We’re this far from Fauci coming out and saying the science points to Wuhan lab as the source…

This fucking guy, and this fucking thing….

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1476263246587994115

Yeah, no shit… lockdowns are bad, lockdowns cause problems… virus plus lockdowns is worse than virus alone.

No shit.

An important piece of my personal intellectual growth over the last decade is the ability to understand seemingly opposing details can be true and not in conflict.

So, related: my current evaluation of 2020 – present: COVID is true (…and from a lab leak), and a fairly big deal, and Donald Trump did need to get defeated, cosmically say, and the broader COVID as public health writ large beginning then was a Munchausen syndrome reflex by the Billionaire philanthropic research community, and carried out by the completely aligned Blue state public health / civil complex, to hijack Donald Trump’s place in the mystical hierarchy of authority that we all live under and diminish his mojo going into Nov 2020.

There’s tens of thousands of moving parts there, mostly in the form of professional people, and none of them had that particular consciousness of why they were doing what they were doing. Soft, subconscious coup and revolution. But the tell is, that now we’re NOT going to hobble the economy with onerous shelter and test provisions where now the science doesn’t justify it much less. The difference being, Joe Biden is President, and the implicit permission structure is different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euI3v2jpTlI

I’m not mad, cuz, cosmically like I say, I get it… I kinda think if the COVID reaction was not a legit reaction to Donald Trump, it was kinda understandable. And almost totally unconscious, like I say.

It’s been expensive to the tune of trillions of dollars though, and trillions more than the govts have even spent. And terribly displocating. And someone is responsible for it, and that someone is the Dems.

Go back to George Floyd right. That doesn’t happen if George Floyd is working and not on COVID unemployment, and then we don’t have urban centers turned into outlaw sanctuaries by the police counter reaction pullback and the hollowing out of urban civic life from COVID protocols.

https://www.propublica.org/article/philadelphia-homicide-surge

Another material observation on the double standard and what not is the whole "testing" ball of wax, which was supposed to THE unimpeachable critique of Donald Trump’s "handling" of COVID in 2020. Turns out "testing" can’t be "handled". Who knew. I mean, no shit.

Anyway… it would be a different thing if the Blue state civil apparatus using COVID to wrest control of civil society from Trumpism ended with a level off into placidity. That ain’t the way things work though. I’d not be shocked for there to be 3 straight Republican Presidents after Biden.

Another clown: https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/12/30/dr-doom-on-omicron-in-a-few-weeks-were-going-to-have-a-hard-time-keeping-everyday-life-operating-n438431

https://twitter.com/ryanlongcomedy/status/1475499710832123910

Sheriff Hutch is a shit show

I have a few casual worthless tell it like it is observations to throw in here that are nonetheless true.

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/questions-continue-to-swirl-around-hennepin-county-sheriff-as-he-dismisses-calls-to-resign

There’s a couple activist reporters on the right in this town… the Alpha rag and this gal https://twitter.com/RebsBrannon and some others. I think one can be skeptical of these people as a matter of rule, based on their conventionally misanthropic righty temperament. The gal there, Brannon, at a point went out to photograph Hutch’s wreck on a lot in Medina. So, stick the camera lens in the window and you can see his T prescription, his Delta 8 gummies, his cigarette packs. She published the photos, you can find that in her Twitter feed.

Now, the activist righty reporter doing news gathering on the nominally DFL sheriff has some partisan energy right…. yeah I doubt the photos are tarted up. I’d bet the composition of the photos is authentic.

So that taken and used as character assessment for Hutch…. that and him not being able to get to sleep in his hotel room in Alex after a night doing professional socializing (… and drinking to excess) and deciding to drive back to the Cities… and wrecking his vehicle and nearly killing himself. Guy is a shit show. I don’t say that totally without empathy. I was a shit show. I had some real derelict moments myself as a matter of personality and drinking. Most were in my 20s. Hutch is Hnco Sheriff though and 43 or so…

The righty Twitter commentary is that Hutch got off easy on the DWI, and he actually didn’t. That was a very conventional 1st timer adjudication. I am surprised at the institutional cordiality that seems to be extended to Hutch, and I’m really surprised how submissive / deferential the press ends up being to him. Thing being, the DWI as Sheriff is really a job disqualifier. And maybe we don’t know that it’s not yet here, as impeachment isn’t a practical possibility but Hutch says he will run again and you can well imagine he loses. But he hasn’t been called out very hard by anyone important, is what I’m saying.

