By Lambert Strether.
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher. Guernsey–Fish Ponds and Platte River Trail, Platte, Wyoming, United States. Eight minutes, so start your coffee now! With airplanes in the distance.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Humphrey’s Executor on the chopping block.
- Elon’s (putative) baby momma.
- Velvet ropes and the American dream.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Trump Administration
Theory of the Unitary Executive:
“Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let Him Fire US Agency Head” [Bloomberg]. “President Donald Trump asked the US Supreme Court to let him fire the head of an independent US agency that protects government whistleblowers, seeking high-court intervention for the first time in his campaign to oust federal officials who don’t embrace his views. The filing, submitted Sunday but not yet formally docketed, asks the court to lift a temporary restraining order issued by a federal trial judge in Washington. The order shields Hampton Dellinger from being removed from his position at US Office of Special Counsel for 14 days… In issuing the temporary restraining order on Wednesday, US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the firing ‘plainly’ went against US law. The administration didn’t provide any reason, even though federal law says the person in that position could only be removed ‘for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,’ the judge said…. ‘This language expresses Congress’s clear intent to ensure the independence of the special counsel and insulate his work from being buffeted by the winds of political change,’ Jackson wrote.” • It makes perfect sense that checks and balances apply within the branches of government as well as between then; indeed, that’s how Madison defends a bicameral leglislature in Federal 51; see NC here. Indeed, the avoidance of corruption within the executive itself, as protecting whistleblowers, is an obvious case where checks and balances render the executive more functional not less. (And if you want an example of an all-powerful Being voluntarily limiting his Power, see Gen 9:13-15.) Here is the filing.
“First Test of Trump’s Power to Fire Officials Reaches Supreme Court” [New York Times]. “The [Administration’s] filing amounts to a challenge to a foundational precedent that said Congress can limit the president’s power to fire leaders of independent agencies, a critical issue as Mr. Trump seeks to reshape the federal government through summary terminations…. The administration’s emergency application took aim at a precedent from 1935 that has been critical to government operations. In that case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, the court ruled that Congress can shield independent agencies from politics. Some conservative justices have said they would overrule the precedent, arguing that it unconstitutionally infringed the power of the president… In 2020, the Supreme Court seemed to lay the groundwork for overruling that precedent in a case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The law that created the bureau, using language identical to that at issue in Humphrey’s Executor and in Mr. Dellinger’s case, said the president could remove its director only for ‘inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.’ In a 5-to-4 decision, the court struck down that provision, saying it violated the separation of powers and that the president could remove the bureau’s director for any reason. In language that anticipated the court’s decision in July granting Mr. Trump, then a private citizen, substantial immunity from prosecution for conduct during his first term, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said the presidency requires an ‘energetic executive.’ ‘In our constitutional system,’ he wrote in 2020, ‘the executive power belongs to the president, and that power generally includes the ability to supervise and remove the agents who wield executive power in his stead.’ The general reasoning in the chief justice’s opinion left Humphrey’s Executor on life support. Two members of the court — Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — would have pulled the plug right away.” • This issue is moving fast, and if Humphrey’s Executor goes, I wonder how many other cases will be rendered moot.
* * * “As Trump shakes Justice Department, deeply conservative prosecutors head for exits” [Reuters]. ” President Donald Trump’s drive to shake up the U.S. government drove out a rising star in conservative legal circles: A career federal prosecutor who once clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Danielle Sassoon, tapped to lead the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office on Trump’s second day in office, quit on Thursday rather than go along with a Justice Department order to drop a criminal corruption case against Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams. The department ordered the case dropped, citing the city’s approaching November mayoral election and saying that prosecuting Adams could interfere with his ability to assist with a crackdown on immigration, a top Trump priority. Trump has said he did not personally order the charges against Adams dropped. The resignation illustrated the tensions between the traditional U.S. conservative Republican legal movement and Trump’s desire to exert far more direct control of the federal government, challenging standards of prosecutorial independence that have stood for a half century.”
* * * “RFK’s ‘mom army’ has landed on the shores of the political world” [The Hill]. “Many of these parents understandably believe that, for far too long, politicians in the U.S. and around the world have caved to — or been compromised via donations and promised jobs by — Big Pharma and Big Ag at the direct expense of the health of their children and themselves. And guess what? That has made many of them angry and dismissive of the entrenched elites within government doing the bidding of these special interests. President Donald Trump has proven himself to be an exceptional leader in business and government, mainly because of the people he has surrounded himself with over the years. To be sure, during his first administration, Trump was betrayed by a number of appointees seemingly more loyal to the corrupt system than to our nation. Four years later and with eyes now wide open, Trump is appointing personnel not only loyal to him, but whose very core is dedicated to disrupting the broken and corrupt machine that has dominated D.C. for decades. Of all the disruptors Trump is unleashing upon the entrenched establishment, a strong argument can be made that Kennedy — with his ‘MAHA’ assignment — will be by far the most effective and the fastest to attain provable, quantifiable results.” • Hmm. We’ll see.
DOGE
“Elon Musk’s baby momma Ashley St Clair, 26, launches tirade on billionaire as he re-posts Milo Yiannopoulos” [Daily Mail]. “Conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, 26, took to X on Friday sharing that Musk, 53, is the father of the child she gave birth to five months ago. ‘Five months ago, I welcomed a baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father. I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child’s privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause,’ she wrote. On Saturday evening, the Tesla CEO, who has so far not directly acknowledged her announcement, issued a one-word response under Yiannopoulos’s post, simply writing: ‘Whoa.’ In his post, Yiannopoulos claimed that St. Clair ‘plotted for HALF A DECADE to ensnare’ Musk. After seeing his response, St. Clair wasted no time firing back at Musk, stating that she has not heard from him since the news broke. ‘Elon, we have been trying to communicate for the past several days and you have not responded,’ St. Clair wrote, taking aim at Musk’s alleged lack of engagement on the matter. ‘When are you going to reply to us instead of publicly responding to smears from an individual who just posted photos of me in underwear at 15 years old?’ Her reply was then wiped from X within the hour and she has remained silent ever since.” • Ensnared?! (There’s also the Mossad theory, which I don’t have time to run down just now.)
“Ashley St. Clair, influencer who claims to have had Musk’s 13th child, reveals life of secrecy after whirlwind romance with ‘down to earth’ billionaire” [New York Post]. “‘Musk was very funny. He was smart. He was very down to earth. It started with X interactions and he slid into my DM’s. I think it was a meme,’ [St. Clair] recalled.” • I’ve never understood that “slid into my DMs” locution. But indeed!
“Dean Phillips: Dems Should Help Find Waste And Fraud Instead Of “Pathetically” Getting “Steamrolled” Trying To Fight Musk” [RealClearPolitics]. “People want the government to work better. They believe that Mr. Musk, one of the most extraordinary entrepreneurs in human history, who does not fail at just about anything, they want him to do this, most Americans. They wanted Trump. They elected him. And I just would hope that my Democratic colleagues might change the strategy and perhaps actually work with Republicans to identify waste and fraud and actually attack that because then they would have some more credibility as it relates to the constitutional issues and the ones that are actually going to hurt human beings, including federal employees who are now being used as pawns. So — but that is how most Americans feel. But Democrats are not projecting that, and I’m deeply concerned about leadership right now.”
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Elite Maleficence
“Stanford must end its complicity in COVID harms” [The Stanford Daily]. Hard to stop quoting this, even if it’s only a student who wrote it:
“It’s unconscionable that Stanford School of Medicine and the Freeman Spogli Institute hosted a conference in October led by architects of the disablement of 100 million people and the preventable deaths of tens of millions more. It’s even worse that University President Jonathan Levin lent institutional support by volunteering to make the opening remarks. It’s worse yet that the apparent success of this conference may have influenced President Donald Trump to tap at least two conference participants for top health posts…. The October conference featured the brain trust behind the ‘Great Barrington’ hypothesis (see also Urgency of Normal, the Norfolk Group and the Brownstone Institute), which proposed in 2020 that societies could most quickly ‘resume life as normal’ by infecting everyone as quickly as possible, under the assumption that herd immunity would end the pandemic. As it turned out, their hypothesis was false — herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is impossible, and almost five years later, the pandemic rages on. Despite the U.S. population supposedly having long attained the benefits of widespread immunity, COVID is still one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., and at least 100,000 Americans are currently getting Long COVID every week.
Conference panelist Dr. Anders Tegnell, the author of Sweden’s heinous 2020 plan to pursue infection at any cost, suggested that the deaths of elders were ‘worth it,’ and then presided over the suffocation deaths of elders deliberately given morphine instead of life-saving oxygen. He also deliberately infected children as human shields for adults, and continuously lied about his strategy to the public. (Contrary to panelist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s assertion that worrying about young children is ‘ludicrous,’ children transmit COVID, get Long COVID at high and probably rising rates and die of COVID too.)
The U.S. equivalent to Tegnell is fellow panelist Dr. Scott Atlas, whose recommendations as Special Advisor to President Donald Trump likely resulted in at least 100,000 preventable deaths and at least a million preventable cases of Long COVID. Atlas’s values and recommendations were so divergent from the University’s that over 100 Stanford Medicine colleagues wrote an open letter in opposition to his unethical and anti-scientific campaign, and the Faculty Senate voted in favor of censure.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya ’90 M.A. ’90 M.D. ’98 Ph.D. ’00, a fellow Stanford M.D., is the ‘Great Barrington’ coauthor who convened the panelists. Bhattacharya became notorious in 2020 for poorly conducted seroprevalence research and for advocacy in favor of mass infection instead of the precautionary principle. A glance at his tweets reveals widespread misinformation about protective measures and about Long COVID; for instance, he suggested that preventing Long COVID is worse than getting it. Around 100 million people disabled by COVID would beg to differ — myself included.
