Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Bioweapons Research and the People of the Wheel

A Chinese vessel has been implicated in what has been described as the sabotage of undersea telecom cables in the Baltic Sea,
The Chinese!

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Goetz. Hegseth. Gabbard. These are tough nominations. Without Goetz, the other two might be interesting and challenging. With Goetz, they are defiant and hostile.

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Volkswagen asked its workers to take a 10% pay cut, arguing it was the only way that Europe's biggest carmaker could save jobs and remain competitive as profits plunged to a three-year low and union bosses threatened strikes.

It was the first official confirmation of cost-cutting measures VW wants to implement to turn around its fortunes as high costs and weak demand in China dragged down sales and left its factories bloated from overcapacity.

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“Europe’s auto-industry travails are painful evidence that net-zero climate policy is the worst act of economic masochism in the West since the 1930s.”--WSJ

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Most central banks are cutting interest rates. Not Russia’s. Last month policymakers raised rates to 21%, a two-decade high; markets expect them to reach 23% by the year’s end.

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Bioweapons Research and the People of the Wheel

The recent revelation that the Russians may be reopening their bioweapons program raises countless questions; one is 'accidents.' Bioweapons have evil intent but are purposeful, under human control.  So accidents will occur.

Ebola is a virus with several subsets that, in humans, is savagely fatal, or up until recently has been. In some respects, it has been managed well and the oft-maligned WHO can point to it with some pride; they have, in between great dinners, managed the outbreaks--if with some admittedly homicidal preventive techniques by the "host" countries.

However, the history of Ebola research raises real concerns.

Ever since the Russian Biopreparate bio-weapons program, where researchers developed weaponized microorganisms and new, lab-created illnesses, to kill people at random, the Americans have had labs devoted to countering these anti-human experiments. On several occasions, Ebola has been encountered outside of such labs by accident. The teaching case is Ebola Reston.

Reston's appearance in 1989 was the first-ever Ebola virus that emerged outside of Africa and was also the first known natural infection of the Ebola virus in nonhuman primates. When it was first discovered among laboratory monkeys in the United States, the source was immediately traced back to the Philippines to a monkey breeding/export facility. The second outbreak was in 1992–93. The third episode in 1996 was the last known outbreak before Reston ebolavirus reemerged in pigs in 2008.

Nonhuman primates (NHPs)are used for preclinical research, disease modeling, drug development, experimental infections, and biological production and testing. M fascicularis is the only indigenous simian species in the Philippines; collection sites and quantities are government-regulated. Regulated.

The original outbreak was first detected among imported NHPs in a quarantine facility in Reston, Virginia, USA. This outbreak was initially suspected to be simian hemorrhagic fever (SHF), another viral disease caused by an arterivirus, and indeed SHF virus was isolated from the animals. However, Ebola virus was also noted by electron microscopy and indirect fluorescent antibody assays in the cultures.

Remember, these are regulated breeding facilities and labs. And, of course, such an infection had never been seen before.

At the time, the virus was identified and its behavior was unknown. Unknown. There was an exposure to human handlers who knew they were exposed--and they went home. To their families.

It turned out that a small proportion of the personnel in the lab had developed antibodies to the virus but it appeared that this particular subset of the virus did not infect humans. (Despite the common natures of the subtypes, the Reston virus does not convey immunity to either Marburg or Zaire.)

Now, this news item from Fort Dietrich, Md.: In June, 2019, an inspection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found leaks and mechanical problems with the lab’s new chemical system to decontaminate wastewater. The institute was also working with Ebola and the agents known to cause the plague and Venezuelan equine encephalitis when high-level research was voluntarily halted.

In 2009, research at the lab was suspended after the discovery that more than 9,200 vials, about one-eighth of its stock, weren’t listed in the institute’s database.

Now, how good is the containment policy in Wuhan?

What are these people doing? And why do we have faith in any of them?

In the original movie adaptation of the novel I Am Legend, The Last Man on Earth (1964), bacteriologic warfare destroys humanity except for a few humans and a group of crazed remnants bent on killing anyone loosely connected to science whom they call The People of the Wheel.

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

The Righteous



“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and the author of “Strongmen,” a 2020 book about authoritarian leaders, wrote on Friday. “And so we would have a national security official who would potentially compromise our national security.”
So foreign nations do get a vote.

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Ukraine has fired US-made ATACMS missiles into Russia’s Bryansk region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, in a major escalation on the 1,000th day of war.
The attack comes just two days after the Biden administration gave Kyiv the green light to use the longer-range American weapons against targets inside Russia.

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German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said damage to two undersea cables in the Baltic Sea looks like an act of sabotage and a "hybrid action", without knowing who is to blame.

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The Righteous

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that faulty mail-in ballots can’t be counted during this year's Senate vote. This after the Democratic majority on the Bucks County election commission had decided to ignore a binding state Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to engineer the election of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

The Bucks County Boards of Elections counted them anyway.

"People violate laws any time they want," Democratic Bucks County commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia said last week, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. "So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes."

