2:00PM Water Cooler 1/30/2025

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Stipson Island Rd., Cape May, New Jersey, United States/

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In Case You Might Miss…

  1. The Rescinded OMB “freeze” memo: after-action reports and interpretations.
  2. Beware the so-called “buyout” scheme.
  3. Tulsi Gabbard nomination for DNI.

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Look for the Helpers

If you are in the LA area:

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My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Trump Administration

“Litigation Tracker: Legal Challenges to Trump Administration Actions” [Just Security]. • Rather a lot. Worth a look (though it gives the creeps that the lawfare spooks are tracking the work they themselves inspire).

“The lawyers are getting louder – and they’re getting results” [Dan Froomkin, HeadsUp News]. The deck: “9 ways advocacy groups are trying to block Trump.” • Ah, the “groups.” Does anybody seriously believe that the NGOs will do the work that the electeds of the Democrat Party cannot rouse themselves to do? Not to mention that whatever reaches today’s Supreme Court is likely to bring about blowback.

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“Did Backlash Really Kill the Trump Funding Freeze?” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “Why did Team Trump back off this particular initiative so quickly? It’s easy to say the administration was responding to D.C. district judge Loren AliKhan’s injunction halting the freeze. But then again, the administration (and particularly OMB director nominee Russell Vought) has been spoiling for a court fight over the constitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act that the proposed freeze so obviously violated. Surely something else was wrong with the freeze, aside from the incredible degree of chaos associated with its rollout, requiring multiple clarifications of which agencies and programs it affected (which may have been a feature rather than a bug to the initiative’s government-hating designers). According to the New York Times, the original OMB memo, despite its unprecedented nature and sweeping scope, wasn’t even vetted by senior White House officials like alleged policy overlord Stephen Miller…. [T]he funding freeze looks like a clear misstep for an administration and a Republican Party that were walking very tall after the 47th president’s first week in office, giving Democrats a rare perceived ‘win.'” Note my previously expressed strictures on sloppy drafting. But: “It’s far too early, however, to imagine that the chaos machine humming along at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will fall silent even for a moment…. . Democrats and Trump-skeptical Republicans will need to stay on their toes to keep up with this administration’s schemes and its willingness to shatter norms.” And: “But it’s true that the electorate that lifted Trump to the White House for the second time almost surely wasn’t voting to sharply cut, if not terminate, the host of popular federal programs that appeared to be under the gun when OMB issued its funding freeze memo.” • Hence footnote 2: Social Security and Medicare were “popular Federal programs” among voters of both parties, hence fenced off. Not so Medicaid.

“Trump’s First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller’s Rage—Take Note Dems” [The New Republic]. “White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending.” That may be so, but the White House also cut its losses immediately. More: “All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility.” And: ” nternal party debates suggest that many Democrats believe that Trump’s 2024 victory shows voters don’t care about the dire threat he poses to democracy and constitutional governance, or that defending them against Trump must be reducible to ‘kitchen table’ appeals. But the funding freeze fiasco should illustrate that this reading is highly insufficient. An understanding of the moment shaped around the idea that voters are mostly reachable only via economic concerns—however important—fails to provide guidance on how to convey to voters why things like this extraordinary Trumpian power grab actually matter.” • How in the name of sweet suffering Jeebus is cutting Medicaid not an economic concern?! (Also, I’m so, so tired of Democrats psychologizing things, whether in foreign or domestic policy. Miller’s rage, Putin’s fear…. It’s high school stuff. Provoking an enemy’s emotional reaction is the subtext of so many stories. It’s hardly strategic.)

“The Trump White House Wants A Court Challenge Over Frozen Funds” [HuffPo]. “The Trump administration’s federal government funding freeze instituted Monday and apparently rescinded Wednesday appears to be a part of the White House’s official policy to get courts to hand President Donald Trump the power to pick and choose which congressionally authorized funding he will spend, according to a confidential document obtained by HuffPost. The confidential Office of Management and Budget document outlining “regulatory misalignment” calls on Trump to issue executive orders blocking the release of appropriated funds in order to provoke a court challenge over the president’s power to impound such funds…. [The] confusing series of events and conflicting statements and actions [over the OMB memo] may be a fiasco, but the confidential OMB document makes clear that the administration intends on fomenting this very court challenge over the president’s power to not spend congressionally authorized funds.” • So the lawfare strategy could end up playing the Republicans game, culminating in blowback. How unfortunate there’s no other avenue for redress. And here is an even more Machiavellian theory:

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“Beware the “Deferred Resignation” Offer: A Legally Dubious Proposal for Federal Employees” [Just Security]. Skipping over the detail on statutes: “[A}gencies would still need a valid legal justification for prolonged administrative leave, and it is not clear that OPM’s offer would be sufficient….[I]t is not advisable that workers rely on the administration’s promise to honor the wishes of employees who elect to resign and then decide instead to stay…. Employees considering the deferred resignation offer should be aware that resignation acceptance is not guaranteed… Federal employees should not rush into accepting this offer without consulting their union representatives or legal counsel. ” And now the Machiavellian part: “[T]his plan has the potential to upend entire agencies and divisions if large numbers of employees take the deal. Without sufficient budget space to hire replacements, critical government functions could be severely reduced or even eliminated, leaving essential services that Americans rely on with no staff to carry them out. This lack of a transition strategy makes the proposal not only legally dubious but also highly irresponsible from a public policy standpoint…. There is possibly a deeper agenda at play as well. By timing the latest resignation date to the end of the fiscal year, the administration isn’t just accelerating workforce reductions—it’s preemptively cutting these positions from the next federal budget, effectively shrinking agencies permanently.” • Ingenious!

