The Greatest Threat - part the sixth

Well... that didn't last long. The Greatest Threat is burying the actual data so that the pols and the populace don't know what the pols are doing. And, most importantly, whether the pols' fiat is good or bad for the populace. And, most importantly, not just the minority that made the fiat happen. Not too surprisingly, one area of general concern is what the results are for the push for abortion bans following the Gang of Six's cockamamie decree to overturn Roe.

New reporting documents that the data is being suppressed!! Who wooda thunk it!! The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts would never lie about such a thing, would they??

In fact, we found that in a few states, political leaders who backed the bans have stood in the way of measuring their consequences.

We can expect, as dead as a Lame Duck is, that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024^© will order that all data assembled, created, or distributed by the Damn Gummint must first be approved by the (soon to be created) Office of Data Integrity. You Betcha.

Where never is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not clouded all day.

And... as one might expect, the quintessence of data suppression is... wait for it... Texas!

When Texas delayed publishing its maternal mortality report in 2022, an election year, then-committee member Nakeenya Wilson, a community advocate, spoke out, saying "withholding data that does not make us look good is dishonorably burying those women."

The next session, Texas lawmakers passed a bill changing the requirements for the position that Wilson held, effectively removing her from the committee. State officials appointed Dr. Ingrid Skop, a Texas OB-GYN who is the vice president of a prominent anti-abortion organization.

The sub-GED crowd should relish their time in the sun. I predict that the Red States will experience significant Brain Drain to the Blue States in less than a generation. Smart people won't stand for this shit.

Fun With Cars

What's that line? "Fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the T-bird away" Not for the first time, these essays have told the tale of the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts claiming that global warming/climate change/Mother Nature's having Her revenge is all a Hoax from the Woke Blue People? And that, the Private Sector, aka the home insurance companies, are the instrument not the Damn Gummint. Of course, not the Damn Gummint because the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts control enough of it from DC down to the Shitburg Town Councils of the Red States to block any efforts to at least slow down the process. In no way is The Insurance Industrial Complex^™ going to wait. They're taking her daddy's house insurance away with vigor. The science is not complete to answer the vital question: have we run past the point of no return. The Musk Ox and his wimins may have to get a move on to Mars to re-populate another planet.

Well, here's yet another report on the inevitable. The Insurance Industrial Complex^™ doesn't believe in the Bible or the Torah or the Koran, just Greenbacks. And when the flow of Greenbacks starts to reverse course, it responds with a vengeance. As well it might.

The Treasury Department under President Biden laid the groundwork to gather data about climate change's effects on the insurance market, then backed off in the face of pressure from states and insurers, as my colleague Emily Flitter reported this year. But the incoming Trump administration could be pressured to intervene, especially since some of the highest premium increases are in states that he carried in November.

Ah, yes. And, most importantly, fiddle a way to put the financial onus on Blue States. We can never forget The Prime Directive.

Here is the map.

Ya don't get away with messing with the Insurance Industrial Complex^™'s rice bowl.

Buyer's Remorse?

Well... all those sub-GED shitkickers are about to get a barge pole up their butt (partial paywalled). They'll likely follow Garfield 2.0's command and blame Sleepy Joe for the betrayal. Or may be not so much. May be they'll figure out they were duped.

Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump's plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called "the largest domestic deportation operation" of undocumented immigrants "in American history." Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand "school choice" by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

Once again, the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts seek to govern not on real policy 'for the people', but culture war. "I didn't get no big city woke book larnin, and I'll be damned if my kids know more than I do. Book larnin never did me no good, anyway and it'll just turn my kids agin me and mine. Schools that just teach the larnin of the Bible, now that'd be good." How much of modern economy came from the shitkickers? Less than zero. Fun fact: bin Laden ran 9/11 with satellite phones. Ya need the modernest tech to take The People back to the 7th century. Or the 1st. Ya should only live as long as God says you should. We don't need no hospitals. And so forth.

Now, the question is: is Brownstein right? Will the MAGAnauts feel the harsh lash of the whip? Likely not. If for no other reason that Garfield 2.0 and his cabal will make sure that the negative impact of these various decisions don't happen in Red Counties. The tariff scam being first among many. Garfield 2.0 can exempt industries/companies as he wishes, and he will. Last time he gave away on the order of $60 billion to his beloved farmers to offset the tariffs. I don't think he's forgotten that bit. Will he and his worry about being shamed by the obvious fact that he'll be targeting Blue states? Not a bit; that's the point. Will the Blue states rise up and throw the bastards out in '26? One can only hope.

On the whole, the whole point of this retribution is to make the Blue States pay for opposing him. There's no reason to doubt he's had second thoughts. Or any thought at all, of course. Reptiles have such meager brains.

Thought For The Day - 11 December 2024

Well... further proof that the USofA would be better off if it had had an FBI director with stones swinging in his BVDs rather than cotton candy.

Two For The Show

Once again, a two-fer from the NYT. First, how the Brits are facing The Greatest Threat, although not due, according to the report, nefarious action by the Damn Gummint. In sum: without accurate data, government administration turns into: 'it is just my opinion that counts'.

An essential ingredient in economic policymaking, from interest rates to government spending, is reliable data. But government officials, economists and other number crunchers in Britain are expressing deepening concern over a long-running issue with a data set used to understand a crucial area: the country's jobs market.

Well... no shit, Sherlock. At least the Brits are taking the situation seriously, rather than creating the mess on purpose to just destroy governance. Not the same as Garfield 2.0's clear intent.

And, second, we have more support for the private sector taking climate change seriously. After all, climate change is affecting profit, that All American Ideal.

Historically, officials at Fannie and Freddie have banked on their mortgage portfolio's being diversified across so many markets that even when delinquencies and defaults spike after disasters, they wouldn't cause significant losses.

What was the mantra leading up to The Great Recession, fueled by ARMS and CDS via Blythe Masters? Oh yeah, the whole country can't go into housing collapse. How did that assumption work out?

"We cannot change the fact that in Florida we have hurricanes, so we shouldn't be penalized for it," Mr. Diaz said, noting that high insurance costs were already pushing prospective buyers to less popular submarkets. œ"This is why we have the federal government."

Ah, now the MAGAnaut ox is being gored. "Uncle Sugar has to rescue us!!!"

I Have it on Good Authority

Way back in the dark ages, I spent some years working for Optimed Medical Systems, which purveyed a medical prior authorization system written in Progress (not at all relational) database and language suite. This was the early 1990s. The point being, of course, that computerized PA moats have been around for decades. In fact, the OMS software was sorta, kinda an implementation of the Milliman & Robertson books in use for some time. The only thing that's really changed today is that the Medical Industrial Complex has leveraged lots more compute and data than was available 30 years ago. And things are so much better now for the unhealthy.

In 1998 (using 1996 data), this is what the Annals of Surgery thought of M&R Guidelines

Many of the M&R guidelines were found to be at wide variance from the actual length of stay of patients treated for these diseases in North Carolina. For many patients, the M&R guidelines are not applicable. Applying them in an uninformed way--in other words, discharging patients from the hospital too early--may hurt some patients.

Yeah, patients are so much better off with PA moats. "Stop cutting!! The gas passer's time is up!" The Medical Industrial Complex now has a smorgasbord of choice for denying healthcare.

Thought For The Day - 6 December 2024

Yeah, I guess it's true that Bidenomics is a complete failure.

US job growth surged in November, adding 227,000 jobs

Of course, Garfield 2.0 will fuck it up. And place the blame on Sleepy Joe. Remember what I've said about The Greatest Threat? Garfield 2.0 will order BLS/Census to 'revise' down, steeply, the employment data for 2024 (at least). And order same to only produce rosy data while he's still around. I guarantee it. The Gang of Six^© has said he can order anyone in the Damn Gummint to do what he says.

Judges Make Law

The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts continually bleat that judges, liberals and progressives, are always 'making law' that should be done by legislatures, preferably in Red States. So now we have transgender status before the The Gang of Six^©. And, as one might expect from the righteous and God fearing, Roberts et al claim no jurisdiction.

We might think that we can do just as good a job with respect to the evidence here as Tennessee or anybody else, but my understanding is that the Constitution leaves that question to the people's representatives rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor.
-- Roberts

As if hillybilly part-time legislators in those wonderful Red States are? There are 10 states with full-time legislatures, and only one might be sort of Red, Ohio. The rest just show up every now and again after walking behind their mule plow. Since when does being a politician make one expert on each and every technical nuance of human life? Well, the Garfield 2.0 and his mob consider themselves to be such experts. Better than the actually trained and experienced ones on Earth One. Damn Deep State educated elites. "Ever ting I no or need to no I gots from ma Bible!1"

So, how many qualified physicians are there in DC? Enquiring minds need to know. According to the wiki page, only 3 could possibly be qualified to be 'expert' on the nuance of childhood transgender issues. That's it.

