Links 5/9/2025

Subscribe to Post Comments

69 comments

1. Antifa May 9, 2025 at 7:00 am

   Elder Abuse

   (Navy Captain and doctor Sean Barbabella says Trump is 6’3″ and 224 pounds. Just like NFL superstar W.J. Brown. Uh-huh. A lot of people in DC are actively committing elder abuse for their own benefit by letting Trump sit behind that Oval Office desk when he so desperately needs nursing care, not greedy politicians.)

   There’s no way Trump is six foot three, the same as A.J. Brown
   If you disbelieve what your eyes see, Trump’s two-hundred-two-four-pounds
   Trump wrote the report on his health exam, and released it to the nation
   Dr. Barbabella supports this sham in total abdication

   A Navy doctor swears two oaths—to heal and to uphold
   Backing Trump denies them both—perhaps he got some gold
   Perhaps the man was ordered to slip his own head in a noose
   Let Trump be weighed by reporters—let’s stop this elder abuse

   Trump’s open overt dementia means his schemes should be rejected
   A TV show faking reality is what got this fool elected
   The Pentagon, Congress, and press like to hang on his every word
   Talking 4th dimensional chess when Donald does something absurd

   Trump is not sane. His failing brain holds no strategery
   He wants to reign but dares not deign to prove his sanity
   Everyone is wondering what else he will destroy
   By blundering, and plundering the working hoi polloi

   The GOP—obviously—want Donald to survive
   They all agree to not decree Amendment Twenty Five
   But Donald’s going to come unglued—he’s closer every day
   This world will watch and well conclude ’tis madness on display

   The day that Donald comes unwound, and howls at all his flunkies
   Baying like a basset hound, his Cabinet of monkeys
   Will give Trump’s crown to J.D. Vance, give Trump a rubber room
   Then Vance will do a song and dance, and warfare will resume

   The GOP will then attempt to fix what they have wrecked
   But codes and clicks and empty tricks cannot repair neglect
   They’ll dig in tight and maybe fight to get back to free trade
   Then Dems will win, and they’ll bring in their usual charade

   Reply ↓
2. VTDigger May 9, 2025 at 7:16 am

   BCBS going to leave VT because of COVID: https://vtdigger.org/2025/05/07/financial-struggles-have-pushed-vermonts-largest-health-insurer-to-the-brink/

   Just another data point confirming the death-spiral of a once great place to live. Sad times.

   Reply ↓
   1. cgregory May 9, 2025 at 8:42 am

      Vermont came close to inaugurating single payer, but the gov balked at a 17% payroll tax to fund it. Afterward, the Vermont Workers Center lobbied for a mechanism by which the tax would be based on the inverse of the ratio between the average pay of the bottom 50% of workers to the pay of the CEO. In the case of one of the big box chains, this was 0.017:1, while a typical mom and pop store operation might be .34:1. The inverse would have meant the big box employer’s share of the payroll tax would have been (hope my math is right) 26.15 times higher than the mom and pop’s share.

      This would have had the effect of giving the very underpaid big box workers a virtual pay hike and the mom and pop stores across the state a health care for all system costing one-26th of what the big box stores had to pay. And— bonus!— if the latter didn’t like it, they could leave the state, which would have been a gift to Vermont’s small businesses.

      Reply ↓
      1. VTDigger May 9, 2025 at 9:54 am

         In a state the size of VT the insurance companies would have just walked away to make an example of them. Not enough scale to pull off SP healthcare I don’t think.

         Families that can are leaving the state in droves. Idiots at the statehouse drove the education system off a cliff because people wouldn’t give up their school even though it has 5 children in each grade. My town’s school has 100 children in the entire High School. And it’s a larger town.

         Beautiful state that no one can afford to live in. There is no housing. Period. Not like the vacancy rate is low, there is literally zero housing available. Too expensive to build more because of the nanny state.

         It’s going to be nothing but second homes within a generation I is my bet.

         Reply ↓
   2. Samuel Conner May 9, 2025 at 9:22 am

      I pull my hair out trying to understand why NPIs to reduce community CV transmission are so unpopular. People don’t want to be ill and they don’t want their health insurance premiums to go up. But evidently the desire to avoid these objective evils is eclipsed by the desire to not be inconvenienced by measures that would help to avoid them.

      Maybe it’s a kind of prisoner’s dilemma — cooperation doesn’t work well for the individual unless everyone cooperates.

      Maybe it’s worldwide “quorum-sensing”, analogous to what happens in mature bacterial biofilms — at some level below conscious awareness the human race perceives that there are too many of us and is adopting measures to reduce the population.

