Covid-19 Booster Campaign Is Expected to Launch Next Month
I’m happy boosters that target new variants are becoming available. I plan to get one. But I’m puzzled by this policy:
Only people who are fully vaccinated will be able to get the modified booster, according to the administration’s fall vaccination planning guide. It doesn’t matter if a person got one or two booster shots as long as they are fully vaccinated, according to the vaccination planning guide.
The story doesn’t provide any rational for why people who are not fully vaccinated will only be offered vaccination against what seems to be an extinct variant. I don’t see how this is going to result in increased acceptance, benefit those who are not yet fully vaccinated or help reduce possible future outbreaks.
Oh well. Open thread.
That doesn’t make any sense whatsoever and I haven’t heard this. I imagine nobody will be denied a shot in reality.
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I also read the FDA isn’t even going to wait for preliminary clinical trial data before proceeding with the booster campaign. That’s a bit of a change to say the least. They say it’s more like flu vaccine derivatives now. I’m not entirely convinced of this.
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I still haven’t seen any efficacy data for this or similar omicron targeted shots. The silence is deafening.
This booster has been tested on mice and not humans. Being released on the same emergency timetable as late 2020 I don’t think should be the standard now. One member disagreeing with approval on the grounds that the antibody increase is only 1.5-2x the amount in a regular booster not tailored for omicron.
I don’t care if the antibody concentration increase isn’t much greater than for the regular booster. I want to take the new booster because it is tailored to omicron.
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I am only slightly worried about the only tested in mice issue. The flu shots are also only tested in mice. I get them every year and will be getting one this year.
Tom,
I should add: Yes, the approval based on mouse data not human trials is new. It’s true there is no specific efficacy data for the Omicron vaccines. It’s the new approval process that is like the flu vax approval process. It’s not saying Covid is like the flu.
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I want the booster. I’m not saying everyone should want it.
Here’s what the CDC says about availability of the new vaccine
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/downloads/cdc-fall-vaccination-operational-planning-guide.pdf
I think this is a stupid policy. But it’s from the CDC itself. They don’t explain their thinking.
So the new vaccine was tested in mice. Did the mice have to be previously vaccinated? Real question.
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Do we know if the new booster triggers a response tailored to the new variants? Or will it just trigger the existing immune response to an earlier variant (i.e., imprinting)? Real questions, although we should not need to ask them
“America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: The MIC, BARE and OGAM Conquer NATO.”
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/08/europes-economic-and-social-suicide-provoked-by-the-us-and-helped-along-by-europes-leaders.html#more
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“The U.S. idea is to isolate Europe from its Eurasian hinterland, to move Europe’s industries to the U.S. and to buy up the rest for cheap.”
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He may have said the antibody levels were only 1.5-2x the regular booster, rather than the increase. Not sure if that makes a significant difference.
Of you ever needed a clear statement of how the ‘progressive left’ views the US Constitution: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/we-can-be-framers-too/ar-AA11bK6D?ocid=EMMX&cvid=342c5bfbe9f248b88d371413cef16fd1
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The author completely rejects every non-majoratorian principle in the constitution. “Don’t care how, I want it now!” is as good a summary as I can come up with. Like all progressives, the author lacks any appreciation of the dangers of pure majority rule, and along the way says even freedom of speech should be curtailed by the majority. The progressive left is exactly as dangerous to personal liberty as they appear on first blush to be.
MikeM
I don’t know about the mice study.
There is some much “covid” out there it can be hard to google to find specific trials. But there have been test in humans– or at least started. This one listed in clinical trials indicates the criteria for inclusion required the humans to be previously vaccinated.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05249829
MikeM
Press releases are horrible for detail. But
https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2022/Moderna-Announces-Omicron-Containing-Bivalent-Booster-Candidate-mRNA-1273.214-Demonstrates-Superior-Antibody-Response-Against-Omicron/default.aspx
This suggests
* booster vs. booster– so candidates would have already been vaccinated.
* bivalent booster showed more antibodies specifically against Omicron than Spikevax did.
So that suggests
* the mRNA-1273.214 is “tailored” in the sense that it gets Omicron “more” than spikevax did. ( There fortunately seems to be some not-too-tailored aspect in the sense that even the old vaccine gives some immunity againt all variants so far. One would likely expect the same for the bivalent vaccine.)
* the new vaccine is not just triggering immune response to the earlier variant. Or at least if it is, it seems to be triggering those portions that happened to already hit Omicron.
In anycase, the body’s immune response does see the mRNA-1273.214 as something different and triggers more antibodies against Omicron.
That said: this was a press release.
SteveF
Well, they are learning it can be. Teachers on reddit are complaining some schools are instituting rules that allow only two choices of flag: US or their individual state. This bans all others, but the two the teachers grouse about are the Rainbow flag and the BLM flag.
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Of course, this sort of rule was likely always legal. Teacher are employees and can be directed to stick to a curriculum. Their walls are not a “public forum”, and the employer– school– can supress some amount of teacher speech for various reasons. Students have greater free speech rights than teachers.
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Often teachers were given quite a bit of latitude–but the law doesn’t necessarily require them to be given complete latitude on what to put on walls.
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New people are being elected to school boards. And also, administrators are going to be responding to the fuss kicked up by some parents. But yes: freedom of speech can be curtailed by the majority– including conservatives curtailing rainbow flags.
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(I’m against excess decoration generally. )
SteveF,
I should add: Lacking a appreciation of the dangers of pure majoritarian rule is not limited to progressives. Conservatives have it in spades too. The problem is that when “We” suppress “You”, “We” don’t think it’s suppression. We just think we are doing something “right”, or “good”. But when “You” suppress “Us”, we know we are suppressed.
Lucia,
There is some lack of shoe-onthe-other-foot awareness on both left and right, of course, but I think the monomania, and lack of awareness, on strict majority rule is mostly on the left. Decades back conservatives were in the clear majority, and progressives carried on endlessly about the need for non-majority protections like the Senate filibuster…. but now in the majority they are raging endlessly about the need for strict 50%+1 rule in every aspect of government. Conservatives have been warning progressives about the danger of eliminating the filibuster on Senate confirmations for decades, but when Obama could not get the crazy-leftists judges he wanted through the Senate, Democrats eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominations, and Obama seated hundreds of extremist judges who would never have been approved with the filibuster in place. Eliminating the filibuster came back to bite them when it was Trump appointing judges, of course. I just don’t think both sides are equally bad: conservatives accept the non-majority protections in the Constitution, and pretty much always have. For progressives, any support for non-majority protections is usually dishonest; it is conditional on whether it helps them politically.
Lucia,
“This bans all others, but the two the teachers grouse about are the Rainbow flag and the BLM flag.”
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That is not a freedom on speech issue; they are employees and have to work under the rules set by their employer. They want to politicize their classrooms and indoctrinate their students. That can be prohibited if their employer wants to prohibit it. They are free to find some other job, and probably should.
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The freedom of speech issues I am concerned about are things like legal banning of ‘hate speech’ and ‘spreading disinformation’ about public policies. And that is what the progressive left actually wants: the majority controls what an individual is allowed to say (and write).
SteveF
Sure. The group in the majority become blind to violations of free speech and wants to impose their side. Who is in the majority changed. That doesn’t mean the current majority is inherently worse about free speech. It means they are the majority so we see their rules.
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I don’t see one side as worse than the other. I just see a side that thinks they have the advantage getting blind and pushing their view.
lucia (Comment #214478)
I am of the mind that these hypocritical stances endure in good measure from the two political party system we have. Partisans become like sports fans whereby their guys can do no bad and the opponents guys no good. Trade one of those opponent bad guys to your team and the bad guy suddenly becomes good.
I would not use the term “no worse” when comparing hypocrites but rather both as being “worse” and lacking in basic principles. Of course, it is politicians who are, by far, the most hypocritical in these instances and lacking in principles. But it seems to work for them and in great part because of the public’s fandom issue.
lucia (Comment #214475): “I should add: Lacking a appreciation of the dangers of pure majoritarian rule is not limited to progressives. Conservatives have it in spades too.”
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I don’t think that is so. For one things, conservatives don’t grouse about ditching the Constitution just because they can’t get their way. And I don’t think there are any examples of conservatives using a temporary majority to try to push through the kinds of extreme changes the Dems push. Examples of the latter would be Obamacare, opening up the border, race based discipline in schools, forcing schools and colleges to allow boys to play girls sports, etc.
MikeM
Conservatives still push moments of silence. In the late 70s, Hyde and conservatives pushed the Hyde amendment– you might like that, but many consider it extreme. Of course conservatives aren’t currently grousing about ditching the constitution: The are getting their way.
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As for the rest: The democrats push agendas you disagree with. You consider it “extreme”. But it’s really just agendas you disagree with. (Hey, I disagree with some of those too!) But even if you hate a policy, you should at least be able to see that “open up the border” a and “build a wall” are both extreme.
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(I’m not sure what you mean about “race based discipline” in school. I’m not under the impression explicitly race based discipline is pervasive. The buzz word I generally hear is “restorative justice”, which is not race based, but which I think is injustice to victims.)
MikeM,
I should also add that from the point of view of those with whom you disagree Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is extreme. That’s why they’ve nicked names it “Don’t Say Gay”. The fact is “extreme” is an adjective often applied to policies the “other side” pushes and that “my side” very much disfavors. That’s sort of the ‘working’ definition in political dialog.
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Lucia,
Yes. The Atlantic had an article not that long ago about rosary beads of all things going along with AR-15’s. (Full disclosure, I have no rosary beads for my guns. Been wondering if I need some in case I have to shoot demons or vampires or something). They introduced a term, ‘rad-trad’ or ‘trad rad’. I forget which way the nonesense went because it means radical traditional.
In my view, radical and traditional are mutually exclusive terms. But I think this is an example of what you’re talking about — portraying the other side’s views as ‘extreme’.
lucia (Comment #214481): “In the late 70s, Hyde and conservatives pushed the Hyde amendment– you might like that, but many consider it extreme.”
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Not the least bit extreme. At the time it was enacted, Dems had 60 seats in the Senate and a near 2:1 majority in the House. It still has near 60% public support.
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It is silly to say that something is extreme because some small minority thinks it extreme. Also, I did not say “extreme” I said “extreme changes” enacted by a “temporary majority”. By definition, a long standing policy can not be an “extreme change” and a policy supported by a large, enduring majority is not one resulting from a “temporary majority”.
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lucia: “Of course conservatives aren’t currently grousing about ditching the constitution: The are getting their way.”
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Ridiculous. There have been plenty of recent times that conservatives have not been getting there way (like the present). They never grouse about ditching the constitution. NEVER. At most they talk about changing the constitution using procedures specified in the constitution. That can not be done by a slim, temporary majority.
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lucia: “As for the rest: The democrats push agendas you disagree with. You consider it “extreme”. But it’s really just agendas you disagree with. (Hey, I disagree with some of those too!)”
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Wrong. I do not call things extreme just because I disagree with them. I call things extreme when they involve radical change not supported by corresponding public opinion.
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lucia: “But even if you hate a policy, you should at least be able to see that “open up the border” a and “build a wall” are both extreme.”
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Nope. Secure borders are a long standing policy supported by enduring large majorities of the public. Not extreme. Open borders are a radical change without much public support. Extreme.
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lucia: “(I’m not sure what you mean about “race based discipline” in school.”
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Obama’s attempt to force schools to make sure that black kids were not disciplined more often than white kids.
It may be the case that omicron variants reproduce so quickly that it doesn’t matter how much antibody response there is, you will still be infected and transmissive.
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The antibody response for omicron BA.5 with the original vaccine was down ~20X. So a 50% to 100% increase from that low level is not that significant in the grand scheme.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2206576
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It’s still “better” though, just very unlikely to give the kind of protection the original vaccine gave with original strain. Might as well get the targeted booster.
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The vaccine evangelists are rather silent on the performance of the new vaccine. This bias by omission is a bit frustrating.
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DC schools were going to mandate vaccines for the 12+ age group this semester. Turn out that would have prevented 40% of minorities from being able to go to school there, so they pushed back the vaccine mandate to January. This all makes perfect sense, ha ha.
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I never was much of a mandate fan, but now that the vaccine is pretty ineffective the mandates make even less sense. They also continue to pretend prior infection doesn’t matter. You should still get vaccinated as it reduces serious illness by maybe 60% or so AFAICT.
lucia (Comment #214482): “I should also add that from the point of view of those with whom you disagree Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is extreme.”
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But there is nothing extreme about that bill. It just codifies what was considered normal until about 6 months ago.
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Yes there are people who label anything they don’t like as extreme. I am not one of them. And that is mostly a tactic of the Left.
Lucia wrote: “But even if you hate a policy, you should at least be able to see that “open up the border” a and “build a wall” are both extreme.”
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Are they though?
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It seems you’re saying that the line drawn in the sand is as extreme a position as those who would remove it. If both positions are extreme, then clearly a compromise is in order, which means the line crossers win by default because you either have a line or you don’t.
I think we have all seen this a thousand times, once an activist group gets to a 50.1% majority they all immediately turn into Hitler. There was a time when the electoral college favored Democrats, you will be shocked to learn their views were different back then.
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This is just expected behavior at this point. Activist groups by their very nature are going to be unreasonable trying to obtain their goals. By any means necessary. This is why I am not interested in joining any of these groups. I certainly have my own biased views, but just find teaming up with others to push an overt agenda kind of nauseating.
A possible example of conservatives pushing an extreme change without enduring majority support would be laws to completely ban abortion. But the waters are muddied by the they would essentially just be reenacting laws already on the books that have been in abeyance by judicial decree rather than the democratic process. But total bans might have solid majority support in some states.
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If congressional Republicans were to enact a national abortion ban, that would definitely be an extreme change without majority support. I would oppose that on principle, even though I am inclined to agree with the objective.
Tom Scharf (Comment #214488): “I think we have all seen this a thousand times, once an activist group gets to a 50.1% majority they all immediately turn into Hitler.”
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Indeed. But with the exception of anti-abortion activists, such groups all seem to be on the Left.
The SC has dealt with the government employee freedom of speech issue. It is different than the private sector. There is a series of tests unique to government employees. There is a bit of gray area. The government can’t put a rule in such as a one sided “No Trump Advocacy” policy, but you cannot also be a disturbance to other employees by standing up and screaming MAGA every day and during meetings.
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Private companies such as the DNC or RNC can effectively ban certain types of political expression. The government can only do this in certain neutral ways.
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center/topics/freedom-of-speech-2/free-speech-and-government-employees-overview
“I’m not under the impression explicitly race based discipline is pervasive.”
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I think what happens here is that the data shows minorities get disciplined more often in most schools. This is likely because they misbehave more often but that is a debate for another day. In my county they instituted a policy to basically stop disciplining * everyone *. A race quota discipline system would never have passed legal muster. Now there are far fewer detentions and suspensions. There are “mixed” views as to whether this is an improvement.
“Full disclosure, I have no rosary beads for my guns. Been wondering if I need some in case I have to shoot demons or vampires or something)”
I am always trying to remember this series that I read when I was little, set in the Sherlock Holmes universe with a priest and a kid that go around fighting demons.
The unequal discipline stat is used to try and implement a large agenda in schools. If they can’t get what they want directly, they call for a committee to be formed at the school or district level, made up of people from the community who get together and surprisingly come up with the same recommendations every place this is done.
For the more urban school districts it involves not calling police on kids. The day he was shot, Trayvon Martin should have been in jail instead of going out to buy his make your own drugs snacks. The school superintendent was given all sorts of awards for implementing his plan to end the ‘school to prison pipeline.’
This was adopted in a nearby school district, keeping the Parkland shooter away from the police as well.
There was a story about a teacher was forced to take down exhibits about various people from black history along with the pledge of allegiance. The actual story was that it was a special ed class that had specific rules on what goes on boards, because of how kids need to pay attention.
California has passed a law making the spread of “misinformation” about Covid treatments & vaccines by physicians “unprofessional conduct” subject to penalties by the state’s medical board, according to this NYT article. The article notes that it is not known if CA’s Gov. Newsom will sign the bill.
“As the legislation moved through the Legislature, its sponsors narrowed its scope to deal directly with doctors’ direct interaction with patients. It does not address comments online or on television”. I wonder if that change was prompted by this comment that “misinformation” could apply to the public statements of CDC members.
As a side note, I wonder why the public service announcements promoting vaccinations are exempted from having to list all potential side effects, as ads for other medications are required to do.
DaveJR
Yes.
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I’m said what I said. This has nothing to do with “line drawn in the same”. Erecting a wall is not “a line drawn in the same”.
An impermeable wall is not a line.
You may want to exit metaphor land and state whatever point or argument you are making directly.
Tom Scharf
Of course if you did this in the private sector you would probably be fired too. If you were a hair dresser you’ll lose quite a few customers. (You might gain others. But honestly, you’d lose more because lots of people what their time in the hair dressers chair to be a politics free zone.)
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It’s easy to ban political speech in politically neutral ways. Government agencies sometimes run afoul of this because administration doesn’t notice that their rule is not politically neutral. (Not flying any flags other than state and US is fairly neutral. Allowing Rainbow but not Confederate flag? Not neutral. )
Later
Yes. This is also where “restorative justice” comes in. Instead of punishment, the perpetrator and victim are required to have a meeting where they try to have a Kumbaya moment. Depending on what the perpetrator did, this might be a second victimization of the victim. But the justification is it gives the perpetrator a chance to do something to “restore” whatever the victim lost as a result of the victimization.
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It’s not “race based”. But it is often motivated by seeing blacks are disciplined more than whites.
> Allowing Rainbow but not Confederate flag? Not neutral.
That is policy in many school divisions in Virginia.
Confederate flag is a symbol of hate that has been banned.
MikeN,
Have they banned the Rainbow flag yet? Because on the teacher subreddit, various grumblings that those on high are telling them “no flags” (other than US or state.) They are grumbling because they are being made to take down Rainbow flags.
And with a little googling
https://roanoke.com/news/local/education/montgomery-county-school-board-debates-pride-flag-in-classrooms-slippery-slope/article_7e39116a-a575-11ec-a281-bb9568c019b8.html
(I’ll look for another version– but you can see debate over the pride flag.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/education-culture-war-finds-new-target-pride-flags-classrooms-rcna2501
“Education culture war finds a new target: Pride flags in classrooms”
‘cont
“which were created to promote unity”
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I just don’t believe that. One can say the same thing about Confederate flags, they are promoting unity behind southern culture. Any particular group can have unity and harmony as long as the rest of the world buys into their value system. It’s a meaningless phrase at this point.
Mike M,
“They never grouse about ditching the constitution. NEVER. At most they talk about changing the constitution using procedures specified in the constitution.”
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‘Never’ seems a very long time. But yes, I agree there is a real difference between conservatives and progressives when it comes to the Constitution: when conservatives want a change in the constitution, they almost always talk about changes using the specified amendment procedures. Progressives? Not so much. The whole progressive “living Constitution” argument (strongly supported by multiple current SC justices) is based on the claim that amending the Constitution is too difficult, which is then used to justify subverting the plain meaning with Orwellian “interpretation” of the original words, eliminating any normal understanding of the plain words and substituting an understanding which is pretty much the exact opposite of what the words actually say.
Some good news. Oberlin College has spent the last 6 years trying to put Gibson’s Bakery out of business. Oberlin has now lost its last attempt at an appeal and will have rto pay the bakery $36 million.
MikeM,
I’d seen the general story earlier. GOOD!!!
Several family members have died since the verdict.
MikeN,
Do you mean the first Oberlin verdict?
Tom
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Also: What a symbol is “created” for doesn’t fix its meaning permanently.
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Well… and at the risk of breaching Godwin’s law…..
Swastikas were symbols of good fortune, representations of God’s thunderbolts, representations of Buddha’s footprints and all sorts of other things for eons.
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Then to quote wikipedia, it was coopted by “far-right Romanian politician A. C. Cuza as a symbol of international antisemitism prior to World War I”. Then the Nazi’s decided they liked the symbol.
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Whatever it originally symbolized, it no longer symbolizes that in the West.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika
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Mike N,
In addition to the defamatory claims of racism, which was in fact the official position of the college, the college stopped all purchases from the bakery. After a month, the administration realized they were in legal jeopardy, and resumed purchases from the bakery, but student protests continued, which the college then claimed they had nothing to do with. They also got rid of the dean of students, who led the protests and personally handed out defamatory documents which had been printed at college expense.
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The jury saw through all the college’s lies and attempts to obfuscate its indefensible actions.
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The problem for the bakery is how to recover the money owed to them. I suspect it will be long and arduous. The process is the punishment.
Orberlin has an endowment of a little over $1 billion, so the final cost to the college of maybe $50 – $60 million, including legal fees, won’t put them out of business. Which is unfortunate.
It’s the same with confederate flag. I saw a few of them in WV when I grew up and saw many more of them when I moved to Florida. Typically on the back of pickup trucks. I was never particularly offended by them and I don’t think anyone else was either in those days. It was basically southern redneck culture. Pickup trucks, country music, domestic beer, whiskey, guns, hunting, tough guy, hard working blue collar. A lot of southern rock and country bands used the flag on their albums.
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I see the case of the change in meaning of this flag more of an imposed change by “northerners” who never liked southern culture to begin with. It’s certainly true that people adorning this flag where almost exclusively young male white southerners. It is also true that this flag was flown at some overt racial events. It’s not like there is some confederate committee who approve and disapproves of its use, not sure what there is to be done about this. There is plenty of hijacking of symbols by activists.
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I see gangsta culture in the same way, it’s more or less an expression of black redneck culture. It’s really not about racism but there are some racist elements to it and the members are pretty homogenous.
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There are some bad people out there, but people have a tendency to paint outgroups with a broad brush using their fringe elements. It’s very tiring.
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Do we really want a boring world of approved groups that are homogenous? I don’t think so. Western cities used to be unique, now they all look the same, except for their old historical architecture.
The bakery will get their money. Unfortunately the business will be forever linked to this event.
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The judgment was correct but the reward was excessive in my view. My motivated reasoning allows me to look the other way though, ha ha. This judgment did “send a message”. It only takes a couple of these type of judgments to shutdown academia’s overt attempts to control speech and to group shame businesses into extinction. This needed to happen, but $36M is a lot for what they actually did.
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I followed this case and the facts are ridiculous. An employee chased down some shoplifters (who were arrested and later pleaded guilty) and a fight occurred. The college behaved very badly. It should be noted that the main event took place in the week after the 2016 election as I recall so it was really more like displaced aggression.
The bakery had their own appeal denied; the punitive damages award was reduced to $36 million.
Lucia, since the first verdict.
Tom Scharf,
Had Oberlin immediately fired the all employees who were involved (there were many, including the president and his assistant), admonished students to not protest, and abjectly apologized to the bakery for blatant defamation, they could have immediately settled for a pittance.
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Oberlin was never going to do those things, and still hasn’t; they put one employee on “administrative leave” (with salary) until she found another job. The president at the time blocked all orders from the school cafeteria, and pressured the bakery owners (in a face-to-face meeting) to drop charges against the students as a condition for resumption of purchases from the cafeteria. The president had already announced he would “step down” before the shoplifting incident. His replacement doubled down on putting the bakery out of business. Oberlin never apologized. Oberlin never told students the bakery was 100% right and the students involved 100% wrong… eg “Shoplifting and assault are crimes, and the students involved were in fact criminals.” At each step in the long history, Oberlin acted like a criminal organization, not an institution of higher education.
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$36 million ($11 million of that legal fees and interest on payment not made) doesn’t seem to me excessive at all considering the college’s continuing behavior. The courts seem to agree.
Actual damages to the bakery was likely in the millions.
Appears metformin significantly reduces hospitalizations and deaths from COVID:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2201662
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Metformin is a cheap and readily available medication for type 2 diabetes. Both vaccinated and un-vaccinated individuals were enrolled, 35 to 85 years old, within three days of a positive covid test, and randomly assigned to a test group or control group. Best estimate of risk ratio for hospitalization or death with metformin was 0.47 compared to controls. Ivermectin and fluvoxamine showed no significant risk reduction. Since the size of the study was limited, the uncertainty in the risk ratio with metformin was quite wide; only a larger study would narrow the uncertainty. Turns out metformin was actually used in the past to treat influenza.
And here’s another possible reason why labor force participation has dropped:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/income-equality-not-inequality-is-the-problem-labor-force-participation-income-taxes-transfer-payments-middle-bottom-rich-household-size-census-11661781351?st=0c77ocm8vmlixda&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
In fact, when corrected for household size, the second quintile median income per capita is less then the first and third. Note that this is total income, including transfer payments, and after taxes.
May he rest in peace, but Gorbachev was one of the most over-rated political leaders of our time. In his attempt to “fix” Communism his work became enamored by the Western press, other writers and members of academia. No doubt in my mind a lot of this came from the leftist wish in these groups for Communism being able to work with the right guy in charge.
The article linked below was written by an economist who worked in the Gorbachev regime. He called it the incoherent 3rd way. I had previously read much of what the author says about Gorbachev in the article and was perplexed when this information was “overlooked” by the Western intelligentsia.
https://mises.org/library/decline-and-fall-gorbachev-and-soviet-state
FYI: The reason why the new shots are for vaccinated people only
https://www.science.org/content/article/omicron-booster-shots-are-coming-lots-questions
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“Because they contain a lower dose of mRNA, the shots are meant to be used as boosters only, and not in people who were never vaccinated.”
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Here another good question:
“Why do the new vaccines still contain mRNA targeting the ancestral strain, which is long gone?
It isn’t entirely clear. Hana El Sahly, a vaccine development expert at Baylor College of Medicine, says she can’t see a biological reason to include both versions of spike.
… the next variant to emerge might be more closely related to the ancestral strain than to Omicron, so the bivalent formula could be a useful hedge.”
The loss of welfare like the earned income tax credit, ends up producing higher marginal tax rates for low income than high income.
The Ukrainian counter-offensive around Kherson is well under way according to Russian military blogger Grey Zone, Ukrainian forces have advanced 6km (3.7 miles) to take Sukhyi Stavok, north of Kherson city (reported at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/31/is-ukraines-counteroffensive-progressing).
Tom,
Making a booster only bi-valent and no first dose was still a decision.
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I wonder if the FDA was going to insist on full testing for a “first dose” bivalent, but gave slack for boosters? (Not a real question. I really just wonder. I suspect few know and it’s hard to google. The news articles don’t exactly link to FDA letters to pharma companies!)
Tom also,thanks for the link
I wish the bivalent included beta too– and for this exact reason.
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I think the more strains the better. 🙂
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I admit that I know the other factors are “lowest effective does” is best, and you probably need enough of each strain. If we were just going for “what lucia wants”, it would be bi-valent omicron and beta. Dump the original. (I already had a vac and booster for original.)
Tom Scharf,
“No doubt in my mind a lot of this came from the leftist wish in these groups for Communism being able to work with the right guy in charge.”
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People on the left desperately want to find a way to make people behave more like honey bees and less like humans. They desperately want to believe ‘everyone would be successful if not for differences in circumstance and upbringing’. It is all rubbish, of course… a bit like Lysenko-lite. That is the fundamental incoherence that Gorbachov embraced and today’s woke left embraces as well. It is obvious to any rational person that individuals are vastly different in size, intellect, interests, physical abilities, energy, effort, and more, and exact circumstances don’t lead to those vast differences. We are not communal insects, and never will be.
Lucia,
After reading the Science article, I am underwhelmed. The quote (from an FDA advisor who voted against the new vaccines) pretty much says it all: The time between exposure and being able to transmit the virus to others (under two days with no symptoms!) is too short for any vaccine to be effective at preventing spread; your immune system can’t ramp up fast enough to stop the spread. So the benefit for the new vaccine compared to the original strain appears to be only a very slight reduction in chance for severe illness…. nothing spectacular.
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The discouraging thing is it looks like we may be stuck with endemic covid forever. And the covid “national emergency” will continue until a Republican is in the White House. It will be interesting to see if young kids with kick-ass immune systems have lower rates of re-infection compared to oldsters. So far, my grand kids (under 4) have had neither vaccinations nor re-infections. The youngest (5 months at the time) was over it in 2 days with very mild symptoms; he didn’t even fuss much.
STeveF
Yes. But this is what I want it for.
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I agree we may be stuck with endemic Covid forever. Like flu.
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One hopes the idea this is “an emergency” will go the way of the dodo. Some states already curb governors “emergency” powers to exist for only finite amounts of time with the need to have the legislature confirm or extend.
There was a second special House of Representative election that went to the Democrats. It was from Alaska where the Republican, Young, who died recently, held that seat for many years. This to me is another sign that the mid terms will not be a slam dunk for Republicans for the House and are becoming a long shot for the Senate.
I believe it has become evident that the Democrats across the board are philosophically for more government with only a small difference on the practicality of how much more power to give to government at this time. Their voting bloc has held together well on legislation to increase the size and reach of government and the Democrat voters appear to be energized.
The Republican antithesis of this Democrat philosophy has not shown through well at the voter level with, I judge to be, many so-called Republican voters in the thralls of Trump and not truly interested in the bigger government antithesis. Trump’s recent statements and insistence on allegiance to him will be a major off-putting for independent voters who often are the deciding factor in US elections.
The Trump and abortion factors are currently putting my thinking about what mischief or worse is ahead with a Biden administration with a larger majority House and Senate.
From completely out of left field:
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“Californian’s may need to take measures to conserve energy, including by avoiding charging electric vehicles, to prevent strain to the state’s power grid over the Labor Day weekend.”
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Sounds like they may have a developing emergency…
Tom Scharf (Comment #214521): “the next variant to emerge might be more closely related to the ancestral strain than to Omicron, so the bivalent formula could be a useful hedge.”
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Why would that be? Each variant should evolve from the dominant prior variant. Unless the next variant also comes from a lb.
Lucia wrote: “The discouraging thing is it looks like we may be stuck with endemic covid forever.”
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My prediction is as it works its way up through the population from childhood, it’s going to go the same way as all the other coronaviruses.
MikeM
Omicron didn’t come from delta.
I think we don’t really know.
My main thought against adding “original strain” to the boost is much of my immune system already recognizes that. Overall, I would prefer boosts to assist recognition of things my body hasn’t seen.
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Mind you, I don’t know the strain of what actually sickened me. But the thing is I know I’ve been vacced and boosted against original strain. So my motive to get a boost is to at least possibly get a slightly different variety of boost.
Kenneth,
“The Trump and abortion factors are currently putting my thinking about what mischief or worse is ahead with a Biden administration with a larger majority House and Senate.”
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There does seem some chance the Dems could end up with 51 or 52 Senate seats. But control of the house? Extremely unlikely to happen.
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I agree that Trump damages the Republican chances virtually everywhere, but especially in the Senate.
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I think Republicans have done a HORRIBLE job of dealing with abortion messaging. Seems to me the only Republicans interested in talking about it are those who are 100% opposed to abortion under all circumstances…. this really hurts Republicans with the voters because it is an extreme position that is very far from where the voters are. It’s damaging their chances. What they should be doing is lining up with what the large majority of voters actually want: easily available first trimester abortions, morning-after pills, early pregnancy termination pills, restrictions on second trimester abortions, and extreme restrictions on third trimester abortions.
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What the Democrats are offering (absolutely no restrictions of any kind) is so far out of step with the voters that it should be a winning issue for Republicans. But it seems Republicans just can’t bring themselves to adopt a reasonable policy position on abortion… too afraid of their extreme base I guess.
SteveF,
I agree with you that Republicans who are moderate on abortion should be vocal.
Ramesh Ponnuru is now the head of National Review, taking over from Rich Lowry. He wrote a book about abortion called Party of Death, and has the position that the 14th amendment should be interpreted as covering the unborn, and abortion should be outlawed nationally.