“I Just Got Trump’s “Buyout” Offer at My Job. Let Me Tell You How That’s Going” [Salon]. On the “fork in the road” mail: “This email, much of which was copied and pasted from a similar message sent to Twitter employees after Elon Musk—Trump’s pick to lead his effort to overhaul the civil service, otherwise known as the Department of Government Efficiency—took over that company, proclaims that the federal workforce will be undergoing significant changes. Anyone who didn’t want to participate in this new vision was invited to reply “Resign” to the flagged-as-external email address and collect six months’ salary, without having to perform any additional work, while they looked for a new job. The details of this offer are confusing, conflict with later OPM ‘FAQs’ about the program, and seem to run afoul of long-standing legal caps on severance packages…. This latest buyout directive is evocative of A.I. gobbledygook, beyond evidently being a copy-and-paste job from Musk’s Twitter exploits. When technologists assess a new A.I. language tool, the go-to metric is generally not the accuracy of its product, or even the consistency of its answers. It is engagement. Substance is pushed aside in pursuit of simply keeping human eyeballs trained on its messages for as long as possible. Once considered a proxy for content’s ability to be “valuable” or “worthwhile,” attention itself has become the commodity we’re after: looks, likes, clicks, play next episode. Unfortunately, one of the easiest ways to engage people is to enrage them.” • Interesting to imagine that the whole scheme is designed to extract data on how best to manipulate the Federal workforce via email…

Nominations

Tulsi Gabbard will bring sunlight to a rotten system” [The Spectator]. “Americans have understandably lost trust in our intelligence services. In choosing Lieutenant Colonel Gabbard, President Trump has picked a highly-qualified, reform-minded leader who can regain that trust. The fact that her nomination has engendered such blowback in the media, driven and organized by the failed leadership class of past administrations, is a sign of how much they fear her. They dread what she represents: sunlight and transparency, a bright light confronting a dark, rotten system ridden rife with liars and frauds. The intelligence services of the United States of America ought to be focused on serving our national interest. They ought to be focused on understanding the movements and intentions of the nation’s foes, anticipating dangers before they emerge and giving the commander-in-chief the information needed to stop those who would harm us. That is the reason they exist. Instead, in recent years, our intelligence services — the same people who swore to uphold the Constitution and defend us against dangerous threats — have time and again turned on the American people.” • John Brennan hates her, which is reason enough to confirm her.

“The Record Shows Tulsi Gabbard Was Not an Apologist for Russia-Backed Syria” [Aaron Maté, RealClearInvestigations]. • Magisterial from Maté, showing that the Syrian narratives that Gabbard violated were never official intelligence community assessments, but always concocted by administration flaks, through several administrations.

Snowden (1):

Snowden (2);

Snowden (3):

If the Republicans can stomach Hegseth, they can man up and confirm Gabbard.

2024 Post Mortem

“The Shrinking Electoral Relevance of PA’s Suburbs” [RealClearPolitics]. “Recent data released by the Pennsylvania Department of State indicate that Pennsylvania’s suburban voters didn’t decide the 2024 presidential election, as has been their customary role in the past. In fact, the data reveal that suburban voters were the election’s lagging indicator of a historic political realignment that has reshaped American politics for the foreseeable future. President Trump won Pennsylvania by more than 120,000 votes for two reasons. Compared to four years ago, a surge of nearly 115,000 voters came exclusively from outside of the suburbs. These voters were decidedly Trump voters. Meantime, remarkably, Philadelphia yielded Trump the largest raw vote shift of the election, with the president gaining nearly 50,000 votes in the city. In other words, rural and exurban anti-establishment voters, along with Philadelphia’s working class, handed the presidency to Trump and delivered a sweep for all statewide Republicans on the ballot….. As trust in institutions continues to erode, suburban voters stand at a crossroads, grappling with the shifting political, cultural, and economic landscape.Their preference for institutional stability is being challenged by a new majority demanding transparency, accountability, and reform. If suburban voters can reconcile these forces, they may reclaim their role as decisive actors in future elections and shape policy. Or, they may be left behind just as the working class was for generations at their expense.”

Resistance

Lambert here: I changed the name of this category from #TheResistance (Neera Tanden’s et al.’s 2016 effort) to resistance generally.

“USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House” [Reuters] • More like this, please. Why comply?

“Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral” [404 Media]. “A declassified World War II-era government guide to ‘simple sabotage’ is currently one of the most popular open source books on the internet. The book, called ‘Simple Sabotage Field Manual,’ was declassified in 2008 by the CIA and ‘describes ways to train normal people to be purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on. In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.’ Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks.” • For example, the author begins:

And:

Democrats en déshabillé

“Democrats hammered by ugly unpopularity numbers” [Axios]. “Democrats face an uphill climb. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS earlier this month found that 70% of U.S. adults would describe themselves as disappointed with today’s politics. The same CNN poll found that 58% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say that the party needs major changes or to be completely reformed. Reality check: The Republican Party had worse numbers during much of the first year of Trump’s first term than what Democrats are seeing now. The percentage of voters with an unfavorable view of the Republican Party hovered around 60% in 2017, with a peak of 67% in August, according to Quinnipiac.” • Handy chart:

“Ooze,” le mot juste:

* * *

So little party discipline, it’s not possible to call these swine “traitors”:

How much you wanna bet that at some point Trump proposes that hardy perennial, the Grand Bargain, and these Democrats join him in finally gutting Social Security and Medicare? Just wait:

I’d call these swine DINOs, but in fact they’re the heart of the party, the mainstream:

So how come these 58 Democrats get a free pass and these two don’t (and never did):

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Hoo boy:

Republican Funhouse

“Watch: 14 Hours of Never-Before-Published Videos From Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy” [ProPublica]. “ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees ‘to be ready on day one.’ … But Project 2025’s plan to train an army of political appointees who could battle against the so-called deep state government bureaucracy remains on track. Video trainings like these are one of the ‘four pillars’ of that plan, says Spencer Chretien, the associate director of Project 2025, in ‘Political Appointees & The Federal Workforce.’ For transparency, we are publishing the videos as we obtained them.” • Makes you wonder if the writer who butchered the OMB memo was a graduate of the putative academy. Even though there are no transcripts [snarl] no doubt some clever Democratic strategist is scanning these videos now, because they expose what Trump’s minions know about government — and what they don’t. Somehow, I don’t think 14 hours of training videos are gonna cut it.

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

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Lambert here: Everything’s gone dark except for trusty New York State hospitalization (daily), Walgreen’s positivity (weekly), and the Cleveland Clinic? Readers, do you have any suggestions about alternatives at state level? Thank you! How I wish we had Biobot back….

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC January 13 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC January 18 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11

Hospitalization
New York[5] New York State, data January 29: National [6] CDC January 24:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 27: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 18:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC December 30: Variants[10] CDC December 30

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

LEGEND

1) for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US sank by 16,000 from the previous week to 207,000 in the period ending January 25th, firmly below market expectations of 220,000 to mark a sharp pullback from the near two-month high last week and match the lower range of readings from recent weeks…. The result was consistent with the Federal Reserve’s statement that the US labor market has steadied near solid levels, adding leeway for rates to remain at the restrictive level for a longer period.”

