’re refusing the euthanasia potential of COVID, they’re buying stuff from Russia, they’re trading with Iran, worst of all, they’re extending the middle finger to Wall Street: they’re obviously not our kind of Communists.

    4. Chas

      Could China’s air defenses take out a B-52 flying at high altitude? And suppose they did and it was carrying an atomic bomb, would the bomb go off? Same for a missile with an atomic bomb payload. Would the bomb explode when the missile was hit?

      1. The Rev Kev

        That is why Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines won’t want nuclear-armed B-52s flying over their territory. As for the Chinese, I would imagine that their main priority would be to just stop those nukes from being anywhere near their country, no matter what it takes.

          1. Ana

            This a partial list. I witnessed an incident in the late 1950’s that is not on this list.
            Ana in Sacramento

            1. ambrit

              Thanks for this. You lived to tell the tale. I hope we all live through the next week. There has been an unusually high amount of C5A Galaxy “training flights” into and out of Camp Shelby the last few days. Something is up.

      2. John Zelnicker

        Chas – I’m not an expert by any means, but I believe that atomic warheads can’t be detonated by impact alone.

        The evidence is that several nuclear devices have been involved in plane crashes or accidental release without blowing up.

      3. David

        Probably yes and probably no. Nuclear weapons have to be armed before they can be used, which only happens close to the point where the weapons are going to be released. The actual physics of nuclear warhead explosions is very complicated, and everything has to happen just right. I think it’s generally accepted that a warhead in a downed aircraft would be unlikely to detonate.
        As for missiles, it would depend what they were hit with, and what kind of warhead the latest Soviet systems were fitted with. A kinetic impact, as used by the current (very limited) US ABM system involves such speeds so much energy that, according to the designers, the metal turns to liquid. The Russian ABM system around Moscow has historically used nuclear-tipped interceptors, but that’s in the context of a general nuclear war.

      4. GC54

        Nope, its implosion requires precise timing. Breaching the weapon would scatter tritium which would eventually turn into a bit of heavy water far away.

      5. scott s.

        They don’t carry bombs. They carry cruise missiles that fly sub-sonic speeds to target very much like Tomahawk except built by the former Boeing. As far as W80 warhead design, that is classified.

    5. Werther

      Don’t worry Kev,

      At least 50 countries will stand with Oz in case the People’s Republic strikes back…

      This morning news over here in the Netherlands. In the General Assembly UN 50 countries have submitted a declaration in support of Bachelet’s report on human rights in Xinjiang.
      As discussed over here so many times before. The NATO bunch supplemented with Japan, your beloved Oz and the Kiwi’s….
      American diplomacy pulled in just two countries in Middle/South America (Bachelet seems not relevant in Chile…) and three in Africa (Somalia???). And two in Asia; Türkiye (of course) and Israel.

      Get 10 very small countries in to arrange a somewhat more impressive number.

      That’s diplomacy at the moment. Makes you wonder when, in the lee of an alternative reserve currency, an alternative UN appears…

        1. werther

          Depressing… what do the Aussie institutions have to hide? Some murky policy’s to prohibit the rise of a 21 century Ned Kelly?

          1. ambrit

            I have read about wonky policies dealing with potential and some actual population migrations that are a result of climate change swallowing up Pacific Ocean island nations.
            The full on cynical geezer in me expands your “Aussie institutions” to include “Globalist” (TM) institutions that claim suzerainty over mere nation states.

  4. Acacia

    Re: The Awful Truth

    Sure sounds plausible.

    “Pelosi owned the hammer. Not Depape. Or, the male prostitute was doing something Pelosi didn’t like.”

    Doing something with the hammer… and then things went tragically wrong? Lol

    1. The Rev Kev

      I knew that he was playing an away game. The attempt to cover everything up led to the Streisand Effect and now it is all coming out. And as one woman said on twitter, ‘Two times in the last six months Paul Pelosi has been found at a crime scene and both times he was hammered…’

      https://twitter.com/ShuForCongress/status/1586248666322702336

      And Nancy? Last I heard she was in Croatia at the Summit of the International Crimea Platform designed to make Russia give back Crimea to the Ukraine so time well spent.

            1. ambrit

              “Knock, knock.”
              “Who’s there?”
              “Hamster delivery man.”
              “Oh, you precious cargo cultist! The back door is open!”

      1. griffen

        Rewrite and pronto. We need a revisionist and mostly accurate, okay sorta accurate works as well. I look forward to 24/7, breathless coverage of this angle, after all, our media will obsess over anything happening to our politicians. \sarc

        Let alone someone hitched to the Speaker. Damn it, where is the memory hole where we send all the versions to delete or redact.

        1. ambrit

          Send the malefactors to the Guantanamo Truth Institute. The results thus obtained are Water Board Certified.

