SUBLIME:

DeSantis' official Twitter account has recently shared photos of him that were apparently taken several days earlier without noting the fact. On Tuesday, DeSantis' account posted a photo that had been taken 12 days earlier--a fact later confirmed to MSNBC by the governor's office.

On Thursday, DeSantis' Twitter account shared a photo of him at Bagelicious Deli & Bakery in Ocala, Florida. Grant Stern, executive director of Occupy Democrats, pointed to a December 17 Facebook post from Bagelicious Deli & Bakery featuring that same photo.

"Ron DeSantis is still living in December 17th. #WhereIsRon," Stern wrote.

IN ABRAHAM ACCORD:

Russia's state TV propagandists express their delight in seemingly having the likes of Tucker Carlson in their corner, praising his coverage as the prime example of Russia's successful influence operations abroad. Carlson's talking points often sound identical to those pushed by the Kremlin's propagandists--or by Putin himself.

During one of his broadcasts on Fox News in December, Carlson argued that "NATO exists primarily to torment Vladimir Putin." He worried about the possibility of "a NATO takeover of Ukraine," and described the 2014 Maidan Revolution as a U.S.-organized "coup in Ukraine." He also baselessly accused Joe Biden of fomenting "a hot war with Russia." The very next day, translated quotes from Tucker Carlson's show were widely broadcast on Russia's state television. After watching Carlson's remarks during the live taping of 60 Minutes, Igor Korotchenko, member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Council and editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine said: "Excellent performance, with which we can only express solidarity."

Carlson's claims that the U.S. is pushing the world to the brink of a nuclear war with Russia fit squarely within the Kremlin's current propaganda offensive. During Tuesday's live broadcast of The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev, host Vladimir Soloviev expressed his concerns about convincing Americans that the fears of war are real: "Americans change their behavior only when there is an existential threat to their population... Their memory of WWI is much greater than that of WWII, because of the numbers of those who perished and the difficulty of that war. We often think of Americans as the mirror image of ourselves and our concerns. They only look like us. Their mentality is completely, absolutely different."

YES, VIRGINIA, THE ANTI-VAXXERS ARE MAKING THEMSELVES NUTS:

We estimate that COVID-19 vaccination reduces anxiety and depression symptoms by nearly 30%. Nearly all the benefits are private benefits, and we find little evidence of spillover effects, that is, increases in community vaccination rates are not associated with improved anxiety or depression symptoms among the unvaccinated. We find that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with larger reductions in anxiety or depression symptoms among individuals with lower education levels, who rent their housing, who are not able to telework, and who have children in their household. The economic benefit of reductions in anxiety and depression are approximately $350 billion. Our results highlight an important, but understudied, secondary benefit of COVID-19 vaccinations.

IT'S NOT STRUCTURAL! IT'S JUST THE NEIGHBORHOODS AND SCHOOLS WE TRAPPED THEM IN...:

McWhorter's conclusion about the connection between inequality and opportunity (that the insisted linkage simply "is false") is casually asserted without explanation or discussion, except to offer the admonition that "the insistence on this mantra makes us dumb." When McWhorter does make specific arguments, these skim along just as superficially. He describes a 1987 "experiment" in which a rich donor "adopted" 112 Black children in Philadelphia, guaranteeing them a fully funded education as long as they "did not do drugs, have children before getting married, or commit crimes." McWhorter points to the poor results for many of these children as evidence that outcomes do not equate with opportunity. If they did, he suggests, wouldn't this infusion of resources have solved their problems? McWhorter does not mention that George Weiss, the philanthropist who "adopted" the children in Philadelphia, managed (with the help of his intervention) to double the high-school graduation rate considered normal for their demographic.

McWhorter's dismissal of the connection between outcomes and opportunity rests on an unnecessarily pinched definition of the latter. Writing about Weiss's Philadelphia experiment, he concludes that, "what held those poor kids back was that they had been raised amid a different sense of what is normal than white kids in the burbs. That is, yes, another way of saying 'culture.'... "

But are culture and structural racism mutually exclusive causal explanations? Is some of what McWhorter describes as "culture" simply a manifestation of the challenges of living in geographic communities characterized by extreme poverty, racial segregation, and a radical lack of economic opportunity? And is it possible to call the persistence of such economically disadvantaged communities a form of "structural racism," as the conservative columnist David French did last year? After all, such communities are shaped by policies in land use and local government finance that reinforce the consequences of historically racist practices, such as redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and exclusionary zoning.

McWhorter is no doubt correct when he says that, more than slogans, we need a better understanding of the mechanics that lie behind racial disparities, which are surely complex. But, precisely because of that complexity, it is far from clear that his examples absolve a legacy of racial discrimination for many or even most persistent inequities we observe today. What we need, from both antiracists and their critics, is sound social science that rigorously analyzes the social and economic mechanisms that connect historic (or continuing) racist practices with persistent inequalities. And we need to be able to evaluate proposed remedies with equal rigor.

Antiracists like Ibram X. Kendi would certainly benefit from such rigorous empirical investigation. If what makes a policy or practice "racist" is its impact on the material well-being of Black and Brown people, as Kendi argues, then a crucial ingredient in assessing policies or practices is a deep and accurate understanding of the nature and extent of those impacts. This is no small undertaking. Policies rarely have just one impact, and understanding the full panoply of a policy's effects, over the short and long term, can be the work of an entire academic career.

Would removing onerous licensing requirements for small urban businesses improve Black lives, or make them worse? What if it improves some Black lives (Black small-business owners) while making other Black lives worse (some of their customers who might have been protected by the regulations in question)? What if the policy causes some harm in the short term, while expanding opportunity over the long run?

Precisely because we are so desperately in need of more and better knowledge about how seemingly race-neutral policies or structures operate to perpetuate racial inequity, it is essential that theorists and social scientists fearlessly pursue research into the operation of those structures -- even when their findings might prove controversial or uncomfortable. For this reason, McWhorter's critique of efforts by the Elect to stifle debate is the most important argument he makes in the book. And yet, even here, he misses the mark by relying heavily on anecdote and by focusing exclusively on opponents to his left.

WHERE'S JANET RENO WHEN WE NEED HER?:

One year after Donald Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington D.C., the hard right, anti-democracy faction of the Republican base that led the attack threatens to overtake the party for the long term.

This hard-right faction, loyal to former President Trump, minimizes, or supports, the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. They have worked to systemically undermine America's democracy in the months following the attack by installing into positions of power loyal proponents of Trump's Big Lie and by passing a flurry of voter suppression bills. The few Republicans who oppose Trump or acknowledge the wrong that he and others did on Jan. 6 face being ostracized.

This group of Republicans also embrace lies and conspiracy theories to spin away what happened that day. Repeatedly, such high-profile Trump backers as Tucker Carlson have opted to further stoke the feelings of paranoia and bitterness that undergirded the attack, rather than work to calm the tensions of a nation in turmoil.

"What happened today will be used by the people taking power to justify stripping you of the rights you were born with as an American," Carlson told his audience of over 4 million people on the night Trump supporters attacked the Capitol. "Your right to speak without being censored, your right to assemble, to not be spied upon, to make a living, to defend your family, most critically."

The tenor of rhetoric like this and the infusion of once fringe, white supremacist ideas into mainstream discourse has raised alarm within Southern Poverty Law Center, and all who care about democracy. Couple those trends with the rapid introduction of aggressive, anti-democracy actions from Republicans who ally themselves with Trump, and the magnitude of the potential crisis we face as a country becomes apparent. The following analysis details how the hard right has assembled in the aftermath of Trump's last days in office, systematically building a culture where violence and authoritarianism can further take root in the U.S.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

THE INSIDE INFO IS THAT BIDENOMICS WORKS:

NO ONE MISSES JOBS:

The four-week average, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, fell to just above 199,000, the lowest level since October 1969.

DUDE, HE WAS A DARWINIST:

With the death of biologist E. O. Wilson on Sunday, I find myself again reflecting on the complicated legacies of scientists whose works are built on racist ideas and how these ideas came to define our understanding of the world.

After a long clinical career as a registered nurse, I became a laboratory-trained scientist as researchers mapped the first draft of the human genome. It was during this time that I intimately familiarized myself with Wilson's work and his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior.

His influential text Sociobiology: The New Synthesis contributed to the false dichotomy of nature versus nurture and spawned an entire field of behavioral psychology grounded in the notion that differences among humans could be explained by genetics, inheritance and other biological mechanisms. 

FORGET UKRAINE...:

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia's Muslim-majority Chechnya region and a loyalist of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has triggered a fresh spat between Turkey and Russia by suggesting to name a park in Chechnya after Turkey's public enemy No. 1, amid ongoing disagreements between Ankara and Moscow over Syria and Ukraine. According to the sources familiar with the matter, Kadyrov's hit to Ankara's sore spot was a manifest of an ongoing face-off between Ankara and the Chechen leader that also involves a Russian spy network that Turkey claimed to have busted in November.

In retaliation to Turkey naming a park after Dzhokhar Dudayev, Chechnya's pro-independence leader in the 1990s, Kadyrov suggested that a park in Chechnya could be named after Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdish militants fighting against the Turkish government. 

NO ONE WILL MISS JOBS:

At least 20 guaranteed income pilots have launched in cities and counties across the U.S. since 2018, and more than 5,400 families and individuals have started receiving between $300 and $1,000 a month, according to a Bloomberg CityLab analysis. If all these programs complete their pilot periods as planned, they'll have given out at least $35 million.

These figures mark the close of a year of rapid growth for U.S. programs that give some residents direct cash payments, with a half-dozen other pilots promised to launch in cities next year. For many advocates, the concept of "basic income" has evolved from the more expansive UBI -- a universal basic income to all residents -- to more targeted guaranteed income programs that have the goal of narrowing inequality and dismantling poverty. 

As local programs sprouted up in cities across the U.S. in 2021, more than 60 mayors joined a coalition to advocate for the policy in their cities and nationally. Among Democrats, at least, it is no longer considered radical to propose giving low-income residents money with none of the traditional strings of welfare attached. And at the national level, Congress engaged in its own temporary mass cash distribution program, in the form of stimulus checks to the vast majority of Americans. 

IT'S NOT A PROGRESSIVE CITY:

Just after midnight in Times Square on Friday night, as the ball drops and the new year begins, Eric Adams will be sworn in as the 110th mayor of New York City. Following David Dinkins, he is the second African American elected to the office. But he is the first mayor of New York who is a retired police officer, the first mayor to have attended New York public schools since Abe Beame in the 1970s, and the first Democrat in recent memory to run for mayor as a centrist, a moderate political position he embraced early on and from which he never veered. While conventional wisdom says the left has all the mojo in the Democratic party--think the Squad, Bernie Sanders, the Progressive Caucus--Eric Adams is proof a centrist can create sizzle and even win in a liberal bastion like New York City. His victory has also put him on the radar screen for moderate Democrats across America looking to get behind a centrist who could have a national profile.

"He created his own lane," says Kandy Stroud, a longtime Democratic party insider and a native New Yorker, who believes Adams's key to success was his decision to eschew the politics of New York's current mayor, Bill de Blasio, an unapologetic progressive. "Adams appealed to a more down-the-middle Democrat. He didn't need Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It just goes to show there is an opportunity for a moderate Democrat to win. Then again, Eric Adams has star quality. He's his own dude. He's cool."

Of everything, though, Adams is defined by his past profession. "Never forget he's a cop," says Edward W. Hayes, a Manhattan-based super attorney whose clients have ranged from George Pataki to Robert de Niro to the estate of Andy Warhol. "He talks like a cop. He acts like a cop. It's the people he grew up with who are getting robbed. He's going to try to protect them."

YOUR NEXT SNOWMOBILE WILL BE A VOLT:

The estimated market for recreational power sports--snowmobiles, jet skis, and side-by-sides, or ATVs--is $40 billion. The impact of electrification on those segments is enormous from a climate standpoint. And the space is changing fast. The world's most dominant manufacturer, BRP Inc., which sells $1.8 billion worth of Ski-Doo snowmobiles and Sea-Doo jet skis each year (the two most polluting vehicle segments in this category), announced in March that it will spend $300 million to develop electric vehicles across all of its product lines over the next five years. BRP followed Minnesota-based Polaris, another of the four major snowmobile brands, which partnered with electric-power-train maker Zero Motorcycles in 2020 to do the same by 2025. In an interview with Axios after that announcement, Polaris CEO Scott Wine said, "I never thought I would invest in an electric snowmobile. I thought it was the dumbest idea ever."

He wasn't alone in that assessment. Since the first snowmobile was built in 1935 as a means of transportation, its piercing sound and exhaust fumes have been accepted side effects--the price of power, if you will. But while recreational sleds cost a few hundred dollars in the sixties, now they go for $15,000 and accelerate like rocket ships. More than 120,000 sleds are sold each year globally, including 94,000 in North America. Emissions standards that some consider too soft magnify their environmental impact.

Two-stroke snowmobiles, the more powerful of the two main designs (the other, a four-stroke, is slightly more environmentally friendly), are on average allowed to emit 105 times more carbon monoxide than a car. The average two-stroke limits for nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons are 843 times higher than for a car. Taiga cofounder and CEO Sam Bruneau calls it "startling" that two-strokes are still allowed to be mass produced.

Unlike automobiles, snowmobiles and jet skis aren't required to include a catalytic converter, which removes pollutants from emissions. (Side-by-sides contain a catalytic converter yet are still more polluting than cars.) Bruneau believes the emissions disparities reflect a misperception that snowmobiles aren't a big enough market to damage the atmosphere. Part of Taiga's mission is to improve air quality and reduce the machines' effects on snowpack in popular riding areas, including around ski resorts. "When you factor in the average between a two-stroke and four-stroke, electrifying one snowmobile is equivalent to taking 40 cars off the road," Bruneau tells me as we sit in his office, in front of a giant photo of a Taiga tester riding powder in Revelstoke, British Columbia.

While boy-genius-run startups are common in the tech world, motor sports are a different game. Taiga's founders were outsiders to the tight-knit "sledneck" community, which was both a pro and a con: they were able to see the potential of electric more clearly, but they also could be viewed as intruders. Bernatchez, a climber from Quebec City, went to robot science fairs as a kid and taught himself to code in high school. Hardware specialist Paul Achard grew up in Granby, Quebec, the son of IBM engineers. Bruneau's dad was a ski instructor at Mont Tremblant, and Bruneau learned to appreciate the quiet of backcountry skiing. The trio met at McGill University, in Montreal, where they teamed up to build 400-pound electric race cars as engineering students. "We just loved chasing performance," Bruneau says.

They couldn't run their cars in the winter, so they stuffed their power train in a snowmobile for the Society of Automotive Engineers' Clean Snowmobile Challenge, an annual competition for students to create more environmentally friendly designs. They won the zero-emissions category in 2013 and 2014. More importantly, after fielding inquiries from ski resorts and tour companies interested in purchasing electric snowmobiles, they realized no one was doing it commercially. "That was a lightbulb moment for us," Bruneau says.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S TALIBAN:

When the Taliban swept into power in August, it was unclear what their rule would mean for the Internet in Afghanistan. Would they cut off Internet access? Use social media posts--or government databases--to identify and target their former enemies? Continue to wage their own increasingly effective public affairs campaigns?  

As it turned out, the Taliban did not cut off access to the Internet--at least it has not yet. Instead, for those Afghan students who can afford the Internet at home--especially women and girls, whom the regime has officially banned from secondary and higher education--online learning has become one of the primary sources of education. 

Some of this is well organized, with encrypted virtual classrooms set up by international supporters, while some is entirely self-directed--learning through YouTube videos, perhaps, or playlists of TED talks. And often it falls somewhere in between, making use of free or discounted online learning platforms. 

Code Weekend's virtual bootcamp falls into this latter category. Seventy-five participants were accepted into the cohort and are working their way through Scrimba's Frontend Developer Career Path, a series of 13 interactive video learning modules that cover everything from HTML and CSS basics to tips on handling job interview questions about JavaScript or GitHub.

Participants can complete the modules on their own time and in their own homes, with Code Weekend volunteer mentors checking in weekly to answer questions, ensure that they stay on track, and assist with logistics as needed--including providing Internet top-up to keep participants online. According to organizers, roughly 50 members of the original cohort are active. 

Ensuring Internet connectivity is just one of the logistical and financial challenges of running a bootcamp, even a virtual one, in Afghanistan. Another is contending with power outages, which become more frequent every winter. In an attempt to solve both these problems, Code Weekend has been trying to crowdfund the costs of 3G credit and backup electricity through generators and battery storage units. 

FOLK TOO OFTEN LOSE SIGHT OF THE COROLLARY...:

England was certainly an oddity to her friends and enemies on the Continent. 'There was no school in the world where one could learn how to negotiate with the English,' the Spanish envoy Íñigo Vélez de Guevara, count of Oñate, told his Venetian counterpart in 1637. The following year, a Jesuit in England groused that he had 'never been in a country where things go so slowly or stupidly ... I seem to be in the middle of Spain.' At other times, however, affairs moved fast, so fast, in fact, that Pomponne de Bellièvre, the French ambassador in 1646, complained that 'one no longer reckons time by months and weeks, but by hours and even by minutes.' The Huguenot Maximilien de Béthune, marquis of Rosny, suspected that the water had something to do with it, the English having 'contracted all the instability of the element by which they are surrounded'. Others blamed a lack of executive heft. With no standing army and no prerogative tax like the taille in France, English monarchs had to seek funds from a parsimonious Parliament. The Stuarts resented that assembly's assertiveness. 'I am a stranger,' James VI and I confided in the Spanish ambassador in 1614, 'and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of.'

That James, a Scot, was complaining to a Spaniard about his alien Parliament was a large part of the problem with the Stuarts, at least from the perspective of their southern subjects (and conversely explains some of the appeal of 'God's Englishman', Oliver Cromwell). James was accused of wanting to sacrifice his new kingdom's distinctiveness for the sake of a 'Great Britain' in which the Anglo-Scottish borders would be reconfigured as 'Middle Shires', Charles I of being swayed by Spain to an 'execrable and rotten' degree, and Charles II of turning England into a 'tributary' of France. It is indicative of Parliament's concern for English liberties that in 1604 a bill was placed before the Commons seeking confirmation of the provisions of Magna Carta. When Guy Fawkes was caught with 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords the following year, he told his interrogators that he had wanted to blow the lot of them back to Scotland.

Another problem for the Stuarts was that, in spite of their persecution of Catholics, they were associated with 'popery'. England was a leading Protestant kingdom - God's chosen nation, according to puritans - and therefore vulnerable throughout this century of Counter-Reformation to the Catholic armies and missionaries who were reclaiming territory at an alarming rate. Between 1590 and 1690, the geographical extent of Protestantism was reduced from one half to one fifth of Europe's landmass. Englishmen feared the return of human bonfires and, as one tract threatened, of 'troops of papists ravishing your wives and your daughters, dashing your little children's brains out against the walls, plundering your houses and cutting your own throats'. For many Protestants in England, the need to keep popery out, by fighting Catholics in Europe and stamping on creeping popery at home, trumped all other considerations.

James II, the last male monarch of the dynasty, was openly Catholic, and his older brother, Charles II, had converted to Rome on his deathbed. James I and Charles I were both devoted to the Church of England, but favoured a ceremonial form of worship which to the hotter sort of Protestant smacked of popery-by-stealth. All four Stuart kings had Catholic queens (Anne of Denmark covertly) and absolutist tendencies, or at least a preference for consulting Parliament as infrequently as possible. Fewer parliaments meant less money, however, which tended to result in arbitrary taxation at home and a degree of suppliance abroad that invited further charges of popery.

KYLE OF THE WEEK:

A heavily armed California man was arrested in Iowa after he told law enforcement officers that he would "do whatever it takes" to kill government leaders on his "hit list," including President Joe Biden and his chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, authorities said in court papers Wednesday.

TOTALLY NOT A DEATH CULT...:

The red map shows the Counties where the death rate increased since adult vaccine eligibility; the green map shows the opposite: those Counties where the death rate decreased.

Complex issues (like Mortality rates) typically have numerous variables and circumstances that discourage making broad conclusions. The world is complicated and reducing that complexity to one factor invites error. However, given the medical miracle that is the life-saving mRNA-based vaccines, I cannot look at these two maps without experiencing a deep sense of sadness for the avoidable loss of life that has taken place.

The Times reported the good news: "Death rates fell in most counties across the country, and in about one in five counties, the death rate fell by more than half." But they also reported some horrific news: "But in about one in 10 counties, death rates have more than doubled."

That is a simply astounding statistic.

Many Americans took full advantage of vaccines -- see the green map -- embracing the latest science, behaving rationally, their instinct for self-preservation driving intelligent decision-making. Since the vaccine became available for all adults in April 2021, the death rate from Covid from about 25% (going from 14% to 11% of all deaths).

But as the red map shows, not all Americans are participating, with inevitable bad results: "The virus is now responsible for a higher share of deaths from all causes for younger Americans and white Americans than it was before all adults were eligible for vaccines."

"JUST THE COMMON COLD":

THIS WEEK'S KYLE:

Lyndon McLeod, who police say killed five people during a deadly rampage in the Denver area, was an author dedicated to alt-right philosophies, including masculine supremacy, contrarian COVID-19 beliefs, and targeted violence against the "weak."

McLeod appears to have operated a plethora of Twitter and Instagram accounts under the alias Roman McClay, which he used for his three-book series Sanction. The book series, with its first book described in an Amazon review as "eloquent reflections on dominance hierarchies, psychology, technology, nature, violence, anatomy and physiology, sexual morality, drug use, politics, and a whole mess of stuff," follows a character named Lyndon McLeod, a persona named after its author who "commits 46 murders" in the book and one he seemed to allow to seep into his real life. The Daily Beast found that at least two Twitter users identified McLeod and McClay as one and the same months and even years before the shooting.

NOT TAKING CREDIT FOR HIS FLU:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn't held any public briefings on COVID-19 since Dec. 17, and one mayor has had enough. "We have not received any assistance from the state of Florida at our testing sites," said Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, who oversees Orlando, at a Tuesday press conference. "Our residents, all Florida residents, should be outraged and they should ask the question, 'Where is our state? Where is our governor? Where is Ron DeSantis now?'"

GLOBALIZATION IS ANGLOFICATION:

This Christmas celebration, which has become a national rite in non-Christian or multicultural countries, used to trouble my parents and myself, 70 years ago. Given that we were of Jewish origin in a France that was massively Catholic--Muslims had not yet arrived in great numbers--my parents at first decided to ignore Christmas, which was, for them, a day like any other. But for a child like me, surrounded by Christian children, I noticed that they received gifts and got to stuff themselves with chocolate. My parents thought that they had found a synthesis by celebrating Hanukkah, a holiday which, on the Jewish calendar, coincides more or less with Christmas. Hanukkah, or the "festival of lights," celebrates, in principle, the reconquest of the Second Temple in Jerusalem from Hellenistic despots by the Maccabees family. But Jews long considered it to be a minor and controversial holiday: 2,000 years ago (in 165 B.C.), the reconquest had pitted integralist Hebrews attached to the territory of Israel against Jews who were already dispersed and who attached more importance to the study of the Bible than to old stones. In contemporary terms, one might conclude that Hanukkah is a Zionist holiday, or at least one characterized by nostalgia for a distant past. If we give children gifts at Hanukkah, this is only so that they will not feel left out compared with their Christian friends. And so, I received presents for Hannukah, our substitute Christmas.

AFGHANIWHAT?:

Despite unprecedented levels of hunger and starvation for which U.S. sanctions bear important responsibility, Afghanistan has once again virtually disappeared from the most important single source of world news for most Americans.

Since September, which marked the end of U.S. efforts to evacuate its citizens and its foreign and Afghan allies, the evening news programs of the three dominant U.S. television networks -- ABC, NBC, and CBS -- have collectively devoted a grand total of 21 minutes -- spread over ten story segments -- to Afghanistan. 

That marks a stunning plunge in evening news attention from a total of 427 minutes devoted to Afghanistan in the two previous months, about 75 percent of which were broadcast in August during the Taliban's takeover of the country and the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and allied personnel. Just one three-minute segment has aired since December 1.

MASK UP:

One of the most vocal advocates for the use of higher-quality masks throughout the pandemic has been Stanford infectious-diseases doctor Abraar Karan, who has researched COVID transmission and been calling for the use of higher-filtration face masks since the spring of 2020. His Twitter feed continues to be an invaluable resource for information on mask effectiveness, criticism of the inadequate public-health efforts regarding masking, and other commentary on COVID-19. I spoke with Dr. Karan about his ongoing campaign for better masks, their importance in the fight against Omicron, and why you should replace that cloth mask in your underwear drawer.

Why should people start using high-filtration masks like N95s and KN95s as their go-to, everyday masks rather than cloth ones?

The key reason is that transmission of the coronavirus is primarily through aerosols, which float around in the air -- you inhale them -- and are not filtered well by cloth masks. You really need melt-blown polypropylene, which you find in surgical masks and N95s, to stop these small particles.

So the materials used to make these masks make them better equipped to filter out the virus?

Yeah. The material is basically melt-blown polymers, like polypropylene, which form this complex sort of webbing which is then electrostatically charged, and that pulls the particles in when you're inhaling and exhaling. Cloth masks are often just woven thread and other materials that don't have that design. Cloth masks don't provide great source control, either. The CDC is now letting people who test positive for COVID-19 stop isolating after five days and then wear a mask for five days. It would have been ideal for them to also recommend that be a better mask.

THANKS, JOE:

Also, your 401(k) surely did not "go to hell," as the previous guy predicted. On the contrary, stocks in the S&P 500 are up 26 percent as the first year of the Biden presidency is about to end.

How good is that? "U.S. financial markets are outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century" is how Bloomberg News put it.

The U.S. gross domestic product is expected to have grown an extraordinary 5.6 percent this year, according to economists. And that's after adjusting for inflation.

The unemployment rate is down to 4.2 percent. Retail sales in the recent Christmas shopping season rose eight percent from the same period last year -- the biggest gain in 17 years.

As Bloomberg summed it up, "America's economy improved more in Joe Biden's first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years."

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Florida's new Covid-19 infections have more than quadrupled over the past week as the new Omicron variant spreads across the state while treatments remain in short supply.

The latest weekly rate of newly reported Covid-19 infections from the Florida Department of Health was 13.8 percent as of Thursday, the most recent figures available, which is double the 5.4 percent rate from Dec. 17. The state Department of Health also reported 125,201 new infections as of Thursday, which is a jump from the 29,519 new cases as of Dec. 17.

TOTALLY NOT A SUICIDE CULT:

HIKE TAXES AND SPEED IT UP:

WELL, THEY ARE THE SORT WHO WON'T TAKE SIMPLE HEALTH MEASURES...:

NOT MY PROBLEM...:

One hospital being overwhelmed isn't a one-hospital problem, it's an every-hospital problem. Even if your community is not awash with Covid-19 or if most people are vaccinated, a major outbreak in your broader region, plus all the other patients hospitals are treating in normal times, could easily fill your hospital, too. That makes it harder for the health system to treat you if you come to the ER with heart attack symptoms or appendicitis or any acute medical emergency.

Already, because of existing staffing shortages, rural hospitals are finding it difficult to find room for their patients at larger hospital systems. With omicron spreading rapidly, increasing the number of patients seeking care while sidelining health workers who have to quarantine, systemic overload may not be far off.

"When you have a Covid patient who needs ICU care, those hospitals are turning away patients," Carrie Saia, CEO of Holton Community Hospital, located in a town of 3,000 people about 90 minutes east of the Kansas City metropolitan area, told me earlier this month. "We're sending our patients farther away. Not because they're full, they're just out of staff."

At earlier points in the crisis, large hospitals would limit transfers from smaller facilities in order to preserve their capacity to treat the most seriously ill patients. As a new wave driven by the omicron variant takes off, that could happen again.

As Karen Joynt Maddox, a practicing cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, told me in August: "During Covid surges, we were told to limit transfers only to patients who had needs that could not be met at their current hospital (i.e. decline transfers because the family requested it, but equal services available at both places) because that was the only way we could make sure that we did have the ability to accept patients that only we (or another major referral center) could handle."

The feedback loop works in reverse as well. Recently, the HCA hospital in Conroe, Texas, about 40 miles north of Houston, was dealing with such a staffing shortage in its emergency department that the facility temporarily asked ambulances to bypass it because the ED couldn't handle any more patients, according to a spokesperson. Suddenly, hospitals in the heart of Houston were seeing an unexpected surge of patients who needed emergency care, causing long wait times at their facilities.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Paul's tweet read: "How to steal an election: 'Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.'" 

HANG 'EM HIGH:

In his recently published memoir, Peter Navarro, then-President Donald Trump's trade adviser, details how he stayed in close contact with Bannon as they put the Green Bay Sweep in motion with help from members of Congress loyal to the cause.

But in an interview last week with The Daily Beast, Navarro shed additional light on his role in the operation and their coordination with politicians like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).

"We spent a lot of time lining up over 100 congressmen, including some senators. It started out perfectly. At 1 p.m., Gosar and Cruz did exactly what was expected of them," Navarro told The Daily Beast. "It was a perfect plan. And it all predicated on peace and calm on Capitol Hill. We didn't even need any protestors, because we had over 100 congressmen committed to it."

That commitment appeared as Congress was certifying the 2020 Electoral College votes reflecting that Joe Biden beat Trump. Sen. Cruz signed off on Gosar's official objection to counting Arizona's electoral ballots, an effort that was supported by dozens of other Trump loyalists.

IT'S A MYSTERY...:

Age-adjusted rates of Covid associated hospitalizations by vaccine status. Adults over age 18. Data from Jan-Nov 2021 h/t @WHCOS pic.twitter.com/lPQ2PVV4Da

— Scott Gottlieb, MD (@ScottGottliebMD) December 27, 2021

TAX THE EXTERNALITIES:

Ken Henshaw is the executive director of We The People, a nongovernmental organisation based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Henhaw works closely with local communities to expand civic engagement and organise around environmental and ecological justice.

In this transcribed interview between Henshaw and journalist Freddie Stuart, Henshaw discusses the history of British colonialism in Nigeria, the legacy of the multinational oil company Royal Dutch Shell in the Niger Delta, and the local indigenous front-line communities demanding reparations for the destruction caused by crude oil extraction. [...]

FS: Can you tell us about the growth of oil extraction in the Niger Delta in the 1950s, and how the new oil economy took on these same colonial patterns of commerce you just outlined? In particular, can you talk about the role of multinational corporations in creating and maintaining these neocolonial systems of oppression?

KH: In the early 1940s it was discovered that Nigeria was a promising place for oil extraction. Drilling licences were awarded by the colonial authorities, with the first given to Shell, which was the first to discover crude oil in commercial quantities.

From the start of the extraction, there was no conversation with the local communities in the Niger Delta, where the crude oil was deposited. The conversation existed only between the colonial authorities and oil companies owned by the colonialists.

The agenda was not to find ways of tapping this new resource to impact the people of the Niger Delta in any meaningful way. The conversation was how this resource could be channelled out of the country to contribute to the economy, welfare and development of Britain and Europe. While it's fashionable today to say that before any resource project is established you need to have prior and informed consent of the people - that never happened here. Oil extraction was always an imposition from without. An imposition against the people. And that's why the people feel they have been completely alienated from the oil industry in Nigeria.