      I rather doubt that we will be able to muster collective will to deal with future challenges, such as climate disruption,

      Reply ↓
3. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 7:19 am

   ‘NEW: Trump May Announce Gaza Deal With Minimal Israeli Input, Says Israeli Report
   A new report from Israel Hayom says U.S. President Donald Trump may unveil a sweeping Gaza agreement by the end of this week—one developed with deep American involvement but only partial Israeli participation. The deal is said to include provisions for ending the war, rebuilding Gaza, and redefining control of the Strip—potentially over Israel’s objections.’

   I don’t see how that works out. Trump put together a grain deal for the Black Sea that would get grain flowing out to the world again but then the EU said that they would never do what was necessary to make that deal work and it died a quick death and was never heard from again. Israel would do the same here and would kill any deal by having nothing to do with it. Trump could stop all weaponry & ammo going to Israel to force them to do so but Congress would never stand for it as it would be unpatriotic if not antisemitic. In any case, Israel will never want to back out of Gaza as it needs it too much. Not only for those lands but it would let Israel lay claim to those offshore gas reserves off Gaza which would help them pay for the enormous cost of this war. Without those offshore reserves, the State of Israel could very well be dead in the water.

   Reply ↓
4. Mikerw0 May 9, 2025 at 7:21 am

   In some ways Trump’s reptilian instincts, while abhorrent, are admirable. Throw out that you might increase taxes on the wealthy, and close the carried interest tax loophole, knowing full well it won’t happen. Then wait for our PE/VC overlords to ‘bribe’ him to stop it. Whether planned, or not, this reads to me as yet another mob boss shake-down. Pay me tributes or sorry that I burnt your store down.

   I subscribe to the frog in the beaker school of human behavior. If the D’s had punched McConnell back in the face, yes I know they never would have, in his early days of manipulative power grabs it would at least have made it harder and slowed him down. What lesson has Trump learned throughout his life — try and get away with things and see what happens. Oh, no one will stop me so I’ll go further. Well, today no one will stand up to him. End of story.

   Reply ↓
   1. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:25 am

      I take it more as an attempt by Trump to pretend that his tariffs aren’t–per Michael Hudson–a disguised plan to cut taxes on rich people such as himself. As you say he knows Congress won’t raise taxes on the rich but the PR purpose is to deflect political opposition to his crazy scheme.

      The prob of course is that few people believe Trump any more and, since he won’t simply shut up, the mountain of lies grows ever higher. Whether the message is admirable or abhorrent the messenger is a mental mess with short fingers.

      Reply ↓
5. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 7:35 am

   “Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests’

   Soooo if I am reading this article right, if something “happened” to the world’s richest 10%, then global heating would drop by two thirds. Is that right? I would be willing to go along with such an experiment as really, it would be all pros and no cons.

   Reply ↓
   1. Polar Socialist May 9, 2025 at 7:55 am

      Can it be (at least partially) an artefact of the Northern parts of the globe being wealthier in general? And also some of that wealth being in dwellings that require both heating and insulation and thus being way more expensive?

      I mean, globally the richest 10% covers almost everyone in The West a.k.a. The Global North. Where I live the average price of a house is, I think, three times over the limit of belonging to the global 10%.

      Reply ↓
   2. Emma May 9, 2025 at 8:43 am

      Aside from the munitions used against them, the people of Gaza have used very little resources for the last 19 months. So maybe we can just swap out the populations of Gaza and the West Bank with the denizens of the Washington DC metropolitan area and see where that gets us in another 19 months.

      Next, we could swap out the population of Yemen with those living around Brussels. It’ll be a sacrifice for the Yemenese to deal with the gloomy climate and dull cuisine, but the Yemenese are a hardy bunch and are willing to make great sacrifices for the greater good.

      Reply ↓
6. Stephen V May 9, 2025 at 8:00 am

   https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/08/who-broke-the-internet/#bruce-lehman

   Cory Doctorow’s latest with history and remedies.

   Reply ↓
7. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:10 am

   “JD Vance says Russia has asked for territory it hasn’t won”

   Can’t work out if Vance is playing dumb or is just ignorant. He could have rung up the Russian Embassy to ask what the deal is here but is going with ‘they are asking too much.’ As I have mentioned before, the Russian Constitution will not allow Russian territories to be given up or negotiated away and for the Russians, those territories are regarded as occupied Russian territory. Not to worry as the Russians will take them over in the coming months but there is a chance that Russia may take over yet more Oblasts so we will see how Vance reacts to that development.

   Reply ↓
   1. hk May 9, 2025 at 12:09 pm

      It does reveal something interesting about the “negotiations” by the parties involved, though.