      2. CanCyn

        This is reminding me of that actor who staged his own assault (maybe in Chicago? Maybe Boardwalk was the show he was in?) Made it look like he was a victim of a hate crime. He was found out and cancelled …. Anyhoo…. the Pelosi’s may not have staged the whole thing but it seems as though they’ve decided to use the ‘dangerous times for politicians’ narrative to excuse the whole thing away. Agree with Screwball here, they’ll succeed in making the whole story go away. Even Al Jazeera has Musk tweeting about the ‘conspiracy’.

    2. Screwball

      Maybe it’s just me, but I expect this story to disappear ASAP. Now would be a great time to drop the “October Surprise” as to get this off the news.

      I can tell you this for sure; do not mention there might be another angle to the story other than it was done by a “right wing extremist who tried to XXXX Pelosi.” I use XXXX instead of the real word in case the NSA is watching. Replace with a word that rhymes bill. They will go ape $hit nuts on you.

      To me, the security system is the dog that didn’t bark. I saw a picture of the house with two security cameras pointed down the side of the house. You could see wires going to them. They appear to be top end cameras, as one would expect. I have 4 cheap ones (no wires). They are triggered by motion, which I expect those do too. Once triggered, an alarm should go off in the house and/or phone – and – should send an alert to an alarm center or maybe even the police. This is the house of the 3rd highest office in the land is it not? The system was probably designed, inspected, and approved by the FBI, SS, or some federal agency.

      But he called the cops, talked in code, and they sent a wellness check? Not buying it. Release the footage and we’ll go from there.

      I’m guessing that will never happen and this will go the same way the Epstein stuff did.

      Maybe we’ll get the real truth – next time.

      1. Revenant

        Also the photograph of the broken window shows the glass *on the outside*. Don’t Pelosi’s read crime novels? It clearly was not broken to gain access….

        But the mighty wurlitzer is playing “nobody here in their underwear” so nothing happened. The Brooklyn ibogaine-partying nudist liberal is really Timothy McVeigh. Yeah, right.

      2. Katniss Everdeen

        Dunno. Any way you slice it, it would seem a bad break for the pelosis that Elon Musk has fired the censorship brigade at Twitter, leaving a crack in the narrative management system for the actual “truth” to squeeze through.

        PS. With regard to the Santa Monica Observer link which states

        “How would (suspect Depape) have been able to break a window that without triggering an alarm? He didn’t. The police broke the window to gain entry.

        a number of internet sleuths have pointed out that the broken glass from a french door presumably used to “gain entry” is on the outside of the house which is not usually the case when glass is broken to get in.

        1. Screwball

          Good point about Twitter/Musk. I don’t know if you have Twitter, but I’m sure some here do. I have noticed a change since the takeover. There are hashtags about this as we speak. Anyone else notice a change?

          I’m guessing if Musk hadn’t done what he did, we wouldn’t be seeing much about this incident on that platform.

          There are more questions than answers. I don’t expect that to change.

    3. lyman alpha blob

      A couple of the preliminary MSM reports that I mentioned a couple days ago taken together suggest that the hammer was Pelosi’s and the “intruder” was unarmed.

      First one says that Pelosi left the room to call 911 himself. 2nd one says that the two were struggling over the hammer when cops arrived. Sounds like Pelosi could have grabbed the hammer after making the phone call. Also, if an 80+ year old man was able to go run these types of errands during a break in where the “intruder” was half his age, it sure sounds like the “intruder” wasn’t all that agitated if he let Pelosi leave the room on his own.

    4. lyman alpha blob

      There were a couple preliminary mainstream media reports that I linked to the other day. When I try to link to my comment it doesn’t work, but the links can be found on the 10/28 water cooler post near the bottom.

      One report said Pelosi called 911 himself after leaving the room. The other said that when the cops arrived they found Pelosi and the “intruder” struggling over the hammer. This suggests that the hammer may have been Pelosi’s and he grabbed it after making the phone call, and the “intruder” was unarmed when he entered the house. It also suggests that this “intruder” wasn’t all that agitated to begin with if the 80+ year old Pelosi was able to walk around the house doing errands while this “intruder” half his age was on the premises.

      1. Michael Ismoe

        If the hammer was Pelosi’s, how did the window get broken? How did the dude get in locked doors if the hammer was inside?

        Vote Blue No Matter Who.

      2. fresno dan

        lab
        curiouser and curiouser.
        This has all the markings of a sex scandal. People won’t let go of it.
        I predick Pelosi won’t be in dem leadership next session…

  5. The Rev Kev

    “Consumers using new money tools to cope with cost of living, survey shows”

    I use a tool to cope with the cost of living and it work great. It goes like this-

    ‘Do you want it?’
    ‘Yes!’
    ‘Do you need it?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Then you can’t buy it!’

  6. Wukchumni

    Homelessness: Rough sleepers in London up by nearly a quarter BBC
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ‘Rough sleeper’ is such a pertinent term, and I think we do the homeless a solid (er, #2) by burdening them with the idea of failed home ownership being the reason for their downfall…

    I think ‘Rough Idlers’ would be a more apt description, bully!

    A fair amount of meth-odd actors in the ranks of our down and outs doing second acts, how does it compare across the pond?

