There is a nail that Frank Bruni appears to be attempting to hit right on its head in this column: That President Biden deliberately is being "Trumpy". To that end:

-"Biden and his advisers know it"; 

-"They know the political danger of...an open borders policy"; 

-"They have surely calculated that French outrage isn’t a serious political liability"; 

-"They no doubt divine ample electoral rationale for some America First maneuvering".

I don't know if Bruni intends to hit that nail so squarely. He rejoices, "Hallelujah", that Biden is so un-Trump.

Biden, this seems to be as direct a hit as Bruni can bring himself to land, is trying to triangulate the Scylla of voters, like me, who "voted excitedly for Biden, even more excitedly against Trump" and the Charybdis of the 46.9% who voted for Trump. When Bruni says Biden's advisers "no doubt divine ample electoral rationale...in America First," that means that is what Bruni thinks, not what any Biden adviser has advised him. I do think however that Bruni is right to think that they think that. I see also a kinder, gentler Biden America First. That doesn't mean what they think is smart. How many times has that worked out, trying to be all things to all people? I can think of only one in my political lifetime, Bubba Bill Clinton. Clinton though lacked majority support; never did get it. Getting to 50.1% was kinda important for survival. Biden has no such problem. All he has to do is hold his own. Especially with Trumpists why try to stretch to reach that far cliff on Deliverance shore? How's that outreach, if that's what it is, gone, by the way? "Fuck Joe Biden" is the chant that unifies both fan bases at college tackle football games across the slave states. It is keener electoral strategy to withdraw from the slave states as determinedly as he withdrew from Afghanistan. I'll take an electorate divided 51.3% blue 46.9% red all damn day.

I struck a blow on the wooden plank a yard from the nail when I wrote that Afghanistan and COVID-19 are not going to hurt Biden. Trump was pro-withdrawal; Trump and his party are pro-Covid. Biden withdrew from Afghanistan, prompting Ann Coulter to write "You have my vote" (if you just build The Wall *eye roll*). Trump Disgustings don't want to get vaxed. Spanish Flu Conquest Day was not mourned in Trump World, it was proof that the U.S.A. was still #1 in something. We broke our own record. Biden's stumbles and bumbles are unintentional lure to the one man who can guarantee Biden's reelection: the real McCoy. That is as far as I am willing to go.

You remember, this was very early on, some of the Best People speculated that Trump was crazy as a fox. He didn't really mean a wall, a nice fence would do, or even a beaded curtain. Don't take him so literally! In his button comparisons with Kim Jong-un, Trump "didn't really mean" he was going to unleash "fire and fury". Well he did mean both. We have Steve Bannon's word for it that Trump says exactly what he means. He's too dumb to play crazy, he is crazy.

I see the same problem in attributing three-dimensional chess to Biden's Withdrawal from Hell. He didn't intend that. He stupidly left the details to his staff and went on vacation to Camp David. They about had to get a warrant to get him back. He didn't call Macron and Johnson and Merkel from calculation. He done forgot. Called them soon as his aides dragged him back.

He thought he was DONE with COVID, had killed that sucker dead. Didn't notice Delta dawning over his shoulder, scorching the path he had just trod until it was nipping him at his heels.

He left the Aussies to notify the French that their sub deal was canceled, to American biz' benefit. That would be consistent with leaving the details to subordinates. But his staff said they tried to have a meeting with the French. Then said we and the Aussies deliberately didn't give them advance notice because they were convinced the French would "sabotage" (French word, sabotage) the new deal. Those are the type of conflicting, mutually exclusive explanations we got from Trump. I just don't think it was important enough to Biden to try to tell the French ahead of time. Calculation never entered into it. But to Bruni this was the art of the steal: "They have surely calculated that French outrage isn’t a serious political liability." Used in that way "surely" means nobody told Bruni that, it had to be that because the alternative is that Biden didn't care. They have "calculated" after the fact that French outrage isn't a serious political thing. And that is where Bruni and I come to agreement from the most divergent paths. None of these things is hurting Biden, COVID may yet bite him as it bit Trump fatally.