[Y]ou could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
-- Hillary Clinton/2016

Damn right.

JAMA actually did the count at the state level, for 2022: 86 of 7552. We don't know how many of them are just country sawbones fixing gunshot wounds.

Past is Prologue - part the second

For those who haven't read American history for a while, if ever, here's a taste of what we can expect from Garfield 2.0 and the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts. Enjoy.

Williams founded the first place in modern history where citizenship and religion were separate, providing religious liberty and separation of church and state. This was combined with the principle of majoritarian democracy.

The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts will put a stop to that.

The Greatest Threat - part the fifth

Today's reporting shows another example of what Science and Smarts we'll likely lose on 20 Jan. It's a report on NOAA's efforts to map the ocean's degree of warming from climate change. It is a full page, "with 8-by-ten10 glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back" story. Herewith the punch line:

A decade ago, sea surface temperatures in the Pacific shot up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal. A high pressure system parked over the ocean, and winds that churn cold, nutrient-rich water from the depths to the surface died down. Stagnant, warm water spread across the Northeast Pacific, in a marine heat wave that lasted for three years.

Under the surface, the food web broke down and ecosystems convulsed, at first unseen to humans on shore. But soon, clues washed up.

You can bet your sweet bippy that such a report will never again leave NOAA, if it even still exists.

Frying Pan Into Fire

Well... Intel does it again. Gelsinger is out. Guess who's in?

Gelsinger stepped down as CEO and resigned from Intel's board effective December 1, the company said Monday. He will be replaced by interim co-CEOs David Zinsner, Intel's chief financial officer, and Michelle (MJ) Johnston Holthaus, general manager of Intel's client computing group, as the company conducts a search for a permanent new CEO. Holthaus has also been named to the newly-created CEO of Intel products, which will oversee, among other things, its data center and AI product efforts.

Yet another big bidnezz, not of the financial sector but one that makes physical things, giving the reins to a bean counter. How's that worked out in the past? Does Boeing strike a familiar note?

As to missing the AI boom: did Nvidia create the AI sector? Hardly. They just happened to be the leader in graphics processing units (GPU to the uninformed), which were used to make pretty pictures on the screen and thence which were then re-purposed for cryptomining. IOW, anything that needed lots of floating point. So entered the AI boom where Nvidia is swapping out some rendering for more maths. Or so it is believed; Nvidia doesn't show its instruction sets. Which is the main reason the linux community doesn't play well with Nvidia chips. Huge correlation matrix to solve. One of the first applications to leverage floaters. One might not remember that it was Intel that built the 8087, circa 1980. Bet you didn't know that. Neither did I; the first Intel floater that I remember was the 80287. Intel knew, and should still know, how to build a floater.

And a floater is limited in instructions. Depending on source, the instruction set size is over 50 and is 70. But it runs in high parallel fashion. So, yeah, not building a respectable floater is on Intel's head.

Galileo

By some circuitous route (doesn't matter), I ended up on his wiki page. This particular quote, like Ruby Begonia, strikes a familiar note.

Galileo's championing of Copernican heliocentrism was met with opposition from within the Catholic Church and from some astronomers. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that his opinions contradicted accepted Biblical interpretations

He wasn't burned at the stake, as was Bruno and some, according to the wiki narrative, viewed his handling as cowardly.

Will the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts under Garfield 2.0 deal with the Smart and Scientific Set the same way? What's your bet?

Best Case Scenario

As I've opined, the best case scenario for surviving Garfield 2.0 is for his demented directives to crash the economy along about June, 2025. If he does what he promised, not out of the question. Well... he's staaaaarted

President-elect Donald Trump said that he plans to institute a 25% tariff on all products coming into the US from Canada and Mexico, starting on the first day of his administration.

Do you know when he got the rag on about Canada? Lots of good hooch from there. Of course, Real Americans only drink Kentucky Bourbon swill. They ain't got no palate.

No more cheap avocado from Mexico.

Being an ignorant slut, Garfield 2.0 has no idea that taxing (which is what a tariff is, but you do know that, right?) goods for which there is an American equivalent primarily encourages American producers to raise their price to a penny or two below the import price. Why not? The import isn't going to get any cheaper. The CPI will soar. Well... may be. Being the Unitary Executive, Garfield 2.0 has the authority to order Census/BLS to report CPI at the number Garfield 2.0 wants. The Greatest Threat in action.

Of course, for the scenario to work out, Garfield 2.0 will have to not suspend elections in 2026 in addition to not messing too much with the macro-data. I'm not willing to make odds on that.

A Game of Chicken

Just happened to be channel surfing, and came across a "Good Eats: Reloaded" episode (2019) on chicken. In fact, left it to compose this. In the narration, Alton mentions the USDA requirements for "organic". They're rather extensive, and expensive. So, let's say that one of the agribusiness poultry oligarches calls up The Utterly Unhinged^© and says that these requirements are cutting into profit. "Could you please tell USDA to lay off? We'll pay a nice fee to USDA (and you, of course), to cut back on the requirements. Waddaya say, big guy?"

USDA poultry organic requirements. Feel free to read them, if needed.

Corruption - part the third

Well... not to be outdone by The Boss, we now find that Boris is up to his ears in shit. Why would we expect any different? We need keep in mind that The Gang of Six^© has deemed immune for any actions deemed (by whom, exactly?) an Official Act. So, one might surmise that Boris's influence peddling is standard operating procedure for any American Bidnezzman.

The internal investigation, which was confirmed by half a dozen sources and is not criminal in nature, has probed multiple instances of Epshteyn allegedly requesting payment in exchange for promoting candidates for administration positions or offering to connect individuals with people in the upcoming administration relevant to their industries, sources said.

In one instance he requested as much as $100,000 per month in exchange for his services, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Hey, if it's your cow, milk it to death.

Scammers

Well... at long last Cassava Sciences (SAVA) reported out the data in its first PIII trial. Not even close. As I type, the share is down 86%. Since it has no other compounds, that I'm aware of, the company is toast. What's particularly devious, just a week ago they hired a commercial officer, thus pumping the share.

The second trial is shut down.

What started out as a pain compound company, morphed into an Alzheimer's outfit on the basis of a compound with a fantastical MoA. Many in the scientific community called it out as garbage over the years, but relying on gullible retail plungers, kept the momentum going for more than a decade based on vapour. Quite a trick. Now, the turkeys have come home to roost. And a boatload of retail plungers won't be moving into their villas in France and St. Kitts.

There is a legion of nano- and micro- cap pharmas out there promising that they've found the answer, where Big Pharma has failed. Seldom happens, and when it has, it's because the nano-cap has developed a robust platform tech over many years, not just a single molecule. Caveat emptor.

Spoilers

As of now, 18:54 24 November, the wiki report has an interesting sidebar. What if there weren't any other candidates but The Utterly Unhinged^© and Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© and that the Other votes all went to Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^©? The latter not necessarily too far fetched, in that his zealots know better than to defect. Death and all that.

Trump  - 76,876,907
Harris - 77,317,255 

Landslide mandate my bony ass.

Captain Obvious - part the third

Well... The Musk Ox, et al, are on the verge of demanding that all Damn Gummint workers return to their offices. At the same time the putative DOGE (fun fact: the word actually means a Venetian Dictator) intends to save (high income) taxpayers money. "Danger Will Robinson", Cognitive dissonance here.

As Dr. McElhone was fond of saying, "It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer..." that these are mutually contradictory orders. Exactly how much the organizations save by not having bodies in the buildings is open to debate, but here's one estimate.

According to Global Workplace Analytics, a remote workforce helped IBM save $50 million on real estate costs.

And that's just part of the savings.

Stupid is as stupid does. Well... OK, the reason for ending remote work isn't better productivity or such, it's just intended to cull the best workers from the Damn Gummint so the Damn Gummint will fail, and give Garfield 2.0 and his henchmen the meme to assert that the Damn Gummint is worthless. And so forth.

By The Numbers - part the eighty first

Well... the MAGAnauts keep bleating about landslide and mandate and such. But we now know that Kim Don Jon polled under 50% of the popular vote, once again a minority dictator. He slithered in under the Blue Wall, which he did by a margin (as of 20 Nov) of 231,648 votes.

How did he do that? By the skin of his teeth. This is the number of precincts in the states.