    1. Revenant

      There is a hidden homeless population who are sofa-surfing and living in cars. The rough sleepers are the visible tip of iceberg and sadly these are mainly:
      – young and homeless in a crisis (e.g. children thrown out of home / escaping home / escaping social care)
      – ex-military, unable to cope with civilian life in some way (or rejected by family, spouses)
      – mental patients, who would formerly have been in an institution
      – chaotic drug-users (rather than, say, Mrs Thatcher’s doctor, Clive Froggat (?), who famously held down his heroine addiction with a heroin addiction)
      and many of them may be all of the above :-( but the studies show the the drugs (or the chaotic drug addictions) are usually preceded by the homelessness rather than the cause.

      I don’t think meth is popular here as way of ruining your life. It is more of a middle-class party drug. I think smack is still the downer and outer of choice plus synthetic cannabis like Spice for really losing touch with reality and sanity.

      1. Wukchumni

        I’ve read that the new meth that is being produced in Mexico doesn’t require Pseudoephedrine (thus, you never hear tell tale stories of meth factories in the USA anymore) and addicts that have managed to stay alive since the good old days, long for the old meth…

        1. Anthony G Stegman

          Heisenberg has been gone from the scene for a number of years now, but he left behind many proteges.

          1. ambrit

            “Smurf city here we come!” [An oldie but mouldy from, you guessed it, Blue Note Records.]
            (Who says that we’ll never hear smurf music again? Was it Cackling Cosmic Chicken? I’m nearly certain that I heard it on the compilation disc, “New Ages of Atlantis.”)

      2. JBird4049

        The studies that I have read suggest that much, but not all, of the mental illness and drug addiction arises from being homeless itself, not homelessness arising from illness and addiction. The process of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness can apparently be fairly quick. A few months, certainly less than a year, and a formerly healthy, employed, housed individual can become unhealthy, unemployed, addicted, and a bit insane.

        This is why people overestimate the number of people homeless from mental illness and addiction. Yes, there are many people whose health problems caused their homelessness, but the greater part consist of people who were rapidly driven insane by being homeless.

        But whether homelessness by addiction or addiction by homelessness, I think having a place to lay your head that is yours alone is the key to being healthy and sane, which is why just being given a small apartment can do wonders. Not for everyone, but many. Often they do pay rent, but it is a percentage of whatever income they have, partly to have them invested in their new home.

        This is not some complex problem, requiring fancy thought and planning. A fair size studio apartment for an individual, a larger apartment with bedrooms for a family. Nothing fancy, just decent. Medical care and a counselor. Perhaps some food stamps as well, and the individual can do very well.

        It certainly much cheaper than sending them to emergency care every time they overdose or destroy the education of a family’s children by bouncing them around. And then send the children to juvie or foster care when the whole family disintegrates.

        But hey, it’s the socialism and we can’t have that for citizens, only for corporations.

        1. Joe Renter

          You hit the nail on the head. Always money for war. The rich don’t pay their share and laws are for little people. Enough to make you want a real revolution.

  7. Mark Gisleson

    I was just a year out of high school when Watergate happened so I don’t know how to process the Farrell information other than to say he’s talking about stuff that didn’t appear in any of the over 100 books on Nixon and Watergate that I’ve read/collected over the years.

    But this explains 1980 to me, at least in part. Setting up Iowa for Ted in 1979 was a small office operation and communications were all one way: we’d send (Telex, actually) news clippings and intel to the Kennedy people out East and that was it. Then, late in 1979 the Kennedy team started rolling in. Everyone wanted to talk to the locals and I heard incredible amounts of gossip, analysis and hope. Well, not so much hope as arrogant expectations.

    There were three clearly identifiable factions in the 1980 Kennedy campaign: old hands who came in with the Kennedys, pros from labor and other liberal constituencies, and the McGovernites who dressed poorly, were highly motivated and consistently frustrated. The Kennedy hands despised the McGovernites and the labor folks just worked with whoever helped their agenda which btw was never made very clear to me other than labor had the sense that everything was on the line and that Carter couldn’t win and that Reagan had to be stopped and that was the end of the discussion. People still talked about getting dental benefits but the real motivator was Reagan’s terrifying record of being anti-labor.

    I never quite got the contempt for the McGovern folks. I think Gary Hart was seen as their leader but I’m not sure of the timeline as I didn’t spend any time with them even though without my union jacket on I looked just like them.

    This Politico story definitely fills in a lot of holes in the Watergate story but it also seems to omit (I’m really going to have to read Ferrell’s book) mentions of any of the CIA activities covered by Russ Baker’s extremely intriguing “Family of Secrets.”

