The Wrongologist – Page 59 – Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – December 5, 2021

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched all eight hours of the new Disney opus on the Beatles, “Let It Be”.

Truthfully, a lot of it is boring. The lads are composing new tunes for a show that may or not also be a film. All of their noodling, the endless repetition and tweaking, can be hard to watch when you already know how good the final cuts are. And they’re still very good, even now, 50 years later.

But you can’t really appreciate how great they were until you watch the last hour which documents their final live performance on the roof of the Apple building in London. After a month of fumbling in the studio, including while rehearsing the day before, they go live on the roof where they show what a fantastic band they were.

Some of those live performances ultimately appear on the “Let It Be” album. They were cut live, outside on a cold day. John at one point says he’s too cold to play the chords on his guitar. It’s hard to believe how good what you’re hearing is. There were some moments of perfection in the studio, mostly with the vocals, sometimes with the instruments, but they rarely sounded as good as on the roof.

Later, they go back to the studio to record the seven tunes that were not performed live. In one case, Phil Spector is enlisted to add strings to “The Long and Winding Road“, but it also sounded great in the studio version in the documentary.

A few hot takes:

By 1969, Paul is the driving force of the project. Despite what we’ve been told, they aren’t always at each other’s throats. There are disagreements. George briefly leaves the band during that month. There are power struggles over what they actually want the final product of the month’s work to be.
When they are playing, they clearly enjoy each other and feed off of each other’s talent. They are all capable of playing each other’s instruments at an accomplished amateur level.
We’ve heard how Yoko broke up the band, but that doesn’t seem to be true. Paul’s wife Linda is there, along with their young daughter Heather. Ringo’s wife Maureen and George’s then wife, Patti, all are around at various times during the recordings.
The band clearly had paid their dues. They seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of most musical genres. They know all the chords to the classics of the fifties, as you see when they spontaneously play them. They were a real band, the kind of band that was ubiquitous in the 1960s, but that rarely exists today.

They’re comfortable with each other even though they haven’t played live for years. There’s no rust once they’re back on stage. You see how a band that cut a great album every year for a decade, one that knew how to do it on the road, gear up for their swan song performance.

Watch it if you are a true fan, or if you’re into nostalgia. Watch it for the learning experience about the Beatles. On to cartoons.

The Beatles were an original, but the issues are the same as before:

GOP makes spreading Covid their top priority, blames Biden for spreading Covid:

Who buys their kid a gun, hears from the school that he’s a problem, and then lets him bring the gun to class?

The Supremes are going in a bad direction:

Saturday Soother – December 4, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Mexican Hat Rock, Mexican Hat UT – 2021 photo by Jacky and Rick

The media keeps talking about inflation, saying that it’s bound to hurt the economy any time now. They mean that inflation will make workers ask for higher wages. That will force companies to pay workers more, and thus, lower corporate profits.

Sounds like a problem, but as Bloomberg reports, the fattest corporate profits since 1950 are debunking inflation stories spun by CEOs. US corporations enjoyed the widest profit margins in more than 70 years during the second and third quarters of 2021. US corporate profits before adjustments rose to a record high of $3.14 trillion in the third quarter of 2021. From Bloomberg:

“On earnings calls, plenty of executives complained about the squeeze from rising costs of labor as well as materials. But overall, profits were up 37% from a year earlier, according to data out last week from the Commerce Department.”

Nearly two thirds of publicly traded US corporations have reported higher profit margins this year compared to 2020. One hundred of the largest have booked profit margins at least 50% higher than last year’s levels.

Bloomberg reports that businesses have been paying more to their employees too, with total compensation up 12% in the last quarter vs. a year earlier. It’s not that every worker got a raise. A significant part of the increase was due to millions of Americans simply returning to work. But many got raises too. To date, hourly earnings broadly kept up with the fast-rising cost of living. And in some low-pay industries like leisure and hospitality they’ve outpaced it, although not by enough for those firms to get fully staffed.