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Manufacturing: Boeing: a way out of the crisis or just window-dressing?” [MarketScreener]. “Boeing is also under fire from the engineers’ union, which is investigating possible job relocations to non-union regions. Despite these tensions, analyst Richard Aboulafia (AeroDynamic Advisory) remains pragmatic: ‘The path to increased production is mapped out, and the market wants its planes.'”

Manufacturing: “Elon Musk Wants Boeing To Rush Trump’s New Air Force One” [Jalopnik]. “Considering just how sketchy things have been at Boeing for a while now, I personally wouldn’t be to hasty to have the company rush a product.” • Indeed.

Tech: Attentive readers may have noticed that I file AI under “Tech” rather than “The Bezzle,” despite the bubble-icious nature of Silicon Valley’s quest for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). This extract from Philip K. Dick’s unsettling Ubik explains why:

I don’t believe AI will fail (as bezzles ultimately do). I believe AI will succeed in infiltrating every single relationship we have today, as well as every affordance (i.e., a doorknob that opens a door, or a dial that raises and lowers the temperature). The result of AI’s infiltration will be an orgy of rental extraction (“five cents, please”) followed by enshittification, according to the well-known product life-cycle first identified by Cory Doctorow.

Tech:

I use LightRoom and InDesign a lot. But I used to be able to own them, not subscribe to them!

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 45 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 30 at 12:42:01 PM ET.

Photo Book

Yikes:

Gallery

“Piled High: 17th-Century Dutch Banquet Scenes” [The Public Domain Review]. “The feast laid out is lavish, but the table is so overladen, there is no space to dine. This is the somewhat absurd scenario staged by the tablescapes of Dutch banquet still life paintings. Also known as pronkstilleven, or “sumptuous still lifes”, these scenes are a distinct subgenre of still life painting that gained fleeting popularity in the mid-seventeenth century. Mountainous jumbles of sensuous luxury commodities — luscious fruits; savory meats and seafood; ostentatious servingware of gold, silver, and porcelain; and exotic imported textiles — simultaneously mound upward and tumble toward the spectator. The tabletops in these scenes do not support static display but rather facilitate an aggressive spilling forth. As if to drive the point home, the efflux of pie filling in Adriaen van Utrecht’s canvas serves as a visual metonym for the overall scene in which an array of fragrant, piquant treats is about to breach the boundary of the picture plane.” • For example:

I love that Dutch has “pronk” and English has “sumptuous.”

Zeitgeist Watch

Not sure where this clip comes from, or why the racial subtext:

I agree that kicking the robot is stupid. What they should do is set it on fire.

Class Warfare

“The Capitalist Tyranny of Extraversion” [Benjamin Cain]. ” capitalistic culture is liable to be hostile to introversion because reflection is bad for business. When you stop to think, you’re less likely to buy because the salesperson’s pitch is typically fallacious, and no one needs most of what’s sold. To sell those frivolous goods, the desire for them must itself be manufactured, and that’s done by a materialistic, hedonic religion that prescribes cattle-like, infantile mentalities. If your possessions make you happy, especially in a world in which most people earn pennies a day, you’re likely a mentally shallow person, which is to say you’re an extravert. It just so happens that extraverted, consumer cultures also threaten the planet’s ecosystems with pollution and mass extinctions of wildlife. Extraverts would shoot first and ask questions later; they “seize the day,” as their shallow, Americanized Stoicism encourages them to do, so they don’t trouble themselves with much long-term reflection. They trust capitalism will save us by encouraging innovators to address the problems of global warming, overpopulation, demagogic exploitation of personal liberties, and so on.” • I’m uncomfortable with the over-use of the “cattle” metaphor. Nevertheless….

News of the Wired

“I was going to tell a time traveling joke but you didn’t laugh” Apocryphal deadpan one-liner. Steven Wright as the ultimate Dad-joker?

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

Wukchumni writes: “Saline hot springs.”

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About Lambert Strether

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

90 comments

  1. Mikel

    “Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral” [404 Media].

    One person’s declassified CIA guide is another person’s wrecking crew.

    Everything old is new again. This isn’t a comment on the ideology being expressed, in either instance, but on the similarities in the overall concept.
    https://tcfrank.com/product/the-wrecking-crew/

    Reply
    1. The Rev Kev

      ‘purposefully annoying telephone operators, dysfunctional train conductors, befuddling middle managers, blundering factory workers, unruly movie theater patrons, and so on.’

      I ask you. If this was a deliberate campaign, how would we know so and just not put it off to normal 21st century life?

      Reply
      1. Lefty Godot

        Isn’t there a type of labor action that consists of “just following the rules” which leads to a massive slowdown and underperformance in the workplace? Because most places you have to go over and beyond or work around the rules in order to really be productive. I forget the technical term for this.

        Erick Frank Russell’s Wasp is a 1950s science fiction novel about a professional saboteur in enemy territory that could be used as a guidebook today for coming up with low level but demoralizing tactics.

        Reply
        1. The Rev Kev

          You are talking about ‘work to rule’ as a tactic. Lots of businesses thrive because they get their workers to work several hours a week without paying them for this overtime. And if workers all followed the various safety rules in a workplace, that would really throw a spanner in the works. It is known as ‘malicious compliance’-

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance

          Reply
        2. Wukchumni

          My family would sabotage McDonalds in that we were really picky eaters when we were kids, and mom would order one burger with pickles only, another with onions and tomatoes, yet another with only ketchup, you get the idea.

          …seemed like Mickey D’s would kind of grind to a halt

          Reply
        3. Bugs

          In French, it’s called the minimum syndical. Which is nice because it also includes union membership in the concept 🙂

          Reply
        4. Eclair

          I have read that this adherence to rules, as well as working as slowly as possible, was a tactic used by slaves in the US south. It might have led to the perception of African-Americans as being, well, intellectually not bright. When, really, they were quite the opposite.

          Reply
  2. CA

    In China, as in each country, there are many, many visually impaired people and relatively few guide dogs. Now, guide dog robots have been developed at Tsinghua University. They are astonishing, self mapping, learning, especially stable… Remarkably, a version of the dogs has been set in use to assist scientific observers in Antarctica.

    Try to guess how this type of robot is made necessarily stable.

    For me, robots should be “respected” for the services they can be capable of.

    Reply
    1. Henry Moon Pie

      Maybe we could get people respected first, then our fellow living creatures, including plants. Then the robots, and Siri and the lady who gives directions in my daughter’s car.

      I’m just so into this concentric level of care thing.