    As for the campaign itself, I still remember two jokes staffers used to tell about Ted, neither of which can be published in a family blog (a tasteless one about Chappaquiddick and one really awful one about Kopechne and RFK’s assassination). In real time I always said I was on board to beat Carter and not to elect Ted and that if Ted McCarthy’ed Carter in Iowa, I’d jump to the first real Labor candidate to announce. No one cared so long as I was helping as this was a rare period in electoral history when the parties were focused on existential matters and the scorekeepers/grudgeholders came later and then one day I realized the party was a closed system and I’d never get back on the inside because the DNC had somehow incorporated and sealed itself off from outsiders and that’s why everything today stinks like corruption. You need outsiders in the mix to call you out when you lose your way. This Democrat party is so lost they’ve forgotten who they are and just focus on what they need right now, nevermind what they did yesterday or (god forbid) plan to do tomorrow.

  8. JohnM_inMN

    I click on a link in the Caitlin Johnstone entry and found that a Consortium News article would not load. Is anyone able to load Consortium News?

  9. IACyclone

    Re: Musk/Pelosi

    As the New York Times mentioned in it’s write up (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/business/musk-tweets-hillary-clinton-pelosi-husband.html), it should be mentioned that the outlet Musk linked to, the Santa Monica Observer, is not exactly reputable. Among other hits, it published an article in 2016 claiming Hillary Clinton died and was replaced with a body double. So I’d take anything coming out of that with a huge grain of salt.

    That being said, I am slightly interested in finding out whether Politico’s reporting of the incident is correct or mistaken, since their reporting stated that police responding to the incident were inside by an unidentified third individual (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/28/police-pelosi-attack-intentional-00064098). Probably just a maid or someone like that, who works for the Pelosi’s and was hiding from an obviously insane and dangerous person, but in cases like this clarification is always welcome.

    1. MT_Wild

      I would really be interested in a full run down of security staff that was on scene at the time of and during the run up to the incident.

      I assume the Pelosi’s live in a gated community with 24/7 security. Did this dude hop the fence? Was he let through the gate?

      It’s hard to imagine that they don’t have in-house security staff. I mean who’s guarding all that ice cream?

    2. Michael Ismoe

      Probably just a maid or someone like that, who works for the Pelosi’s and was hiding from an obviously insane and dangerous person, but in cases like this clarification is always welcome.

      If my employer was being beaten by a hammer, I’d probably call 911 myself, not hide by the front door. If for no other reason, than to protect myself from “an insane and dangerous person.”

      This story is about as kosher as a ham sandwich.

      1. Mikel

        “If my employer was being beaten by a hammer, I’d probably call 911 myself, not hide by the front door….”

        Exactly. And it leads to speculation about whose identities are protected in crime investigations.

    3. ultrapope

      I’d take anything coming out of that with a huge grain of salt.

      Strongly agree. And I gotta say its incredibly disheartening to see so many people I respect desperately wanting to believe this SMO story. The whole story is sourced by quotes from random people on twitter and those tweets aren’t even linked to. The exception being the image of two retweets by Sebastian Gorka. I am told to believe that Depape is a gay prostitute because of his association with “Castro Nudists”, yet the evidence for that is a picture of a clothed Depape dancing with a naked woman (which other articles identify as Gypsy Taub)? Oh, and there was no way an intruder could have gotten past all of heavy duty security that the Pelosi’s almost certainly had around the house? Please. A year ago I watched a bunch of MAGA rioters break into the US Capitol. Its not hard to imagine a single dude breaking into a house of a politician undetected… especially when that politician was not there.

      1. JBird4049

        IIRC, the Pelosi mansion is right on the street only separated by a sidewalk. I assume that the doors would have good locks and that there would be cameras, but it is not a fortress.

      2. ambrit

        Alas for your contention, it now appears that many of those “MAGA Rioters” were allowed in to the Capitol building by a disorganized and or suborned Capitol Police force.
        One of the most effective methods of obscuring the “truth” about a ‘sensitive’ happening is to immediately release multiple and far fetched “versions” of said truth. The sheer volume of misinformation one is thus forced to wade through slows down the ‘investigations’ of the happening until the public ‘moves on’ to the next shiny new thing.
        Something happened. Pelosi ended up in hospital as a result. Now for the competing agendas…..

      3. Darthbobber

        Indeed. Very often we are properly skeptical of the narratives coming from “official” sources but fail to apply any skepticism at all to various counternarratives. Especially if we’d sorta like them to be true. That SMO story is as ill-sourced and tendentious as anything you’ll see out of our intelligence community snakepit.

      4. MrQuotidian

        An even better example is when George Harrison was stabbed in his own home in 1999.. a lot has changed since then but security systems still aren’t foolproof, and short of actual on-site human security, they are often more geared toward deterrence or record-keeping than completely barring entry.

    4. Wukchumni

      I had a nightmare @ noon yesterday involving Livia Soprano & Nancy Pelosi and in my miasma couldn’t differentiate them.

    5. griffen

      I see. As we all can attest herein, the New York Times and the Washington Post also dismissed the Hunter Biden stolen laptop kerfuffle a few mere weeks prior to election day in 2020. And did so with certainty and alacrity, plus all those officially titled former intel persons.