The new data on corporate earnings suggest businesses are comfortably passing on their higher costs. In recent months, a number of US companies including Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Chipotle, and Dollar Tree have announced price hikes, claiming that the increases were necessary because of higher wages and material costs.

But the Bloomberg data say that these corporate kings are using price hikes to pass their sky-high CEO pay and marginal increases in material and labor costs to consumers, in order to keep padding their already historically strong profit margins.

Still, politicians are calling for Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s head. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) wrote in the WSJ that Powell doesn’t deserve another term because he caused inflation. Powell’s policies have contributed to US inflation, but there’s zero evidence that US inflation is a problem today.

For months, corporate executives and right-wing politicians have been parroting the claim that inflation in the US is due to Biden’s social spending policies. But the new data show that inflation is going up largely because corporations are driving it.

Remember, corporate profits are up by 37% while inflation amounted to about 6.2% in the same period. In other words, as the economy reopened and prices for goods went up, and corporations used the situation to raise prices a lot.

In fact, the FTC just announced it voted 4-0 to investigate the relationship between competition and supply chain problems. The FTC sent letters to nine dominant firms in supply, retail, and wholesale, mandating they respond within 45 days to a host of questions, as well as give internal documents on various topics.

This matters. Inflation and shortages aren’t neutral forces. The twin problems seem to be *helping* big business improve their profit margins. It’s important to ask why they are happening and who has an incentive to keep them going.

Even Morgan Stanley is now asking corporations to hit the brakes on accumulating profits. Their research division released a report highlighting the gap between corporate profits and worker wages. From the report:

“Real wages…still have to grow by 7.3% in excess of productivity growth to make up the gap….If this catch-up takes place over the next 5 years, unit profits will fall 33% from current levels…This would move the corporate profit share back to its 1990s average on a pre-tax basis and leave it just marginally above on a post-tax basis.”

Imagine. An investment bank telling corporations that they really should be making less profit. Things must be really going to get much worse than we think.

Let’s launch into our weekend, starting with a Saturday Soother. Try to forget about whether a government shutdown will hurt you or Biden, or whether the Supreme Court is now filled with ideological hacks.

Instead, grab a seat by a window and listen to “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair” by Claude Debussy. The Art Nouveau period was obsessed with women’s hair. Debussy was immersed in that world. It’s played here by the LA-based, Sakura cello quintet. Wrongo is a sucker for cello, and there are five of them! This was originally written for piano, and is transposed here for cello:

Young Americans Are Suffering

The Daily Escape:

View from Franconia Notch, NH – November 29, 2021 photo by Mel Elam. Looks cold.

There’s plenty of Covid news. We’re concerned about the new Omicron variant while we’re also seeing another surge of the Delta variant around the country. It’s important to remember that half of what you’re reading about Omicron now, and for the next several weeks, is going to be wrong or mistaken.

The problem is that we can’t be sure which half is wrong.

It’s troubling how prevalent Long Covid has become. The NIH reported on an Italian study that found 87% of people recovered and discharged from hospitals showed at least one symptom even 60 days after release. The commonly reported problems were fatigue (53.1%), worsened quality of life (44.1%), shortness of breath (43.4%), joint pain, (27.3%) and chest pain (21.7%).

One symptom of Long Covid that wasn’t reported is emotional distress. This is particularly evident in younger Americans. The just-released Fall 2021 Harvard Youth Poll, surveyed 2,109 Americans aged 18-29, between October 26 and November 8. In addition to their usual questions about politics, they also asked these young Americans about their mental health and Covid. They found that half of them say they’re a different person because of Covid. Here are the results:

Overall, 51% of 18-29-year-olds say that Covid has changed them. What’s particularly striking is that 61% of young women say they’re different now than they were before Covid. Contrast that with men in the survey, just 40% of whom said that they have changed.

While the survey can’t tell us exactly how they’ve changed, there’s some insight because 51% also say that Covid had a negative impact on their life. And there wasn’t a partisan divide: 51% of Democrats, 51% of Republicans, and 52% of independents said that Covid impacted them negatively.

