Monthly Archives: January 2020

Opinion | Bernie Sanders Can’t Win – By Timothy Egan – The New York Times

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By Timothy Egan

Contributing Opinion Writer

 

 

Bernie Sanders at a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa.
Credit…Mark Makela for The New York Times

“Watching “Succession,” the HBO show about the most despicable plutocrats to seize the public imagination since the Trumps were forced on us, made me want to tax the ultrarich into a homeless shelter. And it almost made a Bernie Bro of me.

That’s the thing about class loathing: it feels good, a moral high with its own endorphins, but is ultimately self-defeating. A Bernie Sanders rally is a hit from the same pipe: Screw those greedy billionaire bastards!

Sanders has passion going for him. He has authenticity. He certainly has consistency: His bumper-sticker sloganeering hasn’t changed for half a century. He was, “even as a young man, an old man,” as Time magazine said.

But he cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades against walled estates.

The United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will be. Which isn’t to say that American capitalism is working; it needs Teddy Roosevelt-style trustbusting and restructuring. We’re coming for you, Facebook.

The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders, who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans will rip the bark off him. When they’re done, you will not recognize the aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s dystopian dairy. Demagogy is what Republicans do best. And Sanders is ripe for caricature.”

David Lindsay Jr.
Hamden, CT | NYT comment:
Thank you Tim Egan, I completely agree. I can’t get down far enough through the Bernie bros to find anyone who agrees with us. I have something for them though, do remember George McGovern, and how great he was. He lost in a landslide. Michael Dukakis lost by even more, I think he won only 14 electoral votes. Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Obama were all moderates.
What really matters, with the maw of climate change and the 6th extinction hanging over us, is winning with an environmentalist. The polsters say Biden has a much better chance than Sanders or Warren, in the critical swing states. That is why Egan is right.

Opinion | George Soros: Mark Zuckerberg Should Not Be in Control of Facebook – The New York Times

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By George Soros

Mr. Soros is a philanthropist.

 

 

Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times

“At a dinner last week in Davos, Switzerland, I was asked if I thought Facebook was behaving more responsibly today than it did during the 2016 presidential election.

“Not at all,” I answered. “Facebook helped Trump to get elected and I am afraid that it will do the same in 2020.” I explained that there is a longstanding law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — that protects social media platforms from legal liability for defamation and similar claims. Facebook can post deliberately misleading or false statements by candidates for public office and others, and take no responsibility for them.

I went on to say that there appears to be “an informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook” in which Facebook will help President Trump to get re-elected and Mr. Trump will, in turn, defend Facebook against attacks from regulators and the media.

“This is just plain wrong,” a Facebook spokesman told Business Insider.

I disagree. I believe that Mr. Trump and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, realize that their interests are aligned — the president’s in winning elections, Mr. Zuckerberg’s in making money.”

David Lindsay Jr.
Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:
Thank you George Soros, I second your points and demands. Facebook has become a menace, and while extremely useful for many little things, it is getting the big stuff really wrong. It has to play by the rules of other news outlets and publishers, and might need its own rules, which are even stricter.

Opinion | To Understand the Wuhan Coronavirus, Look to the Epidemic Triangle – By Dan Werb – The New York Times

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By Dan Werb

Dr. Werb is the author of “City of Omens: A Search for the Missing Women of the Borderlands.”

Credit…CHINATOPIX, via Associated Press

“Five cases of the mysterious Wuhan coronavirus have been confirmed in the United States, giving rise to concerns about a potential global pandemic. We’ve seen this story before, as health authorities working with threadbare data try to walk the line between epidemic readiness and needless panic. Is this new outbreak poised to become the next AIDS pandemic or a new SARS, which was stopped in its tracks after 774 deaths? To cut through the headlines, we can use a simple concept called the “epidemic triangle.” Employed by epidemiologists since the discipline’s earliest days, it is indispensable in predicting whether localized outbreaks will transform into full-blown epidemics.