      Forgive us, it is as though a few including myself have a natural doubt as to what gets clearance and what does not get clearance by an authoritative source. Not intended as a direct clap back towards your comment, and perhaps the aforementioned SM Observer has more in common with the Onion. In a 24/7 news reporting cycle these stories move quickly.

  10. griffen

    The above Onion article today, was the Secretary seeing Freddy Kruger instead of a nightmare image of the ghoulish foreign country? It is Halloween today, after all, in these United States.

    One, two, Freddy is coming for you…

  11. Patrick Donnelly

    WTF is happening with the world’s TBTF banks and Insurance corporations?

    Why is the anti-Ye mediascape so silent?

    I do hope people don’t withdraw cash in the absence of all those sincere reassurances from whoever?

  12. The Rev Kev

    “India’s ban on Chinese video games proves to be a double-edged sword”

    I’d play more Indian games but every time you go to fight a boss, all the characters in the game starts dancing and singing.

  13. Wukchumni

    Mississippi governor extends Jackson water emergency order Clarion Ledger
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    We got notified in a fever, drier than a dusty spout
    We’ve been talkin’ ’bout Jackson
    Ever since the water went out
    I’m talkin’ to Jackson, don’t mess around
    Yeah, I’m talkin’ to Jackson
    Look out Jackson town

    Well, go on drink in Jackson; go ahead and wreck your health
    Go play your hand you big-talkin’ man, make a big fool of yourself
    Yeah, go to Jackson; have Brandon drink a glass there

    As if water shortages gonna snowball aside from Jackson

    Stay tuned out there

    When they bring bottled water into that city, people gonna stoop and bow (Hah!)
    All that H20 is gonna make do, teach ’em about the here & now
    Joe’s goin’ to Jackson, your turn to pull an Obama Flint feint
    is Joe goin’ to Jackson?

    “Goodbye” that’s all she wrote

    But they’ll laugh at you in Jackson, and dancin’ a.dry jig
    They’ll lead you ’round town like a scalded hound
    With your tail tucked between your legs
    Yeah, go to Jackson, you big-talkin’ man
    And I’ll be waitin’ in Jackson-adjacent, hanging out on the wi-fi lam

    Well we got notified in a fever, drier than a dusty spout
    We’ve been talkin’ ’bout Jackson, ever since the water went out
    Joe’s goin’ to Jackson, and will toss a glass of water back
    Yeah, he’s goin’ to Jackson, probably never comin’ back.

    We got notified in a fever, drier than a dusty spout
    We’ve been talkin’ ’bout Jackson
    Ever since the water went out…

    Johnny Cash & June Carter – Jackson

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3NJC18Oi04

    1. Mark Gisleson

      Classic Johnny but I discovered that version long after the fact. The TV version of “Jackson” I listened to as a kid was the sarcastic cover by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood from back in the day when white people didn’t know how to dance and it showed in every video.

  14. The Rev Kev

    “Ukraine says Iran’s help for Russia should push Israel out of neutral stance”

    Sooner or later, the Ukrainians are in for a rude shock aka a reality check. They have been demanding for months now that Israel get into the fight and send them all their military gear along with their Iron Dome anti-air system. So not only are they demanding that the US lean on Israel to get with the program but they want the US to actually punish Israel if they do not give the Ukrainians all they want. You think that Israel will empty out their armouries for the Ukraine and take pot luck on not needing it? I don’t think that Zelensky & Co. are making many friends in Tel Aviv.

    1. Patrick Donnelly

      Russia may be very patient, even passive, as USA and NATO policy seems self destructive elsewhere than in the Ukraine. Many nations are analysing responses postures and effects.

      What happens when the big bad wolf is seen to be so apparently toothless?

      Will USA ‘allies’ ask for US bases to be removed?

      Is the Allied nation with so much Plutonium waiting for its war party to take over?

      Is the USA playing injured as a bird will, to protect its young and draw an attacker onto ground of its own choice?

      What new “Pearl Harbor Surpise Attack” is being dreamed up by the USA?

      Will the V weapons in the Rockies be used?

      Currently, this is a Joke. Do we honestly trust the Blob?

    2. hk

      This war is apparently pushing Saudi Arabia and Iran into reconciliation. Wouldn’t it be something if Israel joined them as well? Israel and Russia have been trying to play nice with each other (at least in certain dimensions) for a couple of decades now. I don’t think Israel wants to make enemies of Russians for Ukraine just yet.

    3. Kouros

      Ukraine is also asking that Iran’s soccer team be eliminated from the World Cup and replaced with Ukraine’s team.

      1. The Rev Kev

        Didn’t the Welsh team beat them several months ago and knock them out of contention? Being let back in without needing to qualify is not a precedent that soccer really needs.

      2. Tom Bradford

        Why bother even playing the games? Ukraine’s gonna win it anyway, the way it won the Eurovision Song Contest.

