The (second) Unfortunate ex-Mrs. Harris sent me the below today with a twinkling text that POJO had "repeated his gaffe".

President Biden

@POTUS

·

10h

United States government official

A big win for the American people. There’s no better day than today to sign up for quality, affordable health care at http://HealthCare.gov. With millions of people relying on the Affordable Care Act for coverage, it remains, as ever, a BFD. And it’s here to stay.

Quote Tweet

The White House

@WhiteHouse

United States government organization

· 10h

Today’s Supreme Court ruling once again underscored the incredible strength of the ACA. A record 31 million people have enrolled in health care through the law – 1.2 million more signed up using the special enrollment period, open through 8/15. Sign up at http://HealthCare.gov.

I did not know what she was talking about and read the Biden's tweet two or three times. Turns out that in 2010 when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law Vice President Biden introduced him but before turning the mic over to Obama could be heard whispering to him "this is a Big Fucking Deal." 

I googled Professor Bailyn a couple of times after I last read Ideological Origins, holding my breath each time as the search engine loaded. "Was" or "is"? He was in his 90's. But then I stopped. I thought to do it several times since but didn't. Dread. When I picked up Ideological Origins again just now I scolded myself into checking and found out.

Bernard Bailyn died on August 7, 2020. I entirely missed it.

Ahead of his first meeting as president with Vladimir Putin, President Biden said Putin that was a worthy adversary for a Russian, a comment welcomed as respectful in Moscow.

The Vote Was Rigged!

Southern Baptists Narrowly Head Off Ultraconservative Takeover

STOP THE STEAL!

Trumpie, when you gonna 📢 you’re running for the GOP nomination for prez in 2024?

COVID-19 BIDEN+145,146 (June 14, 15)

All categories of COVID-19 across all metrics are flattening.

Cases have changed -20% on the two-week average.

Hospitalizations are down -22%.

Deaths have flattened twice as close toward zero as the other two, at 10%.

A bad sign, +'s and -'s, as New York and California opened today.

Cases have remained on a stable plateau of a little over 14k/day each iteration of the 7-day daily average since June 6. The average June 9-15 is 13,704, June 8-14 it was 14,018, and June 7-13 14,291 to give the last three figures.

The Hospitalizations daily average over seven days is incomplete on the two titled dates.

Deaths daily 7-day average since June 1 is under 400/day. The last three iterations are 340/day June 9-15, 339 June 9-14, and 361 June 7-13.

Vaccines have also plateaued at just over 1M/day since the June 1-7 iteration of the 7-day daily average. That strikes me as almost heroic given the resistance to vaccination, it may not be heroic but that was my reaction. President Biden is still on track to fall short of his 70% 18+ age, at least one shot goal on July 4. The New York Times projects he will hit 68%.

Summarizing, from where I sit: we are not able to outrun the virus at 1.1M-1.2M daily shots when we have near fully reopened. Exactly one year ago there were 22,123 Cases June 9-15, 2020. Cases then were just beginning their summer ascent to 66.6k. We are not in for a repeat of the summer of 2020, Cases were on a smooth clear descent this year before leveling at 13,524 June 6, the first accretion of the floor we have had since, but the raw numbers from 2020 and 2021 are just too close for comfort. As the country reopens now, as it did then, the floor that Cases are on now will be raised. We are likely to see a spur rising off that floor as well, with the two largest states fully reopened. There are fewer hosts for the virus now, to be sure, but the burgeoning immunity, natural and by injection, has not prevented a hard floor from being laid down, nor that floor from being raised slightly almost as a single piece since May 30-June 5.

Deaths one year ago were an average 725/day and on a pretty smooth, for Deaths, descent to 481 June 25-July 1. This year Deaths were on a more typical herky-jerky descent from April 1-7, 2021 (730) to May 26-June 1 (380) when the first accretion of the current bumpy, rock-strewn plateau of ~400/day was laid. 

To change the metaphor, the tide raises or lowers all boats. The tide is ebbing now but its retreat is slowing and the water will rise again, not as a Fourth Wave but steadily, with some surface turbulence, occasionally whitecaps, and this will continue through the summer, into the fall when schools and close gatherings indoors and out return, into the winter when the annual flu season will chop the water, and through the winter into the spring of 2022 when many more people will be immunized and will begin to end their cloistering and to disperse.

COVID-19 DEATHS+600,172

That's about the size of,

 Baltimore, Maryland, the 32nd-largest city in the United States.

RCLSX European Championship Series

 

This is a funny and charming article.

They Love the Car That People Love to Hate

The utilitarian Yugo may be the most maligned auto in history, ridiculed for its looks and its (many) flaws. “We really need tougher slander laws in this country,” one Yugo defender says.

[The] Yugo….has been called “hard to view on a full stomach”, …and “something assembled at gunpoint”.

You might go so far as to say it was “an out-and-out vile little car,” as Eric Peters did in his book “Automotive Atrocities”…

Mr. Pierce [we need tougher slander laws] is one of the Yugo’s more assertive fans, who defend the car’s reputation with the overprotective affection usually reserved for pet cats that go blind and three-legged dogs.

😂

Valerie Hansen of Columbus, Ohio… said she was attracted to the Yugo for two reasons. First, it speaks to her ancestral Balkan roots. Second, its mechanical simplicity means she can do her own repairs. “You can fix a Yugo with a butter knife and a rubber band,” she said.

😂

…
The review from the ordinarily staid Consumer Reports verged on cruelty. The engine “struggled and strained to climb highway grades in high gear.” On acceleration, “Our 0-60-m.p.h. run took 18.5 seconds.” The transmission? “Easily the worst we’ve encountered in years.” The interior was “covered with cloth that resembles towel material.”

😂

On the other hand, “it’s easy to turn on the high beams when you’re trying to signal a left turn.”

[Wait, it gets better! Wait till you read what Malcolm Bricklin says today of the Yugo.]

It’s hard to understand why anyone expected more than mere adequacy from the Yugo. It used parts from Fiat, a marque whose reputation for unreliability had led the brand to abandon America in 1983. Fiat, from Italy, was said to stand for “Fix it again, Tony.”

😂😂

In Mr. Bricklin’s telling, Pininfarina ended its contract with him as part of a deal to make the Allanté Pininfarina for Cadillac, leaving him one car short of what he promised dealers. “So I put somebody in charge of finding the cheapest car in the world”…

It was found in Yugoslavia. Mr. Bricklin went there and encountered “that piece of crap factory with 50,000 people that should have 2,000 people, 127 Communist unions,” he recalled.

But the Yugo would face a much more formidable nemesis than Communism: Jay Leno.
…
It is a tenet of the faithful that the car would have made it if not for those jokes, a staple of Mr. Leno’s “Tonight Show” routines…

“Yugo has come out with a very clever anti-theft device,” went one Leno gag. “They made their name bigger.”

… Even now car enthusiasts can summon gibes like: “You know why the Yugo has a standard rear window defogger? To keep your hands warm while you push it.”

…

When David Lang bought a Yugo GVX in 2018, one of his goals was to drive it across Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge, notorious for a Yugo that went out of control and over the side in 1989, killing the driver.

“People are like, ‘Don’t take it over the Mackinac Bridge!’” said Mr. Lang, who lives in Brown City, Mich.

It was coincidentally on an anniversary of the accident. People reacted as if he were jumping the car over 19 flaming buses, he said.

😂

“That was the first thing I did with it.”
…
Nick Bygrave…found a moss-covered 1987 GVS that had sat in a field for 20 years, but it ran. Once the moss died, it looked like a matte paint job.

😁

…
In 1986, Noce Cadillac in Chicago offered a free Yugo with a purchase of select Caddies. According to a newspaper account, no one took a Yugo.

😭

When Kevin O’Callaghan bought 39 Yugos for his students at the School of Visual Arts in New York to turn into sculptures, the highest price paid was $80. “One guy drove it to my house,” he recalled. “I asked him what he wanted for it. He said: ‘I don’t want anything for this piece of crap. I just want a ride home, and not in that car.’

… Long Island’s Hollywood Motors recently offered a 1998 GV for $6,450.

“This … this is a very, very bad idea,” reads the description. “The thing about bad ideas, though, is that more often than not, they are a lot more fun than ‘good’ or ‘safe” ideas.’” Buying the Yugo, it suggests, is equivalent to drinking flaming tequila shots. The car is now listed as sold.

… owners say the Yugo is less troublesome and more charming than commonly thought. When Mr. Bygrave planned a trip from Ohio to New York, his boss — who owns a Yugo parts store, remember — told him, “I don’t think this is a good idea.” Mr. Bygrave wrote “NYC OR BUST” on the rear window with a craft store marker and headed out in a blizzard.

After 11 hours, “when I pulled into New York, people were honking, a cop car ran the siren, a guy in a dump truck was filming us with a phone,” he said. “My cheeks hurt from smiling.”

AH!

In 1992, the Yugo succumbed to compound wounds from reviewers, comedians, declining sales, a recall due to emissions standards and bankruptcy. But until 1999, some argued that the car would make a comeback when Yugoslav civil unrest settled. “And then NATO put five missiles into the factory,” Mr. Bricklin said, “but other than that ….”

Oh 👍👏👐 🎉 to Roy Furchgott of the Times for this fun.

I am going to be the asshole here, is is my métier. The Yugo is not the most maligned car in history. That accolade belongs, hands down, to its Eastern Bloc cousin, the East German Trabant. Called "a spark plug with a roof,"

The Trabant “LIMOUSINE”! 😂

The 1980s model had no tachometer, no indicator for either the headlights or turn signals, no fuel gauge, no rear seat belts, no external fuel door, and drivers had to pour a mix of gasoline and oil directly under the bonnet/hood.[3]
…
The Trabant's build quality was poor,[13]reliability was terrible,[10][11][14] and it was loud, slow, and poorly designed.[3]
…
It took 21 seconds to accelerate from zero to its top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph).[15][16]

The engine produced a very smoky exhaust and was a significant source of air pollution: nine times the hydrocarbons and five times the carbon-monoxide emissions of the average 2007 European car.

… Because the Trabant had no fuel pump, its fuel tank was above the motor so fuel could reach the carburettor by gravity; this increased the risk of fire in front-end accidents. 😂 Earlier models had no fuel gauge, and a dipstick was inserted into the tank to determine how much fuel remained.

Known for its dull colour scheme and cramped, uncomfortable ride, the Trabant is an object of ridicule for many Germans and is regarded as symbolic of the fall of the Eastern Bloc.[19]Known as a "spark plug with a roof" because of its small size, the car did gain public affection.

The Wilipedia caption to this photo: “ Many Trabants like this one, photographed in Leipzig in 1990, were abandoned after 1989.”

American Trabant owners celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Parade of Trabants, an annual early-November rally held in Washington, D.C.

Just wonderful. Thank you again Mr. Furchgott, thank you Yugo and Trabant.

599,928

Our best and brightest giveth and they taketh away.

At eight-something tonight Johns Hopkins count stood at 599,96-something. Now it's--see title. 

I have been tracking this all day. I actually was surprised and relieved that it wasn't at 600k when I awoke this morning. I am happy to report that my prediction last night that that mark would be hit this "morning" was incorrect. 

I remember getting frustrated with Hopkins over the give-and-take, as I have been with the New York Times. Whatever, 599,928 it is.

Analysts said the British government had concluded that Northern Ireland was crucial enough to risk jeopardizing other relationships, even with the United States.

“Johnson is willing not only to contemplate a trade war with Europe but also to ignore the very strong advice he got from Biden in private,” said Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst with the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. “He was more than willing to allow the row to overshadow Britain’s coming-out party.”

? This is something about Brexit and Northern Ireland.

Mr. Johnson and Mr. Macron had a tense exchange over post-Brexit trade arrangements for the region. British officials are demanding that the European Union change the current system — designed to avoid new barriers between Ireland, an E.U. member state, and Northern Ireland — because it says that checks on some goods flowing from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland are driving a wedge between two parts of the United Kingdom.

...The French president said later he had never questioned “the integrity of the British territory” but insisted that Britain needed to abide by the terms of the deal it signed with the European Union in 2019.

Mr. Johnson, for his part, asked Mr. Macron how he would feel if sausages could not be shipped from Toulouse to Paris.
...
The subject also came up with Mr. Biden. The national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters that “they had a candid discussion of it in private” and that the president urged the prime minister to protect the Good Friday Agreement, the 1998 accord that ended decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Tensions over trade have ignited street clashes in Belfast and other cities.
...
...an ugly clash with the European Union over Northern Ireland...dramatizes the long shadow Brexit is casting on Mr. Johnson’s effort to rebrand Britain as a vital player on the global stage. Not only did Northern Ireland poison Mr. Johnson’s talks with President Emmanuel Macron of France, but it also threatens to undermine his relationship with President Biden.

I still don't understand it. I don't understand what the 2019 Brexit deal has to do with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

...

The “sausage wars” between Britain and the European Union escalated on Sunday when a senior British official accused the bloc’s leaders of holding “offensive” views about the status of Northern Ireland.

The rift stems from something called the Northern Ireland protocol, which was designed to avoid a hard border after Brexit between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an E.U. member country. But the protocol left Northern Ireland straddling the British and E.U. trading systems, and that could lead to shortages of some products in Northern Ireland, particularly chilled meats like sausages...

The two sides have been trying for months to find a more workable arrangement, but as the deadline approaches things have grown increasingly heated...

Mr. Johnson argues that the European Union is being overzealous in its enforcement demands and inflexible in seeking solutions. The bloc’s officials have accused Britain of failing to implement the terms of a treaty Mr. Johnson himself agreed to and ratified.

Okay. The "protocol" was the 2019 Brexit thing. How does that threaten the 1998 Good Friday Agreement?

...

The dispute has widened in recent months, with President Biden warning Mr. Johnson in quite blunt terms not to undermine or renounce the protocol. That, in turn, might lead to a hard land border that could threaten the landmark 1998 Good Friday agreement...

How? Just explain to me.

Northern Ireland’s unionist and loyalist parties, [i.e. the Protestants] which favor remaining in the United Kingdom, were outraged by the protocol, calling it a “betrayal” because Mr. Johnson broke a promise never to accept a border between them and the rest of Britain.

Interesting, guys! Like Israel!

ZERO Tolerance

…with reopenings underway across the United States as the pandemic recedes, city leaders must contend with another crisis: a crime wave with no signs of ending.

They are cheerleading the return of office workers to downtowns and encouraging tourists to visit, eager to rejuvenate the economy and build public confidence. But they are also frantically trying to quell a surge of homicides, assaults and carjackings that began during the pandemic and has cast a chill over the recovery.

…

Homicide rates in large cities were up more than 30 percent on average last year, and up another 24 percent for the beginning of this year, according to criminologists.

…

In Atlanta, the rise in crime has become a driving issue in the mayoral election, causing some residents and businesses to lose confidence in the city’s leadership.

Throughout the first 18 weeks of the year, police statistics show that homicides rose 57 percent, rapes 55 percent, aggravated assaults 36 percent and auto thefts 31 percent compared with the same period last year.

…

Still, even as frustration has mounted, there was also a sense that residents did not want to return to the aggressive measures that officials had resorted to in the past, which had a long tail of consequences and a disproportionate impact on African Americans.

Tough-on-crime stances, once widely popular with voters, have had diminished support as the country has confronted disparities in the criminal justice system. Even without the consequences, criminal justice experts have questioned their effectiveness.

COVID-19 BIDEN +142, 143, 144 (June 11, 12, 13)

Damn if Cases didn't rise in the June 5th through 11th metric average. 12,895 June 10 to 14,768 June 11th. Huge jump there. Off to 14,464 June 12, 14,288 June 13 but off up, meaning the whole plateau has risen:

I know what this is about. It's summer and the entire country is open. Cases are still down a strong 29% over two weeks. I don't know what that's about. How can the two-week be down such a huge number when two seven-days are up?

Hospitalizations lag Cases and Deaths lag Hospitalizations and you'd never know there was any correlation from the H and D 7-day averages recently. The H-number is on the same smooth powdery slalom run down; D's are still an unskiable, boulder-strewn course but down the last two iterations of the 7-day metric. Hospitalizations are down 22% over two weeks ago, Deaths -23%.

599,768 cumulative Dead in the U.S. at this moment. We'll cross the 600k threshold in the morning of the 14th.

The man ahead was weaving.

The boy’s father had slowed cautiously behind. The man on the motorcycle was staying in the lane. When the boy’s father thought it was safe he slowly passed on the left. He and his wife and the boy in the back seat looked at the man on the motorcycle as they drove past.

The boy’s father frantically waved his arm out the car window to get the man on the motorcycle to stop, accelerated quickly to give distance and then stopped the car and got out, waving his arms railroad crossing style.

They put the boy between them in the front seat and the man on the motorcycle in the back. The boy turned and stared at the face of the man with no face. The red perspiration beaded and dripped slowly.

“I’m sorry. I’m getting blood all over your car," the man kept repeating.

I have such a great life and am so happy living it. 

Just cuz I do and I am, from me to you.

Christians Hate America

‘Take the Ship’: Conservatives Aim to Commandeer Southern Baptists

…an ultraconservative populist uprising of pastors from Louisiana to California threatening to overtake the country’s largest Protestant denomination.
…
Like the Trump movement within the Republican Party, a populist groundswell within the already conservative evangelical denomination is trying to install an anti-establishment leader who could wrench the church even further to the right… For three days [next week at their convention] thousands of delegates known as “messengers” — most of them white men — will fight over race, sex and ultimately the future of evangelical power in the United States.
…
Russell Moore, the denomination’s influential head of ethics and public policy, left on June 1. The popular author and speaker Beth Moore, who is not related to Mr. Moore, announced in March that she is no longer a Southern Baptist, citing the “staggering” disorientation of seeing the denomination’s leaders support Donald J. Trump, and lamenting its treatment of women. Some conservatives triumphantly celebrated both departures.
…
The rebellion in the Southern Baptist Convention both reflects and forecasts what is going on in broader society and the Republican Party, said Jemar Tisby, assistant director of narrative and advocacy at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
…
The denomination has about 14.5 million members but has been steadily shrinking for the past decade. In 2014, about 85 percent of Southern Baptists were white, 6 percent were Black and 3 percent were Latino, according to the Pew Research Center.

Southern Baptists split from their northern counterparts in 1845 in support of slavery…the denomination repudiated its role in slavery in the 1990s…
…
The Conservative Baptist Network, an increasingly influential group founded last year, released a recent video urging Baptists to “stop the drift” by coming to Nashville.
…
[In] audio recordings of meetings [among leaders]…debating how to handle [sexual] abuse [claims]…another high-placed leader, Ronnie Floyd, sa[id] his priority was not to worry about survivor reactions but rather to “preserve the base.” (In a statement, Mr. Floyd apologized and said his remarks were mischaracterized.)

Power

I hate Nicholas Nickleby. It's awful. But it's the only unread book I've had at hand so I've read 400 pages. Still hate it but what else to read?

Aside from that, for I have zillions of other read books at hand, I have been thinking, no, Kristin Labransdatter has stolen on my mind several times in the last few months. I have not picked up the book to re-read it. Ugh.

This past week The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber came to mind for some reason. I read the Wikipedia entry on it, I remembered the story very well, I had not remembered all of the psychoanalyzing by the critics that went on over it.Margo wanted to be dominated? Really? I hadn't remembered that. Sexual power, courage, cowardice, men emasculated, women emasculating them, apparently women wanting men to stop women from emasculating men and to dominate them, it is all such a goddamned tangle, men and women. This was one of the times Kristin Labransdatter stole on me, there was quite a tangle there as I remembered but didn't remember in detail so, last night, I took Kristin off my fucking bookshelf and put it on my desk to read in the morning. But when I got up I felt the need to re-read Macomber. Took Hemingway's collection of short stories down and re-read it. The synapses fired like machine guns.

Margot wants to have something on a man, first note I wrote. Oh that's what it was in Kristin! That's why I made the association of Kristin and Macomber in my mind. Margot gets something on Robert Wilson: Wilson and Francis were chasing water buffalo from a motor vehicle, not permitted, Wilson would lose his guide's license if the authorities found out. When Wilson explains this to Margot, "Well," said [Francis], and he smiled for the first time all day. "Now she has something on you." Kristin had to have something on Simon and on her father, Lavrans (not so on Erlend). Sigrid Undset took this tangle, unwrapped it, wrapped it again tight, partially unwrapped it, did everything you could do with a tangle. 

I thought...Kristin doesn't want a man to have something on her: Simon-second note. Yes, that was Kristin's twist on the tangle. Different from Margot's. Sort of. One's Norwegian, one's American. Both are women though. Misogynistic writing? But Kristin was written by a woman and is MUCHHHH more tangled than simple, murderous, American Margot.

She wanted Simon to save and protect her and Erlend but knew that she now owed him and hated that. She knew this only deep down. She then repaid, got back at, Simon.-third note.

Both women make men their thrall, "put man in a bottle," but not with sex--is it ever really sex?, Isn't sex power by other means?-fourth note. "Por um homem na garrafa”, put man in a bottle is a phrase that some African women use to describe how sex gives them power over men. What is a man before sex? A fucking irresistible force, a fucking lion. What is a man after sex? Asleep.

I then noted this remembrance: Kristin resented and maltreated Erlend, drove him away, but she was in his thrall; she needed--had to have--sex with Erlend.

That is a big difference from Margot Macomber and the African tribal women. The woman has to have the sex. Kristin's mother was the same way with Lavrans! So where's the power of the pussy?,  there is no pussy power in Kristin, there is dick power. The power play that's most going on in Kristin is the power of compromising men by accepting aid and giving aid. In Macomber the power is mostly female-on male sexual (But not entirely. Margot uses compromising information also). In Kristin, the sexual power is female.

I started reading the dog-eared pages of Kristin--I got up at 6:30 a.m. to do this.--came across the Big One, Simon coming to Oslo where Kristin was shacking up with Erlend in a brothel, to take Kristin back to Lavrans for Lavrans' honor, not hers, fuck her honor. Oh lord yes. 

P. 165: Simon gets something on Erlend, the secret tryst, Simon humiliates Erlend before Kristin's eyes, standing right there. Simon showed himself the better, braver man--Simon says the word "coward"[double underlined]-- [the theme of Macomber]--Kristin sees it and Kristin hates Simon for it. Simon does this for Lavrans honor's sake and tells Kristin she must never tell Lavrans.-note. In Macomber, Francis asks Wilson not to tell anyone about his cowardice with the lion (self-protective). Wilson asks Margot not to mention that they were chasing buffalo in a vehicle (self-interest). In Kristin, Simon asks Kristin never to tell Lavrans about the tryst (other-protective). 

I turned the page and was reading Simon saying to Kristin, "how little you understood, you his womenfolk, what a man Lavrans is. Knows not how to rule you...he was born to rule over men."(Undset's emphasis)

My eyes glanced to the facing page where I had written in the margins "others" "others" "others" "others" four times in little over the same number of paragraph. Ah. Another difference with Macomber. The characters in Kristin are always acting, on the surface, on behalf of "others," others interests, others honor. It's not straightforward self-interest like those blockhead Americans. Undset gives this others-centeredness a self-interested twist. The characters in Kristin process, e.g. "Simon is saving Erlend from the gallows" as a burden. "Now, I'm in his debt"! It's fucked up. 

In a note this morning: Before the above scene Erlend says Kristin is "afraid" and he has never seen her afraid before. (164) Francis Macomber was afraid of the lion and ran.  After Francis coolly killed two of the three water buffalo the next day as Margot watched she says, "I hated it. I hated it. I loathed it." The ride on the chase was "frightful. I've never been more frightened in my life..." The fright was seeing her husband act courageously and her relative power diminished.

If a person has power over others he or she can exercise his power and dominate others. Or she could withhold the direct exercise of power, hold it in reserve, but it’s still his. To be sexually desired is to have power. If a person wishes to augment her relative power she can acquire more. Or she could decrease the other's power. If a person has power that he or she does not wish to have, if he wishes to be dominated he could surrender his power. 

Margo Macomber had sexual and psychological power over Francis and dominated him. She exercised her power too greatly. Margot's affair with Robert Wilson was a too great exercise of her power; it led to rage-induced courage in Francis and she hated him for it. She had lost relative power by increasing his. It freed Francis. "I've never felt any such feeling."..."You know I don't think I'd ever be afraid of anything again."..."Something happened in me after we first saw the buff..."...Like a dam bursting..." "You know something did happen to me. I feel absolutely different." Francis does not even fear death now. He was too far gone now, Margot had to kill him.

Sigrid Undset inverts the typical sexual power relationship. It is the men, Erlend Nikulausson and Lavrans, who held sexual power over Kristin and her mother. Lavrans had moral power over "men" and over his wife. But Kristin would not be "ruled" by Lavrans. She had no sexual power over her father but she boomeranged Lavrans' moral power back on him. Kristin felt guilty for not being sexually pure and for betraying Lavrans' honor in the Oslo brothel. Guilt gives another person power over you. In Kristin's case in the Oslo brothel Lavrans had power he didn't know he possessed. Kristin knew, her felt guilt is power that only she (and Simon) knew Lavrans had over her. So she revealed it, wounding Lavrans, thereby diminishing his power over her, relatively increasing her share of the power between them.

When Simon's infant son (and Kristin's nephew) is dying Kristin goes and stays with Simon to help and comfort him. She stays eight days. When she makes preparations to leave Simon makes vehement attempt to dissuade Kristin but does not physically stop her from going.

"But if you would not that I should make trial of this last shift of all--"

He stood...with bowed head, and made no answer. Thereupon she said again--and knew not that a strange, nigh scornful half-smile had come about her white lips:

"Would you that I should not go?"

He turned his head aside, and she went by him...

...

This child she would save...(original emphasis)

For you too, Simon Darre, when the dearest thing you owned on earth was the stake, took at my hands more than a man may take with honour unabated--(emphasis added) 

"Would you that I should not go--?", she repeats to herself what she said to Simon.

And he had not been man enough to answer.

She "would" save this child--to make Simon her thrall. Simon "took" from her--in saving Erlend from execution!--more than an honorable man may take from a woman. That is so fucked up. I came to detest the character Kristin Labransdatter because of this. 

"Rule;" "over men". Lavrans was impotent or had performance anxiety or something with Kristin's mother early in their marriage. The mother was a c.d.b. So, is Undset writing here that Lavrans was impotent to rule over women? Hemingway is interpreted by some to write that Margot needs to be dominated, ruled; that she both likes and loathes her power over Francis. On the surface, likes her power over him; just below the surface, is contemptuous of his allowing her to dominate him and secretly wants to be dominated. "Why don't you order her to stay?" behind, Robert Wilson, who hours before has fucked Margot, asks Francis before they go out to hunt water buffalo. But Margot’s need to be dominated doesn’t prevent her from blowing Francis’ brains out from the motor vehicle on the buffalo hunt so I don't know about that dominance interpretation.

Thoughts: I am so glad I am post-sexual,  and If there is reincarnation I hope I come back as a fag.

How's your day been going so far?

Coat of arms of the town in which Kristin Labransdatter grew up showing a young woman blowing a ram's horn sound alarm to the men of town that the Scots were invading.

599,161 COVID-19 Dead in U.S.

That's Johns Hopkins' count this minute. That is since the first death on February 3, 2020. 

Projecting with the New York Times daily average we should hit 600,000 dead on Monday. We then will be 75k short of the Spanish Flu toll in 1918-1920.

It's Friday Night...

 

STOP THE STEAL!

Missouri swamp Republicans in the capitol of Jefferson City proposed a bill at the very end of the legislative session to establish a run-off election for the U.S. Senate nomination next year in the event that one Grand Old Phascist does not get 50% of the vote in the GOP primary. This is transparent attempt to steal the Party's nomination from Trump clone, former governor Eric Greitens. We hope the former president recognizes this as a direct assault on his own bulwark and intervenes to stop the steal and endorse and campaign for Greitens.

COVID-19 BIDEN+141 (June 10)

The average number of Cases/day, June 4 through 10, fell over 1k/day from the previous iteration. In the last four iterations Cases have been up, down, up, down—a perfect Fulham.

Deaths fell 30/day to 387 June 4-10 and are a more consistent up, down, down, down—like Huddlesfield Town.

For the two week period ending June 10 Cases are -42%, Hospitalizations -23% and Deaths -22%.

The greatest president in U.S. history over the first 100 days, Formula One Team Biden needs a pit stop at day 140. 

It is as if the coronavirus has infected the economy and we know that once that thing gets you hooked on one of its spikes it’s difficult to wiggle off. 

COVID is, enexpectedly, wobbling and toggling this way and that, at very low relative levels but it is getting its hooks into around 15,000 American bodies every day. The steady, seemingly inexorable decline that was its death throes has leveled in the last ten days or so. Deaths too make a herky-jerky plateau. 

This phenomenon has its twin in economic data the past two months. Job gains were a shocking ten percent or so of forecasts in April and failed to meet expectations, by a lot, too, in May. 

The canary in the coal mine for economic hospitalization ahead however is inflation. That is the metric that most clearly has analog to the virus’ spiked nodes. During the same two months inflation rose dramatically and once the spikes of inflation latch onto the body economic there is no silver bullet vaccine that confers immunity. Historically the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to choke off inflation’s oxygen, but “I can’t breathe” is as ominous for economic life as a cop with his knee compressing your windpipe is for human life. If the Fed raises interest rates it could push the still recovering economy back into recession, depress the stock market, spook emoloyers in hiring, cause unemployment, to all of which the c.w. counsels flooding the financial markets with money by lowering of interest rates which ignites inflation and erodes workers’ paychecks. There is no way out when inflation takes hold but pain. 

There are pandemic-related dislocations in the economy, for example the 25% rise in used auto sales, the third or fourth cash giveaways to Americans in the epidemic. Some economists believe those cash outlays with no strings attached are incentivizing some Anericans to stay home and not work. Both of these are rightly viewed as overwhelmingly likely to be temporary. 

But even if one takes used car prices out of the data, energy prices are increasing, and inflation is still there. We have had two consecutive months now of lower than expected job gains and higher than expected inflation. If COVID cases had risen as dramatically in the same time, Dr. Rachelle Walensky would be commtting hari-kari in her next official statement from CDC.

An extravagantly, floridly Liberal Democrat, I will have no truck with inflation. Two months is trend enough for me with a virus as intractable as inflation. The president has backed away from extending unemployment benefits in acknowledgement of its possible role in the jobs shortage but his infrastructure bill is DOA. 

The Bidens have shown themselves to be quick and nimble in response to the unexpected, determined to snuff out embers when they first detect the faintist glow. They have to be quick, nimble enough to do a 180, and decisive, now, ready at the drop of a hat to smother inflation in the crib whatever the consequences to their legislative dreams. The president is going to have to be bold in being less bold to stifle the one problem that gives cold sweats to conservative and liberal economists, policy makers, investors and main street alike: inflation.