By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, today is a travel day for me, so this is an Open Thread. I realize my schedule has been overly dynamic lately, and I’m hoping it gets back to normal soon. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Willow Warbler, Han Vejleskjulet, Lund Fjord, Region Nordjylland, Denmark.
An amuse bouche for the coming week–
Readers will recall that I ran “Sen. Mark Warner works to gather Senate Democrats to ask Biden to exit race” a couple days ago. This appears to be a shot across Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Warner’s bow:
Dear @MarkWarner
Are you sure you want to go down this road?
You definitely know what I'm talking about.
Think about it very carefully.
— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) July 6, 2024
Now, I’m writing this a day in advance, before I hit the road, and so by the time you read this, maybe everything will have blown over. But Winslow reminds me of (drug lord) Hector Salamanca in Better Call Saul: “Consider your position carefully.” Pass the popcorn.
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I beg your pardon
I never promised you a Presidential pardon
Along with the sunshine
There’s gotta be a little refrain sometime
When you take you gotta give so live and let live or let go
Oh-whoa-whoa-whoa
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a Presidential pardon
I could promise you things like Kamala coming through
But don’t expect on her respect, if I was you
So you better think it over
Well, if by sweet-talkin’ word salad you could make it come true
I would run the world right now on a silver platter
But what would it matter
So smile for a while and let’s be jolly
Jail shouldn’t be so melancholy
Come along and share the good times while we can
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a Presidential pardon
Along with the sunshine
There’s gotta be you doing some time
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a Presidential pardon
I could sing you a tune and promise you the moon
But if that’s what it takes to hold you
I’d just as soon let you go
But there’s one thing I want you to know
You better look before you leap, still waters run deep
And there won’t always be someone there to pull you out
And you know what I’m talking about
So smile for a while and let’s be jolly
Jail shouldn’t be so melancholy
Come along and share the good times while we can
I beg your pardon
I never promised you a Presidential pardon
Along with the sunshine
There’s gotta be you doing some time
I beg your pardon
I never promised you an ironclad Presidential pardon
Rose Garden, by Lynn Anderson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXHsWBKKNbI
I’m gonna need stitches in my stomach after that one…
RE: ‘Playing COVID roulette’: Some infected by FLiRT variants report their most unpleasant symptoms yet — COVID cases and hospitalizations rise in L.A. County — and some of those recently reinfected with the FLiRT variants are finding the latest bout the worst yet. Rong-Gong Lin II in the Los Angeles Times$ — 7/8/24
Link to article without paywall:
https://www.aol.com/news/playing-covid-roulette-infected-flirt-100026185.html
Finally we are beginning to get an understanding that everybody’s experience with SARS-CoV2 is different and that you don’t know what’s going to happen.
“The dogma is that every time you get COVID, it’s milder. But I think we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that some people have worse symptoms,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert. Each time you get COVID, he said, is “kind of like playing COVID roulette.”
“Since everyone’s experience with COVID is different and influenced by a number of factors, it’s difficult to quantify how many are experiencing more acute symptoms now compared with previous infections.”
Google trends:
COVID FLIRT SYMPTOMS
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=covid%20flirt%20symptoms
Gee, it would be really spiffy if my state would update its wastewater data, which they haven’t reported on since June 24. Apparently we do not release data around holiday weekends…or college graduation weeks…or something in NH.
Anecdata is a couple of co-workers have been “sick” over the past few weeks. Not hearing much in the community so far.
Someone I come into contact with at work had it 2 weeks ago, and someone I’m on a committee with tested positive late last week. I hear so many people coughing wherever I am.
i dont leave the farm all that much…but my ears are always open for coughing.
and sneezing and sniffles to a lesser extent, due to the long term historicity of allergies out here.
magawoman ignoring her 3 kids coughing excessively is all the indicator i need.
At work people continue to be sporadically sick, more often than prior to the Pandemic or prior to the limited restrictions being completely lifted in 2022.
Photos from Emhoff’s Twitter feed (July 5):
https://x.com/SecondGentleman/status/1809271197357756697
Douglas Emhoff
@SecondGentleman
Last night, @VP
and I were proud to join @POTUS
and @FLOTUS
for a Fourth of July celebration at the White House. Together, we continue the fight to protect our democracy and preserve our freedoms.
Photos show him with Joe and Jill and shaking hands at an event.
Maybe Mr. Kamala is ahem…taking one for the team. Nothing would surprise me anymore.
> Nothing would surprise me anymore.