  15. Wukchumni

    Biden administration considers hindering military aid to Saudi Arabia in a ‘punishing’ response to it cutting oil production, report says Business Insider
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Then: ‘Guns & Butter’

    Now: ‘Buns in Gutter’

    1. Eureka Springs

      If anything the Biden admin is probably putting this meme out in front of the Saudis switching to Russian arms. Even if the US arms were up to snuff a trillion bucks a year doesn’t leave a stockpile laying around large enough for a few months early skirmish in Ukraine.

    2. Oh

      I don’t take the US-Saudi spat seriously. Both countries know that if MBS steps out too far, there’ll be a regime change in a hurry.

    1. Michael Ismoe

      Why don’t we just make it illegal to cast a ballot for Trump? It would save a lot of time. Saving our democracy by banning candidates from running.

      We may want to borrow Webster’s Dictionary.

      1. griffen

        Is 2:30 eastern US too soon for the start of a drinking game? \sarc

        “Our democracy”
        “Save our democracy”

    2. hunkerdown

      The existing order should be abolished for protecting its ruling classes from absolute, total accountability for the crimes they commit on its behalf, but good luck getting PMC whiners whose entire value to society is measured in those terms to have any part of it.

      1. pjay

        I forgot to add that I do feel that conspiring to falsely frame a sitting President of the US as a treasonous agent of a foreign power, utilizing a network of partisans in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, the mainstream media, and at at least two foreign intelligence agencies, *should* disqualify one from holding public office. In fact it should qualify one for a prison sentence – even if the target is an a**hole. But hey, laws are for the little guys.

  16. Wukchumni

    It’s the most wonderful time of the year
    With the kids jingle belling
    And everyone telling you be of Ukraine cheer
    It’s the most wonderful time of the year

    It’s the hap-happiest season of all
    With potential long distance greetings and Halloween meetings
    When kids come to call
    It’s the hap-happiest season of all

    There’ll be 2 parties hosting
    Nukes for toasting
    And ushering out our show
    There’ll be scary ghost stories
    And tales of the glories of
    Politicians long, long ago

    It’s the most wonderful time of the year
    There’ll be much toe to toeing
    And cities will be glowing
    When loved ones are near
    It’s the most wonderful time of the year
    Yes the most wonderful time
    Oh the most wonderful time
    Of the year

  17. The Rev Kev

    “Is US-Saudi row giving China a chance to expand its role in Middle East? ”

    Right now the Biden White house is threatening the Saudis. They have told them that they are going to take measures against them because they cut back oil production by some two million barrels a day when clearly there was a deal to open up the oil spigots to help old Joe get re-elected. But then they told them that if at some OPEC meeting in December that they decide to increase oil production after all, that then maybe the punishments need not go ahead. So maybe this is what the visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping is all about. The Saudis getting ready to line up a new best customer. Whatever else happens, after the midterms are over the Democrats will blame two groups for losing any seats – the Progressives and the Saudis and revenge will be the order of the day.

    1. Screwball

      Don’t forget the Russians. They get blamed for everything.

      Oh, and Trump. How could I forget Trump.

  18. Wukchumni

    I’ve spent the past couple weeks reading US press coverage of the Cuban missile crisis at the time and it’s hard to really articulate how extreme and unhinged today’s media discourse is by comparison, even as we similarly inch toward nuclear catastrophe.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    My memories are mostly mama’s mammaries during the Cuban missile crisis as I wasn’t even a year old when we came closest to blowing up the world, but we’d been on high tension for years leading up to it, whereas our situation is different in that all of the sudden both the USA & Apparatchiks behind the Irony Curtain are willing to risk it all on a country that doesn’t matter all that much in the scheme of things.

    My mom told me a few years ago after the crisis was over and I was in the front seat of a grocery cart minding my own business (literally) when a woman practically accosted her, exclaiming that it was awful of her to bring children into the world in such as uncertain time as now!

    1. Joe Renter

      I was in first grade during the crisis and still remember doing the get under the desk drill. Yeah, right that’s going to save little Joey.

      1. LifelongLib

        We had to go out in the hall, I guess to get us away from windows. Where I lived at the time was in Washington state between Seattle and Everett (Boeing) so chances of survival were slim.

  19. fresno dan

    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    ·
    Follow
    An underrated asymmetry in American politics is that liberals sincerely lack a taste for highly partisan media and prefer the kind of mishmash of embedded progressive cultural assumptions + studious evenhandedness about actual politics that you get from NPR/NYT.
    ===============================================
    !!!
    Sooooo, we have a FBI and a DoJ, and and the dem party, that at the VERY BEST interpretation, were too stupid for YEARS to figure out Russiagate was nonsense, and at a worse but probably more realistic interpretation, that an actually coup was attempted. And this fellow can’t see that at all….and believes reporting from the WP, NYT, MSNBC, CNN, etc. was dispassionate, objective, and balanced. !!!
    reality…so, so difficult for some.

    1. Mark Gisleson

      Exactly right in that they “were too stupid for YEARS to figure out Russiagate was nonsense…”.