So aside from a pastel American First I don't think Biden is being crazy as a fox, that he is wrapping competence in incompetence to throw 'em the old curve ball, I think Biden was just being himself, somewhat "Trumpy", too Trumpy for me.

France’s foreign minister...said that Biden’s decision to negotiate a secret submarine deal with Australia that nullified a lucrative French arrangement reminded him “a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do.”

And nothing about Biden is ever supposed to remind anyone of Donald Trump...

That was the promise. That was the point. I admire a great deal about Biden, but let’s be honest: He was elected president primarily because he held himself up as the antithesis of, and antidote for, Trump.

I’d wager that most of the Americans who voted excitedly for Biden were voting even more excitedly against Trump. And that...created a special set of burdens for — Biden’s presidency...Biden was supposed to perform an exorcism. Never was the devil to be discernible in anything he did.

But he pulled out of Afghanistan without the degree of consultation, coordination and competence that allies expected, at least of any American president not named Trump.

...As David Sanger wrote in The Times, some allies are “publicly accusing him of perpetuating elements of former President Donald J. Trump’s ‘America First’ approach..."

And Biden’s return of hundreds of desperate Haitian migrants to Haiti...also seems Trumpy to many observers.
...
But here’s the thing about Trump’s possession of America: It was made possible by untended sentiments among many voters that haven’t evaporated, on predispositions that endure. And Biden and his advisers know it.

They know the political danger of anything that smacks of an open-border policy, of a moral generosity toward newcomers that can be perceived or spun as a dereliction of duty to longtimers. They know the peril of positioning America as the world’s savior, which can look to some voters like a surrender of national interest — and a sacrifice of American service members — to some highfalutin ideal.

They have surely calculated that French outrage isn’t a serious political liability, not if that emotion arises from the United States having claimed its own payday. They no doubt divine ample electoral rationale for some America First maneuvering without the accompanying America First chest thumping.
...
All in all, Biden is a far cry from Trump. Hallelujah. But that doesn’t mean that he’s untouched by Trump...

Painting my balcony deep pink 7:19 pm.

7:20 pm

Picture frame

Croatian police solve mystery of woman with no memory found on rock

With A Spotlight On Gabby Petito, The Parents Of 2 Missing Black Men Call For Action

September 22, 202112:31 PM ET

You had this one comin' Fourth Estaters.

There's been national focus over the last few days on the unfolding story of Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old white woman whose death was ruled a homicide on Tuesday, nearly two weeks after she was last seen on a cross-country road trip with her now-missing boyfriend.

Media coverage of the case is intense and, as some people have pointed out, disproportionate to the kind of attention typically given to missing Indigenous women and people of color.

Reason #4 Why I Love Nebraska People

Stephen Brooks

@StephenM_Brooks

 · Sep 21

Mel Tucker said Nebraska requested around 2,500 tickets. "I don't expect there will be one more Husker body in the crowd than that."

He's basically calling for the crowd to fill the stadium, be loud and create a big-time environment.

Show this thread

🔴 Yo Dino 🌽

@brandonfrank09

That's it I'm going to East Lansing

Nebraska Alumni Association

@NebraskaAlumni

·

Sep 21

Oh?

Abbie

@AbbieSomething

Clearly Mel has forgotten Colorado...

Dan Corey

@DanCorey_

Is that so? #Huskers

[Colorado Folsom field in 2019)

Dyana

The United States could plunge into an immediate recession if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling and the country defaults on its payment obligations this fall, according to...Moody’s Analytics...

Lawmakers in both parties agree that the debt ceiling must be raised to avoid economic calamity, but their standoff over how to do so has intensified. Despite the national debt increasing by close to $8 trillion under President Donald Trump, Republicans have been adamant that they will refuse to help Democrats increase the debt ceiling, in opposition to President Biden’s spending plans.

...

“This economic scenario is cataclysmic. … The downturn would be comparable to that suffered during the financial crisis” of 2008, said the report, written by Zandi and Bernard Yaros, assistant director and economist at Moody’s Analytics.