I have wondered whether people in high places who want JRB out might engineer opportunities for him to contract the CV. It is a bit disheartening to me that I don’t find this thought shocking. There is enough lawless or reckless behavior in plain sight among the elites (exhibit #1 IMO being the collapse of public health policy) that things that ought to shock the conscience no longer do.
aye. plutarch or Polybius prolly dealt with this, but all this not being at all surprised anymore by what the “leadership” and oligarch class do?
makes it kinda boring, no?
im almost never shocked, anymores.
lindsay graham, spittleflecked, yelling for more war?
old hat.
AOC laying upon the floor?
been there.
Bernie, of all people, presenting his ass, cheeks spread, to the Bosses?
meh.
Nietzsche warned of 200 years of Nihilism after his own demise(this was before he went crazy)…we’ve got a good 75 years to go.
The word of the day is denial, or as the old saying goes “de Nile is not just a river in Egypt.” The PMC class is in complete denial and disarray. The excuses are being spit out like a Gatling gun. Old Joe is just fine – what are these people doing?
He only has a bout of neuropathy, nothing to see here, move along.
Why did a Parkinson’s doctor go to the White House on several occasions?
They just passed a bill on Parkinson’s, why wouldn’t a doctor help them with the bill – take off your tin foil hat.
Did you happen to notice anything about him at the debate?
He has a stutter – and how many times did Trump lie?
Never mind.
Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t watched a clip in the last month (and now they are filming everything) where he looked and sounded like he had his full range of abilities. Not pretty, and I don’t know how long they can continue to hide and get away with it. But who knows.
On the other hand, I’m kind of embarrassed about it, but I’m getting a big kick out of watching this epic meltdown by these people. Kind of, but not much. As many have already said; those who are responsible for this mess, those who helped cover it up, and those who continue to ignore it – can now wallow in the mess they helped create.
The meltdown would be a whole lot funnier if there weren’t such negative consequences for everyone attached to it. I’m not just talking about Trump getting elected, but the undeniable signal this sends out to the whole world that our system of government is corrupt and broken. Trying to prop up a leader who is on the brink of death is a pretty standard hallmark of an empire in deep decay.
I really do think most of the Democratic party, their surrogates in the media, and a good chunk of its supporters really thought they were going to 2+2=5 their way out of Biden’s health problems. They saw this as preferable to a competitive primary. They are so brazen in their contempt for the voting public now, barely even going through the motions. The whole thing is unbelievably bleak.
I noted with interest a Fox News clip (served to me by an MSN news-mcnugget page) that gives equal time to the idea that DJT may also be exhibiting evidence of cognitive impairment. I have wondered about this but, given his speaking style that to me seems to be a combination of free-association and confabulation that might “work” well whether or not impaired, it has been hard to form a firm opinion. The interviewee in the above Fox clip expresses the view that DJT also exhibits signs of impairment.
I have no idea whether the interviewee is right in this assessment, but the “equal time” treatment by Fox seems noteworthy.
Winslow: ‘Joe beat Medicare, imagine what he’d do to a punk like you Warner?!’
I’m trying to imagine how really useless Warner Advantage would be.
Putsch yourself in his shoes…
I heard the timing was all wrong and Warner will try again on 7/20…
What Biden meant was that he beat Medicare for all down. You will recall in the campaign to stop Sanders right before the South Carolina primary Biden said, “If a Medicare for all bill crosses my desk I will veto it.” The reason is that in South Carolina there are a lot of military and government facilities and the workers there all get government health coverage. There are a large number of military retirees as well and they and their spouses get Tricare. This group is racially mixed but most Blacks fall into it. The remaining blacks are on Medicaid. So the Black population is pretty well covered. As a result they have little need for a M4A or nationalized health care system because they are not paying. The legislators can enjoy the large donations of the pharma and corporate medicine and insurance industries. The private industry in South Carolina is more dependent on health insurance and it is this group that suffers with outrageous deductables and premiums. The private employers do not hire as many Blacks and those they do hire get low wages meaning they get Medicaid. So speaking about national health care in South Carolina is not going to swing guys like Clyburn and his supporters who just do not care since their constituents do not see it as an issue. They do care about the PAC donations.
Is that still true? I’m in a DOD heavy country, they CLOSED the military hospital. Most troops and families on Tricare are being forced into going to the same docs as everybody else which in my county is not good. The single remaining major hospital had to call 911 to get help (you DO NOT want to go to that ER! They failed all the accreditation), and everybody is waiting about six months to see a doc if you make an appointment assuming you can even get an appointment.
