Went to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Ma, pictures to follow, had lunch with a family friend, Lisa, and had dinner with my niece Eugenia. (Youee)
And there was much rejoicing.
Then we were forced to eat Robin's minstrels , and there was much rejoicing.
Obviously, as a Jew, I do not have to deal with the various vicissitudes of Christmas.
You have things like last minute gift shopping, wrapping those gifts when you finally find the last remaining one in a small shop in Bayonne, New Jersey, putting up the tree, taking down the tree, dealing with your racist uncle's manifesto at the dinner table, and your slacker sibling's significant other hitting on you.
This song is for all of those folks stressed out by the season.
In service to her political campaign donors, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has, opposed stronger safety regulations for railroads, attempted to appoint a right-wing anti-abortion judge to the state Supreme Court, tacitly approved sub-standard education in New York yeshivas, let the eviction moratorium expire, and has attempted to neuter New York financial regulators.
Now, in service to her big ticket donors in banking, big law, and the like, she has vetoed the ban on noncompete agreements that passed the New York legislature.
I have discussed how noncompete agreements lower wages and reduce the formation of businesses in an earlier post.
It is clear that Huchul values the wellbeing of her campaign donors over that of the people of New York:
Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill on Friday that would have banned the use of noncompete agreements in New York after a furious lobbying effort by Wall Street and other powerful industries that forcefully opposed the measure.And then there is this:
Democrats in control of the State Legislature passed the bill in June, wanting New York to join other states that have cracked down on the use of noncompete agreements, which companies use to bar employees from working for a competitor for a set amount of time after leaving a job.
The bill’s supporters argued that the agreements had unfairly trapped an array of workers, from hairstylists to engineers and doctors, who sign away their right to leave for a competitor.
………
Noncompete agreements have proliferated throughout the economy in recent years: Between 18 percent to 45 percent of workers in the private sector may be bound by them, according to surveys. Critics argue that the restrictive clauses prevent the free movement of labor and place an unfair burden on a constellation of workers, especially those who work low-wage, low-skilled jobs.
Governments have responded in kind. About half the nation’s states have imposed sharp limits on noncompete clauses, and some states, like Minnesota and California, have banned them altogether. Under President Biden, the Federal Trade Commission is exploring a national ban on companies requiring workers to sign the agreements.
………
But as its potential impact on New York City’s financial industry became clear, the state’s most powerful business groups quickly mobilized to oppose it. Among them were the Business Council and the Partnership for New York City, which represents big-name banks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Warning of the potentially dire effects the ban would have on a company’s ability to retain top employees in one of the most important financial capitals of the world, the groups used their money and clout to lobby the governor, pushing her to water down the bill to ensure it would not apply to the highest-earning workers.
………
Ms. Hochul did sign a transparency bill that will require limited liability companies in New York to disclose their owners to the government and regulatory entities. But under the version of the bill that Ms. Hochul approved, the names of the owners will not become public in a searchable database as lawmakers originally intended.
So someone looks at the ownership data of fly-by-night scams only AFTER a crime has been committed. Sweet.
I think that there are a number of points to make here:
Given the amount of power that the Governor has, I do not see how one could successfully primary Hochul, but it should be tried.
Also, look into her finances. Her hypocrisy might have crossed the line into actual legal corruption.
On our way up to Western Massachusetts to pick up the last of Nat's summer job, and in Allentown, we stopped for a late lunch in Allentown Psnnsylvania.
After searching for a while, we ended at an Indian place in a strip mall, Cumin N Eat, at 3333 Hamilton Blvd, Allentown, PA 18104 ph: (610) 351-0343. (Facebook page here)
It does not look like much, but it was excellent.
I had goat Chettinadu, , which the waiter recommended, which was exquisite, while Sharon* had the Paneer Majestic, which Sharon* said was the best Paneer she had ever tasted. (I had a bite, it was quite good)
It is highly recommended, though I would have to add, on your first time, order the mild.
Their food has some serious heat to it, and I just got the medium.
I think that my tuchas may resemble a Japanese war flag in the morning, but I have to say that it would be worth it.
This is a very pleasant surprise, and might be the best Indian food that I have ever had.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Bird, the dockless electric scooter company that has been blocking sidewalks, and preventing people in wheelchairs from getting around, has filed for bankruptcy.
Good. They were a bunch of parasites whose whole business model was predicated on monetizing the public commons for their own personal profit:
Bird has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, capping off a turbulent year for the electric scooter company.
In a press release today, Bird confirmed that it had entered into a “financial restructuring process aimed at strengthening its balance sheet,” with the company continuing to operate as normal in pursuit of “long-term, sustainable growth.”
Founded in 2017 by former Lyft and Uber executive Travis VanderZanden, Bird is one of numerous startups to introduce dockless micromobility platforms around the world, allowing city-dwellers to pay for short-term access to electric scooters or bikes. The company went public in late 2021 via a SPAC merger, but in a crowded market built on questionable economics, its stock went into a perennial nosedive, with its market cap dropping from more than $2 billion at its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) debut to just $70 million 12 months later. This decline led the NYSE to issue a warning that Bird’s share price was too low.
Things didn’t improve, and with its share price continuing to plummet, CEO VanderZanden departed in June with the company eventually delisted from the NYSE in September.
Let's see, you had a business model where the basic product had safety issues (ever been nearly run down on a side walk?), few barriers to competitor entry, large ongoing maintenance costs, and they are having problems?
Hoocoodanode? Certainly not the plethora of venture capital firms that dropped about a billion before it went public, and then probably cashed in before the roof fell in.
I am sick and tired of the pump and dump VC Ponzi bullsh%$.
This is My Shocked Face
A feature, not a bug The folks at the Washington Post did an in depth study of the Republican war on voting, and discovered that overwhelmingly targets minorities and Democrats.
That is because they don't really care about voter fraud, they want to:
If this is a scoop, it is only because you have CLEARLY not been paying attention:
As Donald Trump falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, Republicans in some states launched special units to prosecute voter fraud as part of a high-profile and controversial push to stamp out cheating some claimed was rampant.
But the election integrity units established or expanded in six states after Trump’s loss obtained only 47 convictions during a period in which tens of millions of votes were cast, and the units overwhelmingly targeted minorities and Democrats for prosecution, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by The Washington Post of nearly every prosecution.
The analysis found that 76 percent of defendants whose race or ethnicity could be identified were Black or Hispanic, while White people constituted 24 percent of those prosecuted by the units.