The epidemic triangle is essentially an equation. It posits that every outbreak, regardless of its specific traits, is dependent on the interplay between three factors: the pathogen (the agent causing infection), the host (the organism at risk of infection) and the environment (the setting where the infections occur). Every single epidemic — be it the flu, cholera or even behavioral epidemics like drunken driving — is the result of a dynamic shift in one of these points of the epidemic triangle, which then causes a domino effect leading to a sudden explosion of new cases.

In one classic example of this phenomenon, we have an environmental shift to thank for the emergence of the global flu pandemic. In the mid-16th century, ducks were introduced to Chinese rice paddies to feed on the insects that were destroying crops. That meant ducks joined another common feature of Chinese farms: pigs. The duck’s unique biology makes it a generous reservoir for a vast number of viruses, while pigs are uncannily efficient at mixing different viruses together into new strains and passing them to humans. Breeding these two animals in proximity quickly led to the combination and transmission of new viral strains. Novel and highly virulent pathogens — hybrid pig-duck influenza strains — then crossed the species barrier and have been tormenting humanity ever since.”

Opinion | Why Having Hunter Biden Testify Would Be Bad for Trump – By Elizabeth Drew – The New York Times

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By Elizabeth Drew

Ms. Drew is a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate.

Credit…Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

“If there are to be witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump — at this moment an unknown — John Bolton and Hunter Biden would almost certainly be among those called to testify. Some people on Capitol Hill describe it as a one-for-one trade.

This idea has been widely dismissed by both sides. Democrats say Hunter Biden, son of former Vice President Joe Biden, is irrelevant to the issues in the articles of impeachment. The president and Republicans assert that Mr. Bolton, the former national security adviser who was fired by Mr. Trump — Mr. Bolton says he quit — is simply promoting a forthcoming book and has nothing meaningful to say.

To my own surprise, I now think that such an arrangement might well be highly valuable — for the country.

For some time, I was against the Democrats’ offering any Biden as a witness in Mr. Trump’s trial, on principle. Just because the Republicans want to batter Hunter Biden is no reason to submit either him or his father as fodder to hostile Republicans. But principle can be turned on its head; calling Hunter Biden could backfire on the Republicans big time.”

David Lindsay Jr.
Hamden, CT |  NYT comment
Thank you Elizabeth Drew for this fine analysis. I second it. I will bet anyone a penny that Hunter Biden can sound like a serious and intellectual player, who had some skills and integrity as well as connections to offer Burisma.

Opinion | Want to Do Something About Climate Change? Follow the Money – By Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Bill McKibben – The New York Times

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By Lennox Yearwood Jr. and Bill McKibben

“WASHINGTON — If you asked us why a dozen people sat on the floor next to the A.T.M. in a Chase Bank branch on Friday, waiting for the police to arrest us for this small act of civil disobedience, we would come up with the same answer as the famous robber Willie Sutton: “Because that’s where the money is.”

We don’t want to empty the vaults. Instead, we want people to understand that the money inside the vaults of banks like Chase is driving the climate crisis. Cutting off that flow of cash may be the single quickest step we can take to rein in the fossil fuel industry and slow the rapid warming of the earth.

JPMorgan Chase isn’t the only offender, but it is among the worst. In the last three years, according to data compiled in a recently released “fossil fuel finance report card” by a group of environmental organizations, JPMorgan Chase lent over $195 billion to gas and oil companies.

For comparison, Wells Fargo lent over $151 billion, Citibank lent over $129 billion and Bank of America lent over $106 billion. Since the Paris climate accord, which 195 countries agreed to in 2015, JPMorgan Chase has been the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels by a 29 percent margin.”

Temperatures at a Florida-Size Glacier Alarm Scientists – By Shola Lawal – The New York Times

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By Shola Lawal

“Scientists in Antarctica have recorded, for the first time, unusually warm water beneath a glacier the size of Florida that is already melting and contributing to a rise in sea levels.

