Why Do We Need Red States, Anyway?

This is the headline on my CNN homepage this morning: "Red and blue America look like two separate nations". Yeah, so what else is new?? It's always been that way.

So, why do we? Well, we don't; they're the welfare queens of the nation. Here's a recent report on the situation. Mind, it's been this way for decades. The Red states want to party like it's 1859, but use cell phones and other accoutrements of Modern Living.

Eight of the 10 states most dependent on the federal government were Republican-voting, with the average red state receiving $1.35 per dollar spent.
The eight states receiving the highest child tax credit per capita were all Republican-voting.

Live free or die?? Not bloody likely, if they can control the Congress and keep Uncle Sugar's moolah flowing.

Somebody's Gotta Do It

It's been years since I've watched an SNL episode all the way through. Until Baldwin took on The Orange Trickster, I seldom watched at all. When HBO returned to Dish, I looked forward to Maher, but he's turned into RRW in Progressive clothing. If it weren't for Oliver, I wouldn't care about HBO. As to the late-night crew, nada. For the longest time, for reasons lost in the mists of time, I thought Kimmel was the RRW of late-night. Then I saw the headlline that he's vowed to quit if the Suits keep him from doing Trump jokes. Well!

So, I don't know if any of that cabal has yet gone here, but someone has to.

What happened to the Red Wave? Turned out to be just a bit of spotting! Which, yet again, proves that the RRW is just a bunch of whiny, bitching pussies.

Dee Feat is in Dee Flation - part the forty fifth

As regular readers well know, these missives (and those by the more famous) have been bleating the case that the post-Covid (if we really are "post", of course) inflation was/is a temporary problem; in the sense that it's not been driven by one or more of the usual suspects: wage push, cost push, demand pull. Yes, one might make a bit of a case for the third, in that about $1 trillion went unspent during much of Covid, and Sleepy Joe and the Democrats did put some bucks into households. But it's been largely a supply problem, particularly due to Xi's stupidity.

Well, we just got the latest inflation numbers (manipulated by the Socialist BLS, of course), and it's abating. One month's data does not a trend make. But we know, for sure, that Putin, Xi, and Salman have been the bad actors through all this. So the NYT writes up the story.

After stripping out food and fuel costs, both of which jump around, prices rose by 6.3 percent on an annual basis, down from 6.6 percent in the prior reading. And that core inflation measure pulled back sharply on a monthly basis, posting its slowest increase in more than a year.

That is hopeful. On the one hand, one would expect food and fuel to lead the inflation number, given: gasoline prices were supposed to kill Sleepy Joe and the Democrats. On the other hand, if the regular parts of the market basket are retreating, then that has to mean supply is closer to meeting demand. And that's what the author points out

The report provides early evidence that the Fed's campaign to slow rapid inflation may be helping to ease price pressures, working alongside recent healing in supply chains.
[my emphasis]

This was Jerome Powell's answer when he began his war on the American economy:

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers Wednesday that rate hikes will not bring down oil and food prices, despite their contributing the lion's share of recent inflation gains.

In an exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Powell was blunt in saying that the Fed's efforts to tamp down on higher prices with higher interest rates will not impact either category.

"Chair Powell, will gas prices go down as a result of your interest rate increase?" she asked.
"I would not think so, no," he replied.
Then Warren asked, "Will the Fed's interest rate increases bring food prices down for families?"
Powell said, "I wouldn't say so, no."
He nonetheless stressed that the Fed was equipped to tackle inflation more broadly.
"We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses," he said, during his semiannual testimony to Congress.

And to close out this episode, here he is (you've seen it before as a week's quote)

It's not good to have monetary policy be the main game in town, let alone the only game in town.
-- Jerome Powell/2019

At least, so far, he's not been a laughing Laffer.

Canary Sing To Me - part the third

If you look around widely enough, and often enough, you can spot the next Canary in the coal mine.

It's been widely believed that economic growth is a product of reproduction of humans. The tribe that begets the most wins. For decades, likely from the start, it's been an article of faith amongst Israel's right-wing tribe. Today's NYT reports

Sluggish birthrates among secular Israelis, coupled with high rates among the religious, who tend to lean right, have also gradually tipped the balance of voter demographics.

What in the USofA equates to: the great unwashed in the empty places out-breed the educated city dwellers. The Israeli problem has been documented for decades. No solution has been identified.

Oddly, or not, within the same pages is a report that the Jordan river is nearly dry.

Population growth, diminished water supplies and climate change have all taken their toll, while damaged and inefficient infrastructure and the considerable challenges posed by Jordan's geography and topography have only made things worse. The resulting shortages serve as a warning of what the future might hold for the region and the world beyond it.

Gee?? Ya think. In a moment of unpleasant serendipity, this week carried the obit of an anti-growth (population growth) economist.

And, of course, there were recent reports (I didn't follow past the headlines) that 'foreign' owned farms are harvesting water from our desertifying Southwest and shipping it back home. Where's MAGA when you really need it?

Out screwing your neighbor/enemy was a valid technique to win wars. More bodies, more boys, more soldiers, more wins. 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, that plan didn't run up against limited resources the way we have it today. At 2,000 years ago ~170 million all told. At 3,000 years ago ~40 million. Admittedly, 'resources' back then didn't encompass, for instance, petrochemical fertilizers and diesel powered tractors or Abrams tanks. Still, out fucking your enemy could be effective.

About time we figured out how to survive a depleting Mother Earth. We've only got the one, and there's not another one within the distance of chemical rockets. May be none anywhere. "The Martian" was a movie, not a plan.

Musk Ox - part the second

You know, Musk is the epitome of the Right Wingnut hypocrite. from today's news:

"Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists," he said in a tweet. "Extremely messed up! They're trying to destroy free speech in America."

Musk elides the obvious: he has stated, repeatedly, that he doesn't want moderation. Since he now owns the joint, lock stock and barrel, he'll turn it into a "a free-for-all hellscape" as soon as he thinks he can get away with it. Ya can't make money on the innterTubes without advertisers; well, unless you're Amazon.

Just days after Elon Musk assured advertisers that Twitter would not become "a free-for-all hellscape," the social media site was swamped with an outpouring of racist, sexist and antisemitic posts, along with election disinformation and bizarre conspiracy theories. The ugliest of these conspiracies were amplified by Musk himself.

Ya, he's just some anonymous apolitical bidnezzman.

As many predicted, Musk's pro-Trumpian bleeting going back years, and worse since his campaign to have Twitter, has led to a jailbreak. What did he think would happen? Is he so demented that he really believes that most Americans are MAGAists??? I guess if you grow up white in South Africa, you've no truck with those who look like they come from shithole countries. MAGA really means Make America White Again. Or, The South Shall Rise Again.

While he has naturalized, he doesn't get the Constitution. It only prohibits The Damn Gummint from restricting speech, but private enterprise is not so restricted. No one could have sued, and won against, Twitter etc. for banning them for hate speech. That pesky First Amendment has other text, which the MAGAists tend to ignore. There's that bit about no State religion; only White Evangelicals need apply. (Wouldn't be the first time. We've been through this shit before. Twice, even.) Tell that to the Thomas clan. Oh, and Jews will not replace us???? Batshit J. Moron tried his damnedest not to piss off the KKK.

Oh Canada!

Aren't Canadians said to be such nice people? Does it track that the MAGA crowd should import one to assassinate Crooked Nancy?? Well, I guess. At the least, he isn't from one of those shithole countries that Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land just can't stand.

Cohesion

My bestest boss was Dr. McElhone, who came into my life shortly after his leaving army intelligence (yeah, I know the joke). He had his Ph.D. in math stats from Iowa State; if you don't much about math stats, Iowa State was (mid 70s) near the top of the list (currently 19th which ain't cheap cheddar). Anyway, along with stat lingo came a good deal of au courant military jargon. He spent most of his time flying in Beech Air King and Air Queens festooned with a dozen or so antennas vacuuming up various signals.

A couple of concepts he talked about rather a lot: chain of command and unit cohesion. Most civilians, self included, are familiar with the former, but less so the latter. If the Radical Right Wingnuts get their way, it will be the more material.

Unit cohesion is a military concept, defined by one former United States Chief of staff in the early 1980s as "the bonding together of soldiers in such a way as to sustain their will and commitment to each other, the unit, and mission accomplishment, despite combat or mission stress".

Why does this matter today? It's been clear, and the attack on Paul Pelosi is blazing, that the RRW no longer care about democracy. If they get their way, we will have Civil War ver. 2.0. Will our military suppress the insurrectionists, or join them?

It's clear, at least to me, that the officer corps (likes of Flynn excepted, naturally) will obey the Constitution and their oath. But what about the enlisteds? Are they dumb enough to buy into white persecution and grievance? Well, listen up.

The service on June 23 [2022] began allowing people to enlist in the regular Army without a high school diploma or GED ... The change was short-lived. Army officials reinstated the education requirement one week later.

Gulp...

During the height of the unpopular Iraq War, recruitment was falling so fast, especially among some minority groups, that Army recruiters lowered required ASVAB scores and allowed waivers for some recruits with low scores or other demerits, including minor criminal offenses. "In 2006, nearly one in five incoming soldiers did not have high school diplomas," the Boston Globe reported in 2007.

What we already know about the RRW: they prey on the feeble minded, ill-educated, poor white boys and girls from Red States. They laugh at Paul Pelosi getting hammered. Whose side would they end up on?

If Bolsonaro pulls off a military sponsored coup, how long will wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 sit on his hands? Will Musk, a real billionaire, join in?