When Nigeria became independent in 1960, the oil companies had to enter a relationship with Nigeria's government to sustain the same relations of production and extraction. In this new relationship, the same level of protection was extended by the Nigerian security forces, judiciary and ruling elite to the oil companies over and above the interests of locals.

FS: In 1992, the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa said, "The Ogoni have been gradually ground to dust by the combined effort of the multinational oil company, Shell, the murderous ethnic majority in Nigeria and the country's military dictatorships." Can you outline how this relationship exists today, and what role the international community has played in perpetuating this dynamic?

KH: In the 1990s, the Ogoni ethnic nationality, located in a part of the Niger Delta where some of the largest oil fields are owned and extracted by Shell, demanded a better deal from the Nigerian government and the oil company. They simply said that we have not seen any benefits from oil extraction in our community. On the contrary, what we have seen is a system of environmental destruction that denies the people their livelihoods. The people are fishermen and farmers, and oil extraction has polluted our farmlands, made it impossible to put seeds in the ground and for those seeds to germinate at the right time and produce food for the people. We have fishermen who can no longer go fishing because the rivers are dead with no form of aquatic life.

By 1990, the Ogoni people had become completely destitute because of oil extraction. The environmental rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa demanded to redefine that relationship [between local people and the oil company]. The people were simply saying, "listen, you either clean the mess you've made here, or you stop extraction so that we can see if our land can heal."

JUST THE "COMMON COLD"...:

In New York City, it "identified four-fold increases in COVID-19 hospital admissions for children 18 and under beginning the week of December 5 through the current week," it said.

Omicron will become the dominant strain of COVID in Israel within one to two weeks, and it could spread so fast that quarantine will become "rampant," according to a panel of experts from the Hebrew University.

While official figures only categorize about a tenth of Israel's 12,000 coronavirus cases as Omicron patients, team head Prof. Nadav Katz said the actual figure is probably higher -- and numbers are about to grow quickly.

He predicted that the number of new infections will double weekly, and that the proportion of them that are Omicron will grow sharply. If this happens, COVID restrictions are likely to be bolstered with social distancing rules, such as more work-from-home in the private sector, within two weeks, he said.

Striebe is just one of hundreds of Vermonters whose surgery has been delayed in recent weeks as hospitals struggle to manage high numbers of patients -- both sick with Covid-19 and not. And while many patients do continue to receive prompt medical care, some of those kept waiting experience notable impacts in their day-to-day lives. 

Last week, Dartmouth-Hitchcock, which serves many Vermonters in the southern part of the state, posted on Facebook: "Due to the high number of COVID-19 patients in our hospital, we are experiencing a shortage in the staffing and beds needed to provide you with the most appropriate care. For these reasons, your surgery or procedure may be delayed. Thank you for your patience during these challenging times."

Dartmouth-Hitchcock did not respond to emails with questions about delayed surgeries. 

On Nov. 30, the University of Vermont Medical Center announced it was postponing elective procedures through the end of the year to preserve the capacity amid surging Covid-19 cases. That decision delayed care for an estimated 200 to 250 patients, said hospital spokesperson Annie Mackin.

Hospital leaders decided this week to reopen a few more operating rooms in January, Mackin said, though they will still operate below normal surgical capacity.

THESE GUYS ARE SUCH SNOWFLAKES:

The wife of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was arrested Christmas Eve on a domestic violence charge that the right-wing provocateur said stems from a "medication imbalance."

BIDENOMICS:

Mastercard Spending Pulse, which tracks all kinds of payments including cash and debit cards, reported Sunday that holiday sales had risen 8.5% from a year earlier. Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected a 7.4% increase.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

"This is an emergency Christmas Day warning to President Trump. You are either completely ignorant about the so-called vaccine gene therapy that you helped ram through with Operation Warp Speed or you are one of the most evil men who has ever lived to push this toxic poison on the public and to attack your constituents who they simply try to save their lives and the lives of others," he said.

"We're about to lay out the basic, incontrovertible facts that you told Candace Owens just a few days ago is nothing but a raft of dirty lies," he said.

DONALD WHO?:

Looking back on the year, Trump's attempts to wield his power over the GOP have been spotty. State-level attempts to overturn the 2020 election results have all failed, and when the former president pushed the governor of Texas to advance election audit legislation, it went nowhere. Meanwhile, his hand-picked candidate for the US Senate seat in Pennsylvania suspended his campaign amid allegations of domestic abuse. And in Alabama, his support for Senate candidate Mo Brooks appears to be having little effect (you may recall that Trump's weakness showed in Alabama in 2017 when his picks for US Senate lost both in the primary and general election.)

Other Trump setbacks include the failure of his endorsed candidate in a special Congressional election in Texas. And those who are waging primary battles against incumbent Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6 insurrection are struggling with fundraising. In the most glaring example, January 6 committee member Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming -- a Republican who may top the list of Trump's enemies -- has 10 times more campaign cash than her Trump-endorsed challenger, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission filings from October.

In Washington, DC, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in office, seems to be distancing himself from Trump. He recently expressed interest in the January 6 committee's effort to "reveal all of the participants who were involved," and added, "It was a horrendous event, and I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know."

Trump and his TV allies have for months barraged McConnell with criticism. And despite the former president recently declaring McConnell "a disaster" who should be replaced, Republican senators seem to have no appetite for doing so, according to Politico.

To understand the state of Trumpism nearly one year after January 6, we can also look to his recent speaking events. Trump teamed up with former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly to launch a "History Tour," but they failed to sell enough tickets to fill a few of the venues. In Dallas, some members of the audience booed Trump when he said he had received the Covid-19 booster shot. O'Reilly said he had reassured Trump about his position on vaccines earlier in the day.

Added together, the weak showing in political races, McConnell's resilience, the relentless investigation by the January 6 committee and the shock of hearing boos in an arena that failed to sell out -- it's no wonder Trump is planning a press conference to mark the anniversary of the horrific attack on the US Capitol. He may be in balmy Palm Beach, Florida, where the sun shines on his Mar-A-Lago resort, but he's in desperate need of the warmth brought by the media's attention and the controversies he will inevitably stir.

WELFARE KINGS:

As hospitals and health officials prepare for Omicron, additional research is being performed analyzing earlier stages of the pandemic.

During the Delta surge that began over the summer, there were about 690,000 preventable Covid-19 hospitalizations in the United States that cost nearly $14 billion dollars, according to new estimates from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

About 1.2 million hospital admissions were recorded between June and November 2021, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. For their analysis, KFF used data from the CDC to estimate that 85% of those hospitalizations were among unvaccinated.

Hospitalizations for which Covid-19 was not the primary cause were excluded, as well as those that could not have been prevented by vaccines as they are not 100% effective.

Using various studies, KFF estimated the average hospitalization to cost about $20,000 and preventable Covid-19 hospitalizations totaling $13.8 billion dollars over the course of six months.

"The monetary cost of treating unvaccinated people for Covid-19 is borne not only by patients but also by society more broadly, including taxpayer-funded public programs and private insurance premiums paid by workers, businesses, and individual purchasers," the analysts wrote.

"Though there was of course a societal cost to develop and distribute vaccinations, the vaccines save the US health system money in the longer run by preventing costly hospitalizations."

DONALD WHO?:

Trump vs Candace Owens might be a fun little distraction https://t.co/LngT8WY4V4

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) December 25, 2021

TRANSITION FASTER:

Most important, governments should accelerate adoption of cleaner energy. Advancing the EU's existing proposals to boost zero-emissions hydrogen would help wean countries and industries off natural gas, as will additional storage for energy generated from renewable sources. But as countries such as France, the Netherlands and the U.K. have recognized, boosting Europe's energy independence -- not to mention meeting its climate goals -- simply isn't plausible without a significant new investment in nuclear power. Nuclear is already part of Poland's plans to cut coal and can help others to do the same. Leaders in countries where it faces skepticism, such as Germany, need to do more to dispel misconceptions about the risks and costs involved, especially as safer, smaller reactors come online.

Europe can't break its dependence on Russian gas overnight, but it can avoid being held hostage. By adopting a coordinated strategy to diversify its energy resources, European leaders can reduce both their vulnerability to supply disruptions and Putin's ability to inflict harm.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has $9.4 billion -- the largest amount awarded in the agency's history -- allocated to restore and protect Puerto Rico's power network from the type of disasters that have plagued it.

Renewable energy and consumer advocates say that money is best spent on putting solar panels on the roofs of every home on the sunny island, with the aim of creating a decentralized source of power generation. This could minimize the widespread blackouts that have occurred when storms damage the miles of power lines that run across rugged terrain from the oil-fired power plants that provide most of the island's electricity.

Those plants are still owned by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the local government-owned utility being privatized that turned the grid over to LUMA and which most experts blame for years of poor management. Besides being plagued by blackouts, the grid is expensive: Residents on the island paid an average of 19.24 cents per kilowatt hour in 2020, nearly 50 percent higher than the average U.S. home.

A new coalition of clean energy, union and other organizations, Queremos Sol, is lobbying federal officials to intervene in the rebuilding to sharply expand the amount of solar energy on the island. It says such an initiative aligns with Biden's plan to achieve 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity nationwide by 2035, as well as his goals of transitioning away from fossil fuel infrastructure that has been primarily sited in low-income areas and communities of color.

"Puerto Rico is a very big test," said Ruth Santiago, a community and environmental attorney in Puerto Rico and a member of Queremos Sol, noting that this is one fight Biden can win without any resistance from Republicans in Congress. "The funds are already allocated. They're fully within the control of FEMA under the Biden administration."

OPEN THE BORDERS:

For all its flaws, the United States is a marvelous collection of invented and evolved institutions. It took a lot of work to get here. At the margin, it costs relatively little to allow more people to enjoy and benefit from America's Constitution, its favorable business environment and its nuclear umbrella. In the terminology of economics, the U.S. is a public good. Allowing more people in the country is like allowing more people to fill the empty seats in a theater for an excellent performance: Why not?

One simple implication is that the more patriotic you are, the more you ought to believe in a large and growing population. Most of America's founders certainly had that expectation. Alternately, you might think there is nothing special about American institutions, as many a cynic has argued, and be indifferent about the size of its population. But to arrive at that conclusion, you have to deny there is significant value in the basic American framework.

A growing population also brings practical advantages. Consider the year's debate over the effect of stimulus on inflation. It doesn't seem, with a 6.8% inflation rate, that America quite got the balance right. With a significantly growing population, macroeconomic policy is much easier. The growing demands of an increasing number of workers and consumers is itself a form of economic stimulus. But these demands are not in general inflationary, because they are offset by more work and higher output. Those boosts in supply will tend to offset inflationary pressures, and they also will maintain economic growth. A significantly growing population is a kind of macroeconomic free lunch.

More anecdotally, have you ever visited a city and felt a sense of stagnation and decline? For me, that feeling is more common in a city that is losing residents rather than gaining them. There seem to be fewer and less diverse restaurants, theaters, even street musicians.

In contrast, the most exciting states, cities and neighborhoods have lots of new venues and new people. Over the last decade the three fastest growing states, in percentage terms, are Utah, Idaho and Texas. I've recently visited the latter two and felt a palpable sense of excitement and ambition.

The relationship between population and dynamism holds at the national level as well, though it is harder to see because declines are not always so concentrated in a single geographic locale. But a country's mood cannot help but be affected by how many people it has and their ability to make unique contributions to society.

America's population is not declining right now, but it is not doing much better than holding steady. That brings its own mood of stasis and complacency. And let me be so bold as to suggest that, more than most countries, America is highly dependent on its own sense of optimism and growth. Otherwise, how is it to remain a top innovator? How will it pay off all its debts?

ONE MORE THING:

As unlikely as it might seem for a Russian author who composed long books about big ideas, Dostoevsky has had a significant effect on American culture. Dostoevsky, whose life and work is being celebrated internationally this fall on the 200th anniversary of his birth, has influenced the novels of African American writers such as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison, as well as the films of Woody Allen.

Perhaps his most surprising influence has been on mainstream American TV, and specifically the popular detective series Columbo, starring Peter Falk--a series whose heyday was 1971-1978 but which ran on and off from 1968-2003. The creators of the Columbo character, playwrights William Link and Richard Levinson, were fans of the book and especially of the character Porfiry, the lead detective in the investigation of the murder committed by Raskolnikov. A seemingly bumbling but actually brilliant investigator, Porfiry uses indirection and surprise to keep the suspect off balance. From Dostoevsky's novel the creators of Columbo took not only their lead character but also the show's basic plot structure. Instead of beginning with a victim and then devoting the rest of the plot to the investigator's attempt to identify the criminal, the audience knows from the beginning who the criminal is. The drama concerns the investigative methods deployed to trap the culprit. Like Crime and Punishment, Columbo is not a "whodunnit" but a "howcatchem."

DONALD WHO?:

The United States will lift restrictions on most air travelers from eight southern African nations before the end of the year, reversing the move meant to curb the spread of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

Here's what that looks like in practice. There were 49 studies that measured lactate levels with and without compression; 40 of them found no effect. Another 39 looked at creatine kinase, a blood marker of muscle damage; 27 of them found no effect. For heart rate, 53 of 68 studies found no effect. In all these cases, the other studies found generally small positive effects. The picture is roughly the same for performance measures like jump height or time trial, and for measures of inflammation and swelling.

Things get a little more interesting when you look at subjective measures. For perceived muscle soreness in the days following a hard workout, 29 of 50 studies reported positive effects. For perceived muscle pain, six of nine studies were positive.

LEGISLATORS ARE NOT GOVERNORS:

Biden did indeed urge people to get boosted, saying they were free and available, but except for announcing a set of pop-up clinics around the United States, he didn't articulate the plan to get this done. As for vaccine misinformation, he told its purveyors to "stop it," which is far from the campaign we need to address the anti-vaccine propaganda circulating widely in the United States and the corporate reticence to take vaccination seriously.

We already know vaccines alone will not solve this problem. The president made a bet in March that vaccination could return the country to some semblance of normalcy, promising a "summer of freedom." But as the delta variant emerged, the highly transmissible strain tore through the country, outpacing the speed of our vaccination efforts.

Public health experts called for more emphasis on a wider range of interventions, including rapid testing, masking and environmental controls, such as the upgrading of ventilation systems in buildings across the country. Yet such measures remain underutilized here in the United States. White House press secretary Jen Psaki even scorned those who suggested making rapid testing more widely available, dressing down an NPR reporter who made a suggestion of sending tests to every American household.

To its credit, the administration has since announced it would begin to send 500 million rapid tests to Americans in January, although it's not clear whether the administration has put in an order for such tests. And at the scale promised, every American would receive a one-time delivery of no more than a single test at some point this winter. The president also claimed that schools need to be open and they are safer than ever, pointing out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has now endorsed a "test and stay" strategy to make this possible. Except, the infrastructure and resources to carry out that strategy are simply not there for many school districts.

On masks, the president suggested we should wear them even if we're fully vaccinated. But again, he made no offer to make it easier for Americans to get high-quality N95 masks, which are far better at protecting people from infection than blue surgical masks or cloth masks in the age of omicron.

On ventilation and environmental controls? The president didn't say a word. On global vaccination efforts critical to stopping new variants from emerging? Nothing either.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Recent news stories describe a shoplifting surge, but this narrative conflates an array of very different offenses into a single crime wave said to be cresting right now, all over the country, in a frenzy of naked avarice and shocking violence. Smash-and-grabs are awful, but they're pretty rare (and already very much felonies). Nevertheless, a handful of viral videos and some troubling statistics from retailers and industry groups have set Americans on edge during the year's most economically essential shopping season, wondering if the mall where they buy their Christmas presents might be next. The deeper you search for real, objective evidence of an accelerating retail crime wave, the more difficult it is to be sure that you know anything at all.

To determine what, if anything, is up with shoplifting in America, we have to answer two questions: Is theft really more common than it was in the recent past, and is current theft really more severe or harmful? You would think that answers to both of these questions would be readily available, if only because the topic has been discussed so much, but the reality of the situation is not quite so clear-cut.

The first indicator that the theft-wave narrative may not hold water is that stories about it tend to garble terms and numbers. They pair broad statistics about the commonness of shoplifting or larceny of any kind with lurid descriptions of brazen armed robberies (which aren't included in any shoplifting stats, because they are a different crime entirely) to illustrate a narrowly defined problem: organized retail crime. This is identified as repetitive, mostly nonconfrontational theft for profit, whose perpetrators strive to evade detection and keep each theft strategically below local dollar thresholds for felony larceny. Misdemeanors don't attract law-enforcement attention, the theory goes, so criminals are able to strike again and again and flip their hauls to fences, who consolidate millions of dollars of stolen goods into inventory for online storefronts, where Amazon and Etsy and eBay shield them from detection and punishment.

Whether any of these offenses--simple shoplifting, organized theft, or violent smash-and-grabs--are actually happening more frequently overall is, at best, ambiguous. If we look closely at crime statistics in San Francisco, which news stories paint as the epicenter of this crime wave and whose crime stats are often used to illustrate these stories, the idea doesn't seem immediately ridiculous. Robberies, which is where smash-and-grabs generally fall, are slightly down citywide from 2020, according to the San Francisco Police Department, but larceny theft, which is where shoplifting would fall, is indeed up more than 19 percent. In the city's central district, where expensive fashion boutiques and other kinds of retail outlets are clustered together, larceny theft was up 88 percent from 2020 as of early December, when CNN used the number to demonstrate the dire nature of San Francisco's crime problem.

You've gotta admit, that's a worrying number. Except, as you might remember, 2020 was kind of a weird year--people stayed home and many stores were closed for months at a time, which helped make the year's crime statistics, to put it mildly, unique. In San Francisco, the murder rate was (and still is) up, but recorded larceny thefts were way, way down compared with 2019. Robberies were also down by almost a quarter. This year, the 88 percent increase in the central district's larceny reports is still not enough to bring the area's theft rate back up to pre-pandemic levels, which themselves had been dropping for decades.

So far, this dynamic holds true for much of the country, according to FBI statistics. In 2020, the most recent year for which data are available, reports of robbery and larceny fell off a cliff. If we see a big jump in the near future, especially in violent smash-and-grabs, it's worth asking how much the recent media attention itself contributed to the spike. Research has shown that sensational news coverage can influence potential offenders to adopt highly publicized tactics in copycat crimes.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T:

I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, a Latter-day Saint in particular, and one incurably interested in faith generally. Joseph Smith encouraged us to "get all the good in the world" and to "receive truth, let it come from whence it may." One of those sources for me in 2021 is Islam. I've had important interactions with this faith over the years, including attendance at a lecture in Salt Lake City from Imam Yasir Butt, hearing a speech from Imam Khalid Latif of New York University, and visiting Jerusalem where I frequently heard the muezzin's enchanting calls to prayer.

Consistently, apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ have encouraged Latter-day Saints to better understand both similarities and differences between our faith and Islam. For instance, in October 2021 Elders David A. Bednar and Gerrit W. Gong introduced a forthcoming pamphlet designed to help Muslims and Latter-day Saints do just that. "The two faiths are different in many of our core doctrines, but many of our values and the ways in which we practice our respective faiths are similar and reflect our love of God and of our fellow man," Elder Bednar said. Elder Gong added that learning about our Muslim friends "will help us be more kind and more accurate in what we say and feel about each other."

Imam Butt of Utah's Noor Masjid congregation told me and a small group of listeners that he could speak to us all day about the delights of strawberries. But without tasting one we would never know how delicious a strawberry is. That's how it is with the Qur'an, he said. We must read the book to experience its goodness.

With that motivation, the Qur'an and a collection of hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) are part of my morning devotional readings. I recognize, as Rachel Pieh Jones has written, that "there is no single Islam, and Muslims across the globe are not a monolith." What I've read and experienced tells me that Islam is beautiful. The Qur'an is a delight. The hadith can be illuminating. In the light of these readings, my soul expands. So many of these books' sacred passages have enlightened my mind in unique ways, giving me more tools to live a better life.

Beauty comes not only from the texts' obvious truths but also in moments of clarity revealed in doctrinal differences.

GET JABBED; MASK UP:

There are still a few small voices out there crying for harsh containment measures, and of course you should still wear a mask inside, but something tells me that this one isn't going to be contained. Tom Frieden, former head of the CDC, says this is one for the history books -- even with a fairly large percent of our populace either vaccinated or bearing immunity from a prior infection, Omicron is spreading "as fast as measles in a non-immune population". And measles is the most contagious disease hitherto known. The question of whether we should "let 'er rip" is a bit beside the point -- by the time our authorities decide what to do, it will already have ripped.

That's the bad news. So...what's the good news?

The first piece of good news is that vaccine boosters offer substantial protection against Omicron. Studies are showing that a third dose of mRNA vaccine (Pfizer or Moderna) restores a substantial amount of immunity. A booster reduces the risk of severe disease by about 80%. Part of that is because boosters activate T-cell immunity, which confers protection even after antibody levels wane (Here's a cool paper explaining why scientists now think that vaccines activate T-cells that work against all varieties of Covid).

So get your booster right now if you haven't gotten it already -- remember that Covid vaccine shots take at least a week to start working, and Omicron is spreading insanely fast. In fact, some public health officials are now calling for booster mandates -- a welcome change from a month ago.

The second piece of good news is that for better or worse, the Omicron wave could be over pretty soon. As epidemiologist Trevor Bedford explains in this thread, evidence from South Africa's Gauteng province and from London suggest that Omicron waves shoot up and crash even more quickly than basic theory predicts.

But the question is how much damage will be done by that enormous, rapid wave. And here comes the third piece of good news: Omicron probably is less severe than previous strains of Covid.

In my previous Omicron posts, I warned people to be highly skeptical of the initial reports that Omicron was less severe. But new evidence is now coming in, and while we should still maintain a healthy degree of uncertainty, top experts are now agreeing that the data looks encouraging.

TO BE A CONSERVATIVE:

Although this battle is still far from won, I sometimes have mixed feelings about the desirability of winning it at all: The only prize, after all, would be a sense of the absurd, the beginning of a kind of toughness of mind; and to win that particular victory is to cut oneself irrevocably loose from what we used to call the main currents of American thought. Every real American story begins in innocence and never stops mourning the loss of it: the banishment from Eden is our one great tale, lovingly told and retold, adapted, disguised and told again, passed down from Hester Prynne to Temple Drake, from Natty Bumppo to Holden Caulfield; it is the single stunning fact in our literature, in our folklore, in our history, and in the lyrics of our popular songs. Because hardness of mind is antithetical to innocence, it is not only alien to us but generally misapprehended. What we take it for, warily, is something we sometimes call cynicism, sometimes call wit, sometimes (if we are given to this kind of analysis) disapprove as "a cheap effect," and almost invariably hold at arm's length, the way Eve should have held that snake.

FELIZ NOVY GOD:

Signs that similar sentiments are widespread can be seen all over Tel Aviv, the bastion of secular Israel. The party stores near Tel Aviv's Levinsky Market carry Christmas-themed decorations and clothing accessories. Tiv Ta'am, a supermarket chain notable for selling food that doesn't meet kosher dietary rules, has a large Christmas tree display at the entrance to its flagship store. Only about 2 percent of the population of Israel are Christian, the vast majority of whom identify as ethnically Arab, according to the Pew Research Center.

One of the factors likely driving this trend is the influx over the past 30 years of more than a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of whom were deeply secular and, in some cases, identified as Christian or had Christian spouses. The highly assimilated immigrants also brought with them a civic holiday called Novy God that resembles Christmas.

RING THEM BELLS:

It's difficult for 21st-century minds to imagine now, but a heavy snowfall often brought a treat to 19th-century folks. Consider these lines from a letter written in February 1865 by a Union soldier to his girlfriend in Upstate New York. "I presume you did not fail to take advantage of the deep snow. I imagine I see you on a cold pleasant moonlit night gliding over the crystal surface preceded by nettlesome steeds and the pleasant ringing of musical bells which seem to mock the joyous laughter of you and your companions."

After enjoying one such sleigh ride, James Lord Pierpont recognized a song was waiting to be written.

He was an interesting character. Son of a New England minister, he ran away to sea at age 14, later returned, married, and started a family. He settled in Medford, Massachusetts where his father pastored a Unitarian Church. The urge to wander returned with the 1849 California Gold Rush. Pierpont wound up in San Francisco where had a store and a photography studio before losing both in a fire. He returned to New England flat broke.

After his wife died in 1856, Pierpont's brother accepted the pastorate of a Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia. Pierpont tagged along to serve as music minister. He wrote songs and gave organ and singing lessons on the side, all the while composing a steady stream of music himself. He became successful enough to take the daughter of Savannah's mayor as his second wife.

In 1857 he released the song we still sing today. But "One Horse Open Sleigh" bombed so badly when it came out that he had to rebrand it. It was re-released in 1859 as "Jingle Bells." Even then it was far from a best-seller.

Ironically alcohol, not schoolkids, spread the tune. "Jingle Bells" became a popular mid-Victorian drinking song with singers clinking their glasses to imitate the sound of bells. And get this-the lyrics were even considered racy for the time, too. A young couple sleigh riding without a chaperon? Hubba-hubba! Risqué stuff.

THANKS, ANTI-MASKERS!:

Hospital admissions for the flu are up nearly 34% over the past week, reaching a seven-day average of nearly 250 per day as of Thursday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Average daily admissions never topped 125 last flu season.

About 8,400 patients with Covid have been admitted to U.S. hospitals each day on average over the past week, the data shows, up 5% from a week ago but lower than the delta wave's peak level of more than 12,000 daily admissions over the summer.

Last year, the U.S. had virtually no flu season as public health protocols to slow the transmission of the coronavirus also prevented the spread of influenza, Shafir said. Flu cases reached an all-time low last season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Flu season came back as U.S. officials have relaxed restrictions such as mask-wearing and limited gatherings with Covid vaccines available this year.

NO ONE FLIES AEROFLOT:

A third dose of Sinovac's COVID vaccine does not provide sufficient protection against the omicron variant, new research reveals, contradicting the Chinese vaccine maker's pronouncement that it does.

"A CHANT SUBLIME":

On the first day of that December, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was dining alone at his home when a telegram arrived with the news that his son had been severely wounded--inaccurately stating that he had been shot in the face--four days earlier. On November 27, 1863, while involved in a skirmish during a battle of of the Mine Run Campaign, Charley had been shot through the left shoulder, with the bullet exiting under his right shoulder blade. It had traveled across his back and nicked his spine. Charley avoided being paralyzed by less than an inch.

He was carried into New Hope Church (Orange County, Virginia) and then transported to the Rapidan River. Charley's father and younger brother, Ernest, immediately set out for Washington, D.C., arriving on December 3. Charley arrived by train on December 5. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was alarmed when informed by the army surgeon that his son's wound "was very serious" and that "paralysis might ensue." Three surgeons gave a more favorable report that evening, suggesting a recovery that would require him to be "long in healing," at least six months.

On Friday, December 25, 1863, Longfellow--as a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself--wrote a poem seeking to capture the dynamic and dissonance in his own heart and the world he observes around him that Christmas Day.

He heard the Christmas bells ringing in Cambridge and the singing of "peace on earth" (Luke 2:14), but he observed the world of injustice and violence that seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.

The theme of listening recurs throughout the poem, eventually leading to a settledness of confident hope even in the midst of bleak despair as he recounts to himself that God is alive and righteousness shall prevail.

Within a decade (1872), the poem was put to music by the English organist John Baptiste Calkin for a processional, set to the the melody "Waltham."

You can read the whole poem below and listen to a modern rendition of the carol by Caroline Cobb and Sean Carter.

GET BOOSTED:

A third dose of AstraZeneca Plc's Covid-19 vaccine significantly boosted neutralizing antibodies against omicron, according to lab studies at the University of Oxford.

The vaccine, created by Astra and Oxford, saw antibodies increase to similar levels as those after two doses against the delta variant with a booster shot, the drug company said Thursday. A third dose also produced higher levels of neutralizing antibodies than those found in individuals who had recovered naturally from the alpha, beta and delta strains.

IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATION:

By 1961, a few universities around the world had bought IBM 7090 mainframes. The 7090 was the first line of all-transistor computers, and it cost US $20 million in today's money, or about 6,000 times as much as a top-of-the-line laptop today. Its early buyers typically deployed the computers as a shared resource for an entire campus. Very few users were fortunate enough to get as much as an hour of computer time per week.

The 7090 had a clock cycle of 2.18 microseconds, so the operating frequency was just under 500 kilohertz. But in those days, instructions were not pipelined, so most took more than one cycle to execute. Some integer arithmetic took up to 14 cycles, and a floating-point operation could hog up to 15. So the 7090 is generally estimated to have executed about 100,000 instructions per second. Most modern computer cores can operate at a sustained rate of 3 billion instructions per second, with much faster peak speeds. That is 30,000 times as fast, so a modern chip with four or eight cores is easily 100,000 times as fast.

Unlike the lucky person in 1961 who got an hour of computer time, you can run your laptop all the time, racking up more than 1,900 years of 7090 computer time every week. 

KKKOSPLAY (profanity alert)

Second, individuals once arming themselves for self-defense--often out of racial fears or a perceived threat to their masculinity--are now frequently claiming to do so in defense of the Constitution and freedom itself. The NRA has played an outsize role in this vigilante reframing by promulgating the myth that gun ownership has always been an individual, constitutional right and oriented toward a nativist vision of self-defense. This vigilantism operates in conjunction with the extralegal violence of law enforcement officers and is fueled by an individualist notion of sovereignty more dangerous than any military-grade weaponry. It rejects the freedom of others as equal to one's own and views any attempt to support such equality as tyranny. Most importantly, this sovereignty is assumed to grant the individual the power to take life (vitae necisque potestas) in defense not of law, but of particular social and racial orders.

WHY WE SHOULD ONLY ELECT GOVERNORS:

President Joe Biden said that he wishes he had ordered 500 million free, at-home Covid tests two months ago.

Biden, in an interview with ABC News that aired Wednesday evening, spoke about his administration's plans to send the tests to Americans as the highly transmissible omicron variant spreads. Studies say omicron is apparently less severe than other variants, but officials are worried about a surge in hospitalizations and deaths for mainly unvaccinated people.

"I've ordered half a billion of the ... test kits that are going to be available to be sent to every home in America if anybody wants them," he told David Muir. "But the answer is, yeah, I wish I had thought about ordering a half a billion [tests] two months ago, before Covid hit here," he added.

THANKS, JOE:

It's been a year of nonstop supply chain chaos: Covid outbreaks shut down factories and ports, a big boat blocked the Suez canal, and the ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach got so jammed that satellites watched the line of container ships waiting to unload their cargo grow from space. After all these disruptions, many analysts and journalists (including me) warned that 2021 could be a disastrous year for holiday shopping, marred by delayed gifts that wouldn't arrive in time for Christmas morning.

But, despite all that worry, the worst has not materialized--at least for US shoppers. Deliveries during the holiday rush have been remarkably normal. The country's largest carriers, FedEx, UPS, and the US Postal Service (USPS), got the vast majority of their packages to their customers' homes on time last week (Dec. 5-11), according to data from the consulting firm ShipMatrix.