The researchers, working on the Thwaites Glacier, recorded water temperatures at the base of the ice of more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit, above the normal freezing point. Critically, the measurements were taken at the glacier’s grounding line, the area where it transitions from resting wholly on bedrock to spreading out on the sea as ice shelves.

It is unclear how fast the glacier is deteriorating: Studies have forecast its total collapse in a century and also in a few decades. The presence of warm water in the grounding line may support estimates at the faster range.

That is significant because the Thwaites, along with the Pine Island Glacier and a number of smaller glaciers, acts as a brake on part of the much larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Together, the two bigger glaciers are currently holding back ice that, if melted, would raise the world’s oceans by more than a meter, or about four feet, over centuries, an amount that would put many coastal cities underwater.”

Opinion | Trump’s Digital Advantage Is Freaking Out Democratic Strategists – By Thomas B. Edsall – The New York Times

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By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C. on politics, demographics and inequality.

Credit…Evan Vucci/Associated Press

“In a blog post published in November, a year before the 2020 election, Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote.org, a socially conservative advocacy group, announced that in Wisconsin alone his organization had identified 199,241 Catholics “who’ve been to church at least 3 times in the last 90 days.”

Nearly half of these religiously observant parishioners, Burch wrote, “91,373 mass-attending Catholics — are not even registered to vote!” CatholicVote.org is looking for potential Trump voters within this large, untapped reservoir — Republican-leaning white Catholics who could bolster Trump’s numbers in a battleground state.

Burch, whose organization opposes abortion and gay marriage, made his plans clear:

We are already building the largest Catholic voter mobilization program ever. And no, that’s not an exaggeration. Our plan spans at least 7 states (and growing), and includes millions of Catholic voters.

How did Catholic Vote come up with these particular church attendance numbers for 199,241 Catholics? With geofencing, a technology that creates a virtual geographic boundary, enabling software to trigger a response when a cellphone enters or leaves a particular area — a church, for example, or a stadium, a school or an entire town.

Geofencing is just one of the new tools of digital campaigning, a largely unregulated field of political combat in which voters have little or no idea of how they are being manipulated, in which traditional disclosure requirements are inoperative and key actors are anonymous. It is a weapon of choice. Once an area is geofenced, commercial data companies can acquire the mobile phone ID numbers of those within the boundary.”

“The explosion of digital technology has created the opportunity for political operatives to run what amount to dark campaigns, conducted below the radar of both voter awareness and government oversight.

In some cases, the technology is very simple: the anonymous transmission of negative images of candidates by individuals to Facebook groups. This activity is neither reported to the Federal Election Commission nor linked to official campaigns.

Steven Livingston, a professor of media and public affairs and director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University, has been tracking this sub rosa electioneering in the current election cycle. He found that supporters of two candidates, Trump and Bernie Sanders, are the primary practitioners.

The Washington Post and The New York Times have both reported on the activities of Sanders supporters, but, Livingston noted in an email, “Our evidence suggests that Trump supporters use automated promotion or cross posting four times as much as Sanders supporters.”

David Lindsay:  Here is a comment that helped  put the bad news above into perspective:

WFGERSEN
Etna NH

The POTUS’ biggest advantage NOW is the circular firing squad underway among the Democrats, a phenomenon that will come to an end once a candidate emerges from the gun smoke. When that day comes, the anti-Trump animus will unite the Democrats in a way that did not happen in 2016 when the “conventional wisdom” saw HRC’s election as a foregone conclusion… and when the Democratic Party’s nominee emerges, rest assured that some of the DNC strategists know how to use digital technology to good effect and they will do so. There are miles to go before this election is over….

6 Replies149 Recommended

Opinion | Greta Versus the Greedy Grifters – By Paul Krugman – The New York Times

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By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

Credit…Markus Schreiber/Associated Press

“I’ve never been a fan of Davos, that annual gathering of the rich and fatuous. One virtue of the pageant of preening and self-importance, however, is that it brings out the worst in some people, leading them to say things that reveal their vileness for all to see.