PA    -  9,000 
MI    -  5,235 
WI    -  3,563 
total - 17,798

Simple arithmetic: just 13 votes/precinct made the difference.

Tough Love

Well... just about every day the Limp Wristed Lefties bleating that the sub-GED crowd is such a large part of the electorate (where's those jelly bean jar IQ tests that Confederate states used to use?) that they have to do something to carve them off from the MAGAnauts. How, exactly would that work? "Yeah, we're the reason you chuckleheads don't make $100,000 a year with no education and no skill set. It's all our fault, we know it. We'll order American Bidnezzmen to give you guys, and not those with education and skill sets, $100,000 a year." Not even The Utterly Unhinged^© is confident enough that he can bamboozle the sub-GED crowd with that one. Instead, he and the GOP going back to the Southern Strategy have sung the culture wars anthem.

What's amusing: going back forever the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnut crowd have preached laissez faire economics, which requires that individual workers 'negotiate' with employers for wages, and the final answer will be what the employer is willing to pay. Based on education and skill set; unless the employer is your Dad, of course. The Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts are fully aware that they're flummoxing these bird brains; cruelty is the whole point.

The Limp Wristed Lefties have habitually been concerned with Doing Good Works, and ignored the marketing. The Utterly Unhinged^© was smart enough to be devious enough to get his signature on those stimulus checks. One might mention that Sleepy Joe's covid stimulus got the blame, a tad, for the latter inflation, but not The Utterly Unhinged^©.

It's beyond fantasy to play the same tune as Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts to convince the sub-GED crowd. They're in thrall to the notion that their lot in life is due, solely, to some amorphous Highly Educated Elite out to make their lives as miserable as possible. They remain certain that the cause is not the Billionaire Boy's Club to which The Utterly Unhinged^© is a card-carrying member.

What to do? What to do?

Straight talk. Tell the sub-GED crowd that the cause of their lot is that they're dumb as a sack of hair, no president or administration, Left or Right, can force employers to pay the sub-GED crowd upper-middle class wages. Never going to happen. Remind them that the Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts have been the bloc that have consistently blocked increases in the minimum wage for instance; "bidnezzmen simply can't afford to pay these people!!"

Remind them that Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnuts have consistently blocked aid to higher education, including STEM in high school.

In the end, it's going to be a generational slog. Neither Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© nor The Utterly Unhinged^© could take out a magic wand and turn a sub-GED knuckledragger, especially the bunch that want to be that way, into an MBA or chemist or linguist. What the Limp Wristed Lefties can do is offer an opportunity to climb out of ignorance, while the MAGAnauts want to keep them with a belief in persecution and retribution. Not against their real oppressors, but the imagined Highly Educated Elite.

For The Defense

A friend used to be a Federal Public Defender, aka criminal mouthpiece. With more talk of The Utterly Unhinged^© ordering Gaetz/etc. to prosecute anyone who said a discouraging word about The Utterly Unhinged^© or one of his minions, and most of the victims will turn out to be just GS-11 worker bees, the office will be flooded with victims. I guess he could come out of retirement and lend a hand. The Supremes said he can do this.

Life in Trumpistan - part the first

The world of fake news just got fakeier. This one's a beaut.

Project 2025 — the controversial blueprint for a newly reimagined federal government that Trump tried to distance himself from during the campaign despite numerous ties to its authors — called for NOAA to be "broken up and downsized" and said the agency was part of the "climate change alarm industry."

Lutnick, scientist du jour, will decree that global warming is a hoax and NOAA will never again use the term. I'll bet anything.

Here's a detailed review. We're not in Kansas anymore.

It would not be the first time The Utterly Unhinged^© tried to scrub science from the Damn Gummint.

"But this is what Americans can expect from Donald Trump, who as President abandoned the NSC's pandemic unit, suggested nuking hurricanes, lied about storms paths, said injecting Americans with bleach would kill sickness, and denied basic climate science," Singer added. "It's no surprise his allies' Project 2025 agenda builds on that extreme legacy."

Already the private sector, in the form of home insurance companies, is well on its way to clear out Florida. May be Gov. DeMented will end up in some storm shelter with a mass of Mexican illegals. Such a pretty sight.

Thought For The Day - 19 November 2024

C'mon Man!!! Are Joe and Mika so dumb as to think a visit now to The Utterly Unhinged^© will, in any way, stop him from siccing any and all departments of the Damn Gummint on them if they should utter one little word of criticism? Really?

[update]
Well... now that reporting is out that The Utterly Unhinged^© margin has slipped below the vaunted 50% landslide value (49.9%), how soon will the Gym Boy Jordan bloviate on Fox or Newsmax or News Nation that the Dems must have fiddled the total vote count. Must be those Jewish space lasers again. Very handy, those Jewish space lasers.

By The Numbers - part the eightieth

The wiki is a very useful reference, in that it aggregates data for you. At the moment (13:51 18 Nov), The Utterly Unhinged^© has a 2.6 million vote lead, and sits at 50% of the popular vote. So, enquiring minds want to know, how close is this 'win' for the corrupt? Turns out, kinda close.

If we limit ourselves to just the 50 state elections, Dubya and The Utterly Unhinged^© both had negative margins. And The Utterly Unhinged^© has the third smallest lead, by a bunch, when winning from ahead.

2024 - 1.72%
1968 - 0.70%
1960 - 0.17%

The next closest race: Carter at 2.06%.

Parsing through the table, the sore thumb sticking out is the wild gyrations in margins. Some in low single digits, others well above 20%. Harding, King of Corruption (died before he got caught) and Coolidge his deathbed successor, bested FDR's margins; all of them. More proof that Menken was right.

The Greatest Threat - part the fourth

David "I'm not as crazy as MAGA" French opines today that

Donald Trump is planting the seeds of his own political demise. The corrupt, incompetent and extremist men and women he's appointing to many of the most critical posts in his cabinet are direct threats to the well-being of the country, but they're also political threats to Trump and to his populist allies.

French's latest attempt to be the Compassionate Conservative. Baloney. As detailed in previous episodes, The Utterly Unhinged^© is singing

Where never is heard a discouraging word, and the sky is not clouded all day

There will be no government data which exposes the MAGA Kleptocracy. (Much, if not most, Federal data collection is done by Census, irregardless of the department publishing.) Shut down data collection at Census and the Fed. IOW, there's a small nexus, more or less, to strangle. Shutdown news media which tell the truth. You think I'm kidding?

So, French makes his case with

If he can't govern well, his populist partisan realignment will come apart before it can truly begin.

Which is Pollyanna on crack. As Bannon and the Project 2025 crew avow, the point is to not govern. The point is to create anarchy. And, as history and logic tell us, anarchy favors the rich. Which is the point of The Utterly Unhinged^© and The Musk Ox.

He closes with a view through scarlet glasses

Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas defended the Gaetz pick, saying, "Trump was elected to turn this place upside down." That's what Trump thinks. That's what MAGA thinks. But MAGA should beware. If Trump's cabinet picks help him usher in the chaos that is the water in which he swims, then the question won't be whether voters rebuke MAGA again, but rather how much damage it does before it fails once more.

The MAGAnauts, as The Utterly Unhinged^© promised:

Former President Donald Trump called on Christians to flood the polls in November, promising that if they vote him into office, they "won't have to vote again" in four years.

Of course he was serious, although clearly not Christian himself, and of course his zealots believed him. And, of course, these idiots still believe that their lives will be so much better with The Utterly Unhinged^© laying waste to governance. And his cabinet has stated plainly that the Trump Dynasty is just beginning. Ignore the law. Break the law. The Supremes will call this all "official duties" and therefore not actionable. Send the Army to quell demonstrations. Toss apostates into detention camps. Not actionable. All right out of the dictator's handbook.

We Have Liftdown!

We have liftdown!! Just fell to 50%!!! 8:30 EST 18 Nov. Now, that's a landslide. Still ~7,000,000 to count still most in CA. Come on The Utterly Unhinged^©, you can do it. Be a true dictator! The minority sucks up all the resources. Just like Putin and his bungalow on the Black Sea.

At least half of the voters down't want a criminal president.

Question For The Day - 16 November 2024

As the days go by, The Utterly Unhinged^©'s margin steps down to below the landslide 50%. As I type, he's at 50.1 which is a 2.70 million margin, with more than that still to be counted on the West Coast.

Obviously, 50.1% ain't no landslide. Gym Boy Jordan has been silent on corrupted voting this time around. Will his head explode if Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© pulls The Utterly Unhinged^© to 50% or lower??? I hope so.

update - 16:30
For context, 2020 total vote was 157 million (late into 2022, so about as close to 100% as one can get), while we're at 150 million, IOW, there's still room for Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© to drive The Utterly Unhinged^© under 50%. Oh joy, oh joy!!! Fuck that mandate.

Protect the Women and Children!

Well... that didn't take long. Protect the women and children!!! RFK is only proposed to take over HHS, and the bio ETF takes it in the neck. Cool. Lost more than 5% as I type. Your mileage may vary.

The Greatest Threat - part the third

Well, that didn't take long. New reporting that The Utterly Unhinged^© intends to stifle NOAA and its children.

In the 2018 book "The Fifth Risk," which details efforts to shrink the federal government under Donald Trump's first presidential administration, the author Michael Lewis described what it would mean to lose NOAA information. "Without that data and the Weather Service to make sense of it," Lewis wrote, "no plane would fly, no bridge would be built and no war would be fought — at least not well."€

The Utterly Unhinged^© will keep his Superwide Sharpie ready for action.

Stupid is as stupid does

Trump has called climate change a hoax and said he would rollback climate regulations, and, according to Lewis's book, officials in the Trump White House did not know that NOAA existed or what it did when Trump took office in 2017.

Nominating Gaetz, although may be only a semi-pardon, is clearly a shot across the bow of the populace

"So, you say I'm a total whack job? Try this for size. And there'll be more where that came from."

What's odd is that the Republicans should be able to do simple arithmetic: he can't last much longer. Did you see the video of him being stuffed into that garbage truck? He starts out as a lame duck paper tiger. Now, it is true that Alzheimer's Ronnie was handled by Nancy for most of his second term. Same sort of thing for Wilson. FDR was physical, not mental, in case you're asking. Can there be a worthy successor? Not usually, outside real monarchies or dictatorships. We're not yet in the latter. Knock on wood.

MAGA is as MAGA Does

One way to parse the election is to look back, a bit, on the level of education of the Red states. Here's the fake news.

Of the 20 states with the lowest per pupil spending, 17 (Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah) were in the South or West regions. The remaining three were Missouri, South Dakota and Indiana.`

Of that list, only New Mexico and Colorado voted Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^©.

The Red state education motto: "Ya don't need no book larnin to walk behind a plow mule or make babies. We need more White babies." Of course, Mother Earth is either at or finger nail close to her capacity. Naturally, the White countries will suck resources from the Shithole countries to keep us obese and happy. Just as we've always done.

Now that MAGA has the Damn Gummint by the nuts, expect funding for all kinds of nutball Evangelical Reactionary Radical Right Wingnut programs. Ya know, like teaching that the Bible is 100% accurate history, Mother Earth is 6,000 years old, and that our ancestors frolicked with dinosaurs. And, of course, climate change is a woke hoax.

The net result of this assault on science and reason is that today's breeders of rug rats will bestow on their own a burnt out cinder of a planet. Always keep in mind Dr. McElhone, "The world is not linear." Once you're in the bend, the ride upward is rapid.

The Greatest Threat - part the second

Well...

Now that Gaetz and Gabbard are on the board, time to game plan the data threat. Soon after the inauguration, The Utterly Unhinged^© will sign an executive order requiring all agencies to pre-file any public statement through the White House. Either The Utterly Unhinged^© will approve, or one of his loyal servants will. There will never be any bad news about the self-serving machinations, and that includes stuff that benefits The Musk Ox and other toadies. Kleptocracy is the rule of law.

We're on the road to dystopia. Too bad it's not just another Hope and Crosby song fest.

Question For The Day - 13 November 2024

As the days go by, The Utterly Unhinged^©'s margin steps down to below the landslide 50%. As I type, he's at 50.2 which is a 3.16 million margin, with more than that still to be counted on the West Coast.

Obviously, 50.2% ain't no landslide. Gym Boy Jordan has been silent on corrupted voting this time around. Will his head explode if Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© pulls The Utterly Unhinged^© to 50% or lower??? I hope so.

2024 Post Mortem - part the first

All the data isn't in yet, and won't be for some time. What we need to see is the precinct level data to know whether The Great and Powerful Odd^© has, in fact, flipped a significant number of bricks in the Blue Wall. As of now, the data say no.

Here is an instant analysis from the NYT, and it, so far, supports my instant analysis of last Wednesday: the pussy Dems just stayed home. I suppose that enough of the city slickers figured that there'd be so many city slickers out for The Great and Powerful Odd^©'s neck that their vote wouldn't be needed. They were wrong.

Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation's most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.

You can't win if you don't vote.

Whether or not The Great and Powerful Odd^© has turned the USofA into Trumpistan for good and all is a question that can't be answered right now. There's still counting on the West Coast, and enough votes to make The Great and Powerful Odd^© a minority president, yet again. He sure ain't gonna be a landslide.

To answer the question, one need compare the precinct level votes to, at least, 2020 to understand whether The Great and Powerful Odd^©'s margin in popular vote came from additional voting for him (my guess right now) or from Dems. who decide to go MAGA (not my guess right now). It's difficult to see what a Dem. would find appealing in The Great and Powerful Odd^©? He's gotten only more batshit since 2016 and 2020.

Phasers to Stun

Those of you who don't follow pharma as a fact of life may find the RFK, Jr. meme puzzling but not dangerous. Well, it is dangerous. But there is inherent danger in all of pharma, and in CNS space (central nervous system drugs) particularly. Such drugs rely, (almost?) exclusively on subjective surveys of symptoms and behaviors. The space is reknowned for 'unexpected' placebo effects in trials. After all, if what you're measuring isn't some sort of titer, can you trust all the humans involved in generating the data?

As we've found drugs for 'normal' disease, the CNS space emerges as a Final Frontier. What to do, what to do? Well... take a flyer. Most CNS maladies don't have the TAM of normal diseases, so end up with eardrum haemorrhaging prices. In all, billion dollar M&A is becoming more common. AbbVie dropped a cool $9 billion for an outfit that had a spiffy schizophrenia drug in trials. Turns out, the wheel came up 13 Red. Oops.

What is amazing is that the drug failed in PII!! That's not supposed to happen with a drug. The whole point of staged phase trials is that PII is supposed to, designed to, prove what was seen in pre-clinical and PI: the spiffy new drug is the silver bullet. The way that happens (most drug failures happen later in PIII) is that the sponsor, working with the CRO carefully vet sites, patients, data recorders, and the rest of the whole nine yards in order to have a sample (typically an order of magnitude smaller than the follow-on PIII) of patients who can't possibly fail. Or, that's the intent. Not this time.

In the first trial, AbbVie tracked numerically bigger reductions in PANSS scores, 14.7 and 16.5 points, in the emraclidine arms than in the placebo group, 13.5 points. However, the difference fell short of statistical significance. In the second trial, placebo beat one of the two emraclidine doses numerically, racking up a 16.1-point improvement compared to the 14.2-point reduction in the treatment group.
-- my emphasis

No doubt, finding drugs for such CNS maladies is a good thing. But we're not messing with some virus or bacterium that we can slay without hurting the rest of the body too, too much. The current crop of drugs targeting Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, ALS, and such are all in the same swamp.

The Corruption Begins

The corruption begins. The Great and Powerful Odd^© demands that any appointee need not be vetted. Just like a dictator. Are you really, really surprised?

The mob gave us this notion of "governance". Not what the Founders had in mind, but what Andy Jackson invented. The Great and Powerful Odd^©'s Heeero.

The Greatest Threat

To repeat the title: what does gentle reader consider the biggest threat from The Great and Powerful Odd^© sitting in power? There are a host of possibilities, naturally, after all, this is a madman.

Beyond the Revenge Tour, which will be extra-legal and likely reserved for the high flyers who defied him, I'll illustrate. Remember when he sat down with the 'official' map of Hurricane Dorian, and with his signatlure Superwide Sharpy added a blob to the end of the cone of uncertainty to put the storm into Georgia and Alabama? NOAA responded by saying that he was an idiot. Well... may be not so honestly.

Now that the Supremes have codified the Unified Executive assertion, NOAA will not do that again. NOAA will not ever mention global warming or hurricane intensity and such. What will happen is that no department will ever, ever release data that casts anything The Great and Powerful Odd^© does or says as false.

That goes, in particular, for all economic data. Employment will always be great. Inflation will always be low. Migrants will always be killing citizens. Interest rate will always need to be lower. You get the notion. It will happen. All those billionaires who patted themselves on the back for getting him back on the Throne, will be sailing blind through their seas of troubles, having no idea what the numbers really are.

