A welcome shot of info
This WIRED article contains useful coronavirus information, with practically no slant or agenda.
The salacious, unverified Mr. Steele
Christopher ("The Dossier") Steele has been giving testimony under oath in the UK, implicating both Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice in the lucrative oppo research that became the dossier that became the Russia Collusion Special Counsel debacle. At one point he identifies a DNC Perkins Coie lawyer as the source for one of his tidbits; other tidbits he simply paid for.
This striking at the head of the snake is intolerable and clearly has to be denied and denounced. I'm curious whether they'll come up with a defense more convincing than "only a partisan idiot would rely on anything that man has to say."
This striking at the head of the snake is intolerable and clearly has to be denied and denounced. I'm curious whether they'll come up with a defense more convincing than "only a partisan idiot would rely on anything that man has to say."
Radio Silence
Democratic Senators mostly are keeping silent about the sexual assault charge against Biden. So-called “women’s groups” are refusing comment as well.
One prominent women’s political group cited a scheduling conflict and asked to be kept “in mind for other opportunities!” When pressed if the following day would work better, an associate said it would not, citing another scheduling conflict.A few potential VP candidates have summoned up the courage to say they don’t believe Biden’s accuser, Tara Reade. That answer is problematic for the party too, but it’s what they have to say if they say anything. So...
Where are the Hearings?
Were Joe Biden up for a SCOTUS position instead of the Presidency, at this point he would surely be facing a Kavanaugh-style hearing into these charges. The charges come with much more corroboration than any of the ones pointed at Kavanaugh (which is to say, more than none whatsoever plus exculpatory evidence suggesting that the charges were probably to certainly false).
So who runs the hearing on potential Presidents? The mainstream media, right? When do we get started with that? Or is it just going to be The Intercept and some right-wing publications?
So who runs the hearing on potential Presidents? The mainstream media, right? When do we get started with that? Or is it just going to be The Intercept and some right-wing publications?
Some Action
Barr sent formal instructions to Federal prosecutors to look for unconstitutional restrictions in emergency orders.
The Flynn gambit
There's no getting around the problem of Michael Flynn's guilty plea. I'd say his case should have been thrown out a long time ago if it weren't for that horrible strategic error. It's very tough to win a motion to withdraw a guilty plea no matter how seedy the prosecution's actions were; it almost requires the defense to argue that the defendant himself was misled into believing he broke the law.
Early reports, however, suggested that Flynn might have pled guilty in a desperate attempt to shield his son from a bad-faith retaliatory prosecution. That's not quite like believing one's son is really guilty; it's more recognizing that these people can and will stop at nothing to ruin the life even of an innocent man. By this standard, Flynn leapt on a grenade, which tells us absolutely nothing about whether he had a guilty conscience or a well-founded fear that the government could prove its case against him--which, to be honest, always looked terribly thin, even by Kafkaesque standards.
Last Friday's document dump included some material that's still secret, which requires the interested public to draw conclusions from how people are reacting to it, like intuiting the existence of a new planet by its perturbation of the orbits of others. Certainly Flynn's new (and much better) counsel Sydney Powell was galvanized into doubling down on her motion to withdraw the guilty plea. Andrew McCarthy believes the documents show that the prosecution withheld from the court the information that Flynn's guilty plea was predicated on a secret agreement not to terrorize Flynn's son. I hope this will be the straw that broke the camel's back, even for a trial judge who's not demonstrating much concern so far.
There should be some jail time here, but not for anyone named Flynn.
Early reports, however, suggested that Flynn might have pled guilty in a desperate attempt to shield his son from a bad-faith retaliatory prosecution. That's not quite like believing one's son is really guilty; it's more recognizing that these people can and will stop at nothing to ruin the life even of an innocent man. By this standard, Flynn leapt on a grenade, which tells us absolutely nothing about whether he had a guilty conscience or a well-founded fear that the government could prove its case against him--which, to be honest, always looked terribly thin, even by Kafkaesque standards.
Last Friday's document dump included some material that's still secret, which requires the interested public to draw conclusions from how people are reacting to it, like intuiting the existence of a new planet by its perturbation of the orbits of others. Certainly Flynn's new (and much better) counsel Sydney Powell was galvanized into doubling down on her motion to withdraw the guilty plea. Andrew McCarthy believes the documents show that the prosecution withheld from the court the information that Flynn's guilty plea was predicated on a secret agreement not to terrorize Flynn's son. I hope this will be the straw that broke the camel's back, even for a trial judge who's not demonstrating much concern so far.
There should be some jail time here, but not for anyone named Flynn.
Scorecards
When it comes to lockdown orders, the media standard has been hard to justify. The only reliable rule I see is blue states good, red states bad. From time to time, good/bad has meant early/late, or stringent/lax, but the goalposts move so fast and so inexplicably that I'm left concluding the only robust metric is blue/red.
New York has been a horrorshow, but the smart take continues to be that Cuomo is doing a bang-up job whenever he's not being personally sabotaged by the Bad Man. Florida has done very well, but it's better not to talk about it, because Florida is demographically similar to New York, while experiencing virtually none of its severe problems, and we really don't like the cut of that de Santis fellow's jib.
In an imaginary world where the point of all this ink was not to influence the November elections, it's hard to imagine we wouldn't be concluding that lockdowns work best when they're targeted, flexibly responsive to hard-data results, and as un-intrusive as possible. I do continue to wonder, though, whether the biggest difference isn't mass transit and single-family homes. Remember, mass transit kills, while sprawl will save us all.
New York has been a horrorshow, but the smart take continues to be that Cuomo is doing a bang-up job whenever he's not being personally sabotaged by the Bad Man. Florida has done very well, but it's better not to talk about it, because Florida is demographically similar to New York, while experiencing virtually none of its severe problems, and we really don't like the cut of that de Santis fellow's jib.
In an imaginary world where the point of all this ink was not to influence the November elections, it's hard to imagine we wouldn't be concluding that lockdowns work best when they're targeted, flexibly responsive to hard-data results, and as un-intrusive as possible. I do continue to wonder, though, whether the biggest difference isn't mass transit and single-family homes. Remember, mass transit kills, while sprawl will save us all.
Keeping us safe from bad information
I didn't find the widely-shared interview with two moderately anti-lockdown California ER doctors all that persuasive, but I'm getting pretty tired of being protected from information that people think is too dangerous for me to hear. So although I didn't link to the interview to begin with, I'm happy to link to it now, while it's still possible.
And the fact-checkers and community-standards police can bite me. I'll decide what's misinformation and what's not, thank you. I'd have a lot more patience with this approach if half of the garbage I see on "respectable" news sites didn't clearly fit my own definition of misinformation.
And the fact-checkers and community-standards police can bite me. I'll decide what's misinformation and what's not, thank you. I'd have a lot more patience with this approach if half of the garbage I see on "respectable" news sites didn't clearly fit my own definition of misinformation.
Texas re-opens a bit
The governor announced a re-opening plan to begin this Friday, under which most businesses, including restaurants, may re-open at 25% of capacity. There is an exception for hair salons and gyms, which remain closed. Businesses in counties with fewer than 5 confirmed cases, which is almost half of Texas counties and includes my own, can operate at 50% capacity.
Counties have some leeway, but our County Judge and the two local mayors are going along. Although my neighbors are disappointed that we apparently are not opening the public beaches and boat ramps, the aim of the order is not to give people more leisure options. It's to restore jobs.
If case counts are not disappointing, all counties will shift to the 50% rule in a couple of weeks.
This is strictly a permissive order. Businesses that don't feel ready to open aren't required to do so. After the 2017 hurricane, most of the restaurants with good business-interruption insurance opted to stay closed as long as possible, knowing that it would be hard to turn a profit before most residents and tourists returned. As I understand it, though, nearly all business insurance contains a pandemic exception, so owners will have to make difficult decisions about whether they can afford to stay closed, or for that matter can afford to re-open with reduced traffic. Some will be able to thread the needle by operating with reduced staff, which will help with overhead.
Counties have some leeway, but our County Judge and the two local mayors are going along. Although my neighbors are disappointed that we apparently are not opening the public beaches and boat ramps, the aim of the order is not to give people more leisure options. It's to restore jobs.
If case counts are not disappointing, all counties will shift to the 50% rule in a couple of weeks.
This is strictly a permissive order. Businesses that don't feel ready to open aren't required to do so. After the 2017 hurricane, most of the restaurants with good business-interruption insurance opted to stay closed as long as possible, knowing that it would be hard to turn a profit before most residents and tourists returned. As I understand it, though, nearly all business insurance contains a pandemic exception, so owners will have to make difficult decisions about whether they can afford to stay closed, or for that matter can afford to re-open with reduced traffic. Some will be able to thread the needle by operating with reduced staff, which will help with overhead.
Arms and White Samite
My novel is now published on Amazon, both in Kindle and paperback form. The Kindle version is as cheap as Amazon would allow me to set it, in order to make it as accessible as possible at a difficult time. If readers of the Hall are out of work, though, email me at grimbeornr (note final 'r') AT yahoo in order to obtain a PDF copy. I don't want any of you who might like to read it not to be able to do so.
I suppose the strangest thing about this is acknowledging my real name. Of course many of you knew it already, and any of you who cared would doubtless have figured it out without difficulty. The point of incognito is not that we do not know who each other are, but that we pretend not to know in order to enable more honest discussions than we can have otherwise. We will continue to operate in the same manner as always.
I suppose the strangest thing about this is acknowledging my real name. Of course many of you knew it already, and any of you who cared would doubtless have figured it out without difficulty. The point of incognito is not that we do not know who each other are, but that we pretend not to know in order to enable more honest discussions than we can have otherwise. We will continue to operate in the same manner as always.
Puzzling numbers
The differing regional approaches to testing make it hard to figure out what the "positive" rates mean. In some areas, there's almost random sampling going on, while in others, most people are unlikely to have access to a test unless they have clear symptoms plus a troubling contact or travel history. A few samples included nearly all of a more-or-less captive population, like the souls aboard the Diamond Princess or the U.S.S. Roosevelt. Until today, all the results I'd seen suggested that well under half of the ordinary closed population will test positive, while something close to half of detectable cases were asymptomatic. (Note that "asymptomatic" doesn't tell you anything about whether a case is contagious. Pre-symptomatic or permanently asymptomatic patients may be very contagious, barely contagious, or variably contagious depending on the patient, the severity of the case, or the days since exposure, or all three. Not every asymptomatic patient is a Typhoid Mary.)
HotAir has a piece today that reports anomalous results: the infection rates in prisons are sky-high, nearly 90%, and the percentage of asymptomatic positive testers is even higher. The only similar result I'd heard rumors of so far is the puzzling lack of severe cases among the U.S. homeless, and in the entire population of Bali. In the former case, speculation included the possibility that life outdoors was protective, while in the latter case people bandied about the notion that the Balinese lifestyle confers special advantages for immune systems. Neither explanation leaps out as likely for the prison population. I suppose it's possible that both the homeless and the prison population have led such rough-and-tumble lives that they've been exposed to everything under the sun and have robust immune systems. Maybe they're poised to take over the world.
HotAir has a piece today that reports anomalous results: the infection rates in prisons are sky-high, nearly 90%, and the percentage of asymptomatic positive testers is even higher. The only similar result I'd heard rumors of so far is the puzzling lack of severe cases among the U.S. homeless, and in the entire population of Bali. In the former case, speculation included the possibility that life outdoors was protective, while in the latter case people bandied about the notion that the Balinese lifestyle confers special advantages for immune systems. Neither explanation leaps out as likely for the prison population. I suppose it's possible that both the homeless and the prison population have led such rough-and-tumble lives that they've been exposed to everything under the sun and have robust immune systems. Maybe they're poised to take over the world.
Strategy vs. Consistency
Some deployments are worth more than others. This can be reflected in US policy. Right?
[Officials] said the president's military advisers have made the case to him that if the U.S. pulls troops out of Afghanistan because of the coronavirus, by that standard the Pentagon would also have to withdraw from places like Italy, which has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic, officials said.That's not how this works. We don't set blanket standards for where we will deploy troops; we deploy them where we think it is in our interests. If the additional risks of a major outbreak in Afghanistan outweigh the value of keeping a smaller number of troops there, you don't have to do it. If the advantages of maintaining air bases in Italy that can strike terrorist camps in Africa as well as providing air cover in Europe are bigger, you can maintain them even if the risk of an outbreak is worse. This is one of those places where consistency can be foolish.
Viral austerity
Texas is a pretty red state, but that doesn't mean it doesn't blow big bucks on all kinds of state-government fantasies when it's got the cash. The talk now, however, is about "austerity," which I hope will mean serious thought about inducing the government to get back to tending to its knitting:
Just a few months ago, the Texas economy was growing at rates that outpaced those nationally. Lawmakers last session approved a quarter-trillion-dollar budget, and state income was projected to grow faster than previously expected. The comptroller’s office even estimated that lawmakers would have about $2.9 billion in hand upon their return to session. And that would be an important head start for lawmakers who would need to find new sources of state revenue to support the state’s increased commitment to funding public schools, among other things.
The virus, however, effectively wiped out that $2.9 billion surplus and then some. The choice now is pretty basic: Find new revenue or make significant cuts in basic state services. House Speaker Dennis Bonnen recently suggested that all state agencies cut their budgets by 5% now, rather than wait closer to the start of the next session when budget cuts could be draconian, less strategic and made under greater duress. This echoes Hegar, who has advised agencies to cut spending before lawmakers start deciding what will stay and what will go.I find myself wondering about ERs, too. For a couple of months, we've gotten some data on what happens when people can't use ERs as the local free clinic for minor ailments. I'm looking forward to some analysis of the effects.
Greenshirting
The "dangerous" Michael Moore film "Planet of the Humans" has been retracted by its distributor. The powers-that-be have declared that it contains misinformation, some of which contradicts the peer-reviewed consensus.
Maybe Moore can get to work now on a movie about censorship and herd mentality.
Maybe Moore can get to work now on a movie about censorship and herd mentality.
Taking a Piece of the Holy Land Home With You
If I ever make it to the Holy Land, I may have to get a tattoo.
It would be a fascinating memento of the journey, and, as of right now, would be a first for me. It's apparently an old tradition, with deep and interesting roots going back centuries. The only question would be which design?
Man People Hate Georgia
The most ironic aspect of this "Hitler responds to Georgia's reopening" is that they elected to adopt Hitler as being on their side.
It's a festival of contempt that is probably by a northerner who moved to Atlanta, as they clearly know the state well (references to things like pollen, 'the same two colleges,' Waffle House, etc, are spot on). It might be a native of Atlanta who has always hated most of the state, but they'd also have to be an introvert who hates the Southern way of greeting each other and talking to your neighbors.
The latter is hard on even slightly introverted people. I raised my son to recognize when I was angling to exit a conversation, and never to say anything that would undermine the exit strategy I was employing. Some of my neighbors will talk to you for hours if you don't find a way to duck out.
It's a festival of contempt that is probably by a northerner who moved to Atlanta, as they clearly know the state well (references to things like pollen, 'the same two colleges,' Waffle House, etc, are spot on). It might be a native of Atlanta who has always hated most of the state, but they'd also have to be an introvert who hates the Southern way of greeting each other and talking to your neighbors.
The latter is hard on even slightly introverted people. I raised my son to recognize when I was angling to exit a conversation, and never to say anything that would undermine the exit strategy I was employing. Some of my neighbors will talk to you for hours if you don't find a way to duck out.
New Filing: Corrupt FBI Agents Committed Crimes to Frame Flynn
They’re going hard here. I’m in danger of confirmation bias in this case, because I liked and admired Flynn for his work in Afghanistan. I never wanted to believe bad things about him, and may be too ready to believe good things.
On the other hand, it’s of a piece with many other revelations about the FBI and politics lately.
On the other hand, it’s of a piece with many other revelations about the FBI and politics lately.
A Birthday
April 24th was my father's birthday. He died in 2016. He was killed by a cancer we didn't know he had until three days before it killed him; he died within hours of being transferred from the hospital to a hospice. I was at his right hand when he died, and alone marked his shuddering last breath; my mother and some of their old friends were too engaged in pleasant conversation and reminiscence to notice. I said nothing at all, for I think that the mind lingers a while even after the breathing stops, and I wanted his last moments to dwell on the peaceful sounds of voices, his wife's and her friends.
It's hard now that some people can't be with their fathers when they die, but it's hard being there too. The memory haunts me, knowing he was dying and taking no steps to save him. It was what he wanted, and I knew my duty, and I did it. He was a volunteer fire fighter who ran many, many medical calls to the homes of people who were dying. They could be revived with great pain and effort, and kept alive a little longer, suffering all the time. He knew that wasn't what he wanted, and he made his mind up early not to die that way. He told me that when he was hale, and often, so I knew that he meant it when he was not.
When his time came he decided. I was angry to see how much pain he was in, until suddenly it came over me that the pain was a great gift as from on high: because the pain took away all his fear. He did not experience the existential dread at the border of extinction, but set his course straight for death. I heard him say of his own death, refusing treatment and electing hospice care, "Let's get this show on the road."
He was the grandson of a farmer, and the son of a welder and body repairman who ended up owning a service station for long-haul truckers on I-75. I wrote about my grandfather, and my father, in one of my favorite pieces. My grandmother, his mother, had a good heart morally but a bad one physically; she took nitroglycerin and hard liquor from her 40s, in an age and a place when most women didn't drink. She outlived her husband by a decade or so all the same.
God love you, old man. I did too. I'd pray for him, and sometimes have, but I suspect his soul is in a far better case than mine.
It's hard now that some people can't be with their fathers when they die, but it's hard being there too. The memory haunts me, knowing he was dying and taking no steps to save him. It was what he wanted, and I knew my duty, and I did it. He was a volunteer fire fighter who ran many, many medical calls to the homes of people who were dying. They could be revived with great pain and effort, and kept alive a little longer, suffering all the time. He knew that wasn't what he wanted, and he made his mind up early not to die that way. He told me that when he was hale, and often, so I knew that he meant it when he was not.
When his time came he decided. I was angry to see how much pain he was in, until suddenly it came over me that the pain was a great gift as from on high: because the pain took away all his fear. He did not experience the existential dread at the border of extinction, but set his course straight for death. I heard him say of his own death, refusing treatment and electing hospice care, "Let's get this show on the road."
He was the grandson of a farmer, and the son of a welder and body repairman who ended up owning a service station for long-haul truckers on I-75. I wrote about my grandfather, and my father, in one of my favorite pieces. My grandmother, his mother, had a good heart morally but a bad one physically; she took nitroglycerin and hard liquor from her 40s, in an age and a place when most women didn't drink. She outlived her husband by a decade or so all the same.
God love you, old man. I did too. I'd pray for him, and sometimes have, but I suspect his soul is in a far better case than mine.
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