He recently wrote that they should push for a national 20 week ban.
I’m not sure but I think he had written in the past that if Republicans pushed for a national ban on abortion, the next Congress would have fewer Republicans.
lucia (Comment #214534): “Omicron didn’t come from delta.”
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That is correct. So far as I know, there is only one plausible theory as to the origin of omicron. It was made in a lab.
SteveF (Comment #214535): “I think Republicans have done a HORRIBLE job of dealing with abortion messaging. Seems to me the only Republicans interested in talking about it are those who are 100% opposed to abortion under all circumstances”.
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The Republican Senate candidates in Arizona and Colorado have moderate positions, as does their candidate for governor in New Mexico. I am sure there are many more. But the abolitionists are so vocal that they drown out the moderates and screw up any attempt at sound messaging.
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I await the formal Republican congressional campaign platform. Supposedly, it will be an attempt to replicate the success of what Gingrich did. I am half hopeful and half scared of their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I think the best to be hoped for on abortion is that it should be left to the states.
———-
SteveF: “But it seems Republicans just can’t bring themselves to adopt a reasonable policy position on abortion… too afraid of their extreme base I guess.”
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Indeed. It is the mirror image of the hold the far Left has on the Dems.
Never underestimate the ability of a party to self sabotage. Let’s just hope the pendulum swings back at the right time. An emboldened Democratic party may just come up with another “defund the police” bit of genius.
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It’s pretty much Wokeism vs Trumpism in the tabloids we call the media. If inflation stays high then the left will have a hard time. Trump is probably poison to most independents, fortunately he is not actually on the ballot. I saw plenty of political ads with his picture in it during the Florida elections, not a great sign.
Tom
Yep.
The other covid strains are likely still around, just in small numbers and isolated locations. The next strains would seem more likely to come from BA.5 unless we develop an effective defense against it. Evolutionary pressure will favor the best transmission capability. It’s possible natural immunity may provide that pressure, the vaccines don’t look to do so.
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Reinfection statistics are hard to find. Yet another example where the CDC just does a series of one-off studies without any long term monitoring for this type of stuff.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/01/1120510251/reading-math-test-scores-pandemic
“Math scores dropped by 5 percentage points for white students, compared with 13 points for Black students and 8 points for Hispanic students.
…
For Asian American students, Native American students and students of two or more races, there was little change in reading or math between 2020 and 2022, the study found.”
“Geographically, all regions saw decreases in math, but declines were slightly worse in the Northeast and Midwest compared with the West and South.”
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Curiously readings scores were about the same. I tried to find a breakdown by state, but the info isn’t available or nobody is curious about this question. In the several articles I perused not a single one theorized whether school lockdown policies might have made a difference. My evil twin, Mr. Cynical, tells me the question was likely asked, answered, and not released (yet). They may need additional time to collate and confirm the data, scheduled for mid November, ha.
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It’s not surprising remote learning doesn’t work well for some people. It would be a good idea to study why some groups did better than others beyond the typical knee jerk reactions. I would postulate that it’s the same reasons the same groups do better in the first place, and by that I mean systemic racism against white people by Asians. I am proving this by the SOP of offering “no evidence” evidence and making this the reductionist null model of a complex social problem. This theory must first be disproven before any other forcings can be considered. This is known as following the science.
Tom,
Some kids got tutoring. I don’t know how many third graders did. But tutoring was a HOT BUSINESS for high school kids during Covid.
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Lots of the online stuff was bad but partly because the teachers had close to zero time. So “online labs” in particular often “sounded good” if you read the description, but they were just torture when implemented. I mean, I could usually grasp the intended learning goal and probably general idea of an experiment when I saw the lab. But a student couldn’t, say, have the “instructions” of “what to do” open while trying to go through steps 1-12. They often had to open one pane, read a step, navigate the the “aparatus”, figure out something (like, where the heck is the gui protractor? Oh. Behind the “tools”. And how do you drag and place?) Then after “getting the data”, they have to navigate to the “data sheet”. Then navigate back to read what “step 2” is– because they don’t remember. (And this is if they aren’t told to do a calculuation!!)
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The teachers never had their own supplemental instructions. (Like “print on this pdf and have it next to you so you con’t need to navigate”. Or “try using the gui to learn how to use the ruler, protractor, clock…” before “doing the experiment. Why didn’t they have them? BEcause the found their “online experiment” yesterday when the school announced a closure.
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It was terrible.
Getting thrust into remote learning with almost zero prep time was predictably not going to go well for students or teachers. It barely goes OK with the standard model of in person learning.
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Some kids can learn effectively with minimal guidance and those kids no doubt did OK. The kids with a Tiger Mom standing over their shoulder also likely did OK. The kids with working or absent parents who weren’t particularly motivated likely did less well.
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The gap between these groups widening is no surprise. This year will also be hard.
Education stats that don’t control for social economic family background are useless as that factor predominates in the outcomes along with parental involvement. Those two factors of course tend to correlate with each other. Anything else is generally noise.
We’re seeing the results in kids entering college now and they were in the age group that could have handled the pivot online the best. Grade schools really struggled with teaching effectively in remote learning environment. There will be more time to counter it, but with so much of education being additive it’ll be a while before we get back to normal.
Tom
Many Tiger Mom’s hired tutors.
It’s really hard to explain to people just how much more difficult even a good “online lab” is, and how much less kids get out of it.
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I still remember helping a kid figure out the GUI so we could do something as simple as change the slope of the inclined plane (find “tools” under some little “tool” symbol we had never seen before) and then measure the angle (find different tool under “measurement” tools symbol we had never seen before.)
Plus, while you are doing lots of stuff, you need to remember each little feature of the GUI.
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And this was for a kid whose teacher was actually trying to find a good online lab that dovetailed their curriculum. Some just seemed to give up (or were possibly so busy they just couldn’t keep up.)
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The Tiger Mom would probably have had a hard time helping figure out the GUI, goals of assignment, being able to tell if things were totlaly screwed up etc. I had an edge because I could tell *immediately* what the goal was because it was the same goal every has when being assigned a block where you let a block slide down an incline.
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It was bad for highschool. I imagine it was even worse for grade school.
NeverTrumper Kevin Williamson wrote against Trump endorsed Blake Masters, saying never trust any candidate who is not with you on abortion.
The interview in the link below makes some interesting points about the CDC. The professor being interviewed feels the CDC has or should have information about the excess deaths not attributed to Covid-19. Also he presents evidence for why we no longer need vaccination mandates – but we still do. The interview also points to the subtle language used by the CDC to back-off from previous mitigation efforts and apparently without much background given for the changes.
https://mises.org/wire/experts-still-arent-giving-vaccine-mandates
DaveJR (Comment #214533)
” we may be stuck with endemic covid forever.”
My prediction is as it works its way up through the population from childhood, it’s going to go the same way as all the other coronaviruses.”
That will go well.
Coronaviruses seem to be widespread, available to lots of different species and my guess is have been around for thousands of years.
Chucking a dangerous spike onto one was a very good idea for warfare but the long term consequences were not well thought through.
Hard to put a genie back in the bottle.
My guess is this pandemic has put the brakes on any anyone’s secret plans for biological warfare, at least related to new viruses. Things like releasing a pathogen in enemy territory and inoculating the locals doesn’t really look viable. The virus will unpredictably mutate and end up right back in your local area.
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Not all pathogens are equal, some of them have long incubation times which allow vaccines to be very effective. I’m not sure you can risk depending on that though. Would a modified smallpox not mutate to become more transmissive if millions of people were infected? Who knows. What is clear is that virologists don’t really know either given the state of the science. So the risk of biological warfare to your own tribe just seems too high.
Did anyone watch Biden’s Gates of Hell speech? I didn’t, but the clips I have seen are disturbing.
CNN must have thought the image of Biden ranting on a podium with red lights and military standing behind him set the wrong tone, so they gradually toned the red down till it turned purple…
Biden’s and the Democrat’s Senate and House ratings have gone up since Biden has been talking about the MAGA Republicans being a threat to democracy and thus I think Biden decided to double down on a correlation that might not be cause and effect.
What he did is what many authoritative governments have done before him and that is to zero-in on a portion of the population to hold as a threat to the state. Most times for obvious political reasons it is a smallish minority of the population that takes the heat. He could have miscalculated that portion in his most recent diatribe.
Trump’s diatribes met disapproval from the MSM and others in the intelligentsia. In Biden’s case last night he out did Trump and I have not seen any push back from the intelligentsia. That is an important point because if Biden gets away with what he said last night he might just be able to pull off the authoritative goal of turning a majority against a minority in the name of saving the state. It has happened before and it happens when the intelligentsia backs the leader’s diatribe.
Are you referring to Biden The Uniter ™?
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This was just a run of the mill campaign speech. The latest meme in the legacy media is “the Republicans really are fascists”. This is a similar lame response to the The Deplorables. I guess they got tired of calling people Hitler. They will bring out the racism charges soon enough. It’s all so boring and repetitive. It doesn’t even get to level 1 out of 10 for interesting for me.
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Why they think this is a productive use of time is beyond me, I don’t think deplorables worked out very well. As far as I am concerned they can keep it up.
I’m listening to the speech now.
Biden is an evil and stupid man who suffers dementia. The rest is details.
It’s worth remembering the “details” are the ones setting the agenda. Biden wouldn’t be giving such a speech without permission and approval.
There was a lot of divisiveness in that speech. But it was mostly just an incoherent mess.
Lucia,
“…incoherent mess.”
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Consistent with both Biden’s policies and his dementia. IMO, Biden’s election was a catastrophe for the country and the rule of law. Those around him, and who control what that dementia patient does, have respect for neither the rule of law nor the Constitution… and from there flow most of the administration’s terrible policies.
SteveF,
Definitely with the dementia, which likely also affects policies.
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It was weird noticing statements that were written to have a “punch”, but he just bungled, then corrected. There was a significant amount of bad timing, stammering etc. Whatever impact the script might have had delivered by someone else, it really just ended up hard to pay attention to.
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The structure was also:
“Bad guys are bad”.
“My policies are gr–8!”
“Bad guys are bad”.
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There was no fleshing out why his policies were great or what fruit they will bear. Only “We passed this! It’s great! Yeah!” There didn’t seem to be much about what they propose for the future.
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He threw out a lot of words like democracy and unity. Yet, rather obviously, it was not unifying. It is hypothetically possible he isn’t accusing all Republican’s of being MAGA Republicans. He claims that. But he certainly didn’t call out which ones might not be. So enormous numbers of people are going to think he lumped them in there.
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The theatricality of it was over the top too. The two marines on either sides looked somewhat “tin-pot dictator”. Red light was an odd choice. It’s not generally considered flattering.
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In some sense, it’s just a speech though. We’ll see what actual reaction is over time.
“MAGA” is whoever they decide it to be. It will be used just like all the -ist and -phobe labels are now.
DaveJR,
Yes. MAGA seems to be whoever they decide it is at this instant. But people giving speeches really can’t have their cake and eat it to. People listening decide who they are slamming. Trying to explain “I really only meant precisely these three people.” doesn’t cut it.
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It’s similar to “it was only a joke”. Or “I only meant ‘honey’ as an endearment.” Uhmm no. For the first: not “only”. For the second: not even.
Lucia,
The theatrics were more than a little like something from pre-WWII Germany, or maybe a movie version of 1984. I am trying to imagine who’s idea it was to turn on the steep-angled red lights and post the soldiers just behind Biden… but that person could obviously have found employment as a publicist for the Brown-shirts. Biden will soon no longer be able to give a teleprompter speech (he barely can now), so it will be interesting to see if they start substituting Camala Harris or maybe a “Whitehouse spokesperson”.
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It was a horrible and divisive speech, symptomatic of a horrible and divisive administration.
I’m surprised by their choice of visuals, probably set by the ABC guy who was producing for the January 6th committee.
For content, it is something of which Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove would approve.
It reminds me of a scene from either Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones, where the Chancellor soon to be Emperor declares, “I love democracy.”
Maybe the visuals were done by the same guy who made this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Devilsadvocate.jpg
Biden, as the spokesperson for those behind the intellectual part of his administration, may come across as a weak old man with a wondering mind but then his message appears less threatening than a younger stronger person spitting it out with wild jesters and raised voice. All of which might well be taken into account as part of his handlers plan. His message, as SteveF suggests, comes out of authoritative political strategies for both gaining and retaining power by marginalizing a portion the population as enemies of the state.
His speech was by no means meant to be a political one as it was very obviously staged and admittedly meant to be a speech about the state and its enemies. There might be some of us who do not take his speech very seriously, but for me I await how the MSM and others of the current left leaning intelligentsia handle it.
I look for a contrast in how Trump’s vocalization and choice of speech about the border problem could be taken as a light weight version of Biden’s speech. It was, however, I judge coming from Trump and not his handlers and the intellectual class did by no means defend it.
Biden’s mocking of the Second Amendment defenders and seemingly their sometimes rationale for it keeping a wayward government in line was not incidental and had, in my view, two purposes. The first being that the usurpers of the state noted in his speech can be viewed as violent and second that the state stands ready with all of its might to deal with those he sees as usurpers of the state. That part of his speech alone would have presented the MSM a field day of interpretations of it being a danger to democracy had Trump given it.
“This week, Bank of America unveiled a zero down mortgage option as part of their Community Homeownership Commitment.”…
DaveJR,
Sounds a bit like the run-up to 2008. Can you say ‘moral hazard’?
The beauty of this type of lending is the left will not call it racist and if and when sufficient numbers of loans go bad the left can call it predatory lending.
https://www.thetruthaboutmortgage.com/bank-of-america-zero-down-mortgage/
Ken
The conditions and rates depend on the neighborhoods? Not individual race? Lots of people like no-mortage loans. We will soon hear complaints about “gentrification” as white people take out the loans buy in these neighborhoods and move in.
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Yes, there will also be plenty of defaults.
When BOA starts turning down white applicants for loans in those ‘targeted neighborhoods’, lawsuits will follow. Two other observations:
1) It is difficult for me to imagine nobody at BOA remembers 2008. I don’t understand how they can be this dumb.
2) This might be a good time to hold very long term put options on BOA stock.
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I have a relative (by marriage) who got a zero-down mortgage in 2001-2002, refinanced three times up to 2007, pocketing $125K to live well beyond her income, then defaulted and declared bankruptcy in 2009 as housing prices crashed…. stiffing the bank for $150K…. and taking other banks for $35K on credit cards. So, she stole $185K and suffered almost no consequences. If she could, I am sure she would do it again. “Special” programs to allow people to buy houses when they are in no position to own a house are just stupid.
Steve wrote: “It is difficult for me to imagine nobody at BOA remembers 2008. I don’t understand how they can be this dumb.”
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They could just be dumb, or perhaps they know something we don’t. Maybe there are incentives available. Another wealth transfer scheme funded by all the money flying around at the moment for example.
SteveF (Comment #214574): “It is difficult for me to imagine nobody at BOA remembers 2008. I don’t understand how they can be this dumb.”
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Oh ,they remember. But this time is different. 15 years ago, prices were wildly inflated by excess demand, but now prices are wildly inflated by insufficient supply. So that was a bubble but now there is no risk of prices collapsing. Or so they say.
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It seems to me that although the market now is different in one way, it is the same in other ways. In either case, prices are high due to an imbalance in supply and demand and will plummet when the balance shifts. The specific needle that burst the bubble last time is not now a danger. But there are other needles, such as rising interest rates and/or a strong economic downturn.
SteveF
Of course. And if BOA approves the loans without regard to race– which legally, the must, they won’t achieve the goal of specifically lending to Blacks and Hispanics.
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There are plenty of young white (and other non-Black, non-Hispanic and non-White) people who have never bought a house. Some have even just gotten their college loans forgiven. Quite a few have jobs that would let them cover mortgage payments and do some fixing up.
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If they get very favorable loans, plenty of these people will be happy to buy into “certain Black/African American and/or Hispanic-Latino neighborhoods”. (Well, unless those neighborhoods are especially violent. But if they are especially violent, first time Blacks and Hispanics should likely avoid buying their starter home in those neighborhoods too.)
Banks, like the BOA, are tied closely to the government through regulation and the Federal Reserve. Some of their programs such as the one under discussion are driven by their wanting to stay in the favor of the ruling regime. If enough loans were to go bad, the BOA could remind those coming to the rescue of their good deeds and intentions.
If the government can forgive and/or reduce student loans of couples making as much as $250,000 annually at the taxpayers expense, why could they not forgive mortgage loans to those making much less annually – and not at the banks expense, but the politically diffuse taxpayer’s expense.
The bank is making a political calculation and not an economical one.
It sounds like marketing to me, especially if the size of the program is small. It’s also possible they might have an agreement to sell these loans to Freddie Mae or Fannie Mac in which case they won’t be taking any risk.
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This all smells like pre-election propaganda.
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I believe the “black farmers only” assistance program was struck down by the courts, that decision must have taken all of 10 seconds. These type of explicit assistance by race programs are always going to get tied up in the courts so one wonders why they do it. They can optionally just parse by economics.
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They do it this way for short term political reasons, its a wedge issue, try to virtue signal to minorities while hoping the opposing side overreacts. I’m not over confident they really care how well the program goes.
Ken Fritsch (Comment #214569): “His speech was by no means meant to be a political one as it was very obviously staged and admittedly meant to be a speech about the state and its enemies.”
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Virtually the entire speech was an attack on Donald Trump and “MAGA Republicans”. It was obviously meant as a purely political speech. The only way it was “a speech about the state and its enemies” is if you classify Biden’s political opponents as Enemies of the State. Which is what Biden is attempting to do.
Wow, so you actually watched the speech? Good job. I just can’t watch these things. If they wanted to torture secrets out of me they could just start playing presidential speeches and I would crack instantly.
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The few that I have watched are pretty predictable, and Biden is well past his prime and just stumbles and bumbles, a bit embarrassing really. The media picks up only the “newsy” parts and completely ignores all the team building and reasonable sections. Of course the speech writers know this and they can easily point to the parts they know will get covered beforehand.
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Not all Republicans are a threat to deeee-mock-rassee, maybe not even half. This is so inspiring from a leader. What is strange is what are the incentives that make one go say that? I suppose just trying to fire up your base, but this type of comment really sticks to you for a long time.
Biden’s speech was not intended by him and his handlers to be a political one. A President does not get a prime time slot for a political speech without paying for it. The post speech storyline by the regime is that we have an emergency of the state being under attack with references to a civil war. What the state can do in an emergency is fresh in everyone’s mind.
The bait provided by the speech was taken by Trump in stating if he became President again he would pardon all the good people who were found guilty of various crimes related to Jan 6. He makes himself an easy target for the state to rally around. Lindsey Graham makes others targets by stating that violence would follow a prosecution of Trump.
“Who will rid me of this meddlesome MAGA?”
Mike M,
” But there are other needles, such as rising interest rates and/or a strong economic downturn.”
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Yup. Banks that get involved in risky mortgages are almost certain to get burned.
When banks want to do mergers, the activists add all sorts of conditions to approving the merger, like giving out more loans to certain neighborhoods.
I keep seeing ads for cash out refinancing. So no one remembers 2008 or they are delusional and actually believe it’s different this time.
Tom Scharf,
“They do it this way for short term political reasons, its a wedge issue, try to virtue signal to minorities while hoping the opposing side overreacts.”.
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The Democrats know many of these “minority-only” programs are unlawful, unconstitutional, and usually both. Part of these schemes is political pandering to their base, of course.
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But I think part is a philosophy which is unchanged since Lyndon Johnson was president. I read the text of a speech he gave on ‘affirmative action’. he was very explicit: the government must explicitly favor African Americans over all others…. in jobs, loans, education, everything. That POV is absolutely unchanged over 60 years, and I think it is clear this is not going to change. Any differences between identifiable groups can only arise due to prejudice against the group that is less successful. Therefore explicit prejudice against and unfair treatment of the successful is not just OK, it is morally required. This will not be resolved except at the voting booth.
SteveF,
I guess that would mean that LBJ was an anti-racist a la Ibram X. Kendi. It’s very Alice in Wonderland. You have to be a racist to be an anti-racist and five other impossible things before breakfast.
DeWitt,
I was surprised and disturbed by the text of Lyndon Johnson’s speech. He may not have been as extreme as Kendi, but there wasn’t much daylight between them. I guess the fundamental question is whether or not you believe that personal behaviors are the primary determinants of personal success or not. LBJ sure sounded like he was strongly of the ‘not’ opinion.
SteveF,
It would be hard to design a program that would have intentionally done more damage to Blacks specifically and the poor in general than LBJ’s Great Society. The idea that you can lift people out of poverty by the Robin Hood method of taking from the rich and giving to the poor is a dangerous fallacy. It hasn’t worked in Africa either.
It makes zero sense to take a vaccine to create antibodies for a thing you’ve had and survived.
Zero.
However, people do silly stuff all the time.
https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2022/09/05/the-fib-faked-the-trump-photos/
Jeff Id,
FBI? I wonder what the picture that was covered up showed. It obviously wasn’t a classified document. I don’t think even Trump frames those.
Tell that to Djokovic. Sometimes you have to do things that don’t make sense.
DeWitt. the point is that the image the FIB presented was faked to some extent.
Completely proven to be false evidence given to the public by the never trustworthy FIB…… fake.
Jeff Id,
So one frame was made of dark wood and the others had light colored wood. That prove nothing other than that the implausible claim of fakery is probably unfounded. Oh, and that some people will believe anything.
Meh, looks to me like the lighting is from the top left and more toward the rear. You can see a small drop shadow on the paper on the floor and in the box corner in the same direction. There is a pretty hard edge to it which means it is probably a point light source such as a LED or sun. It is entirely possible that this is from a sunlit window with a frame edge causing the shadow edge or a light source that is blocked by something else. I think this lighting situation could be recreated by a skilled photographer.
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I don’t trust the FBI here but I also don’t find this evidence compelling. So far they have released enough info to make Trump look bad. The anonymous leaks to the media are a big issue and unfair to the alleged perpetrator even if it is Trump.
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So far it looks like Trump kept some classified documents and didn’t want to give them back. The whipped up nefarious intent by the usual suspects is likely way overblown. Nobody knows what’s in those documents and nether side is saying. My best guess is this is just another case of Trump being an a**hole … just because, and there isn’t much more to it.
My guess, if the documents contain anything of note, it’s an October surprise. Trump would want to keep them. The regime would go above and beyond to get them back.
The warrant and raid happened pretty quickly after Trump announced Kash Patel and John Solomon would be reviewing records of Russiagate and releasing them to the public.
These documents are not in the National Archives, so they probably figured Trump had them at Mar A Lago, and wanted to recover evidence of their malfeasance.
The warrant affidavit itself has some strange language I think.
Instead of saying he has classified material, it says appears to be classified. There are other instances like this.
So you guys think you can stuff a frame in a box and have the edge of the frame experience zero shadow?
No change in light intensity?
It’s an actual slice through the same shadow region.
Jeff id,
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I have no idea if the guy did the analysis correctly or even if he picked the correct slide.
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The picture was staged. I can not imagine a good reason why they would have to tamper with a staged photo. You’d have to assume that there was some sort of a reason to hide the top framed item and that they somehow failed to notice that while staging the photo. But if that were so, there would be easier options than trying to falsely insert another framed item. And if they did that, it would hardly make sense to deliberately create the fake item with a different frame.
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Your claim is based on unconvincing “evidence” and makes absolutely no sense.
I did not expect that the frame was fake either. I have no idea why they felt it so important to fake. Not like it means something material other than they are willing to fake evidence.
The frame has no shadow. It has to have some shadow.
It is 100 percent fake.
The FBI and DOJ are releasing information (including the staged photo) to reduce the public blow-back on the raid.
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Almost certainly the objective of the raid was two-fold: to damage Trump and to recover documents showing political corruption at DOJ and FBI.
Tom Scharf,
If Trump in fact declassified documents on ‘Russiagate’ and related fiascos involving the FBI and DOJ, then retained those documents, that would be more than enough motivation for the DOJ to seize everything they could from Mar-a-Largo. I can’t see any other motivation that makes any sense. Raiding the residence of a former president? It is so far beyond the pale that they had to know it would cause a great deal of trouble for them. They had to have been very highly motivated for the raid to have happened.
Jeff Id,
“It makes zero sense to take a vaccine to create antibodies for a thing you’ve had and survived.”
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Except maybe for an illness with many strains, where each person’s resistance to specific strains is poorly defined, and depends on their exposure/vaccination/illness history, like, say, influenza.
Jeff id (Comment #214600): “The frame has no shadow. It has to have some shadow.”
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None of the frames have a shadow within the picture. The light color frames appear to be partially *in* shadow. But that is much harder to see with a dark frame.
I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be seeing here. The front two frames are different designs than the back three. I don’t see anything particularly unusual with the shadows. If there is more than one light source then you can get all kinds of different shadows so I’m just not seeing anything obvious.
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Different color temperature light sources will create different color shadows so I don’t know why something would be “too brown”. I don’t know what “no shadow” means when the entire front of the frame seems to be in shadow from a rear light source.
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Additionally it is bizarre that this would be the part of the photo they would fake, or if they were faking a photo they would insert this box of frames in it.
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Has Trump said this photo is fake? Has he said he didn’t have any secret documents? I’m just not following this part that closely I guess.
Until we know what is in the documents that Trump wanted to keep so badly, then everything is just speculation. Trump certainly could have demanded to see all the evidence for “Trump Russia collusion” and a host of other things the media was hyperventilating over. It’s entirely possible that the DOJ or FBI suppressed counter evidence and made it secret to prevent it from being retrieved via the FOIA.
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Trump could have just made it public legally when he was President. One could argue he is waiting to reveal something (Sicknick’s autopsy! ha ha) in his next run for office. Maybe he will hand it to the NY Post. The other side says he was wanting to sell secrets to our adversaries which has no credibility and is also pure speculation.
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I await the answer and will reserve judgment. For now it is simply Trump holding onto to stuff he should have turned over.
I’m reminded of a video that someone made analyzing a picture of Obama with his maternal grandparents, proving the picture is fake.
There are more problems with the fake image too.
Takes an hour of staring but the FIB completely faked this ‘evidence’. The frame has zero shadow while other franes have 3:1 light intensity. We should also have 3:1 on the dark wood. The time mag frame aligns, pixel perfect, with the frame behind it, this was confusing as well until I realized that were it faked out of alignment, shadows would be needed.
Then I backed ny eyes out and realized how stupid I am —in 2D, the time mag frame perfectly fits over the window of the real frame.
100 percent faked evidence.
I’ve got over 3:1 light intensity in the real frames and zero on the time mag frame.
Can’t happen.
China approved an inhaled booster. So mucosal immunity boosters may finally be on their way.
https://fortune.com/2022/09/05/cansino-china-worlds-first-inhaled-vaccine-omicron/
Thinking things over, Trump was the president with unfettered access to these documents and able to take them home with him which is why they were there.
In his role as head of state he did not have to declassify them to have them.
Perks of the office.
Same for Obama.
H Clinton on the other hand had access to documents but had to have them declassified to access them.
Not the President so had to have reasons.
The argument that he has not declassified them for others or to keep does not wash.
There is a legal principle that once something has been seen it cannot be unseen (OK making that up but it sounds right.
Trump could photocopy them , draw them photo them or recite them to a tape, make paper airplanes or origami with them.
Cut them into confetti.
All 100% legal.
They are his property and right as the President and not the subject of any other overriding authority.
There were problems with retention of official documents post Presidency which smart FBI and Democrat lawyers are trying to use to bring him down.
The acts passed on this are designed to return the original documents to archives, not for security purposes.
Twisting the law in this way deserves to fail but may not fail.
As I understand it there is no prohibition on keeping copies, just a need, non criminal to return them when asked and properly identified.
The proper procedure in this case is to notify the previously highest respected person in the land directly if your concerns, work towards identifying said original documents and then proceed to help transport them
Proper and decent conduct.
All those involved in ordering and framing these actions need prosecution and removal, not the rank snd file agents
angech,
Yep. You’re making things up. You’re “thinking it over” is not necessarily the law. And your “logic” doesn’t distinguish between what he can do while president and what he can still do afterwards. He is no longer President.
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You’re also missing the fact that things sitting at Mar a lago can be seen by people other than Trump. Trump may not be able to “unsee” them. But his janitor has not yet seen them.
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Trump may or may not be guilty of anything. The public hasn’t heard everything– and selective leaks aren’t a good way to know.
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I know your a big and constant loyal Trump supporter. But you better hope he has much better lawyers than you!
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If the DOJ never brings charges, then that would be consistent with searching for documents damaging to the DOJ and FBI. If the DOJ does bring charges, then they will have to make a court case. They would also have to convince Federal judges (and the SC) that Trump could get a fair trial in Washington DC; almost no chance of that, which means high probability of a hung jury, even if the DOJ actually thinks they have a case. (In light of Trump’s unquestioned power to immediately declassify any document on his word only, I suspect the DOJ doesn’t think they really have a case, they just wanted the documents).
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My guess: no charges related to the search warrant will ever be brought against Trump, nor will Trump be able to recover most of what was taken. Unless he is re-elected, whereupon there will be a bloodbath at the DOJ and FBI. Only someone exceedingly dumb (like Merrick Garland) would bet everything on Trump not winning in 2024. Even if the odds of Trump winning are only 1/3, that is a very big risk for the future of the DOJ and FBI.
My wife and I aren’t going to need the omicron booster. It’s too late for that as we have both tested positive. So far it’s no worse than a cold.
DeWitt,
Paxlovid. Magic, at no cost to you.
Anything Trump is guilty of, Hillary is more guilty of.
Trump kept documents that some think should belong to the Archives. He is supposed to turn over presidential records but can keep his personal records. The person who decides which is which is Trump. On the other hand, Hillary set up her home brew server for the specific purpose of evading the Federal Records Act.
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Trump had some documents with classified markings stored under lock and key. Hillary had roughly ten times as many classified documents on her server, where Russia and China presumably had access to them. Trump had the power to declassify, Hillary did not. We don’t know if Trump’s documents have any current relevance, but Hillary’s certainly did.
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Trump fought with the Archivist over control of the documents, but complied with legal procedures. Hillary destroyed tens of thousands of documents after being served with a subpoena.
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There may be some technical basis to prosecute Trump, but such a prosecution would not be equal application of the law.
Mike M,
Hillary was never going to charged by the DOJ, no matter the extent of her law-breaking and no matter her motives. Hillary and Bill had been selling influence since Bill’s days as governor of Arkansas. Bill had perjured himself multiple times before a Federal judge (and in affidavits). Neither of them was ever at criminal risk, in spite of being corrupt, dishonest, and arguably borderline career criminals. Bill and Hillary were as favored by the Federal bureaucracy as Trump is disfavored. Same with Joe Biden: blatantly corrupt, but 100% protected. Neither Biden nor his family will ever face any serious consequences for proven criminal actions. This situation can only change if the Federal bureaucracy changes fundamentally, and that process starts at the voting booth.
“you’re also missing the fact that things sitting at Mar a Lago can be seen by people other than Trump.”
Interesting.
Secret and Confidential written all over them to stop people knowing they are secret.
One thinks of Maxwell Smart and Hymie with the CIA and secret service agent’s hiding in the water dispenser at Mar el Lago.
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Does one go from President to Joe Blow overnight or would he still have a Government task force out protecting him and his family and his locker room?
Even the janitors would be triple vetted or agents.
Why does one think the archives knew where to look and the DOJ hides the transcripts of the names of the people supposed to be looking after their (ex) President but spying on him?