He's asserted that he knows more about monetary policy, and should be allowed to meddle with interest rates

"I feel the president should have at least a say in there. I feel that strongly," Trump said at a press conference in August, referring to the Fed's interest rate decisions. "I made a lot of money. I was very successful. And I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve — or the chairman."

Of course, he made his money by scamming lenders from here to Timbuktu, bankrupting 6 of his 'companies' in the process. And, it's just a fact that the real estate business always wants interest rate lower than whale shit. To remind: The Great and Powerful Odd^© couldn't get into the BBA program at Wharton back when that program accepted any warm body. He slunk off to Fordham as a frosh. Then, his brother arranged to get him in the side door of Wharton for his last two years. And, no, there's not a shred of evidence that he graduated at the top of his class, not even cum laude. Grifters will grift.

It's a brave new world, grasshopper.

Lunatic Left

The GOP has been stoking the anger of the sub-GED class for decades, at least since Nixon's Southern Strategy. The Great Unhinged just soaked it in gasoline and tossed in a lit match. The Left Wing pundits, with the loss to The Great Unhinged are wringing their hands. It's a losing battle. Here's why.

There was, is, and always will be a skill/wage function. The more skill, the higher wage; assuming that the greater skill comes as result of ability and larnin. This function is out of the control of a Party or a President, at least in the short to medium term. And, moreover, that Party or President has to be serious about improving the skill level of the low/least skilled people. The GOP has never been interested. Educated folks tend toward Liberal because they simply understand the world better; not just life in the holler. The GOP would rather the latter.

Here's where the rubber meets the road: at least many, if not most, of the white uneducated, unskilled, underpaid underclass are in that condition by choice. Many may not realize it, and fewer would admit it. They favor huntin and fishin and fightin over book larnin. Just go look at the education data by Red and Blue. It ain't a pretty picture.

There's data to back this up, as Sosnik has previously written. In an August report on growing income inequality in the US, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis documented that for every dollar of wealth in a household headed by a college graduate, a household headed by a high school graduate has 22 cents

How then, to entice people who feel persecuted by the Lunatic Left to vote Democrat? They expressly ignore the fact that it's been the Dems who've legislated to provide them better opportunity. It's a fact that low-to-no skill labor earned a better wage when unions were not busted. The GOP, and their friends in bidnezz, did that. It will take a generation or two of increased engagement with education for the sub-GED class to move up. There was a time, even in my memory, when downtrodden parents were happy to see their kids finish high school and may be college. These days, not so much. Such families have been convinced by the GOP that their grievance (or just plain jealousy) against the educated folk is real, and not their fault. But it is. Such folk continue to elect politicians who offer shitty schooling; that has to stop.

As always the Evangelical Radical Right Reactionary Wingnuts offer up battle in a culture war instead of a path out of poverty. "Our reactionary view of the world is better than that Liberal shit of Blacks and Jews and Queers. We must rid the Real USofA of such 'absolute garbage'. It's us or them!"

The Electoral College was supposed to protect the country from government of, by, and for the illiterate mob. It's failed. Miserably.

The Great Unhinged and his cabal will party like it's 1829. Too bad the rest of us have to live that way, too.

The Senate Bump

Luckily for me, the question has been answered. Is there a case when a President was elected through the EC solely by the fact that shitkicker states get the unfair advantage of 2 extra electors. IOW, what is the EC result if only based on House seats? Turns out, 3 Presidents got away with murder. The last being Dubya, and The Supremes couldn't have put their thumb on the scales to save him. Here's the story.

With the two electoral vote bump removed, Gore would have won 225-211.

Hell of a democracy.

Lazy Bastards

2020 registered voters - 240,000,000 
2020 people voted      - 158,427,986

2020 sat on their asses and didn't vote - ~81,000,000

2024 people voted - 140,439,667

It looks like neither landslide emerged. Just a bunch of lazy bastards. The Blue Wall fell by 242,000 votes.

@22:33 6 Nov.

By The Numbers - part the seventy ninth [update beta]

A sad day for democracy. All those who voted for The Great Unhinged^© because they want a Strong Man as president will reap Menken's fury. So will the rest of us who wanted no such thing.

Which brings us to an early (likely incomplete), post-mortem: how come? While all the numbers aren't in, it's clear that the Latino vote abandoned the Democrats. And, why would that be? I've long harbored a distrust, in the political sense only, of that bloc. The reason is that most of Latin America has a history, and currency, of autocratic rule are worst, and one party control at best, energized democracy not so much. Thus immigrants from such countries are enured to the likes of The Great Unhinged^©. And they voted that way. Irregardless of the simple fact that political support has always come from the Dems and The Great Unhinged^© blamed them for the ills of the USofA!! "Poisoning the blood" and all that. That's cognitive dissonance that boggles the mind. Whether the Latino bloc has pulled off Jill Stein 2016 is not yet clear, but they put a big dent in Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^©'s total. The answer will pop up in the news soon enough. One has to wonder how many of these legal MAGA Latinos will end up being deported? Just like the VA 'illegal' voters who were actually legal. I hope it's millions.

The other conundrum: of the 10 states voting on abortion, 7 passed and 1 'abstained'
Here are the passed:
Missouri - Trump
Nevada - ? Trump
Montana - Trump
Arizona - ? Trump
Colorado - Harris
Maryland - Harris
New York - Harris

Nebraska implicitly defeated 6 week ban by keeping the 12 week ban (for now) and a majority passed the viability amendment, but by less than the 12 week and thus lost; quite a catch, that catch-22.

A good deal of cognitive dissonance on display. Not enough, on this basis alone, to give her the White House.

The Big Question: will all this reactionary shit cause significant brain drain in these antebellum shithole states? One can only hope.

By The Numbers - part the seventy eighth

Well... prediction time. As one might imagine, Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© is my preference, for a host of reasons. But that don't amount to a hill of beans, and all that.

The 'honest' polling has Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© with a 3 to 4 point lead, nationally. But, as we all regret, that doesn't amount to a hill of beans, either. On another forum (not one of mine) the electoral college came up, yet again. Which led me to explore its history again. The most mind boggling is that for the first few elections, the electors were appointed by the state legislatures directly. No voting required.

In spite of Hamilton's assertion that electors were to be chosen by mass election, initially, state legislatures chose the electors in most of the states.

Moreover, we find that electoral colleges have been shitcanned in every Western democracy that had one; except here, of course.

By the end of the 20th century, electoral colleges had been abandoned by all other democracies around the world in favor of direct elections for an executive president.

Which, more or less, brings us to reading some tea leaves. We know that the Gold Standard Iowa poll has Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© ahead of The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon., which has sent him into near earth orbit. We know that Dems are out voting Reps in early voting. We know that wimins are out voting male chauvinist pigs in the early voting. We know that Sleepy Joe earned 7,000,000 more votes than The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. in 2020.

The Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts have, at least since Nixon (but really long before), not run campaigns on political issues, but rather culture wars, which are wholly based on population density, i.e. shitkickers and the Bible vs. city folk and education. Not the Koran or The Vedas or The Tripitaka or any of those other pagan religions count. It's not as if the shitkickers have advanced any part of USofA life over the last 225 years, now have they? Along that line, I'm always amused, although not recently for obvious reasons, by photos of bin Laden directing using a satellite phone. What better way to drag the globe, the Western part anyway, back to 600 AD? Of course the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts want us to go back to 1 AD, or even earlier if they can find some text that fits their male chauvinist demands.

In sum then, what's going to happen? We know that Sleepy Joe earned 7,000,000 more votes than The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.. We know that wimins are pissed at The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. for not only killing Roe, but boasting about it. And we know that females are out voting males by a non-trivial margin so far. So, we can surmise that Blue voting is running ahead of what Sleepy Joe earned in 2020. What's it all mean, Mr. Natural? My guess is that Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© end up 10,000,000 ahead of The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. when all is said and done. Whether she gets to 270 isn't clear. In 2020, Sleepy Joe's 7,000,000 was made from CA's 5,000,000 and small change elsewhere. What we do know: if The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. does get the Oval Office, he'll do a Russian Gulag with gusto. The Supremes have said he can.

By The Numbers - part the seventy seventh

Even though my paternal grandmother had a genealogy done way back when (those forbears came here from Jolly Olde England in 1638), I don't follow UK/British news on purpose much. I knew that the Tories had lost in the last election, but I didn't recall the numbers. Well here they are. That's gotta hurt.

The Tories were dumped from government in a July general election, going from 372 to 121 seats in the process, reflecting public anger over their management of the economy, crime, immigration and standards in public life.

