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GA Gov. Brian Kemp shoots down speculation that Fulton County DA Fani Willis will be punished or removed from office for indicting Trump et al. “The bottom line is that in the state of Georgia as long as I’m governor, we’re going to follow the law and the Constitution, regardless of who it helps and harms politically. Over the last few years, some inside and outside of this building may have forgotten that. But I can assure you that I have not.” https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/clear-dividing-line-in-georgia

I just finished “War and Punishment: The story of Russian oppression and Ukranian resistance” by Mikhail Zygar. I’ve read several books on Russian and Ukranian history written by historians. Zygar isn’t a historian, and the style of this book is more of a reporter, albeit one describing history. The writing here is vivid, if somewhat quirky. Zygar toggles frequently between present and past tense, which is sometimes distracting but can enliven the prose. I’ve found the writing of Serhii Plokhy and Timothy Snyder that cover much of this material more authoritative, but Zygar’s purpose is different. The biggest lesson I learned from this book was how much events in post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine have become dominated by media and appearances. In particular, while I knew that Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s career before becoming president of Ukraine was as a comedian, Zygar does a deep dive into that biography and we come to appreciate how such an unlikely career path, pursued by a Russian-speakin

"When Florida rejected a new Advanced Placement course on African American Studies, state officials said they objected to the study of several concepts — like reparations, the Black Lives Matter movement and “queer theory.” "But the state did not say that in many instances, its reviewers also made objections in the state’s attempt to sanitize aspects of slavery and the plight of African Americans throughout history, according to a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times review of internal state comments. "For example, a lesson in the Advanced Placement course focused on how Europeans benefited from trading enslaved people and the materials enslaved laborers produced. The state objected to the content, saying the instructional approach “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.” "In another lesson about the beginnings of slavery, the course delved into how tens of thousands of enslaved Africans had been “removed from the continen

Another thoughtful insight from Josh Marshall: "A central feature of the Early Modern era was weak and underfunded states licensing private entities to exercise state-like powers and then later trying to claw back that license. All of the colonies of that would later become the fledgling United States were founded on this basis. The arc of colonial North American history saw the English and then British monarchies trying to assert direct monarchical control over these fledgling societies. A better known example is the British East India Company which conquered and administered large parts of South Asia before being brought under tighter and tighter state control until being finally extinguished in the 1850s. We live today in an age of reversal in which increasingly public disinvestment, privatization and the rise of a global billionaire class is in key ways reversing that process." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/newsletter/vol-2-no-63-out-with-the-trumps-with-the-global-oligar

  OK, I'm finally starting to get it. I stopped watching TV about 20 years ago. TV is what rules politics these days, not just in the US, but in Russia and the Ukraine, among other markets. I didn't so much miss it as not credit its power, since it held no power over me, directly. But it holds power over all of us, whether or not we consume it, because of the power it holds in society. Donald Trump *never* held political office before he become POTUS, but he was a TV star. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a TV comedy star until he became prime minister of Ukraine. Putin and other right-wing fascists hold power because they control the media, importantly TV. Marx called religion the opiate of the people. That was before TV. Now TV has displaced religion. I've ignored TV so long I failed to appreciate the power it holds over most people, who would rather watch propaganda than turn it off. Fox knows this, and that's their business model. I tremble for the future of democracy.

"With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers. “We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with a historical flourish about the undertaking." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wrecking-ball-government-conservatives_n_64edd9fee4b0792a1ec66547

 For those of you who thing the Trump RICO case in Georgia is a slam dunk, here's an insightful comment from a thread over at jabberwocking.com: "Trump's plan for Georgia is to have Republican-appointed officials on the new PAQC [Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission] remove DA Fani Willis and poof! Trump's schedule is suddenly freed up. "There’s a one-hundred percent chance that’s going to happen," according to a Georgia State law professor. "Maybe. I'm not so sure it'll happen that way. But let's say it does. Then what happens if Fani Willis is removed by the new state commission? Who gets to replace her? The law (now being challenged in court) gives authority to the commission to remove a DA, but not to appoint a replacement. Does the governor name a replacement? (It's not a state office. I wouldn't think so.) Does the Fulton County DA's office make an Asst. DA an Acting DA till a new election? "What happens next