The goal of these people is to suppress the vote, period, full stop.
They are evil and unAmerican.
They should be pursued for the crimes that they are doing, and when they are convicted, we should take their guns.
I have done so every now and then.
I have done this for two main reasons, the first being my predilection for hyperbole, and my second that this virus appears to have a special affinity for the epithelial cells lining the circulatory system, which is exactly how Michael Crichton's fictitious alien pathogen killed people.
We now have another data point showing how Covid is particularly aggressive toward the lining of the circulatory system, specifically a a Yale study showing that long Covid exercise intolerance is caused by reduced ability to exchange oxygen between blood and tissue.
Covid is a slow walking version of Michael Crichton's virulent microorganism:
Exercise intolerance, or the inability to perform physical activity at the expected or desired level, is one of the many symptoms associated with long COVID. In a study, Yale researchers help explain what specifically is driving this symptom, offering much needed information for patients and generating new directions for future research.
The study was published Dec. 15 in the journal ERJ Open Research.
When a patient reports shortness of breath or exercise intolerance, physicians will usually run tests — such as CT scans, echocardiograms, or pulmonary function testing — to determine whether the symptom is being caused by limitations in the lungs or the heart since, typically, it’s one or the other. In some cases, however, neither lung nor heart function appear to be hindered.
Evidence has emerged that patients with long COVID who experience these symptoms tend to fall in the latter category, with standard tests identifying no heart or lung limitations
………
Yale is one of very few places in the United States where a more advanced version of this evaluation — the invasive cardiopulmonary exercise test, or iCPET — is available. For the test, pressure sensing catheters are inserted into the pulmonary artery, a main blood vessel in the lungs, and at an artery in the wrist. As patients exercise, physicians track various measures to observe how well the heart, lungs, blood vessels, and muscles are functioning.
In the new study, 55 patients were evaluated for post-COVID exercise intolerance, including 41 who showed no evidence of heart or lung limitations after initial tests. They then underwent iCPET.
“We found that despite the fact that the heart was pumping oxygenated blood that the lungs were providing adequate amounts of oxygen for, the in patients who had symptoms of exercise intolerance after COVID,” said Peter Kahn, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study.
The study, which follows an earlier study from the research group that yielded molecular insights into the origins of exercise intolerance, also offers patients insight into their symptoms.
What is meant when they say, "Extraction of oxygen by the body’s tissues was compromised," is, "Covid is f%$#ing with capillary function."
This is why, early in the pandemic, we had blood clots and amputations resulting form infections.
This is not just the flu. Wear your f%$#ing mask and get your f%$#ing vaccination.
Rudolph Giuliani has filed for bankruptcy in response to a $148,000,000.00 defamation judgement against him.
It won't help much. Much of that judgement is for intentional infliction of distress, and intentional harms cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.
Maybe he should set up a GoFundMe.
So, initial jobless claims are up by 2,000, less than the forecast of 12,000, to 205,000, while continuing claims were basically flat (down 1,000) at 1.85 million.
Rather unexpectedly, housing starts and consumer spending were up in November as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose marginally last week, the latest suggestion that the economy was regaining some momentum as the year winds down.
The smaller-than-expected increase in weekly jobless claims reported by the Labor Department on Thursday followed recent data showing retail sales unexpectedly rising in November, while single-family housing starts and building permits scaled 1-1/2-year highs. Those reports prompted economists to boost their growth estimates for the fourth quarter.
The economy had appeared in danger of stalling at the start of the quarter. There was even more good news on inflation, with other data on Thursday showing significantly more progress made toward returning it to the Federal Reserve's 2% target in the third quarter than previously reported.
………
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 205,000 for the week ended Dec. 16. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 215,000 claims for the latest week. Unadjusted claims fell 9,225 to 239,865 last week as large declines in California and Georgia more than offset a sizeable increase in Ohio.
Though the claims data are volatile around this time of the year because of holidays, they remain consistent with a fairly healthy labor market, which is expected to keep the economy from recession next year. A survey from the Conference Board on Wednesday showed the share of consumers viewing jobs as plentiful was the highest in five months in December.
………
The economy added 199,000 jobs in November, fewer than the monthly average of 240,000 over the past year, but more than the 150,000 positions created in October.
………
Data next week on the number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, could shed more light on the labor market's fortunes in December. The so-called continuing claims slipped 1,000 to 1.865 million during the week ending Dec. 9, the claims report showed.
………
Inflation was not as hot was previously reported. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index excluding the volatile food and energy components rose at a downwardly revised 2.0% rate in the third quarter, the smallest gain since the fourth quarter of 2020. The so-called core PCE price index was previously reported to have increased at a 2.3% pace.
In the old days, they did their own stunts Breaking news from the Colorado, "None of the above" will be a ballot option in their Democratic primary.
This idea is the best thing that has come out of Colorado since ……… Douglas Fairbanks Senior, or maybe the band The String Cheese Incident, if just for the name.
If voters casting ballots in Colorado’s Democratic presidential primary next year don’t like any of the candidates on their ballot, they’ll be able to choose what’s effectively a “none of the above” option.
The Colorado Democratic Party added a “noncommitted delegate” choice to the March 5 ballot that gives voters the option of sending untethered representatives to the Democratic National Convention next year to select the party’s nominee. Instead of being bound to support a Democratic presidential primary candidate supported by Colorado voters, the delegates could back any candidate on the floor of the nominating convention.
People voting in the Republican primary won’t have a similar choice.
This actually matters, because:
………
The 2024 presidential primary will be only the state’s fifth presidential primary contest. In other years, Democrats and Republicans used the caucus and assembly process to select presidential primary delegates.
So, the good people of Colorado have a primary vote that matters, and they can cast a protest vote that won't require them to vote for someone that they do not actually want.
Sweet.
Maybe he should just withdraw from all the other states too https://t.co/XEawrQ4Uxj
— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) December 20, 2023
Dan Crenshaw is a lunatic, and his being in the House of Representatives is a national shame, though that is not much of a distinction in today's Republican Party.
But when, in response to Vivek Ramaswamy's statement that he will withdraw from the Colorado primary because Trump has been declared ineligible, is to suggest that he drop out of the rest of the primary races as well, I have to agree.
Vivek Ramaswamy is Ted Cruz without the charm, and Kevin McCarthy without the intellect.
It loooks like the gates of hell:
The Colorado Supreme Court has excluded Donald Trump from the primary ballot on the basis of the 14th Amendment insurrection clause.
The MAGAt butt-hurt over this is exquisite. I will use their tears to season my soup for decades to come.
On the other hand, Trump has not yet actually been convicted of a crime related to insurrection, (Yet) and the potential for abuse of this ruling, and I shudder at the prospect of someone like delusional U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk having similar authority.
I do think that this complicates matters for the right-wing hacks on the Supreme Court though, because they now have to rule on both the Colorado case, while ruling in an expedited manner on Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's challenge to Donald Trump's claims of complete immunity for everything forever.
It jams up the Supreme Court 's conservatives something fierce which is an unalloyed good.
Colorado’s top court ruled on Tuesday that former President Donald J. Trump is disqualified from holding office again because he engaged in insurrection with his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol, an explosive ruling that is likely to put the basic contours of the 2024 election in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Colorado Supreme Court was the first in the nation to find that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — which disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it — applies to Mr. Trump, an argument that his opponents have been making around the country.
The ruling directs the Colorado secretary of state to exclude Mr. Trump’s name from the state’s Republican primary ballot. It does not address the general election.
“We do not reach these conclusions lightly,” a four-justice majority wrote, with three justices dissenting. “We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.”
Mr. Trump’s campaign said immediately that it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Colorado justices anticipated that likelihood by putting their ruling on hold at least until Jan. 4; if Mr. Trump appeals before then, the hold will continue until the Supreme Court rules. And while Tuesday’s ruling applies only to one state, it could all but force the nation’s highest court to decide the question for all 50.
I do not think that there is any way that the Supreme Court can not rule on this and retain any credibility, and, absent a conviction for insurrectionist acts, I think that it is EXTREMELY likely that they will overturn the Colorado Supreme Court decision.
But if they do, and then they write Trump a get out of jail free card for the insurrection investigation, I think that we will start seeing a significant portion of the populace invoking Andrew Jackson's, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
This is not a good thing. Andrew Jackson was doing this in service of ethnic cleansing, but we are definitely getting to that poing.
It appears that much of the court record in an Epstein lawsuit will be made public in the next few weeks, which means a lot of friends of Jeffrey are about to be outed:
More than 170 people with ties to Jeffrey Epstein, including ex-employees and victims, are in store for an uncomfortable start to the New Year — with their names set to be dredged up in a trove of court documents to be unsealed in the coming weeks.
Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska on Monday ordered the release of the long-sealed documents in a since-settled defamation lawsuit that Epstein accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, brought against the convicted pedophile’s madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, back in 2015.
Under the ruling, dozens of individuals — who have previously been referred to as “Jane Does” or “John Does” in various court filings linked to the suit — will likely be identified publicly when the materials tied to them are “unsealed in full.”
The judge has given those individuals 14 days to appeal the decision, according to Monday’s order.
I REALLY hope that this happens.
I want to see some big names going down over this.
Watch this space.
Feels like the kind of thing your GOTV teams might recoil at less than a year out from Election Day, but hey, I’m not a strategist!
— Ghost of Toyotathon Sales Event Past (@PanasonicDX4500) December 18, 2023
(BTW, I love this guy's Ecch [Twitter] handle.)
This is a manifestation of the Iron Law of Institutions. which is, as I have noted many times, "The people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution."
This is why you routinely see this sort of behavior. Even if this tactic loses elections, it pushes the left out of positions of power and positions that might eventually lead to power.
The proximate cause of all of this, or my finding this on Atrios, where he calls this, "Going the Full Sinema," and points us to Will Bunch's editorial excoriating Fetterman's recent go along to get along conversion:
“We have started a progressive movement here in Pennsylvania. It’s not going away. This isn’t over. This is not how our story ends.” — John Fetterman on April 26, 2016, after finishing third in a Democratic U.S. Senate primary.
This is how that story ended last week, more than seven years later. Now having achieved his dream of election to the U.S. Senate, and after becoming a leading national figure in the Democratic Party, Fetterman flatly declared in an NBC News interview: “I am not a progressive.”
And the man who once anointed himself leader of the Keystone State’s left-wing movement he now rejects has been busy gathering the receipts to back up that statement. In the same interview. Fetterman — who burst onto the state political scene in 2016 with bold pro-immigration statements, backed by the story of his wife Gisele’s coming to America as a young undocumented migrant from Brazil — said he now supports restrictions on the flow of migrants.
………
All this after Fetterman, who started his rise as the mayor of tiny Braddock in Western Pennsylvania, introduced himself to statewide voters by openly comparing himself to left-wing icon Sen. Bernie Sanders in that 2016 race and then telling progressives again as he successfully ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 and for a year or two after that he was one of them.
“Chip in whatever you can to help us take this progressive momentum all the way to the ballot box on May 15,” Fetterman asked supporters on Twitter, now X, during that 2018 race. That was one of a number of times he explicitly said he was a progressive or endorsed progressive policies or values. In return, core Democrats fueled his decadelong rise from obscurity to Capitol Hill with thousands of small donations, or by knocking on neighbors’ doors.
Now, some of those early supporters say they were betrayed, or even feel lied to. I tried to reach Fetterman this weekend by direct-messaging him on X/Twitter, but have not heard back, at least yet. I wanted the senator to tell me if he’s changed, or if he thinks times have changed — or if something else inspired last week’s declaration. For now, I’ll have to cite his top aide Adam Jentleson, who insists Fetterman “is just being consistent. He spent the entire campaign” — referring to 2022, when Fetterman adopted some more centrist stances like support for fracking — “telling people he wasn’t a down-the-line lefty.”
There is a saying, "Republicans fear their base, and Democrats fear HATE their base."
It could not be more true.
Which is why, as Pro Publica so pithily notes, the self policing of the judiciary, "Doesn’t Work."
It does not work for product safety, it does not work for the environment, it does not work for workplace safety, it does not work for doctors, nor does it work for lawyers.
Self regulation does nor work here nor there,
Self regulation does not
work anywhere.
Self regulation does not work with roof repair,
Self regulation does not
work while flying in the air.
I do not like it Sam I Am.
………
But I digress:
For decades, judges have relied on a select group to make sure the judiciary adheres to the highest ethical standards: themselves.
The Judicial Conference, a secretive, century-old council of federal judges led by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, oversees the ethics and financial disclosures for more than 1,700 federal judges, including the nine justices of the high court. Those financial disclosures, submitted yearly as a list of assets and gifts, are often the only window into whether judges with lifetime appointments have conflicts of interest as they rule on the country’s most consequential legal cases.
The judiciary's leaders argue that the conference has been an effective watchdog over America's third branch of government. The conference’s authority plays an important role in judicial controversies and has been at the center of some defenses of the court following ProPublica’s reporting on possible ethical breaches. With its “sound structure of self-governance,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2021, “the Judicial Conference has been an enduring success.”
In reality, the Judicial Conference has instead often protected, not policed, the judiciary, according to interviews and previously undisclosed internal documents. For decades, conference officials have repeatedly worked to preserve judges’ most coveted perks while thwarting congressional oversight and targeting “disloyal” figures in the judiciary who argued for reforms.
This is what happens in all cases where the fox guards the henhouse.
It is all about protecting the prestige of their institutions, and their phony baloney jobs.
Only being a federal judge is not a phony baloney job.
In the mid-1990s, two judges — a member of the Supreme Court and a judge on the conference — arranged to obscure a legal publisher’s role in underwriting meetings for an awards ceremony attended by judges at lavish resorts in locales like the Virgin Islands and Hawaii.
………
And when the judiciary clarified its rules on federal judges’ disclosures earlier this year, the final version was watered down, according to internal documents obtained by ProPublica. The goal behind some of the proposed edits, a staff attorney explained in an email to a subordinate, was to avoid “drawing bright lines.”
………
Across the federal government, financial disclosures and potential conflicts of interest are self-reported. But experts say the judiciary has the least oversight of all three branches.
………
Even one of the Financial Disclosure Committee’s main functions — making sure judges’ self-reported income, assets and gifts comply with the law — is designed to help judges, not hold them accountable, according to nine federal judges and current and former staffers. Most of that daily work is farmed out to an obscure government agency known as the Administrative Office.
………
Last month, the Supreme Court adopted its first-ever code of conduct but stopped short of defining an enforcement mechanism. That, coupled with the Judicial Conference’s record, has led some observers to assert that the new rules will ultimately change little.
That’s the way some judges like it.
I don't care if the judges like or not.
I want them to not be corrupt. That does not appear to be too much to ask for, does it?
So, we have a healthcare analyst looking at Pfizer's missteps on obesity drugs, by which I mean injuring people, with adverse side effects effecting nearly ¾ of test subjects.
So, what is a the response of a highly respected financial adviser on Wall Street, to ask, "Is it time to buy Pfizer yet?"
Seriously, a 73%+ (the 73% is just for nausea, when you roll in the vomiting and diarrhea it undoubtedly goes higher) adverse side effect rate, and you are wondering if it's time to buy?
Something is very wrong with incentives in society.
Medicare Advantage plans, where private plans are paid more than old-fashioned medicare to do evil things to their customers, has always a pretext for privatizing Medicare.
The idea was, that if the insurance companies could restrain themselves long enough, Medicare could be replaced with a fully privatized system.
That was the intention when it was passed by George W. Bush and the Republican Congress in 2003, and but for the greed of those meddling insurance companies, it might have worked.
But there are a number of things that are certain, and one is that if profit is involved, insurance companies would murder their own grandmothers for the money.
In this case it means that the private plans are getting so abusive and so obstructive that hospitals are bailing out of privatized Medicare:
Medicare Advantage provides health coverage to more than half of the nation's seniors, but a growing number of hospitals and health systems nationwide are pushing back and dropping some or all contracts with the private plans altogether.
Among the most commonly cited reasons are excessive prior authorization denial rates and slow payments from insurers. Some systems have noted that most MA carriers have faced allegations of billing fraud from the federal government and are being probed by lawmakers over their high denial rates.
"It's become a game of delay, deny and not pay,'' Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of San Diego-based Scripps Health, told Becker's. "Providers are going to have to get out of full-risk capitation because it just doesn't work — we're the bottom of the food chain, and the food chain is not being fed."
A quick note here, "Capitation" is where the insurers and providers are paid on a flat rate base per participants, and not as a percentage of services.
In theory, this gives these insurers and providers an incentive to find cost savings, but in reality, it provides insurers an incentive to skim healthier patients and to deny and delay the provision of services by providers.
As a bit of basic math, if capitation worked, Medicare Advantage would not need to be paid MORE than old style Medicare.
In late September, Scripps began notifying patients that it is terminating Medicare Advantage contracts for its integrated medical groups, a move that will affect more than 30,000 seniors in the region. The medical groups, Scripps Clinic and Scripps Coastal, employ more than 1,000 physicians, including advanced practitioners.
Mr. Van Gorder said the health system is facing a loss of $75 million this year on the MA contracts, which will end Dec. 31 for patients covered by UnitedHealthcare, Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California, Centene's Health Net and a few more smaller carriers. The system will remain in network for about 13,000 MA enrollees who receive care through Scripps' individual physician associations.
………
Bend, Ore.-based St. Charles Health System took it a step further and was not only considering dropping all Medicare Advantage plans, but also encouraged its older patients not to enroll in the private plans during the upcoming enrollment period in October. The health system's president and CEO, CFO and chief clinical officer cited high rates of denials, longer hospital stays and overall administrative burden for clinicians. Ultimately, the health system has decided to remain in network with four MA carriers and will not renew contracts with three.
(emphasis mine)
I've heard of hospitals dropping insurance before, but telling the patients that it it's sick of these mother-f%$#ing insurance companies in the mother-f%$#ing hospital?
That's a new level of hostility.
The article goes to list 13 other hospital systems pulling out of Medicare Advantage plans in full or in part,
It's a failed experiment, but given the nature of the program, it will be hard to pass a bill winding it down through Congress, particularly with a 'Phant majority in the house, but the Biden administration has promised a crack-down on some of the unethical actions of providers, and while the initial proposal is weak tea, a harsher regulatory regime could go a long way toward making these plans better, and making their marketing less deceptive.
Of course, I would suggest frog-marching senior executives and board members out of their offices in handcuffs, but that is kind of my go-to solution to all forms of white collar crimes.
Last year, after a resounding series of electoral victories, the proposed liberal constitution lost decisively.
This was from letting the inmates run the asylum, it had 499 articles,(!) and threw in the kitchen sink of left-wing ideas, along with extensive carve outs for indiginous rights, and lost by 61.9% to 38.1%.
Well, they just had another plebiscite for a new constitution, this one profoundly right wing, and it lost by over 10%.
It banned abortion, created a carve out for the Catholic Church, which was an obsequious ally of the Pinochet regime, required "Respect for national symbols," enshrined the private sector in healthcare and other social services, locked in the current privatized and larcenous retirement system, and made discrimination against the LGBTQ a civil right.
I do not expect another referendum for years, and so the Pinochet constitution, with it's disastrous pseudo-free market bent, will solder on.
The right-wing clowns who wrote this version were in a win-win situation, if they won, they won, and if they lost, they still had the Pinochet monstrosity.
One hopes that the left has learned from this lesson, and when they attempt to reform corrupt Pinochet constitution, they don't go with another 499 article (!) monstrosity.
The lead ship of the Gerald Ford class aircraft carriers, will be short staffed by 500-600 crew because of recruiting shortfalls.
By way of perspective, there are 333,896 active duty personnel in the navy.
I don't know the breakdown for this year, but in 2020, it was 286,337 enlisted men, and 55,659 Officers, 5.1 men per officer.
By comparison, in 1945, there were 3,005,534 enlisted men and 323,755 officers, about 9.3 men per officer.
One were to split the difference, to 7.2:1 to account for the increased technology, you would have about 14,000 extra enlisted men in active duty, and you would be paying a lot less for them, and they actually make the US navy work.
In the face of a massive shortage of Navy sailors, America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), has downsized, cutting the crew aboard by hundreds of sailors.
The cuts appear to be deep and dramatic. Over the past six months to a year, some 500 to 600 sailors have left the USS Ford and not been replaced. In fact, the USS Ford has shed so many crew members that the ship’s company (core crew members that operate the vessel) is now below the Ford-class Carrier Program’s original Acquisition Program Baseline objective of 2,391 billets—a goal set back in 2004 that many observers considered unrealistic.
In an emailed statement attributed to the commanding officer of the USS Ford, Captain Rick Burgess, the carrier is now “home to approximately 4,070 sailors: 2,380 ship’s company, 1,550 assigned to Carrier Wing EIGHT, and 140 embarked with Carrier Strike Group TWELVE and Destroyer Squadron TWO staffs.”That represents an enormous reduction in the carrier’s workforce.
The services massively missed their 2023 recruiting goals. The generally good job market probably had a lot to do with that, though I think that the refocusing from counter-insurgency to near peer opponents might have something to do with that as well.
I'm not military, but I would suggest that reducing the number of officers in each service, and redirecting that money toward improving the lot of enlisted personnel, might go a long way toward fixing things.
Otherwise, we will be stuck with trillions of dollars in high tech fighting equipment that we can neither maintain nor operate.
In 2021, the Congress commissioned the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America, better known as the, "Naming Commission," to find all assets and names with the Confederate treason, and select names for removal.
By all accounts, they did a pretty good job, and one of their recommendations was to remove the Confederate memorial from Arlington National Cemetery.
The pro-treason, pro-segregation, pro-racism wing of the Congressional Republicans (Spoiler, that is all of them) are whinging mightily over this, as is Klan wannabe Virginia Governor Glenn Younkin:
A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia in the coming days, part of the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities, a cemetery official said Saturday.
The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.
Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials anticipate completing the removal by Dec. 22, the Arlington National Cemetery said in an email. During the removal, the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected, the Arlington National Cemetery said.
Among other things, this means that the pedestal will remain, because removing that would involve a lot of digging.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.Here is a better suggestion: Melt the mother-f%$#er down, and cast it into a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, Or Ulysses S. Grant, Or Abraham Lincoln. (I'd suggest James Longstreet, who enthusiastically embraced the Union and emancipation after the civil war, but he's a Confederate, so no.)
No, I am not going to suggest that we recast the bronze into a statue of the poet Sappho of Lesbos, or Oscar Wilde, or Osh-Tisch (Finds them and kills them), because their memories should not be reduced to a crude troll. (Also, no living people. We should not erect monuments to people for at least a decade after their death)
As to why this memorial is problematic?
………
Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.
Yeah, kind of problematic.
It should also be noted that the cemetery was created on Robert E. Lee's estate as a "Screw You" to the traitor.
Remove the statue, and transfer it to the National Museum of African American History and Culture and allow them to choose the best way to dispose of this item.
How many hours did Blackstone spend putting this holiday video together lmao pic.twitter.com/fi6hc5O5Lp
— litquidity (@litcapital) December 14, 2023
Dear lord, I am bleeding from both my ears and my eyes.
You might not want to click "Play" on this video.
I wish that I had not.
H/t Matt Stoller.
The fraud formerly known as, "America's Mayor," has been ordered to pay $148 Million to poll workers that he defamed.
He accused them of fraud, helped doxx them, and continued to slander them, even after the verdict.
Part of the verdict is for "Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress," which is not dischargeable by bankruptcy, because it is, "Intentional."
He could appeal, but he would have to post a bond amounting to millions of dollars, and by his own accounts, he is broke:
A jury on Friday ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who said he had destroyed their reputations with lies that they tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.
Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington had already ruled that Mr. Giuliani had defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury had been asked to decide only on the amount of the damages.
The jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.
………
“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women.
He said that the torrent of attacks and threats the women received from Trump supporters were “abominable” and “deplorable,” but that he was not responsible for them.
Crocodile tears from a complete piece of s%$.
………
Mr. Giuliani’s net worth is unknown because he refused to comply with the court’s requirement to provide that information. A lawyer familiar with his legal situation said after the verdict that Mr. Giuliani was likely to file for bankruptcy protection. But because the damages he owes Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are considered an “intentional tort,” bankruptcy would not erase his liability, lawyers said.
Refusing to comply? That's the sort of behavior that should have him perp-walked into the court room in handcuffs and charged with contempt.
………
Mr. Giuliani did not testify at the trial. He said afterward that was because “if I made any mistake or did anything wrong,” he thought the judge would hold him in contempt or put him in jail. “And I thought, honestly, it wouldn’t do me any good.”
But Brave Sir Rudy promised that he would testify, and that he would exonerate himself?
What stopped Mr. "A Noun, a Verb, and 911," from showing the great bravery that we all know that he is capable of?
………
Lawyers for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss had asked the jury to send a message when deciding what Mr. Giuliani should pay.
“Send it to Mr. Giuliani,” one of the lawyers, Michael J. Gottlieb, said in his closing argument on Thursday. “Send it to any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take the chance to seek profit and fame by assassinating the moral character of ordinary people.”
My name is Matthew Saroff, and I approve this message.
@_daniloc #Tesla is in trouble: #unions in Sweden, Denmark and Finland are striking against Elon Musk everywhere they can hit him. @Danilo Campos 🇵🇷 ♬ Ascension by Scott Buckley - Danilo Campos 🇵🇷
First, let us note that there are any number of bosses like Elon Musk who will break the law to suppress unions.
Why isn't someone arresting their flabby white asses?
Unfortunately for him throughout Scandinavia, sympathy strikes are both legal and widely supported.
This is what happens when someone is born on 3rd base and thinks that they have hit a triple.
He additionally has been very very lucky, in that when he has been surrounded by people who have insulated him from his petulance and idiocy.
If he had not been fired as CEO of PayPal, it would have just have been another dot com collapse named "X". (As I have noted before, it was not the branding that would have killed PayPal, but his lack of concern about fraud, his desire to structure the company such that it would be subject to bank regulation, and his insistence that the back end be run on Windows(!) because he was too dumb to understand Linux.)
Here is hoping that his trajectory follows that or Rudolph William Louis Giuliani.
It appears that Meghan "My Dad was John McCain" McCain is suffering from major butthurt after one of her former co-hosts on The View declared that some of the people on that show had been nepo babies.
Meghan "My Dad was John McCain" McCain is threatening to sue, which is a problem because:
So, she got some shade thrown at her, and she decided to remove all doubt:
Nobody mentioned Meghan McCain’s name on Thursday morning’s episode of The View. But the former co-host clearly felt seen.
“I don’t understand why my former colleagues @TheView @ABC bring me up and slander me on an almost weekly basis,” McCain tweeted a few hours after the show aired. “It has been years - move on, I have.”
“I have never been accused of a crime in my life and am a patriotic American - I would never and have never ‘influenced peddled’ in my life, let alone with foreign adversaries,” she added. “Not all politicians children are the same - and I am no Hunter Biden. All accusations are absurd, defamatory and slanderous. I will be consulting my lawyers regarding what was libeled against me on The View this morning.”
McCain was referring to comments made by current co-host Ana Navarro during a segment about the Republican Party’s relentless campaign to smear President Joe Biden with the actions of his son Hunter.
I should mention here that Ana Navarro never worked with McCain, and Ana Navarro is a Republican, but whatever, I guess.
“Did Hunter Biden influence peddle on his last name? Yes he did! So did half of Washington,” Navarro said. She then appeared to catch her co-hosts off guard when she added, “People at this table did it!”
Oh, snap!Asked for clarification by McCain’s de facto replacement Alyssa Farah Griffin, Navarro explained, “I’m not talking about currently.”Gee, ya think?
At that moment, the reaction around the table made it clear they knew which U.S. senator’s daughter Navarro was talking about—even if they declined to make it explicit for the audience.
That means McCain was the first to directly connect the comments made on the show to herself, which could complicate her proposed attempt to claim libel.
I do not know why, nor do I care why, McCain and her former cow-orkers seem to have parted on unfriendly terms.
But this level of unaware self-owning is both amusing and not a surprise.
BREAKING: GOP Representative Mike Garcia sold up to $50,000 of Boeing just before the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, which he sits on, released a damning report about Boeing, $BA.
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 13, 2023
He filed on Nov 23, more than 2 months, later than the STOCK Act requires.
I follow them on Ecch. They came to my attention after they posted about a number of members of Congress, most notably Tommy D'Alesandro's kid, Nancy Pelosi engaging in blatantly corrupt, albeit completely legal, insider trading.
They are one of the few things on Ecch these days generating value.
Why else would Navy Federal Credit Union refuse to give mortgages to Black members when they gave them to less qualified white members.
This cannot happen under capitalism, because it would mean that NFCU would be leaving money on the table:
The largest credit union in the US has the widest disparity in mortgage approval rates between White and Black borrowers of any major lender, a trend that reached new heights last year, a CNN analysis found.
Navy Federal Credit Union, which lends to military service members and veterans, approved more than 75% of the White borrowers who applied for a new conventional home purchase mortgage in 2022, according to the most recent data available from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. But less than 50% of Black borrowers who applied for the same type of loan were approved.
While many banks also approved White applicants at higher rates than Black borrowers, the nearly 29-percentage-point gap in Navy Federal’s approval rates was the widest of any of the 50 lenders that originated the most mortgage loans last year.
The disparity remains even among White and Black applicants who had similar incomes and debt-to-income ratios. Notably, Navy Federal approved a slightly higher percentage of applications from White borrowers making less than $62,000 a year than it did of Black borrowers making $140,000 or more.
Nope, no systemic racism here.
The problem is clearly excessive government regulation, right?
Right?
Link.
This does show how intellectually bankrupt Republican "Compassionate Conservatism is."
Also, it took me 15 seconds to recognize this as snark.
As I have noted earlier, I've not made much in the way of comments about the
Gaza war, because I have very little to add.
Then there was a discussion of plans by IDF to bring in large pumps and flood the Gaza tunnel complexes with seawater at the Stellar Parthenon BBS, and someone said that they should use desalinated water to minimize the damage.
And then I got to go all, "Guardian of Forever," because I got to run numbers. Someone gave me a problem to solve, and by Spock's pointy ears, once you do that, there is no stopping me.
Just ask Sharon*, when I said early in our marriage that I was neither of us were the divorcing kind, we were the murdering kind, and she asked me, "So how would you kill me?"
Give me a problem, and I will look for a solution. It makes me happy to figure stuff like this out.
My solution, rather upset Sharon* for a few days, but as the chicken said, "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it.
So back to the flooding problem.
Point 1 which should be obvious to everyone, is that flooding the tunnels will do enormous damage regardless of the salinity of the water , because pumping that much water into a cave complex does a f%$# tonne of damage.
So, let's assume that the IDF has about 20 so pumps to flood the Tunnel.
The first question is, "How much water will they move?"
Well, given that the Three Gorges dam has a flow rate of about 600–950 cubic metres per second with a water head of 86m through through its generators, and you are looking for flow rate, and not pressure (head), we can say that about 20 pumps could likely put out about 100 m3/s, (26,417 gallon/s) probably with about a 10m (32.8 feet) head.
Each pump would put out 5m3/s (1321 gallon/s).
By way of comparison, the one of the larger fire boats out there the Warner L. Lawrence can put out about 38,000 gallon/minute. (633 Gallon/S or 2.397 m3/s).
OK, so we would probably be looking at more pumps, or less water, but comparative numbers are the same.
The equation for the energy required for pumping is:
P = q h ρ / (6116 103 μ) (3)100 m3/s equals 6 million liters per minute, we've got a head of 10 feet, and I am assuming a pump efficiency of 80%, which is probably a bit low.
where
P = power (kW)
q = flow (liter/min)
h = head (m)
ρ = density (kg/m3) (water 1000 kg/m3)
μ = pump efficiency (decimal value)
Crunching those numbers, we get 12,263 kW, which is a lot of power, about ⅓ of the shaft horsepower of a Virginia Class SSN.
So for 100 m3/s of water desalination, how much power does it take?
Well, it takes between 3 and 9 kWh/m3 of water using reverse osmosis, generally considered the most efficient method. Taking the low end, 3kWh = 10,800,000 Joules, so to desalinate 100 m3/s of water, you would need, 1,080,000,000 Joules/s = 1,080,000,000 W = 1,080,000 kW = 1,080 mW = 1.08 gW.
That is roughly 88 times more power than involved in just pumping sea water, and about 5% of Israeli generation capacity of 21.5 gW.
As such it is likely not viable.
Now this is all just spitballing, and I am not considering the humanitarian and moral issues, because this serves as a way for me to avoid the potential humanitarian and moral issues.
Please, feel free to check my math. It is late at night, and I am still recovering from whatever variant of the Plague that I caught from my wife, so my mind is no where as clear as it should be.
Feel free to castigate me for running these numbers as a way to avoid looking at the moral dimensions here. I just can't do that yet.
The FDA has approved the first genetic therapy for Sickle Cell disease, and it only costs $2,200,000.00 per person treated.
Given that there are 100,000 Americans with Sickle Cell, that ain't chump change.
I would also argue that at that level of remuneration, we can be pretty sure that good folks at Vertex Pharmaceuticals are NOT going to share any issues regarding effectiveness or side effects with regulators.
Same goes for the treatment from Bluebird Bio, which costs an even more ridiculous $3.1 million.
That price is obscene:
The FDA approved the first gene therapy treatments for sickle cell disease on Friday, but it will cost patients millions of dollars.
One of the approved therapies, developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and called Casgevy, is the first of its kind to use the CRISPR gene-editing tool, according to the FDA.
………
Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics said in a statement that about 16,000 sickle cell patients who are over the age of 12 may be eligible for the therapy, which offers a "potential of a functional cure for their disease."
That therapy, however, could cost a single patient more than $2.2 million, not including the cost of associated care, such as a hospital stay or chemotherapy, according to an SEC filing.
………
The second treatment the FDA approved on Friday is called Lyfgenia. Lyfgenia modifies a patient's blood stem cells and transplants them, but it instead adds normal hemoglobin that is uninfected with the disease to the cells so that they have a lower risk of sickling, according to the FDA.
Lyfgenia will come with an even higher price tag of $3.1 million, Bluebird Bio, the biotech company that developed the treatment, said in a news release.
These are all dependent on the CRISPR gene editing tool, which was developed with federal funding, and the isolation of the mechanism and the genes behind Sickle Cell disease were discovered with federal funding, so maybe it's time to get serious about executing march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, which would allow the US government to license these technologies to other (far less larcenous) entities.
It should be noted that march-in rights have never been used in the 43 years that this law has been on the books.
It's about time to start.
We know that the US Foreign Policy Blob has a nearly complete record of failure over the past few decades.
In no particular order, and in some cases multiple times, we have Iran,Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, the former Yugoslavia, (by incompetence) Syria, the Ukraine (referring to the 2014 coup masterminded by Victoria "F%$# the EU" Nuland), NATO expansion, the current bellicose attitude toward China, etc.
None of these provided a meaning improvement in the well being of the people that it was being inflicted on, and non of these provided a long term benefit to the safety and well-being of the United States.
In most cases, the outcome adversely effected both the target and the United States, and some still do to this day.
It is an almost (I don't know of any counter examples off of the top of my head, but my reader(s) might find some) completely uninterrupted record of failure and misery.
The Blob is arrogant, and more importantly it is stupid.
There are different levels of stupid: (in order of increasing stupidity)
And there is:
The senior Afghanistan Expert at the completely inaptly named US Institute of International Peace arguing for a new Opium War in Afghanistan stupid.
Yes, William Byrd, Ph.D, the self described, "Senior Expert, Afghanistan," is arguing that Afghanistan should keep cultivating opium poppies forever, and for the continuation of the ephedra (a methamphetamine precursor) collection, because there is money to be made in opium addicts and meth heads.
Seriously, this is the f%$#ing Opium Wars all over again, where the British, and later the French, went to war with China in order to ensure that the East India Tea Company, and other white dope dealers should be given unrestricted access to the Chinese people, because there is profit in addiction.
Kind of like the Sacklers on steroids.
While it is true that opium is a significant cash crop in Afghanistan, he gives an estimate of over a billion dollars, which means that less than 1% of the total world market just for heroine goes to the Afghan people, he ignores the enormous costs of addiction, from opium, heroine, and meth.
Given the provenance of the USIP, it is little more than a beard for the US state security apparatus.
It was created by Ronald Reagan and Bill Casey as another CIA cutout, it is completely funded by the United States, and its board, "Must include the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, and the president of the National Defense University."
Perhaps the CIA wants to use drug money to fund a counter-Taliban insurgency, maybe they intend to spend the money on some other misbegotten plan doomed to failure, or perhaps they are protecting drug traffickers whom they find useful, as they did with cocaine in the 1980s.
In any case, what we are seeing is shot sighted, self destructive, and arrogant stupidity once again taking the helm.
I'm beginning to think that if you replaced the senior personnel at the State Department, CIA, and the Pentagon with bobble-head dolls we could get better results.
A Republican, like for example, California Gavin Newsom.
This is not a surprise. If you look at Newsom's actions throughout his time as Governor, they have been all the same, overestimate the budget impact, overestimate state budget problems, and kill progressive initiatives that have passed the house.
He is doing this for the minimum wage increase for healthcare workers, attempting to roll back legislation that he has already passed.
His department of finance is claiming a $4 billion first year cost, when independent assessments place that at $300 million, and so he wants the law rewritten and neutered. (Gee only a 93% dfference)
I get it, hospitals, hospital lawyers, and hospital executives are major campaign donors.
To quote Emilio Estevez from Repo Man, "F%$# that."
With California facing an expected $68-billion budget deficit, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking “major reforms” to pull funding from a costly plan next year to begin raising the statewide minimum wage for healthcare workers to $25 an hour.
Newsom told The Times last week that his staff has “been working behind the scenes” with Democratic leaders in the Legislature on how to move forward with the minimum wage law in light of state budget concerns. The changes, which would have to be approved by lawmakers next year, were “all part of an understanding” with labor leaders before he signed the bill, Newsom said.
F%$# his "Understanding." The law was passed, the law was signed into law by him, and the amount is (from the accurate assessment of cost) just 0.4% of the deficit.
Are there no alternatives? Nope:
………
The Legislative Analyst’s Office said conditions exist for Newsom to declare a fiscal emergency to dip into budget reserves to cover some of the shortfall. Analysts laid out other maneuvers that could be used to reduce the deficit, including saving $16.7 billion by reducing education funding under Proposition 98 to the constitutional minimum.
The state budget reserves are something north of $35 billion, but according Newsom, they are not to be touched, because, he really does not want a minimum wage increase, or setting a price cap on insulin, or banning caste discrimination, or the decriminalization of psychedelic drugs, or offering unemployment benefits to strikers, rolling back internet connectivity programs in poor neighborhoods (but not rich ones), homeless housing support, etc. (Links from me about this here)
………
Laurel Lucia, director of the healthcare program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, said a yet-to-be-published estimate by the university suggests the cost is closer to $300 million from the general fund in the first year — lower than the state’s prediction. The labor center developed the estimate based on the final law to help inform policymakers, she said.
Newsom said he was “resolved” that he couldn’t sign the bill into law without promises from key players that changes would be made in the legislative session that begins in January.
Tia Orr, executive director of Service Employees International Union California, said the financial health of the state is consistent with raising wages for 500,000 healthcare workers, nearly half of whom are on some form of public assistance.
Note that no one here is calculating the costs of 250,000 workers receiving public assistance, much of which would not be necessary with the minimum wage increase, because he does not care.
We do not need another neoliberal weasel on the national political scene.
I got a Z-Pack (Azithromycin) and took the first dose a few hours ago, and I am already feeling better.
We were pretty sure that it was not viral, as Sharon* had the same symptoms, and responded antibiotics as well.
My nose is now running like a faucet, which is a sign of the fever breaking, (no, I did not actually have a fever) and my muscle pain and general lassitude have gone away, so I should be well enough to go to work tomorrow.
So poorly written and ill-thought out rants will be resuming.
The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll.I do so love the droll bon mots of British politicians in the past.—Benjamin Disraeli
So all I have is "just" a nasty cold with a cough and a sinus inflammation.
Needless to say, this sucks wet farts from getting pigeons, but it's better than Covid.
My deepest apologies to my reader(s) being deprived of my timeless prose over the past few days.
To quote the old Yiddish proverb, "דער מענטש טראַכט און גאָט לאַכט," Man plans, and God laughs.
I should be back up to speed in a few days.
Posted via mobile.
Still feeling like something that the cat dragged in.
Going to urgent care tomorrow.
Inhaled infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2 in a susceptible adult as a function of time for the transient scenario where an infected individual enters a room and sings. The dotted horizontal line indicates one infectious dose, which corresponds to 10 TCID50, and the time to reach one dose is indicated for a half-life time, t½, of 30 min. Model input: room size = 4 × 4 × 3 m3, inhalation rate = 9 L/min.
This is airborne, not big ass droplets than can only travel about as far as an ordinary person can hock a loogie.
This has been obvious since that choir practice in Washington State resulted in a superspreader event.
Exhaled SARS-CoV-2-containing aerosols contributed significantly to the rapid and vast spread of covid-19. However, quantitative experimental data on the infectivity of such aerosols is missing. Here, we quantified emission rates of infectious viruses in exhaled aerosol from individuals within their first days after symptom onset from covid-19. Six aerosol samples from three individuals were culturable, of which five were successfully quantified using TCID50. The source strength of the three individuals was highest during singing, when they exhaled 4, 36, or 127 TCID50/s, respectively. Calculations with an indoor air transmission model showed that if an infected individual with this emission rate entered a room, a susceptible person would inhale an infectious dose within 6 to 37 min in a room with normal ventilation. Thus, our data show that exhaled aerosols from a single person can transmit covid-19 to others within minutes at normal indoor conditions.
Seriously. wear a mask. You are not just protecting yourself, you are protecting your loved ones.
Fallen ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo is getting much more support than Mayor Eric Adams in a hypothetical head-to-head Democratic primary race for City Hall in 2025, a stunning new poll released Tuesday claims.Ah, yes. Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Anglos, right-wing radio host, and fascist.
Of those Democrats with an opinion, 44% favored Cuomo to 24% for Adams with one-third undecided, according to the survey conducted by American Pulse & Research Polling.
......
“Our American Pulse survey revealed what I found to be a big surprise: If Andrew Cuomo ran as a Democrat for mayor, he would decisively trounce Mayor Adams in a primary,” said Dustin Olson of American Pulse Research & Polling.
“While surprising, it does make sense, as New Yorkers also gave Mayor Adams the distinction of being the most unfavorably viewed politician among all those we tested in the city.”
......
The poll — which was paid for by a group headed by Adams’ 2021 GOP opponent, Curtis Sliwa — also found that 57% of all voters had a favorable impression of lefty Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the highest of elected officials mentioned in the poll, while Adams had the worst unfavorable rating of 58%.
But the exiled ex-governor — who resigned from office in 2021 amid accusations of sexual misconduct — would lose were he to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in a Democratic primary the next year, the survey said.
Well, there is that.
I am not a big fan of Kirsten Gillibrand, but she is orders of magnitude better than "Rat faced Andy" Cuomo.
......
A group called Save the Senate, chaired by Sliwa and aimed at bolstering the GOP in the US Senate, helped finance the poll.
Because, of course they did.
My condolences to the people of the great City of New York. If I had to choose between Adams and Cuomo, I might write in Ed Koch, and he's been dead for a decade.
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A member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party, and a fan of Bernie who thinks Neoliberal (DLC/New Dem) trickle down conomics sucks.Mechanical Engineer with a background in defense, electronics packaging, medical & food equipment, transportation, and manufacturing.
In my spare time (Hah!), I am the developer of the Firefox addon, bbCode for Web Extensions (bbCodeWebEx).
I have two cats, a black cat, and a gray and white long hair cat, who keep me on my toes. (Because he keeps attacking my feet)
I am a Jew and a Zionist, who is married to a woman with exquisitely bad taste in men, and I have two remarkable children with her.