      Why do you “negotiate”? Because there are things that hadn’t been won by one side yet, but are likely to be lost to the other soonish. So one side gives up some of what they are likely to win if they keep fighting and the other side gives up part of what they are likely to lose anyways. So the “gain” is what they would have lost in course of “fighting” for the inevitable outcome. But how obvious is this “inevitable” outcome to the politically relevant actors? In November, 1918, the inevitable outcome was obvious to the German leaders. It was not to large masses of the German people. So the myth of “stab in the back” could be birthed easily. Because of this, Germany, in 1945, had to be broken completely and thoroughly until the Allies had the possession of practically every inch of Germany–so there was no negotiation for the “outcomes” that hadn’t been won yet.

      Today, the problem is worse: how “obvious” is Ukrainian defeat? And even if it was obvious to the Ukrainians, what does Zelensky or his swell gang have to lose that is so obvious? Worse still, what does the West or US have to lose? Not much if anything at all in all these cases. So none of them really needs to negotiate. So, regardless of the Russian intent, the only solution to the war, I think, is that of 1945 (and 1815 and 1865): a Russian army in Paris, “Napoleon” stripped of every dignity and shipped off to modern day version of St. Helena, and all that.

      Reply ↓
   2. ilsm May 9, 2025 at 1:47 pm

      One of these days Russian Federation is going to remind USA of the Melian Dialogue

      No cease fire and we take what we desire.

      Reply ↓
8. PlutoniumKun May 9, 2025 at 8:20 am

   How the US Built 5,000 Ships in WWII Construction Physics

   Fascinating article – the part that is new to me about the Liberty/Victory ship project is near the end of the article – I didn’t realise just how inefficient the process of building them was, I’d always assumed that they were much cheaper to build. It seems that even at its height it took significantly more (wo)man hours per ship to make than equivalent ships in Britain.

   Reply ↓
   1. Unironic Pangloss May 9, 2025 at 9:33 am

      anti-myth take on US war victories—-the US essentially brute-forced itself into winning its peer wars: Civil War and WW2 (industrial deluge overcoming early leadership short-comings), WWI (flood of new cannon fodder).

      Easy to do when the US de facto had infinite resources and labor.

      …not to diminish the near infinite individual acts of heroism, of course.

      Reply ↓
      1. John Wright May 9, 2025 at 9:59 am

         And one can wonder if the US Civil War was necessary.

         Why was it necessary to preserve the Union?

         No other country had to go to war to end slavery.

         Let the South secede and the North may have been fine as the industrial revolution ramped up.

         The electronics company I worked for after leaving school has been sliced/diced into maybe 10 pieces over the years, all quite peacefully.

         Letting the USA South secede, peacefully, may have been a far better option.

         Reply ↓
         1. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 10:21 am

            A problem here was that the Confederacy was an expansionist power. I may be wrong here but I believe that cotton, which the South relied on, tends to exhaust the soil that it grows in leading to a need for more lands and the Confederacy was determined to expand west and take in more States. Not only that but there were those in the Confederacy that had their eyes on Cuba as well. So for the Union and the Confederacy it was a case of ‘This continent is not big enough for the two of us.’

            Reply ↓
            1. caucus99percenter May 9, 2025 at 10:49 am

               The government of the Confederacy missed its chance to seize Cuba and after losing the Civil War, withdraw there into exile — “pulling a Formosa” and becoming to the United States what the “Republic of China” (a.k.a. Taiwan) is to the People’s Republic of China.

               Reply ↓
            2. John Wright May 9, 2025 at 11:14 am

               But did the USA South have the industrial means to accomplish this expansion?

               One can dream of expanding empire, but lack resources to do it.

               Reply ↓
               1. hk May 9, 2025 at 11:38 am

                  I think that’s where analogues to “weak imperialist” powers, like Poland in 1930s or Ukraine post Maidan, or even Estonia today might be applicable. They peddle BS wrapped in phoney moralism and expect other powers to gift them the means.

                  Reply ↓
               2. deleter May 9, 2025 at 1:12 pm

                  The South wanted to expand before secession through their control of the US
                  government. The constitution gave each state 2 senators regardless of population
                  and counted 3/5 of the slave population in slave states for allocating Representatives in the House.
                  They pushed this power advantage too far and seceded from the Union as soon as the anti slavery Republicans were elected. They began seizing Federal arsenals
                  and opened fire on Fort Sumter so they were hardly innocent.

                  Reply ↓
               3. JBird4049 May 9, 2025 at 1:13 pm

                  Just before the civil war there were attempts or pilot programs to use slaves in factories in IIRC Birmingham and Richmond that were modestly successful.

                  Reply ↓
         2. Michael Fiorillo May 9, 2025 at 10:47 am

            Short of expropriation of the Planters property – the proper thing to do, morally and in the political long term – there’s somethingt to be said for this argument.

            Reply ↓
         3. vao May 9, 2025 at 11:54 am

            “No other country had to go to war to end slavery.”