There’s something worse going on though. These kids are a mess mentally. More than half (51%) report that several times in the last two weeks they felt down, depressed, and hopeless, while 25% have had thoughts of self-harm.

In addition to the majority of youth who express depressive symptoms, and the 25% who express thoughts of self-harm, the study also found that a significant number show traits associated with generalized anxiety disorder:

38% of young Americans report feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge in the last two weeks
36% have been worrying too much about different things
32% have been easily annoyed or irritable
30% have had trouble relaxing
22% report feeling afraid, as if something awful might happen
20% have not been able to stop or control worrying
16% have been so restless that it is hard to sit still

The causes of these emotional problems are diverse. The respondents listed the following as their top five reasons for worry: School or work (34%), personal relationships (29%), self-image (27%), economic concerns (25%), and Covid (24%).

But Covid can easily be seen as the primary driver behind all of these issues. The pandemic brought fear of losing one’s own life or that of an older loved one. The lockdowns impacted school and work, with people having to use technology as a work around for face to face interaction. People were cut off from friends and family. Dating died. Retail businesses that primarily hire the young closed, or sharply reduced their staffing, causing historic job losses and reduced paychecks.

The CDC reported in 2020, that from 2007 to 2018, the suicide rate among persons aged 10–24 had increased 57.4%. Let’s hope that isn’t what will happen to this cohort going forward.

Wrongo and Ms. Right have 12 grandchildren. Ten are between 18-29. A few graduated from high school, college, and grad school during the pandemic. And some of those graduates seem stuck in bad grooves, unable to land the jobs they wanted, or in some cases, a job at all.

They seem to swing between two poles, either feeling unqualified for the job they want, or being unwilling to settle for the jobs they are offered. A few grandchildren with college degrees say they are unqualified for even entry-level positions in their field of study.

These kids broadly represent what the kids in the Harvard study say about changes in their lives during Covid. Young Americans must really hate what we’ve done to them.

Their sense of despair is a common theme in other polling of American adults. But the deep unhappiness and pessimism displayed in the Harvard poll was a startling turn in an age group that might be expected to have more optimism, given that they are at such an early stage of their adult lives.

The Great Resignation

The Daily Escape

Sunrise, Alpine AZ – November 2021 photo by Ed Kendall. Alpine is at 8,200’ elevation.

From Krugman:

“You’re probably aware that the US is experiencing what many call the Great Resignation — a significant fall in the number of people willing to accept jobs, at least at pre-Covid wages. Four million fewer Americans are employed than were on the eve of the pandemic, yet the rate at which workers are quitting their jobs — usually a good indicator of labor market tightness — has hit a record, and the scramble of employers to find workers has led to rapid wage increases.”

People see the “now hiring” signs everywhere. They assumed that generous unemployment benefits were discouraging workers from accepting jobs. But the enhanced benefits went away with no visible change in the US labor force participation. So, what’s going on?

Back to Krugman: (brackets by Wrongo)

“…[the] Great Resignation, it turns out, is largely an American phenomenon. European nations have been much more successful than we have at getting people back to work. In France, in particular, employment and labor force participation are now well above prepandemic levels.”

Barry Ritholtz says that there’s a massive transformation underway in America’s labor markets. When we look at the total Quits Rate for all Nonfarm payroll workers since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) ended in 2009, the trend in the “quits rate” has steadily moved higher for all workers and really accelerated this year:

The red trend line shows that the rate that people are quitting has now returned to its level in 2016, and except during the pandemic, it has continued to rise.

If you look at only the Quits Rate for Professional & Business Services, those white-collar workers who did okay during the pandemic, their trend isn’t the same as the overall quits:

There’s been virtually no difference in the rate of professional quits since 2008. That’s telling us that the Great Resignation is taking place in the lower half of the employment wage scale, entry-level jobs, and the tiers just above them.

This has deep ramifications for the American economy.