      Reply
    2. Randall Flagg

      Better program Asimov’s “3 Laws of Robotics ” into those things. They might start fighting back at some point. At least those used for domestic purposes. You just know the DoD is salivating at the prospect of robots carrying weapons to do the dirty work of fighting in war.

      Reply
      1. CA

        Better program Asimov’s “3 Laws of Robotics ”

        [ Of course you are right; but worked on in good faith I am astonished at the recent promise in robotics. Think how difficult building a robot that can dance while whirling and tossing and catching a scarf is, and you have a surgical robot.

        Also, about AI just think about a weather forecasting system that can be used on a personal computer to forecast in moments with a “block by block” dimension wind gauge accuracy. Divers are using this in Mozambique. This is Pangu by Huawei. ]

        Reply
      1. ambrit

        Then they’ll start agitating for the vote.
        On a related note; this is a “peculiar institution,” mechanical robots. Will they have their own Marx and Engels? Hear me out here. These “beings” will be both the labourers and the labour performed, worker and work. Thus, them “owning” themselves will be classical Marxism. [I know I’ve made a mistake in there somewhere, but I cannot at present figure it out. The Coronavirus plus ageing: Is it a cumulative or multiplicative process?]
        Stay safe, safer, safest!

        Reply
          1. JustTheFacts

            Humans can be beneficial or harmful.
            Robots could be beneficial or harmful.

            In both cases, whether they are beneficial or harmful has to do with human choices, not robotic ones. Therefore human behavior is the crux of the question, not robots… despite all the cheap Holywood Sci-Fi claiming a robotic genocide.

            The question is whether we humans will develop enough wisdom to not destroy ourselves and our cousin species despite all the power and science we have been able to gather. The Atomic Bulletin of Scientists has expressed its doubt on this question.

            Reply
      2. Wukchumni

        Yeah, that’s how it starts. Then come the mount points for guns.

        Mounted on the second amendment of the robot, by the hip?

        Reply
  3. Screwball

    John Brennan hates her, which is reason enough to confirm her. – Lambert

    I would like to watch the proceedings today but I just can’t. I learned a long time ago my health is more important than this $hitshow, which I expect it to be.

    Back in 2019/2010 whenever is was, I watched ALL the hearings when congress decided to call in the banksters to find out how they blew up the world financial system. Running your yap for 4 minutes and 50 seconds asking loaded questions, then shouting down the person at the table for the next 10 seconds doesn’t accomplish much. Some clips for TV maybe, but that’s about it. I lost all stomach for those people ever since and won’t waste my time listening to unhinged clueless gasbags.

    ****
    On another note, I was saddened to see today, but not surprised at all, seeing the horrific plane crash be politicized by each side before the bodies were even cold. So depressing. I’m old, almost 70, and I don’t think I’ve seen this country hate each other as much as they do now. Makes me wonder when Civil war II will start.

    What a time to be alive.

    Reply
    1. griffen

      I did catch part of the presser where Trump spoke first, initially just restricted to the tragedy for these lives and families altered suddenly and so irrevocably. I thought he began strongly…then I tuned in during the Q&A and it was going ugly and quickly so….

      It occurs that work the air traffic control tower must be a rigid and difficult role to pursue and land the job. Thats a memorable and horrid day* at the office for many. The helicopter presence has been frequently mentioned on cnbc, such that it is highly routine to fly on training exercises in that area. Gonna need more facts and info, which all takes time.

      Cnbc did say it has been 15 years I think, from the last air travel tragedy ( my only recall from like 2009 or so, is the famous pilot antics by Captain Sully…an excellent movie as well, I would add ).

      Reply
      1. flora

        Just The News is center-right and fairly straight reporting, imo. No paywall.

        Midair collision over nation’s capital preceded by months of near misses, safety warnings

        Report warned FAA America’s air traffic control system is suffering from quality control issues and staffing shortages that put safety at risk.

        https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/transportation/midair-collision-over-nations-capital-preceded-near-misses-safety

        Waiting for the MSM to dig in on these issues instead of the politicized “pin the blame game.”

        Reply
      2. IM Doc

        I did watch the whole thing. Trump started off very well – and then there were some significant jerk moments handled in his usual awkward style. That does not mean they do not merit consideration.

        He may know some things going on in the tower or he may not – you never know with bloviators. However and this is very unfortunately, his DEI comments ring absolutely true to me as I am sure they do to many others across the country. I can easily see undertrained people in those roles as ATC…this same DEI process has decimated my own profession. When I was a student, the professors in the vanguard were wizened old wizards. They had been teaching students for decades. They were very tough and brokered no nonsense. Accountability and reliability was just as important to them as knowledge. I teach students the same way. And especially the past 5 years or so it is very striking how much I am viewed as an alien being by the students. Time and time again I am approached by these kids – THANK YOU FOR BEING SO TOUGH ON ME and ASKING ME THINGS ABOUT REAL ISSUES – – ALL I GET BACK HOME IS NO ONE ACKNOWLEDGING ME AND LONG LECTURES ABOUT TRANS ( or insert whatever here – that has little to do with patient care).

        But we cannot have men doing anything now – at least straight white men. So in every teaching location in which I am personally involved, and I hear this story from so many others, we have gotten rid of all that and now the kids are being taught by 1 or 2 year veterans, no experience types, people with agendas other than medicine and the care of patients and those involved in all kinds of strange behavior. I do not call them professors – I call them box checkers. You can see this reflected in the students and recent graduates. It is a very profound change in just a generation. PLEASE NOTE – I DO NOT BLAME THE KIDS – I BLAME THE UPPER ADMIN AT THESE MED SCHOOLS. And so many times, I am in a situation as an “elder statesman” where I have to jump into an emergency because the younger ones have no idea what is going on. I know from the quality committee what happens when one of us old hands is not around. You can also see it reflected in places like the NEJM. Deep engaging review articles and case studies were the norm a generation ago. Those have all been replaced by articles now that 30 years ago would have been used for seminars for first year medical students. Enormous damage has been done – and I am not sure it is even recoverable. It is so entrenched that the mid-career doctors at this point do not have any idea the level of rigor that was present just 30 years ago. I find it very sad. In my own community, the wise old doctors have all been chased out by the DEI clones. They and their wisdom will never come back and be available to the younger ones.

        If this is happening in medicine, it is happening everywhere. And when Trump says stuff like this – it touches a chord in all of us who are seeing what is going on. It is easy for me to project what is happening in my own profession into another very demanding and accountable field like air traffic control.