And, of course, they go all in for The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. shit. Their very own Black Nazi? No, she didn't say that, but the report reads like someone who is. May be. Sort of. Will the Olde Sod tell us about us? Just remember: it ain't 1829 anymore.

By The Numbers - part the seventy sixth

What's that they say, "payback's a bitch"? First, the Musk Ox makes you his bitch (he he), then your business takes it in the neck.

On Monday, NPR reported that by midday more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions to the Post, citing two people familiar with the matter.

What's the over/under in days to hit 1,000,000?

Well, today's total is up to 250,000!! Jeff is so, so not so

Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one.

I wonder how The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.'s dick tastes? Is it that geezer mustiness? Not that I would know, of course.

By The Numbers - part the seventy fifth

What's that they say, "payback's a bitch"? First, the Musk Ox makes you his bitch (he he), then your business takes it in the neck.

On Monday, NPR reported that by midday more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions to the Post, citing two people familiar with the matter.

What's the over/under in days to hit 1,000,000?

As of 2023, digital total was 2.5 million. Already nearing a 10% hit. Some bidnezz have gone under losing less. Have fun Jeff. May be the Musk Ox will give you a free ride on SpaceX? Blue Origin you say?

Just after I hit enter on this piece, Jeff's plea that he did nothing wrong, nothing at all popped up. As the many 'experts' on dictators have pointed out: they get going by instilling fear of retribution, and getting self-censorship in return. Note that Jeff says that there was no explicit quid pro quo involved. Well, as a very good line from a L&O episode put it (Claire), "like any good gift, it was a surprise". The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. has made clear, explicitly, he will use DoJ, IRS, and any other arm of the executive branch to attack anyone he finds 'disloyal'. Too bad he lost not only his hair but his gonads, too. A while ago.

"I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally," he wrote.

Jeff had no need to 'consult' with The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. before pulling the plug. He can't do that, because if he admits he's The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.'s bitch, everyone knows he's The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.'s bitch. Them's the words of a scaredy cat self-censor. You betcha.

Hinged

While we were out on the island, the hasp for the new shed door, about 3/4 inch of solid hardwood, was finally installed. These are barn door hinges. Big gorillas. The first attempt failed when the block to hold the receiver bracket split. Ah well. But now it's there, replacing a nicely warped sheet of plywood. Long story.

But, we're here to consider the unhinged. The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon. has been on a torrent of spewing shit by the cubic yard. Why? I told The Wife when this got really going a few weeks ago that the answer was as plane as the nose on all the Mount Rushmore faces. It's not well known among the average public, largely because the lamestream media don't talk about it anymore (they used to, a lot), but the fact is that campaigns especially the Presidential variety do a very lot of polling on their own nickel (and the PACs nickels, too). And if a campaign has really deep pockets or the PACs do, they can do more granular polling (larger sample sizes) more often and more widely. As a rule, these internal polls, only rarely exposed to the public before or after a campaign, are more accurate.

Which makes The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.'s totally unhinged behaviour obvious: he knows he's going to get skinned alive. This also explains all the legal attacks being constructed for when he gets his ass handed to him. He's burned every bridge to a constituency except for the neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers. We'll see in a few days, but I can't think of another reason for him to go totall batshit. He has to. It's his only hope.

Life Imitates Art - part the second

Paula Poundstone admitted once that her teeVee viewing is mostly "Law and Order". Same here. I suspect that she, as I, have no use for Tucker the fucker. And his unhinged rant a few days ago certainly is reason for such.

If you have one of the channels that loops the L&O episodes, get ready for "Surrender Dorothy"/2000

The DA's office believes that a well-known psychologist/author may have driven his daughter-in-law to suicide because her increasing rebellion against his "submissive wife" philosophy would have ruined his reputation and lucrative career.

One can only hope that no one takes Tucker the fucker that seriously.

And, lest we forget

"Honey, I'm Home"

These Right Wingnuts are all that wacko. Dad's always pissed.

Decorum

Very long time readers may recall references to Bermuda in these musings. That trip, by boat I may add, was before these missives began. But I've been on the email listserve of "The Royal Gazette" since then. Today is one of the few times I've felt the compulsion to share. It seems that the Attorney General of that Overseas Territory went ballistic in court. How very UnBritish.

"The Royal Gazette" asked the Bermuda Police Service if police were called to the court and a spokesman said: "On Tuesday, October 15, 2024, an officer assisted with a minor incident at the courts that was quickly resolved and did not require any further police action. There will be no further comment made."

Imagine if Bill Barr had blown his top? Well... crickets from the back benchers. Merrick Garland? The world is coming to an end.

By The Numbers - part the seventy fourth

For some years, all of them while I've been keeping track, the pharma bulls have bitched and moaned about the onerous steeplechase that has to be navigated to get these wonderful (new, occasionally) drugs approved. About 3 decades ago, FDA more or less caved to this bitching, and created a less onerous track called, as one might expect, accelerated approval. The gig was that if a drug had stat sig (mostly), clinically meaningful (mostly) benefit before doing a PIII trial(s), and (mostly) targeted an unmet need in the population, then the drug could be sold. The gotcha was that this was a conditional approval, requiring a full-blooded PIII trial post-approval.

The cynical among us (raises hand, very high) found this regime ripe for gaming. And so it has been. Today's Derek Lowe post reviews a rigorous study of these accelerated approvals in oncology. It ain't a pretty sight. In fact, recently FDA now requires that the all-important full-blooded PIII be underway before the accelerated approval can be granted; fobbing off the PIII has not been as rare as hen's teeth.

But the trends in these oncology trials are worth noting: the failure rates of the traditional Phase III oncology trials have been gradually falling over this period (with an overall Phase III failure rate of about 41%, but currently at 34%), whereas the confirmatory post-marketing Phase III oncology trial failure rates have been increasing in recent years, from around 14% during the 1992-2015 period to 33% in 2016-2023.

Conmen will con.

And, it's worth knowing that truly good new drugs don't have to complete a PIII. If the sponsor really, really believes that New Drug X is better than high button shoes, then the sponsor has the option to schedule (not make up as the trial goes along; mostly) interim analysis. It's a bit more convoluted than simply doing the same arithmetic that gets done with the full data set after all patients have been run through the trial; the stat requirements are a tad more stringent. If New Drug X meets the stat requirements, and FDA agrees with the trial data, then New Drug X will get standard approval before trialing all patients. But, as I say, if the sponsor really, really believes in New Drug X, then such is the more ethical avenue.

One might wonder how much worse the situation is in the CNS world. Alzheimer's strikes a familiar note. If you watch carefully on the teeVee, the mood altering compounds display some less than stellar efficacy in the fleeting, tiny print at the end of the advert.

Here's another report in that same space.

End of the Hype?

Well... it did have to happen, and may be it has. ASML has tanked bigly, stock market wise. As I type, it's down $180 from Monday's close and bouncing up a little and down a bit more. Seems that demand for their bottleneck machines is predicted, by them, to wane going forward. The AI chipmakers are collateral damage. May be the AI fever has broken? One hopes so.

Captain Obvious

Well, today's gobsmacking revelation just popped up on CNN

"The biggest single, best predictor of how someone's going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics," Sosnik told David Chalian on the "CNN Political Briefing" podcast.

I've never heard of Sosnik, but if he really, really believes this is "now", he's an idiot. Smart people, at least 99.44% of them, vote liberal/progressive/pussy today and since the beginning of the Republic. In order to keep control in the hands of the dirty boot idiots, we get the Electoral College and 3/5 and so on. FDR gave so much to pull the dirty boot idiots out of the muck that they think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and immigrants and Jews and Negroes and HighSpanics are taking it all away.

As the topic has arisen in these essays over time, the cause has been since the beginning of the Republic: the dirty boot folk have always elected politicians who do all they can to keep them in dirty boots; sick, poor, and uneducated.

Which brings us to the only reason to question immigration from the shithole countries: such countries are (nearly?) all dictatorships, and have been for generations and even the escapees are enured to such treatment. The MAGAnauts ought to be welcoming them with open arms. Why do you think that the Central and South American immigrants tilt toward The Orange Shitgibbon^©anon.? He's what they know.

By The Numbers - part the seventy third

Well, I suppose it had to happen. The anti-vaxx crowd has organized and exploded. This report in the NYT (there are myriad others) makes the lunatics obvious. And gives them publicity they probably shouldn't get. Be that as it may.

It's the No Nothing Party gone beserk. They really do want to party like it's 1829. If the mRNA vaccines, not to mention the decades old childhood vaccines (not mRNA), were turning people into vegetables and the like, you'd think there'd be widespread reporting on such. Fox and Newsmax and such. Crickets.

Number of jabs of Covid mRNA in the USofA: 677 million. Of that total, aprox. 83,000 are Novavax, a 'traditional' type.

So, with all that mRNA circulating in the blood of witless Americans, you'd expect to see some instances of mRNA's perniciousness. Crickets. Yes, there are some rare cases. Here's the real skinny (if you believe in science): non-trivial side effects are about a handful per million doses, and occur in otherwise healthy young-uns.

Here's the CDC report on incidence of myocarditis deaths. Of course, the MAHA cabal will insist in roaring voice, that CDC/FDA/space lasers from Mars are conspiring to keep the gullible on the verge of death. No one was found to have been killed by mRNA caused myocarditis. Zero.

But, that's not the Big Kahuna of the MAHA crowd. The Big Kahuna is that mRNA, however administered or why, alters DNA of the patient. Um, nope. And, btw, Nebraska isn't a hotbed of Leftist elite.

The lunatic fringe, on a revenge ride like the surviving Earps, will wreak havoc and death to the USofA. Be careful who you vote for.

Junk Yard

Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© is a recent title. The latter is Walz, of course. His latest contretemps is the call to get rid of the Electoral College. The sort of bomb throwing one expects from the Junk Yard Dog. Not quite on the level of MTG's assertion that Sleepy Joe and Commie Law have been engineering hurricanes to devastate Red Counties just before the election. Get the hell out of Hurricane Alley. Blowback has ensued.

Today brings new reporting of backpedaling. Ah well.

But the notion boils down to the simple choice: do you want a Damn Gummint run by chucklehead hillbillies? They'll steal all the moolah from the Rest of Us to pay for living in Tornado Alley, Hurricane Alley, filthy Hollers, and any Desert they can find (with myriad water guzzling golf courses, of course; water supplied by the Great Lakes). And insisting that Earth is 6,000 years old and must be taught to first graders. Who don't get lethal vaccinations, of course.

Sleepy Joe squeaked out an EC win, but with 7,059,526 more total votes than Alzheimer's Ronnie, II. Covfefe!

The EC was created for the same reason as the 3/5 thing: to bring along the slave states, and guarantee them more than one-man-one-vote. It's right up their with the rule for deciding a tied EC: the House votes the President, but not on the House seat count, but by states, which just happen to be more MAGA. That's quite a catch, that Catch 22.

By The Numbers - part the seventy second [update]

Well... it's been clear for some decades that Big Time college sport, first football then basketball, were merely instructional leagues for the pros. Now the bandaid of "amateurism" has been ripped off. What's the over/under on years until Big Time college sports no longer require any classes for Big Time college athletes?

[A] group led by former Disney executives-turned-investment professionals has proposed a 70-team super league featuring schools from the four power conferences that would infuse up to $9 billion in private capital cash into the sport.

What's that olde saw? "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out". I went to a football game, and no one went to class.

I wouldn't find it quite so repulsive if at least some, preferably mostly, of those billions went into the academic functions of the schools. And, if memory serves, a lot of Big Time college sports (in the Red states, most) are state schools. Reminds me of those speed traps in the small town Red South. [update... didn't take long, did it?] Well, the bet is off, mostly. It's already here. Color me Shocked!! Shocked I say!!!

Last April, near the end of his third semester on campus, Sanders attended an in-person class for the first time. It was filmed for his social media accounts.

The Worm Turns

Once again, a report from Derek Lowe. This one is especially nice, since it is another feather in the cap of the Cambridge-Boston biotech hat. Well... mostly, but the other one went to UMass Med and teaches there now. That's in Woosta, which is mostly 'around Boston' to most folks.

Gentle Reader likely remembers the whacko crowd yelling that mRNA was going to do such horrible things to the bodies of those who got the vaccines. And right now, God damn it! Haven't heard from them in some time, now have we? I mean, for the MAGAnauts to believe their bullshit, they really, really should have been insisting that the Blue State pointy headed smart people get vaccinated early and often. So that they would die off next week, and the MAGAnauts could take over the planet. Kind of like zombies. But I digress.

The report is about the development of microRNA, and why it's important. Again, one needn't be a medicinal chemist etc. to get the gist of what's going on.

That went from model organisms like fruit flies and zebrafish all the way to humans, and further experiments showed that yes indeed, this microRNA system was involved in timing of gene expression in cells from all of these organisms. In fact, it seemed to be a very important part of the gene expression machinery in every creature with left/right symmetry in their bodies.

Which must piss off the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnut crowd a whole bunch. If they ever find out. There's zero chance that Fox or Newsmax or the Butt Fuck Crier will carry the story.

And that, folks, is what a Nobel Prize-worthy discovery looks like.

Different Ox - part the first

Well, we're in it again. Another hurricane devestates some place, in the Red states. One might wonder whether those Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts will vote against another bailout, like they did with Superstorm Sandy? After all, that happened in rich Blue states, mostly, and they deserves to fend for themselves. And they ain't no such a ting as climate change.

I'm willing to bet that the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts are pleased as punch that Asheville, home to flower power hippie types, got thoroughly wiped out. God's punishment.

The hurricane damaged an estimated 80 percent of the buildings in the River Arts District of Asheville, N.C., and upended the lives of artists who had recast the city as a cultural force.

Will try to keep an ear to the ground. I'm pretty damn sure that Asheville will be on the short end of the stick when the Congressional delegation and state legislature get around to doling out the Bongo Bucks for rebuilding. God got rid of them infidels, and not a dime to put 'em back together. No sireeee.

Uncle Sugar - part the first

Well, it's happened again: a new drug for a (relatively) small TAM, expressly depends on Socialized Medicine to foot the bill. I kid you not:

According to a Bristol Myers Squibb spokesperson, the wholesale cost for a month's supply will be $1,850. Depending on people's insurance coverage, that cost could be lower for individual patients. Bristol Myers Squibb estimates that 80% of people with schizophrenia in the U.S. have insurance coverage either through Medicare or Medicaid.

So, schizo's are mostly geezers and/or in shithole circumstances? Is that what Bristol thinks/hopes? What would MAGA do?

And, for what it's worth, I'm still not clear that such would be covered by M/M directly, since this is not a doctor's office drug. It would be 'covered' for those who pay for Part D, which isn't always cheap. And United Health, et al, have built up a deserved reputation of putting profit before patient; will Cobenfy be as cheap as generic SoC? Not likely. So, it's really not Socialized Medicine, as generally defined. Who wooda thunk it?

By The Numbers - part the seventy first

Well, Ohtani did become the first 50/50 ballplayer, and all the lamestream baseball pundits are cumming in their dad jeans. What a crock. There is no question that Ohtani is a major attraction. But the 50/50 gaga is silly.

In 2023, MLB changed the pitching rule to limit the pitcher to three throws to first base, and increased the size of the base. Hmm?

So, enquiring minds need to know: league wide, what happened to stolen bases from 2022 to 2023/2024? You guessed it, up. By a bunch (doesn't say how far into '24 the numbers go).

2022 - 1,261
2023 - 1,820
2024 - 1,851

Not like falling off a log, but c'mon man! Consider what Ricky would have done with these rules?

Life Changing

Here's yet another report on the progress of fusion. To be clear: it's nothing more than another way to boil water to make steam which then spins a turbine connected to a generator which then pushes them wee little electrons down the wire.

It's a long-ish piece, but doesn't (as none that I've seen do) discuss the implications for how we would run a society or economy mostly, if not solely, on wee little electrons in the wire. In particular, the winners, based on current conditions, would be the Europeans (and some Asians) who still have a substantial infrastructure of electric transport. The USofA used to, but as is well known (not propaganda), GM bought up many city light rail systems and sold buses. The argument, then and now, is that buses can easily be re-routed from low ridership to high ridership routes. All well and good. After all, 29% of the USofA's fossil fuel energy consumption is transport. OTOH, as any highway engineer will tell you - once built, a new road (or even, lane) will almost immediately reach its 10 or 20 year design capacity. If you build it, they will come. Come to think of it, rail transport is the perfect way to drive urban design. What a concept.

Another important use of fossil fuels is heating our homes (and workplaces), which comes to 61%. Kinda big. Not surprising, switching building heat (and, you might be surprised, cooling) to 'all electric home' (you may remeber that phrase from decades ago!) requires little work at the infrastructure level. 3-phase transmission lines in housing areas might need a voltage boost to handle the increased load, and of course that oil/gas furnance would needs go away, but that can be viewed as a sociatal cost and mitigated by Uncle Sugar.

The big nut to crack is how to leverage 'nearly free' elecricity (at least at the operating cost level) for transport. Is their enough lithium to be mined to support "a Tesla in every garage"? Not sure. As so often, kinda depends on how you measure. Is lithium re-usable? Sorta. Kinda.

Of course, all that matters more in a car oriented society than a rail transport one. Boston (Charlie of the MTA crowd) once had extensive trackless trolleys, but the last line shutdown last year. Sigh. I suspect baksheesh this time around, too.

So, the moral of the story: They Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. While the direct cost of pushing those wee little electrons in the wire with fusion generation is likely to be quite small, the opportunity to use those wee little electrons is largely a function of USofA's energy infrastructure, and transport habits. Not so much.

This is tokamak.

Future Transcript - part the first

Now that Bone Spur Samurai^© and Just Dumb Vance^© have been playing the poor victim of the Lefties, wrt attempts of Off Bone Spur Samurai^©, I've found a transcript of part of a rally speech from Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© to be given on 31 September, in Tulsa, OK.

Enjoy!

My fellow Americans and Red Neck Sooners, the time has come to stop the bullshit surrounding the two, so far, attempts on Bone Spur Samurai^©. To be clear, the perps were not, nor ever were, Libs from shithole Blue States. No, in point of fact, they were/are died in the Rock Ribbed Red MAGA wool whackoes. What we don't yet know about their motives. It's clear that a disaffected Evangelical Radical Right Wingnut would only drift so far away from Bone Spur Samurai^© to feel the need to off the bastard with some deep provocation.

It would appear that there's really only three possibilites:
-- Bone Spur Samurai^© has not gone unhinged enough that the perp has to take revenge
-- Bone Spur Samurai^© has sucked Vlad's dick so much in Ukraine ...
-- Bone Spur Samurai^© has caved to the Deep State and gone all soft in the middle (well, metaphorically of course; he's Jabba the Hut IRL) so ...

So, Bone Spur Samurai^© shut the hell up. Just be thankful that a real marksman from one of those shithole countries that you keep pissing on, doesn't see to it that you get your just desserts.

USA!! USA!!! USA!!!! Bomb Moscow back to the Stone Age! We know how to do that!!

[ahem]
really dumb
-- Jonah Goldberg/2024

Dee Feat is in Dee Flation - part the forty ninth

Well, boy howdy!! My early morning sojurn to the grocers and the greasy spoon (the former for foods and the NYT, the latter for a bun, a cuppa joe, and the NYT crossword) takes my by an Exxon station. And, boy howdy!! Regular at cash is $2.99.9!!! Take that Alzheimer's Ronnie, II. Ya gonna give credit to Sleepy Joe and Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^©?? I suppose not.

Scaredy Cat - part the first

Well, he could saute himself, although one might surmise that his recent unhinged bloaviating indicates self-immolation. Be that as it may, we have this.

Scared little Bone Spur Samurai^©. I guess not getting the clap in the 60s and 70s qualifies as combat duty.

The Tyranny of Average Cost - part the twenty fourth

Today's NYT has a long piece on the dangers of over-automation. Rather than repeat most of it, just this

Opposition from unions is just one obstacle to automation. The installation of new machinery and software can cost many millions and even billions of dollars — investments that can take years to pay off. And some ports may not have an incentive to invest in new technology when shipping companies and their customers can't easily move to more efficient ports.

Sound familiar? Use the automation a little or use it a lot, the cost is nearly the same, because it's all sunk and can't be avoided. What happens to capital when there's no more labor to replace?

By The Numbers - part the seventieth

Sex, lies, and videotape.

Bone Spur Samurai^© a lot, Commie Law and the Junk Yard Dog^© not so much. CNN

Trump ultimately delivered more than 30 false claims during the debate, CNN's preliminary count found, while Harris shared just one false claim, though she also added some claims that were misleading or lacking in key context.

I suppose we'll see updated figures in due time.

And, of course, Bone Spur Samurai^© went totally unhinged afterwards, since every time he loses something, anything, it's because he's been sabotaged. Those six bankruptcies had nothing to do with him, of course.

They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.

Such a whiner.

Codd's Revenge

Some years ago, this report ran in the NYT, relating the not so spectacular life of IBM Watson. I find it a cautionary tale for those who cleave to the notion that there's some 'post relational' data world. They ain't no such a thing.

This was predicted some time ago

This goldrush is being driven by the hauntingly accurate results AI has delivered in fields like image, audio and video recognition. Yet, at the end of the day, these algorithms are merely correlation machines, sifting through vast piles of numbers to record subtle correlations among inputs without any high order understanding that would allow them to divine causative relationships. In the end, we are building our AI revolution on a correlation house of cards.

It's not widely discussed, but IBM built DB2 on top of mainframe VSAM way back when. Codd was driven to define the RM in the face of IBM's then major database product IMS, which was/is the hierarchical database. It was defined as a way around the network database. If one wished to, one could have built DB2-lite into any COBOL application, since key-indexed files were/are a part of VSAM, and even earlier machines. Codd, essentailly did that. And Watson and AI and what-have-you continues to do that; xml nonsense being an exception, being just a poor man's IMS. For those with faulty memories, Watson (Jeopardy! version) emerged in 2011. That makes it a decade old, a lifetime or two in IT land.

So, what happened?

The company's top management, current and former IBM insiders noted, was dominated until recently by executives with backgrounds in services and sales rather than technology product experts.

"until recently" is gilding the lily just a tad, implying that the probable was specific to Watson. It's not. IBM from Watson, Sr. on down was/is a sales effort; the science and engineering bits are tolerated as begrudged expense. Remember, the IBM/PC which did jerk IT around for some decades, was built almost wholly from bought-in parts; the Suits thought so little of it.

The Watson they built was a room-size supercomputer with thousands of processors running millions of lines of code. Its storage disks were filled with digitized reference works, Wikipedia entries and electronic books. Computing intelligence is a brute force affair, and the hulking machine required 85,000 watts of power. The human brain, by contrast, runs on the equivalent of 20 watts. [my emphasis]

What Watson is: a relational database on super-duper steroids. Or, at least, it ought to be. Imagine if IBM designed the thing to sequencially search all of that text? Of course not. Indexes up the wazhoo. The only real question: is Watson a structural relational database or a correlation engine? Not everyone acknowledges that these are two distinct ways of looking for 'intelligence'. The relational database is grounded in relations, of course. But relations, in Codd's term, is not the PK/FK 'relation' at all but rather the connection of attributes to the defining identity of the entity. IOW, the standalone table. Again, indexed files existed in VSAM very early on. Nearly everyone considers the PK/FK 'relation' the raison d'etre of the RDBMS, in contrast to the hierarchical file systems which preceded. Both systems are grounded in 'relations' specified by the Designer.

Or is a Watson a correlation machine, continually calculating R among gallions of data points?

The former is structural, dictated by the Designer, while the latter is explorational, hidden in the data.

In the end, so far, Watson would be the Health Guru to smarten doctors. Not so much:

Now IBM is paring back Watson Health and reviewing the future of the business. One option being explored, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, is to sell off Watson Health.

This essay sat in the queue since 2021. Not much has changed, except to increase the AI hype. And to create the WatsonX brand as some vehicle to re-coup all that moolah. They'll end up throwing good money after bad. It will still end badly.

Nuthin

Once again, with vigour: yet another report 'proving' that real estate, particularly residential, is a non-producing 'asset'. A house ain't anything like an ASML litho machine. And even that real asset can only turn a profit for the owners if it can run 24/7 and can shift all that output.

The company's newest lithography tool weighs a staggering 165 tons and will cost up to $380 million, roughly double the price of its previous low-NA EUV lithography machines.

The capital/labour ratio for such automation has to be sky high. Let's see if we can find some numbers. Well, not specific to ASML, but to high-NA EUVL machines in general

Perhaps surprisingly, operating labor costs are expected to be relatively stable. Leading-edge fabs are extensively automated because that approach is less likely to introduce contaminants or defects in the production process than with human intervention. As a result, staff size and responsibilities — mostly in engineering, technical, and operations functions — won't need to change substantially.

So, at the least, labour cost isn't going to rise with The New Machine (with or without a Soul).

Therefore, we see another case of the Tyranny of Fixed/Average Cost.

China's problem today, is just a worst case scenario of any pyramid scheme: it only works if the Next Buyer has more available cash than the current owner. Housing, as a non-producing asset, can only be profitable to the mortgage holder if incomes of those in the buyers class (a bit different for each profitable price point) continue to rise. Inflation, according to the Evangelical Radical Right Wingnuts, is always bad; unless and until they go to sell a house! Then it's God's Gift of Capital Gains.