By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Evening Grosbeak (type 1), Coos, Oregon, United States. “Chatters, trills, dawn. Weather was misty. Habitat: Yard, Suburban.”
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
The Constitutional Order (Insurrection)
Lambert here: Patient readers, I would like to preen a little for (a) recognizing that the Section Three story was important and (b) covering it relentlessly (and from all sides). More, (c) I was skeptical of the case being made, (d) appropriately so, given the tenor of the Justices’ questioning (across the board, not just the conservatives. Of course, we don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be — and there are other case in the works — but I think you were well prepared for the explosion of coverage now that it has finally happened. (Hat tip to alert reader GH for sending me the amici briefs!)
“The Supreme Court seems poised to reject efforts to kick Trump off the ballot over the Capitol riot” [Associated Press]. “The Supreme Court seems poised to reject attempts to kick former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, with conservative and liberal justices in apparent agreement in a case that puts them at the heart of a presidential election. A definitive ruling for Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, would largely end efforts in Colorado, Maine and elsewhere to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot…. But on a Supreme Court that prefers to avoid cases in which it is the final arbiter of a political dispute, the justices appeared to be searching for a consensus ruling and the issue of congressional action seemed to draw the most support. Justice Elena Kagan was among several justices who wanted to know “why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States.’” But it’s unlikely that Congress would act. So where would that leave us? Finally: “In addition to the immunity issue, the court also will hear an appeal in April from one of the more than 1,200 people charged in the Capitol riot. The case could upend a charge prosecutors have brought against more than 300 people, including Trump.” • It’s going to be quite a year!
“The Five Minute Fix” [WaPo]. “The Supreme Court didn’t even have to hear the case. But the justices probably recognized the extraordinary public interest in whether a presidential candidate is an insurrectionist. Which suggests they could rule very soon, before more states have their primaries in March. They have three main options, ranked in order of least to most likely….. 1. They could decide Trump can’t be on all state ballots: This would be cataclysmic for Trump, and it’s the least likely option, based on how skeptical the judges sounded today about Colorado’s argument…. 2. They could decide Trump can be on all state ballots: This would keep the status quo. Trump could precede as a normal presidential candidate. 3. They could narrowly rule on just the Colorado case: This would be the most complicated outcome, according to secretaries of states The Washington Post has talked to. This decision would leave it up to state election officials, or even Congress, to decide what to do with Trump. But while that’s an unsatisfactory answer to the public, it might be the easiest decision for the justices, who never wanted this case in the first place, [aid Jessica Levinson, a legal analyst and law professor at Loyola Marymount University] said.” • Hmm. If that’s the most likely option, then “domestic tranquillity” looks a little shaky.
Our Famously Free Press
On Tucker Carlson’s Putin interview:
The Putin-Tucker Carlson interview has extensive discussion of issues that the US media, across the spectrum, has ignored and whitewashed:
-US building missile systems near Russia
-the 2014 US-backed Maidan coup
-US blocking the Minsk Accords
-US-UK blocking the April 2022 peace…— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 9, 2024
My guess is that if we read the transcript as if it were a speech delivered at the Valdai Discussion Club, there would be much to ponder. And even if Putin is simply repeating earlier positions, that’s interesting in and of itself. Putin is, after all, under no obligation to produce a scoop for Carlson.
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * “Trump (R): Trump has his best day of 2024” [CNN]. “Donald Trump had his best day of 2024 so far… The former president was handed a political gift. An independent special counsel poured kerosene on concerns about Joe Biden’s age with pointed language about the president’s poor memory after concluding Biden had willfully mishandled classified documents – and that his failing memory makes him impossible to convict. Biden was on defense at a hastily called White House news conference. “My memory is fine,” Biden said. He is on a glide path to the Republican nomination. Trump romped in the Nevada and US Virgin Island caucuses Thursday night, continuing his unbeaten streak and making Nikki Haley’s campaign feel futile. He appears poised for a win at the Supreme Court. Justices expressed deep skepticism that Colorado could declare him an insurrectionist and bar him from their election ballots. It’s a one-two-three combo that should have Trump feeling solid about his political future, at least for a moment.” • Lucky in his enemies….
Trump (R): “Trump wins Nevada GOP caucus” [The Hill]. 99.3% “Former President Trump is projected to win the Nevada GOP’s caucus, according to Decision Desk HQ, two days after fellow presidential candidate Nikki Haley lost in a primary there that didn’t count toward the nomination. The state GOP’s rules barred Haley from being in the caucus due to her participation in the primary, where she suffered an embarrassing defeat to ‘none of the above candidates.’ The state party said it would only award delegates for the Republican National Convention (RNC) to the winner of the caucus.”
* * * Biden (D): “Report on the Investigation Into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Eiden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Eiden, Jr.” [Special Counsel Robert K. Hur, U.S. Department of Justice]. Here are the passages that are causing so much agita:
And it appears Biden’s memory has been problematic since at least 2017, that is before he was President:
(Note that an interview with a ghostwriter is not an official proceeding; people forget things in official proceedings all the time!) Since I came up during the Terry Schiavo debacle, when ridiculous and tendentious armchair diagnosis — much of it from doctors! — was rife, I’m careful on topics like this. Dementia has a lot of behavioral symptoms (and if Biden has been formally tested, the results are not available to us). Memory loss is one. Aggressive behavior is another, which is why I flagged Biden’s “rage” in links this morning. If the press really wants to go into pulling-the-wings-off-flies mode, they can ask Biden to count backwards from 100 by sevens in his next presser, if any. If there is a trustworthy, apartisan videopgrapher/editor in this world, they might consider making documenting Biden’s gait over time. Finally, it’s worth noting that Biden has had Covid twice, and that dementia has been a well-known Covid sequela since 2021. As I wrote back in seq: “A sociopathic elite is one thing, that we’re used to; but a sociopathic elite with brain damage is quite another.”
Biden (D): “Biden angrily pushes back at special counsel’s report that questioned his memory, handling of docs” [Associated Press]. “‘How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden asked, about Hur’s comments regarding his son’s death, saying he didn’t believe it was any of Hur’s business. When asked about the report earlier Thursday in a private moment with a handful of House Democrats ahead of his speech at their suburban Virginia retreat, Biden responded angrily, according to two people familiar with his comments* , saying, ‘You think I would f—— forget the day my son died?’The people did not want to address the matter publicly and spoke of condition of anonymity. Biden pointedly noted that he had sat for five hours of in-person interviews in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October attack on Israel, when ‘I was in the middle of handling an international crisis.’” • NOTE * Harris supporters?
Biden (D): “Joe Biden: Political grenade thrusts age into spotlight” [BBC]. “Other Biden allies have pushed back on Mr Hur’s impartiality, pointing out that he was appointed to a US attorney office by Donald Trump in 2017. It was Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who selected Mr Hur as special counsel, however.” • Hur’s bio.
Biden (D): “Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024” [New York Times]. “[A] visibly angry Mr. Biden made the exact type of verbal flub that has kept Democrats so nervous for months, mistakenly referring to the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as the ‘president of Mexico’ as he tried to address the latest developments in the war in Gaza…. The Trump operation has made plain its intent to use Mr. Biden’s stiffer gait [see above] and sometimes garbled speech to cast him as weak.”
Biden (D): “5 takeaways from special counsel report on Biden’s classified documents” [The Hill]. “While Hur’s comments about Biden’s age and memory will no doubt sting on the campaign trail, the special counsel’s rationale for not bringing charges rests both on the law and Biden’s ability to cast doubt on claims he intentionally kept the records. The Espionage Act prohibits ‘willful’ retention of national defense information, placing a burden on prosecutors to show violators kept documents intentionally. It’s a task made more difficult given that Biden alerted authorities to his possession of the documents. ‘His cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully — that is, with intent to break the law — as the statute requires,’ Hur wrote. But there were also other factors that backed Biden’s stance that he was unaware the records were in his home. The Afghanistan documents were ‘in Mr. Biden’s Delaware garage — in a badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus,’ Hur said.” • Well, who doesn’t have a little “household detritus”? MR SUBLIMINAL Not you, Hunter! Seriously, though, if Trump had done this?
* * * Biden (D): “Opinion: Age matters. Which is why Biden’s age is his superpower” [Bill McKibben, Los Angeles Times]. “There was never much question that Third Act, the progressive organizing group for people over 60 that I helped found, would end up endorsing President Biden for reelection… Individual policy decisions don’t explain why my organization’s members are drawn to Biden. It’s not that we reflexively like older politicians; we take seriously the need to pass the torch to a new generation. But we also don’t unthinkingly dismiss anyone just because they can collect Social Security. Obviously you lose a step physically as you age, but the presidency doesn’t require carrying sofas up the White House stairs. And science increasingly finds that aging brains make more connections, perhaps because they have more history to work with. It’s the specifics of that history that really draw us in….. Biden was socialized in an era when government took on big causes, and you can see it reflected in his first-term commitment to rebuilding infrastructure on a grand scale, boosting a new sustainable energy economy with billions of dollars for solar panels and battery factories, dramatically increasing the number of people with healthcare, and standing up for gun control, voting rights and reproductive rights.” By contrast: “When Obama, at the end of his time in office, was asked why even with 60 Democratic senators at his inauguration his policy achievements — Obamacare excepted — had been relatively modest, he cited a ‘residual willingness to accept the political constraints that we’d inherited from the post-Reagan era. … Probably there was an embrace of market solutions to a whole host of problems that wasn’t entirely justified.’” • That statement is such classic Obama. I’d love to accept McKibben’s argument; I’m an old codger, after all. But Biden’s commitment to big causes is highly selective — unless you consider whacking a million people with a “Let ‘er rip” pandemic policy a “big cause.”
“The Republican Fantasy that Democrats Will Replace Joe Biden” [Rich Lowry, Politico]. “[Given the alternatives], sitting tight with Biden, despite everything, and hoping the economy continues to grow and Trump gets convicted of something doesn’t seem so crazy…. Why is it so difficult to accept that this is the strategy? For three reasons. First, Biden does often look and sound so enfeebled it’s hard to believe that a political party would really be pinning all its hopes — including purportedly saving American democracy — on him…. Second, each side of the political divide tends to think the other is shrewder, more conniving and more in control than it is. The reality is that both left and right are buffeted by events and political forces beyond their mastery. But since the Democrats have a political establishment that has maintained more sway than its GOP counterpart, and the Democrats are more capable of coherent actions (getting Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg to quit the 2020 primary at the same time to back Biden is an example), Republicans attribute more power to Democratic string-pullers than they should. Finally, there’s always the psychological satisfaction of supposedly knowing what’s really going on beneath the surface, when usually the muddle of the surface — like being yoked to a flawed incumbent for the lack of realistic alternatives — is all that there is.”
* * * Biden (D): Anything that makes Donald Trump, Jr. look like a winner:
So Joe Biden is old & cognitively impaired (8 yrs ago) according to special prosecutor Hur, that’s why he won’t be charged for leaving classified documents all over the place.
However, he’s still 100% ok to lead the free world & hold the nuclear football!
Totally makes sense! pic.twitter.com/TcFJUuOdW7
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 8, 2024
Biden (D): “Clinton adviser Begala on Hur report: ‘This is terrible for Democrats’” [Politico]. “Democratic strategist and former Clinton advisor Paul Begala issued a warning to Democrats after the release of a special counsel report that questioned President Joe Biden’s memory…. ‘Look, I’m a Biden supporter. And I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed. This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that,’ said Begala, who was a chief strategist to the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign and later served as an adviser to President Bill Clinton in the White House, in an appearance Friday on CNN…. ‘I want to see more Joe Biden, and the gaffes are built in. But instead of simply saying, ‘I’m OK’, he just simply, he needs to be on the attack 24/7 for the next 269 days,’ Begala said.” • I don’t know if Biden has that capability any more. In 2020, he campaigned from his basement. This is four years later….
Biden (D): “Obama AG Eric Holder blasts special counsel’s report” [Politico]. ‘Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions,’ Holder said in a post on X early Friday morning. ‘Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.’” • By the Norms Fairy, apparently, and not Aletheia, the goddess of Truth.
* * * “What is the 25th Amendment? A simplified explanation of what it does, who can invoke it” [USA Today]. “The 25th Amendment cannot be executed by a single party. Instead, it takes a few steps of approval by multiple parties. The vice president is the primary starting point for invoking the 25th Amendment, specifically the fourth section. The vice president, in conjunction with either a majority of the executive Cabinet or a specific “body” designated by Congress, must invoke the Amendment in tandem. The vice president takes over once these parties submit a formal written declaration to Congress. If the president refutes this, they can return to power for four days, in which time the other parties can again submit a declaration invoking the president’s removal. If this happens, the VP takes over again and Congress must secure a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate within 21 days to permanently remove the president.” • So Kamala Harris pulls the trigger. Oh, good. I wonder if the flight-trackers show any movement from Willie Brown; she’d want to consult with her oldest, most trusted advisors. (My thought, which I don’t think I ever wrote up, was that the ideal time to defenestrate Biden would be — or would have been– a month or so before the Democratic National Convention starting August 19. That way, the Convention, which has plenary powers, could simply pick the candidate in a smoke-filled room, which is what the party grandees would like to do anyhow. February is much, much too early; it gives rivals time to start their own campaigns. It also opens up space for RFK Jr.)
“Republicans Call For Biden’s Removal By 25th Amendment After Hur Report: What It Is And Why That Won’t Happen” [Forbes]. “The calls for invoking the 25th Amendment are among mounting criticism from Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, about Biden’s mental well-being given the report’s findings. But the calls are unlikely to be more than partisan chatter as invoking the 25th Amendment would require the support of the vice president and of Biden’s Democratic cabinet. The group would have to agree he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” according to Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. From there it’s an even steeper uphill battle for Biden to be removed from office. Two-thirds majorities of both chambers would then have to vote and approve of stripping the president of his powers.” • I wonder what
Mrs. Woodrow WilsonJill Biden thinks….* * * Biden (D): “Could Taylor Swift Help Biden Win Re-Election? Yes, According to the Data” [Morning Consult]. “3% of U.S. voters say they are avid fans of Swift, along with 37% who consider themselves casual fans. Roughly 2 in 3 avid Swift fans who are registered to vote would like to see her endorse Biden’s re-election, compared with 30% of all voters who agree. Only 51% of Swift’s youngest fans who are eligible to vote (ages 18-34) said they’ll definitely participate in the November election, suggesting that a Swift advocacy effort could help Biden run up the score among this left-leaning group — especially if she can activate her casual followers. 64% of voters who identify as avid Swift fans say they’re supporting Biden for re-election this year.” • Does seem a little trivial, after the Hur report. But one carries on!
* * * RFK, Jr. (D): “Democrats step up legal action against RFK Jr. allies — signaling worry over the independent candidate” [Politico]. “The Democratic National Committee is going after the push to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s name on the ballot in more than a dozen states by alleging his allies’ latest efforts violate federal election law — a sign that Democrats are worried about the presence of the independent candidate in the 2024 race. The DNC officially filed a complaint against Kennedy with the Federal Election Commission on Friday claiming that American Values 2024 — the PAC supporting Kennedy — is illegally coordinating with his campaign to get him on additional state ballots. They say the $15 million the PAC is putting into a signature-gathering effort amounts to an in-kind contribution… — the commission is evenly divided among the two major parties and frequently deadlocks on enforcement questions — but it signals that national Democrats are dialing up their efforts to target Kennedy, the current leading non-major party presidential candidate, over fears that he may siphon votes away from President Joe Biden in this year’s election.”
* * *
The Wizard of Kalorama™
*** Crickets ***
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Vaccination and Vaccines
“One Simple Change May Dramatically Boost The Effect of COVID-19 Vaccines” [Science Alert]. “Four weeks after the second jab, those who received shots in both arms had up to a four-fold increase in SARS-CoV-2-specific serum antibodies compared to those who got shots in just one arm. What’s more, this improved immune response lasted more than a year after the booster was administered. ‘It turned out to be one of the more significant things we’ve found, and it’s probably not limited to just COVID vaccines,’ [infectious disease specialist Marcel Curlin] hypothesizes. ‘We may be seeing an important immunologic function.’ Curlin and his colleagues are not yet sure what that special function is, or how it works, but they have an idea. When a vaccine is given in muscle, the antigens in the medicine are recognized by immune cells, which ‘handcuff’ the invaders and take them to the lymph nodes for further questioning. This then primes the immune system against this particular antigen by sort of sending out wanted signs of the invader. The thing is, different sides of the body drain to different lymph nodes, so by triggering an immune response on both sides, the body may be more on guard.”
Immune Dysregulation
Finally!
Dr. Darien Sutton, medical correspondent for Good Morning America.
“COVID decreases our immune response” clip. pic.twitter.com/HYzGJqj7In
— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) February 9, 2024
Sequelae
“Temporal Association between COVID-19 Infection and Subsequent New-Onset Dementia in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” (preprint) [The Lancet]. Metastudy of 11 studies. “This review primarily aimed to investigate the potential role of COVID-19 in leading to [New Onset Dementia (NOD)] among older adults aged 60 years and older over various time intervals…. In subgroup analyses, NOD risk was significantly higher in the COVID-19 group compared to C2 at 12 months post-COVID… Cognitive impairment was nearly twice as likely in COVID-19 survivors compared to those uninfected.” • See above on Biden.
“Mass Disabling Event Denial” [Nate Bear, ¡Do Not Panic!]. “In 2022 scientists said covid was likely to be a mass disabling event. Mass media articles covered this forecast widely at the time…. Four years later, these forecasts are becoming our reality. The number of long-term sick in the UK was revised upwards this week to a record high of more than 2.8 million after falling consistently until 2020…. In the US the numbers are skyrocketing. On current trends the number of Americans registered as having a disability will top 10 million sometime next year. In Canada 27% of people now have a registered disability. The same thing is being seen in countries around the world. All since 2020. The mass disabling event we were warned of is here. But instead of headlines warning us that yes, indeed, those forecasts we wrote about are becoming reality, something strange is happening. The very same media and politicians who warned about the threat of covid as a mass disabling event are now blaming everything other than the virus for the mass disability.” • “It’s the lockdowns!” And people buy it. I’m baffled why they do….
The Jackpot
This is the story nobody is covering:
Any new zombie movies that want to be believable need to include random people who walk directly up to zombies & get bitten on purpose because they think getting bitten will help them build immunity against being bitten. They also need to mock people trying to avoid being bitten.
— Roxi Horror 💀🌸 (@roxiqt) February 8, 2024
The most baffling part of the pandemic to me. Why is this happening?
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] Yes, up, but we’ll want to wait until next week to see if there are backward revisions. I’d be more comfortable if some positivity figures were up, too, or the ER (UPDATE: It’s not). Verily data, FWIW, also suggests an increase:
I also tried Verily’s regional data and CDC’s mapm but I wasn’t confident I was seeing a signal in either.
[3] “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell. [4] Does not support Biobot data. “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall. [5] Decrease for the city no longer aligns with wastewater data (if indeed Biobot’s spike is real). [6] Still down “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. [7] It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow. [8] Lambert here: Percentage and absolute numbers down. [9] Up, albeit in the rear view mirror.Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States CPI seasonally adjusted” [Trading Economics]. “The seasonally-adjusted CPI in the United States increased by 0.2% month-over-month to 308.742 points in December 2023, the same pace as in November, revised data showed.” If only our paychecks were seasonally adjusted. And month-on-month: “US core consumer prices, which exclude volatile items such as food and energy, rose by 0.3% from the previous month in December 2023, the same as in November and in line with market expectations. Consumer prices eased for services excluding energy services (0.4% vs 0.5% in November), amid softer increases in transportation services (0.1% vs 1.1%). On the other hand, cost of shelter (0.5% vs 0.4%) and medical care services (0.7% vs 0.6%) advanced faster. Among goods, prices rebounded for apparel (0.1% vs -1.3%), new vehicles (0.3% vs -0.1%) and alcoholic beverages (0.3% vs -0.1%). Meanwhile, cost eased for used cars and trucks (0.5% vs 1.6% and fell for medical care commodities (-0.1% vs 0.5%) and tobacco and smoking products (-0.1% vs 1.1%).”
Tech: “Apple Is Lobbying Against Right to Repair Six Months After Supporting Right to Repair” [404 Media]. “An Apple executive lobbied against a strong right-to-repair bill in Oregon Thursday, which is the first time the company has had an employee actively outline its stance on right to repair at an open hearing. Apple’s position in Oregon shows that despite supporting a weaker right to repair law in California, it still intends to control its own repair ecosystem. It also sets up a highly interesting fight in the state because Google has come out in favor of the same legislation Apple is opposing.”
Manufacturing: “FAA says 737 Max operator discovered loose bolts in rudder control system on plane in December” [The Hill]. “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said an operator of a 737 Max plane discovered loose bolts in a rudder control system for the plane. The FAA said it received a report about a missing nut, washer and ‘migrated’ bolt in the system from an operator in December of last year. It said Boeing then inspected all 737 Max 8, 737 Max 8-200, and 737 Max 9 planes in production and turned up another ‘under-torqued nut at the same location.’ Boeing said in a statement to The Hill on Friday that operators have inspected more than 1,400 737 MAX airplanes since late December and no other airplane was found with the condition that initiated the inspection. Inspections on related jets have been completed, the company added. The FAA, meanwhile, said in a statement on Thursday that inspections recommended by Boeing in December had been completed by all U.S. airlines in early January. ‘The FAA carefully reviewed the inspection results, which found no missing or loose rudder bolts,’ the FAA said. An airworthiness directive from the FAA that will require ‘a one-time inspection’ of the system in which the loose bolts were discovered for certain Max airplanes is scheduled to be published Monday.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 78 Extreme Greed (previous close: 78 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 70 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 9 at 2:45:00 PM ET.
The Gallery
“A Case for the Preservation of Abandoned Places” [Atlas Obscura]. A photo this gorgeous makes the case for abandonment:
What could be more beautiful than an abandoned prison….
News of the Wired
“‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries” [Guardian]. “Gerber isn’t alone. Last year in the UK 669m physical books were sold, the highest overall level ever recorded. Research from Nielsen BookData highlights that it is print books that gen Z favour, accounting for 80% of purchases from November 2021 to 2022. Libraries are also reporting an uptick in gen Z users who favour their quiet over noisy coffee shops. In the UK in-person visits are up 71%.” • Best news I’ve heard in a long time!
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