The high on-time delivery rates are a testament to the work each carrier has done to ramp up hiring and expand their warehouses ahead of the holiday shopping rush; USPS, in particular, seemed to learn from its unreliable holiday service last year and improve its performance. The numbers also reflect a shift in Americans' holiday shopping habits: People ordered gifts online earlier and did more of their shopping in-person to avoid the shipping delays they'd been reading about in the press.

THERE'S A REASON TRUMPISTS FEEL INFERIOR:

Republicans and Black Americans make up two disproportionately high segments of the unvaccinated population -- but the survey found they're managing that decision in dramatically different ways.

Black Americans reported much higher levels of mask use, social distancing and trust in the federal government regardless of their vaccination status. That suggests they take the virus seriously even as many struggle with hesitancy about vaccines and the historical connections to racism and medical experimentation.

By contrast, Republicans were far less likely to wear masks and more likely to say they have returned to "normal" pre-COVID life.

81% of Black Americans -- but just 34% of unvaccinated white Americans -- said they were wearing masks outside the home some or all of the time in the second half of this year.

GOOD NEWS FOR MODERNA MAN:

Three separate studies out of England, Scotland, and South Africa on Wednesday suggested the new Omicron coronavirus is less likely so send people to the hospital and usually produces milder symptoms. The Omicron variant is also infecting more people at a much faster rate, among other caveats, so "this is a qualified good-news story," said Jim McMenamin, national COVID-19 incident director at Public Health Scotland and a co-author of the Scottish study.

"Cautious optimism is perhaps the best way to look at" these new studies, Manuel Ascano Jr., a virus researcher at Vanderbilt University, tells The Associated Press. "It is clearly good news, to a degree," said Neil Ferguson, who led the English research team at Imperial College London.

FOR FORCED DIVERSIFICATION:

The primary issue with members of Congress trading stocks is that they have access to inside information which they could profit from. Of course, insider trading by members of Congress is illegal under the STOCK Act of 2012, but it isn't easy to prove when it occurs.

Legality aside, the real issue with Congress trading stocks is that it seems so unfair to everyone else. It's unfair that a group of people with access to inside information also has no restrictions on their investment behavior. For crying out loud, every large financial institution in the U.S. has restrictions on what their employees can buy/sell, but not Congress.

You might argue that members of Congress are special and should be allowed some extra privileges. I am all for that as long as these privileges don't adversely impact anyone else.

"Oh, you used to be in Congress? Come speak at my event for $10,000."

I don't have a problem with this (though you may), but I do have a problem with members of Congress being able to trade stocks without any sort of restrictions. Unlike an increased speaking fee or a fancy job offer, other market participants could be harmed by this privilege. As a result, we need to make a change. [...]

My solution to this problem is very simple--ban buying of all individual stocks, options, and securities not on a pre-approved list. That's it. Members of Congress can sell whatever they want, but they can only buy diversified index funds/ETFs that provide broad exposure to global asset classes.

WE SELL AN OBSCENE NUMBER OF THESE PANS:

In 1946, H. David Dalquist arrived home from the war. Home for him was Minneapolis, Minnesota, where with his family he launched a plastic company. (He was a chemical engineer by trade.) A few years later, the family bought another company, one that sold metalware for the kitchen under the name of Nordic Ware. The name should offer a clue as to what they produced: kitchen goods for the largely Scandinavian immigrant community around them. The Dalquists liked the sound of Nordic Ware, and adopted the name for their whole enterprise.

Simultaneously, Rose Joshua, Fannie Shanfield, and Mary Abrahamson approached Dalquist with a plea. These women, members of a local Jewish volunteer group, needed him to make a very special pan. In Germany, bready cakes called kugelhopf or bundkuchen are still specialties today. Joshua was on the hunt for a modern pan that she could bake her mother's recipe in, and the original pans could weigh up to 15 pounds.

Dalquist molded Joshua a pan out of aluminum, one very similar to the kugelhopf pans still used in Europe today. But Dalquist's design was odd enough for the U.S. that, decades later, one of his daughters remembers a plant manager telling her father, "If you can sell that thing, you can sell anything."

Dalquist, riffing off the word "bund," added a "t" to the name. (He was eager to avoid any association with the German American Bund, a prominent Nazi group established in the USA in 1936.) Then, he quietly added it to his inventory. Few people bought the pan. At least, until 1966.

Devout Catholic and Texas resident Ella Herlfrich had somehow gotten her hands on a Bundt. True, the original group of women who asked Dalquist to make them did sell small numbers of Bundt pans to family and friends, but that was for a fundraiser to support the building of schools and hospitals in Israel.

Nevertheless, Herlfrich entered her nut-studded chocolate Tunnel of Fudge cake into 1966's Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. The secret ingredient in that cake was a packet of Pillsbury's Double Dutch Fudge Buttercream Frosting Mix, which when added to the batter created a ring of creamy fudge suspended magically in the center of the cake. Her secret weapon, though, was her Bundt pan. The judges were impressed enough to award Helfrich second prize. (It consisted of $5,000 dollars and a tractor.)

While the first-prize entry faded from history, the Tunnel of Fudge made a huge splash. Food scientist Shirley O. Corriher went as far as to call the Tunnel of Fudge cake "THE chocolate cake of the 1960s."

HARD TO BE WORSE:

I'm not sure people truly the magnitude of all of this. The president of the United States and his subordinates intentionally took actions which directly contributed to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a mistake. Everyone around him knew what the outcome was going to be.

And they didn't say anything about it to the public. They just complained to each other in emails.

What we experienced was a total system failure: The leadership was corrupt. The institutions were unable to check the corruption. Even the supposedly non-partisan grownups became complicit.

And if we don't create accountability and consequences, then other systems will fail, too.

SYSTEMIC:

For nearly 10 years, Joseph Moore lived a secret double life.

At times the U.S. Army veteran donned a white robe and hood as a hit man for the Ku Klux Klan in North Florida. He attended clandestine meetings and participated in cross burnings. He even helped plan the murder of a Black man.

However, Moore wore something else during his years in the klan - a wire for the FBI. He recorded his conversations with his fellow klansmen, sometimes even captured video, and shared what he learned with federal agents trying to crack down on white supremacists in Florida law enforcement. [...]

The FBI first asked Moore to infiltrate a klan group called the United Northern and Southern Knights of the KKK in rural north Florida in 2007. At klan gatherings, Moore noted license plate numbers and other identifying information of suspected law enforcement officers who were members.

Moore said he noted connections between the hate group and law enforcement in Florida and Georgia. He said he came across dozens of police officers, prison guards, sheriff deputies and other law enforcement officers who were involved with the klan and outlaw motorcycle clubs.

While operating inside this first klan group, Moore alerted the feds to a plot to murder a Hispanic truck driver. Then, he says, he pointed the FBI toward a deputy with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, Wayne Kerschner, who was a member of the same group.

During Moore's years in the United Northern and Southern Knights, the FBI also identified a member of the klan cell working for the Fruitland Park, Florida, police department. Moore said he'd provided identifying information that was useful in that case.

His years as an informant occurred during a critical time for the nation's domestic terrorism efforts. In 2006, the FBI had circulated an intelligence assessment about the klan and other groups trying to infiltrate law enforcement ranks.

"White supremacist groups have historically engaged in strategic efforts to infiltrate and recruit from law enforcement," the FBI wrote. The assessment said some in law enforcement were volunteering "professional resources to white supremacist causes with which they sympathize."

NOT YOUR FATHER'S TALIBAN:

"It's inborn in humans that they attach value to their history," said Rahmatullah, 65, after intently examining a collection of 2,000-year-old swords.

"I wanted to know more about the history of my country. It has a special place in my heart".

The museum reopened in late November with permission from the Taliban's new ministry of information and culture, around three months after the Islamists retook power and ended their two-decade insurgency.

Some artefacts on open display are fundamentally at odds with the Taliban's radical ideology, including pottery collections featuring images of animals and humans.

During their first 1996-2001 rule, Taliban fighters destroyed items including statues at the museum, while tens of thousands of items were looted and never recovered.

In that period, the Islamists also blew up 1,500-year-old giant statues of the Buddha in the central Bamiyan valley.

But Taliban fighters now guard the museum and its treasures from potential attack by Islamic State insurgents.

WHAT HAS GOVERNMENT EVER DONE FOR US?:

What's the best way to power the remote bases of the future? The U.S. military has looked at all sorts of options, from algae-based diesel to small nuclear reactors. On Tuesday, the Air Force Research Lab, or AFRL, announced a breakthrough in a long-envisioned method: solar power collected in space and streamed to Earth in the form of microwaves. 

There's more solar energy to be harvested in orbit than on the ground, where the sun's rays are attenuated by atmospheric gases and dust. The problem is getting that power to where it needs to be. AFRL's, Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research, or SSPIDR, program seeks to beam it down to Earth in the form of microwave energy that can penetrate dust and clouds and be collected a special antenna called a rectenna. From there it can be converted into DC power to run a base. 

AFRL and Northrop Grumman are developing a tile to convert light energy, which has a wavelength of about 400 to 700 nanometers, into microwaves (about 1 to 300 millimeters). On Tuesday, the lab announced that the tile had passed a critical test. 

"This is what makes us believe that we can do this, that this is actually feasible now," said Rachel Delany, a mechanical engineer with AFRL, in conversation wth Defense One. 

Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as from previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide. 

The achievement is the result of almost two years of work on the virus. The Army lab received its first DNA sequencing of the COVID-19 virus in early 2020. Very early on, Walter Reed's infectious diseases branch decided to focus on making a vaccine that would work against not just the existing strain but all of its potential variants as well.

Walter Reed's Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and the other variants, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed's infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One. 

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

Transitioning to a clean-energy grid should happen by 2035, the study advises, with at least 80% of that adjustment completed by 2030. For the purposes of Jacobson's study, his team factored in presumed population growth and efficiency improvements in energy to envision what that would look like in 2050.

Jacobson first published a roadmap of renewable energy for all 50 states in 2015.

This recent update of that 2015 work has a couple of notable improvements.

First, Jacobson and his colleagues had access to more granular data for how much heat will be needed in buildings in every state for the coming two years in 30-second increments. "Before we didn't have that type of data available," Jacobson told CNBC.

Also, the updated data makes use of battery storage while the first set of calculations he did relied on adding turbines to hydropower plants to meet peak demand, an assumption that turned out to be impractical and without political support for that technology, Jacobson said.

ONE ECONOMY TO RULE THEM ALL:

WHY?:

Singer and Academy Award-nominated actress Bette Midler issued an apology Monday for a tweet aimed at Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin that insulted West Virginians as "poor, illiterate and strung out."

UH-OH, COOTIES...:

Eric Hall, who DeSantis recently appointed to head Florida's Department of Juvenile Justice, used critical race theory as the bedrock of his 2014 dissertation examining alternative schools. Hall, who finished the dissertation while completing his doctorate at the University of South Florida, wrote that critical race theory was a good "framework" to study racial inequities in the public education system.

"Critical Race Theory (CRT) provides a grounded set of beliefs that seek to uncover and expose racism and its related impact on those who are often without power, in the case of this study, minority students," Hall wrote in his dissertation, which POLITICO obtained.

SYSTEMIC:

Institute is representative of Black communities across the country that bear a disproportionate health burden from industrial pollution. On average, the level of cancer risk from industrial air pollution in majority-Black census tracts is more than double that of majority-white tracts, according to an analysis by ProPublica, which examined five years of emissions data. That finding builds on decades of evidence demonstrating that pollution is segregated, with residents of so-called fence-line communities -- neighborhoods that border industrial plants -- breathing dirtier air than people in more affluent communities farther away from facilities.

The disparity, experts say, stems from a variety of structural imbalances, including racist real estate practices like redlining and decades of land use and zoning decisions made by elected officials, government regulators and corporate executives living outside these communities. That means that these areas, many of which are low-income, also lack the access that wealthier areas have to critical resources, like health care and education, and face poorer economic prospects.

All of the concentrated industrial activity in these so-called "sacrifice zones" doesn't just sicken the residents who happen to live nearby. It can also cause property values to plummet, trapping neighborhoods in a vicious cycle of disinvestment. In Institute, for example, West Virginia State, starved of state funding for years, has struggled to expand and recruit students. The school is now suing Dow Chemical, the plant's owner, and arguing that contaminated groundwater beneath the campus inhibits the school's development plans and harms its national reputation. Dow has sought to dismiss the case, and an appeals court is considering whether the matter belongs in state or federal court.

Many of the 1,000 hot spots of cancer-causing air identified by ProPublica are located in the South, which is home to more than half of America's Black population. "None of this an accident," said Monica Unseld, a public health expert and environmental justice advocate in Louisville, Kentucky. "It is sustained by policymakers. It still goes back to we Black people are not seen as fully human."

BUT TOO FEW MANAGERS LISTEN:

Part of what makes new employees valuable in problem solving is actually what makes it harder to work with them in general as they get acclimated to their new workplace. They just don't share the assumptions and culture of the organization with everyone else. That can make it hard to explain things to new people. They don't know how or why things are done the way they are.

While that slows down work in many normal circumstances, it's a benefit when there are hard problems to be solved. New employees will end up asking a lot of questions about why things are done the way they are. Those questions can be quite helpful for several reasons. They can bring to the surface disagreements among team members about core assumptions that are only identified because people are forced to articulate the reasons why they believe things are done.

In addition, those questions reveal situations in which the initial reason why a procedure was put in place no longer holds. These questions can also bring to light cases where people were sure they know why things were done as they are, and only realize the gap in their knowledge when asked to explain it.

CAN'T HAVE A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS WHEN THERE IS ONLY ONE:

EXCEEEDING EVEN VLAD'S HOPES:

The report, issued on Friday, documents multiple channels of interference by Trump and his underlings. To begin with, the White House shut down public briefings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Feb. 25, 2020, Nancy Messonnier, the CDC official in charge of respiratory diseases, warned Americans that a pandemic was coming and that they should prepare for school and workplace closures. Trump responded by threatening to fire her. For months thereafter, the White House refused to authorize CDC briefings. In transcribed interviews, CDC officials told the subcommittee that in April 2020, the White House rejected the agency's request to hold a briefing to present the scientific case for wearing masks.

Instead, Trump delivered his own COVID briefing, at which he said of masks: "You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it." That statement and others, according to CDC officials who spoke to the subcommittee, gravely undermined the agency's efforts to control the pandemic.

Second, the White House altered CDC guidance to religious congregations, deleting recommendations to wear masks and take other precautions. In a May 2020 email obtained by the committee, Jay Butler, a CDC official, reported that the White House had stripped out crucial elements of the guidance. "All references to face coverings are missing in the WH version," Butler wrote. In addition, he noted, "References to considering virtual events are absent from the WH version."

Third, the administration tried to limit COVID testing in order to hide the extent of the pandemic and keep businesses open. At a political rally on June 20, 2020, Trump said he had told "my people" to "slow the testing down." He later claimed that he was half-joking, but the report found evidence that in subsequent months, Trump's people tried to do exactly as he had instructed. On Aug. 24, 2020, the administration changed CDC's guidance to say that most people who didn't have COVID symptoms shouldn't get tested, even if they had been exposed to a known carrier. An Aug. 27, 2020, email from Paul Alexander, an advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services, explained that the guidance had been altered because tests of asymptomatic people, if they came out positive, would end up "preventing the workforce from working," and "widespread testing of schools and colleges/universities" would "not allow them to optimally re-open."

Fourth, from September 2020 to January 2021, the White House ignored urgent entreaties from its COVID task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx. She told the subcommittee that during these months, she had repeatedly circulated internal reports pleading for more promotion of mask use, better access to monoclonal infusion and other therapies, immediate provision of vaccines to elderly people based on "compassionate use," and "aggressive testing" to find and alert carriers before they infected others. By comparing states that implemented such measures to those that didn't, Birx estimated that if her pleas had been heeded, fatalities could have been reduced by 30 percent to 40 percent.

The report also details other ways in which the White House impeded or corrupted the public health response.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Latest CDC data by vaccine status:

Unvaccinated: 451 cases per 100k
Vaccinated: 134 cases per 100k
Boosted: 48 cases per 100k

Unvaccinated: 6.1 deaths per 100k
Vaccinated: 0.5 deaths per 100k
Boosted: 0.1 deaths per 100k

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) December 20, 2021

A BOTTLENECK IS NOT INFLATION:

At the end of the third quarter of 2021, total dollar spending on the economy was back to where it would have been had there been no pandemic. This robust recovery in total dollar spending, or nominal gross domestic product (NGDP), was due to the large injections of cash from Congress and the accommodative monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Some observers view this support as creating excessive demand for goods and services, contributing to shortages and spawning the recent surge in inflation.

But had there been no pandemic, the economy would have reached its current size at a normal pace with the same low inflation rate that prevailed before the pandemic, as shown in the figure below. The level of demand, therefore, cannot be the main culprit for the inflation surge through the third quarter of 2021.

A better explanation for the higher inflation through this period is the change in the composition of total dollar spending. During the pandemic, households shifted away from spending on services--eating out, travel, leisure, etc.--because of COVID concerns and increased their expenditures on physical goods they could use at home, where they were stuck. As a result, spending on services declined below pre-pandemic levels while spending on goods rose above pre-pandemic levels. This shift in consumer spending preferences was imposed on an economy that was not equipped for it and was still in the process of reopening. As a result, this change in the composition of aggregate demand created supply chain bottlenecks, production problems and inflation.

VLAD WHO?:

Under pressure from Putin, Zelenskiy has undergone a profound political transformation. One thing is clear: he is no longer the same dove that he was on the campaign trail. Russia is pushing Ukraine toward Nato, he says, and a membership action plan is now central to his foreign policy. This month, Zelenskiy toured the frontline outside Donetsk. Wearing a flak jacket and helmet, he chatted with service personnel who will be the first line of Ukraine's defence should tanks from Russia begin to roll.

Russia has openly spurned Zelenskiy's efforts to negotiate and talks have virtually ceased. Fifty Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since last year's ceasefire, a fact that weighs heavily on Ukraine's actor turned president. "I think he's matured. He's aged. You can see that," said Orysia Lutsevych, a research fellow and manager of the Ukraine forum in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House. "He's simply had to experience the burden of responsibility."

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Donald Trump is increasingly agitated by the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, according to sources familiar with the matter, and appears anxious he might be implicated in the sprawling inquiry into the insurrection even as he protests his innocence.

The former president in recent weeks has complained more about the investigation, demanding why his former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, shared so much material about 6 January with the select committee, and why dozens of other aides have also cooperated.

Trump has also been perturbed by aides invoking the Fifth Amendment in depositions - it makes them look weak and complicit in a crime, he has told associates - and considers them foolish for not following the lead of his former strategist Steve Bannon in simply ignoring the subpoenas.

When Trump sees new developments in the Capitol attack investigation on television, he has started swearing about the negative coverage and bemoaned that the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was too incompetent to put Republicans on the committee to defend him.

SYSTEMIC:

Herb Washington bought his first McDonald's restaurant in 1980. He was 29, young by McDonald's standards; a husband hoping to be a father, as the company preferred; a graduate of Michigan State University and Hamburger University. Washington had been a sprinter, nearly qualified for the 1972 Olympics, and later signed with the Oakland A's as a "designated runner." He lasted just a year, but it was a good year. The team won the World Series, and Washington earned about $100,000 all counted. That's how he paid for the restaurant.

When McDonald's decided he was ready, it also decided where he would go. For a decade, McDonald's had been recruiting Black men--and a few Black women--to own restaurants in Black neighborhoods. Civil rights activists demanded it. Black entrepreneurs wanted it. And company executives knew it was necessary to keep the business growing. Some of the restaurants were new, many had been owned by White operators who wanted, or were advised, to sell. White residents were abandoning cities for the suburbs, and so were White McDonald's franchisees. McDonald's itself wanted to stay. Washington was told his McDonald's would be in Rochester, N.Y., in a poor Black and Hispanic neighborhood, next to a public housing complex called Fight Village. Other Black operators called these "hood restaurants." Washington didn't know that yet.

But he knew enough about McDonald's to understand that turning down the offer would be a mistake. Getting into the system, as everyone calls it, is competitive. Buying restaurants is competitive, and no one gets into the system to own just one. He was excited to join more than a hundred other Black operators at a company that seemed to offer opportunities they were denied elsewhere. He was going to climb, he was going to lift, he was going to get rich.

His excitement didn't last long. The restaurant, on the corner of Clifford and Clinton avenues in downtown Rochester, was new, its economics untested. McDonald's owned the building--as it almost always does--and Washington, like all operators, paid rent plus a service fee to the company, based partially on sales. This model provides McDonald's revenue that doesn't account for the costs of running the restaurant, the debt most every owner takes on, or any unexpected problems. "We're just like the Mafia; we skim it right off the top," a McDonald's executive had joked to Time magazine in the early 1970s. No one ever said anything like that in public again, but it's one reason people still say that McDonald's doesn't sell burgers, it sells real estate.

McDonald's was optimistic about the potential of restaurants that served mostly Black customers. They were regarded as "super-users." Washington's restaurant fell short right from the start. Sales were expected to reach more than $1 million a year but came in at about $700,000. McDonald's misunderstood the demographics of Rochester's downtown, he said. Many of his customers received public assistance and didn't have a lot of disposable income. His staff couldn't upsell. Purchases spiked at the start of the month and plummeted at the end. The crack epidemic was taking hold. There were fights in the restaurant; he kept baseball bats around like they were spatulas.

After the first year, his was the lowest-volume restaurant in the region. That, he said, was devastating. When a restaurant is struggling, McDonald's can help by lowering the rent. But Washington didn't know to ask for assistance, and he said no one suggested he try. Instead he relied on an Urban League program that paid as much as half of the salaries of his younger employees.

The next year, McDonald's offered Washington a second Rochester store next to another public housing complex, Fight Square. He didn't hesitate to buy it. And a few years later, he took on a third. He had figured out a management system of his own.

He'd also figured out what a lot of other Black operators had. Life would be a little easier, and his bottom line stronger, if he could buy some restaurants in the suburbs, where, generally, the customers were White and better off economically, and the McDonald's franchisees were, too. Washington was friendly with one who wanted to sell three restaurants. Before McDonald's even knew the restaurants were on the market, he'd made a deal. That was probably a miscalculation. The company has the first right of refusal, which means a regional manager can prevent any sale between operators. That's what happened. "McDonald's can say, 'Oh no, we want these stores in those hands. It's that simple," Washington said. "McDonald's overrode the deal and then sold the restaurants to a White owner." McDonald's acknowledged that it didn't approve the sale. "After losing the stores, I felt betrayed," Washington said. "I felt discriminated against. I felt that if I was White, the deal would have gone through."

EVERY HOME A NODE:

Clean Energy Council CEO Kane Thornton says grid connection has emerged as the single greatest challenge for renewable energy projects since at least 2019, and the issue is acting as a stop to the enormous capital flows that should be flowing into the Australian economy through clean energy projects.

"The Connection Reform Initiative stands out as a new model for innovation and collaboration in solving such a complex problem," he said in a statement

"I want to thank the hundreds of people from across the energy sector for their effort and contribution, particularly the CEC's members and AEMO, our co-sponsor for this Initiative.

"A reformed connection process is now within our grasp, providing greater efficiency and certainty. It's the certainty that will be crucial if we are to accelerate the deployment of our world class renewable energy and Australia's efforts to decarbonise our electricity sector and achieve net zero emissions long before 2050.

AS IF THE TRUMPISTS WEREN'T FRENCH ENOUGH:

ORIGINALISM V. LEGISLATING FROM THE BENCH:

THE FRAMERS of the Constitution gave the federal government no authority to restrict peaceful immigration. For the first century or so of US history, most foreigners wishing to move to the United States were legally free to do so. The Constitution delegates many specific powers to the federal government, but a general right to bar or expel immigrants is conspicuously not among them. During the national debate over the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 -- which (among other provisions) allowed President John Adams to unilaterally deport immigrants he deemed dangerous -- James Madison and the Virginia General Assembly denounced the laws for investing the president with "a power nowhere delegated to the federal government."

Not until 1882 was there a significant federal law curbing immigration: the unabashedly racist Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively slammed the door on immigration from China. Instead of striking down the law as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court upheld it on the grounds that the right to exclude foreigners for any reason was an "incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States." That decision -- by the same court that a few years later endorsed racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson -- erased a core human right that the authors of the Constitution had never intended to curtail: freedom of immigration.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

State Sen. Doug Ericksen, a stalwart conservative voice in the Legislature, former leader of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Washington and an outspoken critic of COVID-19 emergency orders, has died, his family said Saturday. He was 52.

"YEAH, BUT WUHAN!":

Inside a Kansas City courtroom, Peter Zeidenberg is growing frustrated. The wiry, gray-haired lawyer isn't making much headway persuading a judge to throw out evidence obtained as a result of what he calls misconduct by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His client, Franklin Tao, a former University of Kansas chemical engineering professor facing 20 years in prison, is furiously scribbling notes and passing them to his defense team.

"They were looking for a spy, looking for evidence of espionage of trade secrets," Zeidenberg says, his voice rising in exasperation. But they found none, he says, because there wasn't any. "At the end of the day, they just have a conflict-of-interest form where the box wasn't checked."

Tao is accused of failing to disclose ties to a Chinese university while employed in Kansas. His prosecution is part of the China Initiative, a sweeping effort by the Department of Justice, the FBI, and other federal agencies launched in November 2018. One primary goal was to counter Chinese espionage in America's corporations and research labs by rooting out spies and halting the transfer of information and technology to China. The FBI says it has opened thousands of investigations involving China since then. But recent setbacks--six cases dropped in July and a directed acquittal in September--have revealed law enforcement errors and prosecutorial overzealousness.

Advocacy groups say the prosecutions reflect racial bias, fueled by tensions with China, that contributed to a 71% rise in incidents of violence against Asian Americans from 2019 to 2020. Attorney General Merrick Garland has pledged to review the program. "They have turned the China Initiative into an instrument for racial profiling," says Judy Chu, a Democratic representative from California who is the first Chinese American woman elected to Congress. "They have turned it into a means to terrorize Chinese scientists and engineers. Something has gone dramatically wrong."

A Bloomberg News analysis of the 50 indictments announced or unsealed since the start of the program and posted on the Justice Department's China Initiative web page reveals a further problem: The China Initiative hasn't been very successful at catching spies. The largest group of cases, 38% of the total, have charged academic researchers and professors with fraud for failing to disclose affiliations with Chinese universities. None of them has been accused of spying, and almost half of those cases have been dropped. About half as many China Initiative cases concern violations of U.S. sanctions or illegal exports, and a smaller percentage involve cyber intrusions that prosecutors attributed to China.

IT'S A MYSTERY:

The COVID vaccine isn't 100% effective, but the data speaks for itself. pic.twitter.com/jaH2sFQFPY

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) December 18, 2021

TEMPORARY SUPPLY GLITCHES ARE NOT INFLATION:

Supply constraints are really starting to abate. The US stood out like a sore thumb for much of 2021, with delivery times almost as stretched (red) as Japan after Fukushima in 2011 (orange). We've now been normalizing for two successive months. Same is true for Germany (blue)... pic.twitter.com/cHecoZ0pXG

— Robin Brooks (@RobinBrooksIIF) December 18, 2021

WHAT'S THE GERMAN FOR KEYSTONE?:

German Economic Affairs and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck has warned Russia of "severe consequences" and threatened to halt the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, if Moscow were to attack Ukraine. [...]

Habeck added: "From a geopolitical point of view, the pipeline is a mistake... All the countries were against it except Germany and Austria."

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

"Insinuating that Israel or the Jews control Congress or the media is antisemitic, plain and simple," Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote on Twitter Friday.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

Last weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised a bellwether metric -- the share of people 65 and older with at least one shot. The agency reduced the proportion from 99.9%, where it had been capped for weeks, to 95%, without changing its raw shot totals.

The move acknowledged a dynamic state officials have discovered: in collating reams of data on vaccinations, the U.S. has counted too many shots as first doses when they are instead second doses or booster shots. 

CDC data show 240 million people with at least one shot, or about 72.5% of the population. But the agency says only 203 million are fully vaccinated, or 61.3%, an 11-percentage-point difference that is far larger than in other developed countries.

State and local officials say it's improbable that 37 million Americans got one shot without completing their inoculations. Instead, they say, the government has regularly and incorrectly counted booster shots and second doses as first doses.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Ali Alexander, who founded the pro-Trump "Stop the Steal" movement and attended the rally that preceded the Capitol attack, told congressional investigators that he recalls "a few phone conversations" with Rep. Paul Gosar and a text exchange with Rep. Mo Brooks about his efforts in the run-up to Jan. 6, his lawyers confirmed in a late Friday court filing.

Alexander also told the Jan. 6 House select committee that he spoke to Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) in person "and never by phone, to the best of his recollection," his lawyers say.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S TALIBAN:

Afghanistan's Taliban authorities said Saturday they will resume issuing passports in Kabul, giving hope to citizens who feel threatened living under the Islamists' rule.

Thousands of Afghans have also applied for new travel documents to escape a growing economic and humanitarian crisis described by the UN as an "avalanche of hunger".

The authorities will start issuing the travel documents from Sunday at Kabul's passport office, Alam Gul Haqqani, the head of the passport department in the interior ministry, told reporters.

GET BOOSTED:

The variant, known as Omicron, was identified in the U.S. the following week, and then, as Cornell students returned from Thanksgiving travel to wrap up their semester in Ithaca, it became home to one of the country's "first superspreader" events, according to Dr. Eric Topol, the director and founder of Scripps research translational institute. 

"It's a perfect storm, you have people that are doing a lot of networking and gathering and at the same time, have a highly infectious variant," he said. Without arrival testing, students may have unknowingly spread the virus at end of semester celebrations, holiday outings and other "social gatherings" that may have also increased the spread

While the University is still testing the samples of students that tested positive to confirm how many cases are the Omicron variant, Topol said that the steep rise in cases within the Cornell community -- which is 97 percent vaccinated -- is telling that the Omicron variant is at play. 

Preliminary evidence from the Tompkins County Health Department does show "a high rate of Omicron transmission amongst the 18-24 Cornell University student population and additional prevalence amongst the wider community," according to a release from Frank Kruppa, the public health director.

"The initial batch of positive results from the 18-24 population, prioritized for sequencing due to the rapid spread observed and indication of Omicron, resulted in all 115 samples being confirmed cases of the variant," Kruppa wrote. "These results indicate that the primary spread amongst this population is due to the more transmissible Omicron variant."

Topol and others said the outbreak at Cornell is a dire precursor of what's to come in the rest of the United States. If the variant could take hold in such a highly vaccinated community of younger people -- with 97 percent of the on-campus population vaccinated -- who are less likely to become severely ill, and spread so quickly despite weekly surveillance testing, cases elsewhere in the country could also skyrocket.

JUST "CONCERNED PARENTS":

A Miami activist Gov. Ron DeSantis' office handpicked to amplify his criticism of critical race theory has espoused views aligned with QAnon conspiracy theories and appears to support those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Eulalia Maria Jimenez, the chair of the Miami chapter of Moms for Liberty, stood with DeSantis earlier this week as he touted legislation to combat critical race theory. During the press conference, Jimenez described last year's demonstrations after George Floyd's killing as "race wars" and railed against critical race theory teachings.