Companies who rely on cheap labor are having hiring problems. Those companies that pay the minimum wage (or slightly higher) are having a hard time finding workers. Part of this is the failure of the Federal government to raise the minimum wage, which has been the same since 2009. That hasn’t kept up with inflation, or the growth in corporate profits.

Instead of gradually raising the minimum wage over time nationally, putting it on a path towards $15 or higher, we’ve allowed wage pressure to build for years. Then, during the pandemic, we experienced an 18 month period when low-wage workers reconsidered their careers. The dam broke, and we’re seeing both a sudden spike in wages and a shortage of workers.

Along the way, some labor has upskilled, gotten certified, degreed, and found new fields to work in. Now we have millions of people launching small businesses, striving to make it to the middle class, and towards self-determination. From the WSJ:

“The pandemic has unleashed a historic burst in entrepreneurship and self-employment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are striking out on their own as consultants, retailers and small-business owners.”

The number of unincorporated self-employed workers has risen by 500,000 since the start of the pandemic, to 9.44 million. Except for a few months this summer, that’s the highest total since 2008. It amounts to an increase of 6% in the self-employed, while overall US employment total remains nearly 3% lower than before the pandemic.

So far this year, these entrepreneurs applied for federal tax-identification numbers to register 4.54 million new businesses, up 56% from the same period of 2019. That is the largest number on record since 2004. And two-thirds are for businesses that aren’t expected to hire employees.

Monday Wake Up Call – November 29, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Dusk, San Miguel Peaks, Uncompahgre National Forest, CO – November 2021 photo by Tad Bowman

And we’re back from our gratitude-giving, dessert-eating weekend at the Mansion of Wrong. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, Omicron. It’s the 15^th letter of the Greek alphabet, but it has a darker meaning for people who fear Covid. Omicron is also known as B.1.1.529 Coronavirus variant. It was first detected in Botswana and South Africa earlier this month.

It’s moving fast. Cases have been found in Australia, Hong Kong, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Israel, and the Netherlands, in addition to several African countries. But we know very little about it so far.

Three questions have to be answered: How rapidly does the variant spread? Is it capable of causing more serious disease than the known variants? Can it circumvent the immune protection of the Covid vaccines?

Once again, we’re facing an unknown. Dr. Fauci said Omicron looks more transmissible than others, and thinks that it’s inevitable that the US will see cases of the new variant. No need to panic, but the US has shut down flights from several African countries. There are questions facing us:

Will we be better prepared for this variant than we were for the past several variants that have killed nearly 800,000 Americans?
If a new variant becomes widespread, will it help make a nation that is already skeptical about its institutions and leaders better able to take direction from the federal government?
Will a substantial minority again toss aside experts and incumbents in a pursuit of self-management of their disease in the name of toxic freedom?

What will the political and economic ramifications of a new surge of disease be as we enter an election year? The battle lines are drawn. We know that the country is very evenly divided, and trying to govern causes one side to demand nearly the opposite of whatever is proposed. People on both sides of the political divide ask: Who can we really trust? Who do we really believe can solve the problem? Who’s really for us?

We used to take it on faith that our country works, that the dollar is a valuable currency, that there will always be a peaceful transition of power. But those things are slipping away. Many think that we are teetering on the edge of something very dark, that we must be pulled back, if we are to preserve America.

What are we actually trying to preserve? Our lack of shared values? The sham of our voting laws? McDonald’s, apple pie and baseball? Think long and hard about these questions. Regardless of what conclusion you reach, you’ll find that it simply won’t resonate with a significant minority of Americans.

Time to wake up America! Our social cohesion is dying. The Fund for Peace ranked the political cohesion of countries between 2008 and 2018. They found that the US had the largest drop in cohesion of any country studied, including Libya, Mali, and Bahrain. Martin Longman likens an asteroid headed straight for Earth to where we are as a society. We complain about the asteroid rather than the destruction it will cause.

To help you wake up, listen to U2 play their global hit “One” live at Commonwealth Stadium, Edmonton, Canada in 1997. The song is about finding unity:

Sample Lyric:

Well, it’s too late tonight to drag the past out into the light.
We’re one, but we’re not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other… one
Have you come here for forgiveness,
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head
Did I ask too much, more than a lot
You gave me nothing, now it’s all I got.