Nikki Haley: "Social Security is going to go bankrupt in 10 years." No, Social Security is not going to go bankrupt, in 10 years or ever. As long as there's a single person working for wages in America, SS cannot go bankrupt. Haley knows that. She's just lying. What will happen, if nothing is done to prevent it, is that the Trust Fund will be depleted in about 10 years, and projected benefits will be reduced by about 20%. That's not good, and it's not likely to happen, but that's the worst case scenario. That's not bankruptcy. Not even close. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nikki-haley-raise-retirement-age_n_64eb83dce4b0fcbba8993092

Our genetic endowment is not something we can control. Similarly, the traits we pass on to our children are not something we can control. For people seeking IVF, these are questions that get asked. For most couples, they never wonder about it. "Humans carry on average one to two mutations that, if inherited from both parents, can cause severe genetic disorders or death before reaching reproductive age, report scientists from the University of Chicago and Columbia University." https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/.../humans-carry-one-to... .

These days, microplastics seem to have displaced methane and carbon dioxide as the environmental bogy man. And not that we shouldn't worry about all pollution sources, but it turns out that, once again, driving is a big problem--not just for global warming but for microplastics as well: "Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem — turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters. "That is one of many new findings, released Wednesday, from the most comprehensive study to date on microplastics in California. Rainfall washes more than 7 trillion pieces of microplastics, much of it tire particles left behind on streets, into San Francisco Bay each year — an amount 300 times greater than what comes from microfibers washing off polyester clothes, microbeads from beauty products and the many other plastics washing down our sinks and sewers." https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2019-10-02/california

While I don't find this surprising, it underscores the power of modern pharmacology. Many drugs deliver only incremental improvement, but semaglutide--like anti-hypertensives and statins--looks transformative for many people. "The diabetes and weight loss drug semaglutide significantly reduced symptoms and improved quality of life in people with obesity and the most common form of heart failure in a clinical trial, potentially expanding the already wildly popular drug’s use beyond diabetes and weight loss and offering a new treatment option where few are available. "The study of 529 patients, funded by drugmaker Novo Nordisk, found that a 2.4-milligram weekly dose of semaglutide, sold as Wegovy for weight loss, led to an improvement of 17 points on a 100-point scale that’s used to assess symptoms of a condition known as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. By comparison, participants who got a placebo had a 9-point improvement. The study was published Friday in

"In the New York Times this morning, August 23, 2023, reporter Azeen Ghorayshi writes credulously about the wild, unproven allegations surrounding a St. Louis clinic that specializes in treating gender dysphoric youth. These are the allegations of Jamie Reed, a former clinic employee who has become an activist opposing all medical treatment for gender dysphoria in children (with some statements suggesting she even opposes treatments for adults). "Ghorayshi manages the seemingly impossible, combining examples of her main source’s repeated lies and no evidence of wrongdoing on the part clinic into an article structured to heavily imply Reed’s concerns were genuine, and warranted, in spite of the Times’ own reporting on the case." Shame. https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/nyt-treats-key-sources-many-lies-as-an-aside-in-latest-anti-trans-smear

We arrived in Rhode Island one year ago today. It was a three-day drive from St. Louis with 11 canaries and three cockatiels, and we arrived to find flooded streets. The front door was supposed to have a combination lock box with the house keys in it, but that was missing. The moving van with most of our worldly belongings didn’t arrive for four more days, and unboxing took another couple weeks. Ahead of us were weeks of plumbing drama and several other expensive repairs/updates. Fortunately, the winter of 2022-23 was mild, and we now have an emergency generator and a snow-blower in anticipation of the winters people have warned us about. We bid on the house without seeing it in person—just a walk-through with the agent on her cell phone. The house never went on the market and our bid below the asking price with no inspections or pre-conditions was accepted. We closed in June 2022 after a second cell phone walk-through. Only saw it in person on 22 August 2022. Chutzpah or meshuggeneh?

The first book by Abraham Verghese that I read was “My Own Country,” an autobiographical story of a foreign-trained physician who ends up practicing infectious disease medicine in East Tennessee right at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. I found the writing thoroughly engrossing, less because of the science and medicine than because of the finely drawn sketches of the area and culture near where I grew up and Verghese’s adjustment to that culture. On the strength of that, I read his novel “Cutting for Stone,” which, while not autobiographical, features a protagonist who is a foreign-trained physician from India. Well, write what you know, they say. I’m not a big consumer of novels, but I found this one quite readable. Recently, I came across a short review of Verghese’s new novel “The Covenant of Water.” I don’t normally keep reading the same author, but something about the review drew me in. Compared to the earlier books I read, Covenant is epic in scope, spanning nearly a century.