But on Instagram, Jimenez echoed QAnon conspiracy theories by writing about "children being smuggled through underground tunnels for the enjoyment of demons" and posting a picture from the Jan. 6 riots with a caption that said "the storm is upon us. Trust the process." She also called Covid vaccines "poison."

WAY TO GO, BRANDON!:

Brandon Straka, a Donald Trump ally who spoke at a Jan. 5 "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington -- and has since pleaded guilty for joining the mob that stormed onto the grounds of the U.S. Capitol the next day -- has provided investigators with information they say "may impact the government's sentencing recommendation."

It's an indication that Straka, one of the few Jan. 6 defendants who is also of interest to congressional investigators, has cooperated with prosecutors in a substantive way.

LEARN THE LESSON; DON'T TRY TO TEACH ONE:

The Taliban won the war in Afghanistan. Perhaps it was inevitable, perhaps it was not. But it is in any case a reality. And the consequences of the international withdrawal are horrifying. Half of the nearly 40 million people in Afghanistan are now at risk of famine and starvation. COVID-19 has spread across a country with next to no vaccination or medical ventilator capacity. The economy is broken. Prices and unemployment are soaring. Health care systems are disintegrating. And there is no coherent long-term strategy to prevent a major terrorist threat from reemerging.

Yet all is not lost. Despite the debacle this summer, the war's end came with remarkably little bloodshed. That was not the result of any U.S. or NATO policy but it was a welcome and surprising outcome. Moreover, despite having been bitter enemies for two decades, NATO and the Taliban found a modus vivendi this summer, as the latter even helped us (imperfectly) evacuate more than 120,000 people at risk as Kabul fell. That tacit cooperation suggests a path forward for counterterrorism policy as well.

Alas, these silver linings to the withdrawal are both at dire risk. It will prove little solace that civil war and massive revenge killings were averted this year if many hundreds of thousands of Afghans suffer preventable deaths from starvation and privation this winter.

TOTALLY NOT A DEATH CULT...:

In a devastating revelation, the report adds that "Trump Administration officials purposefully weakened" CDC's "testing guidance to reduce the amount of testing being conducted and obscure how rapidly the virus was spreading across the country."

The Select Committee finds administration officials "championed a dangerous 'herd immunity' strategy inside the White House--including by arranging a roundtable event between then-President Trump and a fringe group of herd immunity proponents--that would have placed millions of lives at risk."

It alleges it has new evidence showing that "Trump White House officials blocked CDC briefings and media appearances, and attempted to sidestep CDC in finalizing coronavirus guidance. The Select Subcommittee also uncovered evidence showing that Trump White House officials neglected the pandemic response to focus on the 2020 presidential election and promote the Big Lie that the election results were fraudulent."

But the Trump administration's failures date back to the very beginning of the pandemic, the reports reveal, with the administration ignoring warnings from its own officials to obtain critical supplies including PPE (personal protective equipment) which ultimately led to medical professionals including doctors and nurses being forced to wear trash bags and reuse medical-grade face masks for days and weeks at a time.

SCRATCH A TRUMPIST...:

Former President Donald Trump veered into several antisemitic tropes in a recent interview, claiming that Israel used to have "absolute power over Congress" and saying that American Jews -- the majority of whom vote Democratic -- "either don't like Israel or don't care about Israel."

WHO DID YOU THINK THE ANTI-VAXXERS ARE?:

The post is one of many that white supremacists and far-right extremists are using to expand their reach and recruit followers on the social media platform Telegram, according to the findings of researchers who sifted through nearly half a million comments on pages -- called channels on Telegram -- that they categorized as far-right from January 2020 to June 2021.

The tactic has been successful: Nine of the 10 most viewed posts in the sample examined by the researchers contained misleading claims about the safety of vaccines or the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing them. One Telegram channel saw its total subscribers jump tenfold after it leaned into COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

"COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for radicalization," said the study's author, Ciaran O'Connor, an analyst at the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. "It allows conspiracy theorists or extremists to create simple narratives, framing it as us versus them, good versus evil."

THE BENEFITS OF GOOD GOVERNANCE:

Why live in New Hampshire? The quality of life is unmatched. Ranked #2 overall by World Population Review, N.H. tops the list for opportunity as the state has the lowest poverty rate in the country.https://t.co/KXM7fEtg72#NHEconomy #NHBEA #ChooseNH #VisitNH pic.twitter.com/1yA30oCzsH

— New Hampshire BEA (@NHEconomy) December 17, 2021

IT'S NOT CRT THEY OBJECT TO; IT'S HISTORY:

The large political divides about banning CRT also translated to differences in the values that Republicans and Democrats believe should be taught in schools. There was near universal agreement among Democrats: 92% said that schools should teach children about fairness and equity. Just 61% of Republicans believe that schools should teach these values.

This deep political split between the left and the right became even more pronounced when participants were asked if teachers should discuss issues related to race.

When participants were asked if public schools should teach more about race and racism as part of American history lessons, 35% of Republicans thought public schools should, compared to 88% of Democrats. Only a quarter of Republicans agreed that controversial national events related to race ought to be discussed in the classroom while 86% of Democrats agreed.  

...AND CHEAPER...:

Tucked inside the massive social spending and climate package lumbering through the Senate is money for new, cleaner postal delivery trucks. There's a lot to like about electric postal trucks. They'd significantly improve Americans' health while also slowing climate change. And it just makes sense for taxpayers over the long term; the Postal Service's private sector competitors have already made similar investments. As Democrats weigh potential areas to cut in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan, this is one provision that should escape the knife.

To call the U.S. Postal Service's current vehicles "clunkers" would be an understatement. These often decades-old trucks are famous for having no airbags, no air conditioning and a nasty habit of catching fire. So the Postal Service's recent decision to buy 165,000 replacement trucks is basically a no-brainer. But the main question is whether they will run on electricity or gasoline.

Electric vehicles are newer to the market and still carry a higher sticker price. But that higher price buys concrete benefits, like lower lifetime fuel and maintenance costs and huge reductions in pollution. Government demand for electric trucks will also push private markets to create better, cheaper vehicles, directly benefiting consumers. So while buying electric postal trucks may be somewhat more costly at first, over the long term, failing to do so could be far costlier.

IGNORABLE YOU:

"We haven't received any concrete serious proposals from NATO. All our previously made proposals on de-escalation remained unanswered," Grushko said in comments to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

Alia, whose gracefully angled 50-foot wingspan Clark says was inspired by the long-flying Arctic tern, is one of a slew of novel electric aircraft that aviation upstarts are building that take off and land vertically like a helicopter. Virtually all of Beta's competitors, including billionaire Larry Page's Kitty Hawk and the SPAC cash-rich Joby Aviation, aim to transport people, enabling urbanites to hopscotch over traffic-snarled city streets. But Clark designed Alia primarily as a cargo aircraft, betting that a big market will develop for speeding ecommerce to and from suburban warehouses long before air taxis are considered safe to allow over city streets.

"We're actually going to win at the passenger game because by the time others are doing passenger missions we will have thousands of aircraft, millions of flight hours and a safe, reliable, vetted design," says the 41-year-old Clark, whose company is based in his hometown of Burlington, Vermont.

Clark is also spooling up what he thinks will be a lucrative second business: charging stations for electric aircraft of all types that he plans to dot around the country to create the aviation equivalent of Tesla's supercharger network. There are nine up and running already, in a line from Vermont to Arkansas, with another 51 under construction or in the permitting process. Most will contain banks of used batteries from Alia aircraft, removed when their capacity has declined about 8%, giving them a profitable second life while Beta sells Alia owners replacement packs at about a half a million a pop. Equipping the charging stations with battery storage will avoid the need for expensive upgrades to the local power grid: Clark's plan is for them to fill slowly at off-peak times, while unneeded power can be sold back at peak to utilities.

"The aircraft is the sexy part but we're going to make big money off batteries," says Clark.

Beta investors Fidelity Management and Amazon are hoping the company will repeat the success of another electric vehicle startup they've bankrolled whose market cap recently topped $100 billion. "They see a lot of parallels between Beta and Rivian," says Edward Eppler, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who joined Beta as CFO after working on its Series A round, which raised $368 million in May at a $1.4 billion valuation. Forbes estimates Beta's revenue over the past 12 months at $15 million, mostly from U.S. Air Force research contracts.

"THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO":

The first type of purpose we considered, the kind handed down to us by a designer or other authority, would be the kind of purpose that would give our lives meaning, since it would be imposed on our lives from the outside. Religion, patriotism, family honour, being of use to God, or society, or even to some kind of totalitarian state, could all be seen as purposes 'over and above us'. It would be comforting to know that there is something your whole life achieves; it would also effectively render us the tools for the purpose of the greater thing. Here the analogy with artefacts is clear. But just because it's an attractive idea, that does not mean that it is true. How might it be criticised?

1) If you don't believe in a God, or an omnipotent state or ruler, it's difficult to see how this kind of externally-imposed purpose could work for us. Why should you accept anyone's authority in making such a claim of purpose on your life?

2) Submission to a greater authority to some degree involves deliberately denying ourselves the responsibility to think for ourselves concerning issues of fundamental importance, such as our purpose in life, and the values by which we should live in order to achieve that purpose. Many philosophers (Jean-Paul Sartre particularly comes to mind) would argue that this surrendering of our will is denying the basic humanity of our existence, which is that we are free to choose and are inescapably responsible for our choices.

3) If we complete this purpose - if the purpose is achieved - then by definition we no longer have a purpose. For example, a person who sees that his life's purpose is to attain eternal salvation is rendered purposeless once he has achieved that end. Is heaven full of people who have no sense of purpose? Furthermore, if a person saw the whole meaning of his life in terms of a given purpose and he achieved that purpose, he would cease to be the same person, in that what he regarded as the most basic point of his life would no longer apply to him. He would, it could be argued, have lost his fundamental identity.

We could formulate this syllogism:

-Either our purpose is achievable or it is not.

-If it is achievable then after it is achieved we no longer have a purpose.

-Then our lives would be futile.

-If it is not achievable then attempting it would end in failure, and to continue would be futile.

-Therefore, either way, our lives are ultimately futile.

One way of getting round this argument is to see the achievement of purpose not so much as an event but as an ongoing process. If we claimed that our purpose was to be rather than to do, we can never finish or complete it, and so we will always have that purpose. For example, if we claimed that our purpose was to have children to succeed us, then once we have done that, there'd be no more purpose. By contrast, if we claim that our purpose is to be good, we can always strive for that.

RETURN TO EISENHOWER/KENNEDY/CARTER/REAGAN/BUSH/CLINTONISM:

[I]'ve been arguing that we need an ideological realignment in which various stripes of liberals find ways to work together and realize that our differences should not prevent us from making common cause. I describe this new alignment as "neo-classical liberalism," a combination of the most common version of liberalism on the left--the market-friendly neoliberal, --and the most common version on the right--the libertarian-leaning classical liberal.

The important shared concept here is "liberal." A liberal is someone who thinks that freedom is one of the central principles of any just, moral and flourishing society.

We need to start thinking about what a broadened liberal coalition would mean in terms of overarching principles and a political agenda. What follows is not quite a neo-classical liberal manifesto--it's too early for that--but more of a starting point.

Protect free elections. No other freedoms can be maintained unless the government answers to its citizens in free elections--unless the party in power can lose an election. There is a long history of politicians making irresponsible claims that the vote was "rigged" when they didn't win. But there is only one movement right now that is attempting to control the apparatus of  vote-counting for the purpose of overturning election results. Part of the point of finding a wider agenda we can cooperate on is to help us remain unified so we can work together on this crucial, single issue.

Guarantee free speech. There is no way to correct an error if people are not free to criticize the status quo. But freedom of speech has to be more than a legal guarantee. It has to be a cultural norm. We need to regard vigorous debate on the widest possible range of issues not as a threat to the truth, but as a necessity for reaching it. And we need to be prepared to support those who are targeted, particularly by "woke" online mobs, for challenging prevailing dogmas.

Fight regulatory 'cost disease.' The most difficult area for different kinds of liberals to work together is in economics, where we disagree on the size and role of government. But one area where we can agree is addressing how restrictive regulations and reckless government subsidies--from NIMBYism in housing to tuition inflation in higher education--conspire to make the major expenses of life less affordable.

It goes without saying that free-marketers will happily get behind a critique of regressive government regulations--and it might even do more good than, say, reducing the top marginal tax rate. Center-left liberals, for their part, should be open to the argument that if government is going to be a force for good, it had better do things that actually help people, rather than allowing itself to be captured for the benefit of entrenched interests.

Big-government liberals have gotten themselves trapped in a cycle of "cost-disease socialism," where government restrictions drive up the ordinary costs of living, which then need to be covered by ever-increasing government subsidies. But what helps people more--a bureaucratically administered handout or a liberalized system that prevents them from needing the subsidy in the first place?

Defend free markets and free trade. [...]

In particular, it is important for the anti-authoritarian center-left to craft its own independent economic vision and agenda--one that embraces the market alongside the welfare state--rather than merely adopting a watered-down version of the latest utopian vision offered by the radical left.

Fight authoritarianism. We need to pull our foreign policy back out of its post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan funk of defeatism and commit the U.S. once again to the defense and promotion of liberalism and representative government around the world. The goal of our current policy seems to be to manage one retreat after another--in Afghanistan, in Ukraine and next in Taiwan--and simply hope that each new withdrawal will not be too embarrassing. Meanwhile, the dictators swallow up more of the globe, gain in power and influence, and provide models to be emulated by advocates of authoritarianism at home.

FINAL COUNTDOWN:

JUST "CONCERNED PARENTS":

The latest COVID-19 surge at Concord Hospital is bringing in patients who are younger than previous surges, more likely to be middle-aged than living in nursing homes, but otherwise it is depressingly familiar, with unvaccinated people filling beds and no end in sight.

"The piece that's more difficult are the staffing shortages, the morale. The general level of grind for our nurses, in particular, is really challenging," said Dr. Matthew Gibb, chief clinical officer of the hospital. "The difficulties have gotten incrementally more difficult, week after week."

Concord Hospital has more than 50 COVID patients and four out of five of them are unvaccinated.

"We have had some cases where people have regretted not taking it more seriously, and they got seriously ill," Gibb said. "There still is a powerful level of what I would call denial in some folks who come in, unvaccinated."

ALL JOE NEEDED TO DO WAS NOT BE DONALD:

THE DESANTIS FLU:

The omicron variant of the coronavirus is ripping through New York City: on Thursday, Bill de Blasio's senior public health advisor Dr. Jay Varma tweeted that the percentage of NYC residents who tested positive for COVID-19 had doubled this week in just three days. There are innumerable factors that could be contributing to this surge, most of them structural and impossible to pin on individuals or the errant holiday party. But Art Basel Miami, which wrapped up on December 5th and was reported to be a return-to-business, NFT-laden bacchanal, seems likely to be a contributing element: New Yorkers flocked to the fair and its satellite events this year in droves, and Twitter is ablaze with anecdotes describing sick art fair attendees.

TOTALLY NOT A DEATH CULT...:

The difference in death rates from COVID between Republicans and Democrats is becoming even more striking. pic.twitter.com/e1gvgwIY4M

— Michael Olesen (@maolesen) December 15, 2021

THE DESANTIS FLU:

THANKS, JOE:

WHEN YOU'D RATHER NOT SERVE YOUR COUNTRY:

The Marine Corps has booted 103 of its members for refusing the Covid vaccine, the service announced on Thursday, even as all the military branches report that a vast majority of troops have gotten the shots.

The news comes the same day the Army announced that it has relieved six leaders -- including two commanding officers -- over the issue, and that almost 4,000 active-duty soldiers have refused the vaccine.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Fox News removed from social media a cartoon depicting George Soros as a puppet master after the Anti-Defamation League called out the conservative news giant for peddling antisemitic tropes.

"As we have told @FoxNews numerous times, casting a Jewish individual as a puppet master who manipulates national events for malign purposes conjures up longstanding antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and contributes to the normalization of antisemitism," the ADL said Wednesday in a tweet. "This needs to be removed."

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

While many nonprofits and businesses have struggled during the pandemic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine group has thrived.

An investigation by The Associated Press finds that Children's Health Defense has raked in funding and followers as Kennedy used his star power as a member of one of America's most famous families to open doors, raise money and lend his group credibility. Filings with charity regulators show revenue more than doubled in 2020, to $6.8 million.

Since the pandemic started, Children's Health Defense has expanded the reach of its newsletter, launched an internet TV channel and started a movie studio. In addition to opening new US branches, it now boasts outposts in Canada, Europe and Australia and is translating articles into French, German, Italian and Spanish.

The group has become one of the most popular "alternative and natural medicine sites" in the world, according to data from digital intelligence company Similarweb. It now draws millions of monthly visitors to its articles -- many of which sow doubt about the COVID vaccine -- up from less than 150,000 before the pandemic.

As CHD has worked to expand its influence, experts said, it has targeted its false claims at groups that may be more prone to distrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans. It's a strategy that experts worry has deadly consequences during a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, when misinformation has been deemed a threat to public health.

A RELIGION, NOT A RACE:

How can a country supposedly founded on principles of religious freedom be so quick to support policies that violate the civil rights of Muslims? That's one of the questions at the heart of a new book, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, by Rutgers law professor Sahar Aziz.

The Racial Muslim proposes an answer: that some American politicians and institutions have perpetuated a narrative that Islam is not a religion, and thus doesn't deserve such protections. In this view, Islam is instead a political ideology, and Muslims--in reality worshippers from diverse racial backgrounds--are viewed as a racial group, subject to racist discrimination. This phenomenon is different from religious bigotry, which tends to focus on theological arguments about why a particular set of beliefs is wrong, the book argues; here, Aziz sees a situation in which Muslims as a group are assigned a set of negative traits, such as the false notions that they are inherently untrustworthy, uncivilized and violent.

On April 13, 1964, Malcolm X left the United States on a personal and spiritual journey through the Middle East and West Africa. By the time he returned on May 21, he'd visited Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco, and Algeria.

In Saudi Arabia, he'd experienced what amounted to his second life-changing epiphany as he accomplished the hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, and discovered an authentic Islam of universal respect and brotherhood. The experience changed Malcolm's worldview. Gone was the belief in White people as exclusively evil. Gone was the call for Black separatism. His voyage to Mecca helped him discover the atoning power of Islam as a means to unity as well as self-respect: "In my thirty-nine years on this earth," he would write in his autobiography, "the Holy City of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the Creator of All and felt like a complete human being."

NO ONE HAS IT HARDER THAN THEIR FATHER DID:

TO BE FAIR, KEYSTONE DOESN'T REACH THERE:

 The battery is being billed as vital to the local electricity supply for its ability to continue power supply during cloudy weather or at night.

"It's been a momentous year for clean energy in Florida - FPL opened the year by formally shutting down its last coal-fired plant in the state and now we're closing the year by shattering a world record and commissioning the largest solar-powered battery in the world," said Eric Silagy, FPL president and CEO.

"Since embarking on the largest solar expansion in the nation, the company has also installed more than 13 million solar panels and is already 45% of the way toward reaching our '30-by-30' goal to install 30 million solar panels across the state of Florida by 2030.

"What makes me most proud is that these projects are cost-effective for customers, which helps keep bills low over the long term. This battery is another example of how FPL has become a leader in clean energy and sustainability without sacrificing affordability or reliability."

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

"Former President Donald Trump already faces a future filled with legal battles in multiple federal, state and local jurisdictions from Georgia to the District of Columbia to New York State and Manhattan," explains Figliuzzi, a frequent guest on MSNBC's cable news shows. "And now, a British court decision against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could resurrect the two seminal questions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation: Did Trump obstruct justice, and did his campaign collude with Russia? Assange, an Australian citizen sitting in Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh in Southeast London, may hold the key that reopens the prosecutive possibilities."

LABOR FLAKE OUT:

In a tight US labor market, unionized workers have been demanding more. But labor is perhaps starting to lose the upper hand.

Following the failure to reach a contract with its union, Kellogg's said it is permanently replacing striking workers. Some 1,400 hourly employees, who are part of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, walked off the job across four cereal plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee starting Oct. 5.

The rejected contract offer would have included a 3% wage hike for legacy employees and increases for newer hires. The company proposed eliminating the cap on the share of lower-tier workers, but some union employees were worried that would put downward pressure on veteran workers' wages if lower-tier workers became a majority.

The food manufacturer has been on a hiring spree to replace the striking workers. The hourly rates for replacement workers posted on the Kellogg's job board are $21.72 an hour for "general labor" and $34 to $37 for "skilled labor", depending on the role. That's comparable to the pay for the unionized legacy employees, who make on average $35.26 an hour, according to Kris Bahner, a company spokesperson.

The fact that the replacement wages are more or less the same as the previous pay suggests the labor market may not be as tight as union activists believe.

THERE'S NEVER A BAD TIME TO STOP BEING DONALD LITE:

More than 100 migrant family members were removed or released from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, between Thursday and Friday of last week.

That brought the total detained family population to zero, according to the internal data.

"ICE has chosen to shift its usage of the Dilley facility to focus on single adults," an ICE spokesperson confirmed to Axios, "consistent with the administration's goals of addressing irregular migration while supporting a system of border management that is orderly, safe and humane."

Why it matters: The change marks a significant shift in immigration policy, and the fulfillment of an early call from then-presidential candidate Joe Biden to release families from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention.

TEXAS JUST NEEDS TO TRANSITION FASTER:

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

A spokesman for Christian churches in the Holy Land on Wednesday accused Israel of discriminating against Christian tourists during the normally busy Christmas holiday season.

Amid the rise of the Omicron COVID-19 variant late last month, the Israeli government took the far-reaching step of shuttering its borders to foreigners for two weeks. Last week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett ordered the directive be extended an additional 10 days, through December 21 at least.

But this week, Israeli officials decided to make an exception for Birthright, a popular program that provides free trips to Israel to young Jews from around the world. Groups from the United States are expected to arrive next week, with participants all fully vaccinated and remaining in small capsules.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

 A young, unvaccinated mom of three was more fortunate than some after being admitted to Catholic Medical Center's intensive care unit recently. Before she died, she had time to call home and request that her children be vaccinated.

An unvaccinated male patient in his early 50s didn't have that option. He needed a breathing tube placed down his throat to his windpipe within 20 minutes of arriving at the ICU. It's a procedure that requires patients to be sedated, and in some cases medically paralyzed so they don't resist. They are unable to speak, so his call home fell to ICU resource nurse Lynn Harkins.

"I don't want to cry," Harkins said, pausing. "She was just sobbing on the phone. They've seen on the news that ventilation is not a good prognosis." The man died.

But the awareness often comes too late, especially for those who think youth and health are protection enough against COVID-19 health complications, including death. The leadership teams at the CMC and Elliot Hospital, both in Manchester, allowed the Bulletin inside their emergency rooms and ICUs in recent days, hoping scenes from the front lines would persuade the unvaccinated to get vaccinated.

"I'm not saying that people who are vaccinated aren't getting sick. They are," said Christine Barry, a nurse manager at CMC. "But they are able to stay home and be sick. The ones that are here? That's where we are seeing the deaths of the ones that are unvaccinated.

Hospital leaders from around the state are sounding the alarm as the state hits record high hospitalizations (454 on Monday) and heads into what they predict will be the worst four to six weeks of the pandemic. They point to a perfect storm of the more contagious and deadly delta variant and decisions to forgo vaccination and masking while moving large gatherings indoors.

Keilani Lime of Vergennes was just two days away from surgery at the Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital last week when she learned that it had been canceled.

The New Hampshire hospital, which is part of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health network, needed to free up beds and staff amid a surge of COVID-19 patients. That required postponing some upcoming surgeries, including a lumbar shunt procedure Lime has been waiting on for more than five months, in the hope that it will reduce pressure on her spine caused by a congenital defect and several painful cysts.

The pressure has become so intense that it's started to erode the base of her spine, and Lime recently started losing strength in one of her legs. With no idea when her surgery will be rescheduled, the 32-year-old now fears that the condition could worsen to the point where she can no longer walk on her own.

"I feel like the sand is falling rapidly through the hourglass," she said, fighting back tears.

Lime represents the collateral damage of the latest COVID-19 surge, which has clogged New England hospitals with mostly unvaccinated patients in recent weeks, pushing an already overburdened health care system beyond its capacity.

The ripple effects hurt many more people than just those infected. Hospitals have canceled hundreds of surgeries such as Lime's that require overnight stays. That includes roughly 250 procedures at the University of Vermont Medical Center and many more at hospitals across the border in New Hampshire.

The logjam means rural hospitals are finding it difficult to transfer patients who urgently need specialized care to hospitals that can provide it.

YET IT MATTERS UTTERLY:

If you needed urgent heart surgery to save your life, would you care about the racial background of your doctor? While you as a prospective patient in need of treatment may not care, Florida State University cares a great deal and recently received a grant worth $14.5 million from the National Institute of Health to promote diversity.

FSU's "Florida-First Brigade" initiative is to "build a research community committed to diversity and inclusive excellence". Diversity of medical professionals is the end-goal of the funds, not the provision or development of better medical care. Therein lies the problem.

The human body operates the same way across individuals regardless of racial background. Theoretically, no patient, doctor or onlooker should care about the racial background of those giving or receiving care.

Black patients hospitalized for heart attacks continue to receive different medical treatment than white patients, according to a new study that explored whether previously reported racial differences in care have faded.

Researchers found that black heart attack patients were less likely than white patients to undergo aggressive medical procedures or be given certain types of medications normally prescribed under common treatment guidelines.

Although racial differences in medical care "are well documented," according to the study published Thursday in the Journal of the American Heart Association(link opens in new window), researchers were investigating whether those disparities had gotten better or worse over time.

In the 15-year snapshot examined by researchers, not much changed.

"Over the years, because of the standardization of evidence-based therapies, we thought the differences would have narrowed, but trends stayed consistent between black and white patients," said the study's lead author, Dr. Sameer Arora, a cardiology fellow at the University of North Carolina.

The study examined data on 17,755 patients hospitalized between 2000 to 2014 in four regions in Maryland, North Carolina, Mississippi and Minnesota. It found that black patients were 24 percent less likely than white patients to receive an antiplatelet drug that wasn't aspirin. They were 9 percent less likely to get medication to reduce their level of lipids, fats in the blood.

Black patients also had a 29 percent lower chance of getting an angiogram, an imaging technique used to see inside the heart's blood vessels, and were 45 percent less likely to undergo more aggressive therapy such as bypass surgery or angioplasty.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

In a Kentucky hospital bed at the end of November, a Covid-19 patient from the state's latest wave of infections lay alone behind the glass isolation wall.

A high-flow oxygen mask pushed extra air into his damaged lungs. His heart beat fast, though he lay frail and still. His mouth opened and closed to take tiny gulps of air. It looked like he was suffocating.

Kentucky's Covid landscape is a lot like what's happening in the rest of the United States. In some places, like Lexington, more than 60% of the population is fully vaccinated. But in many others, like the Appalachian counties 100 miles east, the rates are well under 40%. Diabetes, heart disease, smoking and obesity are prevalent--risk-factors that can make a Covid case severe, or deadly.

That made the state a tinderbox when the latest surge of infections began this summer. Outbreaks in less vaccinated counties filled up small, local hospitals. Sicker patients, or those who couldn't find space, went on to regional facilities. The most severe cases fed into the biggest and most advanced hospital in the state, the University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital, until it too overflowed. Like the man gasping for oxygen in one of the state's many Covid wards, the outbreak starved Kentucky's hospitals of air, consuming every resource: staff, beds, supplies and time.

Immunization is often framed as an individual choice--particularly in Kentucky's less-vaccinated regions. But a Bloomberg analysis of vaccine, infection and hospitalization data for the state, combined with interviews of more than 20 doctors, nurses and medical staff, show how low vaccination rates strain entire communities and health-care systems.

CO-CONSPIRATOR:

Rep. Jim Jordan forwarded a text message to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on January 5, outlining a legal theory that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to stand in the way of the certification of the 2020 election. [...]

Three sources confirm to CNN that the full text that Jordan forwarded to Meadows included specific information about the legal theory and contained a word document that outlined the strategy.

The sources said the full message was:

"On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all -- in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. 'No legislative act,' wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, 'contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.' The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: 'That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.' 226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all."

The text from Jordan is another example of the intense pressure campaign put on Pence by Trump supporters to act on unproven legal theories as a last-ditch effort to prevent the certification of the election results. It was pressure Pence ultimately rejected.

THE CAPITALIST PARTY:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scoffed Wednesday at the idea of banning congressional lawmakers and their spouses from owning stock shares of individual companies, despite the possibilities for conflicts of interest between their legislative duties and personal finances.

"No," Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters at a press conference where she was asked whether she would support such a prohibition.

"We're a free-market economy," she said. "They should be able to participate in that."

TOTALLY NOT A DEATH CULT:

Even if all of the unvaccinated people who died of COVID-19 had chosen to get vaccinated, some of those deaths may not have been preventable, as vaccines are not 100% effective. A recent CDC study showed age-standardized vaccine effectiveness against deaths of 91% in the June 20-July 17 period and 94% in the April 4-June 19 period. Based on this study, we assume 91% of COVID-19 deaths likely would have been prevented with COVID-19 inoculations.

We find that since June 2021 approximately 163,000 lives would have been saved with vaccinations. Most of these preventable deaths occurred well after vaccines became available. In September 2021 alone, approximately 51,000 people's lives likely would have been saved if they had chosen to get vaccinated. In November 2021, over 29,000 COVID-19 deaths likely would have been averted with vaccines.

The overwhelming majority of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths continue to be preventable. COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be effective against the COVID-19 Delta variant. Preliminary studies are showing COVID-19 vaccines with booster doses are effective against the newly emerging Omicron variant. At this time, the CDC does not require a booster shot to be considered fully vaccinated, but that may change.

SIMPLE SCIENCE:

Immunization is often framed as an individual choice--particularly in Kentucky's less-vaccinated regions. But a Bloomberg analysis of vaccine, infection and hospitalization data for the state, combined with interviews of more than 20 doctors, nurses and medical staff, show how low vaccination rates strain entire communities and health-care systems.

As a new winter wave of cases hits, those same dynamics are pushing hospitals around the U.S. to the brink. In Minnesota, doctors took out an ad in the Star-Tribune, pleading with people to get vaccinated. In Michigan, where 20 hospitals are running 97% occupancy or higher, an ER doctor wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times, warning that some facilities were close to being unable to provide care.

Those states will not be the only ones. A worrying new variant is spreading, hospitals are filling, and millions remain unvaccinated. If America keeps stress-testing its hospitals and their staff, some of them will break.

THERE OUGHTTA BE A NAME...:

Israel's Knesset yesterday passed a bill that would allow the occupation police to storm and search Palestinian homes and confiscate cameras without court orders.

YOUR NEXT TRACTOR WILL BE A VOLT:

The need for autonomy on the farm isn't for the sake of technological advancement alone. The need is born of the pressures farmers face today in their operations. Farmers have been embracing the most cutting-edge technologies in the market for as long as cultivating land has existed. They are always looking for an edge to contend with immense challenges to grow enough food to feed the growing world.