The debt limit is the maximum amount of debt that Treasury can issue to pay the country’s bills. It was suspended from 2019 through the beginning of last month under a deal reached during the Trump administration. If Congress fails to increase the debt limit, Treasury would be unable to pay debts as they come due. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said earlier this week that such a default would be unprecedented in U.S. history. Moody’s “best estimate” is that this date is Oct. 20, although Treasury has not given a more precise day.

At that point, Treasury officials would face excruciating choices, such as whether to fail to pay $20 billion owed to seniors on Social Security, or to fail to pay bondholders of U.S. debt — a decision that could undermine faith in U.S. credit and permanently drive federal borrowing costs higher.

Failure to raise the debt limit would have catastrophic impacts on global financial markets. Interest rates would spike as investors demand a higher rate of return for the risk of taking on U.S. debt given uncertainty about repayment. An increase in interest rates would ripple through the economy, raising costs not only for taxpayers but also for consumers and other borrowers. The value of the U.S. dollar would also decline long term as investors questioned the security of purchasing U.S. treasuries. The cost of auto and home loans would rise.

“Stock prices would be cut almost in one-third at the worst of the selloff, wiping out $15 trillion in household wealth,” the Moody’s report finds. 

Both parties remain confident a debt ceiling breach will be avoided. Both White House officials and GOP lawmakers have insisted in recent days that the debt ceiling will be raised or suspended. But they are sharply divided over how that will occur.

...

Historically, both parties have come together to ensure the debt ceiling gets raised. Turning it into a political pawn would jeopardize international faith in the U.S. government, driving the cost of borrowing higher, even if it is not breached.

 No recent fight in the halls of Congress has quite carried the same stakes as this one...

...
...The stalemate threatens to leave Congress with little time to resolve a set of disputes that could destabilize global markets.

The first deadline arrives Sept. 30, at which point Congress must strike a deal to fund the government or critical federal services could cease Oct. 1. Millions of federal employees could see interruptions to their pay. Federal agencies that perform critical tasks in homeland security, law enforcement and housing could stop paying workers indefinitely. National parks and monuments also may close.

...there is little precedent for a sudden halt in government functions during a public health crisis. The U.S. government plays a leading role in monitoring the virus’s spread and coordinating vaccines and testing, all the while distributing billions of dollars in housing relief and other aid programs — working through agencies that are traditionally severely affected during a shutdown.

Three years ago [Dec. 22 2018-Jan. 25, 2019], a shutdown under President Donald Trump’s watch also cleaved a hole in the U.S. economy: JPMorgan Chase estimated then that the country lost $1.5 billion each week that Washington remained at a standstill.

A shutdown in 2021, however, could have even greater economic effects at a time when the Biden administration is still grappling with a pandemic that at one point caused widespread, Depression-era unemployment. Adding to the burden, lawmakers had hoped in the latest funding measure to authorize billions of dollars to respond to two recent, deadly hurricanes that battered the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard. Those dollars now remain in jeopardy, along with a third priority to help resettle Afghan refugees who left their home country as the Taliban seized on a messy U.S. withdrawal.

Only one Senate Republican, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.), has signaled an interest in breaking ranks and casting a vote in favor of the spending — citing the impact of Hurricane Ida on his home state.
...
The next blow could come days later, in mid-October, when the U.S. government stands to breach the debt ceiling absent action from Congress. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other top Biden administration officials have urgently referred to the prospect as a financial doomsday, saying it puts U.S. credit at risk and could plunge the economy back into the recession from which it only recently re-emerged.

The last prolonged standoff over government funding [Dec. 22, 2018-Jan. 25, 2019] prompted Fitch Ratings, a credit agency, to warn at the time that it threatened the U.S. government’s rating, making its debts more expensive...