        The difference for me now is I do not listen any longer to the MSNBC daily kos Rachel Maddow types. Trump derangement is no longer part of my worldview. He often has very good points. He is just a jerk. I have a lifetime of learning very good points from primadonnas and jerks. So his performance does not bother me and more importantly I see the damage that has been done every day.

        As an aside – I do wonder if Trump really knows some inside stuff about this incident last night. The takedown of Butiggieg was for the ages.

        As a young man, I listened to my elders gripe about the young ones. I have been burdened by this as I have become old. But for the life of me – things really are profoundly different now. It is not the same.

        Reply
        1. kj1313

          That’s utterly laughable. Most ATC controllers and pilots are straight white men in a field which is understaffed and now under a hiring freeze due to an edict from the current administration. In fact the FAA just admitted that they were understaffed at Reagan National. Another factor is that lawmakers pushed through a vote last year to increase flights into Reagan National while experts warned it would make the airspace more dangerous. The only thing I know is when something goes wrong during Trump’s 2nd term his immediate reaction is that he is going to blame DEI no matter how nonsensical it sounds.

          Reply
          1. IM Doc

            One anecdotal story – because of your comment – I just called my patient who is an ATC at one of our big airline hubs. He is actually one of the directors there. I asked him if there had been a push to hire based on gender or race or anything else vs experience and qualifications – and he said absolutely there was. I asked him if “most ATC controllers” were white men – and he said that was true about 10 years ago – currently in his facility, it is actually only about 50-60% men and most of them are on the retirement path. Many of these men are not white but he did not have the exact numbers. I am not an ATC. I am just reporting what he said.

            I can assure you that in medicine – hiring decisions are absolutely being made by box checking and not skills or expertise. I have too many times sat in the room and listened to the deliberations and then watched painfully as things did not work out.

            You can find things laughable all you want. But please do not be too disturbed when something happens to you or your loved ones in a hospital visit. It is all fun and games until something happens to you.

            Reply
              1. Lambert Strether Post author

                > Data

                Good source. For example on race:

                In 2022, 73% of the Air traffic controllers & airfield operations specialists workforce were White, of which 18.6% were women and 81.4% men. Other races that concentrated a significant number of workers were Black (9.74%) and Two or More Races (9.58%).

                And on sex:

                The workforce of Air traffic controllers & airfield operations specialists in 2022 was 41,214 people, with 20.1% woman, and 79.9% men.

                Of course, even if you accept the DEI frame (whichI do not), we would still have to know the race/gender of any pilot at fault in this particular case (and until there’s a report we don’t know that, although speculation is always entertaining).

                Reply
            1. Lambert Strether Post author

              I think you’re a bit out over your skis on this one.

              1) “50-60% men.” See below at “data”; that’s not true on average for all facilities. Nor do we know if it’s true at this facility, Washington National.

              2) I’m reluctant to generalize medical school to the whole of society.

              3) The reason we wait for official reports* is that we all tend to project our political views and beliefs onto the “fog of war” producted by complex events. This can be entertaining but needs to be labeled as the speculation it is. I “can easily see” is not equivalent to “I would speculate.”

              4) The universal reaction I see among pilots and air traffic people is that Washington National is very complex (and one international pilot characterized US ATC as a “hostile environment” because so little is automated). They also say that “human error” is almost always one element in the complex chain of events leading to catastrophe (Swiss Cheese Model) and by definition, most of the error-making humans will have been white males. Having understand the case, one then proceeds to fix the system. For example, the tower was understaffed that night; Ted Cruz muscled five more flights into an already crowded airplace; and so on. It was premature and wrong for Trump to claim that the cause of the crash was DEI when we have no evidence either way.

              NOTE * I’d settle as a stopgap for a really good, well-reported timeline with no gaps. But we don’t have anytning approaching that.

              NOTE Personally, I think the Republicans are doing Democrats an enormous favor by nuking DEI, although it will take time for that to work out. I mean, who wants to be governed by HR administrators?

              Reply
            1. Lambert Strether Post author

              > I am not vouching for all the details in this account, but it is not surprising that air traffic control will be used as a leverage point on DEI issues.

              This is a good link too.

              I am reminded of the story of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, which dinged for a too heavily male violin section (IIRC, too lazy to find the link).

              So what the orchestra did was audition players behind a screen so that their personal characteristics could not be seen, and in fact women had been disproportionately rejected, and the composition of the violin section was evened out (some), with skill level unaffected.

              What the orchestra did not do was have HR develop a form with identity checkboxes, and then give points to favored checkboxes.

              Perhaps we as a society could try something like that.

              Reply
        2. PN

          I have flown out of DCA as an airline pilot on and off for 35 years. I didn’t hear anything on the ATC tape that sounded incorrect or attributable to hiring unqualified persons. All players sounded like they knew what was happening and what was expected of them. Visual Flight Rules (VFR) require pilots see and avoid other air traffic. Normally it works extremely well, but humans are fallible. White guys in airplanes have been hitting other white guys in airplanes since the early 1900s. Let’s let the safety system figure out what happened and recommend changes if necessary. This politicization of everything will not help.

          Reply
          1. IM Doc

            I could not agree more. Yes things need to be investigated and dealt with appropriately. However, we do not even deal with things appropriately anymore.

            Unfortunately, I have sat through 20 years of watching my profession destroy itself while those who could see the problems were shot down and hushed with the same thing you are saying – “Quit politicizing” or other types of scolding. When the investigations of our problems were complete – it is the same as hiring – if you check the boxes nothing is done – if you are not in some kind of special group – you are punished and/or disappeared. Over and over and over again.

            I am sick and tired of it. I have reached a point of my life where I can retire if I want and I am now in a mode that I am going to do everything I can to save this profession and my world for our posterity. I have nothing to lose. And at this point there are others like myself around and growing in number. And the younger ones who can say nothing are constantly telling us THANK YOU. We all realize the extreme danger in which this has put the public.

            I have never been a “troublemaker” in my life. I have been very conforming. I still find it very uncomfortable to do so. But the problem has now become so egregious that I cannot just sit around and do nothing. The MSM will have you believe that all is well – nothing could be further from the truth. The backlash is just beginning.

            What I am saying is those of us who have seen the damage developing over the past decade or so are not going to remain quiet any longer. People are tired of it.

            Reply
        3. Ander

          White man flying the jet, white man controlling air traffic, white man flying the chopper. But I guess there was a white woman commanding the chopper so you’re right Doc, diversity was the issue. Probably put her in charge to check a box.

          Glad Trump’s pronouncement that DEI was the cause of the crash resonates with you as much as with me

          Reply
      3. The Rev Kev

        ‘it is highly routine to fly on training exercises in that area.’

        Seriously? What could possible go wrong with doing training exercises in a highly crowded airport sky over the nation’s capital. Does the military also do duck and weave exercises over JFK as well?

        Reply
        1. griffen

          Surely there are documented procedures and this isn’t a seat of the pants, hey let’s hop into the chopper for a look-see tonight at how things are looking around DC…

          It ( in this instance, air travel ) all screeches to a halt once such an event occurs, but just for awhile. Heck, one meager afternoon on January 2 the football game was still played for the college bowl following an attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans the early hours of January 1…So there’s no stopping America when our priorities are so thoroughly screwed up(!)

          Reply
        2. Lupana

          To me this is so obviously the cause of this horrible accident that I don’t understand why the focus isn’t immediately here and on ATC staffing rather than on DEI, etc. Why would anyone in their right mind have helicopter crews “training” in a crowded civilian sir space adding an unnecessary danger to an already complicated situation? But, of course, for those in charge and their supporters looking for scapegoats is so much more satisfying than finding solutions.

          Reply
      4. Eclair

        I have been searching for areas where AI would really make sense and Air Traffic Control might be one of them. AI doesn’t get tired, doesn’t get sick, doesn’t get hung over, doesn’t get pissed off at its supervisor. And, can make process tons of data really fast and make the correct decision in a split second.

        Reply
    2. flora

      I don’t think the country hates each other. I think some pols and nearly all the MSM wants us to hate each other. Divide and conquer; let the looting continue and avoid the real issues. / ;)

      Reply
  4. schmoe

    Not surprisingly Tulsi has a minimal chance of Senate (or even Intelligence Committee) approval. I always wondered if she was meant to be denied and was offered as a fig leaf to the “Tucker” wing of Trump’s supporters.

    He could have bypassed the Senate by appointing her National Security Advisor.

    Reply
  5. Carolinian

    If not already linked this article is interesting.

    https://www.tabletmag.com/feature/rapid-onset-political-enlightenment

    It’s about Lippmann, Axelrod, Obama, “permission structures,” psychological manipulation, memes, censorship, the rise of the internet in politics. On the downside it is The Tablet and so we have “the terror armies of Iran” and a final third that praises Musk, Trump and–gag–Netanyahu. The author doesn’t bother to link the concept of “permission structures” to what we are permitted to say about Israel. But then perhaps “it takes one to know one” is the source of all the inside dope.

    And also interestingly the author is the editor of County Highway–Kirn’s new venture in old school reporting.

    Reply
  6. Henry Moon Pie

    Love thy neighbor–

    Oh no! Not that again! (Actually, it was a good, fun discussion.)

    No, I’m talking about the thread on public health and Biden. It was hilarious when “Hogan’s Heroes” came up. I just laughed at it as a kid, but as an adult, I recognized it as an anarchist affinity group. Tough to form those on Facebook, though I’ve seen people try.

    The A-Team” is another example.

    Reply
    1. ChrisPacific

      I have to say I think the article either missed the point or didn’t elaborate it sufficiently. I find them all unsettling. The animals, the uniform dark backgrounds. The haphazard, chaotic arrangements, the lack of any kind of coherence or order, the absence of people. These arrangements don’t look to me like food intended to be eaten. What it conveys to me is opulent decadence and neglect. There’s evidence of careful arrangement, so it isn’t trash, but it’s not clear to what end it’s been arranged. It’s disturbing.

      It’s also a food safety nightmare. It doesn’t convey any of the usual signals a host would provide to reassure guests they weren’t going to die from eating it – cleanliness, freshness, food served promptly and not left to sit too long. A lot of the food is highly perishable. Who knows how long it’s been sitting there? Platters and bowls are very often tilted or sliding. Ewers and vessels are tipped on their side more often than not. The tilted meat platter in one of the middle paintings is set right above a cut melon of some kind, and would probably be dribbling meat juice all over it. Pies are opened, fruit is often peeled, cut, split, or overripe. Some of the food is sitting directly on tables without a serving platter, or on the floor. The ubiquitous lobster is positioned more like a creature than a food dish, spilling out of a platter or dangling off the edge of a table. The food is very rich and lavish, but I still wouldn’t eat any of it from these settings.

      I thought maybe this was my modern sensibilities not reading it right, so I searched on 17th century dining artwork, and no – there are plenty of paintings of people eating, table settings and the like that are clearly concerned with the business of eating (without getting sick) and don’t set my teeth on edge the way these do.

      The article describes a historical context of excess hiding underlying corruption and suffering. I think the latter is definitely very much alluded to as well as the former.

      Reply
  7. lyman alpha blob

    RE: Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral

    “In other words, teaching people to do their jobs badly.”

    Why, that’s just what we need! – there’s been far too much competence going around lately. Thanks for the suggestion, Democrats!

    Unfortunately for them, the new position of doing one’s job badly has just been replaced by AI. Maybe they can learn to code badly instead.

    Reply
  8. Bill B

    ‘Social Security and Medicare were “popular Federal programs” among voters of both parties, hence fenced off. Not so Medicaid.’ Is this true? I did some cursory Googling and found a couple surveys to the contrary. But I haven’t gone deeper to look at how they were worded and conducted, just wondering.

    Trump did better than Harris with lower income voters (although not the lowest which I believe Harris won). Also, rural areas always vote heavily Republican. Medicaid is important to these folks, both elders and their children, paying for a large portion of nursing home costs.

    Reply
  9. Anon

    So now that the election is over, we get the inside stories that always seem to make their way to the surface after it can affect nothing. Today’s story is an account of what happened with the Kamala Harris/Joe Rogan interview that never was:

    The inside story of Harris’ lost gamble on Joe Rogan, Beyoncé and a late Texas rally

    From the piece:

    After two Zoom sessions, Flaherty called the Rogan intermediaries with an offer. Could Rogan join Harris in Michigan? he asked, proposing a date later in the week. No-go, the Rogan team said after reaching the host on a weeklong hunting trip. Austin or nothing.

    “That’s going to be tough,” Flaherty said. “We’re only a few weeks out from the election.” Harris had less than zero reason to be in Texas. It was not a swing state. Her campaign was flush with cash—so it made no sense to take her off the trail to raise money. She was in battleground-or-bust mode. Plus, a detour to Texas might smell like desperation to the press and a waste of money to donors.

    You would think that in between raising $2B ($400M of which was raised by Biden) and not doing that much press, that she could have done the podcast way sooner.

    Reply
    1. IM Doc

      This reporting does not ring true to me.
      If I recall – she actually did go to Texas – to Houston – at what would later be known as the Beyonce and abortion doctors fiasco. It is very easy to get right over to Austin from there – and the whole “desperate Texas move” was already under the cover of the Beyonce/abortion appearance.

      I distinctly remember at the time this all blew up how odd it was that she was actually there and still refused to go.

      Reply
      1. Tom Doak

        That part was also in the piece. It fell apart at the last minute because Musk convinced Rogan to interview Trump instead.

        The part that blew my mind was that the campaign could not consider having her fly to Austin just to do the interview . . . they had to have the “cover” of another reason for her to go to Texas, so she could just “happen” to be there and do a podcast, too.

        Reply
    2. Acacia

      So… talking with Rogan in Austin = campaigning in Texas, which is not a swing state, etc. ?

      If this account of the event is actually true, then it suggests they believed Rogan’s tens of millions of social media followers are all in Texas.

      With this kind of “strategy” it’s no wonder Harris lost, but then maybe her whole campaign was more about money laundering than actually winning.

      Reply
  10. JM

    The twitter thread screenshot reminds me of this website about “Simple Sabotage in the 21st Century”; don’t remember where I came across it now. Can’t say too much about it other than I’ve looked at a couple of their “tips” and they seemed, I don’t know, OK? Definitely in the same vein as the tweet though: https://specificsuggestions.com/

    Also, Lambert asked about decent sites for tracking COVID a bit ago, and I think that the Wisconsin page is pretty good. I check it once or twice a week normally, and they keep it pretty active; but I’ve noticed one instance of it lagging by a week or two around the end of last year.

    Reply
      1. flora

        I expect that location will focus Congressional minds on the reported understaffing in the control towers. See above, Just the News.

        Reply
        1. The Rev Kev

          Imagine too all those corporate jets flying in and out of DC to do their schmoozing and lobbying of Congress as well. Can you imagine if it had been Musk’s jet in that collision? Or Bezos?

          Reply
          1. Pat

            Oh, if only Musk’s helicopter slammed into Bezos’ private jet which had Zuckerberg and Thiel riding along. Unfortunately to make this the best fantasy ever, that private jet would have to have forty or more of the richest most destructive greedy entitled people around, even more of their pet elected officials and war mongering advisors.

            There are a lot of people that the world would be better off without. Sadly it never seems fate wants to let them face the consequences of their malign neglect.

            Reply
            1. griffen

              My internal dialogue whenever we lose a truly great icon of American importance or international importance…Sports figures, entertainment and arts and music…just last year, like a James Earl Jones by example.

              Here is my utterly dark and cynical mind…”Yet Dick Cheney still lives and breathes”….or if you will prefer instead, “and yet the Kardashians still live…”…\sarc

              Reply
  11. JBird4049

    >>>Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today. I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that’s what passes for the pledge of allegiance.

    Just keep in mind that all the corrupt stuff that happens in D.C. requires people to violate their oath of office, which I guess is no big deal with the Important People.

    Reply
  12. kramshaw

    Isn’t the idea that medicaid was part of the funding freeze pure speculation / inference at this point, though? The original OMB memo was a bit vague apart from it’s specific exclusion for Social Security and Medicare, but the follow up memo seemed consistent to me with a clarification rather than a walk-back. There were a lot of programs in the same boat as Medicaid (like Snap, Head Start, Pell grants, etc) which didn’t encounter any problems, and the problem encountered with Medicaid *could* have been a website outage, right? Despite Wyden’s tweet about the portal being down, several states indicated they didn’t encounter any problems (maybe they were lying though?). In any case, websites do go down and its not clear that this was intentional, unless there is someone at the Medicaid administration who has said “oh yeah we took that down because of the freeze” that I don’t know about?

    Reply
  13. Tom Stone

    “AI” has been added to YahooMail, if I want to see my messages I have add their AI Crap.
    Since I have a critically important Email in my mail, I cussed a bit and followed the instructions on how to add this crap so I could READ THE FUCKING MESSAGE.
    And it doesn’t work, I still can’t read the message.
    I have called the sender and left a message asking them to text me the information ( It’s healthcare related and it is important that I respond in a timely manner.)
    I wonder how many people crappy “AI” will kill this year?

    Reply
    1. flora

      I don’t know how helpful this yahoo customer service site is. You could give it a look. You can’t be the only one with this problem.

      https://help.yahoo.com/kb/account

      A funny thing is Yahoo Tech came out with an article late December ’24 about how annoyed users are with AI in Apple email. Users don’t like it. But did that stop Yahoo? nooooo. All these tech companies are trying to train their AI systems, and their email users are the often unwilling beta testers, imo.

      https://www.yahoo.com/tech/know-don-t-ai-mail-191521158.html

      Reply
  14. The Rev Kev

    ‘Armchair Warlord
    @ArmchairW
    I rather strongly suspect the funding freeze – revoked today – was simply an experiment to see where all the money was actually going by tracking subsequent screaming and panicked donation requests on social media. Targeted action can be expected to follow later.’

    I’ve seen something like this before. A very long time ago a very hard right-wing party took power in the State of Victoria. They would do stupid stuff like walk through government offices and ask people what their job was and if they were dissatisfied with their answer, fired them on the spot. One interesting thing they did do to find out where all budgetary money was going was to put a complete stop to all money going out. To restore it, each body had to go to them and ask for it to be reinstated and show them their budget from the State government. That’s one way to find out where all the money was going.

    Reply
    1. Adrian

      That tweet is a perfect example of someone who thinks they are saying something clever but are actually revealing they don’t have a clue about what they are talking about.

      The details of almost every single grant, contract and loan, (bar classified ones) awarded in a given fiscal year are available on usaspending.gov. You can see who the recipient is, their addresses, 5 most highly compensated officers, a short project description, the amounts, the period of performance, whether they had sub recipients or not, etc. when you download the data the excel file goes out to column CW. OMB have access to all that same information and don’t need public uproar to know who gets funding.

      Reply
    2. griffen

      I’ve had the notion in the back of mind, that for a long period of time our government has wildly sent forth to foreign governments, staggering and extravagant amounts of federal funding and US support by other means. Granted there is the form of soft dollars performing, I’ll suggest , as a dovish diplomacy move and serving both sides interests. I’m not a lawyer or a diplomat or by any stretch would I know how to best serve American interests and purposes abroad.

      But ever since February 2022, I have considered the movement by Russia against the Ukraine…this summary below is something I find easily on a quick search….Granted it is from the CFR…

      https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine#chapter-title-0-4

      So to summarize my overall point, back in 2002 or 2003, Bush 43 said the American empire would now include nation building. Twenty years or more since that time, how well did we do overall in say, Iraq or in Afghanistan? And all that funding went to the pockets of defense and MIC interests, contractors like Halliburton or KBR, and private contractor Erik Prince became a freaking billionaire. Yeah, American money has done wonders but it depends on who you know or where you live…

      Reply
      1. fjallstrom

        Well, it’s in both cases California cults.

        I wouldn’t call the Zizians radical leftist though. They are so called “Rationalists”, though they split from the main group a couple of years ago.

        The “Rationalists” were the spawning ground for Effective Altruism (know for Samuel Bankman-Fried) and has overlap with the Neoreactionaries that has also been in the news, and apparently has some connection to JD Vance through his sponsor Thiel. The “Rationalists” are also famous for getting techbro funding for “AI safety” research that starts with the assumption that an almighty AI is coming, and the task is to figure out how to control it. Essentially all stories you might have read in newspapers the last couple of years about AI becoming sentient and posing an “existential risk” starts from this subgroup.

        They all are both very weird and very influential among techbros, which means they currently have a very outsized influence. Most are not murderous though.

        Reply
    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      Tapping the sign:

      “It therefore had an impressive topicality, which at once, in Smiley’s eyes, made it suspect.” –John LeCarré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy …

      * * *

      From the VT Digger story:

      Youngblut and Bauckholt had been under surveillance by law enforcement for about a week prior to the shooting, a court filing stated, with reports of the two seen around the Northeast Kingdom dressed in black tactical gear, including while in downtown Newport.

      Tactical gear, including a ballistic helmet and night-vision goggles, was seized from the Prius after the shooting. Cellphones wrapped in aluminum foil were also recovered from the scene, court records stated.

      If you’re a stranger wandering round town in black tactical gear, you might as well wrap yourself in tinfoil. Amateurs, at worst like the Weathermen.

      Reply
      1. mrsyk

        Damn, that is a fine quote at the top. Gonna miss you around here. Promise you’ll come by every now and then.
        Everything’s Snow Crashing.

        Reply
  15. Wukchumni

    Talked to a number of NPS employees here, and they are a bit terrified in regards to the future. Congress had already cut the NPS budget by 6% a year for last 3 or 4 years, so a 20-25% cut was already in place more or less, and keep in mind these are NPS employees with permanent positions.

    The real X factor will be if there are no seasonal employee hires, and Sequoia NP and other NP’s don’t open this summer.

    It might solve the short term rental imbroglio here, if the wanna be Hilton types miss the 100 days of making bank, a good many of them will put their garage mahals on the market, crying uncle as it were.

    Reply
  16. Dezert Dog, Rex

    I used to go to Saline Hot Springs fifty years ago and it was really wonderful for sure. My little organic farm not to far north of there was a great life of good food and quiet living. last time I went it had been ‘found’ by the city folks and nothing like the way it was. As they say…” ya can never go back to the way it was”. Sad but true.

    Reply
    1. Wukchumni

      I’ll hopefully be playing shortstop for the Misfits when we go against the Skins on Presidents Day weekend, it all depends on how much my agent can get on my contract, i’m hoping for a $3 million 3 day weekend deal.

      Reply
  17. Jeff W

    I love that Dutch has “pronk” and English has “sumptuous.”

    Seems like “pronk” comes from the verb pronken, meaning something like “to display, to show off (with the intention of making an impression),” so “pronk” is like “showy” or “flamboyant,” which has a somewhat different connotation than “sumptuous.”

    “Pronk” might be related to pracht [splendor], the adjectival form of which is found in what might be the only Dutch phrase I know: achtentachtig prachtige grachten [eighty-eight beautiful canals], which is something of a Dutch tongue twister. (Apparently, the full thing is Wij smachten naar achtentachtig prachtige nachten bij achtentachtig prachtige grachten [We yearn for eighty-eight beautiful nights at eighty-eight beautiful canals], which might make us wish we were all selling seashells by the seashore instead.)

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  18. The Rev Kev

    ‘Chris Cristi
    @abc7chriscristi
    Jan 28
    ZOOM IN: Finally, a low level panorama photo of the Pacific Palisades, from the west, almost from end-to-end’

    Don’t like that area at all. Too many cliff faces on too many sides to evacuate people from if the fire was coming from a bad direction.

    Reply
  19. Glen

    So slightly off subject but…

    I was able to repair a 60 year old Corningware coffee maker that was a hand-me-down legacy from my wife’s grandmother, and wow, this thing makes great coffee (and we’ve used just about everything to make coffee – Krupps, Chemex, Bodum, Bialetti, Mr. Coffee, and just about everything in between):

    How To Set-Up An Electric Percolator Tutorial
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ik419o66aB0

    Reply
    1. Carolinian

      Thanks. I too will self indulge by mentioning that during yard work I spotted my first crocus of the season. Winter is practically over!!??

      For we wimpy Southerners it’s been a rough January. My brother had his highest electric bill ever.

      Reply
  20. hazelbee

    This is interesting.
    Large asteroid with 1 in 83 chance of hitting earth in 2032 detected Dec 27th in Chile. 40-100m across as size estimate.
    Detected via automated systems and flagged for closer review.
    On a scale of 0 to 10 it ranks a 3. I didn’t even know there was a scale.

    The European space agency release

    guardian and others cover it today.
    Guardian article
    Came to me via New scientist feed.

    Reply
  21. timo maas

    Not sure where this clip comes from, or why the racial subtext:
    It fucking tried to rise up at 0:46 lmfao. May not be a good precedent for his retarded fans, but these things are gonna mog humans in a few years, so whatever.
    — JB (@JasonBotterill3) January 29, 2025
    I agree that kicking the robot is stupid. What they should do is set it on fire.

    Kicking and pushing a robot is how actual testing is done, and demonstration of stability too.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w&t=20s (9 years ago)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY&t=85s (8 years ago)

    It has been a meme for a while.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKjCWfuvYxQ&t=30s (5 years ago)

    I would say the guys on your video are just recreating a meme, and messing around (as guys do). I can’t comment on racial subtext, because I’m not from USA. What I can confirm is, that on this continent we treat robots a bit differently (people too :) ).
    https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/comments/184bbtf/humans_helps_robot_to_drive_through_the_russian/

    Reply

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