I’m not responsible for a political system which allows people to be democratically elected by popular vote and unelected no matter what their race, religion, politics or personal morals are.
In general I do favour Democracy even if Democrats no longer do.
Trump supporter?
Well if that means applying honesty and rules of law established over centuries in a Christian and caring way.
Treating others as you would like them to test you and not destroying decent people over made up crimes.
How about a supporter of the maligned, mistreated and denigrated in general.
That sounds better.
Apropos the above I do not believe in any religion but do believe that when you live in any country in the world you should look after your family, neighbours and fellow people first without any need for overt patriotism.
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MikeM,
Perhaps. Absent evidence, I’m not jumping to conclusions in either direction. I know tons of people are doing so in favor of their preferred person.
While sitting president the person who can decide lots things. Afterwards, he does not have 100% authority to decide anything and everything. Trump is no longer sitting president. If he did things sloppily and did not declassify back then, he doesn’t have authority to just do whatever he wants now.
Well, there is evidently some dispute about the “lock and key” issue. It seems he had then not locked for a while.
He once had that power. If he did not exercise it, he can’t do it after he is no longer sitting president. There are those who say he did not exercise it. (And no, I don’t think he can just exercise silently with no actual communication to anyone at all.)
Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know because we don’t know the full case against Trump. My guess is it likely will not be entirely equal application of the law. But if he did something wrong, that doesn’t exonerate Trump.
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I thought the DOJ should have done significantly more to Hilary. But I’m also not going to make up my mind as to who did something more illegal until we have evidence of what Trump actually did. Might be worse than Hilary. Might be less bad.
The HRC server is what will prevent them from bringing charges on documents and obstruction. Lots of clever lawyers will make a case that this is “different”, but what is different is who is the political opponent. The media lapdogs already completely disregard this part of the story, but one cannot dismiss that a large part of the US will not ignore this detail.
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Beyond what is the law, there is also equal protection, and making sure there is not selection bias in prosecutorial discretion and sentencing. Gen. Petraeus was charged with document crimes.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/03/03/390443553/petraeus-enters-into-plea-agreement-on-criminal-charge
“The deal will allow Petraeus, who rose to the rank of a four-star general before becoming director of the CIA, to avoid a trial and plead guilty to a misdemeanor. He’ll also avoid a prison sentence, if a federal court agrees with the plea deal’s terms.”
“The papers filed today say that Petraeus held on to some classified and sensitive information that he shouldn’t have, in the form of “Black Book” notebooks — and that he later provided them to his biographer, Paula Broadwell, with whom he was having an affair.”
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Nothing worse could happen for the DOJ and the FBI than letting HRC and Hunter Biden walk without any charges and then sentencing Trump on document and process crimes. This will be very destructive. I still think the DC people greatly underestimate this aspect of the story because of their cultural bubble.
Not to retread this ground again, but this part of the HRC server affair was particularly galling and strained credibility.
NYT: “… “neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employee’s actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clinton’s and Platte River’s attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request.”
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This is regarding HRC’s server being scrubbed with a program called BleachBit after orders to retain files. I may not have complete trust in the FBI on these things but this part of that story is complete BS.
lucia (Comment #214622): “Absent evidence, I’m not jumping to conclusions”.
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OK, but what sort of evidence would make a difference? It is not credible that he actually gave classified documents to the Russians. The one thing I can see being a problem would be if he had things where secrecy was truly vital (a tiny fraction of classified docs) and/or that were of no particular value to him. Detailed nuclear weapon designs or lists of spies in foreign countries. I will not assume such things without evidence.
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lucia: “If he did things sloppily and did not declassify back then, he doesn’t have authority to just do whatever he wants now.”
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That is at most a technicality. To some extent, the President can declassify at will. There are documented cases of Presidents showing classified documents to representatives of foreign governments without going through any process of declassification.
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lucia: “We don’t know because we don’t know the full case against Trump.”
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At this point, there is no case against Trump. They are fishing through the documents, hoping to catch something.
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There is such a thing as being too open minded. Biden might be the Manchurian Candidate. We have no evidence to the contrary!
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lucia: “My guess is it likely will not be entirely equal application of the law. But if he did something wrong, that doesn’t exonerate Trump.”
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Precedent matters. If the norm is that X is prosecuted, then the fact that it was once not prosecuted may not matter. But if the norm is that X is never prosecuted, then it should not matter if X is technically illegal.
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lucia: “But I’m also not going to make up my mind as to who did something more illegal until we have evidence of what Trump actually did. Might be worse than Hilary. Might be less bad.”
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That is backwards. The absence of evidence implies innocence. And there is no plausible reason to think that Trump might have done anything as serious as what Hillary did.
MikeM
So many types I think it’s silly for you to even ask.
I think he probably did not. Evidently there initially was no lock on their storage area. His janitor couldn’t have found them and given them to the Russians.
Well, that would be a thing.
I think my position is clear: I’m not assuming anything about what he has.
You don’t know this. You know they have not presented a case to the public or courts. That doesn’t mean they don’t have one.
“Implies?” The implication is hardly strong.
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I know you like Trump and you want to see things a certain way. But absent evidence, I’m not making up my mind about the truth or falsity of accusations.
angech
Is this your attempt at irony? Because the notion that someone might get an agent employed at the home of a former president hardly impossible. And having the secret and classified documents conveniently labled would help them. But you don’t even need an spy to make the labeling convenient. A low paid employee or disgruntled one could certainly recognize the possible value and decide to try to sell them.
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That’s why why have handling requirements!
He has personal protection. That doesn’t mean they do background checks on all employees or visitors of the Trump residence!
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Really Angech, I definitely hope his lawyers are better than you!
Tom Scharf,
“This is regarding HRC’s server being scrubbed with a program called BleachBit after orders to retain files. I may not have complete trust in the FBI on these things but this part of that story is complete BS.”
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Sure. Hillary scrubbed the server of plans for her daughter’s wedding, but more to the point, scrubbed all evidence of influence peddling for the Clinton Foundation, evidence which could be used against her. In spite of a formal order to retain records. That has been obvious since the bleach-bit story came out. She was and is a criminal who got away with it, because she has always been above the law. The flow of money to the foundation dried up when she lost in 2016, and the foundation closed up shop. Proving, in case anybody doubts it, that the foundation was nothing more than an elaborate influence peddling scam.
lucia (Comment #214626): “So many types I think it’s silly for you to even ask.”
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So how about an example or two? I assure you that I am not being silly. Stupid maybe, but not silly.
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lucia : “Evidently there initially was no lock on their storage area.”
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I don’t think that is right. My understanding is that there was a lock that the FBI judged inadequate, so they asked that a better lock be installed. Which was done.
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lucia: “But absent evidence, I’m not making up my mind about the truth or falsity of accusations.”
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So are you neutral about the accusation that Biden is a paid agent of China? Real question. I would hope that your answer would be “no”, but I am unclear as to how you would square that with your position re Trump.
Lucia,
“I definitely hope his lawyers are better than you!”
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For sure they are among the best money can buy.
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And that is one of the reasons I doubt charges will ever be brought against Trump based on the Mar-a-Largo document seizure. There will, however, be continuing anonymous leaks to friendly media outlets by the DOJ, each intended to damage Trump politically… each a felony which will be neither investigated nor prosecuted. IMO, the DOJ and the FBI are profoundly corrupt organizations.
I think the public release of the staged photo of classified documents may by itself make prosecution of Trump difficult.
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Trumps lawyers will argue that the DOJ and FBI have acted to prejudice the public against Trump by selective release of information. I believe public release of prejudicial information before a trial is a big prosecutorial no-no. The DOJ refuses to give the public (or Trump) the affidavit used to justify a warrant, but then releases a photo showing documents labeled “classified”? I believe Trump’s lawyers will have a field day with this and with the anonymous leaks from the DOJ if he is charged.
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Of course, if the goal is to damage Trump politically, and not charge him with a crime (which I believe is the case), then selective release of information makes perfect sense to try to keep him out of office in 2025. Even if Trump is not charged, I expect his lawyers will file a lawsuit against the DOJ over selective release of information. This all seems 100% politically motivated… just a continuation of ‘crossfire-hurricane’ under a different name.
I posted some analyses previously here on attempts to estimate the actual number of Covid-19 cases by estimating an actual deaths/cases ratio. I had some time on my hands and I concluded my analyses and thought I might impose the results here. It is certainly nothing earth shaking.
I continued to look for better methods to estimate the actual Covid-19 deaths to cases ratio and, by assuming that deaths are reasonably well reported, estimating the actual cases. In plotting together the two time series of the total Covid-19 reported tests and the reported deaths to cases ratios, the ratio and test peaks and valleys near each major surge in cases were mostly 180 degrees out of phase. In other words when the surges occurred there were anti correlated peaks and valleys for the test and cases with more testing lowering the ratios and less raising the ratios. Each surge would have a different test to ratio relationship and thus obtaining estimates of actual ratios (as opposed to reported) would require a different model for each of the individual surges.
The plan was to use the exponential relationship in the surge time period between tests and ratios and let the model extrapolate the relationship to some asymptotical value m as in Ratio=a*exp(-Tests/k)+m. The constant m was used to avoid otherwise always obtaining zero as the asymptotically approached value. The resulting m was assumed to be the actual deaths to cases ratio from an extrapolation of the total tests to some large number.
I modeled the 50 states and DC (hereafter referenced as states) with weekly test and ratio data from March 21, 2020 for 122 weeks to the week ending July 22, 2022. Weekly data was required since some states in the later part of the series reported cumulative data during the week and not daily. The surge I used was the latest large surge starting in Dec 2021 and ending in February 2022. Most of the state models had close fitting results, but unfortunately using m allowed some of the states to have asymptotes less than zero. I attributed this to the noise in the relationship between tests and ratios stemming from the difficulty in heuristically selecting the weeks to use for the model. The selection was based on a best fit for offset of ratio and test peaks and valleys and the length of the modeled series. Fortunately, the selected time period most frequently had an m value very close to the mean of the periods used in the selection process. Most of the range in results gave m values (extrapolated ratios) between -0.003 and 0.003. This same process was used for the all the summed state ratio and test weekly data and referenced hereafter as US. All data was very lightly smoothed with a cubic spline with the smoothing taken into account in estimating the 95% confidence intervals.
The results for the mean of m for the states weighted by the total test during the period used to determine m and the 95% confidence interval was 0.00161 -/+ 0.002.
The cumulative US mean and 95% confidence interval was 0.00187 -/+ 0.002. The mean of all the selection trials was 0.00144.
I thought the approach was rather novel, but the wide confidence intervals and the heuristic selection process were not satisfying. I owed a large portion of the uncertainty of the results to the imprecision of states reporting testing and cases. I judge that a more diligent statistician (not that I consider myself one) could have devised an algorithm for the selection process that avoided any heuristics. The results I found were in line with other models and seroprevalence testing.
Lucia, was your server down for a while today?
Yes. Dreamhost had a problem. I went to twitter and saw customers bombarding them with questions. So there was nothing I could do.
MikeM,
Here are two. While not being a sitting president (which Trump currently is not:
* Storing top secret documents in a non-secure location is worthy of prosecution (like Mar-a-logo itself.)
* Allowing people (e.g a janitor) without clearances to be in the vicinity of top secret documents.
Fair enough. It was a crappy lock. That makes the location not secure.
I’m not sure why you hope that. But your hope is wrong. If someone accuses him of that, I’m neutral. I don’t accuse him myself. I don’t see any evidence. If they have any, I’ll look at it.
Mike M,
I should also add there is more than “nothing” to Trump documents story.
Are there documents at Mar a lago? Yes.
Were some marked classified? It appears the answer is Yes. Rightly or wrong, some ‘evidence’ of this has been leaked.
Because those answers are “Yes”, we are being treated to all sorts of explanations of why that’s still ok. Maybe it is. There has been some grumbling that things shouldn’t leak. They shouldn’t.
But that doesn’t turn the answers above to “no”.
lucia (Comment #214635): “Here are two.”
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Actually, that makes zero. They do not contradict my claim that “anything Trump is guilty of, Hillary is more guilty of”.
Lucia,
It seems to me you are assuming every document labeled ‘secret’ is in fact secret. Suppose instead Trump said to those assembling the documents in question: “All the documents in these boxes are completely declassified and can be shipped to Mar-a-Largo.” The ‘secret’ labels on the documents are then utterly irrelevant. The sequence of events matters. The words Trump said during that very confused departure from the White House matter. What is claimed after-the-fact by those not present is irrelevant. My guess is: they will not charge Trump, because they have no case worthy of charges. It is 100% political.
lucia (Comment #214636): “I should also add there is more than “nothing” to Trump documents story.”
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I suppose that would be relevant if I said there was nothing to the story.
SteveF (Comment #214638): “”What is claimed after-the-fact by those not present is irrelevant. My guess is: they will not charge Trump, because they have no case worthy of charges. It is 100% political.”
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I almost completely agree. I think it is possible that their TDS is sufficiently advanced that they might charge Trump even if they have no case worthy of charges.
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Aside: I wonder if lucia will say that I just contradicted what I said in Comment #214639.
It gets even more complicated now because symptomatic covid from a home test is likely to get an actual report if the person wants a Paxlovid prescription in most cases, so possibly more reports than early omicron. A lot of degrees of freedom.
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Also I think there needs to be a floor on the people dying with covid instead of from covid which seems to be maybe 25% of deaths … or so.
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So messy.
MikeM
I think it’s relevant because you seem to be objecting to my saying I’m not making up my mind about this story. YMMV.
MikeM
Well… You can wonder what ever you like. I see no contractiction between you saying both
and
STeveF
No. I’m assuming documents labeled secret might be secret.
That may very well end up being his defense to the accusation of storing secret documents. But having an affirmative defense doesn’t make the evidence non-evidence.
Irrelevant to what question? It isn’t irrelevant to discussing that there is some evidence that suggests he may have mishandled documents. “evidence” with no adjective is not the same as “clear and convincing evidence”, nor is it the same as “irrefutable evidence”. Just because evidence can be rebutted doesn’t mean it’s not evidence.
Yes. And we don’t know the sequence of events including what Trump said at and prior to departure. That’s presumably going to come out in testimony. As will witnesses,etc.
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I’m witholding judgement on questions that require that information until such time as we have it. Obviously, telling me that we don’t have that information isn’t going to change my decision to withhold information until we have it! I know we don’t have it. That’s why I am withholding judgement.
MikeM
Uhhh… Could you support your claim Hillary is more guilty?
lucia (Comment #214645): “Uhhh… Could you support your claim Hillary is more guilty?”
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Mike M. (Comment #214618):
The real issue might not be what Trump did but what the law is. The law appears to be quite different for the President than for the Secretary of State. Something that would be illegal for the latter could be legal for the former.
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The President has considerable authority to informally declassify documents. He can choose to show such documents to people who don’t have the proper clearance, including foreigners. He can take classified documents home with him. I think that in such cases he is informally and temporarily declassifying the documents. The Secretary of State can’t do such things without permission.
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So far as I know, the limits of the President’s authority to informally declassify things has not been specified either by statute or case law. Other presidents have kept possession of government documents after leaving office. I suspect that documents marked classified have been included, but I don’t know that.
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So I would think that Trump might have a good case for claiming that he believed that he was within the law, even if formal declassification procedures were not followed. If so, then I don’t see how a case can be made against him.
Mike M,
First: that’s a misleading way to describe what Trump did. Among the things that are stored are items that appear to be classified. Storing stuff in a non-secure place is storing stuff in a non-secure place. Both Trump and Hilary are equal on this count.
Under a flimsy lock and key. Storing in a non-secure place is storing in a non-secure place. They are equal there.
Destroying would be worse than hand over.
But We know more about what Hilary did. We don’t know everything about what Trump did, nor what happened. Hilary may have the edge on worse here.. Or Trump might.
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You are simply assuming you know the worst when in fact, we don’t know. You are making conclusions even though we don’t know.
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I am suspending judgement until we know more. I get it seems to bug you that I won’t jump to conclusions. But then it’s just going to bug you.
Lucia
“ Storing top secret documents in a non-secure location is worthy of prosecution (like Mar-a-logo itself.)”
Prosecution of whom?
You are aware that Trump had been living at Mar a Lago since 2019 and that the building had
Secure secret storage facilities fit and designed for the President of the USA and deemed fit for purpose by the CIA, FBI and all other relevant authorities?
Staffed by people responsible for the security of the United States at one presumes the risk of their jobs, honour and discretion.
Including the janitors.
The same ones they use at Langley and the Pentagon cleaning the rooms in and around the secret documents?
I strongly disagree that the notion of a President having a non secure location and staff is possible, even in a third world dictatorship, let alone the USA.
In no way could it be described as a non secure location in my opinion and I presume that of the very persons now trying to describe the facility and conditions they set up for him.
Do you really think the Secret Service allows past Presidents including Obama the Bushes and Clinton to not have had safe and secure, staffed rooms at their homes for any such documents that they had or might have requested and been granted after leaving office?
My other point, which you recognise, is that Trump had unfettered access and handling rights to any documents that he wanted and requested as President.
Absolute.
His ability to request further documents once he stopped being President and any ability to declassify them stopped when he stopped being President.
This does not mean that he had to unsee the documents or not continue to have access to the ones that he already had.
We will never know the working arrangements for such offices and safe keeping places officially but it is obvious that steps were in place to protect all documents and that staff with that responsibility
Would have to be in place as a routine security operation.
The fact that some of these government and secret service responsible people were still there as part of Trump’s post Presidential team means that they were in place to keep tabs on the records and had full knowledge of Hoepli they were being handled at all times.
Unfortunately for Trump when the CIA FBI DOJ people in charge knew that they could bring a weak charge of mishandling the records they were in charge of, they had the people in place to describe actions, plant and photograph files and worst of all make depositions
(Redacted) to prevent the fact that it was his own planted support staff initiating the charges.
angech,
I suspect you are right about those making depositions against Trump being either active security agents or ‘assets’ working on behalf of the FBI, CIA, or DOJ. There is no possibility that the Secret Service would allow unvetted people to be working in and around Mar-a-Largo… it is preposterous to even suggest.
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I once dined at the home of a former president of Brazil. I was accompanied by the ex-president’s son, an old friend (decades) of the ex-president, and a business associate. The armed security staff questioned us closely, verified ID’s, and insisted on a complete pat-down (except for his son) before we were allowed in the building. I am sure the US Secret Service is pretty careful about who accesses Trump’s homes.
Lucia,
I agree that one should withhold judgement about matters of fact. Those matters of fact will only be clarified by sworn testimony at a trial… along with the inevitable multiple appeals heard by higher courts where issues like presidential powers will be decided. I just doubt any of that is ever going to happen, because I doubt there will be a trial.
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IMHO, the whole warrant/raid/fishing expedition was staged to damage Trump politically (hence the odd release of a photo with documents labeled secret on the floor), and in the hope they might find evidence that could lead to unrelated charges (like encouraging Jan 6 protesters to enter the Capital). I would put the chance of a trial happening at less than 20%….. too much down-side risk for the DOJ and FBI to actually go to trial with a dubious case. Even with a reasonable case (which I doubt they have!) if the trial were held anywhere that Trump supporters could get on the jury, then the result would likely be a hung jury. It is 100% an exercise in politics by the Biden administration.
angech,
The FEDS.
Angech: US government security staff are not working all the hospitality jobs at the Mar-a-lago club.
Here’s a story about Trump hiring staff at Maralago
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/20/the-foreign-workers-of-mar-a-lago
He’s not hiring trained security staff or people with clearances as “cleaners, wait staff, cooks and other hospitality staff for the season”. Not only are they not all security staff, they aren;t even american. Heck, they aren’t even green card holders.
Trump still has a security detail. But he’s a former president. Not a sitting president.
SteveF
I agree it might never happen. We’ll see if there is a trial. There are all sorts of reasons there likely will be none.
.
APRIL 2020
Christopher Wray may be doing the same thing at the FBI?
The Senate? I know someone was using computer staff from overseas who were suss.
So is Christopher Wray not hiring trained security staff or people with clearances as “cleaners, wait staff, cooks and other hospitality staff ”. Not only are they not all security staff, they aren’t even American. Heck, they aren’t even green card holders.
Perhaps they should be checking their own security if they are so lax with the ex President’s.
President Trump signed an executive order on Monday that requires agencies to review their procurement practices to ensure that only U.S. citizens and nationals are working on federal contracts.
While it reflects the federal government’s increased reliance on contractors
The order requires the heads of each agency and department to review the contracts they awarded in fiscal 2018 and fiscal 2019 to determine if contractors and/or subcontractors used temporary foreign labor and to what extent. The order specifically says to look for “any potential effects on national security” and/or “negative impact” of hiring temporary foreign labor or offshoring of labor on the economy.
angech
No.
The FBI is not “lax” with the former President’s staff. The FBI doesn’t have oversight over the former President’s staff. (Beyond that, the bill giving protection for a former president has a lifetime dollar limit. They literally can’t give the amount of protection you seem to think they are required to do. They. Do. Not. Hire., employ or run security clearance on all the huge number of staff at the former presidents country club!!
The cook, cleaners etc at Maralago are absolutely not “working on federal contracts”!!! Maralago is Trumps private enterprise!!
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I don’t know were you come up with your creative ideas of who is responsible for waht. But it would help if they aligned with some facts.
There are procedures for documents. The secret stuff in “unsecured areas” have to be put under standard padlocked or combo locked security. There are some areas where the entire area is cordoned off and the entrance is checked by security staff, and then some stuff can be left out in the open. Security staff are supposed to go around and check that all the locks are locked, etc.
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Some janitors will absolutely have a top secret clearance to clean secured locations.
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That being said, things like finding a file cabinet unlocked because somebody had a senior moment, or was just going to print something quickly, etc. are somewhat routine violations that happen a lot because of the vast number of secret documents and locations. 1.3M people have a top secret security clearance. There are other clearances as you go up the chain.
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What is important is that these violators don’t get sent to prison, they might get reprimanded or lose their security clearance for repeat violations. Knowingly handing out secrets to uncleared people is another matter entirely.
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If Trump is routinely leaving the nuclear launch codes on the coffee table that is one thing, it is another if he is a bit sloppy. If the Trump raid only found secret documents in locked cabinets then there isn’t much here, but we just don’t know much of the important facts.
WSJ: Wealthy Families Stick With Full-Time Tutors Hired Early in Pandemic
Upper-middle-class families, dissatisfied with K-12 schools, are signing up for the instruction as well
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wealthy-families-stick-with-full-time-tutors-hired-early-in-pandemic-11662543002?st=9kr0d9rdwyjq281&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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This is the old adage of losing by winning. An institution is ideologically captured after an immense effort by partisans, only to find out that the power they assumed they would wield disappears when that institution is abandoned and/or public trust is lost.
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The removal of dual tracking, gifted programs, merit rewards, discipline, etc. have made the public education system not worth it for those who can afford to go elsewhere. This void will be filled by a better solution.
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The people who lose the most here are the same ones who the partisans profess to want to help. It’s dysfunctional and can be fixed.
OK, for entertainment purposes only. Please don’t take this seriously. It’s just silly people being silly all around.
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A couple white bros go into the ASU multicultural center to “study” with a laptop with a Police Lives Matter sticker and a “Did not vote for Biden” t-shirt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BzraMlg9Ek
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A predictable parody worthy of the Babylon Bee then breaks out. Viral. Backlash. The “wrong” people are getting disciplined now, they are now the victims, etc. Hilarious.
.
To top off the silliness the NYT then writes a 10,000 word article on it I guess because this needs to be explained somehow, without linking to the video itself which I actually had a little trouble finding.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/magazine/arizona-state-university-multicultural-center.html
Very few Mar-a-Lago employees will have access to private residences. Even fewer would have access to Trump’s residence. The ones who do are surely supervised by a Secret Service agent while there. Even if not supervised 100% of the time, they are not going to have the opportunity to break into a storage room and certainly won’t have the time to rifle through thousands of document in the hope of finding a classified gem.
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Whereas Russian an Chinese cyber-spies could have easily downloaded everything on Hillary’s server.
Tom
That’s basically my position.
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And the thing is, generally, the unlocked cabinets are non-the less situated in buildings with some access protection. There are also different security levels for documents and different levels of security required. Janitors in secure locations have clearances. Janitors and house keepers at Mar-a-lago? You generally wouldn’t expect the typical one to have clearances. You generally don’t keep classified documents there. It’s not really reasonable for a former president to keep top secret papers; they aren’t “his”. The were never “his” papers. The president doesn’t gain ownership of everything he handled– he doesn’t own the furniture in the white house just because he used it.
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We (the public) don’t know enough about what Trump had. We don’t know enough about how they were protected. Trump is Trump, so it’s not inconceivable things could be pretty darn bad. On the other hand, there is quite a big of Trump Derangement going around, so it’s not inconceivable it’s a big stink about almost nothing. So… dunno.
I have to ask without doing any searching whether posters here can, off the top of their heads, relate an incident of a security breach where careless handling of classified documents resulted in documented major security damage. The answer I often remember hearing elsewhere is that it cannot be revealed because it is secret.
I really have to wonder how seriously the classifying of documents are taken by those in government. Over a million people with top secret clearance makes me wonder about the seriousness. I strongly suspect a major part of classifying is to protect government from unwanted scrutiny and an image thing whereby mundane operations become important.
Ken,
I haven’t. I’ve only heard of people who actually sold materials. But it may well be that they don’t reveal these breeches.
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My husband dealt with classified materials. He never, ever, ever took stuff home or even outside secure areas. He didn’t keep them in a locked cabinet in an unsecured building.
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He was a derivative classifier also. He had to do that in a special secure document room. He obviously did not tell me what was in those documents, but I think his opinion about classification was different from yours. The things he dealt with were not classified to avoid unwarranted scrutiny or to make mundane operations seem important.
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He also couldn’t just waltz in and read any ol’ classified thing he wanted to read.
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Perhaps some things are classified for inappropriate reasons sometimes. But that wasn’t Jim’s general impression.
The link below gives a detailed account of how naïve Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State claimed she was about top-secret documents. I suspect there are many others out there with security clearances who are also actually naïve in handling top-secret documents.
https://verdict.justia.com/2017/02/20/protecting-top-secret-information-secretary-state-rest-government
The link below shows the historical security breaches for the US in chronological order. Notice that the breaches up to the 2010’s were espionage cases of people evidently with security clearances transferring secret material to foreign governments. In the 2010s’ and 2020’s it is all about Trump and how he tweeted and otherwise gave out secret information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_security_breaches
There are only two games at play currently in the TDS playbook.
1. Keep throwing mud
2 Make what if accusations
Both are extremely evident in nearly every development in the current persecution.
There is and was also a third way that both would have brought Trump down easily and quickly.
This is called actually doing the crime
For this you need both a crime, evidence of a crime and proof of the evidence
People hate tall poppies, they hate successful, smug rich tall poppies
Can anyone remember when Trump was said to be extremely likeable?
You know.
Like a quiz show host or an evangelist on TV?
Yes.
So why do half the people have TDS now?
See the start and ask yourself why do I have. Even mildly, the symptoms.
Even, dare I say Steve F and Lucia and myself.
Objective people, the Mike xyz’s Ken
and apologies to all others not named as the list would be too long.
It’s been more than 25 years ago for me, but the defense department and their contractors are a vast number of people with a lot of clearances. “Top secret” isn’t really a high level clearance and a lot of people have them. When you are job shopping as an engineer to a defense department contractor you will usually be asked or tell them what type of clearances you had or have. This lets them know they can likely reobtain those clearances or don’t have to pay for them again. I imagine this is a condition of employment at some places.
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The lower levels clearances pretty much means they verified a lot of your reported information, are a US citizen, born in the US in most cases, and they did some background checks. Nowadays they might check social media. These are handed out to employees before they are even necessary even though they cost money sometimes because they take a bit of time to accomplish. Other clearances can be much more invasive.
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Depending on the project you may not even know what you are really working on beyond some specs handed to you. The NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) didn’t even officially exist for a long time even though they had a huge budget. Those type of programs are likely almost blanketed by security clearances all around. The reality is its pretty mundane. Actual capabilities of this type of hardware is very closely held and its likely 99.9% of the people who built it don’t know the final specs.
Lucia, as I recall both you and your husband, Jim, worked at Argonne National Laboratory and I might be assuming too much but I suspect secret technical information there would be more like secrets of companies that I worked for that involved technical information that was not patented, but in Argonne’s case probably on a larger scale, with more technical input and of national importance.
I had a colleague where I worked who came from Argonne and I would kid about all the secret work they were doing at Argonne and would ask if he could fill me in on any that might help in our technical work. He would say: I could, Ken, but then I would have to kill you. He was, of course, kidding because this is just one of many lines he used some of which I cannot repeat in polite company. One I do remember for the imagery was when he would tell me: Ken, I had no more business being in that meeting than a one-legged man in an a$$ kicking contest. But I digress.
We had secrets that we would keep from our competitors only to learn later, when we had a competitor employee who would come to work for us and tells us about technical breakthroughs at his former company, that those “breakthroughs” could only have come from our technical groups. We once had a VP tell us that we needed to give to a competitor the details of a process to prepare a coating material with light-emitting phosphors that did not degrade the emitting efficiency of the phosphor. He would not tell us what we were getting in exchange so we decided with great satisfaction to give him a process that we knew would degrade the phosphor emitting efficiency. I do remember one colleague who came from a competitor who said nothing about a process we were developing to evacuated glass tubes at low temperatures. When we had the process in production, he told us we had followed the same path as his former company did.
Secrets are difficult to keep. Only obvious patents are protective and even those can be circumvented.
angech (Comment #214665)
Angech I am calling you the quipster with many quips. You remind me of a longer version of Steven Mosher who used to post a quip or two about a complex issue and seemingly set back as if to say I just made a brilliant quip and I will leave it to you ignorant souls out there to grasp its full meaning. I do not think you are as presumptuous as I considered Mosher to be, but like Mosher I sometimes have difficulty in grasping the full meaning of what you post. Others here do not seem to have this problem, and particularly Lucia, who when she replies to you I then can surmise the meaning of what you wrote.
Ken,
Jim worked on problems for Homeland security. The security classifications had nothing to do with just being “not patented”. It was information you didn’t want to get out because you didn’t want terrorists to use it to kill lots of people. This had nothing to do with patents or Intellectual Property.
Ken, thanks +.
Lucia, thanks also for providing a forum which has been of immeasurable help over a past few difficult years.
–
We seem to have a two tier legal battle in the offing at the moment with Trump’s former DOJ Bill Barr coming on board for the current DOJ team and putting up arguments for an indiction and the Judge who just supported a special master giving a lot of weight to arguments for a mistrial and also Trump’s rights as President per Supreme Court Judge Kavenaugh.
Barr would have made a good Supreme Court Judge, a very smart man.
He is up against 4 or 5 good legal brains on the current court however.
The recent article doesn’t say Trump had classified material with regards to a country’s nuclear program. The DOJ who fed the story just really want you to reach that conclusion.
It could be an article in the issue of Time Magazine that is in the picture discusses a country’s nuclear program.
There is a case involving President Clinton that was presided over by a ‘Clinton judge’ which said the President decides what are personal records and what are presidential records.
MikeN (Comment #214672): “There is a case involving President Clinton … which said the President decides what are personal records and what are presidential records.”
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That would be the “Clinton Tapes” case. Judicial Watch v. National Archives.
angech,
I never give the height of poppies much thought. I never watch television programs beyond an occasional golf tournament, so I never knew anything about Trump before he declared his candidacy (to loud laughter on all sides). From the very beginning, I concluded Trump acts like a badly behaved 4 year old. But at least he was not a career political criminal like Hillary, and he offered more reasonable policies along with a promise of Federal judges who take the Constitution seriously. I had hoped that after election Trump would “grow into the job” and begin acting more like a rational adult. He didn’t; he stayed just a much a jerk as before election.