Congress appeared at a complete standstill, with no serious negotiations underway and no effort on the part of the White House to break the logjam with the GOP. Instead, both sides have continued to trade rhetorical barbs, raising the prospects of financial calamity.
...
...Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has ignored the attacks, as his party hopes to use the fight over the debt ceiling as a way to delay Democrats from securing as much as $3.5 trillion in new spending that Biden seeks. He said GOP lawmakers would have supported an extension of government funding along with new disaster relief if only Democrats had not coupled it with an increase in the federal borrowing limit.
...
In recent days, Democratic lawmakers have reassured they will not allow the country to default. Some have said they could ultimately take special legislative maneuvers to bypass the Republican blockade and adopt the debt ceiling increase on their own.

But the process could take days that Democrats simply do not have, meaning at least a partial or short-term government shutdown is possible even if Congress staves off a more apocalyptic financial meltdown.

 

U.S. careens toward 

shutdown, financial 

crisis amid 

congressional stalemate

Democrats and Republicans are far apart ahead of key deadlines that could unleash economic havoc

U.S. default this fall 

would cost 6 million 

jobs, wipe out $15 

trillion in wealth, 

study says

GOP signals refusal to help Democrats raise debt ceiling, in opposition to President Biden’s spending plans

 

Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 (Delta) Variant Infections Among Incarcerated Persons in a Federal Prison — Texas, July–August 2021

Early Release / September 21, 2021

What is added by this report?


During a COVID-19 outbreak involving the Delta variant in a highly vaccinated incarcerated population, transmission rates were high, even among vaccinated persons. Although attack rates, hospitalizations, and deaths were higher among unvaccinated than among vaccinated persons, duration of positive serial test results was similar for both groups...

...

During July 2021, a COVID-19 outbreak involving the Delta variant was identified in a federal prison in Texas, infecting...74%...incarcerated persons in two housing units...The attack rate was higher among unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons 93% versus 70%. Four persons were hospitalized, three of whom were unvaccinated, and one person died, who was unvaccinated.

...

Attack rates...among persons vaccinated ≥4 months before the outbreak...89%) than among those vaccinated 2 weeks to 2 months before the outbreak 61%.

So in this case vaccine efficacy waned over 4 months to such extent that the vaccinated were infected (89%) nearly as fully as the unvaxed (93%).

Good morning conquistadors.

Look at this:

225? 225?! You're out of your fucking minds. That's you CDC, you're out of your minds. When I was doing this earnestly, nightly, it took me a little while to understand that despite labels like "New Deaths" these were the reported numbers, not the actual number who died in a particular day. It took me longer as I recall in addition to understand "reporting lag." Remember that? Initially I waxed poetic about the "architecture" created by the bar graphs, the Manhattan skyline, the Golden Gate Bridge. "Gosh, there's a pattern to these bars, wonder why?" Because the fucking reporters don't work weekends! By the time it gets published from the desks of the CDC or Johns Hopkins or the New York Times, it's a Sunday-Monday lag. Yesterday was Sunday. Ergo, 225.

CDC is going to recommend policy on these numbers, folks! You cannot make policy on a bed of bullshit. I gave up with the Faux Labor Day numbers. 

You see the disparity between new REPORTED deaths and the 7-day daily average? Over five times! The Quasi-Official New York Times disparity is worse.

I expected this to be Spanish Flu Conquest Day, thus the image on the header and the post now superseded by fourteen minutes. I bet it's not. The Times has not yet posted their daily numbers for today, Lag-Monday, but I don't...The Times just this moment published the reported numbers for Sept. 20, 2,087 deaths quasi-officially. CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA! WE ARE WORSE THAN 100 YEARS AGO! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

HAPPY SPANISH FLU CONQUEST DAY!

Representing the failure to do better controlling a virus after over 100 years, or to count better. 

500,000-850,000 were killed in the U.S. by Spanish Flu 1918-19. The most commonly accepted number is 675,000. COVID-19 has now killed over 675,000 by the counts of the three most reputable sources, CDC, JHU, NYT, but the figures differ slightly by source.

We're just not very good.

 

 

Man Hooks Onto Dead Body While Fishing in Central Park

Central Park is the center of action in New York City. There’s the Maniac. Dead bodies. If you go to New York you have to go to Central Park.

Congresswoman Cori Bush
@RepCori
·
Sep 17
Had a tough conversation with a constituent about whether the universal pre-K that we’re working to include in the reconciliation package will include snacks.

Is it news if a person is still dead a week after he was killed?

There’s a woman missing. There have been headlines about this for about a week, so I guess she’s been missing that long.

Beto O’Rourke Tries Again

If it’s an even-numbered year you can count on Beto to run for somethin’. The 2018 loser (close, enticingly close) to Senator Rafael Edward Cruz of Canada and later Cancun, and the loser (non-starter, really) in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Beto has been registering as many Democrats as possible and dangling a 2022 run for governor of the Purple Star state that has frozen the field. Beto also is the one who made impassioned pleas to candidate Joe Biden to go big in Texas in 2020. Joe said “No” and IllegiTrump won the state with the same vote percentage he had in ‘16. Beto is trying to be the Stacey Abrams of Texas. T’ain’t gonna work. 

Beto is still mezmerized by 2018. He came oh so close and in his mind Texas is going to go purple yesterday. This is what Beto misses: Cruz is the only Republican in Texas who can be beaten by a Demo. He is the most hated man in D.C. and beloved nowhere, not even in Texas.  Lucifer is unique and he really was vulnerable. 

What possessed Beto to run for prez is beyond rational comprehension. 

And he’s not running against Cruz for governor, he’s running against Greg Abbott, an infinitely less infuriating personality with less duplicity than Cruz. Abbott’s popularity has taken a hit but Beto should have passed up his 2020 fix, passed on this run for guv and gone after a rematch against Lucifer in 2024. But Beto didn’t do either of those things. He ran—for president(?!?!)—in 2020 and is now running for governor in ‘22. He has set himself up to be a three-straight election loser. There’s no caselaw on this but political jurists have pretty clearly signaled that one L is no biggie, two becomes a prob, and at three, you’re approaching Harold Stassen territory. If he had not run  for president he could take a flier on 2022 and then, assuming he lost, madke his last stand in Armageddon in 2024. But he didn’t. And now his last stand is against Greg Abbott? Unforced error there, Beto. Foot fault. Mistake.

I am so fucking pissed right now. I want Manchin OUT of the Democratic Party. I want a real Democrat to primary his smelly ass. I never would want to work with him again were I in Congress. He is an ASSHOLE.

WWAOCD

Nothing! Nothing since Sept. 2(???):

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

@AOC

Manchin has weekly huddles w/ Exxon & is one of many senators who gives lobbyists their pen to write so-called “bipartisan” fossil fuel bills.

It’s killing people. Our people. At least 12 last night. Sick of this “bipartisan” corruption that masquerades as clear-eyed moderation.

 · Sep 2

"What Would AOC Do?" Honestly, I ask myself that question all the time.

 

Manchin, With Close Ties to Fossil Fuels, Will Craft U.S. Climate Plan

Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Mr. Manchin has already emerged as the crucial up-or-down vote in a sharply divided Senate when it comes to Mr. Biden’s push to pass a $3.5 trillion budget bill that could reshape the nation’s social welfare network. But Mr. Biden also wants the bill to include an aggressive climate policy that would compel utilities to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to wind, solar or nuclear energy, sources that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.

...

But Mr. Manchin is also closely associated with the fossil fuel industry. His beloved West Virginia is second in coal and seventh in natural gas production among the 50 states. In the current election cycle, Mr. Manchin has received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator...

He profits personally from polluting industries: He owns stock valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage firm which he founded in 1988. He gave control of the firm to his son, Joseph, after he was elected West Virginia secretary of state in 2000. Last year, Mr. Manchin made $491,949 in dividends from his Enersystems stock, according to his Senate financial disclosure report.

“It says something fascinating about our politics that we’re going to have a representative of fossil fuel interests crafting the policy that reduces our emissions from fossil fuels,” said Joseph Aldy, who helped craft former President Barack Obama’s climate change bill and now teaches at Harvard.

...

Mr. Manchin has also made clear that he does not support legislation that would eliminate the burning of those fossil fuels — particularly coal and natural gas.

Now, Mr. Manchin is preparing to write the climate portion of the budget bill in a way that would keep natural gas flowing to power plants, according to people familiar with his thinking. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss it.

Mr. Manchin does support some climate measures proposed by Mr. Biden, but is working to ensure they protect and extend the use of coal and natural gas. He agrees with the president that communities dependent on fossil fuels deserve financial support as the country transitions to green energy. And he is a booster of carbon capture sequestration, a nascent technology that collects carbon emissions from smokestacks and buries them in the ground. If it were to become commercially viable, that technology could allow industries to continue to burn coal, oil and gas.

But the most powerful climate mechanism in the budget bill — and the one that Mr. Manchin intends to reshape — is a $150 billion program designed to replace most of the nation’s coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear power over the next decade. Known as the Clean Electricity Performance Program, it would pay utilities to ratchet up the amount of power they produce from zero-emissions sources, and fine those that don’t.

...

Mr. Manchin’s version is widely expected to have less ambitious renewable energy requirements for electric power companies. His version could also reward utilities that build new power plants designed to burn natural gas. While it emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal, natural gas is still a major contributor to global warming.

Fossil fuel lobbyists, utility executives and West Virginia business leaders have been meeting, calling and emailing Mr. Manchin and his staff in an effort to shape the bill.

...

“While this will fall far short of what President Biden wants, it could still be the largest action Congress has ever taken on climate change,” Mr. Aldy, the former Obama climate adviser, said.

...

Among the industry executives to whom Mr. Manchin is listening closely is Nick Akins, the head of American Electric Power, an Ohio-based electric utility that serves 11 states, including West Virginia, and relies on West Virginia coal for many of its power plants.

The two men have a long working relationship and spoke earlier this month — each man has the other’s cellphone number.

Mr. Akins said he would like Mr. Manchin to slow the pace at which electric utilities are required to migrate from dirty to clean fuels, and eliminate fines against power companies that fail to switch to clean electricity sources.

...

“And I don’t like the penalty — we already have all the impetus in the world to continue to this clean energy transition,” Mr. Akins added.

Mr. Aldy said removing fines would drastically weaken the bill. “The penalty on pollution is really important,” he said. “All the analyses show that you get big reductions in carbon emissions if you have a penalty on polluting. Take that away, and all you have is another government subsidy for renewable energy.”

Mr. Manchin is also listening closely to his constituents. Earlier this month, the senator spent two days at the annual meeting of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, convened at the lavish Greenbrier resort, where “people were lining up to talk to him about this,” said Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and another old friend of Mr. Manchin’s. “This is something that has been talked about in West Virginia business circles probably every day within the last two or three weeks.”

Those conversations didn’t challenge the reality of climate change or whether the government should act to combat it, Mr. Roberts said. The main theme was “slow down,” he said.

“It wouldn’t offend me at all if you said, ‘Yes, it’s getting hotter and people need to run their air conditioning more.’ And Joe Manchin feels the same way,” Mr. Roberts said.

“But we think we have to be realistic about the elimination of carbon emissions,” he continued. “We’re not really sure that the combination of demand and physics with world market issues will mean that we can go to zero emissions from electricity by 2035, like President Biden wants.”

In May, the world’s leading energy agency said nations must immediately stop approving new coal-fired power plants and new oil and gas fields, and quickly phase out gasoline-powered vehicles to avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change...On Friday, the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said “the world is on a catastrophic pathway.”

Environmentalists and progressives are demanding urgent federal action and are concerned that Democrats have only a short window before the 2022 elections when they could lose control of Congress.

As soon as I saw the headline I thought "What does AOC say?' I can only imagine. Will check her twitter feed when done with this BULLSHIT.

...

The proposals now being weighed by Mr. Manchin “would keep fossil fuels as a major engine of the economy for longer than the climate can bear it,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University.

The Decline and Fall: America's Era Ends

The 21st century began with George W. Bush's stolen 2000 election. A year later America suffered the most devastating attack on its soil since Pearl Harbor. Bush launched the Twenty Years War in response and rode as a war president to reelection. 9/11 birthed a shadow legal system. the FISA court, private military contractors who did not have to follow the law, foreign torture sites like Guantanamo to avoid compliance with the Constitution, unprecedented spying on Americans by their government, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression--We had not gotten better in managing capitalism in almost a century. We then elected one of our greatest presidents, Barack Obama, who steered us out of the economic meltdown and renewed and forged ties with foreign allies. But then another stolen election which no one saw coming, and the Catastrophe, which ended in, and probably because of, the outbreak of a virus that neither he nor his successor, Joe Biden, could bring to an end any better than Woodrow Wilson had the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918/19. We have not gotten better in managing an epidemic in over a century. 

We are less able to manage our affairs than at any time in our history. Democracy, like capitalism, is an engine that runs on the fuel of competition. We no longer have a competitive two-party system. The Catastrophe struck Democracy in America a fatal blow when it infected the Republican Party and  transformed it into an authoritarian cult of personality. There is no longer an alternative to Biden but within one party. And right now, we are on the cusp of, and within days of surpassing, the estimated 675,000 killed by the Spanish Flu. Spanish Flu Conquest Day has arrived. America's era is at an end.

Yesterday the undersigned typed:

#6 Clemson 14 Georgia Tech 8. There's an even chance Clemson will drop in the polls with that horror show.

And,

#9 Ohio State beat winless Tulsa 41-20 in the Horseshoe. What, three TD's isn't good enough? Well, let me turn the question around on you "Buckeyes" fans: Do you think your team is going to rise from ninth with this win? Like AP voters are going to go, "Whoa, I guess those questions after the loss to Oregon have been answered, yessir!"? No. First of all you didn't even cover the spread. Second, you gave up TWENTY points at home to TULSA. Get outta here.

In fact, today AP voters dropped Clem three spots and OSU one.

Joe Biden was the greatest president in U.S. history through the first 100 days. Since then he ranks with the two worst of the 20th century, Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter, though well above 46-1, as failed presidents.

This week, huh? Impeccable timing by Biden.

President Joe Biden goes before the United Nations this week…when allies are becoming increasingly skeptical about how much U.S. foreign policy really has changed since Donald Trump left the White House.

…

Through it all, Biden will be the subject of a quiet assessment by allies: Has he lived up to his campaign promise to be a better partner than Trump?

…

“It [the submarine deal] was really a stab in the back. It looks a lot like what Trump did.”-France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian

Alliance

More Power 5 teams are playing their conference schedules so only inter-conference records here. 

B1G 5-4

The B1G had the best day relatively, and a very, very good day objectively.

Best Win: #10 PSU at home over #22 Auburn. Best game of the day. Best game of the year so far.

Damn Good: 

MSU over #24 UMG

Minn over Colorado

Worst Loss: Northwestern at Duke, which isn't bad at all.

ACC 5-4

The inter-conference record (excluding wins over (but not losses to) pay-to-plays is identical to the B1G's, which demonstrates that the "bottom line" tells false lies. This was a bad day for the ACC.

Best Win: Duke over Northwestern, which does not inspire chants of We Want Bama.

Worst Loss: A ranked team at home getting blown out by an unranked but Power 5 team vs an unranked team losing close at home to a non-Power team. Hmm hmm hmm.

#24 UMG 17-38 to Michigan State.

Runner-up (close):

PAC 1-5

The PAC was a DISAC yesterday. Two of their ranked teams lost, one to a No-Power..

Best Win, Their ONLY win: Stanford at Vandy. Which does not inspire chants of We Want Bama.

Worst Loss. Where to start.

#13 UCLA at home to "Raisins."

First Runner-Up:
Arizona to lower div Northern Arizona

Second Runner-Up:
Colorado whitewashed 30-0 at home to Minnesota.

Dishonorable Mention

Utah losing at non-Power 5 San Diego State

Secret Talks and a Hidden Agenda: Behind the U.S. Defense Deal That France Called a ‘Betrayal’

In meeting after meeting with their French counterparts, U.S. officials gave no heads-up about their plans to upend France’s largest defense contract.

The United States and Australia went to extraordinary lengths to keep Paris in the dark as they secretly negotiated a plan to build nuclear submarines, scuttling France’s largest defense contract and so enraging President Emmanuel Macron that on Friday he ordered the withdrawal of France’s ambassadors to both nations.

Mr. Macron’s decision was a stunning and unexpected escalation of the breach between Washington and Paris, on a day that the two countries had planned to celebrate an alliance that goes back to the defeat of Britain in the Revolutionary War.

… the Australians approached the new administration soon after President Biden’s inauguration and said they had concluded that they had to get out of a $60 billion agreement with France to supply them with a dozen attack submarines.The conventionally powered French subs, the Australians feared, would be obsolete by the time they were delivered. They expressed interest in seeking a fleet of quieter nuclear-powered submarines based on American and British designs that could patrol areas of the South China Sea with less risk of detection.

But it was unclear how they would terminate the agreement with France, which was already over budget and running behind schedule.

“They told us they would take care of dealing with the French,” one senior U.S. official said.

[Thus we see here a repeating facet of Biden incompetence. He gets the underlying substantive point right, but he does not follow through on implementation. He does not communicate. He leaves communication to subordinates, Blinken, Milley and Austin on Afghanistan, Walensky and Fauci on COVID-19, Australia here.]

…
“Military resources are finite. Doing more in one area means doing less in others.”-Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security

It also apparently means hiding negotiations from some of your closest allies.

By the time the Biden administration began engaging Australia and Britain seriously about its emerging strategy to counter China, a three-year-old contract worth $60 billion or more for a dozen submarines, to be constructed largely by the French, was already teetering, American officials said. The submarines were based on a propulsion technology that was so limited in range, and so easy for the Chinese to detect, that it would be obsolete by the time the first submarines were put in the water, perhaps as long as 15 years from now.

There was an obvious alternative: the kind of nuclear-powered submarines deployed by the Americans and the British. But American and Australian officials agreed that if the French caught wind of the fact that the plug was going to be pulled on one of the biggest defense contracts in their history, they almost certainly would try to sabotage the alternative plan, according to officials who were familiar with the discussions between Washington and Canberra.

[That could be justification for the secrecy but just throwing out “sabotage” without particulars is too facile. If Wash-Aus want that to float they better demonstrate its seaworthiness first.]

So they decided to keep the work to a very small group of officials, and made no mention of it to the French, even when Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken met their French counterparts in June.

Mr. Biden made no mention of the plans during a chummy chat with Mr. Macron at a summit meeting in June in Cornwall, where they sat in lawn chairs by the sea and talked about the future of the Atlantic alliance.

[Friends just don’t play friends like that.]

…

 According to French officials, Mr. Blinken also stayed silent on June 25 when his French counterpart, Jean-Yves Le Drian, welcomed him back to Paris — where Mr. Blinken spent his high school years — and extolled the importance of the French submarine deal.

And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”

[Argh. That’s awful.]

And as recently as Aug. 30, when the French and Australian defense and foreign ministers held their annual “consultation,” they issued a joint communiqué that said the two countries were committed to deepening cooperation in the defense industry and “underlined the importance of the Future Submarine program.”

[Ditto]

By that time, the Australians not only knew the program was dead, they had nearly sealed the agreement in principle with Washington and London.

American officials insist it was not their place to talk to the French about their business deal with Australia. But now, in light of the blowup, some officials say they regret they did not insist that the Australians level with the French about their intentions earlier.

[Not our place *eye roll*. We were party to the deal, were we not? Gimme a break.]

"There has been lying, duplicity, a major breach of trust and contempt. This will not do. Things are not going well between us, they're not going well at all.”

French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Sometimes You’re the Bug

Yesterday was repetitive schaden for me.