One particular need that is driving demand for full autonomy on the farm is the shortage of skilled labor in agriculture. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that overall employment of agricultural workers will grow only one percent from 2019-2029, slower than the average for all occupations. In addition, available labor during the peak times of the growing season is often lacking when farmers need it the most. On top of that, the average farmer is 55 years old, according to the USDA. As farmers age, working 18 hour days operating equipment is neither comfortable nor sustainable.

Autonomy is a critical step forward in enabling farmers to leverage their resources strategically to grow enough food to feed a growing global population and create more sustainable and profitable operations.

THE CULTURE WARS ARE A ROUT:

There's a moment in A Journal For Jordan in which Sgt. Charles Monroe King, the late real-life soldier played by Michael B. Jordan, is asked by his girlfriend how a soldier can believe in God. 

"Because I believe in evil," Charles responds.  [...]

Washington was raised by Pentecostal minister Denzel Hayes Washington Sr. His father died in 1991 and his mother passed away just a few months ago. Before she died, Washington vowed to spend the rest of his life making her and God proud.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

Failing to prevent a crime usually does not make someone an accomplice, but it is sufficient when this person had a legal duty to intervene. For this reason, a railroad conductor who failed to prevent passengers from transporting bootleg liquor was himself convicted of transporting the liquor. Similarly, a parent who made no effort to stop an assault on her child was guilty of the assault herself. And a police officer who arranges to be somewhere else at the time of a robbery aids and abets the robbery. This officer can be convicted along with the robbers at the scene.

The Constitution gave Trump a clear legal duty to intervene. Article II, Section 3 provides, "[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." This provision permits good-faith exercises of law-enforcement discretion, but a president unmistakably violates his duty when he refuses to enforce the law because he wants a crime to occur--when, for example, he hopes to advance his own interests through the criminal conduct of others. As abundant evidence shows, that's what transpired on Jan. 6.

Trump's ability to enforce the law was unique. Like other public officials, he could have sought the assistance of additional police officers or military forces, but, unlike anyone else in America, he had a less costly and probably more effective way to bring the crime to a halt: He could simply have asked his followers to stop.

More than three hours after the rioters violently entered the Capitol grounds and two hours after they forced their way into the building, Trump did post a video telling them to go home. But he resisted sending any cease-and-desist message earlier, thereby violating his duty to see the law enforced.

Trump had another legal duty--a duty apart from his duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"--to do what he could to end the occupation. Even if his direction to march to the Capitol and "fight like hell" was not intended to start a riot, it led to violence and placed the Vice President and members of Congress in peril. A person who creates a physical danger--even innocently--has a legal duty to take reasonable measures to prevent injury from occurring. Someone who's started a fire can't just let it burn out of control.

Trump could not be convicted without proof of his criminal intent, but his desire for continued occupation of the Capitol seems clear. Why else did he fail for hours to ask his supporters to desist, and why, even then, did he tell these criminals "we love you" and "you're very special"? And why, according to ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl,  did the first takes of his message leave out a request to end the occupation, prompting his aides to request repeated do-overs?

White House officials told a Republican senator that Trump was "delighted" when rioters pushed their way past police officers to enter the building. A close advisor to the President informed the Washington Post that "rather than appearing appalled, Trump was , , , enjoying the spectacle and encouraged to see his supporters fighting for him." Officials told Kate Collins of CNN that Trump was "borderline enthusiastic because it meant the certification [of the election] was being derailed." Trump booster Sen. Lindsey Graham observed, "The president saw [the rioters] as allies in his journey."

Trump's rebuffs of specific requests for assistance supply further proof of his intent.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

A longtime outside accountant for the Trump Organization testified recently before a New York grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's financial practices, and Trump's former Deutsche Bank banker, Rosemary Vrablic, has been interviewed by prosecutors in Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s office, The Washington Post and The New York Times report, citing people familiar with Vance's Trump investigation. 

Donald Bender, a Mazars USA accountant who has handled Trump's finances for decades, was automatically granted immunity from prosecution by appearing before Vance's grand jury, the Post reports. "The appearances by Bender and Vrablic suggest prosecutors are seeking information about Trump's finances from a small circle of outside partners who handled details of Trump's taxes and real estate deals. Bender and Vrablic were never Trump's employees, but they knew more about his company's inner workings than many employees did."

HOW MUCH GREENER IS MY VALLEY:

The UK government has launched the latest and biggest renewable energy tender this week, seeking to attract 12GW of new renewable energy capacity.

The fourth round of the UK's hugely successful Contracts for Difference (CfD) renewable energy tender is backed by £285 million ($A530 million) of funding per year.

It is the country's main mechanism for supporting the deployment of low-carbon electricity generation, including nuclear, and has already allocated around 16GW of new renewable electricity capacity through the first three rounds - including 13GW of offshore wind.

THANKS, NANCY!:

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan bill to ensure imports from China's Xinjiang region are not made with forced labor due to concerns about human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority.

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

SOMEONE MISSED THE ENTIRE INDUSTRIAL AGE:

This emerging class structure reprises, albeit with far less ­starvation, the patterns of the Middle Ages, with each class performing distinct social functions and defined economic roles. In this new order, there are two ­ascendant classes: the oligarchs and the clerisy. And there are two classes struggling to serve the ­ascendant classes, and to maintain for ­themselves a decent standard of living: the ­yeomanry and the new serfs.

The old feudal order evolved gradually, as the last structures of Roman republicanism first weakened, then totally collapsed due to the barbarian invasions. The seizure of Europe by the barbarian hordes upended an entire ­civilization, including its class structures. The collapse was due as much to the weakness of Roman institutions as to the ruthlessness of barbarian leaders. The feudalism that ensued would simplify ­society under the rule of two ­classes, the military aristocracy and the ­clerical class, while most people lived ­essentially in bondage to one or the other.

DONALD WHO?:

"We have been clear that we share Congress' view that action must be taken to hold the [People's Republic of China] accountable for its human rights abuses and to address forced labor in Xinjiang," Psaki said at a press briefing.

"We've already taken action on the global stage in that regard, leading an effort at the G7, putting in place financial sanctions and Global Magnitsky visa restrictions, and I think that's evidence of our commitment to this."

MET ONE nATIONALIST, YOU'VE MET THEM ALL:

In "The West's Dangerous Gambit in Ukraine," William Smith commits the ancient sophistical trick of equivocation. Equivocating between aggressive Russian action and NATO military maneuvers is a common tactic of the American nationalist right that serves essentially as apologetics for Putin's usurpation of the international security order.

A REMARKABLE MOMENT:

Ryan Warner: We often ask listeners to submit questions and for the last few months, the majority have asked why you won't impose a statewide mask mandate. We've recently seen a surge in cases and a shortage of hospital beds. Is there anything that would prompt you to return to a statewide order?

Gov. Jared Polis: Our top goal is always to follow the science, and there was a time when there was no vaccine, and masks were all we had and we needed to wear them. The truth is we now have highly effective vaccines that work far better than masks. If you wear a mask, it does decrease your risk of getting COVID, and that's a good thing to do indoors around others, but if you get COVID and you are still unvaccinated, the case is just as bad as if you were not wearing a mask. Everybody had more than enough opportunity to get vaccinated. Hopefully it's been at your pharmacy, your grocery store, a bus near you, [or at] big events. At this point, if you haven't been vaccinated, it's really your own darn fault.

Warner: It has been about a year since the first doses of vaccine arrived in Colorado. You see the arrival of the vaccine as the end of mask mandates statewide. That's your position?

Gov. Polis: We see it as the end of the medical emergency. Frankly, people who want to be protected [have gotten vaccinated]. Those who get sick, it's almost entirely their own darn fault. I don't want to say that nobody [will get the virus if they're] vaccinated, but it's very rare. Just to put it in perspective, of the about 1400 people hospitalized, less than 200 (or 16 percent) are vaccinated. And many of them are older or have other conditions. Eighty-four percent of the people in our hospitals are unvaccinated, and they absolutely had every chance to get vaccinated. 

We're talking, as you indicated, a year since the vaccines [became available]; everybody has had the chance to get vaccinated. And at this point, I think it's almost like they made a deliberate decision not to get vaccinated. I still encourage everybody who hasn't been vaccinated to get protected. And for those who are, make sure to get that booster after six months. The data shows it's important and very likely even more so with this omicron variant.

IT'S A MYSTERY:

This chart show the history of three infectious diseases - smallpox, polio, and measles - before and after a vaccine was available.

From my @OurWorldInData post on humanity's long fight against infectious diseases https://t.co/t2fEYgnfjg pic.twitter.com/JzyYzmkxIb

— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) December 13, 2021

NO ONE'S A LIBERTARIAN ONCE YOU PUNCH THEM IN THE NOSE:

Newsweek noted Saturday that Paul had voted against relief funds after Superstorm Sandy caused major damage in New York and New Jersey in 2013, after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, and after various other disasters strained relief agencies in 2019.

Spokesperson Kelsey Cooper on Sunday scolded Newsweek, "Kentuckians across the commonwealth are suffering and grieving today. This tragedy is uniting everyone around the common goal of helping and healing. Politicizing that suffering would be low for even the deepest partisan, yet here the corporate media is trying to do exactly that. Newsweek should be ashamed of themselves."

Cooper responded to the American Independent Foundation's request for comment with an almost identically worded statement.

Minority Leader McConnell voted against both a 2011 bill to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a 2013 Sandy relief package.

The GOP representatives in the delegation also have voted against relief funds for others in the past.

Barr, Comer, Guthrie, and Massie voted against a September bill to extend government funding and provide emergency assistance funds.

Last year, Barr, Comer, Guthrie, Massie, and Rogers voted no on a bill to fund disaster relief and emergency aid to Puerto Rico.

In 2019, Barr, Comer, and Massie voted against the supplemental funding bill to provide $17.2 billion for disaster relief nationally.

And in 2013, Barr and Massie were no votes on providing additional FEMA funding for Sandy relief.

Their offices did not immediately respond to inquiries for this story.

Yarmuth, the lone Democratic member of the Kentucky delegation, has consistently voted for relief funding.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE (profanity alert):

Reading from a transcript, the co-chair of the committee Liz Cheney said:

Indeed, according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the President needed to act immediately. They texted Meadows that:

"Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home...this is hurting all of us...he is destroying his legacy," Laura Ingraham wrote.

"Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished," Brian Kilmeade wrote.

"Can he make a statement?...Ask people to leave the Capitol," Sean Hannity urged.

Even Trump's family members were asking Meadows to push Trump. Cheney again:

As the violence continued, one of the president's sons texted Meadows:

"He's got to condemn this [***] ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough," Donald Trump, Jr. texted.

Meadows responded: "I'm pushing it hard. I agree."

Still, President Trump did not immediately act. Donald Trump, Jr. texted again and again, urging action by the president: "We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand."

There were also members of Congress who texted Meadows, too.

More Cheney:

Members of Congress, the press, and others wrote to Mark Meadows as the attack was underway:

One text Mr. Meadows received said, "We are under siege up here at the Capitol."

Another, "They have breached the Capitol."

In a third, "Hey, Mark, protestors are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors.

Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?"

A fourth, "There's an armed standoff at the House Chamber door."

And another, from someone inside the Capitol, "We are all helpless."

Dozens of texts, including from Trump administration officials, urged immediate action by the president.

WONDERFUL:

The hero of New Orleans, who had emerged from its jazz scene and forever changed the art form thanks to his ear for harmony and melody and daring lead lines, was now to be honored. And there was no better way to do it than with baseball -- a deep love of Armstrong's.

"He loved playing baseball," Riccardi said. "I mean, for the world's greatest trumpet player to name that as his number two hobby, it says a lot."

So, Armstrong found a local team -- likely made up of members of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, a New Orleans "parade krewe and community organization," and Mardi Gras institution -- and outfitted them in the finest uniforms possible. These were crisp, white brand-new togs with Armstrong's name across the front and numbers on the back. At a time when some professional Black teams were wearing hand-me-downs -- the San Francisco Sea Lions wore uniforms with bear cubs on the front because they got the jerseys from a team known as the Cubs -- Armstrong's threads stood out. They were the kind of thing made to play some serious baseball in and so, that's just what they did.

They played throughout the city that summer, but it all culminated on "Louis Armstrong Day." The Secret Nine took to Heinemann Park, home to the New Orleans Pelicans and, occasionally, the New Orleans Black Pelicans. The latter was their opponent on the holiday.

PITIED, NOT FEARED:

NATIONALISM DOESN'T WORK:

Construction cranes stand idle in China's Yunnan Province, on the easternmost edge of the Himalayas. Building has ground to a halt on Hainan, off the coast of Vietnam, and up in Heilongjiang, along the Russian border.

Across China, tens of millions of square feet of unfinished apartment buildings -- the legacy of a real estate boom gone awry in 2021 -- are derailing countless dreams of owning a home.

In a country where private homeownership was only legalized two decades ago, ordinary Chinese are discovering how quickly fortunes can turn in the housing market. Creeping price declines and plummeting sales in recent months have called into question the way freewheeling property developers have financed, built and marketed homes to the masses.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE:

...AND CHEAPER...:

The United States, and particularly the western United States, is a hotbed of geothermal energy that could meet the electric and thermal energy requirements of the entire country many times over.

In this paper, we identify the technological, economic, and political reasons that the United States has failed to exploit its geothermal resources. We provide actionable policy recommendations to sustainably and economically utilize the vast energy reserves under our feet, namely:

Streamline the federal permitting process for geothermal projects -- Federal permitting restrictions on drilling geothermal wells on public land are more burdensome than for otherwise similar oil and gas drilling projects. Extending the same National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) exclusions that oil and gas projects have to geothermal projects would enable the fledgling industry to quickly scale in the parts of the country with the shallowest heat resources.

Increase the federal budget for large scale geothermal R&D projects, particularly those led by public-private partnerships -- Expanding the budget for the Department of Energy's (DOE) flagship FORGE geothermal site would generate valuable data about experimental drilling techniques and provide the private sector additional opportunities for large-scale field demonstrations to attract additional investment.

Create incentives for geothermal generation in state electricity markets -- Adjusting the criteria for Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPSs) in states that are unnecessarily restrictive would help put geothermal energy on an even playing field when compared to wind or solar. Further, adding a requirement that some percentage of RPS goals be met by a clean, baseload power source would acknowledge the special importance of geothermal for firming our energy supply.

Establish federal innovation prizes (or related mechanisms) for the development of key geothermal technologies -- Drilling deep into bedrock is difficult and time consuming. And identifying the most fruitful subsurface locations to drill for geothermal energy is expensive. Accelerating breakthroughs in these key technological bottlenecks could dramatically impact the pace of geothermal power generation.

Reskill oil and gas workers for geothermal projects through federal jobs programs and private investment -- The U.S. has a lot of machinery and a specialized workforce that is well-equipped for oil and gas drilling. There is a high degree of overlap between the skills and equipment necessary to effectively drill for fossil fuels and for geothermal energy. The U.S. should speed the transition away from fossil fuels to geothermal by aiding in worker retraining efforts and/or equipment retrofitting.

XI IS WISE TO BE TERRIFIED:

Others such as Lai only turned up at the event and lit a candle -- an action judge Amanda Woodcock ruled nonetheless counted as "inciting" people to join an unlawful assembly because of his fame and notoriety.

During mitigation on Monday, Lai's lawyer Robert Pang read out a hand-written letter his client had penned from prison which his team later released to reporters.

"If commemorating those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment of this crime, so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on June 4," Lai wrote.

"Remember those who shed the blood but do not remember the cruelty... may the power of love prevail over the power of destruction."  

- 'The candlelight will live on' -

Chow, a lawyer who represented herself at the trial, used her mitigation to describe the convictions as "one step in the systemic erasure of history, both of the Tiananmen massacre and Hong Kong's own history of civic resistance".

She said Hong Kong's courts were "in effect affirming the unequal power wielded by the government" against critics by convicting people like her for taking part in protests.

"People moved by conscience cannot be deterred by jail," Chow added.

"Rest assured that the candlelight will live on, despite bans and ever more restrictive laws".

THE KHAKI PANTS AND RED HATS?:

Varieties of neo-nationalism range from political movements and parties (think Brexit or the National Front, rebranded the National Rally, in France under Marine Le Pen), to neo-nationalist leaning governments (with wannabe autocrats like Trump or Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, and the evolving story of Modi's India), to illiberal democracies (Viktor Orbán's Hungary, Andrzej Duda's Poland and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey), to authoritarian states (think China, Russia, and North Korea at the extreme end).

Hybrids abound. But most neo-national movements, parties, and governments are characterized by some combination of right-wing anti-immigrant, nativist, anti-science, anti-globalist (sometimes couched as anti-Western), and protectionist sentiments. When in power, they seek to squelch or even eradicate criticism.

And neo-nationalist leaders often have a core constituency that includes conservative religious groups--a marriage one finds in India, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, and here in the U.S., but not in secular China where the Communist Party is the state religion.

Some of this is familiar. Like right-wing populist movements in the past, neo-nationalist supporters and parties are often reacting to their own sense of waning political power, and perceived declines in social status and economic opportunity. Demagogues, then, step in to feed off a desire to preserve or reclaim a seemingly lost national cultural and political identity.

In Russia, you can find such backward-looking neo-nationalism. Vladimir Putin is infatuated with asserting Russia's power and place in the world in order to revive nationalism and reclaim in some modern form both Russia's tsarist and Soviet empire.

But if you really want to go back to the future, go to China.

Xi Jinping's "China Dream" is a rewind to hero-worship politics. He demands increased loyalty to the party, and has built a personal cult around himself reminiscent of the founding leader of China's Communist Party, Mao Zedong. Xi's goals are to preserve the existing domestic political order, to restore territory seen as lost (namely Taiwan), and to pursue a new global economic dominance and increasingly military presence in Asia, and beyond. Xi's autocratic China is also portrayed as a superior model to established democracies that seem incapable of governing.

One of Xi Jinping's earliest nativist edicts--in 2013, just a year after assuming power--was for the Chinese people to avoid Western values and what he called the "seven unmentionables." These included "Western constitutional democracy," human rights, media independence, promoting "universal values" in an attempt to weaken the theoretical foundations of the Party's leadership, judicial independence, pro-market liberalism, and "nihilist" criticism of the party's past.

...AND CHEAPER...:

On an industrial estate just outside Didcot in the south of England, an experiment is taking place that will create temperatures hotter than the Sun.

The BBC's climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, went to see the nuclear fusion reactor in action and to find out what possibilities the technology could hold for generating vast amounts of low-carbon energy.

GRANT WASN'T IN THE BUSINESS OF PROTECTING DAVIS:

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent an email saying the National Guard would be present to 'protect pro Trump people' in the lead up to the US Capitol insurrection, according to a new contempt report released by the January 6 committee Sunday night.

It was just one of several new details in the report about Meadows' actions before and during January 6, as well as his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The resolution comes after the panel informed Meadows last week that it had "no choice" but to advance criminal contempt proceedings against him given that he had decided to no longer cooperate.

THE DISCIPLINE OF GOVERNING:

30 years ago, the Taliban first rose to power after a 10-year war with the Soviets and the collapse of the country's communist regime.  Islamic extremists, they ruled with an iron fist - banishing women from the workplace, schools and public life - executing those who didn't follow their strict laws.

Today, there are women on the streets, but not many.  When the Taliban marched into Kabul, they urged women to stay home until they taught their fighters, "how to deal with them."

Which makes what Mary-Ellen McGroarty is doing even more surprising.  She's been personally negotiating with the Taliban so her drivers can deliver food to the needy.

Sharyn Alfonsi: When you say you have to, you know, reach out to the Taliban and talk to them, how does that work as a woman?

Mary-Ellen McGroarty: Being a woman in Afghanistan at the moment is, yeah-- it's challenging. But I think they realize I'm the head of a U.N. organization, so they do have to meet with me. And that's the way it is.

Sharyn Alfonsi: And for the person sitting at home who says, "Well, how could they be engaging with the Taliban? They're an extremist group," how do you answer that?

Mary-Ellen McGroarty: With humanitarian work, you know, the humanity comes first and being able to save lives comes first.  We remain impartial with a clear focus on the humanitarian imperative. 

McGroarty told us humanitarian groups have worked with the Taliban for much of the last decade. They had to - because even when there was a democratically elected government sitting in Kabul, the Taliban controlled 60 to 70% of the country.

Manuel Fontaine, a director for UNICEF, first came to Afghanistan after 9/11. He explained how their relationship with the Taliban has evolved over the years.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Has the Taliban said to you, "We want you here. We need you here. Help us"?

Manuel Fontaine: Yes. Absolutely. From the beginning. And we've said from the beginning that we will be uncompromising when it comes to girls' education, when it comes to making sure that women can work.

Sharyn Alfonsi: Since August 15th have they been more or less receptive to what you have to say and what other NGOs have to say?

Manuel Fontaine: They are receptive now in the sense that they realize that with power comes the responsibility to do something for the population of Afghanistan. They realize they have that responsibility and in that sense, they're willing to have those discussions. 

Because of those discussions, UNICEF is now able to access communities previously off limits.

We traveled with them and their government mandated Taliban escorts to one of those places.     

Sharyn Alfonsi: So we are in Wardak Province which is about two hours from Kabul and the reason that this road is so bumpy is because there were so many IEDs here - this was a Taliban stronghold for about a decade so groups like the U.N. would never have dreamed of coming out here.

It was the first time UNICEF had been to this rural area in 12 years.

And the first time they were able to lay eyes on one of the results of their negotiations with the Taliban, a community-based school for girls.

Sharyn Alfonsi: For how many of you girls is this your first year at school? Raise your hand. 

[All the girls raise their hands]

The youngest girl here is 6. The oldest 12. Many of them told us they hoped to be doctors. The school, and 4,500 like them, operate with the Taliban's blessing.   

Sharyn Alfonsi: How did that happen? This was a province that was controlled by the Taliban for a decade. How do you get to them and say we wanna have a school here?

Manuel Fontaine: Talking to them, explaining the difference it makes. The discussions we're having with the Taliban don't start from scratch. That confidence was built over the years in the areas they controlled that trust has started to build.

Sharyn Alfonsi: What we saw in that school was heart-warming. But we know there are a million girls in high school who are not going to school. We know that there are no women being allowed really to attend college in any way. Are you making any ground in that area?

Manuel Fontaine: We are making some ground, but not enough. That's obvious. What we hear from Taliban is that they want to do it in a way that is keeping with the culture of the country. So we need to find a way to do that. This country needs everybody's strength.

THAT IS THEIR PURPOSE:

As the pandemic progressed, and gun sales continued to climb alongside shootings, researchers have puzzled over the connection between these two intersecting trends. Was the surge in violent crime related to the uptick in guns sold last year? We may not get a definitive answer to that question for years, but fresh data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives provides some of the first evidence that a relationship exists.

ATF data shows that in 2020, police recovered almost twice as many guns with a short "time-to-crime" -- in this case, guns recovered within a year of their purchase -- than in 2019. Law enforcement officials generally view a short time-to-crime as an indicator that a firearm was purchased with criminal intent, since a gun with a narrow window between sale and recovery is less likely to have changed hands. Altogether, more than 87,000 such guns were recovered in 2020, almost double the previous high. And almost 68,000 guns were recovered in 2020 with a time-to-crime of less than seven months (meaning they were less likely to have been purchased the prior year).

YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

The price of the batteries that power electric vehicles has fallen by about 90 percent since 2010, a continuing trend that will soon make EVs less expensive than gasoline vehicles.

This week, with battery pricing figures for 2021 now available, I wanted to get a better idea of what the near future will look like.

First, the numbers: The average price of lithium-ion battery packs fell to $132 per kilowatt-hour in 2021, down 6 percent from $140 per kilowatt-hour the previous year, according to the annual battery price survey from BloombergNEF. The new average is a step closer to the benchmark of $100 per kilowatt-hour, which researchers say is the approximate point where EVs will cost about the same as gasoline-powered vehicles.

WHAT REPUBLICAN GOVERNANCE LOOKS LIKE:

New Hampshire is conducting a groundbreaking experiment in offering free at-home rapid Covid tests to all residents, and one outcome is already clear: Demand is sky-high.

Within a day of the Nov. 29 blanket offer to send eight tests via Amazon.com Inc. trucks to the door of any resident, all 800,000 had been snapped up. As the state leads the nation in per-capita cases and hospitals overflow, officials are promising another round. 

Widespread rapid testing, common in some other countries, is seen by experts as crucial to contain the pandemic bedeviling the U.S. and the Biden administration. The president's spokeswoman said this week that while the administration backs free testing for anyone who wants it and 50 million free tests are going out to community sites, sending tests to all homes might be wasteful.

Governor Chris Sununu has faced bitter opposition to vaccination campaigns and mask mandates in New Hampshire, a state of 1.4 million with a flinty libertarian streak. But the tests-for-all-takers program is a winner, he said.

"It was so successful, we're going to do it again," Sununu, a Republican, said in an interview. A federal program supplied the 800,000 tests from Quidel Corp., but, "if we have to pay for it ourselves, we have funds, and we'll do it," he said. 

NIXON'S DEAD:

On Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner made an unprecedented public statement by a serving senior U.S. official. In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he stated that the island of Taiwan is strategically "critical to the region's security and critical to the defense of vital U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific." 

Ratner defined Taiwan's strategic importance as deriving from the notions that it is: a "critical node within the first island chain," "integral to the regional and global economy," and a "beacon of democratic values" in contrast with the People's Republic of China. In other words, he defined the island as a strategic location of value to the U.S. precisely because it is militarily, economically, and politically distinct from China.

This statement is hugely reckless, because it clearly implies that, in fact, Taiwan should be regarded primarily as a strategic asset to be kept separate from Beijing. That clear implication amounts to a direct abandonment of the U.S. One China policy and the understanding reached with Beijing at the time of normalization.

DISTAFF W:

THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS IS TO THWART MUSLIM DEMOCRACY:

KEYSTONEFEGNUGEN:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under pressure from the U.S. to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project over Russian aggression toward Ukraine, may quietly delegate the task to the country's bureaucracy. 

NO ONE MISSES OFFICES:

The latest bout of Covid whiplash means that many white-collar Americans will be approaching two full years of remote work with no certainty about how long it will last. All the while, the chasm grows between executives who want to eventually get people back at their desks and their workers' reluctance to comply. And while post-pandemic work models are clear for companies such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (most people should be back in the office) and Twitter Inc. (most people can be fully remote), many other firms are still formulating a strategy.

"We coined this term 'shybrid,'" said Paul McKinlay, vice president of communications and remote working at printing company Cimpress and its unit Vista, which both opted to go with a permanent remote-first model in August 2020. "It's the failure of companies to accept that they have, in many cases, lost the right to demand in-person attendance at a piece of real estate on any kind of regular basis. It's about continually pushing back return dates without declaring on a future model and leaving people in this limbo."

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

California governor Gavin Newsom has called for a new California law that will effectively bar the manufacture and sale of assault rifles in the state, modeled on Texas's victory in the U.S. Supreme Court that keeps in place state legislation banning most abortions.

Newsom has directed his staff to work with the state legislature and Attorney General Rob Bonta to create a law that would allow private citizens to sue manufacturers, distributors and sellers of assault weapons, according to a statement Saturday.

The proposed California law would be shaped on the Texas legislation that makes abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy and allows private citizens to sue doctors or anyone who helps facilitate an abortion. 

THEY SHOULD BE PROSECUTED JUST FOR USING POWERPOINT:

The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden's certification from taking place on 6 January.

The PowerPoint, titled "Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan", made several recommendations for Trump to pursue in order to retain the presidency for a second term on the basis of lies and debunked conspiracies about widespread election fraud.

Meadows turned over a version of the PowerPoint presentation that he received in an email and spanned 38 pages, according to a source familiar with the matter.

YOU CAN GET ONE AT CVS:

People who were vaccinated with Pfizer shots six months ago or more have "almost no neutralizing ability" against the Omicron variant, while those who received boosters are in reasonably good shape, an Israeli study has found.

Prof. Gili Regev Yochay of Sheba Medical Center said that her research is "very worrisome" due to its implications for people who have had just two shots and had more than a half-year pass since their most recent vaccination -- which applies to many of the world's Pfizer vaccinees. However, it gives cause for "optimism" regarding the power of boosters to fight Omicron, albeit less effectively than they fight Delta.

My son is a bit of an anti-vaxxer himself, I guess, kicking and screaming, right up until the minute his booster has been administered, at which point he's provided with stickers for his stoicism and forbearance. He doesn't like this process and, to be honest, neither do we, but maintaining our child's immunisations is not merely good for him, it's good for those around us who can't receive them, and therefore need the greater protection an inoculated populace provides them. It's part of the social contract and one I'd be willing to oblige, even if there were no stickers. Luckily there are, which sweetens the deal marvellously.

For millions of years, people got sick and died of things that no longer bother us, illnesses to which we became inoculated the hard way. Diseases so removed from our privileged position in the modern world that my son's favourite pirate cartoons frequently make jokes about things like the black death and bubonic plague, which is a bit weird when you think about it. But comedy is, after all, tragedy plus time. It's just that, occasionally, time marches backwards, and we should be careful that we don't indulge the whims of those whose actions will ensure such tragedy stops being funny any more. Get your jabs and tell Auntie Pauline to do the same. It's not enough for us to ignore the kicking and the screaming, it should be challenged and addressed wherever we find it. If we need to offer a few stickers to sweeten the deal, then so be it.

THE SOURCE OF VIOLENCE IN PORTLAND:

JOE BITES:

WE BROKE IT; WE FIX IT:

Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said Saturday that Tehran was serious in its discussions with world powers aimed at salvaging a tattered 2015 nuclear deal, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"We are serious in the negotiations and if the other side is also serious about the removal of the US sanctions, we will achieve a good agreement. We are definitely after a good agreement," IRNA quoted Raisi as saying, according to the Reuters news agency.

DON'T BELIEVE ALL WOMEN:

The Smollett trial has been worth following for a few reasons. The first, if least important, is the pure entertainment value of the story that Smollett initially told police. For those who have forgotten, the former actor -- famously dubbed "Juicy Smollé" by the comedian Dave Chappelle -- originally said he was attacked by Trump supporters wearing ski-masks, in the integrated heart of Chicago, at 2am on the coldest day of the year.

The details were even more absurd than the big picture. Smollett claimed that after leaving his condo to buy a sandwich, he was approached by two white men who recognised him from the television show Empire...

THE DESANTIS FLU:

On Thursday, a startling announcement appeared on Facebook: "This is to inform you that the Laclede County [Missouri] Health Department has been forced to cease all COVID-19 related work at the current time. This includes: case investigations, contact tracing, quarantine orders, and public announcements of current cases, deaths, etc." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 37 percent of adults in Laclede County, Missouri, are fully vaccinated, levels of community transmission are high, and cases have increased 13 percent in just the last week. But now the health department is simply ... stepping away.

The reason for this was straightforward enough. And profoundly disgusting.

Laclede County, and counties across Missouri, have been forced to drop all assistance to their communities, even as cases in Missouri are once again rising, because of a threat issued by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. As the Kansas City Star reports, Schmitt wrote to both county officials and school districts across the state on Tuesday, threatening them with legal action if they do not "drop mask mandates, quarantine rules or other public health orders."

Schmitt has followed up with this official request to parents, posted to his site as the Missouri attorney general, in which he invites parents to report their children's schools if they do anything--anything--to help protect students against COVID-19.

COME BACK, ADMIRAL POINDEXTER, ALL IS FORGIVEN:

In recent years, OSINT has come to encompass an array of unclassified material available online or for purchase. That includes social media and posts on web forums as well as commercially available data collected by technology giants, advertising entities and consumer-facing companies. It also includes a huge category of data that modern electronic devices emit and that are often collected without much consumer awareness, such as precise geolocation, IP addresses, wireless identifiers associated with cars and modern Bluetooth devices.

The government has also invested heavily in developing specialized analytical capabilities to extract information from open sources--for example, tools that can estimate location information from social-media photos using tiny clues such as the position of the sun, stars or visible landmarks like mountains.

Depending on the intelligence priority, these data sets can now be equally or more valuable to government agencies than more traditional, intrusive types of government surveillance like wiretaps, some former U.S. intelligence officials have said. Unlike such sources, open-source retrieval doesn't require approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Open-source intelligence has played a significant role in military operations in recent years, especially in the global campaigns against al Qaeda and Islamic State, according to people familiar with the matter and documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Some of the lethal airstrike targeting in the campaign against Islamic State was done in part through social media--including by identifying and killing terrorist targets who made critical operational security errors like leaving GPS coordinates attached to public social-media posts, the people say.

Foreign governments have come to rely on open-source intelligence, too. The pervasiveness of what some in the field call "digital dust" in modern society has complicated efforts of U.S. spies to remain undercover in overseas postings, according to current and former officials.

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

Even six months ago, Shell's decision to scrap its investment in the Cambo oil field - and today's announcement by Siccar Point Energy that the project is being "paused" - was unthinkable. New oil and gas extraction in the UK North Sea has routinely proceeded with barely any public scrutiny. Almost 20 new oil and gas fields have been approved for production since 2018, with a further 113 licences for exploration issued last year, all while the UK government proudly claimed the mantle of climate leadership.

Those days are now permanently over. The huge groundswell of public and political opposition to the development of Cambo - and the 170 million barrels of oil it would produce in the next quarter-century - means that investor sentiment in the North Sea basin has turned from "excitement to despair", according to one industry figure. Another described Shell's decision on Cambo last week as a "death knell" for new large-scale, offshore projects in the UK.

IT'S A MYSTERY:

A local Michigan Republican official who refused to certify Joe Biden's presidential victory in his county and who vehemently opposed vaccines has died of COVID-19. William Hartmann, 63, succumbed to the coronavirus on Nov. 30 in a hospital in Wyandotte, Michigan. Hartmann, who spread lies and conspiracy theories about the election via his Facebook page, and a fellow Republican on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, Monica Palmer, initially declined to certify the tallies of 2020 presidential election votes in their county after the results had come in. 

...AND CHEAPER...:

The approach helps solve a second problem: As more renewable energy is added to the grid, producing power at only certain times of the day, more storage is needed. In California, for example, there's now so much solar power, especially on sunny, mild spring days, that some of it is wasted. The network of EV chargers can double as storage, which can offer backup power when the supply of renewable energy drops at night or when the wind isn't blowing--or in a storm or wildfire when the grid goes out. The system is also likely to be cheaper than charging at home, as the demand for electricity grows and utilities charge more for plugging in at peak times.

The startup, which will install its first charger in Los Angeles later this year, plans to work with gas stations. Installing a typical fast charger means expensive electrical upgrades, but the new chargers can plug into any existing electrical connection. "That process of digging up the ground, and getting the permitting for that, can take a year because of all the engineering work that is required on the utility side to actually prepare the site for that level of charging," says Wong. "We're able to significantly accelerate and expedite that process down to just a couple of months because of our process, which doesn't entail that intensive trenching."

It's a way to help gas station owners adapt to the quickly changing world of transportation. "When we think about the equity aspect of things, first is the gas station owners, which are 70% individually owned in the U.S.," says ElectricFish cofounder Folasade Ayoola. "So these are really small businesses that are being disrupted. And there's a ton of real estate now, and assets that are at risk." The chargers can also be used in other settings, from convenience stores to garages with fleets of electric school buses.

At gas stations, the chargers can sit in parking spaces on the side. Each charger can be used for up to 10 minutes; the charger can add up to 100 miles of range to some top-end cars, like the Lucid Air, in 5 minutes. "We cap it at 10 minutes so that it's very similar to behavior at a convenience store--people only spend 7 to 10 minutes there," says Kamal. "And if you come, and the charger is being utilized, you know that at the end of 10 minutes, it will be available for you. So that's very central in trying to make people believe that EV charging is just like gasoline."

DONALD WHO?:

The Biden administration has moved to reverse the depredations endured by one of the more unusual targets of Donald Trump's culture wars during his time as US president: the humble lightbulb.

The Department of Energy has put forward a new standard for the energy efficiency of lightbulbs that would essentially banish the era of older, incandescent technology in favor of LED lighting.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The US government has won its appeal against a court decision that halted the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The case will now go back to the Westminster Magistrates Court , where the matter will be heard again.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced as "shameful" a London court's decision that will allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. 

THE rIGHT IS THE rIGHT:

The best thing that could be said about Tucker Carlson's love letter to Vladimir Putin on his show Tuesday is that it didn't sound any better in the original Russian. It sounded much more like a work of translation than anything original, because we've been hearing it all from Russian state TV for years. 

Many of those classic lies and themes were presented. Carlson claimed Russia's border vulnerability was genuine, that NATO exists solely "to torment Vladimir Putin" who "has no intention of invading Western Europe," that it is the U.S. hyping the threat of war, and more. He indulged in pathetic worship of Putin's manufactured machismo at the same time he presented Biden as weak and not in charge. As I tweeted in reply to Mike Pence in 2016, Putin is a strong leader the way arsenic is a strong drink.

Even after the Trump years, when sometimes you weren't sure if you were watching Fox News or Russia Today, it's still a shock to hear American commentators of influence recite talking points straight out of the Kremlin's playbook. Carlson did his best to twist them into MAGA-friendly soundbites, but it's an impossible task. If there's anything Putin wants for America, it's for it never to be great again.

DONALD WHO?:

On Wednesday night, the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act passed in the House of Representatives by an overwhelming 428-1. This follows a unanimously passed Senate vote from July, which is set for President Joe Biden's approval by the end of this year. This will likely have major implications for China's exports of cotton and solar panels.  

Wednesday also saw the passage of a resolution "condemning the ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity being committed against the Uyghurs...".

These two moves were followed Thursday with the release of the findings of an independent international tribunal concluding that China is committing genocide against the Uyghur people. The tribual found "intent to destroy," a key criterion of the Genocide Convention under Article II.

THE BUBBLE INSIDE THE BUBBLE:

Hatewatch identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists for this essay and then probed their transaction histories through blockchain analysis software. What we found is striking: White supremacists such as Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents, race pseudoscience pundit Stefan Molyneux, Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer and Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer, and Don Black of the racist forum Stormfront, all bought into Bitcoin early in its history and turned a substantial profit from it. The estimated tens of millions of dollars' worth of value extreme far-right figures generated represents a sum that would almost certainly be unavailable to them without cryptocurrency, and it gave them a chance to live comfortable lives while promoting hate and authoritarianism.

Less than a quarter of Americans presently own some form of cryptocurrency as of May 2021. But those numbers increase substantially within fringe right-wing spaces, according to Hatewatch's findings, approaching something much closer to universal adoption. Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far right who hasn't yet embraced cryptocurrency to at least some degree. The average age of a cryptocurrency investor is 38, but even senior citizens in the white supremacist movement, such as Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, 69, and Peter Brimelow of VDARE, 73, have moved tens of thousands of dollars of the asset in recent years.

Cryptocurrency, or a group of digital moneys maintained through decentralized systems, has grown into a billion-dollar industry. A growing swath of Americans embrace the technology. Nothing is inherently criminal or extreme about it, and most of its users have no connections to the extreme far right. (One of the authors of this essay owns cryptocurrency, as disclosed in an author's note at the end.) However, the far right's early embrace of cryptocurrency merits deeper analysis, due to the way they used it to expand their movement and to obscure funding sources. It is not uncommon for far-right extremists to seek to hide their dealings from the public. The relative secrecy blockchain technology offers has become a profitable, but still extraordinarily risky, gamble against traditional banking.

"There are a lot of Bitcoin whales from pretty early [on in its history]," futurist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier told the Lex Fridman podcast in September. (People use "whales" to describe those who hold large sums of cryptocurrency.) "And they're huge, and if you ask, 'Who are these people?' there's evidence that a lot of them are not the people you would want to support."

Johnson of Counter-Currents, an influential figure in the white nationalist movement due to his outspoken support for the creation of an "ethnostate" serving only white, non-Jewish people, first picked up Bitcoin on Jan. 19, 2012, Hatewatch found, making him the first known figure in the movement to invest. Hatewatch could not determine how Johnson generated just shy of 30 Bitcoin on that Thursday in January 2012 - whether he mined it or purchased it, or someone merely sent it to him - but the date falls just a year-and-a-half after the first known commercial cryptocurrency transaction took place.

Johnson obtained the 29.82 Bitcoin on a date when prices for the asset sat between five and 10 dollars. Hatewatch found that Johnson flipped the Bitcoin from that first transaction and additional ones into over $800,000 worth of value. He has turned his website Counter-Currents into a hub for cryptocurrency discussion in the movement and solicits donations in digital tokens, or cryptocurrency "coins," such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Bitcoin Cash, Tether, Cardano, Ripple, Dash, Neo, Stellar Lumens and Basic Attention Token. Hatewatch reached out to him for a comment on this essay, but he did not respond.

"If any of you haters out there have any Bitcoin and you just want to get rid of it, send it to Counter-Currents, we have a Bitcoin address," Johnson said on a Jan. 5 edition of his livestream, referring to those who perceive cryptocurrency as lacking in real world value. "I'll hold it, I'll stack it, I'll keep it ... I have a huge tolerance for unreality."

Johnson often platforms on his site an antisemitic white nationalist personality who goes by the pseudonym Karl Thorburn. As Thorburn, the author advises people in the movement to purchase and hold Bitcoin as an investment. He wrote through his Telegram account that he advertises for Bitcoin so white nationalists can have money they "can travel with, that bad people can't seize/inflate, and that will allow [them] to live in a safer, White neighborhood and start a family."

A MORALLY HEALTHY ADMISSION:

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has proposed improving living conditions in the besieged Gaza Strip in return for calm.

This came during a trip to neighbouring Egypt yesterday where Lapid met with President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to discuss a host of issues, Israel Kan TV channel reported.

Israeli author David Grossman suggested Israel's occupation of parts of the West Bank had turned into an "apartheid" government in an interview on Thursday.

"Maybe it should no longer be called an 'occupation,' but there are much harsher names, like 'apartheid,' for example," he told Army Radio.

Grossman, one of Israel's most prominent authors, said the government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was "good and important."

"But it cannot do the most important thing -- cure Israel of the sick evil that is the occupation," he said.

DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU:

AEMO's Alex Wonhas and Nicola Falcon discuss the draft ISP, the early departure of coal, and managing a renewables grid.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

A new study could shed light: Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, it suggests political polarization increases as people retreat into their party identities. But more worryingly, it also suggests there exists a political "tipping point, beyond which extreme polarization becomes irreversible." If warring factions reach that point--even if the whole country were attacked by some foreign power--teamwork would be a lost cause. "Instead of uniting against a common threat," said Michael Macy, a Cornell professor and the study's lead author, "the threat itself becomes yet another polarizing issue."

The researchers conducted their experiment on a predictive model similar to the U.S. Senate, a partisan group. The model was trained to behave like a legislature with 100 members of varying stances on 10 divisive topics like gun control and abortion; over time, their stances shifted based on the push and pull of allies and opponents. In previous research, the model accurately predicted polarization trends in 28 of the past 30 actual U.S. Congresses.

When Macy's team used it to test the boundaries of ideological extremism, they came to a disturbing conclusion. "We found that polarization increases incrementally only up to a point," said Macy. "Above this point, there is a sudden change in the very fabric of the institution, like the change from water to steam when the temperature exceeds the boiling point." The dynamics of the group, the team reported, were similar to what physicists call "hysteresis loops," which trace the magnetization of an object when a magnetic field is applied. In Macy's experiment, the forces were instead "party identity" and "political intolerance"--and when they reached a certain strength, the polarization became irreversible.

...AND CHEAPER...:

"This study is the first to examine grid stability in all US grid regions and many individual states after electrifying all energy and providing the electricity with only energy that is both clean and renewable," said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford and study lead author.

"This means no fossil fuels, carbon capture, direct air capture, bioenergy, blue hydrogen or nuclear power"

Analysing grid stability across all 50 US states and districts for 2050-51 following a sector-wide transition to 100% renewable electricity and heat - including the electricity, transportation, buildings, and industry sectors - and the deployment of battery storage and demand response, the study finds no blackouts occur, including during summer in California or winter in Texas, and no batteries with more than four hours of storage are needed.

The report specifically demonstrates "concatenating" 4-hour batteries to provide long-duration storage - basically connecting 4-hour batteries end-to-end to provide storage duration longer than their isolated individual limits.

In reality, the study found that long-duration batteries were neither needed nor even helpful for keeping the grid stable. What was more beneficial, however, was linking together short-duration batteries so they could provide long-term storage when used in succession.

Such a battery setup can also be discharged simultaneously to meet heavy peaks in demand for short periods. In other words, concatenating short-duration storage is best suited to be used for both big peaks in demand and for short periods and lower peaks for a long period, or any variety in between.

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

WE CAN'T OPEN THE BORDERS WIDE ENOUGH:

Worker filings for unemployment benefits hit the lowest level in more than half a century last week as a tight labor market keeps layoffs low.

Initial jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell to 184,000 in the week ended Dec. 4, the lowest level since September 1969, the Labor Department said Thursday. [...]

There were 11 million job openings in October, up from 10.6 million in September, according to the Labor Department. By contrast there were 7.4 million unemployed workers that month, a sign of the tight labor market.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S TALIBAN:

The Afghan interim government has arrested over 670 militants of Daesh, also known as the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP or ISIS-K), during the last three months, the Taliban spokesman said, adding that there is no place for these terrorists in Afghanistan.

During an exclusive interview with Anadolu News Agency, the interim government spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that 25 hideouts of the terrorist group have also been destroyed in Kabul and Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.

"Daesh is no longer a big threat in Afghanistan. It was a small group that has now been dismantled in Kabul and Jalalabad," Mujahid claimed.

INTEGRATE IT WITH NAFTA AND TPP:

The bloc has a potential market of 1.3 billion people with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, and could be the world's biggest free-trade zone by area when the treaty becomes fully operational by 2030.

"If the opportunity can be adequately tapped and the potential through the AfCFTA realized, you can build greater resilience to the impact of economic shocks and foster deeper cooperation on regional trade," according to Davis. 

The free-trade pact could bolster intra-African trade exports to 43% of its total from 14.4%, and a further $9.2 billion of export potential could be realized through partial tariff liberalization under the AfCFTA over the next five years, the study found.

THE DRAGON HAS NO TEETH:

It's a frustrating position for the authorities. For the past half-decade, they've prioritized national self-sufficiency in everything from semiconductors to soybeans. But there's no realistic way for China to "decouple" its athletes from global leagues and competitions. Local alternatives won't be enough.

That appears to be dawning on Chinese companies, if not the government. Last week, after the Women's Tennis Association expressed concern for Peng Shuai -- the Chinese tennis star who had accused a former government official of sexual assault -- the streaming platform iQiyi Inc. asked that its logo be removed from the group's website. It did not, however, seek to sever its lucrative digital-rights agreement. Quite likely, iQiyi is hoping that the controversy will pass and it can resume building tennis into one of the country's most popular sports.

China is likely to take a similarly symbolic approach to the diplomatic boycott. For now, it can't afford to alienate American broadcasters and global sponsors. It certainly can't risk cutting off its athletes from world-class training and competition. For China, the games must go on.

HUMAN RIGHTS AND DECARBONIZATION?:

Newly instated German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stressed the importance of tackling the climate crisis on her diplomatic agenda before kicking off her first official trip to Paris on Thursday. [...]

She met with her French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and said in a press conference afterward that they had discussed the two countries' shared goals as well as climate policy, the crisis at the Poland-Belarus border and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. 

She also called for a common response to the case of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai and the possibility of diplomatic boycotts of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.

WHAT A MYSTERY:

Israeli research carried out before the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus found that people over the age of 50 who received a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had 90 percent lower mortality than those who did not get the booster.

THE KEY TO HEALTH REFORM IS LOWERING CONSUMPTION:

[R]ecent research suggests that something as simple as massaging the injury site can speed up healing. A study recently published in Science Translational Medicine found that massage therapy can directly improve the regeneration of severely injured muscles. Not only that, but the benefits from "mechanotherapy"--the scientific term for massage--may be comparable to the more invasive pharmaceutical and surgical interventions.

SIMPLE ECONOMICS:

"A small number of billion dollars over the next few years to buy down the costs of hardware and ride the cost curves as they come down, figuring out how to manage all the voltages and phase on the grid with sufficient batteries and sufficient smarts, then the entire country starts to save billions of dollars," Griffith said.

"By the end of this decade, we'd be seeing $40 to $60 billion a year net savings in the Australian economy by a wholesale commitment to residential electrification alone."

Griffin said that focusing on how households and businesses use energy, and switching that energy use onto sources that can be easily supplied by renewables, has the potential to drive significant reductions in emissions.

BUT THE PETROPHILES LOVE THEM SOME BASELOAD!:

South Australia's record breaking streak for wind and solar generation over the past few months has shone the light over how a modern grid can run with little or no thermal or synchronous generation.

More importantly, it has also confirmed how the term "baseload" has become a redundant concept in a modern grid that is dominated by wind and solar and supported by storage and other so-called "dispatchable" generation.

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

By the end of the piece, Klepper concluded that, "no matter what part of the anti-vax world they come from, there's one comparison they just can't resist making." He then cut to an interview with a German woman in a Bob Marley T-shirt who said "history is repeating itself" with vaccine mandates.

"'Where are your papers? Where are your papers?' It's very similar to the Hitler times," she said.

"So, like, Jewish people are fleeing Poland because they can't get into gyms?" Klepper asked her.

"That's not funny," the woman shot back. She was wrong.

WHERE'S JIMMY CARTER WHEN WE NEED HIM?:

Authorities charged more than two dozen pro-democracy politicians and activists over a vigil last year, which commemorated the victims of Beijing's deadly crackdown in 1989. 

The trio were the only ones to contest their charges in court, meaning they were the last to receive their verdict. 

Hong Kong's District Court convicted them of charges including inciting and taking part in an unauthorised assembly.

In practical terms, the convictions make minimal difference. 

Lai, Chow and Ho are among dozens of activists already behind bars facing separate prosecutions under a strict national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in the wake of huge and often violent democracy protests two years ago.

But their prosecution is the latest illustration of how much the gap has narrowed between Hong Kong and the mainland, where authorities have long sought to scrub memories and official records of Tiananmen.

U.S. President Donald Trump has described protests in Hong Kong as "riots" that China will have to deal with itself, signaling a hands-off approach to the biggest political crisis gripping the former British colony in decades.

INSTITUTIONAL:

The caption read "hanging with the homies."

The picture above it showed several Black men who had been lynched.

Another photo asked what someone should do if their girlfriend was having an affair with a Black man. The answer, according to the caption, was to break "a tail light on his car so the police will stop him and shoot him."

Someone else sent a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree ornament, a star for the top of the tree and an "enslaved person."

"Which one doesn't belong?" the caption asked.

"You don't hang the star," someone wrote back.

The comments represent a sliver of a trove of racist text messages exchanged by more than a dozen current and former Torrance police officers and recruits. [...]

According to the district attorney's records reviewed by The Times, Schroeder sent one message in the texts reading "No Jews, No Blacks," and made racist remarks about a child eating a watermelon.

THE ESSENCE OF THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS:

#LIFEISGOOD:

A city in the US State of Maine has elected its first Black, Muslim and Somali mayor. On Monday, making her the first Somali-American to hold such a role in the country.

Dhalac, who immigrated to the US from Somalia was also believed to be the first Muslim elected to the South Portland City Council back in 2018 when she was the only non-white candidate. She also ran again unopposed last year in what has been described as the whitest state in the US. According to the US Census, the city is 90 per cent white.

MIGHT BE A LITTLE BIT STOP-START:

This "traffic light" coalition -- named for the respective party colors of red (SPD), yellow (FDP), and green (well, Greens) -- isn't exactly a natural ideological fit. The SPD and the Greens exist on the left side of the political spectrum, so they're more in sync. But the Free Democrats are very pro-free market, and supports lower tax, which doesn't always mix well with an ambitious social agenda.

Given these gaps, it seemed Merkel would be caretaker chancellor for many months more. Tense, long-drawn out negotiations, potentially lasting into 2022, were predicted. Instead, the negotiations happened with little public squabbling and few leaks. The three parties finalized a coalition deal in just about two months, outlined in a fairly detailed 177-page document. The consensus meant Merkel would come a few weeks shy of the record for longest-serving chancellor.

The coalition found ways to fit together everyone's big priorities. Each got some, if not all, of what they wanted, which allowed them to sell this agreement to their respective bases.

The SPD, of course, gets the chancellery, along with important ministries like interior (think homeland security), which will allow them to beef up their security credentials, and housing and labor, core to their constituencies and reflective of the party's platform on wages and housing.

The Greens scored the foreign ministry, to be led by party co-leader Annalena Baerbock, who has embraced a more human rights-centric foreign policy, especially when it comes to Russia and China, which is reflected to a degree in the document outlining the coalition's vision. The Greens co-leader Robert Habeck will also lead a new economy and climate ministry, which will give the Greens the chance to work with Germany's all-important industrial sector as it transitions to more climate-friendly policies.

The Free Democrats, for their part, won the very coveted finance ministry, to be headed by party leader Christian Lindner. This will give them power of the purse strings, potentially keeping any too-ambitious spending plans in check. The coalition agreement right now uses some interesting accounting, but has broadly agreed not to increase taxes to pay for programs on its agenda.

WHAT ABOUT WHEN IT'S CLOUDY?:

THE BEAUTY OF THE MELTING POT IS THAT IT CREATES CONFORMITY:

For many years, St Nicholas and 'Father Christmas' continued to exist as separate traditions. Though in some regions, such as Alsace and parts of the Netherlands, where Catholics and Protestants lived in close proximity, each figure had a certain role to play in festive celebrations and confessional divides generally ensured that they remained distinct. 

By the late 18th century, however, demographic changes on the other side of the world caused the two to coalesce. Following the War of Independence, the United States experienced a dramatic rise in immigration. Most of the new arrivals came from Britain, Germany and the Netherlands - and the majority were either Protestants or nonconformists. It is estimated that by 1780 more than a quarter of New York's population traced their origins to the Low Countries, while New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania had large German-speaking minorities. After 1790 the influx slowed a little, due largely to the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars, but by the 1830s immigration had begun to rise again. Over the next two decades large numbers of Irish Catholics came. 

At first, different migrant groups all seem to have celebrated Christmas in their own way. Whereas some of the more austere nonconformists tended to shun overly 'pagan' celebrations, others - particularly the Dutch in New York - indulged in tremendous revelry, with lots of drunken fun and sexual delinquency. More importantly, where the tradition of gift-giving was preserved, there was no single figure who brought children their presents - and there was a marked lack of clarity over when he came. 

But in the melting pot of the early United States, Christmas traditions inevitably got mixed together. Practices and personalities gradually fused and long-separated ideas were recombined. Though much of this may have been unconscious, it may have been encouraged by efforts to contain some communities' excesses. First, the Dutch 'Sinterklass' was 'translated' into English to give 'Santa Claus'. This appeared for the first time in a report in the New York Gazette on 26 December 1773. Then, a few decades later, Santa Claus was identified with the English 'spirit of Christmas' and shorn of his association with the Dutch community's fondness for raucous celebrations. At times, it is true, he still went by one of his old names or by mangled versions of a European analogue (e.g. Kris Kringle for Christkindl) but, in his attributes and manner, he was now recognisable as something close to the Santa we know today. 

INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

When inconvenient news erupts on the Chinese internet, the censors jump into action.

Twenty minutes was all it took to mobilize after Peng Shuai, the tennis star and one of China's most famous athletes, went online and accused Zhang Gaoli, a former vice premier, of sexual assault.

The allegation reached the heights of Beijing's opaque political system, and officials turned to a tested playbook to stamp out discussion and shift the narrative. The tactics have helped Beijing weather a series of political crises at home in recent years, including the 2019 protests in Hong Kong and its initial response to COVID-19.

This time, according to analyses by The New York Times and ProPublica, China began a multifaceted propaganda campaign that was at once sophisticated and clumsy. Inside the country, officials used internet controls to scrub almost all references to the accusation and restrict digital spaces where people might discuss it. At the same time, they activated a widely followed network of state-media commentators, backed by a chorus of fake Twitter accounts, to try to punch back at critics abroad, the analyses show.

The effort didn't always succeed. This is how China reacted -- and how it stumbled along the way.

JUST "CONCERNED PARENTS":

The newfound need to murder their enemies sooner rather than later is an attempt to create unity. Joe Oltmann, a mid-level QAnon influencer, called on Q acolytes via Telegram on November 28th to cease fighting amongst themselves, saying "We have to stop the chaos and stand on one of either side. The side of 'we need more' and the side of 'build the gallows'. I'm not going to take a side on the American movement. I'm going to stand in the gap on the side of 'build the gallows'. I want the fights to stop, but I also understand I am my own man as they are. They will figure it out or they won't."

He does not mean this metaphorically: "Build the gallows" is the end point of QAnon. The next day he wrote, "Good morning ... grab your coffee ... we don't negotiate with terrorists. The radical left are terrorists. ... Organize, walk door to door. Much like in 1776, we need to show them we are a nation with a voice and the courage to protect it." Most charitably, he is advocating militia building and intimidation, but again, the reference to "build the gallows" is QAnon doctrine. Suspended New Mexico State University assistant professor of finance David Clements, who posts on Telegram as The Professor's Record, took up this same point on December 2, writing, "Joe knows we have everything necessary to arrest, prosecute, and dispense justice to traitors now." One of his fans followed that up with wondering why they don't just start making citizen arrests now? Another Telegram user suggested, "Build the gallows and then put them to use executing 500 per hour accoss [sic] the nation would get rid of a lot of our problems in less than a year!!" Those unable to attend personally need not worry, as suggestions were made that they broadcast executions during a primetime pay-per-view.

Joe reinforced this on December 5th, writing, "You don't like that I want to hang traitors to our nation? Sorry, not sorry. Men, women and children have died, suffered unimaginable pain and anguish at the hands of those who stole our voice and installed an illegitimate government." Not only did his 55,000 Telegram subscribers see it, but Lin Wood transmitted it to his 750,000 Telegram subscribers. That's a substantial audience for a call for murder.

This rhetorical violence is not new. But it is always worth highlighting, especially as these discussions have migrated away from more visible platforms like Twitter. These are not niche Telegram channels; these are mid-level to upper-level QAnon influencers, with audiences in the high five figures and low six figures. And the rhetoric has shifted temporal focus, from "trusting the plan" to "auditing the election" to "form a militia" to "shoot healthcare workers" and "build gallows now." We are used to QAnon being a lot of talk, and therefore less dangerous than the Patriot militia movement or any of the more aggressive white supremacist movements. Atomwaffen or Oathkeepers, whose ideology starts from violent overthrow, remain more likely to engage in actual violence.

But this sort of accelerationist rhetoric is finding an audience. QAnon incited Matthew Taylor Coleman to murder his children. The FBI warned the government this summer that QAnoners might engage in violence when predictions fail to materialize. And however much we as a nation are choosing to ignore the coup attempt on January 6th, the active attempt to overthrow the government and murder members of Congress and the Vice President, QAnon ties are a common factor among participants.

The gallows they set up outside the Capitol may have been poorly constructed, but it was heartfelt--and QAnon's bloodlust, far from diminishing, just gets stronger.

THE ACTUAL NUCLEAR THREAT:

With little confidence in deterrence, might Israel find greater advantage in using the threat of nuclear attack as a means of coercion? During the Cuban missile crisis, the US raised its strategic arsenal alert level in order to browbeat the Soviets. During the 1969 Ussuri River crisis, the Soviets conducted nuclear military exercises to intimidate China. And nuclear sabers have long been rattled in Indo-Pakistani crises and wars to focus minds on both sides.

Israel, however, has always kept its nuclear card in the shadows. In so doing, it has honored the 1969 Nixon-Meir pledge, agreeing to remain silent about its own nuclear breakout to avoid encouraging regional proliferation. Even in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, as invading Syrian forces threatened to split the country, Israel did not resort to nuclear deployment either as a deterrent or as a hammer.

Iran's nuclear program, however, represents something Israel has never faced: a tangible nuclear threat. Israeli leaders therefore must consider whether it is time to buck US objections and reverse the longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity. That would mean moving toward a coercive diplomatic strategy in which the tactical nuclear threat is used to ensure that Israel's voice is heard when it says, "Don't mess with us."

At the lowest rung of the threat ladder, the Israel government could sow angst in Tehran by leaking information about its arsenal's size or delivery systems. Climbing the ladder, reporters' inquiries might be met with statements confirming that the government will not exclude a preemptive strike as "appropriate" to stop Iran's nuclear breakout. More leaks could then generate more news stories about nuclear exercises and preparation.

Were Israel's nuclear resolve to be questioned in this scenario, it could follow the model China applied in the Ussuri River crisis when it conducted a nuclear test to signal to Moscow that it would not be intimidated. There are also echoes of this tactic in Israel's own planning during the 1967 Six-Day War, when it conjured an exploding device in a remote corner of the Sinai to signal that it would stop at nothing were Egyptian forces to breach its defenses. Applied today, the aim would be to tell Iran, "We mean business. Stop the nuclear rollout."

Such a ladder of escalation would undoubtedly generate a host of issues at every rung. Just how far should Israel climb? Will aggressive posturing provoke the Islamic Republic into some spiteful military act that could unleash all-out war? Will the US, fearing a regional conflict, demand that Israel stand down or lose US diplomatic support and military assistance? Alternatively, if Israel chooses the nuclear ladder but then acts too timidly, would the Iranians call its bluff?

These are all valid questions. But a less ambiguous Israeli nuclear posture plausibly offers more opportunities on the diplomatic front. It could shake the complacency out of talks, giving the US a new card to play against the Iranians. "Better strike a deal now," American interlocutors could say, "We don't know what Israel will do if we don't make progress. We can't control Bennett and the hawks." But, of course, Iran may well respond by digging in: "No negotiation until Israel disarms." The unknowns about nuclear posturing are and always will be manifold.

WHERE'S JIMMY CARTER WHEN YOU NEED HIM:

The result so far has been a massive tantrum. Unspecified countermeasures against the US are already being referred to as "retaliation". Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson  Zhao Lijian went to considerable lengths to revile the US for its boycott, citing American "wrongdoing" and "lies".

...AND CHEAPER...:

"We are excited to demonstrate the technical and commercial potential of our CETO technology and thrilled to be part of the EuropeWave PCP program which will show future investors the wealth of exciting opportunities emerging within the wave energy industry.

"Wave energy is beginning to gain traction and will complement existing renewables such as wind and solar. Harnessing the power of our vast oceans is a vital step in our transition to the use of sustainable clean energy, and to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible."

CETO Wave Energy Ireland's selection for the program marks another win for Carnegie in overseas markets, after a choppy few years in its own home market of Australia.

The company, which started its life as Carnegie Wave Power, went into voluntary administration in early 2019 after a series of blowouts and losses in former subsidiary microgrid business Energy Made Clean and the last-minute termination of a $16 million project contract planned for WA waters.

Carnegie was reinstated to the ASX in October of the same year, with the company's chairman at the time, Terry Stinson, saying the business had experienced "a very significant cultural reset" that would re-focus funds and efforts on its proprietary CETO technology.

"We continue to believe that our CETO technology, as part of the emerging wave energy industry, can be a major contributor to the reduction in harmful emissions and contribute to a cleaner world for generations to come," Stinson said.

LOCKDOWNS WORK:

THE OTHER WONDERFUL LIFE:

David Niven, the famous British actor, is the bishop who prays for guidance and receives an angel. He shouldn't be speaking with an English accent in New York, frankly, but in the '40s this was tolerated, and we should also extend the same tolerance. Niven's mannerisms emphasize embarrassment and stiffness, which make his role work so well that you will have no doubt as to the great difference between faith and reputation even in the life of spiritual authorities. He has reached a crisis brought on by his success: A young bishop, deeply devoted to the faith, he has taken on the project of building a cathedral to the greater glory of God, but this involves him in the pride of rich people and the endless organization of details that seem to have no connection to faith and with which he cannot cope. Instead of everyone coming together in faith, it seems like the project is bringing out the worst in people, or at least making them heedless, as though everyone wanted something from God but no one gives a thought to making any sacrifices. This is quite a burden, yet he's close enough to success that he cannot detach and see the problem clearly, so he prays for guidance.

Niven is shocked by the miraculous answer to his prayer and dares not disbelieve in the appearance of tthe angel nor avail himself of his faith, which makes for psychological conflict--and gently reveals our own predicament. This is the drama of a good man tempted to ignore the innocent in order to win over the respectable and win his place among them, a problem far harder to deal with in our own time. Moreover, Niven manages to go through the drama almost entirely without harshness, keeping this a family movie. The angel embodies the exhortation to be as prudent as snakes but harmless as doves, so the bishop finds it impossible to trust him: If he is innocent, he's no help in a wicked world; but if he's worldly wise, how can he be good? The angel brings into sharp relief the self-doubt and even self-contempt of the man of faith.

The beautiful Loretta Young is the titular wife--they're Episcopalian so they've got something of Catholic authority and hierarchy, but also the emphasis on family and community of independent Protestants. She has to play the public part of a bishop's wife, all formality and grace, but she cannot help missing their older, smaller parish, before they were important, because they lived a more genuinely loving life as a family and part of a community. Now they've got a mansion, a St. Bernard, and a lovely little girl, but it's making the bishop hard and breaking the wife's heart. She also reveals the bishop's moral drama, because she's always loved him but is unable to help him anymore. He estranges himself from life, because not even marriage seems worth the effort if he cannot prove his faith by bringing his community together.

Christmas is always in danger in Christmas movies--we'd have no reason to make such movies otherwise. But what specifically is in danger about Christmas here? In this case, we have a remarkable concentration of problems in one household: A man's faith, his family, community, and church government are all tied together. All this is made both better and worse by the presence of an angel. This is as it should be because it preserves human freedom. Choices must still be made.

So we have a fairy tale about miracles! You don't see that in theaters anymore. The dramatic construction is itself interesting. The angel does not allow the bishop to divulge his presence, as he's undercover. Why should miracles be invisible? Well, this is merely poetry, trying to show why we're unprepared for miracles. The angel says the bishop is known to be a good man. Nevertheless, the angel is ready to be met with disbelief, and is not disappointed. We want our lives to be ours; miracles take them away from us. We know miracles require that we change, but we don't quite know how, and fear the consequences, so often our pride gets in the way.

So we need fairy tales to remind us that change is still possible, and The Bishop's Wife is just such a funny, lovely Christmas fairy tale.

NO PEE TAPE, NO LOVE-IN:

BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER TOGETHER?:

[S]ussman's lawyers argued in the new filing that the charge is even less reliable than it initially appeared because other evidence in the Justice Department's possession undermines the case that Sussman lied.

'The indictment centered on a September 2016 meeting between Mr. Sussmann and James A. Baker, who was then the FBI's general counsel," as Savage explained. "Mr. Sussmann relayed analysis by cybersecurity researchers who cited odd internet data they said appeared to reflect some kind of covert communications between computer servers associated with the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin-linked Russian financial institution."

Savage explained that according to Baker's own interview, it appears that Sussman never claimed he wasn't representing a client while speaking to the FBI:

In July 2019, Mr. Baker was interviewed by the Justice Department's inspector general about the meeting. Mr. Baker stated, according to a two-page transcript excerpt, that Mr. Sussmann had brought him information "that he said related to strange interactions that some number of people that were his clients, who were, he described as I recall it, sort of cybersecurity experts, had found."

The newly disclosed evidence also includes a page of a report Mr. Durham's team made to summarize an interview they conducted with Mr. Baker in June 2020. According to that report, Mr. Baker did not say that Mr. Sussmann told him he was not there on behalf of any client. Rather, he said the issue never came up and he merely assumed Mr. Sussmann was not conveying the Alfa Bank data and analysis for any client.

THE IDENTITARIAN LAMENT:

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that the people behind bars for their alleged role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots are being abused and mistreated in jail "because of the color of their skin," implying that the mostly white defendants are being treated worse than other prisoners because of racism.

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

The Israeli government is failing to approve the citizenship applications of almost 80 converts to Judaism, nine months after the country's Supreme Court announced its recognition of conversions for the purpose of citizenship.

...AND CHEAPER...:

From Plymouth State University:

Environmental sustainability, financial flexibility, and enhanced student services will be coming together in the form of two leased Nissan Leaf "vehicle to grid" (V2G) capable electric cars. Plymouth State plans to have the first V2G charging stations in the region installed on campus, representing its latest move toward building a sustainable environment. PSU has found a valuable partner in the New Hampshire Electric Co-op (NHEC), which is starting a new program to help maximize value for V2G-capable electric cars.

Unlike standard electric vehicles that have a one-way relationship with power sources, V2Gs have the ability to both draw and return electric current to a cooperating utility. Plymouth State currently has two level 2 (240 volt) chargers located by the Physical Plant Office, which are available to provide power to the Leafs right away. Plans call for installation of one or more level 3 (480 volt) "fast chargers" next spring. Those units will permit bi-directional charging and discharging.

As an example, if between 4 and 8 p.m. is identified as the peak demand period, the cost of electricity during those hours will be higher than during the off-peak time of say, 2 a.m. If PSU's new V2G cars are discharged back to the grid during the peak demand hours and recharged during the off-peak periods, the University stands to earn money from the differential.

EVERYONE WANTS TO BE SPECIAL:

A more realistic way we could imagine demedicalization happening is not by completely eliminating a category but by making its diagnostic criteria more stringent. Medicalization refers not just to the growing number of new categories of disease, disorder, and risk but also to their expansion to an ever wider scope of human characteristics, states, and experiences. Conrad, for example, who has long studied ADHD, suggests that

it is certainly possible that a small proportion of children with a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder may have a discernable neurological problem, but the identification and diagnosis of ADHD goes far beyond these few children and includes a huge number of children with no identifiable neurological disorder.

The problem, on this understanding, is not so much the category itself as the set-points for the diagnostic criteria -- a view echoed by David Kupfer, who chaired the task force overseeing the writing of the DSM-5 and said that the previous edition's thresholds for an ADHD diagnosis were "too low," causing an "unreal" epidemic.

Demedicalization, then, might be thought of as the process of raising the diagnostic thresholds for a condition so that it captures only serious and debilitating clinical cases. By this process, what the psychiatrist Peter Kramer once called "diagnostic bracket creep" would be reversed; cases sometimes referred to as "mild disorders" and "subthreshold syndromes" would be eliminated. The domain of pathology would shrink, and far fewer individuals would be subject to medical management.

But this reversal too appears to hardly ever happen. The solution to the "unreal" ADHD epidemic that Kupfer noted would have been to change the criteria for the diagnosis so that kids with mild "symptoms" are not diagnosed or treated. But instead the DSM-5 lowered the thresholds even further. The unreal epidemic got worse. More youth qualify for the diagnosis, which is now also skyrocketing among adults.

According to a 2016 paper by psychologist Nick Haslam, over the past sixty years

the concept of mental disorder has undergone significant expansion.... An increasingly wide assortment of psychological phenomena fall within the psychiatric domain and diagnostic criteria have tended to loosen over time, so that clinical presentations that would once have failed to reach the threshold of diagnosis now do so.

A similar relentless expansion, in diagnoses and risk factors, can be seen in other areas of medicine.

So, we're back to our original question. Why does change seem to move relentlessly in the same pathologizing direction?

THEY LOST THEIR WHITE HOUSE ALLY:

In a recent joint op-ed published in The National Interest, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the United States slammed the summit as a product of America's "Cold-War mentality" and warned that it "will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new 'dividing lines.'"

The ambassadors, Anatoly Antonov of Russia and Qin Gang of China, decried the notion that the Biden administration is deciding what counts as a democracy, while describing their countries' systems as democratic -- despite the obvious communist one-party domination in China and dictatorial rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia. China, the envoys write, has an "extensive, whole-process socialist democracy," while democracy is the "fundamental principle" of the Russian system.

"There is no need to worry about democracy in Russia and China," the pair write. "Certain foreign governments better think about themselves and what is going on in their homes. Is it freedom when various rallies in their countries are dispersed with rubber bullets and tear gas? It does not look very much like freedom."

The public relations offensive has continued. The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party media mouthpiece, this month launched a series about the "evils committed in the name of democracy." One representative headline: "GT investigates: US war-mongering under guise of 'democracy' inflicts untold damage on the world."

Taiwan's inclusion in the summit has especially rankled China, which claims the island as its turf. Given repeated U.S. promises to support the island in the face of recent aggressive moves by Beijing, the Biden administration likely determined that excluding Taiwan from the summit would have suggested a weakened resolve.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence is cooperating with the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Marc Short was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and accompanied Pence as he fled his post presiding over the Senate and hid from rioters who were calling for his hanging. Short is cooperating with the panel after receiving a subpoena, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private interactions. [...]

Alyssa Farah, who served as Pence's press secretary before taking on other roles and left her job at the White House before Jan. 6, voluntarily met with Republicans on the House select committee and provided information.

In a series of tweets as the insurrection unfolded, Farah urged Trump to condemn the riots as they were happening and call on his supporters to stand down. "Condemn this now, @realDonaldTrump," she tweeted. "You are the only one they will listen to. For our country!"

The panel in November subpoenaed Keith Kellogg, who was Pence's national security adviser, writing in the subpoena that he was with Trump as the attack unfolded and may "have direct information about the former president's statements about, and reactions to, the Capitol insurrection." The committee wrote that according to several accounts, Kellogg urged Trump to send out a tweet aimed at helping to control the crowd.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

If you add up all 67 counties, the actual number of COVID deaths in Florida from May 1st - November 30th is 25,842, versus the NPR figure of just 1,734...or 14.9x higher.

Furthermore, 12,916 of those deaths happened in Florida counties where Trump received over 55% of the vote...vs. just 5,436 in the counties where he received less than 45% of the vote.

In other words, the actual Red/Blue divide is even worse than NPR reported when you account for Florida's death toll properly.

A SERIOUS PEOPLE:

With the omicron variant likely to become very common soon, and delta still spreading through the country, Americans are all for strict measures to control covid-19 spread. So long as businesses and public services don't shut down, the vast majority of people in the US are in favor of all containment measures, including mask and vaccine mandates, according to poll of 2,200 Americans published last week by Morning Consult, a data analytics firm.

The most commonly supported measures are ensuring better ventilation and enforcing social distancing, the poll found. But more controversial measures, such as mask or vaccine mandates, still get the support of a comfortable majority of the population, showing people are taking the threat of the new variant seriously.

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

Since the announcement of the new fees, referred to as "container dwell fees," both ports have seen lingering cargo containers reduced by 37%. The executive directors of both ports will monitor progress and announce whether they will impose fees on Dec. 13, according to a joint statement released on Monday.

PROGRESS:

The employment-to-population ratio for Black Americans aged 25 to 54 rose to 74.3% last month from 73.3% in October, according to unadjusted data published Friday by the Labor Department. The same metric for Hispanic or Latino Americans surged to 76.7% from 75.4%.

For White Americans, the ratio advanced to 80.4% from 80%, and for Asian Americans, it rose to 79.6% from 78.9%.

DONALD WHO?:

China's influence in Asia receded in the second year of the pandemic as the country turned more inward, while the U.S. expanded its power in the region through better diplomacy, according to an Australian research group.

China's measure of power fell as the country wrestled with structural weaknesses in its demographics and financial system and become more isolationist, the Sydney-based Lowy Institute said in its Asia Power Index for 2021, which ranks 26 nations and territories. The index measures power using 131 indicators including economic clout, defense capability, cultural and diplomatic influence, and projected future resources.

Comparatively, the U.S. gained more influence in Asia this year due to President Joe Biden's administration brokering better diplomatic relationships and a speedy recovery from the pandemic with the help of vaccinations, said Herve Lemahieu, the study's research chief and director of Lowy's Asian Power and Diplomacy Program.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

A U.K.-backed research group unveiled a design for a liquid hydrogen-powered airliner theoretically capable of matching the performance of current midsize aircraft without producing carbon emissions.

The FlyZero concept envisions a plane carrying 279 passengers non-stop from London to San Francisco at the same speed and comfort as today, the Aerospace Technology Institute said in a statement Monday. The group, a partnership between the U.K. government and industry, is meant to accelerate high-risk projects that will benefit home-grown firms. 

WHAT DOES LIBERAL GUILT HAVE TO DO WITH THOSE THEY'RE GUILTY ABOUT?:

Only 2 percent of those polled refer to themselves as Latinx, while 68 percent call themselves "Hispanic" and 21 percent favored "Latino" or "Latina" to describe their ethnic background, according to the survey from Bendixen & Amandi International, a top Democratic firm specializing in Latino outreach.

More problematic for Democrats: 40 percent said Latinx bothers or offends them to some degree and 30 percent said they would be less likely to support a politician or organization that uses the term.

BUBBLICIOUS:

Conservatives are aggressively building their own apps, phones, cryptocurrencies and publishing houses in an attempt to circumvent what they see as an increasingly liberal internet and media ecosystem.

WHERE THE BUBBLE BOYS GET THEIR MARCHING ORDERS:

This story contains offensive language.

The story had a bombshell headline: "Thousands of fake votes" had been discovered in Madison, Wisconsin, two weeks after Democrat Joe Biden narrowly beat then-President Donald Trump in the state.

The bogus report from the far-right website Gateway Pundit drew attention to a set of initials - MLW - inscribed on what it claimed were "fake" ballots. Then a reader posted a comment on the story correctly identifying MLW: Maribeth L. Witzel-Behl, the Madison city clerk, whose duties include administering elections.

Other commenters soon called for Witzel-Behl's execution. She found one post especially unnerving. It recommended a specific bullet for killing her - a 7.62 millimeter round for an AK-47 assault rifle.

Witzel-Behl was stunned by the threats and the angry calls that poured into her office. Contrary to the story's insinuation that the initials meant the ballots were fake, in reality she and her staff wrote her initials on all absentee ballots, before they were given to voters, as a matter of policy.

Witzel-Behl is among 25 election officials and workers targeted by more than 100 threatening and hostile communications that have cited the Gateway Pundit since last year's election, according to a Reuters review of the materials, which included emails, letters and phone messages, as well as comments posted on the website's stories.

The messages targeted officials and staff in four jurisdictions that featured repeatedly in false or misleading Pundit reports on voter-fraud claims: the Wisconsin cities of Madison and Milwaukee; Fulton County, Georgia; and Maricopa County, Arizona.

At least five of the officials, including Witzel-Behl, received threats they considered serious enough to report to law enforcement. Among those targeted were a municipal election director in Milwaukee and a Republican supervisor in Maricopa County.  The targets also included Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, a mother and daughter who staffed a ballot counting operation in Fulton County; their ordeal was detailed this week by Reuters.

After Gateway Pundit ran an Aug. 14 story about them, a commenter posted below the piece: "The two women are traitors to the country and should be hung by the neck until dead."

Two additional officials, a Fulton County election commissioner and another Maricopa county supervisor, blamed the Gateway Pundit for inciting serious threats of violence they received after the site implicated the officials in baseless claims of election-rigging.

NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

"If I win this election, it won't be another rotation of power but a reconquest of the greatest country in the world," Zemmour said in a nearly hour-and-a-half-long speech.

He said he was calling his party "Reconquest", a name that evokes the historic period known as the Reconquista, when Christian forces drove Muslim rulers from the Iberian peninsula.

THE HYSTERIA WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED:

Since the accelerated taper talk began in earnest last month, the dollar is up, crude oil is down, and five-year inflation breakevens are down. The talk itself, in other words, is both directly reducing the prices of commodities and exports -- and reducing forward-looking expectations of inflation.

The whole idea that quantitative easing (which really just amounts to swapping one safe asset for another) has a large impact on the economy has always been a little bit puzzling. Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke famously quipped that "The problem with QE is it works in practice but it doesn't work in theory." But other economists argue that it works perfectly well in theory because QE influences people's beliefs. Not necessarily those of random people on the street -- those of professional market participants, who pay very close attention to the actions of central banks.

But people with money on the line don't just wait around for Open Market Committee statements. Especially in the era of transparency and forward guidance, they pay a lot of attention to things Fed officials say. So talking about an accelerated taper isn't just idle chatter about a potential future slowdown in the pace of monetary stimulus; it's a real-time intervention in global markets. And while some Fed actions may operate with Milton Friedman's famous "long and variable lags," the essence of contemporary financial markets is that they operate with almost no lag at all.

That doesn't mean inflation is finished. To retain its credibility, the Fed still needs to issue an actual statement delivering on its chatter, then follow through. 

THE KANSAN:

Dwight Eisenhower was the old soldier's hero. But in politics, Dole looked to another impoverished small town kid who dreamed big, even as he was knocked down. With reverence, he called Richard Nixon "the old man" and fiercely defended him through his 1974 resignation. Dole wept as he closed his eulogy for him at his 1994 funeral.

Dole's sharp tongue, wily partisanship and often grim visage prompted many to write him off as an embittered politician. Cartoonists caricatured him as Darth Vader or the "Ayadollah." Comedians lampooned his gruff style and habit of speaking of himself in the third person.

Even some in his own party criticized him as a skilled but cynical practitioner of power politics, where idealism often took a back seat to practical objectives.

He made no apologies for searching out common ground.

"I learned something over at that place (the Senate) over the years," he said in May 1997. "I learned a lot about people. If you always dig deep enough, you can figure out almost everybody's vote, if you really think about it.

"Why would he do that?" Dole said he would ask himself again and again. "And then the light goes on."

He was always capable of surprising both friends and adversaries. In 1982, Dole crafted the compromise for a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act. A year later, he co-authored legislation designating Martin Luther King Jr's birthday as a national holiday. He supported affirmative action guidelines before backing away from them as a presidential candidate in 1996.

He developed a reputation as a deficit fighter with a deeply skeptical attitude toward supply-side economics. Yet he promoted a 15% income tax rate cut as the centerpiece of his unsuccessful White House bid and picked supply-side champion Jack Kemp as his vice presidential running mate.

Robert Joseph Dole was born July 22, 1923, the second of Doran and Bina Dole's four children. He grew up in a tiny white frame house with a family that melded the sentimentality of Norman Rockwell with the Midwestern stoicism of Grant Wood.

Doran Dole ran a cafe, an egg and cream station and the grain elevator in Russell, a windstrewn central Kansas town of 6,000 at its peak in the 1930s and '40s. Bina Dole talked, walked and worked fast. To bring in extra cash she sold Singer sewing machines from the back of the family car, driving the countryside demonstrating sewing techniques to women.

She was fastidious and charted the lives of her four children (Dole and siblings Gloria, Kenneth and Norma Jean) with days full of chores, schoolwork, errands, Sunday school. Her personal philosophy: "Can't never could do nothing."

The Doles survived blackout dust storms, the Great Depression and the rise and fall of farm prices, even moving into the basement of their home so the upstairs could be rented to oil field workers.

Dole delivered papers and mowed lawns. He said his first taste of politics came serving milkshakes and phosphates as a teenage soda jerk at Dawson's Drug Store on Russell's red-brick Main Street, where he learned to hold his own in a local tradition of friendly, barbed banter.

Decades before the fitness boom of the 1970s and 1980s, Dole and brother Kenny poured concrete into tin cans and fashioned weightlifting sets. He was a strapping 6-foot-1, 190-pounds in high school, where he ran the 440 and 880-yard dashes and became a basketball star.

Upon graduation, Dole decided to attend the University of Kansas in Lawrence, financed in part by borrowing $300 from a Russell businessman. Then World War II changed everything.

He was a sophomore when he enlisted in the Army and shipped off to Italy in late 1944. The new second lieutenant joined the famous 10th Mountain Division, famous for its skiing prowess. It began a long-running joke about the improbable placement of a prairie kid in such an outfit.

On April 14, 1945, less than a month before VE Day, his squad was trying to retake Hill 913 in central Italy. When he crawled to rescue a wounded soldier, Nazi fire ripped into his right shoulder, shredding bone and leaving him partially paralyzed in the mud. He went home in a body cast.

Dole earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with two clusters for his gallantry. He also began a three-year ordeal to reclaim his health, losing 70 pounds and nearly dying twice from complications. His right arm remained paralyzed and mostly useless for the rest of his life.

He spent more than two years at Percy Jones Army Medical Center in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he regained the use of his legs and left arm. An occupational therapist he met there, Phyllis Holden, became his wife in June 1948.

Dole had to relearn how to eat, dress, use the toilet and write with a left hand that was often numb. For years after, to discourage people from grabbing for his right hand, he grasped a felt-tip pen. He said he would come to appreciate those who would reach out with their left hands for a shake.

Returning to Russell after the war, friends rallied to help. Chet Dawson from the old Main Street drugstore started a collection for Dole's hospital bills. He grabbed an empty cigar box, attached a "Dole Fund" label and placed it on the counter. The donations came in nickels, dimes and quarters. Banks pitched in.

The total reached $1,800, a big sum at the time. Dole kept the box in his office desk the rest of his life.

Through a family contact, he traveled to Chicago and met a respected surgeon, Hampar Kelikian.

The seven operations came in waves. Kelikian transplanted tendons from Dole's leg to his right shoulder. A chunk of scapula was removed, and muscles in Dole's neck were reconnected to his right arm. "Dr. K," who didn't charge for the surgeries, helped Dole understand something he'd been loath to accept: that he would be partially disabled the rest of his days.

"When you join that group, you say, `Why me?' But after you've been there awhile, you have to decide what you're going to do with your life," he told The Washington Post's Laura Blumenfeld in 1996.

Dole exercised tirelessly, using ropes, weights and pulleys in his backyard, to regain what limited arm strength he had. In a scheme to straighten his right elbow and pry open his clawed fingers, a high school football teammate molded a six-pound lead pipe affixed with rubber bands that he could walk with on his arm.

Dole had wanted to become a doctor, but that dream was gone, replaced by a nightmare he couldn't shake -- that he'd wind up an invalid selling pencils in little downtown Russell.

Without the use of his right hand, law school at Washburn University in Topeka was a challenge. He taped class lectures because he couldn't take notes quickly with his left hand. At night, he'd listen and painstakingly jot shorthand notes, learning to commit vast amounts of material to memory, a skill that he would draw on decades later in the Senate.

Both Republican and Democratic party leaders exhorted Dole to consider a political career. His father was a Democrat, but Dole knew the GOP enjoyed a two-to-one advantage in Kansas.

After a single term in the Kansas House, he stormed around Russell County trying to beat Dean Ostrum, another veteran, for the county attorney's seat.

"Dole just outworked him," a friend recalled years later.

One duty as county attorney he said he never forgot: signing welfare checks, including those for his grandparents. The experience made him sensitive to those in need. His personal responsibilities grew during this period as well. In 1954, his only child, daughter Robin, was born.

Late one night in 1960, after Dole's re-election to a fourth term, Huck Boyd, a Kansas newspaper publisher and Republican party activist, saw the lights on at the county courthouse. He was impressed to find Dole poring over index cards for political contacts.

Boyd appointed himself Dole's mentor and connected his protege to GOP power brokers. That year, Dole ran for Kansas' sprawling 1st District congressional seat.

Backed by the "Bobolinks," a team of women in matching skirts, sporting a slogan, "Roll with Dole," and with gallons of Dole pineapple juice, Dole waged a vigorous fight, beating Keith Sebelius by less than 1,000 votes in the GOP primary.

"I guess I was very competitive anyway and even after the disability I was more competitive," Dole said in 1994. "I was trying to prove myself that I could still make it, still do it."

The Nixon years

In Congress, Dole adhered to a staunchly conservative agenda and voting record. He opposed Medicare and most of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society proposals with the exception of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two landmark civil rights laws.

In 1964, though, his reelection was in danger. Kansas Republicans were deeply divided over the presidential candidacy of conservative Barry Goldwater, whom Dole backed.

Former Vice President Richard Nixon, collecting IOUs for a 1968 White House race, flew into Kansas and appeared for Dole at a rally. He was dazzled by Nixon, and grateful after his narrow victory (less than three percentage points). It began one of the most intriguing relationships in American politics.

In 1968, Dole ran for Senate, defeating former Gov. Bill Avery to replace the retiring Frank Carlson. He took his seat as Nixon won the presidency. From the floor of the Senate, Dole soon became his fiercest defender. His savage tone earned him the moniker that would stick for the rest of his political life.

"He's a hatchet man," said GOP colleague, Sen. William Saxbe of Ohio in 1971. "He couldn't sell beer on a troop ship."

His loyalty impressed the most important Republican, though. In 1970, Nixon awarded Dole chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. He threw himself into the job.

In his book about the 1988 elections, "What It Takes," Richard Ben Cramer described his efforts, traveling a half-million miles in two years as party chief:

"From the chairman's pulpit, Dole meant to open the Party to groups long ignored: farmers, blue-collar ethnics ... Blacks, Mexicans, Asians ... he never lost a chance to remind a crowd that his, theirs, was the Party of Lincoln, liberty, emancipation.

"He never lost a chance at a crowd. Dole was determined to show his critics -- show everyone -- that he could carry his Senate load (he still never missed a roll call) and show up in every corner of the country. ... Now, for the first time, a car came to fetch him, idling at the base of the Capitol steps as the Senate finished business for the afternoon. ... A jet was waiting at the airport. ... Advance men were waiting at another airport one or two thousand miles to the west. If Dole could pick up a time zone or two on his way to the diner, the funder, the rally ... he might have time for a press conference, too -- or a stop, somewhere, refueling ... 'Agh, better make it Kansas.'"

Dole never forsook Kansas, which fared well when appropriations or farm bills or tax bills popped out of Congress. He did, however, neglect his family. One year, his wife remembered sitting down to dinner with him only three or so times. In late 1971, Dole shocked her by saying simply: "I want out."

He was granted an emergency divorce in Kansas, leaving a dazed wife to mull what happened. (Phyllis Holden Macey, who later married her high school sweetheart, died in 2008.)

Watergate, the 1972 break-in that grew into a nation-gripping scandal, missed ensnaring Dole.

"It happened on my night off," he quipped about the ham-handed attempt to bug the Democratic Party headquarters, by happenstance located in the same complex along the Potomac River where he lived.

Despite Dole's dedication to Nixon and the RNC job, he was pushed out shortly after the 1972 election. Dole believed that Nixon still liked him, and that he was done in by treacherous West Wing aides. But White House documents released in 1996 by the National Archives and reported by The Washington Post show Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to "have some others put the heat on" Dole and make him step down.

While Nixon won reelection by a landslide that November, the GOP remained in the minority in both houses of Congress. Nixon wanted a full time organizer to take charge of the party. Dole was replaced by George H.W. Bush.

Still, as Watergate developed into a Nixon White House coverup, Dole's loyalty didn't wane, even to the final weeks of Nixon's presidency. That allegiance came back to haunt him in his Senate re-election bid of 1974.

As Nixon's presidency collapsed in the summer of 1974, Dole career was at risk. His fierce defense of the president, and his RNC chairmanship at the time of the Watergate break-in, linked him inextricably to an administration engulfed by scandal and criminality. Polls showed Democrat Bill Roy, a well-liked two-term House member from Topeka, led Dole by double digits late in the campaign.

In a last-ditch effort, Dole ran a TV spot that became known as "the mudsplat ad." It featured Dole's face on a campaign poster and an announcer ticking off Roy's attacks. With each, a gob of mud whacked the poster until Dole's face disappeared.

It galvanized the campaign and scandalized Kansans. Late in the race, Dole stunned them again during a debate at the State Fair in Hutchinson by calling Roy an abortionist. Roy, an obstetrician, had performed about a dozen legal abortions over a career of delivering 5,000 babies. Abortion opponents joined the battle and peppered the state with telephone calls and fliers denouncing Roy.

That fall, an exhausted Dole eked out a victory. It was his last close race.

Nixon would advise Dole years later, and the Kansan kept the letters in his Washington desk. In 1994, he would deliver an emotional address at Nixon's funeral, saying how his friend, as a young man from a poor family in a small town, heard the whistles of the night trains "and dreamed of all the distant places that lay at the end of the track."

He could have as easily been talking of himself.

In 1996, Dole finally won the GOP nomination, and he faced off against Clinton, who was seeking a second term. In resigning his Senate seat to make the presidential run, Dole gave the speech of his life--written by novelist Mark Helprin--on the Senate floor, saying, "I will then stand before you without office or authority, a private citizen, a Kansan, an American. Just a man."

The speech shocked the political establishment and got great reviews but did not change basic political dynamics. Dole seemed old and overmatched in the race, even though, at 72, he was young compared with today's politicians like Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, or Mitch McConnell. Dole's odd habit of referring to himself in the third person emerged in his debate against Clinton, and it did not wear well: "Of the people listening tonight, the working families who will benefit from economic packages, they'll be better off when Bob Dole is president and Jack Kemp is vice president." And once again, Dole was unhappy with how his opponent portrayed him, complaining that Clinton "chose to engage in a campaign to scare American seniors. We call it Medicscare! Mediscare! Mediscare! All the ads you see in Florida, all the ads you see in Florida, are negative Mediscare ads!" It didn't help. Clinton won easily.

With his political career over, another side of Dole emerged. For too long, his image was that of the thin-skinned hatchet man, who spoke Senate-ese, a language only resembling English. The most famous instance of this was in 1988, when he incomprehensibly told a college student worried about acid rain, "That bill's in markup." Now people began to see what his Senate colleagues had long understood--that he was a funny guy and delightful company. David Letterman asked him about Clinton's weight. Dole's reply: "I never tried to lift him. I just tried to beat him."

DONALD WHO?:

President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said Sunday that the U.S. is reviewing its travel ban on South Africa and other African countries daily and hopes to lift it "within a reasonable amount of time" even as the Omicron variant spreads through the U.S.

YOUR NEXT PLANE WILL BE A VOLT:

British Airways has signed a deal for aircraft fuel made from recycled cooking oils and other household waste to be produced at scale in the UK and to be in use as early as 2022 to help power its flights.

The airline revealed on Thursday evening it had reached the agreement with a refinery in north Lincolnshire to purchase thousands of tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), which it said would add up to the equivalent of 700 transatlantic flights on a Boeing 787 with net zero carbon emissions.

WHEN ACTING RACIST IS A POLITICAL PLOY...:

Billionaire's scion and Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts set a high watermark for controversy during his first six years in office. There was his "crazy" refusal to lock down the state despite a surge of COVID-19 cases, the unearthed racist messages from his former campaign field director, and his maskless gabfest at a sports bar on election night 2020. (The restaurant worker who filmed the governor was fired.)

Yet in recent months the nuttiness quotient has somehow metastasized. Over the summer, the governor fueled a far-right conspiracy that claimed that some of President Biden's conservation efforts were in fact a private land grab.

Then Ricketts dived head first into the culture wars, assailing critical race theory, the playing of the "Black national anthem" at a University of Nebraska basketball game, and other anti-racism efforts at the college.

"That document is basically saying the University of Nebraska is systematically racist. I don't believe it," Ricketts said of the anti-racism proposals on Nov. 22.

On Wednesday the Omaha NAACP published a statement imploring the governor to back off.

Ricketts' provocations are likely calculated, local politicos say.

SOUNDS LIKE FLORIDA:

Five people were killed and at least 15 arrested after Myanmar security forces in a car rammed into an anti-coup protest on Sunday morning in Yangon, local news portal Myanmar Now reported.

HENRY GIBSON WEPT:

THE DESANTIS FLU:

In the new Kaiser poll, just 36% of Republicans overall said they would get the booster. This is significantly less than the 77% of Democrats.

For comparison, the same Kaiser poll found that 85% of all Democrats were fully vaccinated and 55% of all Republicans were.

This means that the partisan gap on boosters was 11 points higher than it was on becoming vaccinated and that spread was already pretty wide.

The partisan gap on boosters is also wider than the gap on vaccines when the vaccines were first becoming available to the public. In December 2020, there was a 30-point partisan difference compared to the 41-point booster gap in the latest Kaiser poll.

JUST "CONCERNED PARENTS":

Four days before the shooting, Ethan accompanied his father to a gun shop, where James Crumbley bought a 9mm handgun, prosecutors said.

Ethan posted photos of the gun on social media, writing, "Just got my new beauty today." The next day his mother posted that the two of them were "testing out his new Christmas present," Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.

McDonald detailed a number of other warning signs that she said the parents failed to act on.

On Nov. 21, a teacher found Ethan Crumbley searching for ammunition on his phone. His mother later texted him, "LOL, I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."

On the morning of the shooting, a teacher discovered drawings by Ethan Crumbley that depicted a handgun, a bullet, and a bleeding figure next to the words "Blood everywhere," "My life is useless," and "The thoughts won't stop - help me."

School officials summoned the Crumbleys and instructed them to get Ethan into counseling within 48 hours, McDonald said. The parents "resisted" the idea of taking their son home from school and did not search his backpack nor ask him about the gun, she said.

After the Crumbleys left the meeting without their son, Ethan Crumbley was returned to class and later walked out of a bathroom with the gun, killing four students and injuring seven other people, authorities said.

THE DESANTIS FLU:

THE NATURAL IMMUNITY HOAX:

New data from South Africa suggests the Omicron variant spreads more than twice as quickly as the Delta variant, and that immunity from prior infection doesn't appear to protect a person very well against Omicron variant. [...]

The bottom line: This early information underscores the importance of getting vaccinated, even if you've already had COVID.

IT'S A DEFLATIONARY EPOCH:

A major milestone has been breached in the quest for fusion energy.

For the first time, a fusion reaction has achieved a record 1.3 megajoule energy output - and for the first time, exceeding energy absorbed by the fuel used to trigger it.

Although there's still some way to go, the result represents a significant improvement on previous yields: eight times greater than experiments conducted just a few months prior, and 25 times greater than experiments conducted in 2018. It's a huge achievement.

WAIT, TUCKER AND HUNTER ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE?:

A leaked copy of an email exchange between Hunter Biden and Tucker Carlson suggests that the Fox News host once asked the now-president's son to write a college recommendation letter for his son.

HOW ABOUT ENDING PEDERASTY TOO?:

The Taliban issued a ban on forced marriage, a move aimed at gaining recognition of their government from other nations and thus restoring financial and monetary aid.  

Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhunzada made the announcement Friday as the country's economy collapses in the wake of the Taliban's takeover of the country in August.

"Both [women and men] should be equal,'' said the decree, adding that "no one can force women to marry by coercion or pressure.''

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

Currently at least 20 Christians are jailed in Iran because their faith was deemed a threat to the Islamic republic's national security. Of the more than 100 Iranian believers imprisoned since 2012, all have faced similar charges.

But a recent decision by a Supreme Court justice gives hope to them all.

"Merely preaching Christianity ... through family gatherings [house churches] is not a manifestation of gathering and collusion to disrupt the security of the country, whether internally or externally," stated the judge.

"The promotion of Christianity and the formation of a house church is not criminalized in law."

TRUMPISM IN ITS NATIVE TONGUE:

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

 Like the proverbial hand that rocks the cradle, school textbooks still have a big influence on a country's next generation, despite the growing power of social media. And perhaps no country has made such a swift change in its textbooks over the past few years than Saudi Arabia, the center of the Islamic world.

The shift by the Saudi Ministry of Education away from teaching hate and fear of others - especially Jews and Christians - has been so dramatic that a new study of the latest textbooks claims a change in Saudi attitudes "could produce a ripple effect in other Muslim majority countries."

"The Saudi educational curriculum appears to be sailing on an even keel toward its stated goals of more moderation and openness," states the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli research group. Just since 2020, at least 22 anti-Christian and antisemitic lessons were either removed from or altered in the textbooks while an entire textbook unit on violent jihad to spread Islam was removed.

HECK, IT'S JUST A CHRISTIAN HERESY:

ISLAM

The Islamic faith was founded by Muhammad on the Arabian Peninsula in the early seventh Century. He claimed to be restoring the monotheistic religion corrupted by the Jews and Christians. As a result, Muslims acknowledge the impact of Jesus and recognize Him as a significant person within their own religious system. The Quran describes Jesus in the following way:

Jesus Was Born of a Virgin.

The Quran describes Mary as a virgin prior to her miraculous conception. The conversation between Mary and Allah is recorded in the Quran.

Jesus Was to Be Revered.

Jesus is held in high regard within the Muslim worldview. According to a legend, when Muhammad eliminated all the images of other gods in the Ka'bah, he refused to destroy the statue of Mary and the infant Christ. Jesus remains in a position of respect and reverence within Islam. While Muslims believe Jesus was to be revered as a prophet and Apostle of God, they do not believe He was more than this.

Jesus Was A Prophet.


While Muhammad is described as the final prophet from God, he listed the previous prophets and included Jesus in that list. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, but they deny He is God or the "Son of God."

Jesus Was A Miracle Worker. 
Muslims believe Jesus performed many miracles. These miracles included the healing of a blind man and a leper and bringing life to the dead.

Jesus Ascended to Heaven and Will Come Again.

Islam also acknowledges Jesus ascended into heaven in bodily form. The Quran reports Jesus will come again (as a Muslim, returning to revive Islam), and that He will sit beside Allah during the judgment. While Muslims acknowledge the ascension, they either deny that Jesus was crucified or that He died on the cross. Most simply believe Jesus' death was an illusion (and some even believe that Judas Iscariot was mistaken for Jesus on the cross).

NEED CIVIL SUITS TOO:

 A prosecutor in Michigan filed involuntary manslaughter charges Friday against the parents of a boy who is accused of killing four students at Oxford High School, after saying earlier that their actions went "far beyond negligence."

Jennifer and James Crumbley were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. Under Michigan law, an involuntary manslaughter charge can be pursued if prosecutors believe someone contributed to a situation where harm or death was high. If convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison.

THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

According to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report, renewable electricity growth is accelerating faster than ever worldwide, with a new record achieved for renewable electricity installations this year.

Despite rising costs for key materials used to make solar panels and wind turbines, additions of new renewable power capacity this year are forecast to rise to 290 gigawatts (GW) in 2021, surpassing the previous all-time high set last year, according to the latest edition of the IEA's annual Renewables Market Report.

"We have revised up our forecast from a year earlier," the report said, per NBC News, "as stronger policy support and ambitious climate targets announced for COP26 outweigh the current record commodity prices that have increased the costs of building new wind and solar PV installations."

By the year 2026, global renewable electricity capacity is forecast to rise more than 60 percent from 2020 levels to over 4,800 GW. Renewables should then account for about 95 percent of the increase in global power capacity, with solar PV alone providing more than half.

EVERY MAN A NODE:

Baird founded BlocPower in 2014--but the company's agenda just became even more relevant with the passage of Biden's Build Back Better bill, which includes $6 billion toward home energy retrofits. The company replaces aging systems that run on fossil fuels with more efficient alternatives like electric heat pumps and solar panels, saving building owners between 10% and 50% on energy costs.

Earlier this month, BlocPower partnered with the city of Ithaca, New York, to electrify every single building in the city (that's over 6,000 homes and buildings) by 2030. The company is projected to cut about 40% of the city's overall carbon footprint--saving approximately 160,000 tons of carbon dioxide by 2030, or the equivalent of about 35,000 cars driven in a year. It's a tall order, but it's only the beginning.

Buildings account for almost 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. And a whopping 80% of domestic energy comes from fossil fuels. In the winter of 2019-2020, about 5.5 million households in the United States used oil as their main heating fuel, almost entirely in the Northeast. "Literally, a truck will pull up and dump oil into the basement," says Baird. "365 days a year, they are burning oil in the basement."

We know by now that burning fossil fuels releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air, which causes global warming. So, the roadmap is obvious: To slow climate change, we need to decarbonize our buildings. And to decarbonize our buildings, we need to electrify them.

For Baird, the answer lies in heat pumps. These devices use a small amount of electricity to move heat from one place to another. Heat pumps have been around for decades, but they're getting more efficient. In fact, your fridge is a heat pump, as is your air conditioning, except they only push heat in one direction. Heat pumps do both: they can heat in the winter and cool in the summer. (Baird wants to rebrand them as "climate pumps.")

When heat pumps are installed, sometimes coupled with solar panels, the need for radiators or air conditioning--and fuel-burning boilers--is gone. "We want to turn buildings into a Tesla," says Baird. "If Tesla can take the fossil fuel engine out of an automobile, we can now take all the fossil fuel equipment out of a building."

THE rIGHT FEELS LIKE THEY'RE BEING CONDESCENDED TO...:

The social media posts started in May: photos and videos of smiling people, mostly women, drinking Mason jars of black liquid, slathering black paste on their faces and feet, or dipping babies and dogs in tubs of the black water. They tagged the posts #BOO and linked to a website that sold a product called Black Oxygen Organics.

Black Oxygen Organics, or "BOO" for short, is difficult to classify. It was marketed as fulvic acid, a compound derived from decayed plants, that was dug up from an Ontario peat bog. The website of the Canadian company that sold it billed it as "the end product and smallest particle of the decomposition of ancient, organic matter." 

Put more simply, the product is dirt -- four-and-a-half ounces of it, sealed in a sleek black plastic baggie and sold for $110 plus shipping. Visitors to the Black Oxygen Organics website, recently taken offline, were greeted with a pair of white hands cradling cups of dirt like an offering. "A gift from the Ground," it reads. "Drink it. Wear it. Bathe in it." 

BOO, which "can be taken by anyone at any age, as well as animals," according to the company, claims many benefits and uses, including improved brain function and heart health, and ridding the body of so-called toxins that include heavy metals, pesticides and parasites.  [...]

Beyond the questions of the health benefits of fulvic acid, there's the question of just what is in Black Oxygen Organics' product. 

The company's most recent certificate of analysis, a document meant to show what a product is made of and in what amounts, was posted by sellers this year. Reporting the product makeup as mostly fulvic acid and Vitamin C, the report comes from 2017 and doesn't list a lab, or even a specific test. NBC News spoke to six environmental scientists, each of whom expressed skepticism at the quality of BOO's certificate. 

Assuming the company-provided analysis was correct, two of the scientists confirmed that just two servings of BOO exceeded Health Canada's daily limits for lead, and three servings -- a dose recommended on the package -- approached daily arsenic limits. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no comparable daily guidelines.

In an effort to verify BOO's analysis, NBC News procured a bag and sent it to Nicholas Basta, a professor of soil and environmental science at Ohio State University.

The BOO product was analyzed for the presence of heavy metals at Ohio State's Trace Element Research Laboratory. Results from that test were similar to the company's 2017 certificate, finding two doses per day exceeded Health Canada's limit for lead, and three doses for daily arsenic amounts. 

Growing concern among BOO sellers about the product -- precipitated by an anti-MLM activist who noticed on Google Earth that the bog that sourced BOO's peat appeared to share a border with a landfill -- pushed several to take matters into their own hands, sending bags of BOO to labs for testing.

HECK, THEY CAN'T FACE BEING REPLACED BY THEIR OWN KIDS::

"We get some of the grossest telephone messages that you can imagine...Some of the stuff is hard to believe. It's full of venom," Delgado said. The University of Alabama law professor is the co-author -- with his wife, Jean Stefancic -- of several books on critical race theory.

The 82-year-old scholar says the messages accuse him of eating children, wanting to destroy the U.S., and hating white people. (Delgado is Mexican American; Stefancic is white). [...]

He blamed the new anger over critical race theory on those who are upset over former President Donald Trump's loss in 2020 and the nation's changing racial demographics.

The pandemic also played a role, Delgado said, since parents were forced to talk to their children and found out during the Black Lives Matter protests their children held more progressive views on race.

"Parent lost it. They blamed the teachers for indoctrinating their kids, even though the kids are growing up in a more diverse world."

WHAT INFLATION:

This rekindled inversion already does indicate a very likely end to the "inflation" narrative of 2021, a welcome development in the narrow sense of consumer prices, yet this would also mean 2022 almost certainly ends up closer to 2019; as a best case.

Treasury yield spreads are contracting.

Inflation has been the talk of the town in recent weeks. But, now that the Federal Reserve has finally joined the chorus, the market seems to be headed in a different direction. At least over the near term.

Short rates are holding up just fine, but the longer end of the curve has been under serious pressure.

We've been closely monitoring long-duration rates for signs of further weakness. As we write, the 30-year is violating its summer lows, and the 10-year is testing a critical level of interest around 1.40%.

ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

This differential model showed marked differences in the relative efficacies and hierarchy of the active treatments compared with a network model that considered all placebos equivalent. In the model accounting for differential effects, intra-articular and topical therapies were superior to oral treatments in reducing pain. When these differential effects were ignored, oral nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were superior. [...]

Conclusion: All placebos are not equal, and some can trigger clinically relevant responses. Differential placebo effects can substantially alter estimates of the relative efficacies of active treatments, an important consideration for the design of clinical trials and interpretation of their results.

THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

An unpublished investigative compilation sometimes referred to as the "Alternative Mueller Report" has been located in Justice Department files and could be released soon, according to a letter filed in federal court Thursday.

A top deputy to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann, revealed in a book he published last year that the team he headed prepared a summary of all its work -- apparently including details not contained in the final report made public in 2019.

IF YOU PRICK US DO WE NOT BLEED?:

Experts long believed fetuses could not feel pain until the point of viability. But more recent findings on fetal brain development have cast doubt on this theory. Sotomayor dismissed this research as coming from "a small fringe of doctors" who believe that "pain could be experienced before a cortex is formed."

Dr. David Prentice, the vice president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, took issue with Sotomayor's assertion that formation of the cerebral cortex is required for a fetus to feel pain.

"If Justice Sotomayor were to follow her logic to its conclusion, she would have to admit that children, teenagers, and even young adults cannot experience pain because the human cortex doesn't mature until 25 years of age," Prentice told the Free Beacon.

Even pro-abortion experts accept that fetuses can feel pain. Dr. Stuart Derbyshire, a professor at the National University of Singapore, was once hailed as "a leading voice against the likelihood of fetal pain." Derbyshire repudiated his position in a 2020 analysis that found fetuses may feel pain as early as 12 weeks.

Derbyshire, who is unapologetically pro-choice, said those who want to uphold Roe should disregard the science of fetal development and focus on arguments of bodily autonomy.

"The discussion about viability is insane," Derbyshire told the Washington Free Beacon. "The entire point of abortion is to stop viability."

Abortion activists and medical groups still cite Derbyshire's recanted claims that fetuses can't feel pain. The plaintiff in Dobbs cited Derbyshire's coauthored 2010 review in its brief to the Court.

But according to Derbyshire, pro-choice advocates should acknowledge that abortion impacts two humans and pick a side.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

The materialist's usual explanation for our universe's 12 perfectly tuned constants is that there exists an infinite or nearly-infinite number of universes, each one exhibiting a different combination of values for these constants. We happen to find ourselves in a universe where the constants just happen to allow the existence of our sort of life--not because of any Grand Designer, but merely because life as we know it could evolve only in a universe where the values of the constants just happen to be so aligned. We cannot observe other universes. So no experiment--even in principle--can provide evidence to refute or confirm the multiple-universe hypothesis.

Meyer finds such appeals to imagined and unobservable worlds unscientific. Early on, he cites the 13th-century theologian William of Ockham, known for his oft-cited but poorly understood "Razor." Ockham's Razor is the rule that if multiple phenomena can be explained either by a single hypothesis or by multiple independent hypotheses, then the single hypothesis should be preferred. The single hypothesis of an intelligent God can accommodate the creation of the universe from nothing, the fine-tuning of the elemental constants, and the origin of life. Explanation without recourse to God requires multiple hypotheses, some of which are untestable--such as the hypothesis that there is an infinite number of unobservable universes--to explain the same phenomena.

The multiple-universe theory is not the only domain in which Nietzsche's prophecy has been realized. I earned my bachelor's degree in biology at MIT and both my doctorates at the University of Pennsylvania. As a student, more than 40 years ago, I read the theories that were being proposed to explain the origin of life on earth. I found them unsatisfactory and unpersuasive. When I returned to this topic recently, I was surprised to find that no progress has been made since I read the literature as a student. Or, more precisely: the progress made has been largely negative. Greater understanding of the complexities involved in even the simplest form of life have led leading researchers to question how the first life could ever have emerged from non-living matter. Nobel laureate in chemistry Ilya Prigogine concluded that the odds of information-rich biomolecules developing by random chance are "vanishingly small," even over billions of years. According to information theorist Hubert Yockey, the widespread conviction among scientists that life could arise spontaneously from non-living matter "is simply a matter of faith in strict reductionism and is based entirely on ideology" rather than evidence. Francis Crick, the Nobelist who famously helped discover the helical structure of DNA alongside James Watson, likewise saw no possibility that life on earth could have arisen spontaneously from the primordial slime. In his book Life Itself (1981), Crick argued that life on earth must have been seeded by aliens from another solar system.

Forty years have passed since Crick published Life Itself, and the prospects for solving the mystery of life's origin seem bleaker than ever. Today it is clear that the genetic code is a code: a sophisticated marvel of information-processing nanotechnology whereby three-letter nucleotide codons are translated into amino acids which are assembled into proteins. Even if scientists could succeed in showing how the prebiotic soup could generate a rich mixture of nucleotides (the building blocks of RNA and DNA), such a mixture would be roughly equivalent to a bucket full of English letters. The unanswered question is how a random scoop into the bucket could ever generate the equivalent of Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn. Even the simplest living cell contains more than 400 genes, each composed of dozens or hundreds of codons and every one of them essential to life--that is, if any one of those genes is deleted experimentally, the cell will die. No theory currently on offer satisfactorily explains the origin of this genetic information. Researchers have responded with vague ideas such as "self-organization" and "prebiotic natural selection." But as Nobel laureate in physiology Christian de Duve noted, such theories "presuppose what is to be explained in the first place," namely: where did the information come from?

THE rIGHT THINKS ONLY THE 2ND AMENDMENT EXISTS:

A federal judge yesterday blocked a Texas state law that bans "censorship" on social media platforms, ruling that the law violates the social networks' First Amendment right to moderate user-submitted content.

"Social media platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms," Judge Robert Pitman wrote. He found that the Texas law "compels social media platforms to disseminate objectionable content and impermissibly restricts their editorial discretion" and that the law's "prohibitions on 'censorship' and constraints on how social media platforms disseminate content violate the First Amendment."

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

The extreme Shiite parties backed by Iran lost badly. The more moderate bloc under the umbrella of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won the most seats in Parliament with 73. Coming in second with 37 seats was the moderate Sunni party Taqaddum, or Progress, led by outgoing Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi.

Mr. Sadr campaigned as a nationalist, meaning his Shiite party will likely now form a majority coalition with Sunni parties, further reinforcing a trend away from sectarian politics and violence in Iraq. Since the election, this Muslim preacher has also asked Shiite militias to disband and join government security forces in a show of national unity.

The election itself was forced on Iraq's political elite by a mass uprising of young people in 2019. The protests brought in a reformist prime minister and a cleanup of the election process. Most of all, the protesters sought a government not corrupted by the divvying of power along religious and ethnic lines. That 2019 Arab Barometer survey found the share of Iraqis who say they attend Friday prayers has fallen from 60% to 33% in five years' time.

Dozens of the protest leaders won in the October election. For the first time, Iraq will have a large, independent opposition in the 329-seat Parliament to counter the religious-based parties.

THERE WILL BE NO BLOOD:

Canadian energy firm Pembina Pipeline Corp. pulled the plug on a years-long project that would have led to greater natural gas exports from to Canada to the U.S.

The multi-billion-dollar Jordan Cove project included plans to construct a marine export terminal, which would have been the first of its kind in the continental U.S., and a 230-mile pipeline across Oregon, The Associated Press reported.

WHEN THE JUDICIAL VIOLATES THE SEPARATION OF POWERS:

As I listened to almost two hours of oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, a case challenging Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks, I kept returning to a single thought: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was right. She accurately identified the inherent instability of Roe v. Wade. Because of that instability, it is now quite possible that Roe will be overturned and the ultimate legality of abortion rights will be decided by legislatures, not justices.  

When I say "Ginsburg was right," I'm referring specifically to fascinating comments she made during a Madison Lecture at New York University in 1992, the year before Bill Clinton nominated her to serve on the Supreme Court. In a section of her lecture devoted to "measured motions in third branch decisionmaking," she made two observations of enduring significance.

First, she quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who argued that "judges do and must legislate," but they must do so "only interstitially; they are confined from molar to molecular motions." In plain language this means that judges don't merely interpret laws, they write laws, but when they do so, they should do so slowly and cautiously. Otherwise, as Ginsburg argued, "Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable."

Second, as her prime example of this principle, she chose Roe v. Wade, a precedent she called "breathtaking" and contrasted directly with the Court's "more cautious dispositions" in cases "contemporaneous with Roe" that involved questions of sex discrimination. She noted that the Roe Court did not have to rewrite all of the nation's abortion laws at a stroke. There was a narrower path, and that narrower path may have been more prudent.

FOLKS THAT SELFISH SHOULD ENJOY THEIR TIME BY THEMSELVES:

IT'S WHAT GUNS ARE FOR:

The father of the 15-year-old charged in Tuesday's horrific school shooting in Michigan bought the gun suspected in the killings just four days prior. Now, he and the child's mother might be charged as well, the county's top prosecutor said Wednesday.

Ethan Crumbley, a sophomore at Oxford High School in a suburb north of Detroit, was charged Wednesday as an adult with murder, attempted murder, and terrorism causing death. The suspect allegedly opened fire at the school shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday, killing at least four of his classmates and injuring a half-dozen more, as well as a teacher. 

The alleged shooter and his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were called in to Oxford High School earlier in the day to discuss behavior the school found troubling, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said Wednesday. "The content of that meeting, obviously, is part of the investigation," Bouchard told reporters. "We did not learn of that meeting nor of the content of that meeting until after the shooting and during this investigation."

James Crumbley bought the 9 mm Sig Sauer semiautomatic handgun police believe was used in the shooting on Black Friday, just four days before the tragedy. When police arrested the alleged shooter they found three 15-round magazine clips.

"It's my understanding, again, that this was a recent weapon purchase, that he had been shooting with it. And [the family] posted pictures of (a) target and the weapon," Bouchard told reporters Tuesday night. 

THE TRUMP BRAND:

When Joe Biden came into office, we were literally right at the peak of the winter wave of infections that began in the fall of 2020 shortly after Donald Trump resumed rallies and hosted a super spreader event in the White House. Of the nearly 400,000 who have died since January 20, nearly half were in the tail of that wave. I don't know anyone on Earth who expected COVID-19 deaths to suddenly drop to zero the day Biden came into office.

But now you see both the dishonesty and the meaninglessness of this stat. During the first three weeks of January, we were having the equivalent of a 9/11 every day. By counting deaths from January 1 to January 20 in Biden's "column" instead of Trump's, these weasels are able to shift a whopping 60,000 deaths in the blame game.1

Now, has Joe Biden's response to the pandemic been perfect? Of course not. But it's been better than Trump's. We've put actual scientists back into advisory positions and listened to their advice. Biden hasn't run out and started telling people not to fear the virus or mocked anyone for wearing a mask. He's enacted a vaccine mandate which has caused vaccinations to resurge over the last few months. There are criticisms I would lob: elites not wearing masks and going to social events while the rest of us are supposed to follow the rules is a big problem. But having an Administration that can stay on message -- even if that message is sometimes garbled -- has been an improvement.

And I would say that, up until mid-summer, the results spoke for themselves. Vaccinations rates have been decent, if not great. And by July, it was looking like the pandemic was fading. [...]

But the second point is why this blame game with Biden crosses me as so offensive. Because as the winter wave receded, Republicans made a choice. They decided that they were going to oppose almost all pandemic mitigations. With governors in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas leading the way, they banned masks in schools. They refused to enact any social distancing measures. They screamed that vaccine mandates were unconstitutional and filed lawsuits until they found a partisan court that would side with them. And almost all of the anti-vaxx hysteria and lies have been on the Right wing.

STRUCTURE:

In the U.S., Cashin notes, there is an underlying cultural assumption that people live where they deserve to, "that affluent space is earned and hood living is the deserved consequence of individual behavior." Emblematic of this thinking, Cashin shrewdly observes, is the way the term ghetto has morphed from a noun to an adjective. Whereas ghetto once connoted an enforced separation of a people, whether Jews in sixteenth-century Venice or Black people in modern America, today it is also "a pejorative" used to describe "dress, speech and social codes" that are rejected by middle-class Americans.

Cashin brings to bear considerable evidence to show that poor neighborhoods are not the natural result of sorting by merit; to the contrary, both Black and white spaces in America have been socially engineered by government. Consider Baltimore, which is today highly segregated by race and class. It was not always thus, Cashin writes. Working-class white and Black people were reasonably integrated in the late nineteenth century. When George W.F. McMechen, a Black Yale Law graduate, moved into a white upper-middle-class neighborhood in the early twentieth century, however, white families reacted with violence and legislation. "Whites threw stones and bricks into the McMechens' new home," Cashin writes, and Baltimore's mayor, J. Barry Mahool, championed the nation's first racial zoning legislation, which banned Black people from moving into white neighborhoods.

Mahool did not mince words. "Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidents of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods and to protect property values among the White majority," he declared. The New York Times article about the ordinance, Cashin notes, "featured an image of the handsome, dapper, and presumably disease-free McMechen."

Although the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial zoning as a violation of the Constitution in 1917, segregationists in Baltimore and elsewhere employed a slew of additional tactics: racially restrictive covenants (which were not struck down until 1948), redlining (which was not made illegal until 1968), and economically exclusionary zoning (which exists to this day). Whites also fought efforts to place public housing in middle-class neighborhoods; in fact, in 1994, the otherwise liberal Maryland U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski killed a federal program that provided the opportunity for low-income families, many of them Black, to live in upper-middle-class areas in the Baltimore region and elsewhere.

ECONOMICS IS PURITAN:

Regenerative agriculture is a method of farming that allows food to naturally regrow on its own. As businesses seek to meet emissions targets, regenerative agriculture is seen as a way to farm in harmony with nature and reduce carbon footprints.

A recent study by Bain and Nature United, the Nature Conservancy's branch in Canada, shows that transitioning to regenerative farming techniques can help farmers reduce their emissions and gain higher profits. Emissions could be cut in half per hectare farmed (one hectare is equivalent to 2.47 acres), according to the study. The collaboration between an environmental non-profit and a management consulting firm comes at a time when industries, businesses, and governments are trying to come up with plans to meet emissions reduction targets. In addition, companies have been facing pressure from activist shareholders, governments, and even their own employees to pursue those targets.

Bain provides consulting to companies that supply farmers or buy from farmers and process their commodities. "We want to add to the list of the tools that we suggest and recommend to our clients when we are discussing climate change strategies," said Fernando Martins, a partner at Bain. He added that the number of Bain consultants who advise on regenerative agriculture grew from about a few people in early 2020 to dozens this year. The study comes out of a larger, higher-level report by The Nature Conservancy that outlines natural climate solutions for Canada including regenerative farming, agroforestry, and grassland protection.

THAT WAS EASY:

Despite the lousy weather that has plagued much of the state in the last few days, the combined output of the state's 32 grid scale solar farms reached a new peak of 1827MW at around 1.40pm AEST on Wednesday, and then jumped to 2,092MW at 11.05am AEST on Thursday.

According to Geoff Eldridge, from NEMlog, that helped the entire main grid, known as the National Electricity Market (NEM), break through the 4GW mark for the first time and also set a new instantaneous output record of 4,002MW around the same time.

WAR ON IRAN HAS BEEN FAILING FOR 50 YEARS:

First, Netanyahu encouraged the Trump administration's withdrawal from the accord, and its imposition of "maximum pressure" sanctions, in the belief or hope that a combination of economic pressure, consequent domestic unrest, and the threat of US-led military action might compel the regime to set aside its bid for the bomb.

Second, he relied on the Trump administration being prepared to take military action, or support and help facilitate Israeli military action, if the point arrived where nothing else could halt Tehran's military nuclear program -- and if, in the curt, graphic summation of the late Mossad chief Meir Dagan, the sword was at our throat.

And self-evidently, by extension, Netanyahu bet on Donald Trump retaining the presidency, rather than losing out to a Democratic rival likely to seek to reinstate the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

Needless to say, the strategy failed. 

NUKE PYONGYANG; IT'S A TWO-FER: