Top blogging of 2022

Yes, we are here. Not because of procrastination, but for other reasons, I delay these blogging roundup pieces by a few days.

Anyway, not all of these were posted in 2022, but they were the most read.

This year, we're doing reverse order.

No. 10 was early in 2022, and was about the truth of the Minsk Accords and related issues in the background to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the tussles that led up to that. (Well, not all the truth, as it turns out; it wasn't until early December that we learned German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel had pushed them as a way to string Putin out while re-arming Ukraine from NATO stocks.) 

No. 9? My hot take on platitudinous high school graduation speeches, both the student ones and the guest speaker ones.

No. 8 may involve eating crow. It was about the possibility, and more the desirability, of Phat Albert Pujols returning to St. Louis.

No. 7 is from way back in 2004 and started trending again late this summer and I have no reason why. It was about the Snooze, aka THE Dallas Morning News, pushing Shrub Bush to go further right with second-term Cabinet picks.

No. 6 is also old, but trending because it relates to the Jan. 6 committee and I goosed it. It's about felon Joey Dauben, updated with more of his comments about Ali Akbar, aka Ali Alexander.

No. 5 was also from the baseball preseason, in which I urged Cardinals head cheese John Mozeliak to sign Zach Greinke. Early hindsight made me want to retract and eat crow; later hindsight said that, his injury issues aside, it wouldn't have been a bad addition.

No. 4 was a series, not MAGAts, "just asking questions" about why don't we have non-mRNA boosters? Sadly, BlueAnon in general and People's CDC types in particular, choose not to address this issue, rather, just bitching about the Biden Administration and saying (at times) "masks forever" without proposing other constructive ideas. Like pushing the actual CDC for non-mRNA boosters. (Personal note: I got the Johnson and Johnson original and have never been boosted; and, per that post, I think the clotting death concerns over it are not THAT much less than the cardiomyopathy death concerns over mRNA shots.)

No. 3 was my first big piece about the Russia-Ukraine war. The Russian-Ukrainian linguistic division in left-bank Ukraine, Joe Stalin's role in setting Ukraine's boundaries and other issues of major relevance were all analyzed.

No. 2 was my highly irreverent chops-busting of Americans boo-hooing the death of Liz Windsor.

No. 1, like No. 7, was old, and started trending this summer, perhaps goosed by code in a Chinese-language comment that I since removed. It was about the Chevy Volt being an electric lemon.

Justin Amash as principled compromise Speaker? OR instead, Justin Amash, Just.Another.Politician.™?

Sounds good, right, that the former Michigan Congresscritter, former Republican now Libertarian, would offer himself up as a compromise, one-term Speaker of the House?

Ain't happening, and Amash should know better.

The "defectors" wouldn't surrender to him. His promise to run a putatively Constitutional House operations would probably make some of them think their plans to investigate anybody with a D last initial would be grounded.

Beyond that, the defectors have nominated, or voted for, nearly half a dozen candidates. And, Amash's offer was aired with Reason before the end of the day Wednesday. The defectors pointedly did not take up his offer.

That said, nobody really knows what the defectors DO want. McCarthy pretty much cut off what was left of his own balls when he agreed that his Speaker's PAC wouldn't intervene in safe states primaries, and not a single defector left the flock. They haven't gained anybody since Donalds on the third round of voting. (I have no idea why Spartz continues to vote "present," and I think nobody else knows what she's doing, either.)

At the same time, because nobody knows what the defectors want, they haven't added anybody since Donalds in the third round of voting.

Beyond that, Amash's idea for diminishing the Speaker's power bucks 200 years and more of House history going back to Henry Clay.

Side note: To non-Mises type Libertarians like George Phillies of Independent Political Report, is Amash really a true Libertarian? This non-Libertarian leftist said he isn't, at the time he said he was leaving the GOP. That post of mine ties us back to the start of all of this, though. Amash, as noted there, was one of the founders of the FreeDumb Caucus. He should know that it's unlikely the defectors would surrender to him. And, per both that and the Reason piece, he's attacked McCarthy before he does there, and what passes for a GOP "mainstream" agreed with Trumpists on backing Peter Meijer's challenge to Amash. 

Verdict?

Amash is trying to keep his face in the news for 2024.

Coronavirus week 131: Problems with the People's CDC

First, yes, there is an organization billing themselves as such, the People's CDC, complete with website.