“One” is a song about disunity written against a backdrop of reunification. U2 decided to work at Hansa Studios in Berlin. The studio used to be called “Hansa by the Wall” but when U2 got there, the Berlin wall was gone. Bono told the BBC:

“The irony of One’s title is the band wasn’t very close at the time….We were building our own wall right down the middle of Hansa studios.”

Happy Thanksgiving

The Daily Escape:

Turkeys on the fields of Wrong – November 2018 photo by Wrongo

(Wrongo is taking a break for the Thanksgiving holiday. Posting will resume on Monday, November 29th. We should expect that by then, most of what we already know will still be on everyone’s plates, and it won’t be leftover turkey.)

“I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual” — Thoreau

Thanksgiving is Wrongo’s favorite holiday because as a secular holiday, no one commands you to do anything. Celebration is subdued, and at least around here, it focuses on gratitude.

Here’s Wrongo’s thanks to the readers of the Wrongologist. Special thanks go to everyone who reads this crummy blog, particularly those who have stuck around since the beginning: Monty, Fred, David, Marguerite, Kelly, and Terry. Thanks to those who comment and send me private emails saying the equivalent of “What’s wrong with Wrongo?”.

I am grateful that you all stick with it, and with me.

We started this adventure in 2011. Since then, this is the 2,286^th post. This year’s list of readers includes people in 166 countries. The company that hosts the Wrongologist says that in the past 12 months, we’ve had 1.2 million page views. Most readers (43.7%) use a desktop machine, and Chrome (48.2%) is the preferred browser.

Wrongo is grateful every day for this journey he’s on with you. Sometimes, it seems like cynicism and despair is all we have left. But then there are days like today, a crystal clear morning, and at sunup, the temperature outside was 26°F. Hopefully, optimism will stick with us for a few days.

On the big day, we’ll have a fire in the fireplace, “Alice’s Restaurant” playing in a semi-continuous loop, along with good thoughts about the great country that we’re privileged to live in.

We’re thankful to those who came before us, and to our family members and friends who can’t be with us today. We’re thankful to those who are on the front lines in military service, or here at home in our hospitals, schools, firehouses, and police stations.

Let’s listen again to two of Wrongo’s favorite Thanksgiving songs. First, the late Tom Petty and his band Mudcrutch. Petty started his career with Mudcrutch, but everyone knows The Heartbreakers, who he had most of his hits with. Petty returned to Mudcrutch for the last time in 2016, when they released the album “Mudcrutch 2”. Here is Mudcrutch with Petty singing “I Forgive it All”, an incredible reflection on life and forgiveness. The video stars Anthony Hopkins:

Sample lyric:

I ain’t broke and I ain’t hungry
but I’m close enough to care

Wrongo’s other favorite Thanksgiving song is “Be Thankful For What You’ve Got” by William DeVaughn. It sold nearly two million copies after its release in 1974. It reminds us of a time when there was more optimism in America. If you lived or worked in NYC in the1970s, the video will take you back to a difficult period in that city’s history:

Sample lyric:

Though you may not drive a great big Cadillac
Gangster whitewalls TV antenna in the back
You may not have a car at all
But just remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tall
Just be thankful for what you’ve got

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Should Biden Run Again?

The Daily Escape:

Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley NP – November 2021 photo by Ed Kendall

Paul Campos asks: “Should Biden run again in 2024?” While Martin Longman asks what explains Joe Biden’s steep decline in the polls in the latter half of 2021?

Jonathan Chait has an idea:

“Nobody can say with any confidence if this fall can be reversed. Indeed, given the US’s steady job growth, nobody can ascertain exactly why the public has turned so sour so fast. Biden is like a patient wasting away from some undiagnosable disease. What is clear is that if the presidential election were held this fall, Biden would enter the contest as the decided underdog against Trump.”