You are just projecting onto the rorschach blob of Bidenisms
I have decided that all those 3…5…7 dollar donations they have been begging for are being spent on troll armies to comment on any popular article, tweet, post supporting Biden stepping or being forced to step down. It is fun to notice how long it takes for the hoards to arrive and overwhelm everything.
The Wizard of Kalorama begged me for $5 last night on YT. First time for that ad.
i have been pretty ugly to genocide joes people when they have texted me…but i havent heard from them in at least a month.
i always tell them just what i think….and they always seem to text me for $ when i’m well into my cups(so much for the alacrity of AI).
so its “fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you genocidal POS.
no! you cant have any of my tiny-ass teachers pension. go fuck yourself and go blow pritzker or something…”
and so on.
maybe the sentiment finally penetrated.
I have been sorely tempted over the last few days to answer one of them that the Lord Almighty told me to tell Joe where to go and how to get there, he has an overdue reservation waiting in hell.
sorry again to the mods for my total pottymouth, but fuck them all.
i loathe joe biden, donald trump, chuck shumer and all of the rest of them.
id rather roast them and feed them to the poor than vote for them.
and it bothers me to no end that they still demand my respect…and my money???!!???
mirrored bubble membrane is pretty derned think, it seems.
fuck them.
i have zero use for them.
none of them even pretend to “represent” my interests…neither do they ever even ask what my interests are!
why would i spend my vote on any of them?
Yep. On a day when I get an unfortunate text from a Democrat campaign, fu is generally the reply. Thankfully it’s been very rare. No easy way to block unlike email spam. I’ve been so successful I never see any now!
https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/elder-abuse-is-refusing-to-give-the
“Elder Abuse” is Refusing to Give the President a Neurological Exam — and Instead PUSHING Him to “Soldier On”
It’s Definitely a Unique Strategy: Defeat Trump by Letting Biden Have a Stroke (or worse)
I haven’t listened to the whole thing and I don’t agree with a lot of the great things Moore has to say about Biden, but Moore makes the case (as Lambert has) that pushing Biden to keep going is “elder abuse”.
Nice to see Michael Moore out and about, he had a rough bout with Covid if I recall. But seriously, I’m sure Biden has had neurological and other exams on the regular, no? They’re just not going to tell us about them. Maybe they don’t even tell him.
But four months until the election, I don’t see how they keep his obvious issues hidden unless he stops going out in public. And there is still a second debate scheduled for September.
Maybe the second gentleman could infect him again, he could have an “unexpected and rare” bad reaction to Covid and bow out? Though I don’t actually care–it’s clear he would not survive a four year term, and I’m not supporting Kamala in any role.
Except for the White House staff, there isn’t anything that is going to help Biden. Genocide, Zelensky surrendering/fleeing with a helicopter of coke, the economy, and so forth. If the highway bill was signed early this year, sure, one could see that being offered as an empty promise, but that was 3 years ago.
Even the msm and Biden’s supporters fully expected the debate to actually help Biden against Trump.
Can you imagine Biden visiting a hurricane disaster zone?
Zelensky surrendering/fleeing with a helicopter of coke
“Vladimir Zelensky has purchased panama and exited stage right bringing his nationalist guard along to assist in the transition”
Yes, please pass the popcorn:
Biden tells Congress he won’t quit
The US president has asked his fellow Democrat lawmakers to rally behind him in order to beat Donald Trump
https://www.rt.com/news/600658-biden-congress-letter-elections/
My TDS/Blue-no-matter-Who folks are gobbling-up the dogfood: “just a bad-night… he was travelling too much.” I don’t really argue– not bad people and I recognize that their views are just as much psychological as informational, so I play the long-game of slow subversion, conversion. Without exception, they finally accept that Ukraine is losing the war and that Russia isn’t exactly hurting too badly.
But getting back to domestic politics, all of these folks seem to share authoritarian world-views, a belief in almost infallible “leaders,” the Team Blue strong-man or strong-woman– a “liberal” version of the righter right-wing… just my observation.
“just a bad-night… he was travelling too much.”
The denial is strong, isn’t it?
We all saw what we saw, didn’t we? That wasn’t a cold.
I feel like I”m living in an episode of the “Twilight Zone”.
Pigs are flying and hell is frozen.
“I was wrong about Biden”
https://www.slowboring.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-biden
Old Joe is even getting testy with the media-
‘Speaking to hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Monday, Biden reiterated that he is “firmly committed” to winning a second term in office, and called on “Any of these guys that don’t think I should run” to challenge him at next month’s Democratic National Convention.
Confronted by Brzezinski with a list of liberal news organizations and pundits who have called on him to bow out of the race, Biden claimed that all are part of an “elite” conspiracy to force him out of contention.
“I don’t care what those big names think,” Biden said. “The American public is not going to move away from me as an average voter,” he declared, his voice rising to a shout. “Remember all this talk about how I don’t have the black support, come on, give me a break! Come with me. Watch! Watch!”
“I’m more than the presumptive, I’m going to be the Democratic nominee,” he asserted.’
https://www.rt.com/news/600671-biden-not-going-anywhere/
I’m more shocked by Mika committing a small act of journalism than by Joe’s response.
More and more I am coming to the conclusion that no one close to the nasty cognitively impaired jerk has any control of him, and they have all quit trying. They are actively letting him continue to dig his own grave.
I hate to admit it, but I chuckle each time I read this kind of news now.
Let them keep on keepin’ on… until “boom boom — out go the lights”.
Dave Brubeck – Audrey
https://youtu.be/hASG4nniLQs
Will I had for gotten about this place and checking the site after reading their take on ukraine they didn’t let me down. They’re as delusional as trumpsters.
https://www.dailykos.com/
Haven’t visited DKos in over well over a decade. Even back in the Bush years it was a cesspit of Dem-aligned dimwits. It was fun to read the hysterics during the Obama/Clinton primaries as their cult was splintering and the vitriolic spats were funny to read but even in my days of regularly reading Crooks & Liars, TruthDig, AHNC and other lefty blogs DKos was second only to ThinkProgress for it’s absolute bottom-of-the-barrel vapid partisan cheerleading.
Reflecting on all those sites does remind me of just how lucky I am to have found NakedCapitalism. This place is the best – by far. Thanks NC team for all you do!
I actually found NC by way of OpenLeft before Chris Bowers(?) sold out and went over to DKos, perhaps for the health insurance. His election forecasting was actually pretty accurate. He called Obama being garbage kind of early, prior to him taking office, based on his garbage cabinet picks. Despite all the delusional rhetoric about how Obama was gonna be the best president, ever. Those were the days.
I found lambert by way of OpenLeft (before he was banned for advocating single-payor too vehemently or, perhaps, too cogently), which led me, eventually, to this site. I also found Ian Welsh there as well.
I second that. NC is an amazing site.
I have even managed to lure a couple of people to consult it regularly.
i almost never read Daily Kos. But I have to confess that the reason was strictly esthetic.
It was a viciously eye-bruising ugly orange colored place.
They suckered me into donating to some scattered Democratic Congressional candidates back during Bush’s first term. They portrayed themselves as insurgents out to reform the party, calling for “More Democrats! Better Democrats!” But it turned out they really only cared about the More part. I don’t think any of the Democratic challengers I donated to that got elected turned out to be the Better kind of Democrat once in office.
I’m surprised they are still around and still trying to sell the same snake oil.
New Alastair Crooke on topic A.
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/07/08/we-were-deceived-and-gaslit-for-years-all-in-the-name-of-democracy-then-poof-it-collapsed-overnight/
And most recent Construction Physics on the Bell System is interesting.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/building-the-bell-system
Thanks for these, Carolinian. Great links.Crooke is becoming a favored commentator.
If Stumblin’ Mumblin’ Joe’s gonna stay in, I say they go dig up Feinstein and put her back in congress. It’s only fair.
“The freelancers having their livelihoods replaced by bosses using generative AI aren’t being “replaced” so much as they’re being shown how little respect many bosses have for their craft, or for the customer it allegedly serves.”
A great article on the AI bubble and it’s impending collapse.
https://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/
Another fun excerpt:
“On top of generative AI not having any killer apps, not meaningfully increasing productivity or GDP, not generating any revenue, not creating new jobs or massively changing existing industries, it also requires America to totally rebuild its power grid, which Janous regrettably adds the US has kind of forgotten how to do.”
We are lucky that TS Beryl was no big deal:
At least 2 dead as Beryl pummels Texas with tornadoes, 90 mph gusts, leaving over 2.7 million without power
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news/beryl-landfall-texas-hurricane
Tropical Storm Beryl topples trees, floods highways and leaves more than 2M without power in Texas
https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-beryl-texas-7dfd5353671ee30d0c6d11518ea5a370
Hmm, something in America blowed down, flooded, or burned up. Must be time to send tens of billions to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
“Must be time to send billions to Ukraine,…”
Hilarious!! Couldn’t stop laughing for 2 minutes!
Interesting essay by David Wengrow.
https://aeon.co/essays/an-archeological-revolution-transforms-our-image-of-human-freedoms
“On a global scale, we are witnessing a revolution in our understanding of ancient demography. To ignore it, these days, is to indulge in a cruel sort of intellectual prank, by which the genocide of Indigenous populations – a direct consequence of the planetary revolt against freedom, in the past 500 years – is naturalised as a perennial absence of people. Nor can we just assume that if we want to understand the prospects for our modern world, the only ‘big’ stories worth telling are those of empire.
The world we live in today is not just the one created by the likes of Tiberius of Rome, or even Emperor Wu of Han. Until surprisingly recent times, spaces of human freedom existed across large parts of our planet. Millions lived in them. We don’t know their names, as they didn’t carve them in stone, but we know that many lived lives in which one could hope to do more than just scratch out an existence, or rehearse someone else’s script of ‘the origin of the state’ – in which one could move away, disobey, experiment with other notions of how to live, even create new forms of social reality.”
We know that roughly 6 million of those kind of people had spent hundreds of years at least, maybe thousands of years; up-terraforming much land in the Amazon Basin area. They all died in the Great Germocaust of the EuroExplorer Diseases.
Really good book on that topic – The Art of Not Being Governed
I looked up about the Don Winslow who issued that “threat” to Senator Warner. I found this . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Winslow
and this . . .
https://www.donwinslow.com/bio
Is this person really in a position to threaten a United States Senator? If so, how, and based on what?
Secret knowledge from Epstein’s little black book?
Hey, if you are a failed foreign service wannabe who’s written umpteem spy or ex spy novels, a failed undercover television series and were a private investigator in a couple of the sleaziest places around you know people…who know people…who know people.
Interesting!
I’m thinking about becoming a respiratory disease activist. I got the idea during a marijuana enhanced yoga session. Here in Uruguay there are people who get on the bus and entertain with music and others who sell small items like socks. Well, I think I’m going to do something similar and offer free masks on the bus. This way I will look like the people who are selling socks. And these people talk about their socks in an effort to sell them. So I will do the same thing with my free masks. I will talk about how we all breathe each other’s air and then I will count the number of windows that are open. I will also talk about how we people who ride the bus depend on each other to be protective. That we don’t have cars and this forces us to be in this close contact and breathe each other’s air. How important it is that we cover our coughs and wear a mask if we feel ill. How important it is to have air ventilation. And how important it is to take vitamin D in the winter time.
So this is going to require a lot of guts, particularly because my Spanish is pretty good but not perfect and it’s difficult for me to understand some of the fast talkers down here. So it requires courage because I am embarrassed when I don’t understand people who are just talking their own language. I hope I have the courage in me!!
Good for you E2U. :)
Creo que tu tienes el coraje de hacerlo! Great idea.
Here’s something from the “facepalm” subreddit. It is a TwitterX posting by Kangmin Lee which says :
” Stop Asian Hate died overnight because people started asking ” Wait who’s attacking Asians?” and they didn’t like having to answer that.”
Here is the link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1dyc0cj/wait_what/
On a funnier note, from the ” funny” subreddit, some front-door security cam footage called:
” Squirrel launches itself inside of a home during a pizza delivery”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1dyh7on/squirrel_launches_itself_inside_of_a_home_during/
Ha ha ha! I’ll never look at “our” squirrels as little innocents any more.
Lambert, if this was already linked on NC, I apologize. Of course, Medicare Advantage cannot be skewered enough, so…
‘It’s Time to Take Medicare Advantage Off the Market’: CounterSpin interview with David Himmelstein on privatized Medicare
What we found is that the taxpayers are overpaying these Medicare Advantage private plans by tens of billions of dollars each year. In fact, $82 billion last year alone, and $612 billion since 2007. That’s overpayments compared to what it would have cost to cover those same people in the old public Medicare program. So, in effect, the private insurance companies have ripped off taxpayers to the tune of more than half a trillion dollars, and most of that goes to either their bottom line, or to the paperwork that they carry out to realize those profits. In fact, 97% of the total overpayment stayed with the insurance companies. Only 3% went to the perks that they offer to entice people to enroll in their plans rather than staying in traditional Medicare.
https://fair.org/home/its-time-to-take-medicare-advantage-off-the-market/