I came across them via a New Yorker story by Emma Green. As she narrates it and I interpret it, they're the other hand, or other pole, of the twosiderism and tribalism on this issue that I work to avoid.

Her Twitter thread is worth reading not only for the highlights of the story, assuming you hit a New Yorker paywall, but also for the degree of vitriol she gets from the one of the two sides, which has definitely lost me.

As far as main points?

• The CDC as eugenicist is laughable, and sounds like something the other half of the tribalism says about Big Pharma's mRNA vaccines
• That's only amplified by it being mainly White folks attacking Green
  
• Taking money from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation would be hypocritical.
• Their claims about risk levels on Long COVID haven't been scientifically tested. (In addition, there's no scientifically agreed definition of Long COVID, which of course makes it "easier" to claim whatever you want. More on that below.)
  

There you go.

Let's look at the Long COVID issue. Here, first on their side:

More grievances: the People’s C.D.C. believes that the C.D.C. downplays the risk of long COVID, a post-viral syndrome that can follow the initial infection. The People’s C.D.C. matter-of-factly reports that getting COVID more than once increases your risk of death and hospitalization, and of developing chronic conditions affecting your lungs, heart, brain, and other organs. No amount of COVID is safe, and no number of shots can protect you: “We want to say plainly that you can have a mild infection and still get Long COVID,” the organization wrote, in a Weather Report in June. “Vaccinated people can also get Long COVID.” They frequently cite the figure that one in five cases may lead to long-COVID symptoms, based on a C.D.C. study of data gathered, in part, before vaccines were widely available. All of this is an argument against treating COVID like any other inevitable seasonal yuck, the People’s C.D.C. argues—instead, we should think about it as a “mass-disabling event.”

Then, the response:

Leana Wen, a professor at George Washington University’s school of public health and the former health commissioner of Baltimore, told me that there’s a distinction between patients who have trouble recovering from a bad COVID case or who experience lingering symptoms and those who are truly debilitated afterward. “That’s not one in five patients,” she said, of the latter group.

If these folks are really claiming "one in five," they're fucking laughable. They're probably also goalpost-shifting on just what Long COVID is, which also wouldn't surprise me. I also wonder exactly what they mean by "immunocompromised." Is it cancer patients, organ transplant persons and some other narrow group? I agree with those concerns. But, is it defined broadly and vaguely?

Another way of looking at this is via "anecdotal math." Let's say that half of all adult Americans have gotten COVID. I don't think that's wild-eyed and could be conservative. If one in five has Long COVID, that would mean that 10 percent of adult Americans have Long COVID. Does that describe your social world? Including yourself, are 1 in 10 people in your circles afflicted with Long COVID?

I think some want "masks forever." You can do that — as individuals. But, even in Japan, where pre-COVID individual mask-wearing was a deal, it's not happening nationwide.

That said, I'm not totally unsympathetic to them, either. Nor is Green, for that matter:

Among the people I spoke with who have actually led public-health agencies, all were sympathetic to some of the critiques that the People’s C.D.C. makes. “The pandemic has opened what were cracks in our health-care system and exposed them as large chasms,” [Anne Zink, Alaska's chief medical officer], said. “The systems that we have built have failed America and failed us individually.” But these experts also found it hard to take the group seriously because of its strident analysis. “To make claims that C.D.C. is beholden to big business—this is just nonsense, frankly,” [Tom] Frieden, the agency’s former leader, said. “Once you’re sitting at C.D.C., your goal is not to say the thing that makes you feel best or sounds most politically correct or radical.” 

The C.D.C. has become “the punching bag of our country,” Zink told me. She recognizes that the pandemic has been scary, sad, and frustrating for many people. Her reaction to “hearing those criticisms, particularly the eugenics comment—it’s just more sadness.”

There you go. And, it's why I called this a "semi-crappy takedown," not a "crappy" one. (More on the "semi" below, though.)

Related to that is the People's CDC saying the CDC et al are getting this that and the other wrong, but not only not offering, rather, actively refusing to offer, anything in the way of ideas to do things differently, beyond "masks forever."

I've talked myself about some of this before. I've talked hard about my wondering why we don't have non-mRNA boosters. And, the likes of Walker Bragman, who is at least a fellow traveler to the People's CDC? Crickets. But not crickets on the piece, calling it, via a retweet of Gregg Gonsalves, a "hit piece." And, the People's CDC has nothing about this on their website. And, I think that's deliberate, especially if current as well as former CDC are involved. They're not going to criticize the government on vaccines, period, which is sad.

Contra Green, and some of her "other side" interviewees, I think there IS room to criticize capitalist capture of more then FDA than the CDC, and specifically Big Pharma. Bragman, who should know better, has never gone there. I think they're all afraid of looking like MAGAts. Tough shit. The lack of better boosters is an issue, and the mRNA jabs, while not ineffective, are of relatively limited effectiveness.

So, to put it in tribalist terms, until it starts pushing for non-mRNA boosters, it can pretty much fuck off. That's even as daily cases so far this winter show but a mild uptick and daily deaths remain flat, per the latest info from Worldometers. Per Worldometers, the P-CDC claim that 2,000 people a week are dying is too high by one-third right now. (Carl Zimmer also makes this not-totally-true claim.) And, even if true, that is NOT worse than at least a more severe flu season. Oh, and you can stop the alarmism, likes of The Fed Up Chef, over Omicron SUBvariants. (And is Rob Wallace of the People's CDC actually looking for variants in wastewater, or subvariants?)

Anyway, shadowtweeting about the likes of these people:

Anybody panicking over the likes of Omicron SUBvariants which have not shown themselves to be any worse than other subvariants has lots the right to be treated 100 percent seriously on COVID pronouncements in my world.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly (@real_gadfly) December 30, 2022

But Emma Green can fuck off to some degree herself, and deserves some the vitriol. This IS a schtick by her and I first called her out SEVEN years ago. It, and this, were both two-dimensional strawmanning.

There's an actual piece to be written about the problems with the People's CDC, one with more nuance than this. Sadly, it will now never be written; Emma Green's made those waters too toxic.

One side note: The venue kind of surprises me at first glance. I could easily see The Atlantic, where Green did her schtick seven years ago, doing a piece like this. But the New Yorker? This seems at first glance like eating their own. But, really, not so much. It's left-neoliberal, not leftist, so just a few steps away from Atlantic on the spectrum.

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Related: STAT talks about lessons from COVID so far. One is how public health measures have both been imposed, and to some degree, opposed, without nuance either way. Something else the People's  CDC could take to heart — but probably won't. It also notes the rapid dropoff of mRNA effectiveness, something which, as noted above, the People's CDC and fellow travelers don't discuss, at least not from what I could tell browsing their website.

In that piece, re the one big issue above, Nancy Messionier notes there's still no accepted definition of Long COVID. That's one of many science-tentative issues around COVID, she says.

This:

“I’ve been sort of repeatedly surprised by how often I see statements in the press attributable to scientists that have an unwarranted level of confidence associated with them,” [Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at Rockefeller University] said, suggesting this has contributed to a decline in trust in science and in public health experts over the course of the pandemic. 

Bieniasz thinks scientists should have started most statements with “I don’t know, but my best guess is …”

Is big. But, again, the People's CDC half of twosiderism won't be listening. Nor will many of the science experts who may not be twosiderists but are unwittingly fueling the problem.

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Update: Related issue? Zeynep Tufekci tells you what Bragman and the People's CDC won't — RSV and flu cases have both sharply dropped again after their initial surge. I suspect two years of masking and isolation lessened natural immunity, which is a thing, even if misinterpreted by the denialists and minimalists. (And, she's been attacked on Twitter herself.)

Update 2: The Nation decides to go "all in" on the left hand  of tribalism, with a piece by People's CDC fellow traveler Gregg Gonsalves (you ARE a "fellow traveler," Gregg) that's as much a hit piece if not more than Green's original. He has no substantive engagement with Green on Long COVID and other issues. I also find it "interesting" that the likes of a Zeynep Tufekci aren't interviewed.

The piece has other strawmanning. No, we don't have a memorial to COVID dead, unlike 9/11. And? As I wrote in a newspaper column 20 years ago, we also don't have a memorial to dead diabetics and other things.

Finally, Gregg? Show your homework. Worldometers doesn't show 4,000 US dead in the past week. Even a full week of 500-death days (which we don't have) would be 3,500.