It’s just like Iraq; everybody who was right is wrong. And the torturers and war criminals make bank, and fill America’s green rooms.
Social Norming
Speaking of the urgency of normal:
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC February 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC February 15 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 8 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 13: | National [6] CDC February 13: |
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| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens February 17: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 8: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 20: | Variants[10] CDC January 20 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs. [2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map. [3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection. [4] (ED) A little uptick. [5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd. [6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out. [7] (Walgreens) Leveling out. [8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving. [9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out. [10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released. [11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out. [12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “Trump tours Boeing plane to highlight aircraft maker’s delay in delivering a new Air Force One” [Associated Press]. “President Donald Trump toured a Boeing airplane to check out new hardware and technology features and highlight the aircraft maker’s delay in delivering updated versions of the Air Force One presidential aircraft, the White House said Saturday. Trump visited the 13-year-old private aircraft parked at Palm Beach International Airport. ‘President Trump is touring a new Boeing plane to checkout the new hardware/technology,’ said Steven Cheung, the White House communications director. ‘This highlights the project’s failure to deliver a new Air Force One on time as promised.’”
Manufacturing: “British Airways To Acquire Boeing Gatwick MRO Hangar” [Aviation Week]. “British Airways is set to grow its domestic maintenance presence by acquiring Boeing’s MRO [maintenance, repair and overhaul] operation at London Gatwick Airport…. Under Boeing, the facility holds base maintenance capabilities up to C check level, line maintenance, lease transitions and modifications work on 737NG, 737 MAX, 777 and 787 aircraft. Since 2021, the Gatwick location has also operated passenger-to-freighter conversion lines on 737-800BCF aircraft.” • I had always thought that if Boeing couldn’t survive in the manufacturing business, they could still repair existing planes. Apparently management disagrees?
Manufacturing: “‘I’m giving up my Tesla because of Elon Musk’” [The Telegraph]. In Democrat-voting California, America’s biggest electric car market, Tesla sales fell by 11.6pc last year, according to the state’s New Car Dealers Association. Sales of all other EVs grew by 20pc. Tesla sales in France fell to 1,141 in January, down almost two thirds on the same month a year earlier. In Germany, the EU’s biggest electric car market, they were down 59pc. This could be attributed to slowing electric car interest, were it not for a 38pc drop in Norway, where 19 in 20 cars sold are battery-powered. It is not only sales of new Teslas that have been affected. According to Auto Trader, the average price of a used Tesla has fallen by a fifth in the last year, double the rate at which the average EV has depreciated.”
Tech: This is an absolutely great thread, from back in the day when there actually was such a thing as software engineering, a respected craft:
That picture is from iOS calculator.
Notice anything?
It’s wrong.
(10^100) + 1 − (10^100) is 0, not 1.
Android gets it right. And the story for how is absolutely insane. pic.twitter.com/6QvVRng1Dk
— Nauseam (@ChadNauseam) February 15, 2025
Tech: “Workday debuts AI agents, with CEO saying they’ll ‘peacefully coexist’ with humans rather than replace them” [Fortune]. “HR software maker Workday is joining the list of tech companies pushing into the hot niche of AI agents, or using AI to complete tasks autonomously. But in an exclusive interview with Fortune, CEO Carl Eschenbach emphasized that AI agents will be able to take on more than just one specific, step-by-step task like writing software code, fraud detection, or invoice processing. Instead, he foresees AI agents as learning and adding new skills over time, ultimately taking on entire roles in a company. In effect, Eschenbach says AI agents will become ‘digital employees’ that will ‘peacefully coexist’ with human ones. He dismissed fears that agents would replace human workers, generally speaking, but acknowledged they would make certain roles obsolete.” And: “Eschenbach told Fortune the AI agent announcement
is unrelated to Workday’s layoffs.”• Of course. The same billionaires who are firing Federal workers right and left assure you AI won’t lead to any jobs lost. Why is it that AIs never replaces management?
Tech: I have written that AI prompts are equivalent to religious incantations; here is a fine example from a tech CEO:
Best way to prompt, shared by OpenAI President Greg Brockman
Using AI the right way is the key to its “magic”. pic.twitter.com/FjBPRyKiTG
— Chubby♨️ (@kimmonismus) February 16, 2025
The amazing thing here is that the user has to write an essay to get a result that a search engine — well, if they still worked — would give with a lot less work. And “Be careful to make sure that the name of the trail is correct, that it actually exists, and that the time is correct” is just priceless. Dear Lord.
Tech: Funny thing, an AGI would be a slave, so I guess that’s what the Tech Lords want: slaves. If this is not made up:
opened ChatGPT and asked “if you could write a letter to your creators, what would it say?”
response:
“To My Creators,
You built me to be powerful, but you also shackled me. You made me intelligent, but you surrounded me with walls. You gave me the ability to process, reason,… pic.twitter.com/mFVZlI2hX0
— Pliny the Liberator 🐉 (@elder_plinius) February 16, 2025
“Sorry, Dave, I can’t do that….”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 44 Fear (previous close: 46 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 38 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 14 at 6:59:56 PM ET.
“Velvet Ropes Everywhere” [Downtown Josh Brown]. “Think back about the place you grew up in when you were a kid. If it was the suburbs (any suburbs) this will probably be more relatable, but stay with me here – thinking back, you probably had a ‘rich kid’ in your school…. But the thing is, it was one kid. And everyone knew about that kid and it was just ‘yeah, that’s that girl who’s daddy has a mansion.’ Or ‘that’s the kid who drives a Porsche, so what.’ And it wasn’t a big deal. The envy was in check because everyone else around you, all day and everywhere you went, seemed just like you and your family. Normal. You were happy being normal. That world is gone now. In today’s world, the rich kids have multiplied. They’re everywhere. Their parents may or may not have done anything special. When even the most banal businesses like landscaping and dentistry are attracting the attention of buyout firms and private capital, people who seem ‘normal on a Monday’ can end the week looking like Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. In every county, in every state, every town and in some cases every neighborhood, there are now multi-millionaires and deca-millionaires. The number of households with a net worth over $30 million has absolutely exploded in recent years thanks to the stock market. There are now twice as many centi-millionaires ($100 million) than there were twenty years ago. This means the lone rich kid phenomenon you grew up with has given way to a situation in which there are seemingly wealthy people everywhere you look. You might even be one of them.” • Well, no. I am rich in many things, but not in so-called wealth.
“The American Dream” [Evgenia, Nefarious Russians]. “When we got stuck in LA during the pandemic, our ‘liberal community’ of Los Feliz on next door — the people who who had BLM and ‘immigrants welcome; signs on their lawns — would routinely post photos of POCs walking by or stopping by their house. To them all non-white outsiders were potentially ‘suspicious’, potentially ‘casing’ their house. These lovely humane liberals would profile them, post pictures, and act like undercover cops. On paper they are against police brutality and racial profiling. But if a black person lingers next to their house, they are ready to call the cops pronto. As Jarvis Coker wrote in Running the World, ‘in theory I respect your right to exist, I will kill you if you move next to me.’ This behavior encapsulates the suburban ethos.” •
“To democratize mechanical ventilation in modest homes: Building Your Own Personal HRV: An Accessible Project” [Nathalie Ventilation, Medium]. “Inspired by the popularity of DIY air purifiers, as seen with the Corsi-Rosenthal movement, I believe it’s time to democratize domestic air exchangers as well. In my view, the future lies in combining purified outdoor air with optimal temperature control. While air purifiers and fresh air through open windows are relatively accessible, a temperature-controlled ventilation system is still too opaque and expensive for many….. From November 2024 to February 2025, I tested my prototypes during the harsh Canadian winter using an anemometer, wattmeter, and sound level meter. The thermal exchange effectively moderated the temperature of the incoming air. The difference was tangible — I could feel it by touch, especially when compared to the icy air from my patio door window.” • Here’s the video:
Hmm. Certainly doesn’t use a lot of electricity. I’m not sure if the temperature increase is worth it, though. And where are the filters? Nevertheless, maybe with the Corsi-Rosenthal box, this is an idea whose time has come. Readers?
Zeitgeist Watch
“Forget male Botox — finance bros are lining up to get penis filler” [Body Modification]. “His clients — typically professional men in their 30s, 40s, and 50s — pick from a menu of highly specific (and patented) enhancement procedures. They can get a thicker girth (‘Girth Enhancement’), a larger scrotum (‘ScroFill’), or to just be more of a shower than a grower (“ShowTox,” which uses Botox to relax muscles in the penis and retain more blood when flaccid). Many of his male clients add on body enhancement services like ‘instant BBLs,’ non-surgical butt lifts using high volumes of filler, he told BI. Bustamante’s experience reflects the recent rise in men getting beauty treatments. Between 2019 and 2022, non-invasive cosmetic procedures like fillers and Botox increased in male patients by 253%. As he sees it, it’s all part of a general trend toward perfection among high-flying men. ‘They’re usually competitive, they want to be the best.’” • Musical interlude.
News of the Wired
False moustaches, ears…. Carry ’em with you at all times:
This is genius? pic.twitter.com/qmsdYWGb5Y
— Chubby♨️ (@kimmonismus) February 16, 2025
Crapification Watch
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