All of us have been on the wrong side of failing someone’s unstated expectations. We didn’t know we were taking a test; we didn’t know our actions were being scored, and naturally, we failed. That’s where Biden is today. Regardless of the analysis, it seems clear that Biden would lose an election to a Republican if it were held today, probably even to Trump.

But the reasons for Biden’s poor poll numbers are at least to Wrongo, unclear. At the 2020 presidential election, people were crying out for a return to normalcy. Back to Campos:

“It’s clear that a big underlying reason for Biden’s success in 2020 was a widespread…belief/hope among voters…that electing an anodyne middle of the road elderly white man — you know, a normal person, as opposed to a woman or a minority or a Jewish radical leftist [sic] — would calm things down after all the Trump craziness, and the Republican party would at least trend back toward being a center right party…”

We didn’t return to normal, and maybe, there isn’t a normal to return to. If that’s true, “Make America Great Again” will again have tons of appeal.

Wrongo detects among Democrats a perception that Biden and the Democratic Party are all in on tying their policies to racial justice. While that’s well-intended, and good strategy for energizing the base of People Of Color, it’s causing some dissatisfaction among Whites and certain Hispanic sub-segments.

That showed in this year’s Virginia and New Jersey elections. White suburban women moved away from the Dems in both states.

In Passaic, NJ, Hispanics make up about 70% of the population. Trump won 22% of their vote in 2016, and 36% in 2020. The 2021 Republican candidate for governor won a similar percentage. A Republican won a seat on the county board of commissioners for the first time in more than a decade.

These results should be a wakeup call for Democrats.

A recent Pew Research study divided the electorate into nine affinity groups, four Republican, four Democratic and a disaffected group that didn’t fit well into either Party’s coalition. Pew found that among: (brackets by Wrongo)

“….the four Republican-oriented typology groups…[fewer]…than…a quarter say a lot more needs to be done to ensure equal rights for all Americans regardless of their racial or ethnic background; by comparison, no fewer than about three-quarters of any Democratic group say a lot more needs to be done to achieve this goal.”

This gulf on one of the central questions facing our nation suggests that for now at least, Republicans have a powerful message to take to Independents and undecideds in the mid-terms and beyond. From Tom Sullivan:

“The MAGA squad on Capitol Hill sees waging culture war as the very point of holding political office: stoking anger, provoking fights, “owning the libs,” and advancing conspiracy theories.”

Everything isn’t about Dems being too pro-equality. Things like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, inflation, the supply chain disruptions, and the Delta variant of Covid have something to do with Biden’s poor numbers, along with no prospect of returning to normal.

Should Biden not run in 2024? Do the Democrats have a viable national candidate who could step into Biden’s shoes? Having a president candidate in their early to mid-80s, like Biden will be, isn’t optimal. That would seem to rule out both Sanders and Warren.

Kamala Harris looks to be doomed at least for now as a national candidate. She polls behind Biden. About the only thing low-information voters know about her are her gender and ethnicity. All else being equal, being nonwhite and female are probably national electoral handicaps this time around. She does appeal to many minority voters. But are there enough minority voters in swing states who would be willing to vote for her?

Given the ossification of the Democrats, the question of “Who should run?” feels like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We’re one election away from permanent Republican rule that will bring with them “show elections”. So far, no Democrat with the exception of a few dark horses, like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, appear to have the smarts and charisma to be credible with the disaffected middle road of American voters.

Maybe the Dems have no realistic alternative to Biden in 2024.

Who do you think should run?

Monday Wake Up Call – November 22, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, NV – November 2021 photo by Marcia Steen

Today is the 58^th anniversary of the assassination of President John Kennedy. While it wasn’t the first time Americans dove deep into conspiracy theories, who killed JFK has always been a controversial topic surrounded by conspiracy theories since that November day.

Over the weekend, we passed a sad milestone. The number of US Covid deaths in 2021 surpassed the deaths in 2020 and we still have a month to go. So far, there have been 385,457 deaths this year vs. 385,343 in 2020 according to the WSJ.