Update 3 (as we get material enough for a new post): Former Pro Publica editorial top cheese Dick Tofel also suggests it's time to move from pandemic to endemic, in terms of journalism coverage, and how we should get beyond twosiderism:

The answer seems not to be to pretend that COVID has disappeared, but rather to integrate what we have learned these last three years into public life, urging (and making it feasible) for those who are ill to stay home, taking special precautions around those at highest risk, varying our own behavior at times and in places where illnesses are more prevalent, acknowledging that those who choose to avoid or delay available vaccines are assuming risks for which they must bear at least some of the consequences.

Sounds pretty sensical.

Update 4, mainly as a bookmark for me when I start that new thread: Leana Wen, a professor of public health like Gonsalves, and one of the experts mentioned in Green's story, wonders if we're not overcounting COVID deaths and talks about deaths "from" vs deaths "with." And, she actually interviews two people, which is two more than Gonsalves. Both the people she interviewed are infectious disease physicians. Both have themselves been attacked as COVID minimalists.

Wen has the advantage of having been, pre-COVID, on the ground lines of public health as the city of Baltimore's health commissioner, too.

Update 5: A Dutch immunologist says there's a bunch of clear evidence COVID is moving in the direction of seasonal waves.

Texas Progressives say happy new year with first roundup of 2023

SocraticGadfly looked at how Texas Parks and Wildlife got all butt-hurt over Endangered Species Act listing for the lesser prairie chicken. 

The state Supremes said that Comptroller Glenn Hegar can officially say fuck-you to a late rush of Chapter 313 filings. I think it's a cheap-ass punt by the justices saying this is for the Lege to decide. That said, the lobbying's going to be hot and heavy!

Off the Kuff gets back to doing data analyses of the 2022 election in Harris County by looking at the County Judge and Lite Guv, AG, and Ag Commissioner races. 

Aridzona developers still haven't gotten, or internalized, the message on water.

Steve Vladeck explains just what Title 42 actually is.  

Texas Monthly gives their favorite photos from 2022. 

The Dallas Observer names the worst Karens of 2022. 

The Observer reports on the likely undercount of the COVID death rate for people of color.

Saudi sports pimping and imagewashing not limited to golf

Witness Ronaldo's €200m deal to play for Saudi state-owned footy club Al Nassar.

That said, in futbol, it's not limited to the Saudis, as James Dorsey explains in this piece. Arab states in general are using soccer transfers to whitewash their image. (Even without these massive free agencies to the Gulf Arab states, European soccer salaries to top stars mean that American big three sports fans should note that free agencies here aren't that pricey.)

As part of that, as KSA, UAE and Qatar all battle for influence, Dorsey speculates that they'll come together to try to form an Arab-world federation for future World Cup qualifying, splitting Arab states off from the current Asian-Arab federation while trying to get North African states moved over from the African federation.

Top blogging of December

As normal, not all of these posts were necessarily from December, but were the 10 most read in the past month.

No. 1 was my take on former German Chancellor Angela Merkel's admitting that the Minsk Accords were nothing but a form of appeasement, to string out Putin long enough to rearm Ukraine with modern NATO armament (and training). No wonder Putin doesn't trust NATO.

No. 2 was my noting that a significant minority of Ukrainians (and that's without allowing for Zelenskyy having repressed oppo media and oppo political parties even before the Russian invasion), like a majority of Americans, want peace talks. A Twitter warmonger claimed that I had undercut myself on a back-and-forth on this. Rather, I told him that he had confirmed himself as a warmonger before I muted the conversation. (People talk about the wonkiness etc of Twitter's API, but the fact that, in a conversation, you can mute it, leave it, or mute, or block, the one problematic individual kind of belie that.)

No. 3 was me wishing a Merry fucking Christmas to Robert Jeffress for cavorting with Belial.

No. 4 came after the Brittney Griner-Viktor Bout prisoner swap. I speculated about Paul Whelan either being an actual spy, a corporate spy, or a spy wannabe. 

No. 10 was related; it was about John Bolton apparently further kneecapping Russiagate. Deal with it, BlueAnon.

No. 5 goes meta and was my post about top blogging of November.

No. 6 was just before Winter Storm Elliott and was about cryptocurrency mining sucking at the ERCOT teat, and how both Rethugs and ConservaDems are OK with that.

No. 7 was about two Dem senators in the Texas Lege crafting narrow bills to partially address problems on a couple of big issues to appeal to Republicans. I remain at least halfway skeptical.