I have to admit to ambivalence about televising the Federal and Georgia state Trump treason trials. On the one hand, I think that we're best served when justice is conducted in the clear light of day. On the other hand, TV invites spectacle, both in the courtroom and outside. The threat of violence is real for these trials, and the threat that these solemn proceedings will morph into reality TV is real, unless the judge exerts strict control. Here's a long article about the issues and history: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-georgia-trial-camera-courtroom

It would be hard to think of anyone more clownish in the Big Lie election denialist clown car than Mike Lindell. I read that he admitted to cocaine abuse/addiction, and I can believe that he still suffers from long crack syndrome. I don't know who writes his material these days, but he seems to have captured that elusive nexus of comical and pathetic that I used to associate with Andy Kaufman. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/mike-lindell-has-a-plan-to-stop-the-evil-fix-elections-and-help-you-save-on-bedding  

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) first came to my attention just a couple years ago. Apparently, anything could be an NFT. Per Investopedia: “Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are assets that have been tokenized via a blockchain. They are assigned unique identification codes and metadata that distinguish them from other tokens. “NFTs can be traded and exchanged for money, cryptocurrencies, or other NFTs—it all depends on the value the market and owners have placed on them. For instance, you could use an exchange to create a token for an image of a banana. Some people might pay millions for the NFT, while others might think it worthless. “Cryptocurrencies are tokens as well; however, the key difference is that two cryptocurrencies from the same blockchain are interchangeable—they are fungible. Two NFTs from the same blockchain can look identical, but they are not interchangeable.” Most of the NFTs I’ve seen have been digital images. Their utility depends on The Greater Fool Theory of investing. A

"Former President Donald Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News. "Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it." How many people besides me suspected that this was the plan from the beginning. Announce you will present evidence that the election was stolen and then regretfully have to cancel on the advice of your attorney, leaving the Trumpenproletariat clinging to their deep state conspiracy theory--the evidence is the absence of evidence. https://abcnews.go.com/US/trumps-legal-advisers-urge-cancel-press-conference-refute/story?id=102336380&cid=social_twitter_abcn

This is what happens when a state is taken over by right-wing religious zealots: "Settlers are awaiting the appearance of a ‘blemish free’ red cow, which, according to Judaism, is central to the prediction about the “end of times”, and therefore paves the way for the acceleration of the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque to make way for the so-called Temple. "The cow’s promise of reinstating Biblical purity to the world, is what far-right Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has been waiting for before he storms Al-Aqsa Mosque. "So important is the red cow, that the so-called Temple Institute has dedicated itself, since its inception in 1987, to find the cow. It went on to raise funds to transplant frozen embryos into the uterus of a cow raised in a local barn in an attempt to employ biotechnology to fulfill the biblical prophecy in a programme it called “Raising the Red Cow in Israel”." This won't end well. https://www.juancole.com/2023/08/religious-emboldens

I have no idea who Clark Neily is or what his track record in prophecy is. But the fact that this post is up at the right-wing Cato Institute's blog Cato at Liberty got my attention. The money graf: "Being an inveterate liar is a major liability in litigation. So is being openly disdainful of the entire process. And so is complexity. But put all three of those together at the same time for the same defendant, and his goose is cooked. So you can put a fork in Donald Trump—he’s done." https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-toast-folks

 Trump has now been impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, indicted four times on felony conspiracy and obstruction charges, and forced to pay tens of millions of dollars in civil actions for fraud and sexual assault. One of those indictments was in New York State and another in Georgia, so he can't be pardoned by himself or any other POTUS if convicted in those cases. He can appeal to his SCOTUS, however. It has long been beyond comprehension why anyone would ever have voted for Trump. These indictments don't change my perception of Trump, but clearly anyone who supports Trump now is a cult member deep down the conspiracy rabbit hole.

  Now that COVID seems to be surging again, some timely reminders are in order: • keep your vaccination status current. The vaccine won’t keep you from being infected, but it will most likely keep you out of the ED and the morgue; • the outcome of COVID infection isn’t binary: death or survival. A third outcome is long COVID. Among the consequences of long COVID are pathological changes in blood pressure and heart function. From the link: “For up to a year after a case of COVID-19, people may be at increased risk of developing a new heart-related problem, anything from blood clots and irregular heartbeats to a heart attack –- even if they initially seem to recover just fine. “Among the unknowns: Who’s most likely to experience these aftereffects? Are they reversible — or a warning sign of more heart disease later in life? “Heart disease has long been the top killer in the nation and the world. But in the U.S., heart-related death rates had fallen to record lows in 2019, just before the

• Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of a court most noted with liberalism for many decades now, had been a Republican governor (California, a very different state in the 1950s) who was nominated by a Republican president (Eisenhower); • 1969 was the last year the court had a Democrat-appointed majority. Every court since has had an Republican-appointed chief justice and majority, including the ones that decided Roe, upheld assault weapon bans, ruled in favor of gay marriage, and more. Imagine today’s court doing any of that. Parties have always had differences in legal philosophy, and politics often has influenced the court. But there’s been nothing in our lifetime that compares to the radical ultra-partisanship we’ve seen in recent years.

I've long held that Libertarianism is the political philosophy of middle school boys and arrested development. This article in the Boston Globe confirms that in spades. Behold, the modern Libertarian man*! *because nearly all the people at this festival were men https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/09/magazine/a-week-inside-the-libertarian-porcfest-in-new-hampshire/

 The whole "Biden crime family" conspiracy theory is a classic example of Republicans accusing others of what they're doing. There's ample evidence that Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner profited handsomely from the Trump presidency, and that Trump did so in blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. There's zero evidence that Joe Biden profited from his positions as VP or POTUS. But what about Joe's son Hunter? Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum channels the NYT: "Bank records obtained by the committee show the receipt of money from a foreign company connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, who was the subject of a criminal investigation and prosecution for corruption in Romania. In 2015, Mr. Popoviciu retained Hunter Biden, who is a lawyer, while his father was vice president, to help try to fend off charges. That effort was unsuccessful and, in 2016, Mr. Popoviciu was convicted on charges related to a land deal in northern Buc

According to this WaPo article, the average physician in the US earns $350K/yr. I didn’t click through to the actual data, but from the first table, I’m guessing that “average” means median, not mean. And physician income isn’t a Gaussian distribution—there’s a long right-hand tail for the specialties. Why is this? It looks to me like supply-and-demand is a big factor. Despite the fact that allopathic and osteopathic medical schools have expanded class sizes in the last ten years, the supply of physicians hasn’t reflected that growth. This is because you can’t practice in the US without completing a residency, and until very recently, residency slots were not growing. Domestic and foreign-trained medical students compete for residency slots, so increasing domestic grads without commensurate increases in residency slots just means more competition, not more doctors. Another factor mentioned is debt. Med students graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans. There’s also the

 The Jan 6 coup plotters are happy to swath themselves in the fabric of patriotism, claiming the Declaration of Independence as their lodestone. Of course, the DoI isn't a legal document, it's a manifesto to justify treason. I wonder how many of these fat, happy clowns know what the punishment for treason is. " . . . yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government if you really think its abuses have gotten that intractable and grave. But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang." https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/john-eastman-comes-clean-hell-yes-we-were-trying-to-overthrow-the-government

One thing seldom remarked upon by the Roman Catholic anti-choice crowd is that the church is also on record against capital punishment. The crowds of Catholics waving signs in front of prisons depicting adults who have been shot, poisoned, hanged or electrocuted have eluded my attention. A jury just returned a death sentence for a man who killed 11 Jewish worshipers in cold blood.  The sentence had to be unanimous or he would have been sentenced to life in prison. When I was in college, I took three religious studies courses to fulfill the requirements for a liberal arts degree. My professor in those courses was Charlie Reynolds. Along the way, he mentioned that he was opposed to the death penalty because he believed you should never kill an unarmed person. Until that point, I supported the death penalty. Since then, I've been opposed. Dr. Reynolds changed my mind. If Robert Bowers knew my name, I'm sure he would have been happy to kill me. Would I feel differently if a loved o

America is not great: • Health care spending, both per person and as a share of GDP, continues to be far higher in the United States than in other high-income countries. Yet the U.S. is the only country that doesn’t have universal health coverage. • The U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest death rates for avoidable or treatable conditions, the highest maternal and infant mortality, and among the highest suicide rates. • The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions and an obesity rate nearly twice the OECD average. Americans see physicians less often than people in most other countries and have among the lowest rate of practicing physicians and hospital beds per 1,000 population. • Screening rates for breast and colorectal cancer and vaccination for flu in the U.S. are among the highest, but COVID-19 vaccination trails many nations. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2022