            Haiti.

            A revolution, followed by a war to boot the French (and the Spanish, and the British) out, who were trying to reinstate slavery.

            Reply ↓
            1. Unironic Pangloss May 9, 2025 at 12:20 pm

               the US just replaced slavery with sharecropping (proto-neofeudalism).

               just saying.

               If I was the 1866 Union Despot, I would have expropriated all of the plantations and given ex-slaves a land grants.

               but of course, the Union did what many?/most? elites have done since time immemorial—-let the losing elites largely keep their status quo

               Reply ↓
         4. scott s. May 9, 2025 at 2:05 pm

            Chandra Manning’s “What This Cruel War Was Over” argues the thesis that in the north, the religious second great awakening in the early part of the century gave birth to the idea of American Exceptionalism — that the US government was uniquely ordained by God as a “shining city on the hill” and example to to the world. As such, an attempt to break that “Union” (which otherwise has to be seen as a pretty abstract concept to be willing to die for) was acting against God’s plan.

            In her argument, it wasn’t until the Union armies entered the south that the common soldiers came to see slavery as a detriment. Not so much to the slaves themselves, but in the effect they saw on the common southern white man. In her view it was this change in attitude that eventually led the northern elite to embrace emancipation as a war aim.

            Reply ↓
      2. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:30 am

         You could expand that to US history in general IMO. Our resources made us the once great nation and this was a common belief decades ago.

         Now the elites want to pretend it’s all about them.

         Reply ↓
   2. Revenant May 9, 2025 at 9:45 am

      Thank you, PK, for this comment. I thought I knew that story so I skipped the article. I am glad I read it. Fascinating.

      And how did British shipyards remain so efficient that US liberty shipyards rarely equalled them? A stable trained workforce rather than commodity labour? Something related to industrial clusters (the Clyde)? Or were they better managed than postwar decline would suggest and they adopted similar innovations in manufacturing, possibly earlier?

      Or is it just a measurement error, like so many things are!

      Reply ↓
      1. vao May 9, 2025 at 12:02 pm

         This is also what puzzled me: how could the British yards be so efficient if they were not relying upon that massive rationalization based on pre-fabricated components that the shipyards in the USA had invented? In the end the British managed to produce ships using vastly less resources (man-hours) than the heavily Ford-like streamlined North American operations.

         The article gives just one hint: it states that the British workforce was much more qualified than the American one. But that is a bit too short for an explanation.

         It would also be interesting to know how Canada fared in naval construction compared to the UK and the USA.

         Reply ↓
      2. PlutoniumKun May 9, 2025 at 12:43 pm

         Indeed, I’m still puzzling over that, its very much contrary to my assumptions. I would guess a lot of it comes down to the skill levels of the workers – in one of the footnotes it states that the plans sent by the British were very deficient in detail, as they assumed the workers would know how to fill in the gaps, so to speak. Building ships well is something that takes literal generations to learn how to do properly, but once the chain of knowledge is broken, its very hard to reconstruct (as Britain is now learning as it flails around trying to figure out how to build frigates). Even the 10 year break in German inter-war ship building set them back a long way relative to Britain and France.

         As it happens, I’ve just finished reading the book Shattered Sword by Parshall and Tully, an account of the Battle of Midway. I was intrigued to read in the appendices (yes, I’m nerdy enough about these things to read the technical appendices) about the costs of the Japanese aircraft carriers. The Akagi (the first Japanese fleet carrier) actually cost the same as three full contemporary Japanese battlecruisers, which in turn cost even more than a Royal Navy Nelson class Battleship built the same year (allowing for currency changes). The Japanese did reduce the cost by more than half in subsequent carriers as they got the hang of it, and started building smaller ones. It didn’t say it, but it did imply that that the Japanese spent a lot more on their vessels than the British, presumably due to their relative lack of experience and issues with getting suitable workers.

         Reply ↓
         1. Polar Socialist May 9, 2025 at 1:31 pm

            Edward H. Lorenz, in his “An Evolutionary Explanation for Competitive Decline: The British Shipbuilding Industry, 1890-1970” (jstor.org) gives the credit mostly to unionized skilled workers in UK.

            Basically there were something like 80 shipyards in UK, which allowed the owners to hire and fire people as they had the need, while the industry still retained the workforce, as there was always a new job waiting in the next shipyard.

            Where the unions come in is that by preventing shipyards from using much automation and especially by forming skilled squads that were hired usually as a team to perform some specific task the shipyard owners did not need any middle management as teams managed themselves – and even trained the assistants.

            The unions also provided unemployment insurance thus allowing the skilled workforce to remain available even after short economic downturns.

            This way the UK shipyards could both accommodate client’s wished much better (no detailed drawings, no limiting machinery) and bill the client as the work progressed (no capital investment on the machinery or the workforce).

            Reply ↓
         2. hk May 9, 2025 at 2:14 pm

            There are some odd issues in comparing costs: Akagi was itself one of those contemporary battlecruisers–it was converted from the hull of an incomplete Amagi class battlecruiser. So are we double counting the cost of the construction that already took place? Also, battlecruisers, bc of the powerplant, iirc, cost more than battleships. How do these compare? Lastly, since the Nelson class were new builds under the treaty regime, in a more austere fiscal environment, the circumstances would have changed compared to what were basically wartime projects with looser constraints. I’d say the better comp might be between the Hood, Lexington, and the Akagi, both as battlecruisers (projected cost for the latter two) and as carriers (the conversion of the Lexington would gove us a sense of what a conversion costs, ftom whoch baseline).

            Reply ↓
   3. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 11:05 am

      There is a chart showing ‘Allied Ship Losses’ which needs a bit of an explainer. You can see a rapid increase for early 1942 and there is a reason for this. At the beginning of the war the u-boats had a lot of success sinking ships as the convoy system was still being developed.They called this the “Happy Time” but then it became harder to sink ships. When the US entered the war the US was slow to use the Convoy system and German u-boats got a lot of kills patrolling off the US coastline and they called this the second “Happy Time” as they sank individual ships. You had people on beaches and in small towns watching ships being blown up and burning just off the coastline and it was bad. And that is what that chart was showing.

      Reply ↓
   4. Carolinian May 9, 2025 at 11:50 am

      Nothing beats experience? A key point of the article is that the US was trading speed for cost because so many ships were needed quickly. Also the shipyards had stopped making cargo ships as so many were left over from WW1.

      And so companies that had never built ships were brought in and pioneered speedy techniques that eventually turned out a ship in a couple of months as opposed to the UK many months.

      Reply ↓
   5. hk May 9, 2025 at 12:22 pm

      There was something in comparative physiology from some decades agp (that could very well be out of date now) that claimed ectotherms (cold blooded animals) are much more efficient, wrt energy consumption, than endotherms (warm blooded animals). FWIW, that makes an intuitive sense–keeping the body warm at all times, even when unnecessary, does seem very inefficient. But, by the same token, endotherms are everywhere while ectotherms are confined to narrow ecological niches. (Which, again, makes sense–being an ecological niche specialist is more “efficient”–you are also more likely to go extinct…)

      Reply ↓
9. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:25 am

   “The Russians Remember the Great Patriotic War, the US Does Not”

   ‘At the start of World War II in 1939, the population of the United States was approximately 130 million people. By way of comparison, the population of Russia and Ukraine (where the bulk of the battles with the Nazis were fought) was 150 million (110 million Russians and 40 million Ukrainians). In other words, Russia lost 20% of their population in World War II, while the US, in the war with the Nazis, lost .1%. So here is the question… How would Americans have reacted after losing 20% of their population in a war with Germany’

   I think that it is worse than this. Imagine if Japan had invaded the west coast of the US and had taken nearly everything up to the Rocky Mountains. And most of those millions of American deaths had occurred in this occupied area. Every city and town smashed or burnt, anything of value stripped or stolen and sent back to Japan, massacres everywhere you looked, American guerrilla fighters striking back leading to reprisal murders on the civilians of any town near such an attack. Now how would Americans have reacted to that after the end of the war.

   Reply ↓
   1. caucus99percenter May 9, 2025 at 10:41 am

      As things deteriorated, the baser instinct might well have been to take it out on the Japanese-Americans in concentration camps like Manzanar, abusing and starving them or simply killing them piecemeal or en masse, the way Israel is treating Gazans today. Even though the vast majority of the people sent there were loyal American citizens, in no way responsible for imperial Japan’s predations.

      Reply ↓
10. Christopher Smith May 9, 2025 at 8:31 am

    “FBI opens formal investigation of NY Attorney General Letitia James”

    How dumb do you have to be to lie on a mortgage application after making an enemy of the President? I have come to the conclusion that elected officials cannot help themselves.

    Reply ↓
    1. Randall Flagg May 9, 2025 at 11:48 am

       And let’s not forget, “No one is above the law!”

       I hope that continually gets thrown into her face since she and so many others used it non stop.

       Reply ↓
11. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 8:35 am

    “Gates on Musk: ‘World’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children’ ”

    Bill Gates demands to know who the hell Elon Musk thinks that he is. ‘Killing the world’s poorest children? That’s my job.’

    Reply ↓
    1. jo6pac May 9, 2025 at 9:58 am

       Nailed it on gates

       Reply ↓
12. Es s Ce Tera May 9, 2025 at 8:46 am

    re: Pope Leo XIV heralds a renewal of Catholic social justice Unherd

    In my view the author makes too much of the name, Leo, and not enough of the fact that this pope is of the Augustinian order. Choosing a charism is choosing how you are called to serve God or, as many believe, being chosen by God to serve in a particular way. Expect to see a pope influenced by Augustine’s City of God, or by Augustine’s particular theological frames and leanings.

    And this is important, might be a cause for concern. A Thomist might see creation as God’s heaven on earth, which we are to care for, and our role is as stewards of the earth, nature as the book written by God. An Augustinian might see creation as merely a passing on the way to something greater, to an otherworldly heaven, and the earthly City of God is and always will be human, broken, sinful, only God’s grace can save it (as opposed to us actively trying to care for the earth).

    I think this pope, however, is known for his views on climate change, which is a relief. I’m happy with the choice, I think a majority of the church sighed in relief, most want a progressive pope, but I still have a nagging doubt on how the Augustinian aspect will play out on the environmental front.

    But yes, a Leo and an Augustinian would put much emphasis on caring for the poor and trying to mend what is broken about society.

    Reply ↓
    1. Smith, M. J. May 9, 2025 at 11:56 am

       I have a dream: After the Popemobile is refurbished as a mobile health clinic, Leo XIV should personally deliver it to Gaza, and act as its driver for a month.

       This would not only perfectly fulfill Francis’s final bequest, but also ensure that the Israelis will not blow it to smithereens on arrival, as they do for Red Cross/Crescent vehicles. It might also serve as partial atonement for the Church’s disgraceful silence during that other genocide eight decades ago.

       Reply ↓
13. Lieaibolmmai May 9, 2025 at 8:58 am

    “Pope Leo XIV heralds a renewal of Catholic social justice”

    I am very happy about the conclave choosing Pope Leo XIV and may go back to the Catholic Church as a result. I knew the Pope Francis was dying and I was waiting to see what direction the church was going to take with the new Pope.

    Reply ↓
    1. Colonel Smithers May 9, 2025 at 9:17 am

       Thank you.

       This may be of interest: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/05/09/pope-leo-xiv/.

       Reply ↓
14. upstater May 9, 2025 at 9:08 am

    Brooklyn College demonstration opposing Zionist genocide ends with police violence:

    “It was unclear what prompted the officers to move in aggressively”

    Perhaps police commissioner Jessica Tisch has the answer?

    Reply ↓
    1. cyclist May 9, 2025 at 1:29 pm

       More NYC police overreach (not Gaza related): https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/05/06/as-nypds-criminal-crackdown-on-cyclists-expands-it-grows-more-absurd-victims

       Reply ↓
15. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 9:26 am

    “Trump says 10% is floor for tariffs; ‘Some will be much higher’”

    I think that we are going to be in need of a new measure to judge the impact of Trump’s tariffs. You have, for example, obtuse ones in other fields like the number of Noble Prizes won by Americans to show what lead the US has in science. So I would put one together to show the number of contracts Americans have signed with the corporations, institutes, governments and businesses of overseas nations. I would suspect a decrease in the number of contracts signed as having business dealings with Trump America is just too complicated and too much hassle to deal with. In business you need certainty, not weekly chaos. You have had this for years now with overseas banks not happy dealing with any American accounts due to the laws that they have to deal with to satisfy US legal requirements lest they fall afoul of ferocious American penalties. But this new measure would look at all commercial relations to see if the number is increasing or decreasing. I would suspect the later.

    Reply ↓
16. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 9:43 am

    #sports desk

    The NFL announced that they will be expanding to include the first ever international franchise, based in the Philippines.

    The new team will begin play in 2026, under ownership of Donald J. Trump. The team will be called the “Manila Folders.”

    Reply ↓
    1. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 9:50 am

       Lemme guess. As there is another country involved, you will no longer have the final Super Bowl game but the final World Super Bowl game.

       Reply ↓
       1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

          Halftime show: Nick Cave and the Cavemen.

          Reply ↓
    2. Michael Fiorillo May 9, 2025 at 10:50 am

       Trump has already been deeply involved in the demise of one football league (the USFL).

       Would that he help bring down the NFL.

       Reply ↓
       1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:56 am

          Yes, I had forgotten that episode. Was it the N.Y. Generals that he owned? They signed Herschel Walker to a big contract, IIRC.

          Trump at one point was mentioned as a bidder for the Buffalo Bills, my beloved hometown team, after Ralph Wilson passed.

          Whew … I dodged a bullet there, at the expense of the nation. At least I have a decent team to root for, if not a country.

          Reply ↓
          1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 11:02 am

             Correction – it was the New Jersey Generals.

             https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/13255737/five-things-know-donald-trump-usfl-experience

             Reply ↓
17. The Rev Kev May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

    “Trump Speaks With Zelensky, Calls for ‘Unconditional’ 30-Day Ukraine Ceasefire”

    Trump still talks about maybe walking away but nobody believes him anymore. He has bolted the US to the Ukraine for at least the next ten year or more. So now he want Russia to lose the war thus he is calling for an unconditional ceasefire for 30 days. The Ukraine will not honour it but Trump will never call them out on any attacks that they launch like he never called them out on the Ukrainians attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure during that 30 day truce. And by the time the 30 days is up Trump will demand that it must be permanent now with NATO, errr, European troops going in to secure the Ukraine while they re-equip and retrain the Ukrainian army. You can guess the rest. But Russia knows all this so is not buying it. Trump has just said that he will ask China to help with negotiations. By that I think that he will offer tariff relief if they get the Russians to stop the war. Well Xi has just dropped the hammer on Trump about this. ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the root causes of the Ukraine conflict to be eliminated as a way to achieve a lasting peace’

    https://www.rt.com/news/617100-china-russia-ukraine-xi/

    Reply ↓
18. AG May 9, 2025 at 10:25 am

    re: Covid study Greece

    The study about Covid in Athens hospitals, from April:
    Deaths “due to” COVID-19 and deaths “with” COVID-19 during the Omicron variant surge, among hospitalized patients in seven tertiary-care hospitals, Athens, Greece
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-98834-y?error=cookies_not_supported&code=fae88ed0-6a95-486e-a53a-6030af47b22c

    It´s discussed in Germany only now. So sorry, if this is duplicate info.

    Abstract:

    In Greek hospitals, all deaths with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test are counted as COVID-19 deaths. Our aim was to investigate whether COVID-19 was the primary cause of death, a contributing cause of death or not-related to death amongst patients who died in hospitals during the Omicron surge and were registered as COVID-19 deaths. Additionally, we aimed to analyze the factors associated with the classification of these deaths. We retrospectively re-viewed all in-hospital deaths, that were reported as COVID-19 deaths, in 7 hospitals, serving Athens, Greece, from January 1, 2022, until August 31, 2022. We retrieved clinical and laboratory data from patient records. Each death reported as COVID-19 death was characterized as: (A) death “due to” COVID-19, or (B) death “with” COVID-19. We reviewed 530 in-hospital deaths, classified as COVID-19 deaths (52.4% males; mean age 81.7 ± 11.1 years). We categorized 290 (54.7%) deaths as attributable or related to COVID-19 and in 240 (45.3%) deaths unrelated to COVID-19 In multivariable analysis The two groups differed significantly in age (83.6 ± 9.8 vs. 79.9 ± 11.8, p = 0.016), immunosuppression history (11% vs. 18.8%, p = 0.027), history of liver disease (1.4% vs. 8.4%, p = 0.047) and the presence of COVID-19 symptoms (p < 0.001). Hospital stay was greater in persons dying from non-COVID-19 related causes. Among 530 in-hospital deaths, registered as COVID-19 deaths, in seven hospitals in Athens during the Omicron wave, 240 (45.28%) were reassessed as not directly attributable to COVID-19. Accuracy in defining the cause of death during the COVID-19 pandemic is of paramount importance for surveillance and intervention purposes.

    Reply ↓
19. pjay May 9, 2025 at 10:26 am

    – ‘German companies assume responsibility for Nazi rise to power’ – RT

    I don’t question this historical claim. But in the current German context this confessional reminds me of a bunch of corporate execs admitting to their “white privilege” in a Robin DiAngelo seminar. It certainly serves a similar political purpose. Admit your collective guilt and keep those right-wing racist proto-Nazis out of power! Of course it also provides cover for enforcing silence on Israeli genocide. Never again!

    Reply ↓
20. Quintian and Lucius May 9, 2025 at 10:47 am

    El Presidente del Norte’s apparent oscillations on every conceivable policy issue (sans perhaps immigration) are so regular as to be viable for use in an ostentatious, guillotine watch-eligible timepiece. This movement (gently, and perhaps not materially on a moral level) away from Israel resembles exactly the movement away from Ukraine that the administration seemed to be conducting just days ago, only to return today to a bellicose Zelenskyyite posture because some dubious investment deal’s been agreed. So what exactly is it Trumpomundo wants from Israel? Investment properties (mostly “vacant” lots, or fixer uppers consisting largely of debris, some of it organic) in the carthagized Gaza strip? Or is this just so much big-boying directed at Bibi (has Trump given him the “little” label yet or did he stop doing that after his first term)?

    Anyway some of us never learn our lesson; there’s a petite, desiccated angel of optimism in me that gets a little color in her cheeks whenever dear leader does anything even approximating the right and moral thing; of course her opposite the tremendous cynical beast demands to know how one single Palestinian will be helped by this performance and is answered with silence.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 10:53 am

       Just thinking that as far as the Gaza strip goes (or went) the level of toxic substances in the ground from 18 months of non-stop bombing, fires, lead from bullets, and possible use of banned chemical weapons by the IDF may have rendered the environmental cost of cleanup so high as to render it essentially “worthless” to any developer.

       Perhaps Trump finally figured that out?

       As far as Ukraine, what Trump is doing is negotiating with himself, or “thrashing.” That’s what people do in hopeless situations where they have no good options.

       Reply ↓
       1. vao May 9, 2025 at 12:50 pm

          Do not forget rotting corpses, burnt synthetic materials, the seawater Israelis used to flood Hamas tunnels, and the systematic destruction of agricultural land. By now, groundwater in Gaza is probably unusable for all types of consumption — domestic, agricultural, and industrial.

          Anyway, Gaza will not be developed as a real-estate moghul like Trump envisions, but only set up as an off-limits enclave with the minimum necessary infrastructure to sustain the exploitation of off-shore gas fields. Nothing more.

          Reply ↓
21. Tom Stone May 9, 2025 at 11:08 am

    It seems to me that allowing NAZI’s and AZOV types to participate in the “Liberation Day” parades is entirely appropriate in both the UK and the USA.
    Look at the ICE video in today’s links, then tell me I’m wrong.

    Reply ↓
    1. Quintian and Lucius May 9, 2025 at 11:28 am

       In fact on a second watch that video seems to evoke the same energy as some of those mobilization skirmishes in Ukraine, only the objects of the sentence here are women and children rather than young men. What morbid symmetry.

       Reply ↓
22. Tom Stone May 9, 2025 at 11:35 am

    I did a quick read of the CFAA ( Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) and putting people on the SS Master Death List that you know are alive looks like a clear violation, not that I expect any of Elons Evil Elves to be prosecuted for their crimes.
    Perhaps one of the Lawyers in the Commentariat can weigh in?

    Reply ↓
23. Expat2uruguay May 9, 2025 at 12:37 pm

    “Washington” is so worried about Burkina Faso’s new revolutionary “leader” that the Mint Press doesn’t even put his name* in the headline!!
    *IBRAHIM TRAORÉ, 37-year-old PRESIDENT. (Now if I could only define “Washington”, but I digress)

    This 15 minute video from one month ago gives the best introduction to some of the range of projects that Traoré and his government are spearheading. (heh)

    https://youtu.be/TUD1fouJ2ho

    I predict that if he is not assassinated (18 attempts to date), then we here on NC are going to be talking a lot more about this revolutionary “leader” and what he’s doing to scare “Washington”. Also, keep in mind that his successes will be a model for other countries in Africa, particularly since he is a foundational leader of the Alliance of Sahel States

    Obligatory Wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrahim_Traor%C3%A9

    Reply ↓
24. Sub-Boreal May 9, 2025 at 1:20 pm

    File under “Enshittification Watch”:

    Though retired, I still get some emails from my former academic employer, and today we were told that because Zoom is going to triple its licensing fee, the school is switching to MS Teams. While I hate seeing any more revenue going to Bill Gates, they probably had no choice.

    Reply ↓
25. ChrisFromGA May 9, 2025 at 1:35 pm

    He’s Jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    (Sung to the tune of “Chain Gang” by Sam Cooke)

    Uh! Fore!

    (I hear someone sayin’)

    uh, ah! uh, ah! uh, ah!

    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    All day long he’s swinging … “uh!” “ah!” “uh” “fore!” “uh” “ah!” “uh!” “ah”
    (Don’t you know)
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    All day long he golfs so hard, ’til the sun is going down
    Working on the fairways and sand traps, and wearing, wearing a crown
    You hear him moaning about unfair trade
    Then you hear somebody say ..

    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    Can’t you hear him tweetin’ – hmmm, I’m goin’ home one of these days, I’m going home
    See my woman whom I love so dear, but meanwhile, I’ve got to gaslight here

    That’s the sound of the Don, jerkin’ all our chains, gang
    That’s the sound of the Don jerkin’ all our chains, gang

    (all day long he’s sayin’)

    Ah my work is so hard, oh give me my 9-iron, my wrist hurts so bad … .
    Whoa, my my, my work is so hard ..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBn5aIfZElE

    Reply ↓
26. Lefty Godot May 9, 2025 at 2:05 pm

    India defends missile strike that killed civilians in Pakistan by “claiming they killed only ‘terrorists,’ not civilians.” So, India and Israel, twins separated at birth?

    Reply ↓