Wrongo has a few observations about what our continuing saga with Covid says about America. Almost 200 million of us are fully vaccinated. In addition, we have had 47 million confirmed cases to date. That means 74.8% of us have some level of antibodies to the several variants of Covid that have traveled through our population in the past two years.

But because: 1) Vaccines haven’t made it beyond the rich world (only 6% of the population in Africa is vaccinated) and 2) Americans seem to value the freedom to control their bodies over public health, new variants that may not be controllable by current vaccines could infiltrate the US.

There’s one very concerning new variant, B.1.640. It appears to be from Africa and has only been seen in small numbers. Apparently it’s bad. The Jerusalem Post mentioned it in” New COVID variant found in France: Reason for panic or not quite yet?” after it spread to Europe:

“A new COVID variant identified in a handful of European countries is raising concerns among some health professionals because there are changes to the coronavirus spike protein that have never been seen before.”

The B.1.640 variant has nothing to do with Delta. Researchers have had a really hard time placing it on the known Covid family tree, because it’s so far removed from anything else, that it just sits on a very long branch of its own. They think that it may elude our current vaccines.

If true, this would be another example of viral evolution completely blindsiding us. And if it isn’t this one, we’ll probably see some other variant.

The sad truth is that America is no longer willing to fight Covid. We think its too hard, and we don’t like doing difficult things. Too many of us don’t want to choose between public health and our economy.

Our unofficial policy is to expect that Covid will become a gradually declining annual infection. But that’s based on the assumption that we have a successful vaccine, that the current variant is all we’ll see, and that the virus will lose its potency over time.

Nobody dares say it out loud, but Covid has revealed the US to be a prime risk for a bioweapon attack.

If a terror group, or an adversary country decided to launch a biological attack, there is clearly nothing that we would do to stop it. How do we know that? Because Covid could have been a biological attack, and it was allowed to spread broadly instead of being properly dealt with. Because it was “too hard” to try to stop it.

We’ve spent countless $ trillions over the last 20 years for “national security”, and this is where we’ve gotten to? Wrongo is starting to think that Churchill’s comment that “the US will do the right thing, after we’ve tried everything else” was overly optimistic.

Time to wake up America! We’ve got to toughen up, or face defeat, not only on the battlefield but in ICUs across America. To help you wake up, here’s a throwback song from another era. Listen to “I’d Love to Change the World” by the late Alvin Lee & his group, Ten Years After from their 1971 Album: “A Space In Time.”

The video doesn’t feature the band, just the song from the album. The video is a film student project that Wrongo likes. Overall, the song looks at what were considered the biggest problems in the world in 1971: Overpopulation, economic inequality, pollution, and war. Unsurprisingly, the issues remain the same:

Sample Lyric:

Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more

I’d love to change the world
But I don’t know what to do
So I’ll leave it up to you

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 21, 2021

The Rittenhouse verdict is in. The jury has spoken, and in our system, regardless of who agrees or disagrees with it, it’s decided, and we move on.

Whether justice was done by a “not guilty on all counts” verdict is a question that can will never be fully answered, but he WAS found innocent, and there’s no appeal. That says more about us than it says about him. The problem isn’t our laws, either about gun ownership, or self-defense, although Wisconsin’s self-defense law could be better. Not so long ago, we had exactly the same laws and we lived in a (mostly) decent society that wasn’t armed to the teeth.

But we no longer live in that society now. We now live in an angry society where vigilantes are praised. The Republican Party has turned this little son of a bitch into a murderer and then, into their little pet hero.

Rittenhouse is a hero to the entire American Right Wing, which is represented politically by the Republican Party. Doubt that? Consider this tweet from Rep. Anthony Sabatini, Republican representing Florida’s 7^th Congressional district:

On to cartoons. The Rittenhouse trial checked all the boxes:

Wrongo heard a pundit on NPR say the Rittenhouse verdict was a win for Constitutional rights. Wrong! It had nothing to do with the Constitution:

Rep. Gosar’s murder tweet didn’t even register with the elephant:

The difference between the Parties:

Bannon plans to make his taking of the 5^th Amendment a long slimy road:

2021’s Thanksgiving seating plan:

Saturday Soother – November 20, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Floyd Lamb Park, Las Vegas NY- November 2021 photo by Marcia Steen

The biggest, baddest news of the week was that Kyle Rittenhouse was found innocent on all charges in the Kenosha murders.