And so it was for Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary. First, Mnuchin doubled down on his claim that the 2017 tax cut will pay for itself — just days after his own department confirmed that the budget deficit in 2019 was more than $1 trillion, 75 percent higher than it was in 2016.

Then he sneered at Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist, suggesting that she go study economics before calling for an end to investment in fossil fuels.

Well, unearned arrogance is a Trump administration hallmark — witness Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, claiming that a respected national security reporter couldn’t find Ukraine on a map. So it may not surprise you to learn that Mnuchin was talking nonsense and that Thunberg almost certainly has it right.

One can only surmise that Mnuchin slept through his undergraduate economics classes. Otherwise he would know that every, and I mean every, major Econ 101 textbook argues for government regulation or taxation of activities that pollute the environment, because otherwise neither producers nor consumers have an incentive to take the damage inflicted by this pollution into account.”

David Lindsay: Thank you Paul Krugman.  Here are two of the most popular comments which I endorsed:

Matt
VT

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out that if you don’t have an economics degree, like Greta, they’ll mock you for not having one. If you do have one, like AOC, they’ll claim it’s illegitimate. They will happily deny logic, science, and environmental consensus in order to protect oligarchy. Not surprisingly, economics fares no better.

4 Replies735 Recommended

 
Socrates commented January 27

Socrates
Downtown Verona. NJ

The human depravity required to be a right-wing science and manmade global warming denier is astounding. The only reasons to indulge in such a stance are a sadomasochistic death wish for oneself, humanity, and the entire animal and plant kingdom…and psychopathic greed.

Or as Greta Thunberg said so eloquently at the UN Climate Action Summit:

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

“For more than 30 years, the science has been crystal clear. How dare you continue to look away and come here saying that you’re doing enough, when the politics and solutions needed are still nowhere in sight.”

“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions?” “There will not be any (realistic) solutions or plans presented…here today, because these (C02) numbers are too uncomfortable. And you are still not mature enough to tell it like it is.”

“You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.” “We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

“Thank you.”

— Just say NO to the Gas Oil Petroleum party.

5 Replies663 Recommended

Opinion | We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic – By David Quammen – The New York Times

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By David Quammen

Mr. Quammen is the author of “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic.”

Credit…Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

“The latest scary new virus that has captured the world’s horrified attention, caused a lockdown of 56 million people in China, disrupted travel plans around the globe and sparked a run on medical masks from Wuhan, Hubei Province, to Bryan, Texas, is known provisionally as “nCoV-2019.” It’s a clunky moniker for a lurid threat.

The name, picked by the team of Chinese scientists who isolated and identified the virus, is short for “novel coronavirus of 2019.” It reflects the fact that the virus was first recognized to have infected humans late last year — in a seafood and live-animal market in Wuhan — and that it belongs to the coronavirus family, a notorious group. The SARS epidemic of 2002-3, which infected 8,098 people worldwide, killing 774 of them, was caused by a coronavirus, and so was the MERS outbreak that began on the Arabian Peninsula in 2012 and still lingers (2,494 people infected and 858 deaths as of November).

Despite the new virus’s name, though, and as the people who christened it well know, nCoV-2019 isn’t as novel as you might think.

Something very much like it was found several years ago in a cave in Yunnan, a province roughly a thousand miles southwest of Wuhan, by a team of perspicacious researchers, who noted its existence with concern. The fast spread of nCoV-2019 — more than 4,500 confirmed cases, including at least 106 deaths, as of Tuesday morning, and the figures will have risen by the time you read this — is startling but not unforeseeable. That the virus emerged from a nonhuman animal, probably a bat, and possibly after passing through another creature, may seem spooky, yet it is utterly unsurprising to scientists who study these things.”