      I have never read a single allegation about anything Russia allegedly did that amounted to actual election interference. Even the claims were preposterous, the kind of swill shoveled by people who don’t actually understand how elections work or can be influenced.

      Whig the family blog out of these people starting a week from tomorrow.

      1. fresno dan

        MG
        So I’m reading a Jeff Greenfield column, and I used to think the guy was OK, but I’ll give a couple of examples of his beliefs and inability to even consider another perspective.
        https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/29/pelosi-attack-power-political-violence-00064105
        Greenfield in italics Not all of the violence is political. Some crime rates are spiking after decades of decline, with random attacks on city streets grabbing the headlines; crime has returned to center stage in our politics, and with it, the impulse to find a source that will fit an ideologically useful explanation.
        I agree with that 100% – maybe the guy who attacked Pelosi was only metally ill. EXCEPT Greenfield than says: Some on the right, like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, made the remarkable assertion that Paul Pelosi’s assault is tied to “leftist elected officials” creating an atmosphere that fuels crime.
        Well, there are a considerable number of people who are criticizing the San Francisco district attoney for minimal criminal enforcement. As well as any number of assertions from “liberals” that this attack is due to Trump.
        More importantly, the attack underscores the possible dangers of the escalation of heated political rhetoric, overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, from the right.
        Well, gee, my above post is all about the years of calling Trump treasonas, and trying to impeach him, without a scintilla of evidence, when anyone who was objective could see that Crossfire Hurricane was unreasonable to start with.
        It took Donald Trump to fully demonstrate the malevolent power of violent rhetoric, from the beginning of his presidential campaign, when he poured venom on immigrants, insulted the war record of McCain, and urged his followers at rallies to lay hands on protesters.
        I don’t like Trump, and many of the things he says simply can’t be justified. But again, to ignore that Trump was accused from the very highest levels of government and the media of being in cahoots with the Russians, was impeached, and that is ALL demonstraitably false, without comment, says something about the balance in Greenfield’s essay.

          1. ambrit

            I beg to differ. The most effective President of this century was Dick Cheney, Baron Halliburton, (Lord Protector, 2001-2009.) He cemented America’s ‘Turn to the Dark Side.’

      2. Late Introvert

        My dad, bless his heart, got all huffy when I scoffed at Russi@’s so-called “el3ction 1nterference”. I told him it was some F@ceborg ads and polls for scant millions* and his face fell. When you explain it to people they get it.

        *if it was even that, and I try to explain to him and my mom how much we interf3red in their elections, it’s a hard climb

        1. The Rev Kev

          You should tell them – true story – that the US sent so much money to the US Embassy in Moscow to buy the election for Yeltsin back in the 90s, that the guy guarding it actually slept on it at night as it was such a large stack.

          The let them watch the film “Spinning Boris”-

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNbYhkj3fmE (1:52:31 min)

          Hollywood actually made a film how they stole the Russian election. :)

          1. Polar Socialist

            It’s my understanding Yeltsin would have won anyway, at least after he was the strongest not-Zyuganov candidate left. Just like French did not vote for Macron but against Le Pen, a little bit over half of the Russians voted against communists and indeed all got Gaidar, Chubais and the goodness of Chigago Boys, a.k.a. “the rape of Russia”.

            What a great introduction to democracy it was.

            1. ambrit

              Sorry, but that should be Democracy (TM). Do this again and Legal will be contacting your seconds. /s

  20. The Rev Kev

    “EU admits new cold war is not ‘democracy vs. autocracy’: ‘On our side, there are a lot of authoritarian regimes’’

    I don’t think that Josep Borrell gets it.

    ‘Borrell said the international political order is in a period of “messy multipolarity,” describing it as “a world of radical uncertainty,” where the “speed and scope of change is exceptional.”’

    It’s not a period, it is the new norm. The unipolar moment of the past three decades was a historical aberration and could never last. And that means that countries will need good Foreign Ministers to protect their interests – like Lavrov. And not non-entities like Borrell and Truss. The days when the Global South just rolled over at the dictates of what the EU wants is over. People may remember a film called ‘The Year of Living Dangerously.’ Well this is going to be The Decade of Living Dangerously while the new order shakes itslef out. And one thing that should be shaken out is people like Borrell.

  21. Will

    re audio of Earth’s magnetic field

    Very cool podcast episode on musician-astrophysicists and others creating audio representations of the galaxy. The link is to a summary article. The article also had the following links to these examples:

    Dawn chorus – “radio waves sent to earth when solar winds interact with Earth’s magnetosphere.”

    Saturn and its moons – radio waves collected by Cassini probe in 2003.

    Lightning storm in Jupiter – radio emissions recorded in 1979 by Voyager 1

  22. Mikel

    “Job Markets Are Defying Central Bankers’ Efforts to Cool Demand” Bloomberg

    I don’t think the Central Bankers want to encourage the option of comfortable retirement right now either.

  23. Wukchumni

    Finding safe haven in the climate change future: The Northeast Yahoo
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    I like the sound of Lamoille, Vt because of good times in Lamoille Canyon & the Ruby Mountains, a must see if you happen to be in Elko.

    https://travelnevada.com/outdoor-recreation/lamoille-canyon-ruby-mountains/

    I think the idea of being safe in a given place is relative as all it takes is one catch 22 inch deluge in a 24 hour span to upset the apple cart.

    The sheer randomness of events beyond our ken only adds to the lack of allure.

    And so far there haven’t really been any feel-good stories about climate change and how it did something for the better, only differing levels of losing.

  24. flora

    from The Atlantic:

    Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty

    We need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/10/covid-response-forgiveness/671879/

    Being a member of the PMC class means never having to say you’re sorry for vilifying in the most horrible ways your fellow citizens who simply asked reasonable questions. I don’t know anyone who was/is reasonably hesitant who is “gloating” now. But claiming they might be gloating is another dig at the out-group’s character. Perfect PMC.

    1. Screwball

      For personal reasons I refused the shots. From the beginning of the pandemic, through the lock downs, then out of the lock downs to mask wearing, removing masks, declaring the pandemic over (h/t Joe Biden) I have continued to teach school in a local college and a vocational school. I felt like I was risking my life, but it was my choice, so I did what I did. I used all the prevention I had available, including drugs from foreign countries.

      That said, I haven’t forgot how I was treated for even questioning the shots, or the science, or Fauci, or the CDC, or the FDA. I haven’t forgot the people who thought I shouldn’t be able to go to the store, gas station, doctor, or a bar, because I wasn’t jabbed.

      I haven’t forgot the people who thought I shouldn’t be treated at a hospital. Screw him, everyone else first. I haven’t forgot how so many wished death on people, including me, and spoke it loud and clear. No, I haven’t forgot, and I won’t accept their apology. They can kiss my ever loving butt.

      And I also won’t forget all that next Tuesday.

      1. marku52

        Amen. And I totally am impressed that all of that “Stop the Spread–Save Granny, Follow the Science!”

        Was based on literally NOTHING.

      2. Late Introvert

        I did get one of the J&J’s, it was a family thing. But I agree with everything else you said. My employer went from requiring a phony ass document anyone could forge, to then saying no masking needed. I won’t forget that either.

    2. chuck roast

      Gotta love the big “A” they use as their logo now. Reading the rag reminds me of the three A’s I got in high school…in Anxiety, Angst and Alienation. I pine for the days of Mort Zuckerman.

  25. Anthony G Stegman

    The United States has had many terrible presidents over the course of my lifetime. Most of them have been terrible for a variety of reasons. The Biden presidency to-date certainly must rank among the worst of the worst. With 2+ years to go in Biden’s term we all ought to be extremely concerned. Is there any real chance of removing Biden before 2024?

    1. JBird4049

      Please, no. As bad as President Biden is, just think what a President Harris would be especially as she would probably be just an incredible stupid and foolish façade for the powers that be. A Liz Truss, only worse, if that is possible. When he can think coherently, he seems to be his own man and to have a spine, albeit very rubbery.

  26. larry silber

    I read Scott Ritters account of Bucha again, after that 60 Minutes story blaming the Russians, The news report did have witnesses claiming they saw Russians firing from a tank killing a older man on a bike out to get groceries. Obviously that on its own can be true notwithstanding others in the Bucha tragedy actually being killed by Ukrainian’s angry over so called collaborators. War brings the worst out in humanity. Which is why we need to diplomatically end this asap. That being said, Scott also just makes counter claims about the western narrative, convincing as he sounds, i still didn’t read any real proof or eye witness accounts being offered in support of his thesis. Unfortunately the fog of war still makes getting at the truth difficult.

    1. pjay

      Well, there has been considerable evidence presented – “circumstantial” evidence, I suppose. This includes things like timelines and photographs that don’t line up, white arm bands and/or Russian aid packages for some of the victims, bodies that seemed to be too recently deceased, etc., not to mention the usual convoluted logic: why would the Russians commit such an atrocity *as they were leaving*, for no apparent reason (other than their sadistic evilness, of course, as always in such otherwise senseless “atrocities”)? There’s more, but since it is always the case that one can reject any such information as disinformation by the bad guys, it is fruitless to make such an argument.

  27. Mikel

    https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/elon-musk-fired-top-execs-to-avoid-paying-122m-golden-parachutes-report/
    “…Musk reportedly terminated the executives “for cause” — which would void a clause in their contract that entitles them to payouts worth tens of millions of dollars in severance and unvested stock options, according to reports on Saturday by the New York Times and the Information.

    The research firm Equilar told Reuters on Friday that Agrawal, Segal, and Gadde are in line to receive golden parachutes worth a total of some $122 million….”

    Musk is still trying to save some money on this deal….

    1. marku52

      I read on a substack that Musk dragged out the court hearings to gather information about Twitter inside before he consummated the deal, That he always intended to buy, but gained info that was useful to him. Like who to fire and why.

      Might be giving Musk a little too much credit, but it’s a possibility.

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