As bad as that is, there’s some good news to start the weekend. First, the House succeeded on Friday in their months-long quest to pass Biden’s social spending bill. It still faces a serious challenge in the Senate before it can become law.

Second, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported that the US is the only G7 country to surpass its pre-pandemic economic growth. Employment is up. Wages are up. Goldman Sachs predicts by the end of next year the US unemployment rate will drop to a 50-year low, thanks to continuing red-hot demand for workers. Retail sales surged 1.7% in the month of October. American consumers spent $638 billion in October, a 16% increase from last year.

Meanwhile, slowly but surely, the supply chain bottlenecks that have plagued our economy for over a year appear to be easing. Imports through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are up 16% from 2018, and in the first two weeks of November, those two ports cleared about a third of the containers sitting on their docks.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI), a measure of global shipping rates and an inflation indicator, has plummeted 50% since peaking Oct. 7, another good sign for consumers. And the global chip shortage that was crippling the auto industry? GM said that the week of Nov. 1 was the first time since February that none of its North American assembly plants were offline due to a lack of chips.

All of this good news is going to waste because of the media’s hot takes on how bad Biden is doing. From Eric Boehlert:

“For weeks this fall, the Beltway press joined forces with the GOP to tell a hysterical tale about the state of the US economy. It was an alternate version of reality, where the stagnant, faltering economy was being driven to the precipice by runaway inflation, which stood poised to demolish middle-class savings across the board. All while an ineffective president stood by and watched cash-strapped households suffer.”

Boehlert says that recent press coverage suggests the economy is an albatross around Biden’s political neck, while in reality, it’s booming.

Biden got elected to bring a return to normalcy. Since there’s no normalcy in sight, his poll numbers (along with Democrats generally) have plummeted. David Brooks in the NYT addresses Joe Biden’s efforts at meeting the needs of people in “left behind” places of the country that did not vote for him: (parenthesis by Wrongo)

“If (noted economist) Larry Summers thinks lifting wages at the bottom will cause inflation…so be it. The trade-off is worth it to prevent a national rupture.”

Democrats have to get beyond the victory laps when they pass a bill, and let America know what the bills are for. Propaganda is a tool that shouldn’t be used to yammer on about defunding the police. Here’s Wrongo’s list of what Dems should say they’re for:

The Bill of Rights
One person, one vote
A world-class ideology-free education for all American kids
Jobs for more Americans
Universal health insurance
No more foreign interventions
More police funding and more police accountability
Reduce carbon emissions
Zero potholes

That last one is facetious, but it’s political gold in Wrongo’s town, and is funded in the recent infrastructure bill.

The Democrats’ gamble is whether their efforts and their successes will be rewarded politically less than a year from now, in November 2022. Remember that despite what the pundits say, passing the items on Biden’s platform shouldn’t be primarily to woo swing voters. They’re to shore up enthusiasm among your base, something that Dems didn’t have in the recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

Right now, things look grim. If you let your mind wander to what might happen if there’s a Republican House and Senate in January 2023, you should be happy not sad, that the Dems aren’t repealing the filibuster.

Let’s take a break and try for some normalcy in our weekend. Wrongo recommends that you start by not watching the Sunday pundit shows. Here on the fields of Wrong, we’re still engaging in our fall clean-up, trying to take advantage of the few warmer days to work outside. Also, there’s some menu planning for Thanksgiving underway.

So, settle into your Saturday Soother, where we leave the chaos behind for a few moments. Let’s start by grabbing a chair near a large window, and listening to the Prague Cello Quartet play an atmospheric version of the theme from “The Phantom of the Opera”: