Post by mhbruin on May 1, 2022 8:39:39 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 575 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 27)
We had some rain up north this week.
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My Relationship With Whiskey is On the Rocks
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
TucKKKer is the KKK'est
We start today with Nicholas Confessore of The New York Times and his three-part profile of Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain. When refugees from Africa, numbering in the hundreds, began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the Trump administration, he warned that the continent’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.” Amid nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the killing as “criminal mobs.” Companies like Angie’s List and Papa John’s dropped their ads. The following month, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in history. [...]
Alchemizing media power into political influence, Mr. Carlson stands in a nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan. Now Mr. Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much as anyone, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr. Trump. At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. To channel their fear into ratings, Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists, who have watched gleefully from the fringes of public life as he popularizes their ideas. Mr. Carlson sometimes refers to “legacy Americans,” a dog-whistle term that, before he began using it on his show last fall, appeared almost exclusively in white nationalist outlets like The Daily Stormer, The New York Times found. He takes up story lines otherwise relegated to far-right or nativist websites like VDare: “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has featured a string of segments about the gruesome murders of white farmers in South Africa, which Mr. Carlson suggested were part of a concerted campaign by that country’s Black-led government. Last April, Mr. Carlson set off yet another uproar, borrowing from a racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement” to argue that Democrats were deliberately importing “more obedient voters from the third world” to “replace” the current electorate and keep themselves in power. But a Times analysis of 1,150 episodes of his show found that it was far from the first time Mr. Carlson had done so.
One of the more interesting facts in this profile is how Carlson used to to have guests on his show with opposing viewpoints but it was discovered that Fox News viewers did not want to hear opposing viewpoints so the show did away with them.
Nominating Joe Namath and Every Other Medicare Disadvantage Shill
We-The-People run Medicare for no profit. Executives and stockholders profit from preying on us via Medicare Advantage. They demand bonuses and profits. That means less healthcare for you.
The Medicare Advantage plans spend millions in advertising to sell you crap. Guess who is paying for that advertising? You are by getting fewer healthcare services. They offer perks like free lunches to sign up. Some even provide dental, hearing, and vision coverage which Medicare does not. But don’t be fooled; they make you go through hoops to get real value out of them. Unlike traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage must pay bonuses to executives and dividends to shareholders that come out of your care.
From the NYT:
Tens of millions of denials are issued each year for both authorization and reimbursements, and audits of the private insurers show evidence of “widespread and persistent problems related to inappropriate denials of services and payment,” the investigators found.
The report echoes similar findings by the office in 2018 showing that private plans were reversing about three-quarters of their denials on appeal. Hospitals and doctors have long complained about the insurance company tactics, and Congress is considering legislation aimed at addressing some of these concerns. …
Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019. In some cases, plans ignored prior authorizations or other documentation necessary to support the payment.
These denials may delay or even prevent a Medicare Advantage beneficiary from getting needed care, said Rosemary Bartholomew, who led the team that worked on the report. Only a tiny fraction of patients or providers try to appeal these decisions, she said. …
People “should know what they’re giving up,” said David B. Honig, a health care lawyer and Mr. Pauker’s son-in-law. People signing up for Medicare Advantage are surrendering their right to have a doctor determine what is medically necessary, he said, rather than have the insurer decide.
Hillbilly Gibberish
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
The Comedian in Chief. Ukraine Turned a Comedian Into a Leader. Why Do We Turn Our Leaders into Comedians?
— “I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight, because of covid. Well, we’re here to show the country that we’re getting through this pandemic. Plus, everyone had to prove they’re fully vaccinated and boosted. So if you’re home watching this, and you’re wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They’re all here, vaccinated and boosted. All of them.”
They Will Fight With Anything
Ukraine’s territorial troops are true citizen-soldiers. Volunteers all, they enlist with local brigades and fight in their home regions with only minimal training and equally minimal equipment.
They don’t always have standard uniforms, trucks and radios—to say nothing of heavy weaponry. But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely lacking firepower.
To give the territorials some chance of blunting Russian attacks, Kyiv has armed at least some of its two dozen territorial brigades—one each for every major free city—with a type of big gun that, in almost any other army, would be on display at a museum.
The MT-12 towed anti-tank gun. Hundreds of copies of which were lying around in Ukrainian warehouses before the current war.
The three-ton MT-12, firing a high-velocity, 100-millimeter-diameter shell from a smoothbore tube, is getting a hard workout by the territorials as they hold the line against the latest Russian offensives in southern and eastern Ukraine.
A video that circulated on social media on Friday depicts volunteers with the 110th Territorial Brigade from Zaporizhia, 100 miles northwest of Mariupol, furiously firing their MT-12 at nearby Russian or separatist forces.
The gun’s flat elevation means the enemy might be just a mile away, at most. At that range, an MT-12 can penetrate 400 millimeters of armor—enough to destroy an infantry fighting vehicle and, from certain angles, disable or destroy a tank.
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Invasions Have Consequences
For the second straight day, Russia lost more ground than it gained. Ukraine is pushing Russian forces around Kharkiv toward the international border. Blue dots are cities taken the last couple of days; yellow ones are under current Ukrainian assault.
Given Ukrainian pickups around Kharkiv and Kherson/Mykolaiv, Russia may be at a net-negative in territory for the last two weeks. This thing is a standstill. And what’s worse for Russia, even if they break through at Popasna or Rubizhne, then what? Ukraine just drops back to their next set of prepared defenses a few kilometers back, and we’re back to the daily grind, except now Russia has to run their supply lines a few kilometers further.
Meanwhile, Near Izyum
The general confirmed killed was the guy in charge of Russia’s VDV airborne troops, the same crew up in Bucha and Irpin committing heinous war crimes. He can rot. But this attack tells us a couple of other things:
1) The first hit is the command post, some sort of agricultural structure. It was specifically targeted, scoring a direct hit. We may be seeing the first of the suicide drones in action, or a direct-hit artillery smart round. Ukraine made sure that round hit dead on, and hit first, before the rest of the barrage took out much of the supporting gear and vehicles. They didn’t want anyone getting out alive. Coordinates 49.2902805019397, 37.23174981492426:
2) That command post could’ve been set up in the residential parts of town, instead of that exposed complex. For once, Russia didn’t do a war crime, and it cost them. Then again, someone probably lived there at one point, so let’s not rule out war crimes just yet...
3) In a typical artillery attack, a battery fires a handful of one-off rounds, then spotters (now with drones) call in adjustments. It’s not just GPS coordinates that matter, but atmospheric conditions, earth’s rotation, wind speeds at various altitudes, etc. In this case, there was no spotter rounds. It was fire-for-effect from the start, with the guided round hitting just a split second before the rest of the barrage landed.
4) You can assume that the entire barrage was targeted at that command center, which gives you a good idea of artillery’s margin of error. For the M777s headed from the US and other allies, it’s around 150 feet from the target. Some of these rounds actually miss by more, so perhaps Soviet artillery is less accurate.
5) Not sure about Soviet artillery, but modern NATO artillery can shoot three rounds before the first one hits, and all of them hit at the same time. The guns make automatic adjustments as new rounds are loaded. The first round is shot higher, and the subsequent ones adjust downwards for shorter flight durations. That allows for the quick saturation of a target area, then quick departure before counter-battery radar can pinpoint the location of the guns and retaliate.
6) This command post was in the town of Zabavne, 8 kilometers north of Izyum. Take a look at the map below. This is what happens when Russia can’t protect its main supply line into the Izyum salient from Ukrainian flank attacks, and it’s only going to get worse with the arrival of Western artillery reinforcements.
Concentration Camps, Internment Camps, Filtration Camps. Camps in War Never Seem to be a Good Thing
Back in early April, Yahoo News took a look at the filtration camps Russia had created at that point, and at the degrading conditions faced by Ukrainians who found themselves placed in one of these camps.
“The filtration camps, described as large plots of military tents with rows of men in uniforms, are where deported Ukrainians are photographed, fingerprinted, forced to turn over their cellphones, passwords and identity documents, and then questioned by officers for hours before being sent to Russia.”
At the time of that report on April 7, the Bezimenne camp in the Russian-occupied area of Donetsk had processed over 40,000 Ukrainians to be “exfiltrated” to Russia. That number can be expected to be much higher now, as Russia continues to send Ukrainians to unknown locations in Russia. On April 11, the Russian military gave an astounding number of 723,000 Ukrainians “evacuated” from Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. That number could now be much higher.
What's the Dumbest Thing Anyone Could Do When Not Winning a War? Expand it. Is It Possible?
Recent threats made by Russian officials about retaliation against countries interfering in Ukraine may serve a dual purpose of warning off Western powers while also building favor among Russian citizens should a full conflict with NATO break out, according to experts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a Wednesday address that any countries who "create a strategic threat to Russia" during its war in Ukraine can expect "retaliatory strikes" that would be "lightning-fast." Days before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview that "NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy."
Various experts who spoke with Newsweek recently said Russian officials have increased the amount of threatening rhetoric as a way of stoking fear in NATO allies. Some experts also feel it's an effort to win over the hearts and minds of the Russian public.
"All along, Russian domestic propaganda has emphasized that Russia is at war not with Ukraine, but with NATO and the West," Yuri Zhukov, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek. "Behind every Ukrainian military success, in this narrative, there is a NATO officer telling the Ukrainian where, when and whom to shoot."
A One-Way Ticket to BOOM
There's new a drone on the battlefield. Only six months old, video of it in action is still secret. Unlike armed drones that carry weapons under the wings, launching them and returning to base, the Switchblade "kamikaze" drone carries its own warhead, and blows itself up – taking out tanks, armored vehicles and artillery nests with it.
"It's a one-and-done drone," said Wahid Nawabi, who runs Aerovironment, which makes the Switchblade at a secure location he's asked us not to reveal.
So far 700 Switchblades – both large and small -- are being sent to Ukraine to be used against the Russians. "We understand what the people in Ukraine are doing. This is our part to help," said John Aldana, the program manager for the Switchblade.
He explained to CBS News national security correspondent David Martin why the drone – a missile placed in its launcher with its wings folded – is called the Switchblade: "It fits inside this tube. At the bottom we have what is known as a gas generator. It pushes the Switchblade out. Once it's clear of the tube, the wings automatically flip out, and it happens very quickly, just like a switchblade."
In the nose are cameras which scan the battlefield, sending video back to an operator controlling the Switchblade from a tablet
"Once it finds the target, the operator has the ability to essentially dive bomb into the target and take out the target," said Aldana. "It's a one-way mission."
Crates containing Switchblades are already being loaded for Ukraine. "We've been in touch with the Ukrainian military," said Nawabi. "They could use thousands of them. The type of conflict they're engaged with today really is almost ideal for the Switchblade capability."
He's talking specifically about the long Russian convoys creeping toward the front lines. "Switchblade can just literally take them out like popcorn, literally," he said.
Martin asked, "Is the enemy going to hear it?"
"No. It's very, very quiet," said Aldana.
"But if you look up you can see it?"
"Well, it's not easy, right? I mean, it looks big on a table, but when it's in the sky it's very hard to see."
Cyber Karma Gonna' Get You
For more than a decade, U.S. cybersecurity experts have warned about Russian hacking that increasingly uses the labor power of financially motivated criminal gangs to achieve political goals, such as strategically leaking campaign emails.
Prolific ransomware groups in the last year and a half have shut down pandemic-battered hospitals, the key fuel conduit Colonial Pipeline and schools; published sensitive documents from corporate victims; and, in one case, pledged to step up attacks on American infrastructure if Russian technology were hobbled in retribution for the invasion of Ukraine.
Yet the third month of war finds Russia, not the United States, struggling under an unprecedented hacking wave that entwines government activity, political voluntarism and criminal action.
Digital assailants have plundered the country’s personal financial data, defaced websites and handed decades of government emails to anti-secrecy activists abroad. One recent survey showed more passwords and other sensitive data from Russia were dumped onto the open Web in March than information from any other country.
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The Pandemic Must Be Over. Amazon Says It Is.
Amazon will no longer grant up to seven days of paid time off (PTO) for workers sick with COVID-19, the company announced in an internal memo obtained by The Verge (via CNBC). Starting Monday, Amazon will offer up to five days of unpaid, excused leave, with the option for workers to use the paid sick time they’ve accrued.
Amazon initially offered 14 days of PTO at the start of the pandemic, but later shaved one week off this policy in line with the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) updated guidance. The company now says workers with “confirmed” COVID-19 cases can submit a request for paid time off per its “standard sick leave policy,” regardless of vaccination status. It will also stop giving workers excused time off when waiting for their COVID-19 test results, citing the wide availability of rapid tests.
Amazon is adjusting some of its other COVID-19 policies as well. It’s discontinuing its vaccine incentive program that paid workers $40 for every COVID-19 vaccine dose they received, and will no longer notify entire workplaces of positive COVID-19 cases “unless required by law.” Amazon has made continued to make adjustments to its policy over the course of the pandemic and ended mask requirements for both vaccinated and unvaccinated warehouse workers in February.
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Could Inflation Be Peaking?
Inflation is at a 40-year high, and Americans are feeling it.
Thankfully some analysts think that the burden could soon ease, and that we've reached an inflationary top.
This week, the Federal Reserve will meet and likely announce plans to raise interest rates, a tool used to combat rampant inflation. However, investors fear that accelerating the pace of interest rate hikes could drag the economy into recession.
Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for LPL Financial, thinks it's likely that inflation has already reached a peak on its own, and that the Fed could start to pull back on interest rates by the second half of the year.
The core personal consumption expenditures index, which the Federal Reserve closely watches to measure the price of goods and services, grew by 5.2% in March, excluding food and energy prices, coming in below economists' expectations and falling on a monthly basis for the first time since October 2020.
Analysts at UBS also said this month that they expect inflation will likely peak in March and then fall "sharply."
Detrick points to three key economic indicators for that belief: a drop in used car prices, a lack of "sticky" inflation, and a relative easing in supply chain chaos (though China's Covid-related shutdowns could put an end to that).
The chip shortage caused by supply chain kinks and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has made getting a new car very difficult, and the prices of used cars and trucks have correspondingly soared. In February, the price of a used car was up about 45% year-over-year, according to the Manheim Used Car Value Index. But it has since come down to about 25%. Two months of declines show that the prices of used cars, which make up 4% of the consumer price index, could finally be reverting back to pre-pandemic levels.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta breaks inflation into two categories: sticky and flexible. Sticky inflation is a basket of goods that tends to change more slowly and permanently in price, things like the cost of education, public transportation and motor vehicle insurance. Flexible inflation includes items that move up and down in cost more quickly: gas, clothing, milk and cheese.
During the stagflation of the 1970s, both sticky and flexible inflation grew. But so far sticky inflation has remained relatively flat compared with flexible inflation, a good sign that this could still be temporary.
Of course, it could take some time for sticky inflation to play catch up, but Detrick says he's optimistic. Flexible inflation is like a rubber band, he said, you can stretch it pretty far and it will still snap back.
And though shutdowns in China could hurt the global supply chain, it does appear that problems are easing -- at least for now. If businesses can easily obtain more supplies, the prices of materials go down and consumers won't be charged as much for goods and services, said Detrick.
Shipping rates from Shanghai to Los Angeles, New York and Rotterdam are down 28% on average from the peak last year, according to LPL Financial's data. Schedule reliability for container ships is also continuing to improve, according to new data from analytics firm Sea-Intelligence. March also marked the third consecutive month of declines in average delays for container ships.
The move lower in inflation could be sudden as a result, especially for durable goods, said Detrick. Still, he warned, it's hard to tell if we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel — or an oncoming train.
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The Great Dying II
The world’s seawater is steadily climbing in temperature due to the extra heat produced from the burning of fossil fuels, while oxygen levels in the ocean are plunging and the water is acidifying from the soaking up of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This means the oceans are overheated, increasingly gasping for breath – the volume of ocean waters completely depleted of oxygen has quadrupled since the 1960s – and becoming more hostile to life. Aquatic creatures such as clams, mussels and shrimp are unable to properly form shells due to the acidification of seawater.
All of this means the planet could slip into a “mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past”, states the new research, published in Science. The pressures of rising heat and loss of oxygen are, researchers said, uncomfortably reminiscent of the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Permian period about 250m years ago. This cataclysm, known as the “great dying”, led to the demise of up to 96% of the planet’s marine animals.
“Even if the magnitude of species loss is not the same level as this, the mechanism of the species loss would be the same,” said Justin Penn, a climate scientist at Princeton University who co-authored the new research.
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Who Won the Week?
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, who is making history at this moment as the first Black woman to serve a long-duration mission (6 mos.) at the Space Station
Emanuel Macron, the first French president to win reelection in 20 years…and Robert Golob, whose environmentalist Freedom Movement party ousted right-wingers from power in Slovenia
President Biden: stocks up on Covid-19 antiviral pills; issues 1st pardons; pushes student debt forgiveness, ratchets up aid and unveils plan to sell Russki oligarch assets and give money to Ukraine
Lalo Alcaraz, one of US's first syndicated Latino cartoonists, for being awarded the Herb Block Award for distinguished editorial cartooning at the Library of Congress
The "bored kids" who threw eggs at trucks driven by Trump cultists staging a "People's Convoy" in the Bay Area, forcing them to clumsily flee with tears in their eyes and pee in their pants
The members of the German Bundestag, for uniting in an historic vote to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine; and Finland & Sweden, who will soon start their NATO membership applications
Karma, as fructophobic "Troth Senchal" founder Donald Trump is ordered to fork over $10,000 per day after a judge finds The Thing in contempt of court
Jon Stewart, recipient of this year's Mark Twain prize for American humor
Health Canada, for finally scrapping its outdated rule banning gay men from donating blood (When will the US do this?)
Ukraine, for doling out another week of humiliation and pain to the troglodyte Russian horde
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At the Intersection of Previous Guy, Corrupt Bank, and Russia
A man believed to have worked with federal authorities to investigate the activities of Deutsche Bank and its ties with former President Donald Trump was found dead on an El Sereno high school's campus Monday.
A cleaning crew found the body of Valentin Broeksmit, 45, self-described as a "comically terrible spy," around 6:40 a.m Monday morning. He was declared dead at about 7:05 a.m. on the Woodrow Wilson High school campus off on the 4500 block of Multnomah Street according to the Los Angeles County Coroner. Officials have yet to release a cause of death pending an autopsy.
School police said that they had no video that shows him coming onto campus and are unsure how long he'd been on the campus.
Broeksmit was last seen driving a red Mini Cooper on April 6, 2021, in Griffith Park on Riverside Drive. Although Broeksmit had gone missing his Twitter account remained active. Freinds and journalists claimed to stay in contact with him during his disappearance, with Forensic News investigative journalist Scott Stedman tweeting that he last spoke with Broeksmit in January.
Stedman wrote that Broeksmit had given him "Deutsche Bank documents that highlighted the bank's deep Russia connections."
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 30 | |||
| Apr 29 | 56,166 | 308 | |
| Apr 28 | 54,696 | 311 | 1,955 |
| Apr 27 | 53,133 | 334 | 1,941 |
| Apr 26 | 48,692 | 299 | 1,889 |
| Apr 25 | 47,407 | 330 | 1,840 |
| Apr 24 | 44,416 | 314 | 1,779 |
| Apr 23 | 45,413 | 315 | 1,629 |
| Apr 22 | 44,308 | 311 | 1,642 |
| Apr 21 | 40,744 | 346 | 1,647 |
| Apr 20 | 42,604 | 375 | 1,609 |
| Apr 19 | 40,985 | 385 | 1,582 |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 380 | 1,564 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 | 1,542 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 | 1,532 |
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 | 1,510 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 | 1,490 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 | 1,477 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 | 1,463 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 | 1.447 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 | 1,443 |
| Apr 9 | 28,339 | 509 | |
| Apr 8 | 28,169 | 516 | |
| Apr 7 | 26,286 | 471 | |
| Apr 6 | 26,595 | 496 | |
| Apr 5 | 26,845 | 533 | |
| Apr 4 | 25,537 | 537 | |
| Apr 3 | 25,074 | 572 | |
| Apr 2 | 25,787 | 576 | |
| Apr 1 | 26,106 | 584 | |
| Mar 31 | 25,980 | 605 | |
| Mar 30 | 25,732 | 626 | |
| Mar 29 | 25,218 | 644 | |
| Mar 28 | 26,190 | 700 | |
| Mar 27 | 26,487 | 690 | |
| Mar 26 | 26,593 | 697 | |
| Mar 25 | 26,874 | 705 | |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.5% | 66.0% | 45.6% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.3% | 70.2% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 87.1% | 74.5% | 47.4% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.9% | 76.0% | 49.1% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 90.0% | 68.3% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 27)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks Ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 81% (74%) | 79% (70%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 67% (61%) | 65% (58%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 62% (57%) | 60% (54%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 29% | 15% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 33% | 27% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 23% | 24% |
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My Relationship With Whiskey is On the Rocks
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
TucKKKer is the KKK'est
We start today with Nicholas Confessore of The New York Times and his three-part profile of Tucker Carlson of Fox News.
Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain. When refugees from Africa, numbering in the hundreds, began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the Trump administration, he warned that the continent’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.” Amid nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the killing as “criminal mobs.” Companies like Angie’s List and Papa John’s dropped their ads. The following month, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in history. [...]
Alchemizing media power into political influence, Mr. Carlson stands in a nativist American tradition that runs from Father Coughlin to Patrick J. Buchanan. Now Mr. Carlson’s on-air technique — gleefully courting blowback, then fashioning himself as his aggrieved viewers’ partner in victimhood — has helped position him, as much as anyone, to inherit the populist movement that grew up around Mr. Trump. At a moment when white backlash is the jet fuel of a Republican Party striving to return to power in Washington, he has become the pre-eminent champion of Americans who feel most threatened by the rising power of Black and brown citizens. To channel their fear into ratings, Mr. Carlson has adopted the rhetorical tropes and exotic fixations of white nationalists, who have watched gleefully from the fringes of public life as he popularizes their ideas. Mr. Carlson sometimes refers to “legacy Americans,” a dog-whistle term that, before he began using it on his show last fall, appeared almost exclusively in white nationalist outlets like The Daily Stormer, The New York Times found. He takes up story lines otherwise relegated to far-right or nativist websites like VDare: “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has featured a string of segments about the gruesome murders of white farmers in South Africa, which Mr. Carlson suggested were part of a concerted campaign by that country’s Black-led government. Last April, Mr. Carlson set off yet another uproar, borrowing from a racist conspiracy theory known as “the great replacement” to argue that Democrats were deliberately importing “more obedient voters from the third world” to “replace” the current electorate and keep themselves in power. But a Times analysis of 1,150 episodes of his show found that it was far from the first time Mr. Carlson had done so.
One of the more interesting facts in this profile is how Carlson used to to have guests on his show with opposing viewpoints but it was discovered that Fox News viewers did not want to hear opposing viewpoints so the show did away with them.
Nominating Joe Namath and Every Other Medicare Disadvantage Shill
We-The-People run Medicare for no profit. Executives and stockholders profit from preying on us via Medicare Advantage. They demand bonuses and profits. That means less healthcare for you.
The Medicare Advantage plans spend millions in advertising to sell you crap. Guess who is paying for that advertising? You are by getting fewer healthcare services. They offer perks like free lunches to sign up. Some even provide dental, hearing, and vision coverage which Medicare does not. But don’t be fooled; they make you go through hoops to get real value out of them. Unlike traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage must pay bonuses to executives and dividends to shareholders that come out of your care.
From the NYT:
Tens of millions of denials are issued each year for both authorization and reimbursements, and audits of the private insurers show evidence of “widespread and persistent problems related to inappropriate denials of services and payment,” the investigators found.
The report echoes similar findings by the office in 2018 showing that private plans were reversing about three-quarters of their denials on appeal. Hospitals and doctors have long complained about the insurance company tactics, and Congress is considering legislation aimed at addressing some of these concerns. …
Advantage plans also refused to pay legitimate claims, according to the report. About 18 percent of payments were denied despite meeting Medicare coverage rules, an estimated 1.5 million payments for all of 2019. In some cases, plans ignored prior authorizations or other documentation necessary to support the payment.
These denials may delay or even prevent a Medicare Advantage beneficiary from getting needed care, said Rosemary Bartholomew, who led the team that worked on the report. Only a tiny fraction of patients or providers try to appeal these decisions, she said. …
People “should know what they’re giving up,” said David B. Honig, a health care lawyer and Mr. Pauker’s son-in-law. People signing up for Medicare Advantage are surrendering their right to have a doctor determine what is medically necessary, he said, rather than have the insurer decide.
Hillbilly Gibberish
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
The Comedian in Chief. Ukraine Turned a Comedian Into a Leader. Why Do We Turn Our Leaders into Comedians?
— “I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight, because of covid. Well, we’re here to show the country that we’re getting through this pandemic. Plus, everyone had to prove they’re fully vaccinated and boosted. So if you’re home watching this, and you’re wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter. They’re all here, vaccinated and boosted. All of them.”
They Will Fight With Anything
Ukraine’s territorial troops are true citizen-soldiers. Volunteers all, they enlist with local brigades and fight in their home regions with only minimal training and equally minimal equipment.
They don’t always have standard uniforms, trucks and radios—to say nothing of heavy weaponry. But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely lacking firepower.
To give the territorials some chance of blunting Russian attacks, Kyiv has armed at least some of its two dozen territorial brigades—one each for every major free city—with a type of big gun that, in almost any other army, would be on display at a museum.
The MT-12 towed anti-tank gun. Hundreds of copies of which were lying around in Ukrainian warehouses before the current war.
The three-ton MT-12, firing a high-velocity, 100-millimeter-diameter shell from a smoothbore tube, is getting a hard workout by the territorials as they hold the line against the latest Russian offensives in southern and eastern Ukraine.
A video that circulated on social media on Friday depicts volunteers with the 110th Territorial Brigade from Zaporizhia, 100 miles northwest of Mariupol, furiously firing their MT-12 at nearby Russian or separatist forces.
The gun’s flat elevation means the enemy might be just a mile away, at most. At that range, an MT-12 can penetrate 400 millimeters of armor—enough to destroy an infantry fighting vehicle and, from certain angles, disable or destroy a tank.
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Invasions Have Consequences
For the second straight day, Russia lost more ground than it gained. Ukraine is pushing Russian forces around Kharkiv toward the international border. Blue dots are cities taken the last couple of days; yellow ones are under current Ukrainian assault.
Given Ukrainian pickups around Kharkiv and Kherson/Mykolaiv, Russia may be at a net-negative in territory for the last two weeks. This thing is a standstill. And what’s worse for Russia, even if they break through at Popasna or Rubizhne, then what? Ukraine just drops back to their next set of prepared defenses a few kilometers back, and we’re back to the daily grind, except now Russia has to run their supply lines a few kilometers further.
Meanwhile, Near Izyum
The general confirmed killed was the guy in charge of Russia’s VDV airborne troops, the same crew up in Bucha and Irpin committing heinous war crimes. He can rot. But this attack tells us a couple of other things:
1) The first hit is the command post, some sort of agricultural structure. It was specifically targeted, scoring a direct hit. We may be seeing the first of the suicide drones in action, or a direct-hit artillery smart round. Ukraine made sure that round hit dead on, and hit first, before the rest of the barrage took out much of the supporting gear and vehicles. They didn’t want anyone getting out alive. Coordinates 49.2902805019397, 37.23174981492426:
2) That command post could’ve been set up in the residential parts of town, instead of that exposed complex. For once, Russia didn’t do a war crime, and it cost them. Then again, someone probably lived there at one point, so let’s not rule out war crimes just yet...
3) In a typical artillery attack, a battery fires a handful of one-off rounds, then spotters (now with drones) call in adjustments. It’s not just GPS coordinates that matter, but atmospheric conditions, earth’s rotation, wind speeds at various altitudes, etc. In this case, there was no spotter rounds. It was fire-for-effect from the start, with the guided round hitting just a split second before the rest of the barrage landed.
4) You can assume that the entire barrage was targeted at that command center, which gives you a good idea of artillery’s margin of error. For the M777s headed from the US and other allies, it’s around 150 feet from the target. Some of these rounds actually miss by more, so perhaps Soviet artillery is less accurate.
5) Not sure about Soviet artillery, but modern NATO artillery can shoot three rounds before the first one hits, and all of them hit at the same time. The guns make automatic adjustments as new rounds are loaded. The first round is shot higher, and the subsequent ones adjust downwards for shorter flight durations. That allows for the quick saturation of a target area, then quick departure before counter-battery radar can pinpoint the location of the guns and retaliate.
6) This command post was in the town of Zabavne, 8 kilometers north of Izyum. Take a look at the map below. This is what happens when Russia can’t protect its main supply line into the Izyum salient from Ukrainian flank attacks, and it’s only going to get worse with the arrival of Western artillery reinforcements.
Concentration Camps, Internment Camps, Filtration Camps. Camps in War Never Seem to be a Good Thing
Back in early April, Yahoo News took a look at the filtration camps Russia had created at that point, and at the degrading conditions faced by Ukrainians who found themselves placed in one of these camps.
“The filtration camps, described as large plots of military tents with rows of men in uniforms, are where deported Ukrainians are photographed, fingerprinted, forced to turn over their cellphones, passwords and identity documents, and then questioned by officers for hours before being sent to Russia.”
At the time of that report on April 7, the Bezimenne camp in the Russian-occupied area of Donetsk had processed over 40,000 Ukrainians to be “exfiltrated” to Russia. That number can be expected to be much higher now, as Russia continues to send Ukrainians to unknown locations in Russia. On April 11, the Russian military gave an astounding number of 723,000 Ukrainians “evacuated” from Ukraine since the beginning of the invasion. That number could now be much higher.
What's the Dumbest Thing Anyone Could Do When Not Winning a War? Expand it. Is It Possible?
Recent threats made by Russian officials about retaliation against countries interfering in Ukraine may serve a dual purpose of warning off Western powers while also building favor among Russian citizens should a full conflict with NATO break out, according to experts.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a Wednesday address that any countries who "create a strategic threat to Russia" during its war in Ukraine can expect "retaliatory strikes" that would be "lightning-fast." Days before, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview that "NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy."
Various experts who spoke with Newsweek recently said Russian officials have increased the amount of threatening rhetoric as a way of stoking fear in NATO allies. Some experts also feel it's an effort to win over the hearts and minds of the Russian public.
"All along, Russian domestic propaganda has emphasized that Russia is at war not with Ukraine, but with NATO and the West," Yuri Zhukov, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, told Newsweek. "Behind every Ukrainian military success, in this narrative, there is a NATO officer telling the Ukrainian where, when and whom to shoot."
A One-Way Ticket to BOOM
There's new a drone on the battlefield. Only six months old, video of it in action is still secret. Unlike armed drones that carry weapons under the wings, launching them and returning to base, the Switchblade "kamikaze" drone carries its own warhead, and blows itself up – taking out tanks, armored vehicles and artillery nests with it.
"It's a one-and-done drone," said Wahid Nawabi, who runs Aerovironment, which makes the Switchblade at a secure location he's asked us not to reveal.
So far 700 Switchblades – both large and small -- are being sent to Ukraine to be used against the Russians. "We understand what the people in Ukraine are doing. This is our part to help," said John Aldana, the program manager for the Switchblade.
He explained to CBS News national security correspondent David Martin why the drone – a missile placed in its launcher with its wings folded – is called the Switchblade: "It fits inside this tube. At the bottom we have what is known as a gas generator. It pushes the Switchblade out. Once it's clear of the tube, the wings automatically flip out, and it happens very quickly, just like a switchblade."
In the nose are cameras which scan the battlefield, sending video back to an operator controlling the Switchblade from a tablet
"Once it finds the target, the operator has the ability to essentially dive bomb into the target and take out the target," said Aldana. "It's a one-way mission."
Crates containing Switchblades are already being loaded for Ukraine. "We've been in touch with the Ukrainian military," said Nawabi. "They could use thousands of them. The type of conflict they're engaged with today really is almost ideal for the Switchblade capability."
He's talking specifically about the long Russian convoys creeping toward the front lines. "Switchblade can just literally take them out like popcorn, literally," he said.
Martin asked, "Is the enemy going to hear it?"
"No. It's very, very quiet," said Aldana.
"But if you look up you can see it?"
"Well, it's not easy, right? I mean, it looks big on a table, but when it's in the sky it's very hard to see."
Cyber Karma Gonna' Get You
For more than a decade, U.S. cybersecurity experts have warned about Russian hacking that increasingly uses the labor power of financially motivated criminal gangs to achieve political goals, such as strategically leaking campaign emails.
Prolific ransomware groups in the last year and a half have shut down pandemic-battered hospitals, the key fuel conduit Colonial Pipeline and schools; published sensitive documents from corporate victims; and, in one case, pledged to step up attacks on American infrastructure if Russian technology were hobbled in retribution for the invasion of Ukraine.
Yet the third month of war finds Russia, not the United States, struggling under an unprecedented hacking wave that entwines government activity, political voluntarism and criminal action.
Digital assailants have plundered the country’s personal financial data, defaced websites and handed decades of government emails to anti-secrecy activists abroad. One recent survey showed more passwords and other sensitive data from Russia were dumped onto the open Web in March than information from any other country.
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The Pandemic Must Be Over. Amazon Says It Is.
Amazon will no longer grant up to seven days of paid time off (PTO) for workers sick with COVID-19, the company announced in an internal memo obtained by The Verge (via CNBC). Starting Monday, Amazon will offer up to five days of unpaid, excused leave, with the option for workers to use the paid sick time they’ve accrued.
Amazon initially offered 14 days of PTO at the start of the pandemic, but later shaved one week off this policy in line with the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) updated guidance. The company now says workers with “confirmed” COVID-19 cases can submit a request for paid time off per its “standard sick leave policy,” regardless of vaccination status. It will also stop giving workers excused time off when waiting for their COVID-19 test results, citing the wide availability of rapid tests.
Amazon is adjusting some of its other COVID-19 policies as well. It’s discontinuing its vaccine incentive program that paid workers $40 for every COVID-19 vaccine dose they received, and will no longer notify entire workplaces of positive COVID-19 cases “unless required by law.” Amazon has made continued to make adjustments to its policy over the course of the pandemic and ended mask requirements for both vaccinated and unvaccinated warehouse workers in February.
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Could Inflation Be Peaking?
Inflation is at a 40-year high, and Americans are feeling it.
Thankfully some analysts think that the burden could soon ease, and that we've reached an inflationary top.
This week, the Federal Reserve will meet and likely announce plans to raise interest rates, a tool used to combat rampant inflation. However, investors fear that accelerating the pace of interest rate hikes could drag the economy into recession.
Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for LPL Financial, thinks it's likely that inflation has already reached a peak on its own, and that the Fed could start to pull back on interest rates by the second half of the year.
The core personal consumption expenditures index, which the Federal Reserve closely watches to measure the price of goods and services, grew by 5.2% in March, excluding food and energy prices, coming in below economists' expectations and falling on a monthly basis for the first time since October 2020.
Analysts at UBS also said this month that they expect inflation will likely peak in March and then fall "sharply."
Detrick points to three key economic indicators for that belief: a drop in used car prices, a lack of "sticky" inflation, and a relative easing in supply chain chaos (though China's Covid-related shutdowns could put an end to that).
The chip shortage caused by supply chain kinks and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, has made getting a new car very difficult, and the prices of used cars and trucks have correspondingly soared. In February, the price of a used car was up about 45% year-over-year, according to the Manheim Used Car Value Index. But it has since come down to about 25%. Two months of declines show that the prices of used cars, which make up 4% of the consumer price index, could finally be reverting back to pre-pandemic levels.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta breaks inflation into two categories: sticky and flexible. Sticky inflation is a basket of goods that tends to change more slowly and permanently in price, things like the cost of education, public transportation and motor vehicle insurance. Flexible inflation includes items that move up and down in cost more quickly: gas, clothing, milk and cheese.
During the stagflation of the 1970s, both sticky and flexible inflation grew. But so far sticky inflation has remained relatively flat compared with flexible inflation, a good sign that this could still be temporary.
Of course, it could take some time for sticky inflation to play catch up, but Detrick says he's optimistic. Flexible inflation is like a rubber band, he said, you can stretch it pretty far and it will still snap back.
And though shutdowns in China could hurt the global supply chain, it does appear that problems are easing -- at least for now. If businesses can easily obtain more supplies, the prices of materials go down and consumers won't be charged as much for goods and services, said Detrick.
Shipping rates from Shanghai to Los Angeles, New York and Rotterdam are down 28% on average from the peak last year, according to LPL Financial's data. Schedule reliability for container ships is also continuing to improve, according to new data from analytics firm Sea-Intelligence. March also marked the third consecutive month of declines in average delays for container ships.
The move lower in inflation could be sudden as a result, especially for durable goods, said Detrick. Still, he warned, it's hard to tell if we're seeing the light at the end of the tunnel — or an oncoming train.
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The Great Dying II
The world’s seawater is steadily climbing in temperature due to the extra heat produced from the burning of fossil fuels, while oxygen levels in the ocean are plunging and the water is acidifying from the soaking up of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This means the oceans are overheated, increasingly gasping for breath – the volume of ocean waters completely depleted of oxygen has quadrupled since the 1960s – and becoming more hostile to life. Aquatic creatures such as clams, mussels and shrimp are unable to properly form shells due to the acidification of seawater.
All of this means the planet could slip into a “mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past”, states the new research, published in Science. The pressures of rising heat and loss of oxygen are, researchers said, uncomfortably reminiscent of the mass extinction event that occurred at the end of the Permian period about 250m years ago. This cataclysm, known as the “great dying”, led to the demise of up to 96% of the planet’s marine animals.
“Even if the magnitude of species loss is not the same level as this, the mechanism of the species loss would be the same,” said Justin Penn, a climate scientist at Princeton University who co-authored the new research.
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Who Won the Week?
NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins, who is making history at this moment as the first Black woman to serve a long-duration mission (6 mos.) at the Space Station
Emanuel Macron, the first French president to win reelection in 20 years…and Robert Golob, whose environmentalist Freedom Movement party ousted right-wingers from power in Slovenia
President Biden: stocks up on Covid-19 antiviral pills; issues 1st pardons; pushes student debt forgiveness, ratchets up aid and unveils plan to sell Russki oligarch assets and give money to Ukraine
Lalo Alcaraz, one of US's first syndicated Latino cartoonists, for being awarded the Herb Block Award for distinguished editorial cartooning at the Library of Congress
The "bored kids" who threw eggs at trucks driven by Trump cultists staging a "People's Convoy" in the Bay Area, forcing them to clumsily flee with tears in their eyes and pee in their pants
The members of the German Bundestag, for uniting in an historic vote to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine; and Finland & Sweden, who will soon start their NATO membership applications
Karma, as fructophobic "Troth Senchal" founder Donald Trump is ordered to fork over $10,000 per day after a judge finds The Thing in contempt of court
Jon Stewart, recipient of this year's Mark Twain prize for American humor
Health Canada, for finally scrapping its outdated rule banning gay men from donating blood (When will the US do this?)
Ukraine, for doling out another week of humiliation and pain to the troglodyte Russian horde
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At the Intersection of Previous Guy, Corrupt Bank, and Russia
A man believed to have worked with federal authorities to investigate the activities of Deutsche Bank and its ties with former President Donald Trump was found dead on an El Sereno high school's campus Monday.
A cleaning crew found the body of Valentin Broeksmit, 45, self-described as a "comically terrible spy," around 6:40 a.m Monday morning. He was declared dead at about 7:05 a.m. on the Woodrow Wilson High school campus off on the 4500 block of Multnomah Street according to the Los Angeles County Coroner. Officials have yet to release a cause of death pending an autopsy.
School police said that they had no video that shows him coming onto campus and are unsure how long he'd been on the campus.
Broeksmit was last seen driving a red Mini Cooper on April 6, 2021, in Griffith Park on Riverside Drive. Although Broeksmit had gone missing his Twitter account remained active. Freinds and journalists claimed to stay in contact with him during his disappearance, with Forensic News investigative journalist Scott Stedman tweeting that he last spoke with Broeksmit in January.
Stedman wrote that Broeksmit had given him "Deutsche Bank documents that highlighted the bank's deep Russia connections."
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