Universal Voter Registration

The IRS could handle our voter registration. It works in Canada.

Why Reducing Emissions Is So Hard

It seems we humans tend to sabotage our own climate-improvement efforts.

The findings revealed two surprises. First, state governments' policies aimed at helping consumers improve energy efficiency had no effect on CO2 emission. Rather, states with economy-wide lower energy input per each unit of economic output (per capita gross domestic product, GDP) emitted lower levels of the greenhouse gas. Second, investment in renewable energy sources led to increased levels of CO2 emissions in the residential sector. These outcomes are evidence of a well-known phenomenon called the rebound effect that describes when people respond to saving energy by consuming more, negating the benefit of CO2 reduction.

"Lots of energy analysts tend to look at emissions as a technical problem that requires a technical solution; build more efficient vehicles, build homes to use less energy. What they don't consider is human behavior. If you've got a hybrid car, the money you save on gas might allow you to drive more," said the study's lead author Lazarus Adua, assistant professor of sociology at the U. "My goal here is to let policymakers know that this rebound effect is a problem, and they need to address it. If you're only paying attention to improving efficiency and investing in renewables, you're not going to solve the problem."

Breaking from the Herd

An interesting human social dynamic appears as people assess when to go along or go their own way in group situations.

"When we see other people hesitate before making a choice, that tells us they were conflicted, that they weren't entirely sure they were making the right decision," said Ian Krajbich, co-author of the study and professor of psychology and economics at The Ohio State University.

"That makes people less confident in the group consensus and frees them to make decisions based on their own information. That can help groups to escape bad outcomes."

Savvy leaders are probably unconsciously aware of this and strive to silence equivocation is the ranks to keep their group on track with their goals. Even more enlightened leaders can see equivocation in the ranks as a flag that a potential bad result of a decision is looming. 

More United Than They Appear

All the worry about fractures in the majority party may be more apparent than real. Even for the moderates, it's better for them if their president succeeds rather than to be the reason he doesn't.

One reason why Democrats have been so unified is that there are structural reasons to expect a majority caucus to be more cohesive than a minority one. For one thing, minority-party members’ “votes don’t make or break legislation a lot of the time,” Gregory Koger, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, told FiveThirtyEight, so “there is a little more leeway for them to break with their party.” For another, majority-party members (especially when the president is also of that party) have a clear electoral incentive to get things done. “All Democrats — regardless of whether they’re moderate or progressive — really need the Biden administration to succeed,” said Ruth Bloch Rubin, a political science professor at the University of Chicago. But on the other hand, the minority party has “competing incentives: They want the president to look ineffective but also want to bring things home to their district.”

The centrists really would be to blame. Do they want that?

the progressives are begging the centrists to meet them somewhere in the middle. The centrists — really, just the tiny handful of holdouts — are refusing to negotiate, threatening to torpedo the entire Biden presidency if they don’t get exactly what they want.

One thing that has enabled their tactics to succeed is the knee-jerk assumption by people with moderate inclinations to attribute reasonableness to any self-styled centrist posture. But nothing could be less reasonable than refusing to negotiate or articulate your position.

Hypersonic

The US Air Force has successfully tested a hypersonic missile. Such a missile goes so fast that counter-measures can't intercept it and it hits so hard that explosives are not necessary. The goal is unstoppable missiles that can maneuver at low altitude while being stealthy.

"This is a history-making moment, and this success paves the way for an affordable, long-range hypersonic system in the near term to strengthen national security," says Colin Whelan, Vice President of Advanced Technology at Raytheon Missiles & Defense. "This test proves we can deliver the first operational hypersonic scramjet, providing a significant increase in war-fighting capabilities."

Killing Tumors with Dead Bacteria

The idea is to inject dead bacteria into a tumor. The body's immune system attacks the bacteria and as a side effect it also attacks the cancer cells. Once the system is sensitized to the cancer, it begins attacking it wherever it is found in the body. This would kill the tumor as well as any metastasized cells.

"The best things about this new treatment are that it requires few dosages, is simple to administer, and has low side effects,” adds Fahrer. "It is also extremely low cost. We are looking at around $20 a dose, whereas the cost of other immunotherapies can run to $40,000. This makes the treatment accessible for patients in developing countries."

Power Problems in China

China is experiencing power shortages. We may see the effect of that in our global supply chains.

Companies in the country's industrial heartlands have been told to limit their energy consumption in order to reduce demand for power, state media has reported. And supply has been cut to some homes, reportedly even trapping people in elevators.
An "unexpected and unprecedented" power cut hit three northeastern provinces on Monday, according to the Global Times, a state-run tabloid. The newspaper reported Tuesday that power rationing in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces has "resulted in major disruptions to the daily lives of people and business operations."
Power shortages have also hit the southern province of Guangdong, a major industrial and shipping hub. Local officials said Monday that many firms are trying to reduce demand by working two or three days per week.

Unbreakable Glass

By coping the way sea shells are formed, scientists have created an essentially unbreakable glass that can have its color and transparency tuned.

Scientists from McGill University develop stronger and tougher glass, inspired by the inner layer of mollusk shells. Instead of shattering upon impact, the new material has the resiliency of plastic and could be used to improve cell phone screens in the future, among other applications.

More on the glass,

“Until now there were trade-offs between high strength, toughness, and transparency,” says Allen Ehrlicher, corresponding author of the study. “Our new material is not only three times stronger than the normal glass, but also more than five times more fracture resistant.”

The team says that the method should be scalable, and the resulting material could be useful for making stronger displays for smartphones and other devices. In future work the researchers plan to investigate ways to change the color, conductivity and other properties of the material.

Mormon Cognitive Dissonance

When the church leadership came out recommending vaccines, Trumper Mormons were consternated.

In the weeks since, the statement has caused Latter-day Saints on the far right, long accustomed to having their beliefs reflected by church leaders, to face the kind of cognitive dissonance that liberal members have had to contend with for decades. “They’re having to ask themselves who they trust more — the prophet or Tucker Carlson,” Mosman told me, then sighed. “This is new territory for them.”

Debt Ceiling Fixes

When Republicans are in power, the debt ceiling is always raised when needed. When they aren't they use it as a cudgel against Democrats. It may be time for Biden to unilaterally eliminate it.

Rachel on Kagan with Schmidt

 Rachel Maddow refers to Robert Kagan's article in the Post. He's a conservative raising the alarm about the Republican attack on our elections. 

the United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the civil war, with a reasonably chance over the next three to four years of mass violence, of breakdown of federal authority and the division of the country into warring between red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distraction of politics, the pandemic, the economy, global cries and by wishful thinking and denial, but about these things there should be no doubt.

...

the amateurish stop the steal efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or find more votes for Trump, those officials are systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the certification process.

Then Steve Schmidt has some choice words.

I think it`s extremely ominous, Rachel. I think we are in a crisis. It`s hard to overstate the magnitude of the crisis. I agree with Mr. Kagan that Donald Trump will certainly be the Republican nominee in 2024. We have an autocratic movement in this country. And one thing is certainly true. The Republican Party of late September 2021 is a profoundly more radical party than it was on Election Day, than it was on January 6th, than it was inauguration day.

And part of the strategy -- and it`s important to understand -- you see this with the chaos that could result from the debt ceiling -- is they are trying both chaos at the same time where they are selling order. So, all right-wing authoritarian movements always do this. It`s how they come to power. They drive chaos through policies of cynicism and nihilism and then they promise to restore order with easy scapegoats.

Kagan on the Crisis

Conservative commentator, Robert Kagan, on the coming crisis.

Fraudit Report

Trump still loses and Biden margin grows 

The Plan Behind Jan 6

Jamelle Bouie lays it out for us. The glass is broken on the peaceful transfer of power in our country.

Consider what we know. A prominent, respected member in good standing of the conservative legal establishment — Eastman is enrolled in the Federalist Society and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — schemed with the president and his allies in the Republican Party to overturn the election and overthrow American democracy under the Constitution. Yes, they failed to keep Trump in office, but they successfully turned the pro forma electoral counting process into an occasion for real political struggle.

It was always possible, theoretically, to manipulate the rules to seize power from the voters. Now, it’s a live option. And with the right pieces in place, Trump could succeed. All he needs is a rival slate of electoral votes from contested states, state officials and state legislatures willing to intervene on his behalf, a supportive Republican majority in either house of Congress, and a sufficiently pliant Supreme Court majority.

Coming Constitutional Crisis?

James Madison warns that we may be headed for a crisis as dangerous as the Civil War.

the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

The stage is thus being set for chaos.

It's Not Really a $3.5 Trillion Bill

Peter Coy explains what the real fiscal impact of the bill is. Apples to apples, it really a $875 billion bill.

The $3.5 trillion spending plan from President Biden is at risk in Congress partly because $3.5 trillion strikes people as a lot of money. Which, of course, it is. But the net cost of the plan, after taking into account offsetting tax increases and spending cuts, is only one-quarter as big.
...
if Donald Trump’s signature legislative achievement, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, had been measured the same way as Biden’s plan is being calculated, it would have been called a $5.5 trillion package. It never was — it was described appropriately as a $1.5 trillion piece of legislation (later revised by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to $1.9 trillion) — because Republicans and Democrats alike took into account that the Trump bill contained offsetting tax increases and spending cuts.

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The Epik hack is a treasure trove to investigators.

Emma Best, co-founder of Distributed Denial of Secrets, a nonprofit whistleblower group, said some researchers call the Epik hack “the Panama Papers of hate groups,” a comparison to the leak of more than 11 million documents that exposed a rogue offshore finance industry. And, like the Panama Papers, scouring the files is labor intensive, with payoffs that could be months away.

“A lot of research begins with naming names,” Best said. “There’s a lot of optimism and feeling of being overwhelmed, and people knowing they’re in for the long haul with some of this data.”

COVID Treatments Becoming Less Available

In Tennessee which has been hard hit by COVID among its unvaccinated population, monoclonal antibody drugs are experiencing shortages. How do you triage between responsible people who are still very sick and the irresponsible begging for forgiveness?

The Tennessee state government now recommends nearly all vaccinated residents be denied access to monoclonal antibody treatment in a new effort to preserve a limited supply of antibody drugs for those who remain most vulnerable to the virus, largely by their own choice.

An Historic Crisis?

Ken Burns thinks we may be looking at 4th historic crisis in the post-Trump era, rising to the level of the Civil War, the Depression, and World War II.

“It’s really serious,” replied the documentarian. “There are three great crises before this: the Civil War, the Depression and World War II. This is equal to it.”

Burns then quoted a young Lincoln to explain his thinking about America destroying itself, referencing an 1838 talk in which the future president said “some trans-Atlantic military giant” would not be to blame, but instead “ourselves.”

“We’re looking right down the muzzle of that gun,” added Burn

Woodward and Costa Remove All Doubt

From an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell, in their new book, Peril, Woodward and Costa have many appalling revelations about what the White House was like under Trump. Trump browbeat Pence when he wouldn't throw out the electoral votes. Not surprisingly, Pence struggled with this and needed moral backup from advisers and acquaintances to make the right call. On January 6, Bannon and Giuliani are in a war-room in the nearby Willard Hotel monitoring the insurrection. They talk about killing the Biden presidency in the crib. All this is a huge contrast with the Biden administration with its clear moral compass of caring for people and our country. 

A Different Sort of Trump Tower

From Rachel last night, Weisselberg is characterized as the boss of the Trump financial world. Recent search warrants have produced more damning evidence. If you have a boss at the top of the organization, you also have subordinates who know stuff. It looks like many of them are cooperating and producing new information leading to new search warrants that are producing more tax evasion evidence.

But the fact that he referenced him as the boss of the financial records indicates that he is the top of this conspiracy. So now we`re looking at a couple people either parallel to him or underneath him in the Trump Organization that may be implicated in this compensation scheme to avoid taxes.

And, so, the question is, do any of those people cooperate? Are they just cooperating to provide more evidence against Allen Weisselberg? Or do they have evidence of knowledge of people higher up than Allen Weisselberg?

So, there are still a lot of questions but it does appear that there will be more indictments of individuals. I would guess that does not include Donald Trump and that does not include any of his children.

Growing Coffee in the Lab

Worried about the environmental impact of intensive coffee agriculture to support your supply? In about 4 years we may see on the market coffee grown from coffee plant cells. It skips the beans and deforestation to grow coffee in a bioreactor. Once dried and roasted, the lab-grown product is pretty tasty.

"The process uses real coffee plant cells," he tells us. "Initially a cell culture is started from a plant part eg. a leaf. The formed cells are propagated and multiplied on a specific nutrient medium. Ultimately, the cells are transferred to a bioreactor from which the biomass is then harvested. The cells are dried and roasted and then coffee can be brewed."

Jobseeker and Employer Mismatches

Lots of jobs and lots of unemployed people are out there. There's a ton of reasons why they can't get matched up.

• Unemployed people want good wages
• They want better job security
• They want genuine benefits
• Wages not appropriate for local costs of living
• Fear of COVID
• Desire to work from home sometimes
• Work requirements evolve over time, moving beyond the available skill sets
• Employers use job descriptions that are impossible to fill
• Employers use bad AI that screen out perfectly good applicants
• Employers not willing to provide good training
• Employers have a lack of imagination in hiring
• Employers unwilling to take risks in hiring
• Both job seekers and employers fail to think outside their own respective boxes 

Franklin County Shenanigans

The county lost a suit about discriminatory districting. Two right-wingnut commissioners have their knickers in a twist. Meanwhile, the adults on the staff are preparing redistricting maps as ordered by the court.

Demand AND Supply

Recent policies have demonstrated that demand-side assistance can be quite helpful is lifting people from poverty. But if these are not balanced by programs that increase critical supplies like housing, drugs, and trained personnel, we will still be in a world of hurt.

Political movements consider solutions where they know to look for problems. Progressives have long known to look for problems on the demand-side of the economy — to ask whether there are goods and services people need that they cannot afford. That will make today fairer, but to ensure tomorrow is radically better, we need to look for the choke points in the future we imagine, the places where the economy can’t or won’t supply the things we need. And then we need to fix them.

Finally, A Real Cure for HIV

 Using CRISPR-Cas9 tools, Excision is moving a treatment into human trials. 

EBT-101 has since been tested in nonhuman primates, which showed it reached every tissue in the body where HIV reservoirs reside.

Excision licensed the therapy from the universities with a goal of moving it into clinical trials. Now, the FDA is on board.

An Amazing Paint

 Researchers at Purdue have created the whitest paint ever.

The paint reflects 98.1% of solar radiation while also emitting infrared heat. Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power.

The Goal is Martyrdom

 One in 500 Americans have died of COVID. There is this craziness in society that sees this kind of senseless martyrdom as noble in some way. Just like the South declaring war on the North or destroying your country just so you can rule over the remains. Susan Glasser writes in The New Yorker:

The G.O.P.’s desire to see Biden fail has become a willingness to let the country fail. Nine months into Biden’s Presidency, the bottom line is that the Republican war on Biden’s legitimacy and the war on Biden’s covid policies are now inextricably linked. The consequences of this are so hard to contemplate that we often do not do so: a politics so broken that it is now killing Americans on an industrial scale.

Defeating Facial Recognition with Makeup

By carefully applying off-the-shelf makeup to distort the heatmap used by facial recognition systems to identify black-listed people, the systems can be defeated. The trick is each person's heatmap is slightly different, so the makeup pattern must be designed uniquely to each individual. The makeup job looks just like normal makeup so it doesn't get noticed by the human observers either.

“​​I was surprised by the results of this study,” Nitzan Guettan, a doctoral student and lead author of the study, told Motherboard. “[The makeup artist] didn't do too much tricks, just see the makeup in the image and then she tried to copy it into the physical world. It's not a perfect copy there. There are differences but it still worked.”

Consistent Religious Exemptions

If you are claiming a religious exemption to the COVID vaccination because of the fetal cell lines used in its development and production, you must also exercise a similar refusal to use the following other drugs and treatments.

The list includes Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin.

Otherwise, your fetal cell line based exemption is specious. 

It's the Varnish

We think we now know what gives a Stradivari violin its unique sound. It's the varnish. Expect modern luthiers to up their game in producing wonderful instruments.

Long Covid

hat's the % of infected people who get long COVID? Five to 11.7 percent

Chinese Company Teetering

A major Chinese real estate company is on the edge of default. The collapse could be felt around the world.

In recent years, Evergrande's debts ballooned as it borrowed to finance its various pursuits.
The group has gained infamy for becoming China's most indebted developer, with more than $300 billion worth of liabilities. Over the last few weeks, it's warned investors of cash flow issues, saying that it could default if it's unable to raise money quickly.
That warning was underscored on Tuesday, when Evergrande disclosed in a stock exchange filing that it was having trouble finding buyers for some of its assets.

This could be China's Lehman Brothers moment.  

Better COVID Vaccine Coming

Current intramuscular vaccines stimulate the body to quickly fight off the virus when it appears in the bloodstream. This new nasal vaccine stimulates the mucous membranes to kill the virus before it gets into the blood.

"We used NanoSTING as the adjuvant for intranasal vaccination and single-cell RNA-sequencing to confirm the nasal-associated lymphoid tissue as an inductive site upon vaccination. Our results show that the candidate vaccine formulation is safe, produces rapid immune responses -- within seven days -- and elicits comprehensive immunity against SARS-CoV-2," said Varadarajan.

A fundamental limitation of intramuscular vaccines is that they are not designed to elicit mucosal immunity. As prior work with other respiratory pathogens like influenza has shown, sterilizing immunity to virus re-infection requires adaptive immune responses in the respiratory tract and the lung.

The vaccine candidate is easy to administer and it doesn't require refrigeration. This would really be helpful in the global vaccination efforts. 

How Republicans lie

They put out a lie. And then relentlessly insist that the lie is true. They lie so much that they come to believe that everyone lies like them so the truth doesn't matter. What matters is what you can get people to believe that gives you a political advantage. Truth is only meaningful in that it's that thing that your lie pretends to be.

Risch used his time to elaborate on the slander. “Somebody in the White House who has authority to press the button and stop the president, cut off the president’s speaking ability and sound," he told Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "Who is that person?”

Blinken chuckled as he replied that the loose-lipped Biden “speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself.”

Their expose their deepest desires. Republicans wish that there was someone able to shut off Trump's microphones. 

Epik Hack

The Epik hosting service that supports several right-wing web presences like 8chan, Parler, Gab, and the Texas GOP has been hacked at 180GB of internal data has been dumped by Anonymous.

The hacktivist collective says that the data set, which is over 180GB in size, contains a "decade's worth of data from the company."

Anonymous says the data set is "all that's needed to trace actual ownership and management of the fascist side of the Internet that has eluded researchers, activists, and, well, just about everybody." If this information is correct, Epik's customers' data and identities could now fall into the hands of activists, researchers, and just about anyone curious enough to take a peek.

Tho 2022 Strategy

Pundits are analyzing the Newsom win. There could be some lessons for winning Congress in 2022.

there are also lessons from California for Democrats as they prepare for 2022. Newsom’s most effective strategy was not talking about how California’s economy has improved under his leadership or the long list of progressive policies he has signed into law. Instead, Newsom and his campaign relentlessly focused on Elder, casting him as extremist. And they emphasized that Newsom supported vaccination and mask-wearing requirements and other common-sense policies to reduce the spread of covid-19, much of which Elder opposed.

Inside Trumpistan

Here are some takeaways from the Woodward-Costa book.

Former Vice President Mike Pence struggled with the decision to follow the law and accept the electoral votes cast during the 2020 election far more than was previously known

Pence’s decision not to participate in what would have been a coup attempt earned him a torrent of hatred from Trump and his supporters

In November 2020, CIA Director Gina Haspel warned Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley: “We are on the way to a right-wing coup.”

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy,” Pelosi reportedly said. “He’s crazy and what he did yesterday is further evidence of his craziness.”
Milley replied, the book says, that he agreed with everything Pelosi had said.

In conversations with senior staff, Milley reportedly likened Jan. 6 to the 1905 Russian Revolution, which was put down by the Tsar but presaged the successful 1917 revolutions that overthrew the country’s government.

“What you might have seen was a precursor to something far worse down the road,” the book quotes him as saying.

California Gubernatorial Candidate Elder Concedes

Well, not really. But he fully embraces the Republican election strategy of undermining the belief in the integrity of elections. Even before any election results are in, he is claiming 

“Statistical analyses used to detect fraud in elections held in 3rd-world nations (such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran) have detected fraud in California resulting in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor,” the site reads. "The primary analytical tool used was Benford’s Law and can be readily reproduced."

The site added on Monday afternoon a disclaimer saying it was "Paid For By Larry Elder Ballot Measure Committee Recall Newsom Committee," with major funding from Elder's gubernatorial campaign.

It's clear by putting this out ahead of time that we can expect Republicans to dispute every election they don't win because, after all, the only legitimate winners are Republicans. That's what you have to do when you are a minority party hanging on to power by your fingernails. True democracy be damned. 

Philadelphia Inquirer Chooses Words Carefully

Whatever Republican are doing with election ballots it isn't an audit. Perhaps "fraudit" is a more appropriate term.

Who gets to decide what language is used? Should it be advocates, like activists who oppose abortion and insist that they should be called “pro-life” even if they favor the death penalty? Should it be politicians like those in Arizona and Pennsylvania whose “forensic investigations” are motivated not by any democratic impulse but by a purely partisan agenda?

Or should news organizations employ clear thinking and plain language, intended to serve the public’s understanding and interests? That’s what the Inquirer has decided to do in this case.

There’s a word for that, too: Integrity.

Regular Folks Have to Wait for Boosters

Lancet article indicates that folks without immune system problems should probably wait for their boosters.

“Current evidence does not, therefore, appear to show a need for boosting in the general population, in which efficacy against severe disease remains high,” the article states. “Even if humoral immunity appears to wane, reductions in neutralizing antibody titre do not necessarily predict reductions in vaccine efficacy over time, and reductions in vaccine efficacy against mild disease do not necessarily predict reductions in the (typically higher) efficacy against severe disease.”

Barrett says strange things

 Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett says some mysterious things about wanting the Court to be non-partisan. Is she looking at the mirror? Is she beginning to regret the partisanship that put her on the court? Is she signaling that she may deviate from everyone's expectations? Or is it the projection of seeing others as partisan while being oblivious to her own background?

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed concerns Sunday that the public may increasingly see the court as a partisan institution.

Justices must be “hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions, since judges are people, too,” Barrett said at a lecture hosted by the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center.

“To say the court’s reasoning is flawed is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner,” said Barrett, whose confirmation to the seat left open by the death of the liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cemented conservative control of the court. “I think we need to evaluate what the court is doing on its own terms.”

Potty-training Cows

How come they never though of this before?

Researchers from the University of Auckland and the Federal Research Institute for Animal Health in Germany trained 16 calves to use a latrine they call the MooLoo. It’s essentially a bright green pen that gives the animals a food reward for urinating there.

“This is how some people train their children – they put them on the toilet, wait for them to pee, then reward them if they do it,” says Lindsay Matthews, lead author of the study. “Turns out it works with calves too. In very short order, five or 10 urinations for some animals, they demonstrated they understood the connection between the desired behavior and the reward by going to the feeder as soon as they started urinating.”

The animals were discouraged from peeing elsewhere with gentle deterrents like collar vibrations or splashes of cold water. And sure enough, after 15 days of training, most of them had gotten the hang of it, and would head to the MooLoo on their own when they felt nature calling.

Running from Shadows

 Moderate Democrats worry about vicious attack ads in the next election if they support the big infrastructure bill. Don't they realize they are going to get attacked anyway for voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill? So, vote already and get it done!

The party’s moderate gang has proven to be a bigger problem here than the progressives in the caucus, which is interesting, because a lot of the media assumes that it’s the left that is unruly and insurgent and inflexible and ridiculously idealistic. I don’t know how people will vote, but I haven’t heard a discouraging word out of AOC, and Bernie Sanders is being a loyal soldier despite the fact that the bill is $2.5 trillion less than he wanted. How soon some forget: It’s usually the moderates who make trouble. Remember the eleventh-hour preening over abortion coverage in Obamacare, led by then–Michigan Representative Bart Stupak? They nearly killed the bill.

Today’s moderates—first and foremost Joe Manchin, but many others—are going to follow the same script. Why do moderates do this? I think I know the answer: They’re acting on some well-worn assumptions about elections—midterm elections, in particular—that are now outdated. In sum, moderate Democrats are always looking for opportunities to distance themselves from the national party. That made some political sense as recently as a decade ago. These days, however, I think there is no separating oneself from the national party. It’s futile.

Kids Up for Vaccines Soon

Perhaps as soon as October, we could be vaccinating our children for COVID.

Top U.S. health officials believe that Pfizer Inc's (PFE.N) COVID-19 vaccine could be authorized for children aged 5-11 years old by the end of October, two sources familiar with the situation said on Friday.

The timeline is based on the expectation that Pfizer, which developed the shot with Germany's BioNTech (22UAy.DE), will have enough data from clinical trials to seek emergency use authorization (EUA) for that age group from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) towards the end of this month, the sources said.

Fertilizer breakthrough

Engineers at the University of Illinois have come up with a major improvement in the production of fertilizer. Imagine being able to use solar energy and waste water to ammonia with at 10-fold improvement in energy efficiency. This could lead to on-demand on-site fertilizer production facilities.

the researchers have improved this concept and developed a new method that uses nitrate, one of the most common groundwater contaminants, to supply nitrogen and sunlight to electrify the reaction. The system produces nearly 100% ammonia with nearly zero hydrogen gas side reactions. The reaction needs no fossil fuels and produces no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases, and its use of solar power yields an unprecedented solar-to-fuel efficiency, or STF, of 11%, which is 10 times better than any other state-of-the-art system to produce ammonia (about 1% STF).

The new method hinges on a cobalt catalyst, which the researchers describe along with the new process in their paper, "Solar-Driven Electrochemical Synthesis of Ammonia using Nitrate with 11% Solar-to-Fuel Efficiency at Ambient Conditions."

The Coup Continues

The January 6 coup attempt is not over. In the aftermath, the ground is being prepared for the next coup. It was Republican officials who rejected attempts to invalidate fair elections. When the next elections come around, many of them will have been replaced.

True to form, Mr. Trump was able to supply the mob but not the procedural victory. His coup attempt was frustrated in no small part by a thin gray line of bureaucratic fortitude — Republican officials at the state and local levels who had the grit to resist intense pressure from the president and do their jobs.

Current efforts like the one in Florida are intended to terrorize them into compliance today or, short of that, to push such officials into retirement so that they can be replaced with more pliant partisans. The lonely little band of Republican officials who stopped the 2020 coup is going to be smaller and lonelier the next time around.

...there isn’t really any middle ground on overthrowing the government. And that is what Mr. Trump and his allies were up to in 2020, through both violent and nonviolent means — and continue to be up to today.

When it comes to a coup, you’re either in or you’re out. The Republican Party is leaning pretty strongly toward in. That is going to leave at least some conservatives out — and, in all likelihood, permanently out.

Steve Benen makes the same point on MSNBC. 

The then-president's point — Trump wanted Americans to see a far-left menace that eclipsed anything seen on the right — came to mind when reading Reuters' latest report on the "sustained campaign of intimidation" against U.S. election officials at the state and local level.

From the Reuters article, here is more about the nature of the threats: 

Through public records and interviews, Reuters documented 102 threats of death or violence received by more than 40 election officials, workers and their relatives in eight of the most contested battleground states in the 2020 presidential contest. Each was explicit enough to put a reasonable person in fear of bodily harm or death, the typical legal threshold for prosecution.

Almost all of the 102 threats of violence appeared to be inspired by Trump’s debunked claims that the election was rigged against him. The messages often included highly personal, sometimes sexualized threats of violence or death, not only to the officials themselves but also to their family members and their children.

The Cost of Intentional Ignorance

 I think we may have found a way to stem the flood of Ivermectin poisonings.

The effects of Ivermectin therapy on human males can have an effect on men’s reproductive health.

Researchers at three universities in Nigeria studied the effects of Ivermectin, which is used to treat river blindness and other medical conditions in humans, on men’s sperm counts. According to their study, 85 percent of men who take Ivermectin become sterilized.

One could almost see a Divine hand at work culling the human herd of people who are doing it the most harm. 

Historical Energy Marker

 I'm just throwing down an historical marker here. Some MIT physicists founded a company called Commonwealth Fusion Systems. That company has achieve a 20 Tesla magnetic field with a high-temperature super-conducting magnet. 

The magnet that was tested last week was about three meters tall and half that wide. It's powered by coils of a high-temperature superconducting material called ReBCO and operates at about 20 Kelvin. (In superconductivity, 20 K counts as high-temperature, as more typical superconducting materials need to be at less than 5 K.)

The magnet is designed such that production of similar magnets can be scaled-up to mass-production levels should it be successful in a net-positive power-producing fusion reactor.

"Performance of this magnet is similar to a non-superconducting one that was used in an MIT experiment that concluded its experiments five years ago," said MIT's Whyte. "The difference in terms of energy consumption is rather stunning. That magnet, because it was a normal copper conducting magnet, consumed approximately 200 million watts of energy to produce the confining magnetic field. This magnet was around 30 watts, so a factor of around 10 million decrease in the amount of energy that was needed to provide the confining magnetic field."

The Commonwealth Fusion Systems magnet also faces challenges that one-off research reactors don't. It is designed for scaling to rapid production, which means a more modular design. The hardware is composed of a stack of thin coils called "pancakes," each with its own sensors and control hardware. There are about 270 kilometers of superconducting material in the magnet, but the material is distributed among all these individual pancakes.

This could be a milestone in the achievement of fusion nuclear power.

Quiet Part is Being Said Out Loud

 Garrett Epps dives into the amicus briefs so we don't have to and pulls out what Republicans are really after.

Anyone who rides horses recognizes the moment when, at the end of a ride, a tired horse spots the barn. A skilled rider does not let the animal break into a trot. But the horse’s impulse is understandable. C’mon, cowboy, the mount is pleading, let’s get this over with!

Barn fever is sweeping the anti-abortion movement in 2021. The Supreme Court is now their conquered province; red-state legislators have been enthusiastic about constructing laws that can cash in on former President Donald Trump’s promise that his justices will “automatically” overturn Roe v. Wade. And as of last week, his justices show every sign of doing the job they were hired to do.

---

What this means, readers, is that a state legislature—if it is feeling chivalrous—may (but does not have to) punish women who have abortions somewhat less harshly than doctors who perform them. And a court could also (but does not have to) decide not to punish a woman who undergoes an abortion necessary to save her life—or perhaps knock a few months off her sentence.

Here is the grinning skull behind a lot of the highfalutin moral talk about abortion. Much anti-abortion argumentation embodies the unspoken premise of the passage above: Under the Constitution, a fetus is a person from the moment of conception. The woman who carries that fetus is, well, never a person at all.

Rich Countries Fail the Third World at Their Own Peril

 We really need to do better about distributing vaccines worldwide.

The WHO maintains that, so far, clinical evidence does not indicate that booster doses are needed to prevent severe outcomes and death from COVID-19, a point that US officials do not dispute. "The vaccines are holding up very, very well against the severe end of the disease spectrum," Kate O'Brien, director of the WHO's Department of Immunization, Vaccines, and Biologicals, said in a press briefing Wednesday. "We're not asking to withhold something for which there is a strong set of evidence that it is needed."

Meanwhile, in low-income countries, initial doses of vaccines have yet to reach even the elderly and frontline health workers—those most vulnerable to severe outcomes and death. In a press briefing earlier this month, the executive director of WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, Mike Ryan, likened giving boosters in high-income countries to "hand[ing] out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets while we're leaving other people to drown."

What the Law Should Be

Here's some details on the Women's Health Protection Act. 

Reproductive rights activists say it’s a well-thought-out bill that not only expands federal protections but also anticipates potential challenges from conservative state governments. It has widespread, but probably not universal, support among elected Democrats.

The Court’s 1973 decision in Roe divided pregnancy into trimesters, with states gaining more power to regulate abortion as pregnancies advance into later trimesters. WHPA, by contrast, primarily seeks to protect the abortion right “prior to fetal viability” — the moment when “there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.”

Under the WHPA, states could not enact “a prohibition on abortion at any point or points in time prior to fetal viability, including a prohibition or restriction on a particular abortion procedure.” It also prohibits post-viability restrictions on abortion “when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Additionally, the bill includes several provisions preventing states from enacting specific restrictions on abortion that anti-abortion lawmakers have pushed in the past.

Benton County Sheriff Applicants Must Thread a Political Needle

The TCH got its hands on questions (subscribers only) being asked of applicants by the Benton County Commissioners. Rarely have I seen something as rife with dog-whistles as this.

▪ What political party do you affiliate yourself with?

▪ Is there anything in your personal past or present record that could be embarrassing to you or the Benton County Republican Party if it were to become known?

▪ Do you know the Republican Platform and do you support Donald Trump’s America First Agenda?

▪ Do you have conflicts of interest? (Example, are you involved in a lawsuit suing the County, on the Recall Committee or part of the Recall-Effort, or are you a Police Union member)?

▪ What do you believe the issues were inside the Benton County Sheriff’s Department that created the divide and eventually led to the situation we find ourselves in?

▪ How will you address the shortage of deputies and how long do you believe it will take to attract new officers?

▪ What kind of culture will you create in the BCSO if you are selected as the new sheriff?

▪ How do you feel about enforcing an unconstitutional law or initiative?

▪ Do you think every person must have a COVID vaccine and should they be required by government to get one?

▪ Do you think that laws should reduce and deter crime through strong and appropriate punishment?

▪ Will you Honor the constitutional resolution that Sheriff Hatcher signed from the Sheriff’s Association in July of 2021?

▪ What does the phrase “Constitutional Sheriff” mean to you and what are some of the actions that they would take vs one that is not?

▪ What is the one thing you would do differently than the prior Sheriff?

▪ Do you currently plan to run for Sheriff next year if you get this temporary appointment or not?

▪ The Sheriff is the Top Law Enforcement Officer in Benton County. With our very leftist Governor closing down our county businesses and schools last year, and our State Legislature taking away law enforcement tools, what would you as Sheriff do to protect the citizens? (Basic rights, peaceful assembly, right to keep and bear arms, etc. are guaranteed in the State and federal constitutions and as [sic] under attack.)

▪ Do you believe in Open Carry for the citizens in the state of Washington?

▪ Who should run the Sheriff’s office and Jail? (Remember there are 3 branches of County Government-Executive, Judicial, and Law Enforcement. The elected Sheriff.)

▪ What would your first steps be if selected as Interim Sheriff?

Take the Test

If the United States had six major parties instead of two, what would be your party?

The choices are Progressive Party, Patriot Party, Christian Conservative Party, American Labor Party, Growth and Opportunity Party, and New Liberal Party.

Mine is the Progressive Party. No surprise there.

You can get a feel for what each party might be like by looking at how notable individuals fall into a given party's philosophy. Who's in your tribe?

Progressive Party: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, and Julián Castro

New Liberal Party: Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Eric Garcetti, and Beto O’Rourke

American Labor Party: Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Tim Ryan
Growth and Opportunity Party: Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, and Michael Bloomberg
Patriot Party: Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and Tucker Carlson
Christian Conservative Party: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mike Pompeo

Update on the Pro-choice Resistance

It's been an interesting day on the pro-choice front. 

Professor Emeritus of the Harvard Law School, Laurence Tribe, reminds us of a case that he won in 1982 at the US Supreme Court that established in an 8-1 decision that the state had fallen into unconstitutional territory when it "delegated to private nongovernmental entities a power normally invested in agencies of government". 

As Rachel Maddow summarize in an interview with the professor:

What was at issue here was that the government, the state, can`t let some random entity, a church, a school, some other private entity make that decision. It`s a governmental decision. You cannot delegate it to a private entity to make that determination for its own purposes. That is standing Supreme Court precedent from 1982, again, 8-1 decision.

 Tribe:

The whole case arose because of this arbitrary power that was given to a private entity. It happened to be a church.

But the issue is the same whether it`s a church or not. There are cases in which the Supreme Court said you cannot give governmental power over peoples` lives or liberty to private bodies, that have no public accountability.

And the Supreme Court has said, in 1925, in a unanimous decision, that the attorney general of the United States, even without a statute, has authority to go to court, to represent the United States against any state, which interferes with interstate commerce, or in this case, international commerce, to Mexico, or to New Mexico within the country, or that violates human rights pursuant to a treaty, in order to get injunctive relief.

And I know, the attorney general is looking closely at all of those options.

And furthermore,

He also has options under the Ku Klux Klan Act, to bring criminal proceedings, against bounty hunters who are basically engaged in the kind of vigilante justice that led to the enactments of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871.

the individuals who are targeted, the clinics who were taken out of business. Could bring lawsuits under the civil equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which is 42 U.S. code sections 1983 and 1985, to legalistic about this, but those are the sections.

They can bring suits to basically get a multitude, of whatever bounty is are being claimed against them, so that what we need since this Texas law operates by chilling abortion helpers and abortion providers, frightening them out of business when they can do is say. You sue us for $10,000, or $10 million, because there is no limit put on the statue. And we will see you for double that. You want to try?

So now it's the legal equivalent of, "Go ahead. Make my day."

There's still more. Today, the Mexican Supreme Court ruled unanimously to decriminalize abortion in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Super-immunity to COVID

Some people have been found to have a special level of immunity to COVID. Their immunity is so strong that they could be immune to all variants into the future.

So who is capable of mounting this "superhuman" or "hybrid" immune response?

People who have had a "hybrid" exposure to the virus. Specifically, they were infected with the coronavirus in 2020 and then immunized with mRNA vaccines this year. "Those people have amazing responses to the vaccine," says virologist Theodora Hatziioannou at Rockefeller University, who also helped lead several of the studies. "I think they are in the best position to fight the virus. The antibodies in these people's blood can even neutralize SARS-CoV-1, the first coronavirus, which emerged 20 years ago. That virus is very, very different from SARS-CoV-2."

In fact, these antibodies were even able to deactivate a virus engineered, on purpose, to be highly resistant to neutralization. This virus contained 20 mutations that are known to prevent SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from binding to it. Antibodies from people who were only vaccinated or who only had prior coronavirus infections were essentially useless against this mutant virus. But antibodies in people with the "hybrid immunity" could neutralize it.

Redistricting can bite

The redistricting map for Colorado would arrange that Lauren Boebert would have to compete with the very articulate and capable Joe Neguse. I like that idea. 

The path to reelection for Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican congresswoman from Colorado, could soon become a lot harder. A new map proposed by Colorado’s nonpartisan redistricting committee could force Boebert to compete against Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) in his safely Democratic district.

The new map wouldn’t necessarily mean the end of Boebert’s political career. If it is made final, she could still choose to run in another district instead of challenging Neguse.

How do they do it?

How do the ultra-rich get away without paying income taxes? They use a simple strategy known as buy-borrow-die.

This scam works really quite simply. The wealthy buy an investment or — in the case of the trillion-dollar seven — found a company. Then, as their asset soars in value, they never sell. Instead, they borrow against the increased value of their asset whenever they need cash.

Finally, they die, and each death wipes off the tax liability on all the gain that’s gone untaxed, sometimes for an entire adult lifetime.

What makes the Buy-Borrow-Die strategy possible? The gaping loophole in our tax law known as “stepped-up basis.” Under this loophole, those who sell inherited assets get treated as if they had purchased the assets at their fair market value on the date of the deceased owner’s death.

The end result: If Jeff Bezos’ children inherit his Amazon stock, about $200 billion in gains will face no tax at all.

Our political leaders have been aware of the stepped-up basis loophole for decades, yet have done nothing while the super-rich have been using Buy-Borrow-Die to accumulate obscene piles of untaxed wealth.

But the Biden administration is now calling on Congress to end stepped-up basis to fund the programs we need to move our country forward. Will our lawmakers now summon the courage to tax the trillion-dollar seven?

Check out the “Buy-Borrow-Die” video 

The New Jim Crow

If voter-ID laws look like a resurrection of old Jim Crow laws meant to exclude voting rights from certain people, it's because they are.

Voter i.d. laws are the direct successors of Jim Crow voter restrictions, with the wrinkle that they are based on class rather than race. Since, however, class in the U.S. is closely connected to race, they do double duty in squelching democracy and the political participation of the poor and working poor. If the latter category contains substantial numbers of whites, too bad. They might after all vote Democratic and need to be stopped from voting.

Today’s southern GOP is less interested in caste and more interested in sectarian politics and ensuring that the Republicans always win the elections. Thus, they are happy to disenfranchise even white voters who can’t be depended to vote Republican.

Republicans and Democrats have a big gender gap, with women preferring the Democratic Party by, typically ten percentage points. Hence, not only poor whites but females need to be put in their place.

Declaring that women are not in charge of their bodies and that elite white males will make their most intimate decisions for women underlines this sectarian, party politics.

Better Ventilation Could Do Much More Than Stopping COVID

What we have learned about how easily COVID transmits in poorly-ventilated areas is also informing us how to minimize other pesky airborne ailments such as colds and flu.

In official public-health guidance, however, the possibility of flu-laden aerosols still barely gets a mention. The CDC and WHO guidelines focus on large droplets that supposedly do not travel beyond six feet or one meter, respectively. (Never mind that scientists who actually study aerosols knew this six-foot rule violated the laws of physics.) The coronavirus should get us to take the airborne spread of flu and colds more seriously too, says Jonathan Samet, a pulmonary physician and epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health. At the very least, it should spur research to establish the relative importance of different routes of transmission. “We had done such limited research before on airborne transmission of common infections,” Samet told me. This just wasn’t seen as a major problem until now.

Earlier this year, Morawska and dozens of her colleagues in the fields of building science, public health, and medicine published an editorial in Science calling for a “paradigm shift” around indoor air. Yes, vaccines and masks work against the coronavirus, but these scientists wanted to think bigger and more ambitious—beyond what any single person can do to protect themselves. If buildings are allowing respiratory viruses to spread by air, we should be able to redesign buildings to prevent that. We just have to reimagine how air flows through all the places we work, learn, play, and breathe. 

The question boils down to: How much disease are we willing to tolerate before we act? When London built its sewage system, its cholera outbreaks were killing thousands of people. What finally spurred Parliament to act was the stench coming off the River Thames during the Great Stink of 1858. At the time, Victorians believed that foul air caused disease, and this was an emergency. (They were wrong about exactly how cholera was spreading from the river—it was through contaminated water—but they had ironically stumbled upon the right solution.)

How much actually changes “depends on the momentum created now,” she said. She pointed out that the vaccines looked like they were going to quickly end the pandemic—but then they didn’t, as the Delta variant complicated things. The longer this pandemic drags on, the steeper the cost of taking indoor air for granted. 

Learning from Sturgis, Provincetown, and Lollapalooza

 From Sturgis, we learn that Delta is bad even when lots of your population has been previously exposed or vaccinated.

From Provincetown, we learn that COVID causes much less severe infections in exposed vaccinated populations.

From Lollapalooza, we learn that masking and outdoor venues are much better than the reverse.

It wasn't the outdoor event in Sturgis that spread the disease near as much as the crowded, unmasked indoor bar scene.

The Fetal Heartbeat Lie

It seems that the foundation of the Texas anti-abortion law isn't medically definable. 

Newly passed laws in Texas mean that people cannot have an abortion after six weeks - the point where a "fetal heartbeat" appears, and the point before most people know they're pregnant.

However, doctors are coming forward to say that the "fetal heartbeat" isn't a real medical point in fetal development, casting doubt on the credibility of the Fetal Heartbeat Bill.

Heartbeats in humans produce thump-thump sounds caused by the opening and closing of the heart's valves.

However, in conversation with NPR, Dr. Nisha Verma, an OB-GYN who specializes in abortion care and works at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says that that heartbeat doesn't exist in 6-week old fetuses.

Gentrification is a problem

 You start with the situation where neighborhoods are economically segregated, high income versus low income. The low income neighborhoods tend to be invisible to city administrations and get fewer city services. The high income neighborhoods generate a larger portion of the city revenue and are, therefore, recipients of higher levels of attention from the cities. Gentrification brings higher levels of positive attention to a neighborhood. Unfortunately, the existing residents get priced out of their homes, often without any affordable alternatives. Somehow, there has to be a way for neighborhoods to grow while keeping a healthy mix of both affordable and gentrified housing. Of course, this is anti-capitalist in that developers are limited on the size of profits that can be extracted from gentrification projects. But in the long run, all citizens can reap gentrification benefits rather than just the wealthy.

Blue States shouldn't ignore red rural expanses

The great state of Texas may exemplify this more than Washington state, but the same principles apply here. Folks in the rural areas get left behind by the metropolitan-centered Democratic party. Fortunately for us, the cities have enough votes to limit the damage done by red county, misinformed voters. It isn't a bad thing to understand how diverse a state can be. We can't reach these folks without working with them with respect and humility. We need to be able to do this hard thing.

Fighting Back

 Legally astute columnist, Jennifer Rubin, offers a path to "chill" Texas abortion access bounty-hunters. TL;DR, there is a law that says if individuals act "under the color" of a State law and deprives another of a constitutional right, they are liable to lawsuits for redress. Bounty-hunters can be counter-sued. 

Section 1983 of Title 42 in the U.S. Code provides: “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.” When Texas’s law forces every abortion provider in the state to shut down, surely there is a deprivation of constitutional rights. They have effectively “chilled” women’s constitutional rights.

“In evaluating whether the conduct of an otherwise private actor constitutes indirect state action, courts conventionally have traveled a trio of analytic avenues, deeming a private entity to have become a state actor if (1) it assumes a traditional public function when it undertakes to perform the challenged conduct, or (2) an elaborate financial or regulatory nexus ties the challenged conduct to the State, or (3) a symbiotic relationship exists between the private entity and the State.” Moreover, when the state and individual actors’ conduct amounts to “pervasive entwinement,” the private individual can be a state actor. 

The interplay between Texas officials and private actors is intricately choreographed for the express purpose of letting the state get away with something it could not do directly. This screams out for a remedy to break up this unsavory alliance of anti-choice bounty hunters and the state.

To be clear, a Section 1983 case requires a high level of intermingling state and private actions. The degree of collaboration required against private actors in 1983 cases may not exist in this situation. Ironically, simply announcing the intention to file 1983 suits against bounty hunters might be enough to stop — or to borrow a phrase, chill — the whole charade. Certainly, anyone sued under the bounty-hunting statute could raise the defense that the law in unconstitutional. What Section 1983 does is provide an offensive weapon to discourage such suits and ensure that bounty hunters pay a price for attempting to interfere with women’s constitutional rights.

 

Flying COWs in Louisiana

 AT&T's tethered drones serve as emergency cell towers in storm-ravaged Louisiana. The tether supplies power so the drones can hover indefinitely.

The drone has the potential to hover over 300 feet and is connected by a tether attached to the ground. When someone texts, calls, or uses data, the signal is sent to the drone and transferred through the tether to a router. The router pushes information through a satellite, into the cloud, and finally into the AT&T network.

Some Labor Day 2021 Movies

From Hullabaloo 

Made in Dagenham

Based on a true story, this 2011 film (directed by Nigel Cole and written by William Ivory) stars Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, a working mum employed at the Dagenham, England Ford plant in 1968. She worked in a run-down, segregated section of the plant where 187 female machinists toiled away for a fraction of what male employees were paid; the company justified the inequity by classifying female workers as “unskilled labor”. Encouraged by her empathetic shop steward (Bob Hoskins), the initially reticent Rita finds her “voice” and surprises family, co-workers and herself with a formidable ability to rally the troops and affect real change. An engaging ensemble piece with a standout supporting performance by Miranda Richardson as a government minister.

Harlan County, USA

Barbara Kopple’s award-winning film is not only an extraordinary document about an acrimonious coal miner’s strike in Harlan County, Kentucky in 1973, but is one of the best American documentaries ever made. Kopple’s film has everything that you look for in any great work of cinema: drama, conflict, suspense, and redemption. Kopple and crew are so deeply embedded that you may involuntarily duck during a harrowing scene where a company-hired thug fires a round directly toward the camera operator (it’s a wonder the filmmakers lived to tell this tale).

Matewan

This well-acted, handsomely mounted drama by John Sayles serves as a sobering reminder that much blood was spilled to lay the foundation for the labor laws we take for granted in the modern workplace. Based on a true story, it is set during the 1920s, in West Virginia. Chris Cooper plays an outsider labor organizer who becomes embroiled in a conflict between coal company thugs and fed up miners trying to unionize.

Sayles delivers a compelling narrative, rich in characterizations and steeped in verisimilitude (beautifully shot by Haskell Wexler). Fine ensemble work from a top notch cast that includes David Strathairn, Mary McDonnell, James Earl Jones, Joe Grifasi, Jane Alexander, Gordon Clapp, and Will Oldham. The film is also notable for its well-curated Americana soundtrack.

Norma Rae

 

Martin Ritt’s 1979 film about a minimum-wage textile worker (Sally Field) turned union activist helped launch what I refer to as the “Whistle-blowing Working Mom” genre (Silkwood, Erin Brockovich, etc). Field gives an outstanding performance (and deservedly picked up a Best Actress Oscar) as the eponymous heroine who gets fired up by a passionate labor organizer from NYC (Ron Leibman, in his best role). Inspiring and empowering, bolstered by a fine screenplay (by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.) and a great supporting cast that includes Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle and Barbara Baxley.

Roger and Me

While our favorite lib’rul agitprop director has made a number of films addressing the travails of wage slaves and ever-appalling indifference of the corporate masters who grow fat off their labors, Michael Moore’s low-budget 1989 debut film remains his best (and is on the list of the top 25 highest-grossing docs of all time).

Moore may have not been the only resident of Flint, Michigan scratching his head over GM’s local plant shutdown in the midst of record profits for the company, but he was the one with the chutzpah (and a camera crew) to make a beeline straight to the top to demand an explanation. His target? GM’s chairman, Roger Smith. Does he bag him? Watch it and find out. An insightful portrait of working class America that, like most of his subsequent films, can be at once harrowing and hilarious, yet hopeful and humanistic.

Dress Code Dissonance

 If you are going to make a public health measure like wearing masks optional, don't expect to be able to enforce school dress code.

“Dress codes are definitely sexist,” she said. “They put the onus on girls to not be distracting or not call attention to themselves instead of putting the onus on all students to respect everyone’s body.”

Ms. Bernadel said that when it comes to students being punished for dress code violations, Black and brown girls get written up the most, followed by Black boys, then white girls, then white boys. For Black girls, the issue is not necessarily around their clothes, but their bodies, which tend to be perceived at early ages as more developed or “adult.”

Texas Republican Incompetence

Competence is not a Republican strong suit. It seems the website set up to receive Texas whistleblower complaints about folks aiding and abetting women to choose what happens to their bodies has been shutdown by the ISP. 

GoDaddy took action after Gizmodo reported that Texas Right to Life's new website, prolifewhistleblower.com, seems to violate a GoDaddy rule that says website operators may not "collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another user or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent." GoDaddy's terms of service also say that customers cannot use the web hosting platform in a way that "violates the privacy or publicity rights of another User or any other person or entity, or breaches any duty of confidentiality that you owe to another User or any other person or entity."

After a couple of tries they finally found a hosting service that would accept them. There's a good chance they will be able to stay on Epik since it hosts things like Gab, Parler, and 8Chan. That's good company for this kind of site. 

Update: The site got booted from Epik as well. It seems their mission simply violates basic Terms of Service everywhere.

An American Taliban

 Domestic white supremacists praise the Taliban. 

As the United States-backed government in Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and US troops raced to leave the country, White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for what the Taliban accomplished, a worrying development for US officials who have been grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism.
That praise has also been coupled with a wave of anti-refugee sentiment from far-right groups, as the US and others rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan by the Biden administration's August 31 deadline.

The CRT agenda

 So you are wondering what all the fuss is about Critical Race Theory in the schools is about. Right Wing Watch explains. The religious right and others have been in conflict with science-based education for a long time and want to destroy it.

Religious-right activists and other right-wing groups have long viewed public schools and colleges as culture-war battlegrounds. This year’s campaign to mobilize school board takeovers is reminiscent of school board wars that raged during the 1990s, when religious-right groups made a determined effort to take over school boards across the country to combat what they claimed was liberal indoctrination in schools.