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His policies and his complete in-your-face irreverence toward our ruling idiot-elites in Washington DC gives Trump unshakable support by 45% of voters, but his clown-like, childish behavior makes him an object of utter loathing for over 50% of voters. That loathing, combined with changes in voting rules that favored Biden in competitive states, is why he lost in 2020. I am convinced that if he is the Republican candidate in 2024, he will lose again by close to the same margin as in 2024, in spite of the horrible, destructive record of the Biden administration.
.
I am not one to wish ill health on people, but the USA would be much better off if Trump suffered a major health crisis that prevented him from running in 2024, clearing the field for a candidate who would almost certainly win. Trump would never think about what is good for the country…. obnoxious 4-year olds don’t think about anyone but themselves, and that pretty well describes Trump.
SteveF
I am OK with the idea of Trump not being President again.
I would like all the bad faith actors to get just deserts though.
Cannot see this happening with any of the other republicans who have to and need to live in the swamp .
Back to my bridge, 500 hundred and football for the weekend and look at your polls next Tuesday to see if the Democrat trend from the Supreme Court settles.
Have a good weekend.
lucia (Comment #214669)
Lucia, thanks for straightening me out on this. I should not have posed this issue as a lead in to my experiences with secrecies.
MikeN, MikeM,
I clicked over to https://casetext.com/case/judicial-watch-inc-v-natl-archives-records-admin (Judicial Watch v. National Archives. )
I think the issues are going to be distinguishable. Because even if the president can decide something is a personal record, that’s not the same as declassifying it.
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Trump is being accused of mishandling classified records, not merely withholding presidential records. Whether the NARA has the right to decide what’s “persona” and what is “presidential” seems irrelevant to that question.
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He may be innocent of what he stands accused of. But it’s not precisely the same as what Clinton was accused of. When interpreting what the law is, you need to consider the relevant legal question, not change it into a entirely different one.
lucia (Comment #214678): “Trump is being accused of mishandling classified records, not merely withholding presidential records.”
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He is being accused of BOTH. The presidential records business is what started it all. That would seem to be without foundation. Yes, that would still leave the issue of mishandling classified material. But the presidential records issue might still bear on whether the search warrant was legal.
MikeM
Yes. Both, I should have said also.
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I don’t know if the presidential records issue will bear on the search warrant. The affidavit for the warrant evidently says this
“”Probable cause exists to believe that evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” was being improperly stored in various places at Mar-a-Lago, the affidavit states.”
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That’s not saying the specific reason for the warrant is violating the presidential records act.
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Yes, materials were found when agents were allowed into Maralago looking for something else. That’s not an illegal search. Then what they found during this perfectly legal visit looked illegal. They used that to get a warrant.
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I don’t see any 4A problem. I doubt the courts will.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/26/1119588357/trump-warrant-affidavit-mar-a-lago-search
angech,
Those acting in bad faith (and there are many at DOJ, FBI and the ‘intelligence agencies’) are unlikely to suffer any consequences if Trump is the Republican nominee, because he will likely lose again; their bad faith will be richly rewarded by any Democrat in the White House. Ron DeSantis, in contrast, is focused and an expert in political knife fighting; those acting in bad faith today would pay a very dear price starting in January 2025 with a DeSantis administration.
lucia,
A key issue is whether the warrant was overly broad. It allowed the seizure of all documents from Trump’s time in office. I don’t see what the basis for that could be other than that they might be presidential records and therefore public property.
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“evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed”
.
What does that mean? So far as I can see, there are two possibilities: Things that were illegally possessed because they were classified or things that were illegally possessed because they were government property. The former should only allow seizure of the classified documents. The latter would seem to be based on whether the documents constitute presidential records.
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It seems clear, at least to me and many others, that the search was a fishing expedition. It remains undetermined as to whether the affidavit provides sufficient legal cover for that. We can not really judge that since so much of the affidavit was redacted. But based on what we do know, it appears that there is a significant chance that the entire search will be tossed as improper. Judicial Watch v. NARA is relevant to that.
The special master is necessary because the DOJ can’t really be trusted to sort out what is an attorney/client privilege and what is a personal record. Not sure the special master can be trusted either, but I’m not comfortable with Garland making that call as an opposing party political appointee. I’m also not comfortable with him overseeing career bureaucrats either, this is too easy to control.
.
The special master could potentially really wreck any DOJ case. Not only will it restrict what they can use, but it will be a big problem going forward for them because they can’t unsee the documents. If they took and viewed documents that are ultimately not supposed to be seen then they get into the “fruit of a poisonous tree” scenario. This can get really messy.
DoJ clearly had probable cause to believe that there were documents with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago, that the material in those documents might still be classified, and that they were improperly stored. Had they obtained a search warrant on those grounds and only seized such documents, they would be on solid legal ground. One might be suspicious of their motives, but bad motives would not have been obvious and the search would have been bulletproof re the 4th Amendment.
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DoJ obviously did not think that was good enough. Maybe because, given precedent, they thought Trump would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Or maybe because they figured they could not prove that Trump had not declassified the docs. Or maybe their TDS drove them to want to find something truly devastating. In any case, they chose to go way out on a limb and to carry out a legally questionable search in pursuit of something more than what they had.
I think that’s pretty clear.
Or it can mean both simultaneously and allow them to look for both.
If someone is authorized to look for “fruit”, they can be looking for apples, bananas, kumquats or whatever. Or all of them. Authorizing someone to look for “fruit” isn’t “overly broad” nor ambiguous merely because “fruit” can include a variety of individual fruits.
In anycase,
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So the affidavit specifically mentions the boxes marked “Top Secret”. So searching and seizing at least those would appear to fall under the warrant. The warrant specifically mentions
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793 (e) and then 1519 or 2071. So it definitely addresses being in position of classified materials.
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I’m not sure how it’s “clear” that this is merely a fishing expedition.
* While legally at Maralago. Agents had previously found documents marked “top secret”.
* After finding those, they got a warrant which authorizes them to look for more of precisely that.
* It sounds like they may have found precisely that.
.
That doesn’t sounds like what people usually call a “fishing expedition”. To me, it sounds pretty targeted on something they had reason to believe was there.
The unredacted portions are sufficient to know they provided evidence to look for top secret documents and they asked to look for those. That other bits are redacted doesn’t make the unredacted portions vanish.
Affidavit
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/22267188-mar-a-lago-affi/?title=1&embed=1
Tom Scharf
I agree with this.
Yes. That could happen.
Clemson’s college football coach gets 10 year, $115M contract. Wow. It’s hard to refute this has gotten out of control, but artificially restricting the market is even worse.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/search-warrant#
A fishing expedition can be legally conducted if the search warrant and affidavit are worded to avoid that connotation and is thus court approved. I suspect the court approval could vary by the judge(s) involved.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/searches-and-improperly-issued-warrants.html
Bill Barr says that the DOJ should appeal the judge’s deeply flawed ruling for a special master. I suspect if the DOJ did decide to appeal and had the right judge(s) the ruling would be overturned.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/06/politics/bill-barr-special-master-doj-trump/index.html
Barr has also said that the issue with the government papers in Trump’s possession is that the papers belong to the government regardless of classification or even if unclassified.
I think that the DOJ in Trump’s case will be considering the political impact and push it in a direction favorable to the Democrats. That well might include not using or pushing all the legal tools at its disposal when it appears that doing so might reveal too blatantly the political intent.
I believe a lessen to be learned here is that government has the legal means to arbitrarily punish individuals. In Trump’s case it will be tempered by political considerations just as was the case with Hillary Clinton. More important are the cases of the average Joe or Jane who might fall under government attention for punitive measures who do not have an array of expensive lawyers like Trump or any political consideration. Think 87,000 added IRS employees and the difference between the high-income earners’ capability to defend versus that of those with lesser incomes.
Another lesson from litigation against Trump comes from the civil cases posed against him and the process of discovery which can reveal the most private matters merely by filing a civil complaint. Discovery can certainly by-pass Fourth Amendment rights as spelled out in the linked article below. I do not think of this as Trump being an exclusive victim, but that everyone is a potential victim.
https://opencommons.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1236&context=law_review
The search was not “merely” a fishing expedition. They used something justified (looking for potentially classified material) to get a warrant for an overly broad search. The fishing expedition was not the potentially classified docs seized, it was the other 99% of what they took.
———–
Ken Fritsch (Comment #214689): “Barr has also said that the issue with the government papers in Trump’s possession is that the papers belong to the government regardless of classification or even if unclassified.”
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But the decision in Judicial Watch v NARA would seem to say otherwise.
MikeM
What’s overly broad about the warrant? Merely allowing them to get a lot of stuff that didn’t turn out to be classified doesn’t make it “overbroad”. Classified documents might not be marked.
Honestly, I don’t see how.
Trump had decades of experience before becoming a politician of avoiding a paper trail that would lead to * successful * litigation. He’s been sued innumerable times and involved in endless lawsuits. He’s a clown who can make mistakes but he certainly has been very slippery so far.
I feel strangely sad that Queen Elizabeth died.
I don’t know the exact details, but from my limited knowledge if they are searching for missing confidential files and come across a folder labelled “My personal notes on Jan 6th” then they can’t take it, and may not even be able to look at it or use it. Perhaps they can look in it on site to confirm it contains no missing files. If the file is labelled “My personal notes on my secret insurrection plan to overthrow the US government” then they can take it. Evidence of a crime in open view.
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The police et. al. do these fishing expeditions routinely and they are legal. Looking for evidence of a recent murder from a suspect based on better evidence he is involved in a string of robberies.
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The question is whether this was the actual intent in the Trump case. I can’t tell. The next question would be whether an overt fishing expedition leading to weak politically motivated charges would be acceptable to the public. I think not.
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There are many abuses that routinely happen to normal citizens. Civil asset forfeiture is one of the worst.
Tom,
I think you point out there are lots of separate questions. These are all different questions:
1) Did Trump do anything illegal? And how bad?
2) If yes, should the government charge him? ( Either considering Hilary or not considering Hilary.)
3) Were there 4A violations?
4) Where there other violations (confidentiality.)
5) If yes to (3) or (4) will that matter to a legal case? (The wouldn’t matter to the question of whether Trump did something illegal. Either he did or he did not.)
More questions can be asked. The answers to some may be “yes” and others “no”.
lucia (Comment #214692): “What’s overly broad about the warrant? Merely allowing them to get a lot of stuff that didn’t turn out to be classified doesn’t make it “overbroad”.”
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I think that is pretty much the definition of overly broad. Warrants need to be specific. “Everything” is not specific.
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lucia: “Honestly, I don’t see how.”
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The decision in Judicial Watch v NARA held that the outgoing president decides which documents are personal and which are the property of the government.
Tom wrote: “I feel strangely sad that Queen Elizabeth died.”
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It marks the end of an era for sure. It’s looking bleak for UK from what I can see. I guess we’ll see whether the newly appointed “conservative” PM intends to fight fire with fire (appointing a cabinet with no white males…) or is fully onboard with the “globalist” agenda.
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If Charles is made king, I expect respect for the institurion to take a nosedive. I’m not aware of any toxicity from William but he’s got plenty of time ahead of him for that.
Charles is already king. The formal coronation is a formality.
The warrant is water over the dam. It was granted and even if it was improperly granted it will not affect how the evidence is used.
Like Tom alluded, if evidence is in plain sight that could connect to another crime it is fair game. The search cannot go out of its way to search for evidence unrelated to the warrant content. Of course, the question remains: who determines plain sight other then the searchers.
Selective leaking by the government of so-called secret information in this case is probably the most damaging actions by the government to date. I do not believe the public much cares about leaking one way or another. I do not think the public cares much about some of these other legal issues in this case. They might if it personally affected them. I also believe that much of the current public thinking on government restraint in these cases would favor less restraint and much less than I would favor.
When I hear posters here say that certain government actions will not go over well with the public, I think that will not hinge on any legal intricacies, but rather whose bull is being gored.
Charles is king by default, yes, but he could choose to abdicate.
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It’s my theory that Elizabeth sat on the throne until death because she didn’t think Charles a suitable successor.
DaveJR (Comment #214701): “It’s my theory that Elizabeth sat on the throne until death because she didn’t think Charles a suitable successor.”
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Much more likely is that she sat on the throne until death because that was her duty.
Dave JR,
“It marks the end of an era for sure.”
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Indeed. Elizabeth was at least sane. Her offspring? Not so much. I chalk it up to the same lack of rearing discipline so obvious in the lStates. Charles is and will continue to be an unknowing fool.
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Why the hell don’t the British do something sensible, strip them all of money and titles and send them all out to fend for themselves? I do not and have never understood the British affection for this family of fools and idiots. They are below contempt.
She “didn’t think Charles a suitable successor.”
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She was but one of tens of millions of Brits who understand that sorry reality. Charles is an obvious idiot, as he has proven by action and speech hundreds of times. Maybe his oldest son is better, but I would not hold my breath.
MikeM
They didn’t take “everything”.
No. The decide which are personal and which are presidential. But read through the links to definition of “presidential”. It excludes government documents– which are neither “presidential”, nor “personal”. The ruling is silent on those. That was likely because those types of documents were irrelevant to the Clinton issue.
SteveF
Which is neither an unusual feature for a monarch, nor as far as I can tell a disqualifying one. Hopefully he will have the good sense to do what his mother tried her best to teach him: Stay as silent as possible.
lucia (Comment #214705): “It excludes government documents– which are neither “presidential”, nor “personal”.”
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Ah. Good point. I missed that.
Lucia,
“Stay as silent as possible.”
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Wise council for a fool like Charges. Let’s hope he listens to that advise. It is very likely he won’t, but if Charles vowed to say nothing at all for a decade, the world would be a better place. Sort of like AOC shutting up for a decade.
Actually, if AOC would promise to say nothing for a decade I would contribute to her re-election campaigns.
lucia (Comment #214705): “It excludes government documents– which are neither “presidential”, nor “personal”.”
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On second thought, I don’t understand.
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I don’t think there is anything special about government documents. Pelosi did not commit a crime when she ripped up her copy of Trump’s State of the Union address. Government *records* are a different matter. Those are property of the government and need to be preserved.
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If Trump had the only copy of a classified document, then that would be a government record. It would be a problem for Trump to take that, even if he declassified it. But if Trump had a copy of a document in government archives, I don’t see where it would be government property if declassified.
MikeM,
Read the statute. Click through to definitions.
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In anycase, that’s not the only thing wrong with your interpretation of Judicial Watch v NARA. The case only addresses what NARA can be forced to do. They couldn’t be forced to force Clinton to hand something over. But NARA is not the entire government. And the presidential records act does not indemnify the president (here Trump) from charges of mishandling documents.
The act– and the court ruling– don’t say that whatever the President decides is right or legal. Merely that NARA is authorized to be judge and jury on what is “personal”. As they can’t do that, they can’t be forced to force the President to hand something to them. (And so they didn’t have documents to supply when requested through FOIA.)
lucia (Comment #214711): “Read the statute. Click through to definitions.”
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What statute would that be? Which definitions?
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lucia: “As they can’t do that, they can’t be forced to force the President to hand something to them.”
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I have not managed to read that in a way that makes sense.
MikeM
https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-44-public-printing-and-documents/chapter-22-presidential-records/section-2203-management-and-custody-of-presidential-records
Click to what presidential records are:
https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-44-public-printing-and-documents/chapter-22-presidential-records/section-2201-definitions#mm97rrFvLvXn84fqVcDdg
“Official records of an agency and “extra documents produced …” are neither “presidential records nor “personal”
Have you actgualy read through judicial watch? Judicial watch made a FOIA request for tapes. NARA didn’t hand over the tapes because they didn’t have them. Then Judicial watch wanted the court to force NARA to force Clinton to hand the tapes over to NARA (“i.e. seize them from Clinton”)
This is in the ruling:
Note: All of this discussed what NARA can be forced (i.e. compelled) to do. And what can be requested under FOIA. NARA not beng able to do smething doesn’t mean no one can. The President having the first cut at deciding what is classified how doesn’t mean he is deemed correct in any and all circumstances. It only means that for the purpose of the archivists action, the President makes some choice.
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That’s all that’s said, and you are trying to generalize this to something very broad about what the “Government” can do. The FBI, the Justice department and so on and so on aren’t NARA.
https://casetext.com/case/judicial-watch-inc-v-natl-archives-records-admin
lucia (Comment #214713):
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OK. so such things are basically just scrap paper. No need to preserve them or turn them over to the archives and no problem if Trump kept them, unless still classified.
“Official records of an agency (as defined in section 552(e) 1 of title 5, United States Code)”
https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-552
MikeM
Unless still classified is the issue.
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Sorry, but “Top Secret” documents are not “personal documents”.
Even if NARA doesn’t get to decide (and the judge ruled in Judicial watch), that doesn’t make them personal. It only means NARA isn’t the agency that can contradict the President’s decision about what goes in the archives. That’s all that mattered in “Judicial Watch vs. ” because Judicial watch wanted the court to tell NARA to do something. (In particular they wanted to court to order NARA to make Clinton hand over tapes.)
The ruling is silent on what other branches of the government or agencies could do or whether the President could be prosecuted for not applying the description of “personal” vs “presidential” correctly.
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That case really isn’t much help to Trump as far as I can tell.
lucia (Comment #214716): “Sorry, but “Top Secret” documents are not “personal documents”.”
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I never said otherwise.
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lucia: “The ruling is silent on what other branches of the government or agencies could do”.
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There is no basis whatever to claim that other agencies have a role.
MikeM
A role in what?
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Other agencies have no role creating and maintaining archives. But the question of whether Trump is breaking the law is not about creating and maintaining archives.
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The affidavit for the search warrant didn’t cite laws about archives. The cited laws about handling national security documents.
lucia,
This sequence started with Bill Barr’s claim that it did not matter if the documents were declassified. I claim that it does matter.
Are you claiming that unclassified national security documents are different from other documents?
Interesting that NARA did take the iniative in getting the DOJ involved in getting Presidential documents from Trump, but that they cannot be forced to retrieve the papers on their own. Could they be asked to get another agency involved? Could they arbitrarily agree/disagree to that request?
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/national-archives-asks-doj-investigate-trumps-handling-white/story?id=82781128
MikeM,
First:
I don’t think “This sequence started with Bill Barr’s claim that it did not matter if the documents were declassified. I claim that it does matter”
This sequence is about what Judicial Watch v. Nara says. It is not about whether Bill Barr’s claim about wither it mattered whether the documents were declassified. My involvement starts with by addressing your claim about what “Judicial WAtch v. Nara” says.
The questions and discussion related to that claim are:
1) Did DOJ/FBI have reason to believe there were classified documents at Mar-a-lago? Yes. Because in Jan 2022, NARA received boxes of documents that contained materials marked classified. The archivist found these documents in February.
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2) Did the presence of classified documents in boxes sent in 2022 give probable cause to believe there could be additional classified documents at Mar-a-lago in 2021? Yes.
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3) Did the affidavit for the warrant say that was why they wanted to search? And they would be looking for classified materials? Yes.
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4) What law does the affidavit cite? It cited laws about handling classified materials.
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5) Is NARA the one investigating or seizing? No. The FBI/DOJ are investigating.
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6) Does “Judicial Watch v NARA” tells us anything about what the FBI or DOJ can do? Nope. Only the powers and responsibility of NARA.
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7) Judicial watch v. NARA says NARA doesn’t have authority to decree that former presidents choice of classification is wrong. Does it say FBI/DOJ don’t have said authority? No. Judicial watch says nothing of the sort. It is utterly silent on this point which was irrelevant to that case.
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Now back to your claim about what this is about. At least as far as I can tell, this argument is not about what Bill Barr said. But now to address your claim about about what Barr– which may be in your mind — and,which preceded the bit I quote:
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But the decision in Judicial Watch v NARA would seem to say otherwise.
Recall: my response is about what Judicial Watch. V. Nara says. But if we return to Barr’s claim and your claim about what NARA sais about Barr’s claim:
Judicial Watch v. Nara doesn’t say who the papers “belong” to. It merely says the President (or former president) gets to decide what he transfers to NARA as “presidential papers” which is then their responsibility to hold.
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This is not the same as saying whatever the President keeps is actually his. Such a claim is expanding JW v. NARA beyond it’s relatively narrow holding.
JW.v NARA also doesn’t say the Presidents decision to keep somethings means they no longer belong to “the government” nor that they cease to be “government documents”. It merely says NARA doesn’t have a right to seize them. They aren’t “presidential documents” as defined by NARA.
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You seem to be conflating NARA powers being limited to the notion that the entire governments powers are limited. And you are conflating the ruling that that NARA can’t seize them to means the documents belong to the former president and no longer belong to the “government”. That is a broad extension. Some court may hold that some day. But JW. v. NARA says nothing of the sort. It is limited to statements relevant to the case in JW v. NARA.
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Like it or not,Judicial Watch v. Nara is only concerned with whether NARA has the legal power to seize the documents. It is utterly silent on who “owns” them.
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As for Barr: Barr hcould be right or wrong about whether classified documents that were unclassified remain government property. I suspect they do still belong to the government.
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But it’s not what our exchange on this is about.
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This exchange is about what “Judicial Watch v. Nara” says at all, and also touches on what it says about Barr’s claim. JW v. Nara says nothing about whether documents the president retains remain government documents or not, and certainly nothing about whose property documents become when a president declassifies them.
To make it easy to find:
Link to Affidavit
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/22267188-mar-a-lago-affi/?title=1&embed=1
On Oberlin:
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Lorna Gibson (owner of bakery) writes an article on Bari Weiss’s blog about her experience:
Will I Ever See the $36 Million Oberlin College Owes Me?
https://www.commonsense.news/p/will-i-ever-see-the-36-million-oberlin
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And the answer is … yes.
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NYT: After a Legal Fight, Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/us/oberlin-bakery-lawsuit.html
“Oberlin College, known as a bastion of progressive politics, said on Thursday that it would pay $36.59 million to a local bakery that said it had been defamed and falsely accused of racism after a worker caught a Black student shoplifting.”
“Such a large amount is certainly going to make institutions around the country take notice, and to be very careful about the difference between supporting students and being part of a cause. It wasn’t so much the students speaking; it’s the institution accepting that statement uncritically. Sometimes you have to take a step back.”
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This is framed as some kind of goodwill gesture by Oberlin, ha ha. They had no choice here and fought this the entire way. In the end this is a fine example of where a well earned apology to the bakery would have saved an obstinate organization 10’s of millions including their own legal fees and years of bad publicity.
Also: What Barr said wasn’t quoted. I think this is the quote
JW v. NARA does not contradict this. Because JW v. NARA only discusses what NARA’s powers and responsibilities are.
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Judicial Watch didn’t sue Clinton. So the ruling is silent on whether Clinton might be violating 44 U.S.C. § 2201. They are silent on that because it didn’t matter to that case which was a suit filed against NARA, not Clinton.
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The President is the one given the responsibility and power to execute the law under 44 U.S.C. § 2201. But being the executive doesn’t mean he gets to not follow the rules.
https://casetext.com/statute/united-states-code/title-44-public-printing-and-documents/chapter-22-presidential-records/section-2201-definitions#mm97rrFvLvXn84fqVcDdg
The classified docuemnts, even if declassified still do not fit the definition of “personal”. What that means is that if when executing this law mis-classified these, he broke the law.
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It doesn’t mean the documents “become personal” and are no longer owned by the goverment.
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But even if I’m wrong on that, it remains absolutely the case that JW v. NARA is silent on this because they weren’t discussing the Presidents legal obligations.
From my first reading of Judicial Watch vs NARA, I learned that NARA had already decided that the Clinton documents under consideration were Clinton’s personal records and not related to Presidential activities. From the description of the tapes general contents that appears questionable. NARA stated that they would review their original decision.
The PRA does allow the President’s decision on what documents are personal and Presidential to be adjudicated and it also allows NARA to involve other government agencies, like the DOJ in obtaining contested documents.
It would appear that Judicial Watch took the wrong approach here or perhaps not seeing alternative approaches took the only approach available. The question becomes: can the NARA decision on these documents once made be appealed and if so how.
My interest here is relegated to how arbitrary NARA can be in their decisions given the vagueness of the law under which they operate. Arbitariness becomes more apparent when the subject is as disliked as much as a Trump. Even me, who is considered restrained in physical matters (by age and temperament), can fantasize a big slap to a Trump face when giving out that smug smirk.
Ken,
But what the NARA choices or decisions made is irrelevant to the question of whether Trump broke the law by taking classified documents. The relevant thing is what choices Trump made.
If the decision to partition into “personal” and “presidential” is the presidents, he still needs to follow the law. The law doesn’t say he can make arbitrary decisions– just that he executes. And when executing, Trump still has to comply with laws about handling classified documents– that’s an entirely different statute. And he still has the responsibility to carry out his responsibility correctly. That holds even if the Archivist doesn’t have the responsibility or power to do it.
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Yes, more people are after Trump than Clinton. But right now, it’s not NARA who is so much after Trump. It’s the DOJ and they are sending the FBI.
I don’t think classified vs unclassified matters.
Trump’s attorneys(or possibly just custodian of record) gave a statement to the government that all materials marked classified have been returned. This would include declassified material marked classified. It would include any document that mentions FISA Court, which are automatically classified.
Trump’s lawyers apparently were in discussion with DOJ and knew of a possible raid, perhaps because of the previous visit by agents. They told DOJ to notify the court of Trump’s having declassified documents. DOJ included this in their warrant application, but then went hunting for other crimes they could include. Having documents in an unauthorized/insecure location was something they seized on.
I think Trump had documents regarding FBI actions of spying on Trump and casting him as a Russian agent. At least they thought he had these documents because Trump announced John Solomon and Kash Patel would be releasing them to the public. He ordered many of these documents declassified January 19/20, and the various agencies resisted.
I don’t see any reason to believe what’s in the affidavit. It’s the same people who declared Chris Steele credible, knowing he was leaking to the media, and actually used the leak to provide more evidence for their warrant, saying, ‘We don’t think he’s the source for this article that reinforces our claims.’ They had Danchenko saying the dossier was fake, and they reported, ‘We interviewed one of the sources and found him credible.’
The second page of the affidavit says they found documents with classification markings that ‘appear to contain National Defense Information’. It does not say they found classified documents containing National Defense Information, but they really want the court to think that.
On Page 17, there is a list of all the types of documents the FBI found, top secret, secret, confidential, HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, SI. However instead of saying there were documents containing national defense information, the agent who wrote the affidavit says, ‘Based on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain NDI.’
Also, they might have separated attorney client privilege, but executive privilege was ignored because Biden designated someone to withdraw the privilege claims.
That’s why I don’t trust them here, because of the possibility TDS is clouding their views, as it clearly has in the past. It has to also be said many people have TDS because Trump has some egregious character flaws. They take it too far many times. The only thing to do is wait and see what turns up in evidence.
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If that had been done with the Steele dossier and the Trump Russia collusion narrative then my trust in the system would be higher right now. Many people in those organizations acted properly, however enough people did not, and it is the selective leaks to the media that continue to reinforce my thinking of low trust. These leaks for political purposes are completely tolerated, if not commonly orchestrated. McCabe lied about himself being the source of a leak to the WSJ, he did eventually get fired for lying, not leaking.
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I don’t know that you can stop this part of the swamp, but you can try harder to hold people accountable.
MikeN
Matters to what question?
“have been”? When were they returned. This statement is ambiguous as to points that are relevant to some questions. Among those: Did Trump mishandle them? (Storing them at Mar a lago after he was no longer president would be mishandling them. Returning them would have merely meant he ceased to do so.) Whether they were classified matters to this question.
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Did he misapply the law when sorting “personal” from “presidential”. That is his power and responsibility to do correctly. Classified may not matter to this question. Whether they were government documents of any sort matters to this one.
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“Seized on”? Having documents marked classified that had been stored at Maralago arrive at the archive two years after Trump was no longer in office provided probable cause to believe other classified documents could still be there. No one disputes this was a thing that gave probable cause.
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Well… ok. And I don’t see any reason to disbelieve it.
If it’s made up, and there is evidence to believe this was all concocted, that is something that Trump is going to have to bring up in his defense.
But that’s separate from the question of whether if true it gave probable cause.
Or, alternatively, the people going through the boxes didn’t have clearance to look inside. So that’s all they can say: That they found stuff with classification markings.
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This is still probable cause.
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If I found such documents, knew what those marking meant, I wouldn’t open them further until opening was cleared. I don’t have the correct security clearance. I don’t have “need to know”. I have enough training to know that things classified at those levels means they contain stuff I am not allowed to look at.
Also, they might have separated attorney client privilege, but executive privilege was ignored because Biden designated someone to withdraw the privilege claims.
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I don’t see how the agent saying pretty much that is a problem.
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Biden can’t withdraw Trumps claims. Trump claims what he claims. His claims might possess no foundation in law, and no one needs to treat them seriously, but they are still claims. I can claim to be a martian. You can’t with draw that for me.
lucia (Comment #214726)
Lucia, I believe I agree with your understanding of the law. My concerns are relegated to the arbitrariness with which a law that I consider to be subject to wide interpretation is applied.
Interesting point brought up in the Lucia and MikeN exchange.
Would all the agents doing the searching need a high level security clearance in order to identify what documents were classified or would they go by the outer markings of the documents. What if there were partial copies of classified documents that didn’t have the classification marks?
I would suspect that the searchers either all had to have high clearance or the search would have had to collect all documents and materials to be sorted later by someone with the proper clearance.
Now that we’re close to the minimum for Arctic Sea ice for 2022, I finally did the seven day moving average minimum for 2021. It was 4,657,726 square km on September 12. It looks like 2022 will be very close to that. In spite of the predictions that Arctic Sea ice would be zero for at least one day by 2013, or whenever it was, it looks like there has actually been no trend since about 2007.
The Antarctic Sea ice minimum and maximum have been declining recently. So much for the idea that the Antarctic Sea was somehow being sheltered. OTOH, the AMO index is still quite positive.
It still looks to me that the best measure of the effect of warming on sea ice is the total of Arctic and Antarctic ice.
Just collecting everything for the DOJ to sort out later by the TDS team would be what I would call an unacceptable fishing expedition. I read they used some kind of special FBI team that was supposed to know what they were looking for.
WSJ: Ukraine’s Rapid Advance in East Puts Russian Forces on Defensive
Moscow rushes in reinforcements as Kyiv’s surprise offensive threatens to cut off Russian troops
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-eastern-advance-puts-forces-close-to-key-town-11662718470
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Sounds like it is inevitable that Russia’s beleaguered and overmatched troops are going to be surrounded by a superior and more motivated army and should be destroyed in detail in short order. The demilitarization of Russia should follow promptly. War should be over in a week, ha ha.
Tom Scharf,
“I read they used some kind of special FBI team that was supposed to know what they were looking for.”
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Ummm…… that would be any information which could be used to disqualify Trump from running in 2024. They won’t find it. They will, however, continuously leak whatever information the ‘special team’ (AKA the entire FBI) finds that might reflect poorly on Trump and make his re-election less likely.
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I have no love for Trump… he is an insufferable a$$hole…. but the FBI and DOJ are way out of control. All I can reasonably hope for is a couple of Republican administrations to start clearing out the worst of the hacks in those organizations. Of course, should Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress in the next decade, The DOJ and FBI will likely get richly deserved reductions in size and scope, along with permanent restrictions on ‘investigating’ people who are candidates for office. The abuse of power by the FBI and DOJ has been consistent, obvious, and damaging. They need to be brought to heel…… or done away with.
Ken,
I don’t know what would be required of those searching under the warrant. But when the boxes of papers sent by Trump in Jan 2022 arrived at the archive, there would have been no reason to expect things would be classified until someone came across the stamped papers in the box. At that point, I think who ever was processing the box and read the markings would need to stop looking at the paper. They couldn’t read it and evaluate it.
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How much the lawyers could reveal about the contents of the paper in the affidavit would be another issue. I don’t know if it would be permissible to say “People with a clearance did read the papers and we found they described X”. Maybe it is; maybe it’s not. The thing about contents of classified papers is you don’t want people to find out the information or even discover where they might find it.
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In fact, there can be some procedural things around clearances. At PNNL in Washington, people with clearances marked on their ID badges– worn on lanyards– were told to not display the badges in public. Men would generally place the badge in their shirt pocket when going out to lunch.
Those without clearances were encouraged not to show badges either. The reason was because they wanted it to be slightly more difficult to learn who did and did not have L and Q clearances. So everyone hid their badges in public.
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I don’t think it was actually illegal to accidentally exhibit your badge with the clearance stamp. But you were strongly encouraged to conceal it.
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Once guy in my department once wanted to make a joke poster and photocopied his badge. Security came and gave him a talking too.
DeWitt,
I rather expect the lack of decline in sea Ice minimum will be ignored, and most especially ignored by those who said the decline would be rapid and extreme. No, the Arctic is not going to suddenly be Ice free…. not now and not for multiple decades, if ever. It is like predictions of increasing extreme weather (hurricanes, tornadoes, etc): when the predictions don’t come true, they are simply forgotten; nobody calls the idiots to task for wildly incorrect predictions. There has never been a more politically corrupted field than ‘climate science’.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #214732)
Now that we’re close to the minimum for Arctic Sea ice for 2022, it looks like there has actually been no trend since about 2007.
Only 11 years according to PIOMAS though that is volume not extent.
The Antarctic Sea ice minimum and maximum have been declining recently.
Massive drop about 5 years ago after 3 decades of above average (unexplained, not sheltered) extent
It still looks to me that the best measure of the effect on sea ice is the total of Arctic and Antarctic ice.
True
I was so hoping that the Arctic would somehow top 5 Wadham’s.
At least it might be a good base for next year, too early to tell yet.
National Archives people wouldn’t have the clearance, but the FBI’s investigating team could look thru this, and would have done so before seeking a warrant. Much of this would be in the redactions, presumably. I don’t see any basis for hinting at national defense information, rather than stating it outright. It’s not like they sought the warrant within days of finding out from the archivist. Even in days, they could go thru 15 boxes.
They stated they returned all marked classified documents some time after the first set of boxes were sent to the archives. This would be perjury or something like that.
“they used some kind of special FBI team that was supposed to know what they were looking for.”
A taint team or filtering team, that is supposed to be independent and sort out attorney client privileged information and only give the investigators what they are looking for.
MikeN,
I don’t interpret that single paragraph 47 of unredectacted in the middle of tons of redactions as “hinting”. You don’t know what follows or what came before.
I can’t grok what you are claiming. Who is “They” in the paragraph above. Who did they say they return the documents to? Can you mention the paragraph. Then I can understand who you think said something and what you think they said.
The affidavit is here:
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/22267188-mar-a-lago-affi/?title=1&embed=1
This is unrelated to the affidavit. Someone on team Trump, I have seen it reported as either his lawyers or the custodian of record, sent a certification either to DOJ or the archives that all documents marked classified had been returned. I think this is in DOJ’s reply brief to Trump’s argument for a special master.
The point is it doesn’t matter if Trump declassified. Documents were still marked classified at Mar A Lago. Someone has made a false statement, to the point where they can be charged with perjury or something similar.
MikeN
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I still don’t know what you are saying.
Are you saying Trumps lawyer said all documents marked classified that he once possessed had been returned? Who were they supposedly returned to? And when?
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“Someone”. Who do you think made a false statement? Trump? His lawyer? And FBI agent?
I would think it matters who made a false statement and what that was.
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Whether or not it “matters” depends on what possible sorts of charges one is talking about. It really doesn’t make sense to talk about whether something “matters” unless you specify the question being asked.
Ok…this seems to be the story about claims of returned documents
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3601682-nyt-trump-lawyer-told-doj-classified-material-was-returned/
by Chloe Folmar – 08/13/22 11:15 PM ET
My *guess* is that the subpoena in June was for classified documents, that the FBI agents serving the subpoena saw documents marked classified, and that Trump or his lawyer refused to let the FBI take them on the grounds that Trump had declassified them so they were not covered by the subpoena. Then instead of getting a new subpoena for documents marked classified, DoJ decided to use those documents to bootstrap taking all documents.
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That would explain Trump’s lawyer attesting that all classified documents had been returned. I very much doubt that a lawyer would outright lie in such a circumstance. Another possibility is that the anonymous sources are wrong. Or that some other technicality was involved.
MikeM,
So you are suggesting Trump was uncooperative at least as early as June. (He didn’t let them take suspicious documents.)
No, I am suggesting that Trump was not meekly subservient. As if anyone would expect that.
Well, well, well. It looks like Ed Forbes’s prediction that troops in the Izium area will get cut off in a cauldron might be about to come true. Except that it is Russian forces being cut off by Ukrainian forces. We will see if the Ukrainians can actually pull it off.
Does anyone have a link to the text of the June 2022 subpoena?
The link below would indicate from recently unsealed information that the FBI made quite a large haul of documents that were not classified and including 40 empty folders with classified markings.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/10000-government-docs-classified-markings-seized-trumps-mar-lago-doj-s-rcna46064
lucia (Comment #214749): “Does anyone have a link to the text of the June 2022 subpoena?”
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I had assumed that was not public, but there is this:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/31/2120039/-Trump-Subpoena-buried-in-the-fine-print-of-the-DOJ-Response-like-an-Atomic-Sledgehammer
https://images.dailykos.com/images/1108169/large/Trump_Subponea_Attachment_C_NuclearSecrets.JPG?1661987539
It does say “classified markings”.
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But that is dated May 11, with a demand to appear on May 24. And it is addressed to “Custodian of Records”, but no name. So it is not clear to me just what it is.
https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/22gj37%20Emergency%20Application%20for%20Order.pdf
This document was filed 9/02/22. Not sure when it was written. It seems to be relating what happened when government people went to Mar-a-lago in June.
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The above (emergency application for disclosure) seems to describe what Trumps attorney and “custodian of records” said about what was turned over. I can’t seem to cutand paste text. But on pate 4/6, the quoted language from the “custodian of records” starts with
“Based upon the information that has been provided to me….”
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And the “counsel for FPOUTS” stated that “he had been advised” and he additionally represented to government personnel “his understanding that there were no records in any other space at Mar-a-Lago”.
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I note: this is very carefully worded language. (1) Neither the custodian nor Trumps counsel claim any first hand knowledge. They are saying “someone told me”. And (2) Neither state who told them.
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It also says Government person asked to see the storage room, and were allowed to briefly view it, but were explicitly forbidden from opening any boxes.
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The government evidently continued to investigate (not at Mar-a-lago) and says the found other evidence to suggest classified documents remain at Mar-a-lago and that, in addition, some records were concealed and some removed.
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A long redaction follows. I woujld imagine this is information support the DOJ’s claim they found evidence they claim their investigation uncovered.
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(For those comparing to Hilary– not Trump is suspected of concealign and removing government records that are being requested under a subpoena. )
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I still havent found the subpoena itself. But footnote 3 on page 7/16 states the “subpoena sought documents ‘bearing classification markings’. That would mean he’s supposed to turn over anything with markings. The subpoena was not limitted to things that were still classified. So declassification would not be a reason to escape being turned over in June..
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The linked document discusses the differences what Trump’s team says happened and what government people say happened. (see before and after page 9/16)
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The document refers to some attachments which presumably are elsewhere.
The link below is to a piece by NPR from 2005 about the government’s tendency to keep information from the public and other government agencies.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4837061
I doubt that NPR would publish a piece on this topic today.
lucia: “For those comparing to Hilary– not Trump is suspected of concealign and removing government records that are being requested under a subpoena.”
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Whereas we *know* that Hillary destroyed documents that had been subpoenaed.
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If Trump did do what the leaks suggest, he would seem to have a major legal problem.
You know…. I wouldn’t have touched the job of “custodian or records” for Trump with a 10 ft pole. All of this legal hassle just cannot be worth whatever he pays for that job.
The link below discusses the problem of courts deferring to national security secrecy.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/courts-have-been-hiding-behind-national-security-too-long
On a tangent: I can’t help but notice Ed Forbes has not commented since 8/29.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2022/new-vaccines-coming/#comment-214451
The tide seems to have turned for Ukraine. Hope that’s not an illusion and I hope it persists. (Fingers crossed.)
If it does turn, I’m sure Ed will let us know!
It seemed to me that Ukraine had to show the Western allies that their investments in military equipment for Ukraine could have a payoff. The point currently remains whether Ukraine has not spread its military so thin that it cannot maintain its gains and further how Russia recovers/responds to another unexpected development.
Ken,
I agree with you that things could be very, very tenuous. In war, I don’t like to count chickens before they are hatched. Nor to claim all the eggs are broken until I can actually see that all the eggs are broken.
I’m not exactly looking forward to Ukraine starting to “win” this war. A humiliated Putin is not going to react reasonably.
I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from the available information. The fog of war is always thick, and false/misleading pronouncements are the norm, not the exception. I note again: Russia has not taken out electrical infrastructure and plunged the Ukraine into darkness (something which seems relatively easy to do), nor have they targeted Ukrainian leadership; this does not resemble all-out war in any way.
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That said, it seems likely the Russians don’t care much about the region around Kharkiv; they are more focused on control of the Donbas region, maintaining a land bridge to Crimea (that is, most land south of the Dnipro river), and control of the canal through southern Kherson that carries water to the Crimea from the Dnipro.
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With each passing day, a long term stalemate seems to me more likely than a negotiated settlement…. and a stalemate may be more acceptable to both the Russians and the Ukrainians than any plausible negotiated settlement.
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Will the Europeans develop their shale gas? Might be prudent, and could be done within a year or so. Putin seems inclined to send all exported gas to China and India (or flare it!) and 100% cut off Europe. Reserves are mainly in the UK, Poland, and France (France has the largest reserves). I imagine the Poles will develop as quickly as they can, the Brits will say they want to develop shale gas, but will futz around forever and never produce much gas, and the French will simply say “jamais”. Build new nuclear plants? “Nie, never, mai, nooit, aldrig, and nunca” will be the replies. Europe is a crazy place.
SteveF,
I’m not drawing conclusions about the state of the war!
Ken Fritsch (Comment #214758): “The point currently remains whether Ukraine has not spread its military so thin that it cannot maintain its gains”.
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I think that by now Ukraine has a bigger army than Russia. They do not have nearly as much heavy equipment such as armor, artillery, and fighter jets. They seem to have the advantage in mobility while Russia has a big advantage when forces are massed. So I would think that a spread out war would give Ukraine the advantage.
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That seems to be what has happened. Ukraine started an offensive in the south, Russia moved force from the east to the south leaving at least one weak spot in the east. Ukraine attacked that weak spot with excellent results, at least in the short run.
War maps….Everything is moving very fast. This is a series of war maps from Ukraine. The source is an underground enthusiast who uses open-source intelligence (OSINT) to build maps. They are usually about 48 hours ahead of the more legitimate news sources [ISW for example] but have been remarkably accurate over the past couple of months.
“Ukraine War Map@War_Mapper 4h
A map of the approximate situation on the ground in Ukraine as of 00:00 11/09/22”
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1568755330372276226?s=20&t=XN_vSNXzMAngRPrCU09row
Also:
“A timelapse of the progress over the first 4 days of Ukraine’s Kharkiv offensive.”
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1568755355592626176?s=20&t=XN_vSNXzMAngRPrCU09row
Zoomable [but cantankerous to work with] version is at
https://soar.earth/maps/13196?pos=48.58396564303463%2C31.127628994999974%2C5.96
Remember, this information will be out of date by the time you read it…
Another reliable underground source is “Ukraine Battle Map” [link at: @ukraine_map] …. I find these maps less useful but he presents a lot of anecdotal information from personal contacts in the region.
Governments are notoriously very inept at predicting the costs of wars in life, limb and money. Much of these errors arise from keeping the populace from realizing what they will have to endure. The current US money cost for Ukrane is 54 billion dollars. Our involvement in Iraq was initially predicted to be 50 billion dollars while the final tally was closer to a trillion dollars.
Of course, every military involvement is sold to the public as somehow different than previous ones and with a gradual engagement that mimics the frog in water with gradually increasing temperature. Currently Russia has to be the prime example of government predictions gone wrong.
Wars are examples of the more general problem of governments doubling down on programs gone wrong. Wars, by invoking nationalistic tendencies, make the doubling down easier for governments.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/20/upshot/ukraine-us-aid-size.html
Another reliable underground war mapper who I follow is ‘Def Mon’. He did an analysis of the territory gained by Russia’s entire summer of attacks vs the territory reclaimed by Ukraine in the last four days…
Ukraine recaptured 4,472 sq km in four days and Russia took 3645 sq km in three months.
Map here: https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1568873080474275841?s=20&t=gmO8pVnZ9cIEksiDYmA20w
Note: he also publishes an
“Exportable list of GSUA shellings updated most of the days. You can use this to import locations to google maps or Scribblemaps.” https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1553313578530267138?s=20&t=8fj7ffwVGZOkXwbeosaQwA
Russia allegedly started buying artillery from North Korea because they had depleted their own stocks down to around 50%. Apparently everyone, everywhere, always vastly underestimates the amount of munitions that will be used in a hot war.
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I follow this channel on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/
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It consolidates daily updates on released videos, almost entirely from the Ukraine perspective. You can kind of tell when things are getting active, and they are definitely active over the last week or so.
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We shall see where it goes. It increasingly looks like this will be a long indefinite slog.
Tom Scharf,
Well…. also research projects that are for sort of “one offs”. Project management can be very good for more-or-less repetitive things. “Build a house from standard plans” (e.g. ranch) is more or less repetitive. Will there be surprise? Sure. But usually those are “predictable surprises”. “Remodel a house” which has surprises bit those tend to be more predictable than “Build innovative custom house on the side of a mountain with little access to roads”. You read articles about that sort of house in the Wall Street Journal all the time. People always go over budget!
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And that’s nothing as unpredictable as a war.
Tom,
And rather obviously, Putin did not expect this war to be that as expensive for Russia as it is. We almost certainly under predicted what we would spend. But my guess is at the beginning was we under-predicted for the same reason Putin did. We thought Ukraine would fold even with help.
Over budget for a private concern is different than for a government whereas a government has a near unlimited source of funds. Governments can issue bonds at low interest rates due to its power to tax or print money to pay for debt or simply accumulate debt with no immediate pressure of default.
This difference is what allows wars, which by nature are unpredictable, to accumulate costs that can be near unlimited. It is probably the loss of limb and life that shuts down the spending more than the actual money costs. Interesting that in a proxy war the limb and life cost for a nation providing financing those boundaries are missing.
Biden’s statement that we continue the proxy war “as long as it takes” is concerning in the above context.
Nice to be missed ! Been moving several kids off to college and setting up apartments.
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Boy…rental rates in California are insane! 1 bedroom apartment, not on the coast, is pushing $2k a month.
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On Ukraine.
Ukraine got it’s clock kicked big time in the west. That happens when light infantry attack over open ground against dug in regular mechanized troops with overwhelming air and artillery support.
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For the east
The Uk/Ru situation in the northeast of Uk is very strange.
Russian military has been saying for weeks previously that Ukraine was massing armored and artillery units in this area for a major counter attack.
Bloggers were very vocal over these weeks that the force mix seen in this area was configured for attack, not defense.
Yet when Ukraine pulled the trigger to attack, Russia had almost no forces defending the area. Only a few under strength local militia and a couple of small security units that are more police than military.
Russia committed regular army to the fight a only one location, and that were paratroopers to extradite the security units. Everything else did a full retreat to avoid combat and going back to the river lines to redeploy.
Major Russian reinforcements were stood up in Russia several months ago to begin training and are expected to be deployed to Ukraine shortly.
It looks to me as if Russia has enticed Ukraine into committing its strategic reserve in an area it does not consider important, giving Russia a free hand to launch its new offensive when Ukraine has little to no strategic reserves to counter.
Now it may just be that the Russian high command is just incompetent, but the facts do fit the “it’s a trap!” theory.
Ken
Sure. But my point is even in private industry where there can be a strong incentive to stay in budget, it’s hard to stay in budget when there is great uncertainty.
We will begin our new offensive once our retreat is complete! Ha ha. From what I can tell in the videos the Ruskies forgot about 100 tanks when they left the area. I think their equipment is in poor shape in a lot of areas. It’s possible everyone is pretty worn out from months of an artillery war. Everyone is living in ditches and trenches. Looks like misery all around.
I expect this crazy lawsuit has about a 100% chance to be reversed so I didn’t really pay much attention to it. What I didn’t expect was our defenders of “democracy” and anti-authoritarians at NBC News to publish a puff piece about it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cowboys-trump-fanatic-lawsuit-wins-sets-big-precedent-rcna46946
“But this case is just the start.”
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A person in New Mexico who attended the Jan 6th riot (oops, sorry, the insurrection) was barred for life from running for office. My view is crazy people get to run for office in this country.
Misery all around fits.
Equipment maintenance sucks for both sides. Russia likely finds it easier to bring in replacements than do major repairs. I highly doubt those abandoned tanks are in usable condition at the moment. And Ukraine ability to maintain and repair is MUCH worse than for Russia.
Tom Scharf
And even serve. It’s a bit sad, but it’s the price we pay for being a democratic republic (which has quite a bit of advantages relative to other systems.)
It’s becoming clear that Russia was in the process of withdrawing from the area prior to the Ukraine counter attack.
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So the Russian military command may consider the operation as a tactical success as the redeployment was carried out with very few Russian casualties and high Ukraine casualties due to heavy artillery and air attacks on Ukraine road columns.
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Strategically I tend to think it will come down for Russia as did for the US for Tet in 1969 with attacks mounted by the People’s Army of Vietnam and Viet Cong in February 1969 in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
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An operational victory militarily, but a strategic defeat politically.
Tom Scharf (Comment #214777): “My view is crazy people get to run for office in this country.”
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Indeed. And that is MUCH better than having judges decide who is or is not allowed to run.
Funny how trespassing somehow gets turned into “insurrection against the United States”. New Mexico is a Democrat controlled state…. it shows.
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I will be surprised if this ruling is not reversed by a Federal court.
Tom wrote: “I expect this crazy lawsuit has about a 100% chance to be reversed”
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But probably not in time to run for the election. The process is the punishment.
Ed Forbes,
It looks like the Russians have very limited territorial objectives, and the Kharkiv region is not one of those objectives.
Steve, I agree, but….. this is currently more a political war than a full on shooting war. This victory in the east gives Ukraine political momentum.
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By next spring, or even late fall or early winter this year, political pressure to end the war will be intense due to the condition of both the Ukraine and EU economies, which are both imploding. Political momentum will affect these peace talks.
Ed Forbes,
I hope you are right about peace talks, but I am skeptical…. if the EU goes through the winter they will be under a lot less pressure WRT natural gas. I will not be surprised if there is no negotiated settlement for multiple years. The Ukrainians have painted themselves into a political corner which is going to make negotiated compromise very difficult. The Russians will complete new pipelines to China and India, and will have little motivation to do anything but dig in and hold the territories they want in the East of the Ukraine. I see long term stalemate (and long term political divide in Europe) as the most likely outcome.
Ed Forbes,
I should add: I don’t think it had to turn out the way it did. The refusal of the US to listen to Russian warnings about the Ukraine joining NATO made it almost inevitable that Russia would invade. Whatever else happens, it seems to me the Ukraine is going to end up far worse off than if the USA said: “OK we won’t invite the Ukraine to join NATO”.
One of the unstated bits about the war is who is volunteering to go to the Ukraine to help fight against Russia and how many have actually gone.
A bit like the Spanish Civil War except there only appears to be side to volunteer for.
Anyone h@ve any idea if volunteers are a reason for the Ukraine lasting so long?
The rout of the Russian army continues in Northeast Ukraine . On the ground reports of Ukraine mechanized forces liberating towns all the way to the Russian border to the North.
Map with time lapse snapshots of Ukrainian Northern advance as of four hours ago. It has significantly expanded from this time last night.
https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1569115735900753921?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
Rush to the East is also continuing:
“East Kharkiv Front (September 11)Ukrainian Forces have liberated the villages of Vovchansk, Ternova, Hrafske, and Hontarivka. Ukrainian Forces have also retaken at least 7 smaller villages near them. Confirmed With Calls“ static map: https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1568966462806851584?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
In the South, the Ukraine offensive is also taking territory, but it seems at a slower pace then in the North.
“There are reports that Snihurivka is being evacuated by Russian Forces in Mykolaiv Oblast
I have 3 contacts in that village and will contact them tomorrow to confirm if true If the reports are true then Russian Forces would lose a lot of land North of Kherson City”
https://twitter.com/ukraine_map/status/1569001704066289666?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
And:
“[Ukrainians] have liberated Oleksandrivka (W of Kherson).” Map https://twitter.com/War_Mapper/status/1568755366254755840?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
angech (Comment #214788) You asked “who is volunteering to go to the Ukraine to help fight against Russia”
Here is one volunteer’s story…..
KyivPost:
“Sandra Andersen Eira, a Norwegian Sámi [native tribe] who served as a member of the Sámi Parliament of #Norway, is working as a combat medic in #Ukraine. According to reports, she joined the #InternationalLegion in the early days of the invasion joining a mixed-British and American ranger squad.”
When her unit is out of rotation she writes posts about her work. I follow it closely. You can read it here: https://twitter.com/DirtydozenEira?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
Video of her story… Quite a comely young lady: https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1536630730796814336?s=20&t=yhLBrRlj-WTAlBLRSjHh5Q
Russian rules of engagement has changed. Air strikes are taking down the Ukraine power grid. The electric trains than move people and supplies are going down. Many cities are now in full blackout.
This will effect the EU also as they buy quite a bit of power from Ukraine that is now going off line.
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Life may start to get interesting all around
The Russians were not routed, they started moving troops several days ago to reposition reserves for an expected Ukraine attack in the south.. They can always come back for the north later if they need to.
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As Ukraine moves troops and armor almost entirely by electric rail, shutting down the rail shuts down large scale troop movements for all of Ukraine. Supplies of food, munitions, and fuel can no longer be supplied by NATO through the far west, through Poland.
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The Ukraine army in the east is now almost entirely at the mercy of the Russian army.
Ed Forbes (Comment #214792)
You wrote : “The Russians were not routed, they started moving troops several days ago to reposition reserves for an expected Ukraine attack in the south.”
That is the same baloney put out by the Russian Ministry of Defense. The ISW calls it a lie: “The Russian MoD falsely claimed that Russian forces undertook a number of demonstrative actions and used artillery and aviation to ensure the safety of withdrawing Russian forces. These Russian statements have no relation to the situation on the ground. 5/ iswresearch.org”
Their full statement is here:
https://twitter.com/thestudyofwar/status/1568960376867258374?s=21&t=4Htj6VzU5v_Div3M96HZZA
The official baloney from the Russians is translated here: https://twitter.com/mattia_n/status/1568617986495336452?s=20&t=mlZRfmKIdZoSTkuFHStLXw
“The Ukraine army in the east is now almost entirely at the mercy of the Russian army.”
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Are we playing the “backwards world” game today? A more sane view is that the Russians fell for all the recent bluster about an offensive in the south. Perhaps this was intentional disinformation with the guidance of US intelligence. I guess we just can’t trust what armies say they are going to do.
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The Russians will need to rebuild those power stations if they retake the area. Looks like they don’t plan on that in the near term or they wouldn’t take that action.
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The war may go back and forth as time passes, but these are good days for Ukraine which hasn’t seen a lot of them recently.
Ed Forbes (Comment #214791)
You wrote:
“Russian rules of engagement has changed. Air strikes are taking down the Ukraine power grid.”
That was in response to Ukraine initiating attacks inside Russia….
“Hundreds of thousands of Russians plunged into darkness – Ukraine attack sparks blackout’
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1666304/russia-news-Belgorod-electricity-centre-putin-news-ukraine-war
“Russia Increasingly Feeling Sting Of War Behind The Lines. Every day, new targets inside Russia and Crimea are blowing up and by all indications this is just the beginning.” https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-increasingly-feeling-sting-of-war-behind-the-lines
The link below does a rather thorough analysis of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment as applied to the Jan 6th mob actions. I suspect its conclusions are flavored by the political leanings of the author. The being said, however, the author does bring up the 1828 Webster definition of an insurrection:
I believe what the author objects to as being overly broad by including civil disobedience is his own overly broad reading of the dictionary definition. It would also appear that Webster definition could be used to fit the Jan 6th rioters who were insurgents not against the whole of the US but a single act that congress was voting on that day.
Further, by playing down this definition he avoids talking about applying insurrection to those, such as Attorney Generals who selectively do not enforce laws that they do not like. Again, in my view, this becomes an example of a vaguely worded laws and amendments that allow arbitrary interpretations and enforcements.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/disqualifying-insurrectionists-and-rebels-how-guide
On Ukraine news, ISW is a Ukraine mouthpiece. Enough said.
“Of course, no one seriously thinks that Section 3 ought to have applied, for example, to the late and great Rep. John Lewis…”
“A number of House Democrats objected to the certification of Trump’s 2016 win in order to draw attention to voter disenfranchisement and Russian election interference, but no one seriously thinks those House Democrats engaged in Section 3…”
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Only Very Serious People think this way. The trick is making the definition vague enough to ensnare your opponents, but also allow all your tribe’s past and present actions to not qualify. Summon up laundered experts who inform the Very Serious People and the end result is rather predictable.
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Nobody here is even attempting to write a neutral standard specific enough to pass muster with reasonable people. That the defenders of democracy cannot even summon up an argument of opposition to this madness is absurd and highlights the bias in the system.
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Above and beyond that the complete lack of foresight in how that barring from office behavior will be received is astounding. Saving democracy through clever lawyering, not the voters, yeah! What could go wrong?
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This is still, and will likely remain, an academic whack off session. One can imagine how this would be received if the roles were reversed.
Taking down the Ukraine electric grid is a logistical nightmare for Ukraine. Their train net runs on electric power, which has been brought down. Moving heavy equipment, fuel, and ammunition by other than their electric railway is not realistic for Ukraine.
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Taking down the electric rail net strands Ukraine forces in the area they are currently in allowing Russia to defeat these out of supply forces in detail.
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Ukraine ( and the Russian Federation) have a different rail gage than the EU, so EU diesel electric engines can not be used to replace Ukraine electric engines.
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https://jakubmarian.com/track-gauge-by-country-in-europe/
It may be that some of the Jan 6. rioters could be regarded as participating in an insurrection. But the banned New Mexico politician did nothing violent and never entered the capitol. He was convicted of trespassing on a restricted part of the capitol grounds.
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It is the judge who should be removed from office.
Ed Forbes,
Based on your multiple failed predictions of eminent Ukrainian military collapse, all your sources must be Russian mouthpieces.
Fact .. Ukraine power grid in the east is down
Fact… Ukraine trains move by electric power
Fact… Ukraine trains don’t move without electric power
Enough said
I don’t get why Russia would be having so much trouble in the north, where there border is closer to the front lines.
Looking at the ISW maps, it looks like Russia has gained ground near Kerson. Also, Ukraine is close to becoming landlocked.
Ed Forbes,
Night-time satellite images should very quickly confirm if the Ukrainian grid is down or not. Absent that kind of evidence, I would be very cautious in declaring the Ukrainian power grid down.
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It ought to be relatively easy to put the Ukraine in pretty much total darkness; power production and distribution is relatively centralized; even if the plants were not attacked, high voltage power lines are easy, undefended targets which extend over hundreds of miles and which take a long time to repair.
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I have noted multiple times that Russia has *NOT* attacked power production and distribution, which strikes me as an attempt to enable/maintain a credible negotiating counter-party in the Ukraine. Maybe that is changing, as the headlines all scream, but I would need to see clear/irrefutable satellite images showing the Ukraine in darkness to be convinced. If Russia does IN FACT put the Ukraine in darkness over the winter, that will cause a lot of suffering and death among civilians, and make a future accommodation of any kind essentially impossible.
MikeN,
“Ukraine is close to becoming landlocked.”
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The Ukraine’s main ports (80% of total capacity?) are in the Odesa region. That is where grain exports are currently taking place. So long as the Odessa region remains in Ukrainian hands (and not blocked by Russia), the Ukraine cane maintain its exports.
Steve,
As I understand it, Russia is disrupting power in the east, not fully destroying all the generator plants at this point in time. Power is going up and down over time.
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Ukraine had started loading and movement of the NE Ukraine forces by rail to reposition these forces to the south. Disrupting the power grid stoped the trains and made them stationary targets for Russian air strikes. Stationary trains are easy targets.
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Russia has shown that they can either disrupt electric supply by hitting transfer stations or destroy the generator capacity as needed to stop rail movements of supplies and heavy equipment. This escalated response of targeting electric generation will make Ukraine planning for movement by rail extremely difficult to carry out successfully and, more importantly, on time.
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Fact: A majority of Ukraine’s rail track is not electrified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Ukraine#Infrastructure
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Fact: A majority of Ukraine’s locomotives are diesel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Ukraine#Rolling_stock
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Fact: Diesel locomotives can operate just fine on electrified lines.
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Fact: Ed Forbes is a windbag.
SteveF, the ISW map has Russia closer to Odessa area than I remember seeing in previous maps.
Both sides are in a tenuous position where they have an informal agreement of sorts. That border is bidirectional. Ukraine can take out infrastructure across the border and bring the war to the Russian population. Have we ever seen a war of conquest where one side agrees to not attack across a border? It’s kind of weird.
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Part of why the west is giving out weapons piecemeal is to prevent Ukraine from doing this. This will leave Ukraine with minimal munitions if it does something stupid (from NATO’s perspective).
This is wise, to say the least. However one can envision Ukraine getting desperate, or Russia over escalating and inviting this. Miscalculations happen in war. Zelensky or Putin could be killed by a rogue unit. A nuclear plant could be destroyed catastrophically. The longer this goes on the more likely something bad is going to happen.
Mike M,
Thanks. A dose of factual reality is always welcomed….. and helps to stop wild-eyed speculation (that would be *you* Ed Forbes).
Mike N,
Russia has formally agreed to allow export of foodstuffs from the Odesa ports (foodstuff dominate the Ukraine’s normal export volume). I think it unlikely the Russians are going to attack those ports and send many millions in poorer countries into likely famine.
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This is most certainly NOT all-out war, where such niceties and considerations would be ignored. This is Putin insisting the Ukraine is not going to become a NATO country like Poland….. at huge cost to all involved.
Allowing export of foodstuffs, which Russia was accused of violating shortly after agreeing, is not the same as not attacking towards Odessa. I believe the front has moved significantly toward that direction in the past few months.
Biden Administration had told Ukraine they were not going to be part of NATO, but asked Zelensky to say that publicly.
MikeN (Comment #214813): “I believe the front has moved significantly toward that direction in the past few months.”
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That is not correct. The Russians made it as far a Mikolaiv in their initial push. They were stopped and have recently been pushed somewhat back toward Kherson.
Since the Ukrainian invasion it has got very deadly for Russian Oligarchs. Dead in mysterious circumstances so far:
Vladislav Avayev, (along with his wife Yelena and his 13-year-old daughter Maria)
Sergey Protosenya, (along with his wife Natalya and his 18-year-old daughter Maria)
Alexander Tyulakov
Leonid Shulman
Vasily Melnikov
Ravil Maganov
Ivan Pechorin
Is Putin cleaning house? Is it the SBU (Ukrainian Secret Service) , or CIA, or MI5? How would a Bayesian test this level of mysterious deaths for significance?
Mike N,
Two points of fact:
1) Ships are routinely leaving the Odessa region with food shipments (https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-economy/3570286-seven-more-ships-with-grain-leave-ukrainian-ports.html), so whatever Russia was accused of it has not interfered with shipping under the food export agreement.
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2) The US Secretary of State signed a formal agreement with the Ukraine (https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/) in November 2021, which specifically states that the decision to join NATO is to be made only by the Ukraine.
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That agreement led to an immediate military buildup on the Russian border, and was almost certainly what motivated Putin to invade the Ukraine. The Biden administration completely ignored constant warning from the Russians about Ukraine joining NATO. It did not help that they also ignored Russia’s dependence on Crimea as a strategic warm water port, that Crimea is dominated by ethnic Russians, and Crimea has been part of Russia for most all of the past 300 years (until Stalin declared it part of the Ukraine under the USSR). IMO, the Biden administration provoked a war via stupid, inept policies. Pray they do better with Taiwan, but it doesn’t look good so far.
I always thought the casualty rate was to redistribute the grift from their fiefdoms to help subsidize the loses for Putin and the remaining Oligarchs.
SteveF,
Biden is an idiot, but I disagree that the motivation for the attack on Ukraine was the offer of NATO membership. It was a convenient excuse for something Putin was obviously (IMO) going to do anyway. It might have sped up the time table a bit. I also agree that Putin’s goals in Ukraine are limited now. The initial attack, however, was designed to take over the whole country. The attack on Kyiv by elite spetznatz and paratroops, which failed spectacularly, was meant to overthrow the government. It failed and the rest of the offensive seriously bogged down. So Putin appears to now be settling for what he can get.
If more NATO countries on his border was Putin’s main justification for invading Ukraine, then that has backfired spectacularly with Sweden and Finland asking to join NATO.
DeWitt,
The November “strategic agreement” was both not needed and terribly provocative. Ignoring the multi-century history of Crimea as Russian territory, and the fact that Russia has a major military port in Crimea, was stupid an provocative. I don’t consider the Biden administration even slightly competent in foreign policy.
sovereignty: the authority of a state to govern itself or another state.
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If Ukraine wants to join NATO, or was thinking about it, then they can do so if it is actually their own country to run. These constant rumblings of “look what NATO and Ukraine made Russia do, tsk, tsk” are misplaced in my opinion. The other side of that argument is that Ukraine likely thought it was inevitable that Russia was going to try to take over their country, whether through the prior Crimea takeover or the attempts to install puppet governments.
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The wooing of the EU and NATO were completely rational given Russia’s behavior toward them and other neighbors. It had its risks but so did doing nothing and possibly waiting for Russia to invade anyway.
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Russia also had the option of making Ukraine actually want to be closer to Russia. It would seem that being under Moscow’s thumb during the good old USSR days wasn’t so pleasant and the grass was greener to the west.
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Ukraine could have avoided all the suffering by being complicit and a vassal state of Russia. Nobody needs to point that out to them. They chose otherwise. It may all be for naught, but they decided it was worth fighting over. This goes a lot deeper than a document from a secretary of state.
SteveF (Comment #214819): “The November “strategic agreement” was both not needed and terribly provocative.”
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That is true, but it was just one small step in a long serious of foolish and provocative actions going back to the Clinton administration. It did not really change anything and could hardly be the cause of such a drastic response by Russia.
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DeWitt Payne (Comment #214818): “I disagree that the motivation for the attack on Ukraine was the offer of NATO membership. It was a convenient excuse for something Putin was obviously (IMO) going to do anyway. … The initial attack, however, was designed to take over the whole country.”
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Exactly right. Putin wanted to turn Ukraine into a puppet state. He has made it clear that he thinks Ukraine is part of Russia. The timing of the invasion was not due to some minor provocation by the US, but because he judged that the time was ripe. An oil shortage was developing, meaning that NATO would be powerless to prevent Russia from being able to sell its oil at a high price. A weak President was in the White House. That weakness infected Biden’s entire administration as indicated by the wimpy way they treated Nordstream 2 and the nuclear arms treaty renewal.
If Putin invaded Ukraine to stop NATO, he screwed up… Bigly!
Ukraine has become the darling stepchild of every NATO country.
In addition, as a direct result of Putin’s invasion:
-Sweden and Finland joined NATO
-NATO countries in Europe are greatly increasing defense spending
-Germany has turned 180 degrees and is opposing Russia
-NATO is more united than at any time I can remember… maybe since Khrushchev built the Berlin Wall
Tom Scharf,
“sovereignty: the authority of a state to govern itself or another state”.
Sure. But plenty of countries don’t really have complete sovereignty; geopolitical realities make a difference. China’s smaller neighbors don’t have complete sovereignty. Nor do ours. Nor do Russia’s. I think it more than a bit naive and dangerous to think otherwise.
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“This goes a lot deeper than a document from a secretary of state.”
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As Mike M points out, there have been many, many bad policy choices made since the USSR broke up. But the formal agreement to allow the Ukraine to join NATO was the final (and absolutely unnecessary) provocation. An opposite announcement: “We see no need for the Ukraine to join NATO”, might have made a real difference. If there is ever a negotiated end to the war (and it is unclear if there ever will be), you can count on the Ukraine not becoming a NATO country as part of the agreement.
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Were the Ukraine located far from Russian borders, it would in fact have sovereignty. But it is neither distant nor does it have full sovereignty, as the current situation makes plain….. at enormous cost in lives and treasure.
NYT: Is Ron DeSantis the Future of the Republican Party?
Democrats have worried about the prospect of a more disciplined heir to former President Trump. Florida’s pugilistic governor may be that candidate.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/magazine/ron-desantis.html
“DeSantis has been permitted to subsist as a kind of Schrödinger’s candidate, both Trump and Not Trump.”
“Here is Trump, but more strategic about his targets; Trump, but restrained enough to keep his Twitter accounts from suspension; Trump, but not under federal investigation.”
““People say it’s that Ron DeSantis hates the right people,” says Longwell, who has conducted focus groups gauging his 2024 appeal and sees a path for him. “It’s the opposite: The right people hate Ron DeSantis.””
“DeSantis’s team did not make him available for an interview for this article and declined to answer written questions. … remarking this February that the best federal officials “can put hit pieces from The New York Times on their wall like wallpaper.” “Republicans have to understand,” DeSantis said in an interview last November with Ben Shapiro, the popular conservative commentator, in the governor’s office. “Don’t try to get these people to like you.””
“DeSantis’s disdain for journalists feels authentic and visceral”
“With his early bet on reopening and his concede-nothing posture, DeSantis has plainly won the political argument on Covid. The economic advantages and day-to-day freedoms of his hands-off approach were undeniable, and state-to-state virus statistics are rarely as clean as his opponents would like.”
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This is a very subtle attempt to paint DeSantis as Trump. This article mentions Trump exactly 100 times. They literally have pictures of DeSantis taped over pictures of Trump. Very subtle.
Ukraine as a sovereign state can chose their own course. That choice does involve Western nations and their sovereign choices to support Ukraine’s war effort. How successful would or will be Uraine without Western support? Ukraine makes no bones that they are dependent on the West and are currently asking for more support from the West ( meaning primarily the US).
Ukraine’s heroic efforts and Russia’s dismal performance and military involvement with the Ukrainian citizenry allows the overlooking of the similar poor performances of Ukraine and Russia in governance (corruption) and freedom indexes.
The pragmatic rationale from the West (mainly the US) is that we have a proxy war with the enemy Russia with no cost to us in limbs and lives. That rationale tends to ignore the destruction of Ukraine and their limbs and lives costs. In light of the fact that it is Ukraine’s sovereign choice to suffer these consequences, our rationale for the proxy war tends to ignore the fact that Ukraine depends on our support for their continuing military effort and suffering. The rationale also tends to ignore the potential costs to the West in terms of direct financial support and costs from sanctions.
Politicians are not talking about how and when this war ends and the costs to rebuild Ukraine and the total eventual costs of the war. I suspect the Russian, Ukrainian and Western politicians have trouble thinking 6 months ahead about the war and that comes from the short term time frame most politicians operate under. That thinking is most troublesome when it involves wars.
It isn’t just ex-Soviet states forming ties to the west. It is the plague of borderless western values that are even more threatening to Putin and his regime. How do you stop that? It is not a compelling argument that barring NATO / Ukraine rumblings that Russia wasn’t going to lash out eventually.
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As for NATO it is very unclear whether these were strategic miscalculations. We will see where it ends. If it ends with the territorial status quo in Ukraine, a humbled, weakened, and isolated Russia, with Finland and Sweden in a newly united NATO then I would say it was the opposite of a miscalculation * for NATO *. It’s better for NATO to fight Russia in Ukraine than Poland.
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It’s not better for Ukraine but they had few good options. If they wanted to be a submissive neighbor to Russia then NATO wouldn’t have done anything about it. I’m sure the CIA et. al. would still be playing the same games as always.
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These moves with Russia’s neighbors had risk, but Putin seems to have overreacted.
SteveF (Comment #214823): “But the formal agreement to allow the Ukraine to join NATO was the final (and absolutely unnecessary) provocation.”
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Huh? There was no formal agreement to that effect. The “Strategic Partnership” does not seem to have really changed much of anything. The policy re Ukraine joining NATO was left as it was: We might let them join someday but if we do, it is none of Russia’s business.
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SteveF: An opposite announcement: “We see no need for the Ukraine to join NATO”, might have made a real difference.
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Perhaps, but I doubt it. The real problem was that once NATO started to expand eastward, Ukraine in NATO became more or less inevitable, independent of whatever the current position might be.
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Remember that we had previously promised Russia that NATO would not expand to the east. So any promise to not include Ukraine would not have been believed.
Zelensky made a statement this year that he was told Ukraine would not be allowed into NATO, and to not make a public statement about that.
Mike M.,
There was no such promise.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
And many other hits. The only promise was that no non-German NATO troops would be based in the former East Germany after reunification.
Putin is, as usual, lying about this and entirely too many people believe it.
Looks like Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s power infrastructure for the last two days. The same reasons it didn’t before are the same reasons it is risky now. It’s going to annoy the locals and they will just need to rebuild it themselves if they are successful.
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There are endless recent videos of abandoned Russian positions and equipment. The Russian media is starting to point fingers and whisper criticisms. Their media talks about nuclear weapons often, it’s taboo to even say it out loud in western media. It seems the Russians are a bit insecure and constantly remind themselves of their WMD’s.
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The war is entering a new phase, the bear has been officially poked. My guess is Putin has little choice but to be even more brutal in tactics now, hence the destruction of infrastructure. Those meddling kids keep messing up his dastardly plans.
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The western media is doing some weird victory laps like the war is over. Ukraine reclaimed about 10% of the land Russia had taken. Get a grip people.
If in fact Russia takes down electric power generation and distribution, there will be a severe humanitarian crisis come December, and many millions of civilians will leave the Ukraine. Anyone who has been through a week-long power outage in a cold climate can probably appreciate the dire conditions the Ukrainians will face. I wonder only why this did not happen back in February or March. If the Russians start targeting Ukrainian political leadership that will signal the kind of scorched earth approach I had expected from the start, and will suggest Putin has given up on current Ukrainian leaders as potential negotiating counter-parties.
Scanning news of the past week, it looks like any targeting of the Ukrainian power grid has been limited to a few areas in eastern Ukraine, near where fighting has taken place. It does not appear there has been any general targeting of the power infrastructure by Russia. It could happen, and the grid is obviously an easy target if maximum suffering in the Ukraine is the goal, but there is no evidence of it so far.
Watching something curious.. A B-52 Stratofortress is making a meandering tour around Florida.
Not sending a callsign, no flight origin and did a “Touch and Go” at the Kennedy Space Center.
Tracking live:
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae588d
If it has gone dark, screenshot of track:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1570112675862007808?s=20&t=F0Wp78J7_-myrT6LZdWaiA
And the “wind” continues to blow 🙂
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Russia is continuing to attack infrastructure it considers as Ukraine military support. As I said earlier, the rules of engagement have changed.
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Latest is a dam controlling the river that forms the Russian line of defense in the SW. see the below link.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-KT31QWco
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Russian withdrawal in the northeast to behind the north/south river line allowed for the both shorting the line of defense and to relocate forces from here to the south where both Russian and Ukraine main interests are located. The north is, and has always been, a side show.
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I consider the Ukraine action in the north comparable with German action at the battle of the bulge in WWII, tactically successful, but a strategic defeat as it used up resources better used elsewhere.
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Covid.
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After about a 9 month covid wave, both Australia and New Zealand look to finally be over the hump. New Zealand removed all travel restrictions for the time since about forever.
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You might have missed it, but only because it was never reported. Previous infection is significantly more protective against omicron infection and hospitalizations than vaccine in children. See Fig 1.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2209371
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Also never covered at most news sites:
Nature: New Omicron-specific vaccines offer similar protection to existing boosters
Updated COVID jabs have been approved in the United States and United Kingdom, but they offer roughly the same protection as existing vaccines, a study suggests.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02806-5
“…suggests that updated boosters offer much the same level of protection as an extra dose of the older vaccines does — particularly when it comes to keeping people out of hospital.”
“Moore worries that people are being misled into thinking updated vaccines are vastly more effective than existing vaccines, and might then expose themselves to greater infection risks.”
Tom Scharf,
Countries like NZ and Australia (mostly isolated physically) that kept covid out until almost everyone was vaccinated have suffered approximately 15% to 25% of the number of deaths per million population as countries that had widespread infection prior to vaccines being available. Which sounds suspiciously like the expected drop in hospitalizations and deaths from vaccinations. Part of the lower death rate may be that current strains, while more infective are less often fatal, but I suspect most of the difference is vaccines.
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Even today, the USA and many other countries suffer significant rates of death (current annualized rate in the states is about 100,000 per year, mostly very elderly), but the mass hysteria is completely gone. I doubt that is because the MSM is any less breathless in its reporting of COVID’s danger; more likely it is that so many people have had COVD and survived… Chicken-little reporting of how COVID could kill you (new dangerous stains are coming!) is now sensibly ignored.
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I sometimes hope the public will learn from the COVID cluster-f*ck, and the next time people will remember all the economic and social damage useless (and crazy) ’emergency’ policies did…. the inflation we now suffer being the most obvious…. but that hope is probably too optimistic. More likely the next great pandemic will arrive after most of those alive today are already dead, and hysterical fear will again lead to terrible policies. Only laws that severely limit ’emergency’ executive powers have much chance of limiting the damage in the future. We are STILL under a declared Federal ‘COVID emergency’, and policies allowed by that ’emergency’ continue to do economic and social damage. Both Federal and state emergency executive powers need to be permanently limited in scope by law and duration limited to a few weeks absent majority approval by the legislature.
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WRT the greater protection from illness than from vaccination: it would be shocking if it were any other way. It was known clearly from early 2021 that was the case. It was simple dishonesty of the Biden administration that blocked public disclosure of the obvious difference. It was, of course, a corrupt political decision: It made no technical sense to force people who already had the illness to be vaccinated, which was contrary to Biden’s desire to force 100% vaccination. So they just lied about immunity from previous illness. I can’t wait for the evil dwarf Fauci to be gone, and for House hearings on destructive COVID policies where the immunity liars are called to task. Count on many other ‘senior scientists’ to follow Fauci to the exits before COVID hearings start.
Tom
That’s just pearl clutching. I’m guessing this person is hallucinating about what level of protection people “will” do without the booster.
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I plan to expose myself to exactly the same level of infection risk with the booster as without. Honestly, I suspect most people will do as I do. They want to live their lives and will do that with our without the booster.
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Same with polio shots, rubella shots and everything else. I had those as a kid. My parents weren’t planning to make us all live in a little bubble if we didn’t get the shots!
I’m going to get the variant booster pretty soon. I read you should wait 90 days since you had covid. It didn’t say whether to count from your last day or first. I figures waiting a little longer is fine so I’ll get it at the end of the month.
The fear of covid should only apply to the immunocompromised, and even for them it is a losing battle in the long term. I see almost no masks nowadays in my area. Maybe 5% at the grocery store now.
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But I do agree with the quote in that the efficacy of the new booster is likely misleading by the silence. Bias by omission and inferring the shot is “new” = significantly improved. These are the same people who were screaming from the rafters about vaccine efficacy a year ago and shaming anyone who questioned the orthodoxy.
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All things equal, the new shot is better than the old shot. I will probably get it in a few months. There is some minor risk that they didn’t do enough testing and one could opt for the old booster and get about the same protection without that risk.
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Looking back the greatest sin in my view was not allowing prior infection to count towards an ill advised vaccine mandate. This was not one that was cloaked in a lot of uncertainty, although they implied that. This was plainly anti-science and the entire public health and science sectors said nary a word. They acted like they had no idea if natural immunity ever worked, ever. There was zero information to conclude a vaccine would magically provide long term durability and prior infection would not. It was all a bit strange and obviously a forced narrative.
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-vaccine-immunity/fact-check-cdc-recommends-covid-19-vaccine-even-after-recovering-from-the-virus-idUSL1N2QH2HP
Tom Scharf,
That’s my view. And unless they add other spikes (e.g. ?,?) I’m getting 1 booster. The notion is to give my immune system a chance to recognize “more” varieties. I’m also aware having a mild case also means it may already recognize “more” portions of the virus beyond the spike.
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Agreed. Either the body can form immunity to a particular pathogen or it can’t. There is no reason to believe that getting sick didn’t work.
The next pandemic will need to be judged on its own merits, they are going to be different. If this pandemic had started with omicron it would have been different. NZ and Australia both basically had an omicron pandemic and came out way better. Vaccine, antivirals, and a well characterized risk helped them a great deal.
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Unfortunately one of the things we may have learned here is that overreacting to the uncertainty in the initial wave may be prudent. Had covid been suppressed in China early it would have made a huge difference. Closing the borders. Lock downs. The US and Europe suffered because we had widespread transmission before we took any action to contain it and then only applied partial measures to an exponential disease. We also may have learned that China style lockdowns are the only way to shutdown that transmission. On/off 75% suppression efforts just aren’t very effective.
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Conversely we learned that some diseases can’t be stopped, only delayed. Sorry, science, you are not all that. But that delay can save a lot of lives if effective vaccines and treatments can be produced. We also learned that the risk profiles are very meaningful, the age bracket in this case. Public health is going to be biased towards covering their own a**, and politicians have to make some tough calls regarding the tradeoffs of economics.
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The biggest lesson of all? Always keep a good stock of toilet paper.
Lucia,
“There is no reason to believe that getting sick didn’t work.”
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I think it was worse than that.
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There were published studies showing the much greater effectiveness of infection relative to vaccination (about a factor of four lower rate of re-infection for infected versus vaccinated), and worse, the CDC sat on their own study showing the same results for 6 months. And when finally released, the study authors bent over backward to emphasize that vaccination after infection slightly reduced infection rate (about 15% to 20%), while simply ignoring the fact that infection alone was 3 to 4 times more protective than vaccination.
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As Tom says, this was purely anti-science. It was a dishonest and willful effort to mislead the public to accept the forced-vaccination policies the Biden administration wanted to impose. The ‘scientists’ at CDC should be ashamed of themselves. There are no excuses for their dishonesty; their silence showed only unprincipled cowardice. They should have resigned and screamed to the media about the dishonesty. They didn’t. IMHO, they should all be fired.
Tom Scharf,
“Had covid been suppressed in China early it would have made a huge difference.”
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I very much doubt that, unless you are talking about suppressing the foolish research which almost certainly led to the virus existing at all.
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Occam’s razor is a good guide here: what is the simplest explanation? That the virus “breaks out” in one of the very few cities in the world where research efforts to make bat coronaviruses better able to infect “humanized” mice have been ongoing for years is very (*VERY*) unlikely to be a coincidence.
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The unlearned lesson: Don’t conduct research that is likely to kill tens of millions of people, cost tens of $trillions…. or even worse. There is a real need to permanently end, by binding international agreement, all such dangerous research.
Tom Scharf,
“Always keep a good stock of toilet paper.”
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Or a bidet. 😉
It’s just the math of exponential spread. Starting at a 10x lower number may give you months of extra time. Reducing the doubling time saves lives. The question is whether focused lock downs are actually feasible in the real world. Keeping the virus almost completely contained to Wuhan would have been a major improvement. It would have leaked out eventually but perhaps a year of delay could have been obtained. It does not seem feasible this virus could have been stopped once it had the initial breakout.
`
$ to Ukraine is money well spent. Deep thoughts from an anonymous source….. highlights:
-whatever the actual costs to the US, it’s peanuts compared to the accomplishment of these strategic objectives which will be reaping dividends for years to come
Ultimately the EU will shoulder most of the suffering while the US reaps the benefits
-The US is passing off older, strategically obsolete weapons which would eventually be replaced (even HIMARS is yesterday’s news)
-The US didn’t part with any of their most effective and technologically advanced systems
-America will achieve all its strategic objectives on the cheap
-Europe will need to invest in their military which will mean big business for the US
-Russian armaments have been exposed as inferior so Russia will lose global marketshare to the US military industry
-Europe is essentially decoupled from the Russian energy tit, creating a huge opportunity for US LNG
-The Russian military is grounded down by Ukraine with no American soldiers dying
-China’s slow moving influence campaign into Europe is essentially done
Full text here: https://twitter.com/gummibear737/status/1568614745284005892?s=20&t=v1VErlZipRz8qbXv9yL-6w
In other news,
Lesbians and trans people are at odds. Shockingly, some lesbians insist that women don’t have penises. This rad-trad view shared by gun toting rightwing extremists cannot stand of course.
My favorite exceprts:
and
Priceless.
mark bofill,
The lunatics are now fully in charge of the asylum. This will change, starting January. At least there is a bit of humor value in the endless woke insanity.
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BTW, I saw three daughters come into this world, and I can certify from personal observation: none of the three had a penis (as opposed to their three bothers, who actually did). The woke nuttiness is just laughable! 😉
This is one of the strangest articles I have read in a while. It contradicts itself about every third sentence, completely incoherent. Apparently the unity agenda is all about hate, and overt demonizing of political opposition and dissent is not hate, but unity. Or something.
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Biden calls on the country to unite against white supremacy at a summit on hate
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/15/1123070385/the-white-house-is-hosting-a-summit-to-combat-hate-based-violence
“The summit pushed a message of “unity” which has been central to Biden’s agenda in office — though some voters appear skeptical on whether Biden can accomplish the task.
The event also came just weeks after Biden’s speech in Philadelphia where he sent a warning message about how extremist Republicans are a threat to democracy.”
I’ve got to say I was skeptic number one that CNN would make meaningful changes to return closer to the center. They are proving me wrong.
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Chris Cuomo – Gone
Brian Stelter – Gone
Don Lemon Tonight – Cancelled
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A few random visits over the past month showed the stridency at CNN.com has been reduced. A simple measurement = how many Trump mentions on the front page. The Twitterati are complaining about CNN’s false balance.
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They have a long way to go and much of this might be motivated by tanking ratings. Rebuilding trust is a long road, but the new bosses look like they know where the problems are.
A good comment here
“Agreed. Either the body can form immunity to a particular pathogen or it can’t. There is no reason to believe that getting sick didn’t work.”
There were a lot of people pushing natural immunity without infection two years ago.
As if one could be immune without having to have had an infection or an immunisation.
I think it was as an excuse to diminish the actual risk of the virus.
There is a natural immunity, it actually exists in small or large swathes.
But it is a false assumption to think that one can become immune from a naive state.
It is the pathogen, not the host that dictates infectabilityby design or accident.
It is the luck of the host if it lacks the ability to be infected.
True immunity, or acquired immunity, involves the host developing mechanisms to a real attack, as expressed above.
There is simply no way that an injected vaccine will provide better immunity to a respiratory virus than an actual infection. Conversely, there is no chance of an effective vaccine if there isn’t effective immunity from infection (see HIV, e.g.). The people who claimed that there was no evidence that infection acquired immunity even existed or was as good as vaccination were purposely wearing blindfolds and ignoring historical data from other illnesses to support the vaccine mandate narrative.
And they’re still doing it. They didn’t allow Djokovic to play in the US Open Tennis Tournament because he wasn’t vaccinated. But he did have a prior infection.
There was also no way that China was going to get on top of the original outbreak in Wuhan early. The local officials penalized the doctors who initially reported the existence of a new disease.
Without effective vaccines, public health measures just delay the inevitable. Measures that would actually prevent the spread will not be tolerated for long outside a totalitarian regime. You may be able to flatten the curve with less intrusive measures, but there is zero evidence that flattening the curve reduces the area under the curve or prevents another surge later. The virus is still out there and the unexposed population is still just as vulnerable.
angech,
“There were a lot of people pushing natural immunity without infection two years ago.”
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There were many people with certain high exposure to the virus (eg kissing/sleeping with the sick person) who for sure did not become infected. I know several of them. You can call that what you want, but it indicates at least some kind of existing immunity/resistance. That seems less common now with the omicron strain around, but it still seems to happen. There is a huge range of illness levels for people who contract covid, from light symptoms (or none!) to very sick, very fast. That seems consistent with a range of susceptibilities within the population. For sure, previous exposure to the virus spike protein (m-RNA vaccines) reduces the chance for severe illness, especially in older people. But there is clearly a ‘natural range’ of susceptibilities, which maybe related to previous exposure to other coronaviruses (common cold types) and perhaps many other factors. But resistance to infection is obviously not like an on-off light switch… it is a continuum.
DeWitt,
“They didn’t allow Djokovic to play in the US Open Tennis Tournament because he wasn’t vaccinated.@
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Which considering:
1) There are millions of residents of the USA who have never been and will never be vaccinated,
2) Djokovic is more resistant to re-infection due to previous illness than vaccinated people, and
3) Thousands of unvaccinated illegal aliens are allowed into the country by the Biden administration EVERY DAY, with no obligation to be vaccinated
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means Biden and his entire administration are nothing more than a clown car full of unthinking, politically motivated, woke idiots.
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I thought there could be no president worse for the country than Carter…. then Obama came along. Then I thought, surely there could be no president worse for the country than the utterly lawless Obama. But Biden puts all previous presidents to shame: an angry, disoriented, and barely intelligible Alzheimer’s patient, surrounded by a bunch of leftist true believers who decide policies and write his teleprompter speeches for him. It is nothing less than frightening.
angech
First:I’m not sure what your point is.
WRT to what you think you remember:
I remember people speculating that, possibly, one might have some degree of immunity from infection but by some related corona virus. In fact, we still don’t know. We still don’t know why some people unvaccinated people got very mild illness vs. severs. Some people have never gotten infected. And there is no way to study some of these questions because a large fraction of the population got vaccinated. So even if some people had a level of resistance, most got vaccinated. So there is no way to detect their level of immunity without vaccination.
If by naive state you mean no infection with anything at all uhnhmmmm I’m almost tempted to say “sure”. But it’s not necessarily impossible. Some animals don’t seem to get Covid. Others do. It’s not impossible to suspect the range of susceptibility would vary in humans.
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I think it may vary– but that this disease is tailored enough to humans that no one is immune with no infection to anything.
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My cat has FIV. I have immunity to it, as do all humans. We humans did not “develope” mechanism to the real attack by that pathogen. It just doesn’t attack us. But we are immune to it nevertheless.
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But, absent evidence, I don’t think it’s “naive” to suggest that one needs data to determine whether infection by a related virus can make one immune to a new as yet unstudied virus. Vaccinia and cow pox make one immune to small pox. It’s not “naive” to think so.
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There is nothing less “naive” about claiming with certainty that a related virus can’t give immunity. That claim might be right or wrong– but before data are availabel at all (as in early 2020), neither the position that related virus might give immunity or the position that they can’t is less naive.
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Uhmmm… no. Many pathogens infect only some hosts and not others. There are tons of cat diseases and dog diseases that can’t transfer to humas. And vice versa.
As for host dictating infectability, take HIV. Some hosts are highly resistant due to a mutation in the CCR5 receptor HIV uses to enter cells. Mutations of the angiotensin receptor, levels of expression etc in humans may affect infectability with covid. There’s a whole field of study examining host/strain susceptibility and genetics.
War thoughts.
The new US aid package to Ukraine includes additional HIMARS rockets but no additional launch vehicles. The US claimed to have previously sent 16 HIMARS launchers and the Russians claim to have destroyed 44 HIMARS launchers, so somebody may not be telling the truth. In defense of the Russians, Ukraine is positioning plywood mockups of HIMARS launchers, so the Russians may actually think they destroyed 44 of them. An interesting sidelight is Russia is wasting Kalibr cruise missiles launched by ships in the black sea to blow up painted plywood. The Kalibr cruise missiles are reported to cost 6.5 million dollars and are supposed to be in short supply.… Beautiful!
lucia,
Because the vaccine is injected, there is a way to determine if an individual has been infected even if that individual has also been vaccinated. At least one of the antibodies produced by infection is structurally different from antibodies produced by vaccination by injection. That’s because the mucous membranes have their own immune system. I don’t know if this test is practical for people whose antibody levels have declined over time. But the last data I saw was that 95% of the US population has at least some antibodies to at least one strain of SARS-CoV-2.
There’s also a possible problem with the new mixed booster for anyone who has been previously vaccinated or infected. As I remember, there’s no guarantee that those individual’s immune systems will produce antibodies specific for omicron. Their systems could just produce lots of new antibodies to the original straIn and ‘think’ it’s done.
We should know after enough humans have received the new booster, if they bother to look. This is the kind of thing that they might not want to know, much like the relative effectiveness of infection vs. vaccination acquired immunity, because it could change the narrative about getting the new booster.
Many people who didn’t get infected when close family members did may have had a previous asymptomatic infection.
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With the original strain about 25% of the time covid entered a house other people got infected. That number is now around 50% as I recall. Home tests won’t catch it for mild cases. Blood tests should usually catch it, but there is also very likely big susceptibility differences between some people. This is just not well understood AFAICT.
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Before covid people caught the flu and people didn’t wear hazmat suits around their homes and go into strict isolation. Usually other people didn’t catch it. I haven’t had the flu in decades but have likely been exposed many times.
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I just don’t think simple models work with virology.
Dewitt,
I’m aware of that problem. It might or might not happen. But I know a booster with the old spike will, for sure, not create “new” omicron specific antibodies. That’s why I wasn’t at all enthusiastic about getting the “original only” vaccine.
.
I don’t know where to get the test for whether I had omicron. Seems to me just getting the booster is safe enough and so I’ll just chose that. Others might make a different choice.
Tom Scharf,
“Before covid people caught the flu and people didn’t wear hazmat suits around their homes and go into strict isolation.”
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True, but flu was known, COVID was not. That is changing, with the predictable result that people are not any longer wearing hazmat suits and isolating. Flu killed in about 0.1% of cases (IIRC), mostly the very elderly. Which sounds like about where COVID will end up once pretty much everyone has been infected at least once.
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Unlike the flu, young kids really don’t seem to suffer much from COVID; two of my three grand kids (5 months and 3 1/2 years) had COVID and they got little more than a low grade fever and runny nose. Their parents (early 30’s) had symptoms for ~7 days. The kids were symptom free in 3 to 4 days.
Lucia,
“I don’t know where to get the test for whether I had omicron.”
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I think the CDC has published reports of the relative incidence of different variants over time…. this may even be available state-by-state. If there was almost nothing but omicron around when you were infected, most likely it was omicron. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions
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Based on when I was infected (July 22), it is >99% certain I had one of the omicron variants, either BA 5, BA 4, BA 2.12.1, or BA 2.
“… While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87 percent of the world’s population has declined to follow us. Economic sanctions have united our adversaries in shared resistance. ….”
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https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-90-percent-world-isnt-following-us-ukraine-opinion-1743061
The spike protein relates to a specific point of attachment closely related to the Ace2 receptor in human cells.
“to understand SARS-CoV-2 tropism, transmission and pathogenesis. Early evidence pointed to angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as SARS-CoV-2 entry receptor.“
This receptor develops more sites as we age meaning the virus with its spike and its destructor mechanism, two seperate programs, infects older people more quickly, more often and more destructively.Lethal i around 10% in people over 85.
Both the spike protein and the destructor mechanisms can be cut off and reattached to different but related viruses and in time, one imagines with developing snip and paste techniques even unrelated viruses.
A virus only exists because it can attach to and then use the hosts RNA DNA copy mechanisms to reproduce itself, with and without damage..
A virus can attack many species with similar receptors and replication systems eg mammals.
It can attack one species only because that species has the only receptor the virus can use.
It can attack only some members of the species because only they have the receptor.
Therefore it can choose, or accidentally find hosts of different ages, sexes and behaviours.
When I refer to a naive human host, I mean someone who by dint of belonging to that species, sex, age and behaviour also has the right receptors.
Therefore the expectation is that they will catch the disease on exposure to the virus without fail and develop symptoms appropriate to that disease at that stage of their lives.
Immunity in this setting is therefore always an antibody response in those with a functioning immune system.
“There were many people with certain high exposure to the virus (eg kissing/sleeping with the sick person) who for sure did not become infected. I know several of them. You can call that what you want, but it indicates at least some kind of existing immunity/resistance“
There is a difference between being infected and being sick.
Knowing people in this situation is not enough to say that they had not or have not been infected.
Did they have antibody tests done thus proving no infection that you are absolutely sure of?
Or are you relying on the fact that they said they did not get sick?
I would, in the case of young children with their parents, have said that they did not have enough receptors to be at risk of being infected.
That would be different to two 80 year olds sleeping together or in a Nursing home.
angech “It is the pathogen, not the host that dictates infectabilityby design or accident.”
Lucia
“Uhmmm… no. Many pathogens infect only some hosts and not others. There are tons of cat diseases and dog diseases that can’t transfer to humans. And vice versa.“
I think we are saying the same thing but looking at it from opposite viewpoints.
Your statement is correct.
As I explained above, from a medical perspective the virus is the aggressor once it causes harm.
As the predator it needs a host.
It is programmed to have attachments to sites of entry and transport in cells.
It can develop, by mutation, both accidentally ( who knows what site the changed protein will stick to) and design ( that is it is programmed to mutate deliberately to achieve continuity of existence)
No receptor, no infection.
But this does not mean that a cat virus linking to a specific cat receptor protein could not mutate to be able to attach to a human receptor site that does the same function but looks different in a human.
In fact we know this happens and keeps happening all the time.
Cowpox, smallpox
parvovirus in seals and dogs.
Ross river virus in birds and humans.
First you need a pathogen.
Then a means of entry.
No entry is not immunity because there was no risk in the first place.
Develop a key and you need to develop immunity.
It is something that responds to danger and threats.
“Cheney also floated that legislation could address Trump’s alleged pressure campaign at the Department of Justice.
Trump’s attempt to reverse President Biden’s victory has also prompted the most publicly discussed efforts to reform the Electoral Count Act.
Senate lawmakers introduced legislation that would reform the Electoral Count Act in July. A companion bill was introduced in the House this week by two lawmakers who do not serve on the Jan. 6 committee.
The bill seeks to clarify the role the vice president plays in certifying the results, specifically stating that it is purely ceremonial. The legislation also would raise the bar to successfully challenge a state’s Electoral College result, from just one House member and one senator from a state to 20 percent of a state’s congressional delegation.
It also directly targets Trump’s fake elector scheme by largely leaving each state’s governor in charge of submitting electoral certificates to end the risk of any competing electors.”
If legislation has to be written to cover all these cases does it not mean that Trump did nothing illegal by the current laws?
TALLAHASSEE, FL — Outraged at having been sent 50 illegal immigrants from Florida by Ron DeSantis, Martha’s Vineyard has taken ultimate revenge on the governor by shipping 50 Karens to Florida.
“Perhaps now DeSantis will think twice before he sullies our pristine white island with brown migrant people,” said Martha’s Vineyard HOA President Karen VonSchnitzel.
https://babylonbee.com/news/marthas-vineyard-takes-revenge-on-desantis-by-shipping-him-50-karens
This may be the Governor’s most successful stunt yet. The democrats are reacting perfectly.
angech,
Efforts to remove authority of the president to direct the Department of Justice are very likely to fail on constitutional grounds: the president is in charge of all executive functions, including prosecutions under Federal law.
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WRT the rest: seems to me you are looking at this as something that is related to the actual text. It is mostly an effort to thwart what the establishment left sees as a serious threat to “our democracy”…. AKA Donald Trump or anyone like him. Trump did behave very badly after the 2020 election; but the system worked. He should have accepted the Democrats had out-worked and out-smarted him in the 2020 election, and that Biden really did have more votes than Trump in 4 key swing states that decided the election, even while some of the things Democrats did to increase Biden’s votes were of very dubious legality. The courts were not going to get involved after the fact, so Trump should have recognized he was out of options.
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Had Trump even a gram of judgement, he would have accepted that he lost, and focused his efforts on making sure the two special elections in Georgia, which decided control of the Senate, yielded at least one Republican win…. and Republican control of the Senate. Nearly all of the horror-show of destructive legislation passed since January 2021 happened because Trump was too stupid to focus on the good of the country, and instead (and as always) focused only on Trump, Trump, Trump. While in office Trump had adopted policies far better for the country, but his personality flaws constantly diminished what those policies could accomplish, and in the end led to his loss in 2020. Too many people just don’t want to vote for an a$$hole.
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I sure hope somebody other than Trump is the 2024 Republican nominee. If Trump had a major health crisis that made his candidacy impossible, it would be very good for the country.
angech
Good change.
I don’t know if that’s meant rhetorically. But the answer is “No.”
SteveF
This.
Russell,
In my opinion we are experiencing one of those occasional instances where reality is actually funnier than the Bee:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nbc-news-gutted-after-deleting-tweet-with-quote-comparing-martha-s-vineyard-migrants-to-trash/ar-AA11WkZm?ocid=sf
NBC quoted somebody on the Dem’s team comparing what DeSantis was doing to dumping trash. Add to it that the good progressives of Martha’s Vineyard suffered the illegals for one day before using a (relatively) excessive number of National Guard to have the illegals removed, and. Yeah. There’s nothing left for the Bee to say. It doesn’t get any better than that.
If Trump had done something clearly illegal when challenging the election he would already have been charged given the political environment we have at the moment. People are allowed to challenge elections and exhaust all legal possibilities in doing so, people are allowed to believe they won, people are allowed to construct fantasies of election rigging. People are allowed to spread the word of their fantasies.
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People have to find proof these things happened to be effective, law enforcement needs to look into even frivolous claims of election rigging.
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When no such evidence is found, people should concede to fight another day, but that is not required by law. People who refuse to accept elections without evidence of wrongdoing should be held to account by the voters.
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Obviously I’m speaking about HRC and Stacey Abrams here, ha ha. Trump may have done some illegal things lately but they aren’t directly related to challenging the election prior to Jan 6th. Most people concede close elections because it is political suicide to not do so, and it is generally the right thing to do. You win some, you lose some. Imagine what a better (political) position Trump would be in now had he conceded.
The Russian military is acting in desperation and Putin is acting like a cornered rat. This is a dangerous time. I fear chemical, biological or nuclear weapons are the next step.
News from just this week:
“…in the last seven days, Russia has increased its targeting of civilian infrastructure even where it probably perceives no immediate military effect.”
https://twitter.com/defencehq/status/1571373728008736769?s=21&t=1A7JDLzE6QrVA8tJo8yKTQ
“Wagner Group: Head of Russian mercenary group filmed recruiting in prison”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62911618
“Russia turns to recruiting trucks, big wages to woo volunteer soldiers”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-turns-recruiting-trucks-big-wages-woo-volunteer-soldiers-2022-09-18/
“Russia is Running Out of Options to Recruit More Soldiers”
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-recruitment-kremlin-putin-troops-manpower-1743630
“Team Putin Threatens Maniacal Response to Bitter War Losses”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-state-media-threatens-scorched-earth-response-to-bitter-losses-in-ukraine
“Indian leader Narendra Modi tells Putin: Now is not the time for war”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/17/world/modi-putin-russia-ukraine-war-rebuke-intl-hnk/index.html
I think it’s ok for migrants who want to go to Chicago, New York etc to be put on a bus to a place where they want to go. (Provided someone makes sure they can still get to their scheduled court hearings when they happen.) But I think sending them to Martha’s Vineyard was unfair to them. They didn’t want to go there.
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(Some are evidently leaving busses when they stop in places like Tennesse because they know it’s on the way and they’d rather be in Tennessee!)
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So I think DeSantis should have made sure the each migrant knew where they were going and wanted to go there.
.
That said: it is a big funny to have the locals at Martha’s vineyard express their actual feelings, which are not all that welcoming. It is likely the case that the wealthy in Martha’s vineyard had “theoretically” welcoming views, knowing perfectly well that they migrants would not, ordinarily, arrive in Martha’s vineyard. Martha’s vineyard is isolated doesn’t ordinarily welcome anyone other than the very wealthy.
Lucia,
Hmm. So, assuming these are all illegal immigrants who have no business being here in the first place, it matters where they want to go. Maybe. Not sure.
Shrug.
NPR says shipping illegal immigrants (oops, I mean “migrants”, or is it “unauthorized aliens”?) to Martha’s Vineyard is a crime.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/18/1123644692/desantis-migrants-texas-massachusetts-marthas-vineyard-legal-questions
“We believe they are victims of kidnapping”
“”It would be so ironic for these families to ultimately legalize and become citizens as a result of his actions.”
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Go ahead and open you beach chalet’s to them. Nobody is stopping you.
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Unintentionally funny. Luring people away from overcrowded detention centers (with cages!) to their luxurious vacation islands is certainly a crime to the passions of virtue signalers. I wonder if NPR is aware that crossing the border illegally is an … ummm … actual crime. The overly clever lawyer quota is pretty high at Martha’s Vineyard.
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FYI: DeSantis disputes claims that the migrants were “enticed” to get onto the planes bound for Massachusetts. “The folks that are contracted, they gave them a release form to sign, they gave them a packet with a map of Martha’s Vineyard.”
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I doubt any of the immigrants know much about where they are going. 50 immigrants. This is a trap. Try 500, or a single days worth of 8,000. The good people at Martha’s Vineyard reportedly offered the migrants water as a hoard of photographers watched! Possibly even food was offered. Obviously this is a political stunt, but it is a funny one.
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The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Russell, some comments
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The dams that were opened were military targets. Ukraine manipulated water flow to lower the river to make it easier for their river assault by building pontoon bridges. Russia blew the gates to destroy these pontoon bridges by flooding and to flood Ukraine troop deployment areas. This is common military tactics for both sides.
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Prisoners are commonly recruited by the military. In the US in the Vietnam War it was common for judges to give a choice; jail or the Marines/Army.
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Scorched earth response. I have always found it amusing that the west is hoping for regime change in Russia. If there was a regime change that forced out Putin, it would be by the radical nationalists. The pressure on Putin is that he is trying a soft approach instead of going with US and NATO tactics of first total destruction of the power infrastructure of Ukraine.
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On India, they have increased oil imports from Russia and have signed up for Russian trade that cuts out the US dollar. I think this means more than talking points that mean little.
Here on Cape Cod (a few miles from Martha’s Vineyard) we have lots of foreign nationals: eastern Europeans on temporary work visas (the wealthy do need restaurant wait staff, hotel maids, etc) who almost always go home when they are expected to after the summer season, plus a mix of mostly legal (along with some illegal) Spanish and Portuguese speakers (Brazilian). The illegals on Martha’s Vineyard need only take a 1 hour ferry ride to Hyannis, and they will have no problems fitting right in. I rather expect the folks on Martha’s Vinyard have already sent them to the mainland.
Ed Forbes,
The Indians are just acting in the interests of their citizens…. discounted Russian petroleum is very good for their economy.
Steve,
They were ‘transferred to Joint Base Cape Cod’ after being rounded up by the National Guard and bussed to an 11 am ferry to the mainland. Presumably no deception was involved, so I’m guessing it’s not that the illegals are free to go where they want, it’s just that there ought to be no false inducements influencing them in their decision to go someplace, assuming that the proximate local authority is giving them a choice. Or something. I don’t know.
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Or maybe I got this all wrong and the 50 illegals all wanted to go to Joint Base Cape Cod. Who can say.
What Tom Scharf said (Comment #214875).
hmm. I got part of that wrong. I read ‘The national guardsmen will meet the immigrants at Joint Base Cape Cod on the mainland.’ — so I don’t think the National Guard rounded them up as I claimed above. It’s not clear to me from anything I’m reading precisely what induced the illegals to leave Martha’s Vineyard, or what options were made clear to them.
This was a successful stunt. The targeted people (politically correct outspoken elites) reacted in the predictable way. It doesn’t take much further thought to ponder how hard it is on the southern border to deal with literally millions of people a year. Day, after day, after day …
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Then on top of that, the people dealing with these huge numbers are accused of caging them, ripping babies from mothers, and whipping them. A few busloads show up in self declared sanctuary cities and all of a sudden emergencies are declared. I very much doubt the local press in these areas are circling like vultures looking for signs of abuse. Scale matters.
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Like I have said many times, my feelings toward illegal immigration is ambivalent. Large numbers of poorly educated and unskilled people immigrating is not an economic win. However it may be that the second and further generations are an economic plus. The studies say that, but those studies are made by people who prefer that narrative.
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My own anecdotal experience is that southern immigrants tend to be hard working and have a strong family culture. These are pathways to success. This is not an endorsement of open borders, but somebody needs to fund our future social security coffers, controlled immigration is one of those ways.
Abbott sending migrants to major “sanctuary” cities was brilliant. The only difference between what he did and what Biden has been doing is that Abbott delivered the migrants in the light of day while Biden did so under cover of darkness.
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DeSantis sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard was genius. It thoroughly exposed the hypocrisy of the leftist virtue signalers.
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So far as I am aware, there was no deception and all the migrants went willingly. No doubt, some just regarded it as an intermediate stop on the way to their final destination. But as mark points out, why was the National Guard needed to remove them from the island?
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There are plenty of relatively poor people, including minorities and probably illegals, on Martha’s Vineyard. Somebody is needed to wait hand and foor on all the rich folks.
Mike,
I’m sorry. I think I got that wrong. Not sure exactly how they were induced to get on the busses and go to the ferry and subsequently to the military base.
To be clear, I’m reading nothing that provides enough detail to illuminate this, so I’ve got no idea.
.
[
Edit: I find this story where it is reported that the bussing was voluntary:
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2022-09-16/migrants-leave-marthas-vineyard-cape-cod-military-base-7358653.html
]
Edit2, final I hope: There does not appear to be unanimity in the illegals reactions : https://www.foxnews.com/media/reporter-msnbc-immigrants-not-angry-desantis-thanking-marthas-vineyard-flight ]
Thanks, mark. That link implies that at least some of the arrivals on Martha’s Vineyard had been deceived. But it also claims that they were deceived by DHS. Frankly, it sounds like very suspicious hearsay.
Mark
No matter what, they are people. For that reason, unless you are deporting or arresting them, which is involuntary, I think they should not be tricked into going somewhere they do not want to go.
Beyond that: At least some are making asylum claims. The correct legal process for that is: Arrive here. Make claim. While making the asylum claim, their stay is legal. They just don’t know if they will be allowed to stay after their claim is heard. It might be rejected. Then if they stay, their stay is illegal. Or if they don’t show up, their claim becomes rejected and they become illegal.
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Depriving them of the ability to go through the legal process is not right.
Lucia,
Fair enough.
[Edit: Although I read here:
I get what you’re saying about DeSantis’s move messing up their hearings, and I’d agree if that wasn’t already messed up by DHS falsifying information. But I still agree with you general point; tricking people isn’t right.]
Tom
They may or many not have wanted to. I’m pretty sure those on Martha’s Vineyard are doing their best to push them out.
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It does appear to be true that Martha’s Vineyard has not embraced them with open arms. No stories of Obama opening up his home an housing a family. The homes are large and some could do that. Not happening.
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But I am still disturbed be the stories that at least some Venezualans did not learn where they were going until they were in flight. They evidently thought they were going to Boston. Maybe more will come out. But I think there shouldn’t be deception.
lucia (Comment #214892): “But I am still disturbed be the stories that at least some Venezualans did not learn where they were going until they were in flight. They evidently thought they were going to Boston. Maybe more will come out. But I think there shouldn’t be deception.”
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The stories are second hand. As are the claims that they were not deceived at all.
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I agree that deception is wrong. My guess would be that they were told they were being sent someplace near Boston. Martha’s Vineyard arguably fits that description. I doubt they would have turned down the flight if told that they were on their own for the last 90 miles.
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A Guatemalan (or Brazilian or Pakistani, etc) crossing our southern border has no right to stay here while claiming asylum.
MikeM
My impression from reports is the ones sent by Abbot were not deceived, went voluntarily and got where they wanted to go.
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There are reports of migrants arriving in Martha’s vineyard saying they did not know where they were going. At least some migrants say they thought they were going to Boston.
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They did get on the plane voluntarily– but they did so thinking they were going to Boston.
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Some defenders of the stunt say, “they were given maps”. But the reports are they were given maps while in flight. Not knowing when you are boarding is the relevant issue.
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This is likely not the worst thing to ever happen to them. But if true, it was unfair. And– for those who like the stunt (and I get that) it was unnecessary. They probably could have been entirely clear and still have filled the plane. But some might have said: I’ll wait for the bus to New York, thank you very much.
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There is no reason why this “stunt” needs to treat any migrants unfairly. They can achieve every goal without doing so. I think they should.
MikeM
Sure. The story by the reporter from telemundo is telling us what they told her– 2nd hand
A lawyer for speaking for some of the migrants is saying this for them– second hand:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/us/politics/migrants-marthas-vineyard.html
We are getting multiple “second hand” stories that some migrants who specificlaly went to Martha’s vineyard did not know where they were going, or did not understand what the place was.
lucia (Comment #214894): “They probably could have been entirely clear and still have filled the plane.”
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Which is why I am taking the claims of deception with a grain of salt. It does not seem plausible. Yes, people do stupid stuff, so implausible is not impossible. But misunderstanding is far more plausible. As is activists exaggerating or outright lying. So I remain skeptical of deception.
I don’t know what happened, but I’m not trusting the “ripping babies from their mother’s arms, keeping them in cages, whipping them from horses” crowd to tell me the facts.
Tom–
I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that it’s “ripping babies …” people relating the story.
In case your concern is NYT, this is “Reuters”:
If, for whatever reason, the group organizing the plane to Mass used volunteers or not fully trained people, it’s entirely possible that the story “Perla” told was either not entirely truthful or was misunderstood in translatoin.
As this was DeSantis organizing in Texas it may well be that he relied on some sort of volunteer local staff. The volunteers might not be well trained, and hardly a “crack” team.
There is no particular reason go think “Luis” has been previously disseminating stories about ripping babies out of people’s arms.
MikeM
No? I think it’s not implausible. So: it’s plausible the migrants were misled, misinformed or something similar. It could have been done intentionally or unintentionally through lack of care.
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I definitely think it’s certainly plausible some people disinclined to be careful could very well have been not clear when dealing with migrants whose English language skills are poor.
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I have not seen similar stories of mis-undesrtanding for the migrants rounded up by Governor Abbot.
I should add: I don’t think that the migrants were significantly harmed. I don’t hear reports of them complaining. Some reports pretty much have some saying they didn’t know where they were going, but they weren’t unhappy with the outcome. So I’m not wildly upset about this.
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But I think it sounds like greater care should have been expended in sending migrants who are after all people to Martha’s Vineyard. Being more tired, confused or possibly a bit frightened unnecessarily is not a great thing. Some of that could probably have been avoided.
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I do think the issue of immigration has been elevated– which is a good result. I do think some degree of hypocrisy of people giving all sorts of verbal support as long as immigrants are in their backyard has been shown. And I think we are more likely to see some sort of action now that the Governors have started to do this.
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But it does look like there was some sloppiness that resulted in unnecessary (though not intense) mental anguish to those spent to Martha’s Vineyard.
I’m no political professional, but I think this was another major win for DeSantis. The Liberals and the Press [redundant i know] reacted exactly right…
He got a lot of coverage. He thrives on it, especially the negative coverage.
2. The liberals exposed themselves as heartless hypocrites
3. Joe Biden’s border disaster was brought back to page one.
I expect these to continue for as long as his patsies keep playing the fool.
Reuters, quoted by lucia (Comment #214898):
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San Antonio is in TEXAS. That would have nothing to do with the DeSantis flights from Florida. Perla likely works for an NGO operating in cahoots with the Biden administration. And the migrants, who probably have no idea who is who, likely conflated things they were told by different groups of people.
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If that is the best evidence for deception, than DeSantis would seem to be not guilty.
MikeM,
DeSantis organized flights from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/18/1123644692/desantis-migrants-texas-massachusetts-marthas-vineyard-legal-questions
If your conclusion is based on the notion that DeSantis did not organize flights from Texas then… uhmmm….
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It may seem weird, but he did organize flights from Texas.
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lucia (Comment #214902): “It may seem weird, but he did organize flights from Texas.”
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None of the stories I had seen said where the flights originated. I assumed Florida. If they really did recruit people in Texas, then I have a problem with that. But given the massive lying about the border from the administration and the left, I am not going to trust a leftist media outlet. I await confirmation as to what really happened.
Mike
Did you not read the article at the link I posted above?
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/18/1123644692/desantis-migrants-texas-massachusetts-marthas-vineyard-legal-questions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/16/migrants-marthas-vineyard-desantis-biden-democrats-criticism
Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be any debate where the migrants DeSantis sent to Martha’s Vineyard originated. That was San Antonio Texas.
mark bofill,
My understanding is that joint base Cape Cod is part of the ‘national space command’. Sending illegal aliens to space? Nah. Bus them to Hyannis… quicker and cheaper. There is some humor to be found here. But the underlying reality is no joke: the Biden administration absolutely refuses to enforce immigration laws. Just like Obama, the Biden administration refuses to enforce any laws any they disagree with. Like the Obama clown car, the Biden clown car is profoundly corrupt and profoundly unlawful.
Lucia,
I am on Cape Cod. The illegal immigrants were not significantly harmed by walking off the plane on Martha’s Vineyard a couple days ago. OK, they had to take a 1 hour ferry ride. But that is about it for their hardship.
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I still like the humor value of the DeSantis stunt. 😉
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Biden administration: We refuse to enforce any immigration laws we disagree with.
Public: Why?
Biden administration: Shut up you scum!
Public: Say what?!?
Biden administration: Shut up you scum…. not another word!
SteveF,
I agree the hardship was not large. I would suspect the confusion and possibly worry or fear on landing was a bigger hardship than either ferry ride or any walk. But I still think it would have been fairer to be straight with them. Given conditions in San Antonio, think they still would have filled the airplane. From what I understand, people are sleeping in the streets in San Antonio.
SteveF,
I do ‘get’ the humor in them being sent to a “Sanctuary” who immediately sends them away because they are too burdensome. Obviously no one wants people in the streets in Martha’s Vineyard. But no one wants them in the streets in San Antonio either. Obviously, Martha’s Vineyard didn’t “expect” them. But San Antonio doesn’t have people phoning ahead with reservations either.
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So there is a shoe on the other foot element. But I do think it would have been fairer to get more or better translators, make sure those on the planes knew where they were going, and alert them to some range of things that might be happening. I think they would have gotten the whole plane loaded anyway.
Yes, DeSantis is milking this stunt for all it’s worth:
Video of his victory lap:
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1570838647749939200?s=20&t=zxbvIIO4NZk8i6w50Z5eOA
People die, and possibly worse, trying to cross the US border because democrats have issued an open invitation incentivising them to make the journey, blame everyone else for the result, while lying to your face that there is no problem. Quibbling over details while the law is made an utter mockery and bodies, broken lives, and chaos mount seems rather like fiddling.
I think perfectly rational and highly informed immigrants would agree to be taken to Martha’s Vineyard. Really, the impulse is the further away from the border you get the more likely you won’t be sent back shortly. A quick perusal of Martha’s Vineyard on Google will be met with a “OK, where do I sign up?” in most cases. I’d personally want to get as far from an empathy free mega processing center as soon as possible.
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For the highly informed immigrant this is a mega-plus to be part of a political stunt, the chance of you being mistreated is almost zero, and the do-gooders will likely supply you with pro-bono lawyers to prove their virtue during afternoon tea with duck pâté.
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It’s completely believable the person who was charged to go round up some volunteers was sloppy, but there wasn’t going to be a shortage here. It’s completely believable there was some misunderstanding as well. It’s more than completely believable (to me at least) that the immigrants were prompted to make “I was taken advantage of” statements by the political operatives sent out to manage the situation and a credulous media dutifully copied those statements directly from activists. A total political stunt all around.
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A bright shiny example of dysfunctional American politics in action. Home of the free, land of the brave.
Tom Scharf
Yes. Although for a period of time, some would not have known what is going on. But I think it’s true that those that ended up in Martha’s Vineyard will get good legal representation. They will be able to make it to their asylum hearings. And so on and so on.
Oddly, I haven’t read any migrants claim that. Only that they didn’t know where they were going when they boarded the plane. Some have said they didn’t know where they are going, but they are happy with how things worked out so far!
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I think most see they landed somewhere much better than the streets of San Antonio. They weren’t trafficked ,beaten yada, yada….
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But I suspect it’s true some did not know where they were going. That was sloppy and unfair. They should have been informed most would still have gone. I mean… what’s the alternative? And the spots of those that didn’t would probably have easily been filled.
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Possibly, some people in Martha’s Vineyard will now donate some or more to help others who are stuck in San Antonio. (Or not.)
Dave,
I understand what you’re saying, and I don’t exactly disagree. But I’ve speculated that one of the problems with liberals is that they are unwilling or unable to ‘police’ their own, by declaring the behavior of anybody on their team out of bounds. I’m generalizing of course, and it’s just my opinion. But a consequence of my holding this opinion is that it leads me to think it’s important for conservatives not to make parallel mistakes. So – yes. It’s a small thing when measured against the ruin of de facto open borders, but it’s still noteworthy in my book that DeSantis’s people weren’t exactly or wholly in the right, if they did in fact deceive the illegals.
Anyways. Thanks everybody for sharing your thoughts.
General Jack Keane and his Institute for the Study of War just released their Ukraine war assessment for September 18…and it’s a stunner:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly relying on irregular volunteer and proxy forces rather than conventional units and formations of the Russian Federation Armed Forces” [I wrote yesterday about the desperate Russian troop recruitment efforts.]
“Putin has been bypassing the Russian higher military command and Ministry of Defense leadership throughout the summer and especially following the defeat around Kharkiv Oblast.” [This is very similar to the relationship between Hitler and The Wehrmacht as the Allies were finishing off the Germans in WWII.]
“The formation of irregular, hastily-trained units adds little effective combat power to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. Forbes noted that the 3rd Army Corps rushed in to defend Russian positions around Kharkiv Oblast during the counteroffensive but failed to make any difference and melted away.”
..and a whole lot more:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-18
Russell, the ISW is decidedly behind the times if it is just noticing that militia and contact forces are the mainstay for the Russian allied forces in Ukraine.
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In the southeast, Russia mainly supplies support, such as air, logistics, artillery, intelligence, and operational control. Ground combat has been almost entirely by local militia and contract forces.
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Regular Russian ground forces are generally located in the northeast and the southwest. With the pullback shorting the lines in the northeast last week, regular Russian ground forces are starting to reinforce militia forces on the southern lines defending the river line, but the majority of ground combat forces here is still mostly militia.
If it is true that Putin is desperate, then his next step should be to make life miserable (or near impossible) in the Ukraine by taking out the entire energy grid, followed by rail lines and non-military airports. These are soft targets which are slow and costly to repair. I will believe Putin is desperate when the Ukraine is 99% dark, the trains aren’t running, and nobody is flying to Berlin or London.
Lucia,
“But I do think it would have been fairer to get more or better translators, make sure those on the planes knew where they were going, and alert them to some range of things that might be happening.”
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I think we should remember that these are people in the country without legal authority to be here. Instead of governors (or the Biden administration!) flying them to destinations in the States, they should be loaded on planes and taken to their country of origin. The main discussion ought to be about why their lawbreaking is being tolerated or ignored and not about the ‘fairness’ of arriving on Martha’s Vineyard (a safe and pleasant destination): the discussion ought to be about why millions of illegal aliens are being allowed into the States.
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I don’t accept any framing of immigration issues which ignores the fundamental fact: those who arrive illegally ought not be here.
SteveF
I’m not forgetting that. I think they are still people.
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Whether the Feds should deport them is a separate argument. And it may be true that many should be deported, but some who apply for asylum actually merit asylum. Between application and hearing they are not here illegally even if some wish that were true.
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But even if they are hear illegally, issues of fair treatment remain. Even convicted murderers have some rights. Political systems that recognize that work better that those who just say “They are scum. Who cares?”
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The discussion about why millions are being allowed in is also going on. It’s not either/or. We can discuss both the issue you want to discuss and the issue of whether it was fair to mislead migrants as to where they were going.
Lucia,
US consulates and embassies in their home countries are perfectly capable of receiving asylum claims, and routinely do. People arriving at the southern border chose to NOT apply for asylum, but instead make a trek to the border, one with real danger, because they know they will never legitimately qualify for asylum. They just want to live in the States for economic opportunity and quality of life. I would be in favor of a law that permanently prohibits application for asylum if someone enters the country illegally….. followed by instant deportation. The USA can’t afford 2 million illegal aliens entering the country every year; it is madness. BTW, if I entered most countries illegally, I would be subject to immediate deportation, if not incarceration. The USA is pretty much unique in not enforcing its immigration laws.
lucia (Comment #214921): “Between application and hearing they are not here illegally even if some wish that were true.”
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But the overwhelming majority of those called “asylum seekers” are in fact here illegally.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/16/most-illegal-immigrants-do-not-qualify-for-us-asylum/
Lucia,
My waffling stems in part because of this. Yes, they are still people. The trouble is, everybody is people. People still living in Mexico are people. People who obey immigration law and consequently don’t get to come to the U.S. for decades if ever, are still people. So, I ignore those people because they aren’t within the legal borders of the US, but I’m going to work hard to treat fairly those who disregarded our laws to get within the legal geography where I care about treating people fairly.
There’s something wrong about that.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m only saying I don’t have this sorted out in my head to my satisfaction.
What I read yesterday is that about 10% to 15% of immigrants are granted asylum. Reading the media somewhere between 0.1% and 90% don’t show up for their hearings (this is literally the span I read). The answer seems to be around 50% but it is obfuscated beyond belief. Tom’s Theorem: The longer a “fact check” article is, the more the checkers don’t like the answer they were getting, and the more confounding nuance that they felt needed added.
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(Illegal) Immigrants have some form of civil rights, but not Constitutional rights. For example you don’t really want to push starving tired walking people back into a large desert in August. You don’t want to send unaccompanied minors into the oblivion of Mexico where they can be exploited. What is also clear is that these type of exceptions are being exploited by the bulk of people who are actually economic immigrants. Having your humanitarianism taken advantage of is a bit galling, but there aren’t many good options here.
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I’m far from an expert, but my understanding is that people are ID’d at the border and people who were previously denied are immediately deported. They can just turn around and try again though.
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Living in Florida you do come across more first generation immigrants than most places, probably not as many as the Southwest. After being here for decades it is just part of the landscape. I don’t think Florida is suffering from it, but other places may be different.
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The US should have the right to decide who it * invites * into its own country, almost every other 1st world country is selective. How that gets done is messy. The answer we have now is ridiculous. A deal can be made: more legal immigration, more secure borders, limited amnesty.
Putin is running out of missiles. It’s not just soldiers in short supply.
Russia’s attacks on civilian targets have used more than 3000 long range missiles and countless short range missiles. These are expensive and difficult to manufacture. Sanctions have decimated the supply of high tech components like microchips needed to manufacture these. Russia has been reduced to salvaging electronic components from consumer products. The number of sophisticated missile rolling of the production lines is in total only a few dozen per month.
Russia has resorted to firing weapons not suited to attack land targets.
During this same time period Ukraine’s air defense has been increasing in proficiency with practice and more and more NATO air defense systems.
The result is Russia is firing more, shorter range, less accurate projectiles and fewer of all types are getting through.
On the other hand Ukraine has become much more proficient in its missile attacks. The US supplied HIMARS have been a game changer.
The noose is tightening.
Further reading:
“The chips are down: Putin scrambles for high-tech parts as his arsenal goes up in smoke”
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-chips-are-down-russia-hunts-western-parts-to-run-its-war-machines/
“Russia Has Run Out Of Long-Range Missiles To Terrorize Ukraine”
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/08/russia-has-run-out-of-long-range-missiles-to-terrorize-ukraine/
Russia Resorting to Out of Date Missiles as Weapon Stocks Run Low: Ukraine”
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-resorting-out-date-missiles-weapon-stocks-run-low-ukraine-1739714
Many of the illegal immigrants present themselves at a point of entry and are allowed in until their hearing. The administration is also just dropping deportation cases, to ‘clear the backlog’. Immigration judges are being removed if they reject too many asylum claims.
Tom Scharf (Comment #214925): “Having your humanitarianism taken advantage of is a bit galling, but there aren’t many good options here.”
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The good options consist of removing incentives. Securing the border so that there is little chance of evading capture. Remain in Mexico so that bogus asylum seekers can’t enter the country and disappear. Strong enforcement of laws against employing illegals. Not letting illegals receive welfare. Making it clear that there will be no path to citizenship for those who enter illegally.
In my continuing effort to discover the arbitrariness of how laws and regulations are carried out, I have been looking at the differences that occur in the asylum acceptance rates in various federal juridications and over time.
It does not take much researching to find that acceptance rates vary dramatically by jurisdiction and over time. Laws have changed over time but not in a way that should change the rate. I do not see where the large numbers of asylum seekers should not provide a reasonably homogeneous population. I do not see where anyone in government or, for that matter, the general population cares much about these very apparent differences.
The federal government allows the illegal migrants in and then allows long wait times for a final hearing that can vary over 6 to 30 months. That would not appear to be equal justice. During the waiting time the federal government loses interest in those waiting and they have to depend on private parties to see them through the waiting period.
Throughout the entire process the federal government appears to be satisfied merely going through the motions.
Mike M,
“But the overwhelming majority of those called “asylum seekers” are in fact here illegally.”
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Yup. The Biden administration is gaming the system to allow a large portion of apprehended illegal immigrants, with absolutely no valid claim for asylum, into the country…. likely permanently. .
This may be perfectly OK for people who consider self-governing countries as passe and have outlived their usefulness, but it’s not OK for most people. If a country can’t control who enters and becomes resident, then it is no longer a country in any conventional sense. Which seems the whole objective of existing Biden administration policy.
Tom Scharf,
“Having your humanitarianism taken advantage of is a bit galling, but there aren’t many good options here.”
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What Mike M said (#214928). Stop making illegal immigration attractive, and it will rapidly decline. Keep providing incentives and it will grow, almost without limit.
Marks wrote: “So, I ignore those people because they aren’t within the legal borders of the US, but I’m going to work hard to treat fairly those who disregarded our laws to get within the legal geography where I care about treating people fairly.
There’s something wrong about that.”
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Agree completely, Mark. You look at other democrat policies that are busy turning cities into literal shitholes and you’ll see a similar callous disregard for “normal”. The people who work within the law and respect the rights of others are treated with contempt. Those who exploit the rights of others and disregard the law are treated like unsung heros because their situation is always someone elses fault. Democrats are empowering the worst traits of humanity under the guise of compassion and empathy and it is the weak of all cultures and races who bear the brunt of the loss of law and order that’s taking place. It’s not just bogus asylum seekers who are flowing across the border.
As an anecdotal point, I’ll refer to the video below from Oakland, Ca. In it, a car honks at a truck going through a red light. The guy in the truck stops, pulls out a gun, and fires. However, it is not the incident itself that is my point, but the response from media and law enforcement.
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https://youtu.be/37L-B-xiRNI
KEn
Actually it could easily happen if the populations are different in one location relative to the other. Those entering at TX may be mostly economic refugees. That doesn’t qualify for asylum.
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Those flying in from Africa, Europe and Asia may be more well heeled and better advised. And more likely to have a good case for asylum. They may land in other areas. (NY, Chi, Seattle etc.)
Russel, on the ISW report you commented on:
“Forbes noted that the 3rd Army Corps rushed in to defend Russian positions around Kharkiv Oblast during the counteroffensive but failed to make any difference and “melted away.”[10] “
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Both ISW and Forbes are in fantasy land. The new 3rd army was deployed to reinforce Donbas and across the Crimea bridge through Crimea into Ukraine as noted by a number of video posts at the time. They were on the other side of the Ukraine front and would have required at least a week, likely more, to redeploy to this area.
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Reinforcements were not sent in to reinforce the Kharkiv Oblast, orders were immediately given for a complete withdrawal from the area back to more defensive lines to avoid encirclement of Russian forces and the likelihood of being defeated in detail if they tried to defend this area.
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As to Russia running out of missiles and ammunition, news reports have been saying Russia was running short since March. They continue to strike deep into Ukraine and continue to fire 50k rounds of artillery per DAY vs about 5k returned by Ukraine.
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It is Ukraine that faces critical ammunition shortages
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The US is now down to supplying Ukraine 105mm artillery and ammunition as the US stockpiles of 155mm ammunition is getting dangerously low. The EU is currently supplying almost nothing in the way of ammunition. The much reported increases in US support to Ukraine is almost all for FUTURE contracts for weapons and ammunition that need to be produced sometime in the future.
Ed Forbes, don’t leave out that US support to Ukraine includes paying salaries and pensions of government officials.
Lucia, I based my homogeneous argument on the information in the link below. That link also discusses the independence or lack thereof of the immigration judges who are actually lawyers appointed by the Attorney General. The argument is also based on some personal and more anecdotal information I garnered from my granddaughter and daughter-in-law. It involves illegal migrants crossing the border in Texas and then going to various cities before ending up in a completely different city and state that will be the location of their immigration court asylum hearing.
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/quickfacts/about_eoir.html
Even better for looking at differences in judges’ asylum decisions is in the link below which shows the judge variations within the same jurisdiction.
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/590/
Now Russia is starting to lose the energy war…. WSJ:
“Vladimir Putin’s Energy War With Europe Seems to Falter, Russia curbed natural-gas supplies to undermine European support for Ukraine, but the economic strategy is struggling”
“Alternatives to Russian supplies—including LNG from the U.S. and other countries—are helping to plug some of the gap caused by Russia closing down Nord Stream. Gas storage underground has reached 85% of capacity, exceeding the EU target of 80% by the end of October.”
Free link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vladimir-putins-energy-war-with-europe-seems-to-falter-11663523925?st=5lo4qtcbjcq6cx6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
The EU is doomed. The are staring down a projected loss of 40% of their industry due to the loss of gas from Russia.
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Much of the new imported LNG will go to subsidized public non commercial use to keep their citizens from freezing to death this winter. Businesses face bankruptcy as they will be unprofitable vs imports using cheaper energy to produce competing goods. The loss of business will usher is a massive depression in the EU as unemployment will skyrocket due to business closures and bankruptcy.
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Regarding gas storage reserves, the EU wants 85% storage with NORMAL gas flow. 85% storage WITHOUT full continuing gas supplies runs the storage empty very quickly. LNG shipments to the EU will be a small fraction of what the EU previously imported from Russia.
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Trump warned the EU about relying on Russia for gas instead of developing their own gas fields, which they have, but they snickered at him.
The link below gives access to immigration judges denial rates plus the nations from which the migrants came. The link is to a specific judge but on that page is a dropdown box to other judges.
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/judgereports/00491NEW/index.html
European natural gas storage looks sufficient to keep people from freezing to death this winter. But today’s European gas storage is only about 18% of total annual consumption, so industries dependent on natural gas will definitely suffer shortfalls when most available gas goes to individual consumers. There is a wide range of storage capacity, with a few countries already holding nearly a year’s consumption, while others are very close to zero storage. It will be interesting to see how gas shortages are handled with such large discrepancies in storage. I can see the potential for non-european style nationalism leading to withholding of gas by the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in serious trouble.
Ken Fritsch,
Great link, thanks.
Economics and supply and demand are weird to understand.
In an oversupply situation it is easy to forget usual suppliers and to go for new cheap options, like the Russian gas.
When the supply gets tighter, or choked off, the original suppliers are going to charge more as a seller’s market.
If they charge too much and European businesses fail they will not have the income to continue buying the gas so the income to the gas suppliers will fall.
Governments cannot stop personal misery, freezing and death if they have no money and their only interest is in keeping businesses open so they get a salary, not the people.
When solutions are easily available with political will, such as coal power and nuclear power these solutions will rise to the surface of reality.
Human misery is the greatest impetus for effective change.
Flowery language (yuk).
SteveF (Comment #214941): “European natural gas storage looks sufficient to keep people from freezing to death this winter. But today’s European gas storage is only about 18% of total annual consumption”.
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18% is not so bad when you consider that before the war the EU was getting about 1/3 of is gas from Russia and they have replaced a chunk of that with other sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_in_the_European_energy_sector#2021%E2%80%932022_supply_instability
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A lot will likely depend on if they have a relatively warm winter or a cold one.
Germany over generates electrical power anyway. That is why they are shutting down their last nuclear plants isn’t it ? 🙂
Several pages of transcripts from a recent interview by Putin.
Here is a portion, but well worth a full reading.
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“ We made attempts to persuade the Europeans to focus on long-term contracts rather than solely on the market. Why? I said it before and will repeat it once again: Gazprom needs to invest billions in development but it must be confident that it will sell gas before making investments. This is what long-term contracts are about.
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Mutual obligations are incurred by the sellers and the buyers. They said, “No, let the market regulate itself.“ We kept telling them, “Don’t do it or it will lead to drastic consequences.” But in fact, they forced us to include a significant share of the spot price in the contract price. They forced us to do this, and Gazprom had to include both the oil and oil product basket but also the spot price in the gas price. The spot price began to grow, causing the increase in the price envisaged even in long-term contracts. But what does it have to do with us? ..”
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/09/putins-press-conference-on-ukraine-terrorism-fertilizer-europes-energy-crisis.html#more
According to a certain Jesuit, Jeff Sessions was being misleading in saying that half do not bother going through with the asylum application after being let in to the country.
I was admonished for not looking at this Syracuse TRAC database, even though I was the one who had told the Jesuit about this source.
From the AP yesterday:
“Biden: US would defend Taiwan against Chinese invasion”
Joe Biden has no authority to say that. The US is bound by no defense treaty with Taiwan and only the US Congress can commit us to war.
This “President as Cowboy” attitude is dangerous.
Jesuit?
Russell Klier,
The Congress has not formally declared war since 1942 during WWII. Congress can effectively ratify a President’s decision to engage in warfare by funding it. That’s what’s happened in every engagement since the end of WWII. Technically, the US, or at least the UN, is still in a state of war with North Korea as there is only an armistice in effect in that conflict. So people who say the conflict in Afghanistan was our longest war are wrong.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #214950)
You wrote: “Congress can effectively ratify a President’s decision to engage in warfare by funding it.”
That’s what has been going on, but I do not approve.
Run Rabbit Run!
Ukraine has chased the Russian submarine fleet out of the Black sea.
“U.K. Says Russia Relocated Black Sea Submarines As ‘Threat Level’ Rose From Ukrainian Attacks”
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-submarines-moved-crimea/32042294.html
“We are like a hive of bees” …
Interesting WSJ article about the people and tactics used by the makeshift gang of defenders of Kiev who defeated the best units of the Russian army.
“The Ragtag Army That Won the Battle of Kyiv and Saved Ukraine”
FREE LINK: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-invasion-ukraine-battle-of-kyiv-ragtag-army-11663683336?st=725sjlw6i1hlqwc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“The EU is doomed. The are staring down a projected loss of 40% of their industry due to the loss of gas from Russia.”
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There’s going to be suffering in some industries (fertilizer production, etc.) and some high energy prices. Nobody expected this was going to be a smooth ride.
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However it is ludicrous to believe the long term effects will favor Russia. They lose a major customer and demonstrate to the world they cannot be trusted to fulfil “long term” contracts based on the whims of Putin. People will buy Russian gas, likely at a discount, but every single one of them will have a backup plan for Russia shutting off the tap. This will limit the size of their commitments.
Biden says the pandemic is over, the White House says no change in policy and the state of emergency will continue. I’d say this is another bumbling Joe moment, but he said it twice and there has been nothing but mixed messages since. Different president, same clown show.
Strange really. I don’t recall seeing “The White House” on the ballot…
The National Review headline, ha ha:
“Welcome to Schrödinger’s Pandemic”
Tom, more than just a few industries closing down
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https://www.dcclothesline.com/2022/09/19/energy-prices-in-germany-soar-1000-as-companies-go-bankrupt/
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A couple of extracts
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“.. “With a tenfold increase in gas and electricity prices, which we had to accept within a few months, we are no longer competitive in a market that is 25% supplied by imports,” says Reiner Blaschek, CEO of ArcelorMittal, which is closing down plants both in Bremen and Hambur….”
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“… One area baker saw his monthly gas bills go from 3,000 euros to 11,000 euros, a nearly 400 percent increase.….”
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North Dakota: 41yo guy admits to intentionally murdering 18yo with his SUV for being a “republican extremist”. Sorry? Who are the extremists again Mr Biden?
For those interested in a more detailed look into the Ukraine battlefield, here are several sites I follow. Some pro Russian and some pro Ukraine. Both sides lie constantly and generally have different outlooks, but over all useful. Getting reasonable information out of ISW is alm impossible.
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Pro Ukraine site that has very good maps showing the units involved. Very pro Ukraine military, very anti Ukraine government as he considers Ukraine government as very corrupt.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thJukrXLGGQ
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Another pro Ukraine site. It gives updates several times a day. Given to over enthusiastic projections for Ukraine advances that almost never happen.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrmSkKcF-Gg
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A pro Russian site that generally gives a generally unbiased view of the lines, but occasionally goes off the deep end in his projections. Generally one of the best and most citied sites.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrNVqI_yNwE
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One of the more neutral sites
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4boB63BIiE&t=304s
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This is a blog without maps, but gives generally very informative discussion of events in the EU and Ukraine
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https://www.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal
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Ed Forbes,
““… One area baker saw his monthly gas bills go from 3,000 euros to 11,000 euros, a nearly 400 percent increase.….”
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There is more than meets the eye here. The German government will set ‘industrial’ gas prices (and industrial electric prices) which are FAR lower than the prices paid by individuals and small businesses like bakeries. There will be use restrictions, and prices will clearly preclude huge energy users like steel plants from consuming natural gas. But count on some measure of ‘triage’ to keep many important businesses (like cars) afloat.
It appears that Putin was supposed to give a major televised speech and was a no-show. It was cancelled after a two hour wait. Huh.
Jesuit? casuist
“Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilization during an address to the nation on Wednesday morning. He said the Defense Ministry had recommended drawing military reservists into active service as the country faces a protracted conflict in Ukraine and Donbass.”
“The measure is sensible and necessary under the circumstances, Putin said, considering that Russia is fighting “the entire Western military machine” in Ukraine. He has already signed an order for the call-up to start immediately.”
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https://www.rt.com/russia/563209-putin-donbass-mobilization-ukraine/
Interesting… how the OSINT people go about identifying troop movements for their maps. A few days ago a Russian soldier posted a video of his unit relocating. The video was reposted by the mapper with a request for help… There was a bus stop in the background and someone recognized the site and reported back to the mapper. Bingo! https://twitter.com/davidnewschool/status/1572415602844655617?s=21&t=guEyTH2kp9ZY7zmJN_IYEA
Mike M,
Reports are that Putin was coughing too much to record the speech, so it was delayed. Of course, who knows?
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It does look like Putin’s plan is to hold ‘referendums’ in the occupied regions and then declare those regions “permanently part of Russia”; any efforts by Ukraine to re-take those regions will be called “invasions of Russia”.
I should add, others the found a smoke stack in the background and all this was geolocated on aerial photos.
The defense minister was supposed to speak alongside Putin. Perhaps Putin was looking to set up a scapegoat should the invasion fail. I have not seen an explanation for why the speech was postponed.
Well, that’s clear proof that Putin thinks the war isn’t going well, and somebody actually had to tell him. I envision the scenes from Star Wars where storm troopers had to tell Darth Vader bad news. Escalation is not a good thing for Ukraine obviously. We are definitely entering a new and dangerous phase both for Ukraine and Putin. The potential for reckless moves from Putin go up tremendously if he feels personally threatened.
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It looks like Putin’s messaging is they are doing poorly because they are fighting the entire west. Does anybody in Russia want that war? No.
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“Without providing evidence, Mr. Putin said top officials at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had said that it would be acceptable to carry out nuclear strikes on Russia”
“In his speech, Mr. Putin cast the partial mobilization—Russia’s first since World War II—as a response to what he called a decadeslong Western plot to break up Russia.”
“The bellicose address to the nation comes after officials in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine on Tuesday announced plans for Russia to annex four regions in the country’s east and south. The move would allow Mr. Putin to describe a Ukrainian offensive on that territory as tantamount to an attack on Russia.”
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Insanity. I only guess that this is directed at his domestic audience. Putin as a cornered rabid raccoon is not a good look.
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What is going to be a bit interesting is how the Russian public is going to take this after being fed continuous propaganda for the last 7 months. Even people with a lot of nationalism are going to be asking what this is all about, and whether this is wise. A simple examination of where Russia was before this foolish invasion and where they are today will lead many to wonder how wise their leaders are.
I will also add that this may alternately be a prelude to negotiations to end the war. Russia may be signaling in their own unique way. Putin is going to have to be able to save face for him to survive. If there is a both sides can win outcome here, now would a good time to do it.
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The mobilization is likely going to be unpopular. They already weren’t getting enough volunteers. Another year of this war is going to be a big strain on Russia with a potentially catastrophic outcome, and the west just has the economic capacity to keep going.
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The only thing preventing a settlement now is human pride. Unfortunately this is a rather large obstacle.
Tom Scharf (Comment #214971): “The only thing preventing a settlement now is human pride.”
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I don’t think that is true at all. Both sides have interests that they see as being vital vut that are in conflict with the other side’s vital interests.
Mike M,
Yes, but in addition to their conflicting vital interests, both the Ukraine and Putin (especially the Ukraine) have painted themselves into a corner with their publicly stated demands. These make negotiation essentially impossible. The Ukraine is not going to get back the Crimea… ever…. yet the requirement the Crimea be returned has been clearly stated many times. Seems to me neither side is even slightly interested in negotiations.
My point is how does either side think it is going to obtain those goals realistically given what they * now * know. What’s another year going to look like? I just don’t see any good outcomes here. Ukraine overrunning demoralized Russian lines is going to cause Russia to escalate to WMD’s to save face. Russia beating back Ukraine with a mass mobilization and attempting to occupy a clearly hostile population is going to be an insurgency disaster. Western Ukraine’s hatred of Russia seems very real.
If Zelensky’s army actually pushed Russia out of Crimea I very much doubt he would survive to see it. I thought the chances of that were zero 7 months ago. Now, maybe 25%. I would suggest the Russians have changed their calculus as well, it’s no longer unthinkable.
sfitzpa@comcast.net (Comment #214973): “… publicly stated demands. These make negotiation essentially impossible. The Ukraine is not going to get back the Crimea… ever…. yet the requirement the Crimea be returned has been clearly stated many times.”
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That is normal in negotiations. There is little point in publicly backing off from maximalist demands until there is a chance of actually reaching a deal.
By the way, there are indications that a deal nearly happened in April, but was nixed by NATO, with Boris Johnson as the messenger.
There is an article in Foreign Affairs by Fiona Hill and Angela Stent is extremely anti-Putin and depicts him as intransigent. Yet in the middle they say:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/world-putin-wants-fiona-hill-angela-stent
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They say nothing about why the deal fell through.
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But then there is this report from Ukraine:
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/
And that was the end of the negotiations.
I have thought it time to take inventory of my “insurance “ policy for an emergency due to an increase in tension in the world. Emergency preparedness can be done fairly cheaply and I have always thought it a bit like sticking ones head in the sand hoping one doesn’t appear.
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For me:.
Full pantry and 20lb each of beans and rice in sealed containers. Bland but cheap med term food and easy to transport if needed.
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340 gal of water in a hot tub than uses a non chemical cleansing system and 30 gal of stabilized water in 5 gal cans to load and bug out if needed.
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6kw, 3 fuel house generator and 1kw portable generator
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5 -5gal propane bottles generally used for BBQ and outside patio space heaters but 4 are always in a mostly filled condition. These power camp stoves and can supply the house generator. Easy to quickly load in a bug out situation.
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5- 5gal jerrycans of stabilized gas to bug out if needed or to power the house generator if natural gas is interrupted.
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Box of emergency supply equipment if need to bug out quickly
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I don’t think I have spent more than $1k on med term emergency prep as with California doing rolling blackouts or shutting down power systems due to wind in fire prone areas, the generator and some emergency fuel is almost required for normal living.
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Curious what some on this site considers necessary supplies for emergency situations and if they plan for short, med, or long term situations.
Ed
Looks like you are ready for a short term food emergency. That’s maybe enough calories to get two people through a month.
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I buy brown Bastmati rice in 10 lb bags because that’s how it’s packaged at the local store. ( It’s better than other brown rice which comes in smaller boxes.)
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I think there is no harm in being ready for a short term emergency. Long term emergencies are difficult to prepare for without majorly compromising your life. I mean, you sort of seriously have to move to some rural area, grow a variety of foods– some of which will yield reliably with little effort (nut trees? berry bushes just “around”), and have some processing equipment.
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You really have to do a lot of the effort to keep the place going yourself– otherwise the helpers will get all your “emergency food” from the nut trees!
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If you are anticipating a really huge long term emergency, you may need to arm up like the couple on “Tremors”.
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Moving there can make it difficult to have an interesting career.
Plenty of places sell emergency food rations with something like 20 year shelf lives. Probably a tad more palatable than beans and rice for weeks although not as cheap.
Between the beans & rice and a full pantry ( 2 large standing cabinets) it should go for 2 months for 2. But I plan on taking in several neighborhood families if not forced out. Emergencies are best handled by groups, not individuals.
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“Drop one man into a jungle naked and he quickly becomes lunch. Drop a mixed group of 20 men and women naked into a jungle and they come out wearing skins and several are pregnant “
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Forget where I read this, but very much believe the sentiment.
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See the series Doomsday Preppers and about 1,000 novels in the genre. Vacuum packed rice and beans in foil pouches lasts a very long time. You can buy MRE’s just like the army does. Dealing with a hurricane or national disaster is one thing, trying to plan for a nuclear war is not really even rational. That’s buy a survival bunker in the woods, not fill the pantry with Pop Tarts.
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Putin is sabre rattling again, he is quite insecure. He started this thing and now he has to lie in the bed he made. The best thing that can happen is somebody in Russia “solves” that problem at this point.
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“Hey, let’s nuke NATO!” Great idea. That’s certain to turn out well.
Ed Forbes: be careful how you store your brown rice. Since brown rice hasn’t been polished it still has weevil eggs which will hatch at 25-40 deg C and WA above 70%, that is Water Activity of the Rice. The rice will pick up moisture during storage unless vacuum packed or very well ventilated. Of course weevils are edible if cooked, just unpleasant.
Lucia was correct in her suggestion that various immigration courts could have different portions of nationalities seeking asylum – or at least that is the case of the New York court when compared to the all the US immigration courts. New York, the only court that I have looked at in detail, has a very high portion of cases involving Chinese nationals. A quick comparison of the denial rate between the New York court and the total of the US courts for Chinese nationals shows a much lower rate for the New York court. I need to do some statistical analysis on this difference but with other US courts using nationality. I also attempted to find how well the supposed random assignment of case to judges in the New York court stood up to evidence. My first attempt compared the nationality makeup of the cases of two judges with the highest denial rate to that of the two judges with the lowest denial rate. The difference was obviously not what would be expected with a random selection. I need to look further but I expect all my comparisons will have to consider the nationality factor. My data comes from one of the many Syracuse Trac websites dealing with immigration courts and is linked below.
https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/
There is a discussion at a Trac site linked below of how the data from the immigration courts is tracked and the difficulty Syracuse had in getting more complete and accurate data. They made several initiatives to push the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR) to improve the quality of their data reporting.
Trac is obviously making a concerted effort to collect immigration data with the goal of the data being used by researchers for analysis. I have been searching for papers that might have used Trac data for this research and have to date not found many and none that attempt to answer the questions I have on variations in courts and judges on immigration decisions.
https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/asylum/about_data.html
The link below details further the problems Trac had in obtaining proper data from the immigration courts.
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/624/
I also read a paper that was critical of the case assignments in the Chicago immigration court where the first judges’ dockets on the list were filled first with cases and if towards the end of the judges list there were not sufficient cases to fill their dockets the distribution of cases across judges became very uneven. It took an outside group to figure out this simple problem.
I recently ran across a paper that has attempted to look at the variations across immigration courts and judges after statistically accounting for several potential factors.
The data is dated (1994 to 2007) but it certainly shows arbitrariness of the system even be it unintentional.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-08-940.pdf
At my age it would be a loaded gun, a bottle of single malt scotch, a glass, some ice and quite place to lay.
I can imagine a large number of emergencies/ disasters that don’t involve nuclear destruction or other end of modern civilization events. Planning to survive for at least 1 month with no, or minimal, outside support is relatively inexpensive and cheep insurance.
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Most of the world population would be in serious trouble if cutoff for 1 week due to lack of water if nothing else as most of the world now lives is cities that require electrical power to survive.
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NYT: At least 1,252 people are detained in protests across Russia
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Looks like many people aren’t very excited about getting drafted. One way tickets to visa free destinations from Russia have sold out for the week.
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Politically and tactically now would be a very good time to press a counter offensive for Ukraine. Mobilization won’t show up for quite a while and Russia is a bit demoralized. No rest for the wicked. Not sure Ukraine has the energy for that.
Arctic Sea ice seven day moving average minimum for 2022 was 4,557,781 km^2 compared to 2021 4,657,726 km^2 and 2012’s record low of 3,201,214 km^2. The last ten years or so hasn’t shown a significant trend.
WSJ opinion pieces:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cdc-oversells-the-bivalent-covid-shot-hospitalizations-vaccine-booster-omicron-pandemic-pfizer-moderna-china-illness-death-11663793472?st=r9h3qncznwt6gys&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-west-mimics-mao-takes-a-green-leap-forward-clean-energy-china-communism-farming-industrialization-quota-11663767101?st=grlvp9e01j774bq&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Saying that humanity is on a fast track is more than a little hyperbolic. There’s a whole lot of humanity in China, India, Brazil and probably Africa that aren’t going along with the program.
DeWitt,
“There’s a whole lot of humanity in China, India, Brazil and probably Africa that aren’t going along with the program.”
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Sure, the vast majority of people in the world are not going to “fundamentally change how they live” to satisfy the crazy green left. When I have traveled outside the States (especially in South America) there is some lip service paid the the very angry green-left-gods…… but it is almost entirely lip service. No sane person living on $25 – $50 per day is going to sacrifice much of their very limited income to please the green gods. China, India, and Africa? Nah; it’s like a bad joke.
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So, no matter how much the States, Europe, and a few other patsies sacrifice, the net is not going to change much…. +2 to +2.5 PPM increase in atmospheric CO2 for the coming several decades, if not longer. Temps will very likely top out at 2.25C to 2.75C above pre-industrial. Sorry, no palm trees in Minnesota.
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The green loonies are going to have to get over it, lest they be forever depressed. Wait, the loony greens are pretty much always depressed. Oh well.
DeWitt and Steve, when things get tough for the victims of the Green Leap Forward, the next step is to redistribute wealth along global lines to the victims. There has been serious talk about redistribution to make climate mitigation more palatable. That in the end would obviously fail when the wealth to redistribute runs out or even stops needed investments in energy, but in the meantime it could well persuade those that might suffer from the Green Leap to fall in line.
I believe Germany plans to tax the energy companies and transfer funds to energy consumers(voters). Governments are also very good at finding private parties to point to when their programs fail.
Ken Fritsch,
A German subsidy of energy consumers would only return some of what German policies of subsidizing industrial energy costs have taken from them by charging household level consumers much higher prices for energy. The idea that, at current German electricity prices, consumers should replace home gas or oil heat with electric heat pumps is ludicrous. It’s worthy of Gavin Newsom.
DeWitt, my point was that governments making Green mistakes will invoke measures to sate the howling masses. It will eventually run out of funds to keep the process going, but in the meantime there will not be voter revolts.
Word is that the Truss government has lifted the UK ban on fracking. Sanity: What a concept!
DeWitt Payne (Comment #214990)
Arctic Sea ice seven day moving average minimum for 2022 was 4,557,781 km^2
compared to 2021 4,657,726 km^2
and 2012’s record low of 3,201,214 km^2.
The last ten years or so hasn’t shown a significant trend.
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The last 10 years trend is significantly different to the trend of the previous 30 years.
I do not disagree with your statement, just saying there are two trends evident in a short 43 year data base.
It does seem highly correlated with the recent La Nina’s so may stay flat another year before we can judge significance properly.
At various times in the last 2 years it has varied between near lowest and 17th lowest a couple of times which is an amazing range.
angech,
Certainly ENSO can influence arctic sea ice, but another factor seems to be the extent of mixing between arctic and temperate northern hemisphere air masses. It looks to me like higher sea ice minimums go along with higher summer temperatures in the rest of the northern hemisphere. This summer was (I think) a little warmer than typical between 30 north and 60 north, while IRRC, 2012 was on average cooler than normal, and had less sea ice in September.
Mike M,
I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions about climate sanity in the UK. Count on the green crazies to do everything possible to keep fracked natural gas from being produced in the UK. There is a very good chance they will succeed. Green madness never diminishes, especially not in Europe. I’ll be convinced sanity has returned when the Europeans adopt national programs to build nuclear power plants ASAP…. and then actually build them. I won’t hold my breath.
The effects of green virtue signaling end when energy bills go up, so they try to hide the costs in any way possible. Subsidies and making anyone but consumers pay the bill is what they try to do. People aren’t going to tolerate high energy bills because they regressive.