No. 8 was my one COVID-related post of the month. It was about Dr. Peter Hotez, and how, under the "let's talk science" surface, he's a Blue Anon gaslighter, grifter, and tribalist. (Side note: I have a semi-blistering post about the "People's CDC," and its butt-hurt-ness over the Emma Green piece, teed up.

No. 9 was a recent Texas Progressives roundup. Maybe Tony Tinder(holt) made that popular.

RIP Ratzi the Nazi

Can't think of many better ways to see the old year end and the new one begin than with the death of Joseph Ratzenberger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, aka Ratzi the Nazi. Yes, I know his Hitler Youth service was forced and he deserted the unit; the nickname plays on his German background to describe his time as cardinal-flunky of John Paul II, yet even further right, and above all his time as pope.

To extend the analogy, Ratzi the Nazi was one of JPII's chief stormtroopers, even a Gruppenführer of his reactionary papacy, gone further than the master.

Ratzi was hard-core anti-gay, as well as anti anything else that didn't fit into his small vehicle of conservative Catholicism. Since his retirement, many of Pope Francis' pronouncements have been seen as shots against those of Ratzi.

And, of course, he did basically nothing about the priestly child sex abuse scandal. In fact, he was part of the coverup. And, part of giving victims the back of the Vatican hand, while already having apologists flock around him like the flies of Beelzebul. He then tried to claim, shades of Uber and Lyft, that abusive priests were, essentially, independent contractors. (Francis, while far better, has not been far far better and is no shining light overall.) Per the obit piece at top link, Ratzi continued to shoot himself in the foot on this issue after becoming pope emeritus.

And, there are many fundamentalists Catholics and Conservative Cafeteria Catholics who can't accept the truth about Ratzi the Nazi, even though the bible itself says "the truth shall set you free," does it not?  

And, while we're going biblical?

Per comments about Ratzi's current locale, there is no heaven, or hell, and no immortal soul, so he's not in any realm of the saints. But, if both metaphysical sites existed, along with immortal souls, per Jesus' own "suffer the little children" plus "it would be better if a millstone were placed around their necks," he sure wouldn't be in heaven. 

As for the priests he defrocked? The apologists won't talk about how much outside pressure was required for that to happen or how many he didn't defrock. And, indeed, many of the alleged 400 were not defrocked but retired (whether totally voluntarily or not). And, in any case, it was not 400 final actions. It was 400 cases opened. Says who? National Catholic Register.

They won't talk about him being part of the coverup, per that link above, and individually as well as institutionally. Per Hitchens' piece I linked there, they won't talk about Ratzi the Pedi wrote a statute of "we've got first dibs" regulation about reporting abuse, as in, reporting stays in house for 10 years — probably hoping that governmental clocks would run out by then. As for the claim that "he did more than previous popes"? That's like sayig the atomic bomb is not as deadly as the hydrogen bomb.

They won't talk about how the Vatican financial scandal grew on his watch. They won't talk about how, going beyond JPII's putting a brake on everything in the way of Vatican 2 reforms, Ratzi actually tried to move that bus backward again, and in doing so, enabled Opus Dei, and Catholic groups and individuals more reactionary yet.

As for Blue Anon types, or leftists for that matter, who don't like the tag? I said on Twitter, too, that I was referencing his time as pope. If you call Mussolini a fascist but reject "Ratzi the Nazi," you're a hypocrite. Beyond all the above, he gave reactionary formal Catholic groups like Opus Dei a degree of coddling that even JPII wouldn't, as I note above. Beyond THAT, given David Kertzer's history of Pius XII's arguably being a fascist, if not a Nazi, Ratzi was chief among stonewallers of Kertzer and other historians wanting to look at Vatican archives of Pius XII. Benedict was also part of stonewalling over the release of official records of Pius XI, about whom, and his relationship to Mussolini, Kertzer has also written. (Catholic fundies refuse to admit this stonewalling is of a piece with Ratzi's other actions.)

Speaking of, Francis has now led Rome as long as Ratzi if not a bit longer, and there's been more and more talk about his health status in the last year. Will he avail himself of the "pope emeritus" idea and if so, how soon?

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Related thoughts, from old blog posts about Ratzi the Nazi?

How much is Douthat mourning his death, given that he mourned his retirement?

As for him being an unwilling draftee into Hitler Youth? The German Catholic Church remained cozy with elements of Germany's Nazi past even into Benedict's papacy.