But the court had already paid attention. It had already ruled against her. So they ruled against her again.

Laws are challenged in the courts all the time, but not by breaking them and seeing what happens. And while demonstrators will sometimes break a law--like assembly or trespassing restraints--it is to call attention to another, unrelated legal issue.
 

But violating the law because you think your vision of the legal situation is better has one foot in tyranny, one in chaos. This is especially true in a nation whose very foundation rests on the confines built around the appropriate actions of its government.

This is not an outlier. Recall Biden and his response to the Supreme Court's ruling against his college loan forgiveness/transfer. “That didn’t stop me,” President Biden proudly declared after the Supreme Court blocked his $430 billion student loan write-off in 2023. It sure didn’t. After striking out in court with three debt forgiveness schemes, the Administration unveiled another.

This arrogant assumption of personal superiority over foundational law is the hallmark of the autocrat.


Monday, November 18, 2024

Weekend Catch-Up




Weekend Catch-Up

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket at sunset with a payload that has been shrouded in secrecy to the point of not disclosing any specifics of the mission, and not using its original name.
All regulatory filings and U.S. government agencies, like the Space Force and the Federal Aviation Administration, call the payload ‘Optus-X,’ while SpaceX calls the mission ‘TD7.’ SpaceX’s commentator noted that it was a communications satellite during the company’s livestream.

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Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago over the weekend.

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America's biggest budget airline, Spirit Airlines, has filed for bankruptcy.

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US President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to launch limited strikes into Russia using US-made long-range missiles, in a big policy shift
What could have inspired this aggressive change?

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Good hours. Good pay. Rare emergency call.
Medical residency applications for dermatology slots are up 50% over the past five years,
A younger generation of physicians wants better work-life balance than their predecessors
Dermatologists earn a median $541,000 a year,
Seventy-one percent of applicants who selected dermatology as their first choice when applying for their residency match this year were women,
A 2020 study found dermatology was the second-least-racially-diverse specialty in medicine, behind orthopedic surgery.

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Organic and baby carrots sold at grocery stores across the US have been recalled after an E. coli outbreak that has killed one person.

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Portugal is implementing tax breaks and housing incentives to retain young talent and combat the brain drain to wealthier European countries.

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Zelena Zeto writes that 2000, not 2016 and 2024, were the American outliers.

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Several Trump appointees are being attacked for their lack of administration experience. Worse than Kamala?

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Sweden, Finland Urge Residents To Be Ready For War--Barron's headline

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There's a big campaign called "Stand up to Hate." Will they have bumper stickers and pins like "Whip Inflation Now?"

Sunday, November 17, 2024

A View of the Fed



The Democrats’ focus on identity politics was a problem before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s death, but it has supercharged since then. People see themselves primarily as individuals, not as members of a demographic group. They don’t like being treated as members of a group rather than as individuals.--Strain

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Recently, Democrats shook their fists and bellowed to the Heavens about the need to expand the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster, override state abortion laws via federal legislation, and choose presidents by popular vote. All to save Our Democracy. So far as I can tell, all such talk has ceased—as if there were a great disturbance on the Left, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. It’s never wise to seek powers that you would fear in the hands of your adversaries.-- Graboyes

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A Southwest Airlines plane carrying passengers has been struck by a bullet amid gunfire near a Texas airport.

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A View of the Fed

The Federal Reserve was created in 1913. Very shortly thereafter, the United States for the first time become involved in a European war, initially as a lender to the Allies, subsequently as a co-belligerent. Coincidence? Not entirely.

We are treated to such quaint myths about the purpose of a central bank. “It controls the money supply to steer the economy away from high inflation or high unemployment.” “It is the lender of last resort.”

The real purpose of a central bank is to enable the government to borrow money at a low interest rate.

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In its twentieth-century incarnation, an effective central bank enables the welfare-warfare state. Nowhere is it more effective than in the United States.--Kling

So, as in so many cases, the law and the system benefit the agents and not the citizens? Like the education system benefits the employees, not the students? If true, when does such a repurposing become damaging?

For example, 85% of Black fourth graders cannot read. How does such a loss of foundation influence future learning? How does that growing failure influence future decisions?   

And, importantly, can a society afford to have structural deficits that disqualify over 13% of its population from contributing to its advancement?

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Sat Stats/Transfer Payments


CNN anchor Chris Wallace announced on Monday that he would leave the network at the end of his contract, citing the growing influence of podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Charlamagne tha God.

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We find that performance on both the Multistate Bar Examination (MBE) and essay components of the Nevada Bar have little relationship with the assessed lawyering effectiveness of new lawyers, calling into question the usefulness of these tests.--paper
"Effectiveness"

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Noonon on Hegseth:
Pete Hegseth as defense secretary? This is unserious and deeply alarming. He is a decorated military veteran with Ivy League degrees, but he has no serious governmental or managerial experience, no history of international accomplishment. The Pentagon is a mammoth bureaucracy overseeing almost three million employees, including those in the military services. The defense secretary is a world leader: If North Korea launched a nuclear missile, he would be in the room with the president, advising and counseling. In the past 10 years Mr. Hegseth has made his living as a breakfast TV host and culture warrior. This isn’t the right fit. At this point in his life Mr. Hegseth, 44, lacks the stature and depth required of the role.

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Transfer Payments

Payments from government entitlement programs — transfer payments — are the fastest-growing major component of citizens’ personal income.

Such transfers are the third-largest source of personal income: In 2022, the average citizen received almost as much from government transfers ($11,500) as from investments ($12,900), and more than one-quarter as much money as was obtained from work. 

This average citizen received six times more (adjusted for inflation) in government transfer payments than in 1970, during which span income from other sources increased less than half as much. Transfers’ share of total (inflation-adjusted) personal income has more than doubled since 1970, from 8.2 percent to 17.6 percent in 2022.

How are we different from the failing European redistributionist? 

And while those numbers are astonishing, they are not as remarkable as their direction.

Friday, November 15, 2024

Tariffs


Tocqueville read Say’s "Cours complet d’économie politique pratique" twice—the second time while enroute to America. Besides exposing Tocqueville to key ideas expressed in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Say stressed a point that Tocqueville never forgot: that while the economy can be studied on its own terms, one should never forget that it is embedded in society.--Gregg
That may be why the Europeans have such difficulty understanding the Americans.

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A Gallup poll this summer said 81% of Americans want a path to citizenship for those “brought to the U.S. illegally as children.” That included 64% of Republicans.

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Tariffs

A new National Bureau of Economic Research paper shows that tariffs probably did more harm than good. Using meticulously collected industry-level and state-level data, the paper traces the impact of specific tariff rates more clearly than before. The results are not pretty.

One core finding is that industries with higher tariffs did not have higher productivity — in fact, they had lower productivity. Tariffs did raise the number of US firms in a given sector, but they did so in part by protecting smaller, less productive firms. That was not the path by which the US became an industrial giant, nor is it wise to use trade policy to keep lower-productivity firms in business. Not only does it slow economic growth, it also keeps workers in jobs without much of a future.

These results contradict the traditional protectionist story — that tariffs allow the best firms to grow larger and capture the large domestic market. In reality, the tariffs kept firms smaller and probably lowered US manufacturing productivity.

The paper also finds that the tariffs of that era raised the prices for products released domestically. That lowers living standards, and should give a second Trump administration reason to pause, as he just won an election in which inflation was a major concern. The finding about inflation also counters another major protectionist argument: that tariffs eventually lower domestic prices because they allow US firms to expand and enjoy economies of scale. That is the opposite of what happened.

The paper also details how lobbying, logrolling, and political horse-trading were essential features of the shift toward higher US tariffs. A lot of the tariffs of the time depended on which party controlled Congress, rather than economic rationality. Trump is fond of citing President William McKinley’s tariffs, but they are evidence of the primacy of political influence and rent-seeking, not of a well-thought-out strategic trade policy.

The authors of the new research are Alexander Klein and Christopher M. Meissner with comments from Cowen in Bloomberg

Trump probably plans tariffs as a threat for other aims. And security questions are raised by foreign production of security products. But most economists argue against the value of tariffs in most instances and Trump, knowing these arguments, seems eager to bull ahead anyway.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Quality vs Censorship

The Democrats spent 300 million dollars against Scott in Florida.

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The Gaetz nomination was a revealing error.

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I assess the climate impact of granting federal approval to all proposed U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal projects, which would double U.S. export capacity by 2030. Results indicate a net decrease in global emissions through 2070, primarily due to higher local gas prices in the U.S., leading to lower domestic gas generation and accelerated renewable adoption.--That is from the job market paper of Constanza Abuin
Not what most LNG proponents would expect. Or believe. Certainly, the supply side in the improved distribution atmosphere would have a significant, if uncertain, impact. It does say a lot about world demand, though.

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Quality vs Censorship

The premiere of a 19th-century play directed by John Malkovich was performed in an almost empty Sofia National Theatre after angry protesters irritated with how Bulgarians are portrayed prevented visitors from entering the building.

Reuters reports that one hour before the opening of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and The Man on Thursday evening, protesters started gathering in front of the theatre, Nova TV reported on its website.

They held a big banner reading: "Without anti-Bulgarian plays at the National Theatre." Protesters threw garbage bags, spat and physically attacked Oscar-nominated animator Theodore Ushev as he tried to enter the theatre, Nova TV reported.

To avoid further clashes, the theatre management allowed only a few journalists inside to watch the performance.

The play is a comedy featuring a love story during a conflict between Bulgaria and Serbia.

Critics in Bulgaria say Shaw presents the Bulgarian soldiers as cowardly and unworthy, and Bulgarians as people who bathe once in their lives and don't read, Nova TV reported.

Criticism of art is become intolerance of it. And that can become suffocating.