I don’t know why that is. You wouldn’t size him up as intrinsically popular, you wouldn’t assume his being ‘DFL’ would get him better treatment such that that’s meaningful at all as Sheriff. I don’t see that.

Now, Hutch is gay, right. You actually hear that observed of him so little though that you wouldn’t think it’s a thing earning him better stylebook editorial treatment. But over a generation there has formed this huge gap between the gays of trope and the gays of reality, the gays of trope being all Will and Grace and the gays of reality being capable of being shit shows like anyone else. Hutch is a shit show, and that’s going unremarked on.

As I said, we hate watch Yellowstone

Yes, it’s entertaining. Slate thing:

https://slate.com/culture/2021/12/yellowstone-1883-paramount-kevin-costner-taylor-sheridan.html

Couple weeks ago I said Yellowstone was an absurd MAGA rant against metropolitanism. Slate critic “Yellowstone is totally obsessed with drawing lines between city slickers who watch Succession and the kinds of real people who are meant to be in Montana.”

Taylor Sheridan has the Yellowstone canon show out, 1883. I moved on to contemplating Sheridan as a matter of ‘success at craft.’ So, he started life as a good looking actor, and he appears in Yellowstone here and there as a modern horseman character. Sheridan is my age (just over 50-ish), and his physical appearance is a complete caricature. Square jaw, great physique in these square shoulder western shirts. Sheridan works out, of course, but he’s extremely ropey veined and is obviously on T or other supps or roids. Just saying…

Ya know, hats off to him, he’s going to have a $25M house in Pacific Palisades if he doesn’t already. The show writing is totally, “why didn’t I think of that”, which is of course a certain kind of brilliance in itself.

But it’s also completely derivative. With1883 he’s doing the journey from TX to MT in Lonesome Dove over, but with the F word. True Grit thing going on too with the girl narrative voice. In the Yellowstone episode last Sunday night he also reimagined the diner robbery from Pulp Fiction, reimagining it where the bad guys get shot to pieces by the Duttons.

Western armorer stuff in “1883”: Opening scene of episode 1, Tim McGraw shoots some bandits with a brass scoped Winchester High Wall, which is an inspired choice to stick in a western scene. Other movies have used a Sharps buffalo rifle to convey similar details. But the High Wall is also known as the “Model 1885”, and the show is “1883”, so….. This same laziness happens elsewhere with the Winchester 92. McGraw’s Colt 1873 has a brass trigger guard, which is an Italian clone thing, but they do have cosmetically correct Italian clones… you just have to make the effort to order the right gun and spend the extra $30.

Saaaayyyy, BBB is dead

I was moved to read Joe Manchin’s wikipedia this morning. It said Manchin is an Anglo-ization of Mancini, and that he’s also Czech. I said to myself, he’s got to be Catholic… Wikipedia article doesn’t confirm that. Next goog search did.

There’s a bit going on with this guy as a renegade caucus member, and I don’t actually think him being a modest size millionaire from “coal brokering” and the attendant alignment to whatever commercial lobbying interests that begets is the tenth biggest thing about that…

Structurally, the bill is a legit farce, right. Bunch of programs that get 3 years of funding on a 10 year revenue collection outlook, the programs are expressions of permanent Dem policy goals, but require perm leg funding in 3 years, perm funding that won’t happen…. SALT tax gets redressed to benefit affluent blue state homeowners while at the same time this has a phantom bookkeeping entry effect of harmonizing the bill’s income to outlays. Ya know, the bill is not actually “paid for”, that’s wholly Democrat smoke blowing, it’s a straight up lie that’s not near the same neighborhood as the truth.

Serious proggy analysts understand the composition of the bill is a legit farce: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/12/did-joe-manchin-kill-joe-bidens-domestic-agenda.html

Now I know that factionalism makes structural evaluation of the bill a second run or a hundredth run thing… it’s to say, a Republican’s evaluation of BBB financing isn’t all that valuable cuz they wouldn’t vote for it anyway first because it’s a Democrat thing.

So any analysis of renegadism is only salient among the Democrats, cuz they’re the ones with the heretic. And well… it’s a shit, fantasyland bill. That’s understood. But you can either know that and vote for it anyway… Like Aklo and Tina Smith and 46 other Democrat Senators… Or you can be Joe Manchin and value realistic financing and vote no.

Joe Manchin ain’t the one with a perspective problem if you’re properly valuing structural analyses that should be properly valued, alright.

I’m reading how he made his way in life…. Family had some storefronts over the years, and then at 39 Manchin established his “coal brokerage”. Parenthetical there to note the vast over-description. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/03/joe-manchin-coal-fossil-fuels-pollution/ What it sounds like is Manchin as a younger, modestly successful family business man decided to say buy some Kenworths and get in on the action running coal from the mines to the power plants. He was a coal jobber. Not driving the trucks ya figure, but that’s the business he put together.

Know what, you’re accountable to the bank such that you borrow to buy say 5 trucks and have daily bookings for them that reaps an aggregate profit over the monthly debt payment. And you can be a Democrat, and understand that, and understand that’s what it means to have sustainable financing. And that’s Joe Manchin, and it’s not AKlo and Tina Smith and the 46 others, is the thing.

There’s also this internal Democrat critique of the Democrat strategy through this all… is the infrastructure bill chained to BBB etc. And the progs wanted it chained. That’s “undemocratic”, to choose a word, to hold popular public initiatives that will pass legislatively hostage to ones that won’t. If you want to play that way, you’ll get mostly gridlock.

Ya know, I’m coming to a realization that Republican / Conservative nihilism is by nature less fraught with hypocrisy and dissonance, cuz, you don’t believe in anything, what’s the problem, right? And being a Democrat and wanting to do things is the opposite, more fraught with hypocrisy and dissonance. I dunno, it’s hard to give Dems credit for continuing to fuck up taking on a harder problem.

I cut the tailgate end caps off my Scout with a Sawzall

First, thank you Peter for the WSJ article, I don’t have a subscription. That’s a nice read.

A pro feature writer that’s a layman to the topic will nonetheless properly get a bunch of pulse of the zeitgeist anecdotes into his narrative anyway. He did that. Solid feature.

Atlanta songwriter Crowder is a GenXer through and through. Hagerty muses on GenX tastes in this click baity thing…. https://www.hagerty.com/media/market-trends/hagerty-insider/what-gen-xers-can-and-cant-tell-us-about-the-future-of-the-collector-car-market/ … and notices GenX, probably pretty recently, has flexed its economic power to pursuit these tastes. And ya know… Tim Walz is a GenXer, I’m a GenXer. Scout’s are a GenX thing such that it matters. The Boomers are still doing old cars, but I think their tastes continue to run to the trad hot rods. I dunno, if you are a GenXer there is something about the adventure television of the 70s that smoldered a desire for Jeeps and shortbox 4x4s and Scouts. #ScoutsAreSoHotRightNow.

Boy, an amateur project build Scout that’s been done 10 years and has a 350 chev swap that’s functional is a “buy” in the affordability zone of less than $20k these days. Songwriter Crowder prolly paid $5k for that rig in 2011. What’s also interesting about the evolution of the market segment is the emergence of specialty rotisserie restoration shops building Scouts for $75k + invoices. Specialization eh.

I won’t be doing that. I’m not a qualified customer for it and I don’t have a truck that’s a suitable starting point. Checkbox 1 though is “have a truck”, and I do. It’s rusty but far enough away from point of no return to save. Can be saved by someone with the aptitude. Which I have now in spades at 53, which is an oddity of my life. I mean, shocker, I think the top obvious superficial quality of my life, since I was a child, is that I’m verbose when I open my mouth. But I liked nuts and bolts, always did, and there was a self-actualization of that over 25 years or so.

So I cut the tailgate end caps off my truck with a sawzall, doing prep for replacement. You put your project in a much worse place, for a time, doing that. Worse place if it comes to pass you have to liquidate (…which I am not doing, not selling, eva). Am worried about having a healthy heart heart attack and kacking though, and having a truck with a body sawed in half for my fam to dispose of.

Springsteen selling his catalog…

… so he can pay taxes on it at amounts calculated that are lower than his personal income tax table rate…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/arts/music/bruce-springsteen-sells-music-catalog.html

… is him not paying his fair share, right? If we’re to be consistent on all this?

The reality of Eric Black’s thing in Minnpost…

…being consistently horseshit. And him being a very low effort mind, at least now.

Both Eric Black and Lambo did this thing yesterday on their pages on gun civil lawsuits like = TX abortion civil lawsuits where they wanted to work up some Cuomosexuality for Gavin Newsom. Completely ignorant stuff… there’s a lot a guy like me could say about it, but I felt I would have been too weak to being trolled to work up a bother. But both these articles were dumb, and betrayed a qualitative child like understanding for grasp of the gun topic at large.

Without any hyperbole, all I have to say about the gun civil suits is, I’ll offer an over and under of .5 on the amount of plaintiffs who ever get to court with a claim under Gavin Newsom’s proposed law. I’m taking the under, vs all comers who’ll take the over.

There’s this on Black’s page today.

https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2021/12/what-would-happen-if-blue-states-stopped-paying-for-red-states/

Now, underlying artifact of Black’s article is a lib think tank study that asserts [smarty smart] Democrat blue states are ***favorite hated word alert*** "subsidizing" the [dumb rube and racist] Republican red states.

https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-payments-portal/

Ya know, there’s this common mental feature where libs want to construct a stretch quantification for the belief elements of their worldview, and then beat conservatives over their heads with it, and then also tell them they are dumb because they are skeptical of the stretch quantifation. Political fact checking AND *"SCIENCE"* serve that purpose.

This Rockefeller thing is that way. Buncha graphs right… it’s garbage.

The Rockefeller article and Black’s commentary allude that the blue / red intake vs state balance of payments skew is a result of social service funding to red states. Now, this detail’s express purpose is feeding Eric Black type lib’s bias about red state education and achievement levels, and then also "hypocrisy" right.

This balance of payments skew to red states is well understood as result of ag and resource outlays to red states, and not social service funding outlays.

Another thing is, you look at that list, and it’s as if there are only 8 blue states that are net payer to the feds. Yeah well five of those states are THE five financial market hub states where securities capital gains taxes are booked in aggregate amounts dwarfing the other 45. Ya know, and, being a financial hub state with gobs of securities transactions may correlate to being a blue state, but thats a result of history and not progressive causation.

As the states ascend and descend on the list, I don’t actually see an obvious pattern where the red states end up being the biggest fed outlay recipients. PA is a big gross recipient, NM is a big per capita recipient.

Its just effing dumb… to have biases confirmed by insipid graph memery.

Ahem I said that yesterday

https://twitter.com/PaulBlume_FOX9/status/1471551286994681861

State of the Wright trial

I don’t think it’s a slam dunk she gets convicted, particularly of the highest charge. Probably get convicted of something, but not a lock *Earl Gray.
https://www.startribune.com/day-5-of-the-manslaughter-case-against-kimberly-potter-is-underway/600126931/

I don’t think I said this early on but I know I thought it. The thing where Daunte Wright is trying to drive away with cops hanging out the doors and gets shot… That set of circumstances generally substantiates a prosecutorial review that discerns use of force was justified. Ya know, imminent danger, Graham v. Connor, all that jazz.

The thing here is Potter went flippo with immediate self conscious anguish over her mistake with the pistol, and made all kinds of loud admissions in the presence of the sidewalk public and on body cam vid. I tellya, the reality is if this happens on the job for two 43 year old man 18 yr veteran cops, and there’s no vid, the after report gets written in a way where prosecutors won’t / can’t charge. If it happens to guy cops and there is vid, someone would have walked the shooter cop away and cooled him down before he said anything incriminating.

IE, the basis of Potter’s charges are mostly her self incriminating statements about her mistake. The mistake is real… I’m the opposite of a cop apologist, as my past writings indicate.

SOOOOO… it is interesting but perhaps a complete obviopiphany to see Gray illuminate a defense argument that says use of force was justified, even though it might have been a mistake.

I think he’s right as a matter of law, whether anyone likes the law or not. I could see him winning acquittal on the severest charges, and losing the mildest, here.

Other thing he did of course, was argue "the perps smoke reefer", just as he did for Jeronimo Yanez.

Say look at all the Neanderthals in Hastings re the trans kid

First off, I wouldn’t discredit the observation of that observed vibe at all, that there are some retrograde reactionary conservative meanies in Hastings making life hard for this family.

https://www.startribune.com/for-family-of-trans-child-idyllic-life-in-hastings-is-no-more/600126146/

I don’t need to make that observation or affirm that truth though, cuz the newspaper is johnny on the spot to do that. That role is performed.

What I have to say that I think is a sensibility of perfectly proper temperament and yet wouldn’t get in the newspaper is….

That’s terrible parenting to actively manage the gender identity of someone who is 8. Ironic as hell that the mother is a Wellesley grad, a former DFL House candidate, and a doctoral candidate at the Humphrey school. Ironic as in not ironic. This sort of self selection is the reddest of flags for a kind of Munchausen by proxy.

So this family gets outed for whatever it was that was supposed to be under gossip radar as a result of a COVID facemask fight in the Hastings schools, where the mother was at least modestly aligned with the mask the kids sect… Ya know, that externality of being outed is totally play stupid games win stupid prizes. Got a complicated family life? You can choose not to do politics, ya know… That’s not a cop out. Use your big brain on managing / nurturing your family life.

Best wishes to the kid. If you like legos, think about machining.