Month: June 2021

I left this week's cat photography to the last minute, and then Hopper decided not to be especially cooperative. So this is what you get this week: Hopper on the patio rolling around and wondering why I'm not rubbing her belly. Not to worry, though. She gets plenty of belly rubs around here.

So where are we on infrastructure? I'm glad you asked.

On the Republican side, the latest offer is a trillion dollar bill that includes about $600 billion in new spending. However, it will take another week or two to "iron out the details," which gets us to the end of June with nothing more than v2.0 of what's on the table now. Like all the other Republican proposals, this one is an obvious attempt to run out the legislative clock. Democrats would be idiots to twiddle their thumbs waiting on this.

On the Democratic side, Chuck Schumer says he's fine with some kind of Republican compromise, but he intends to get the rest of what Democrats want via a separate bill that he can pass with 50 votes via reconciliation. Republicans would be idiots to accept this.

I'm unsure what to make of all this kabuki. Republicans are pretty obviously not acting in good faith, but I suppose this all has to play out until they finally rub Joe Manchin's nose in the fact. Democrats aren't really acting in good faith either, but I suppose the reconciliation track also has to play out until Joe Manchin recognizes that it's the only way anything will get done.

Long story short, we're all waiting on Joe Manchin. Same as always.

Here is the fundamental mystery of crime in the US over the past year:

As you might guess, the murder rate and the overall violent crime rate usually rise and fall in tandem. But in 2020, they suddenly diverged by an enormous amount: Compared to 2019, violent crime rose 3.3% while the murder rate went up 25%.

If you're interested in the murder rate beyond partisan talking points, this is what you need to explain. What could account for a huge increase in homicides but not in violent crime more generally? Police presence seems an unlikely explanation. Perhaps it has something to do with the nature of murder, which is usually committed against someone you know.

In any case, this is what needs explaining. But be careful. This is trickier than it looks.

I've been a weak defender of the CDC against some of the overwrought attacks against it, but their handling of the J&J vaccine deserves all the condemnation we can muster:

When Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose coronavirus vaccine was authorized for emergency use in late February, ​it was seen as a breakthrough for reaching vulnerable and isolated Americans, a crucial alternative to vaccines that require two shots weeks apart and fussier storage. It was soon popular on college campuses, in door-to-door campaigns and with harder-to-reach communities that often struggle with access to health care.

But with only 11.8 million doses administered in the United States so far — less than 4 percent of the total — the “one and done” vaccine has fallen flat. States have warned for weeks that they may not find recipients for millions of doses that will soon expire, partly because the vaccine’s appeal dropped after it was linked to a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder and injections were paused for 10 days in April....Health officials in a number of other states presented a similarly discouraging picture. The pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, they said, effectively kicked it aside for good.

The blood clotting disorder was always super rare and everyone knew it. The risk of staying unvaccinated and dying from COVID-19 was far greater than the risk of the blood clot.

Of course, other countries had already made the same mistake, led by Germany, the mistake king of Europe. The whole thing is infuriating. The J&J vaccine is perfectly safe and perfectly fine; it can be transported with nothing more than normal refrigeration; and it's perfect in places where getting people to agree to one shot is hard enough, let alone getting them to come back for a second. What a mess.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through June 17. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

This is a Coulter's matilija poppy growing by the side of the road in Trabuco Canyon. Wildflower season is mostly over around here, but there are still a few pockets of color here and there.

New cases of COVID-19 have been declining steadily in the US and Europe for the past month. The main exception is Great Britain, which has seen a rising case rate for the past three weeks thanks to stalling vaccination rates and the fast spreading Delta variant of the virus.

The US is in good shape right now, but there's every reason to think we may follow in Britain's footsteps soon. The Delta variant already has a foothold here, and vaccination rates have plummeted to less than half the level of most other countries.

It's insane. Here we are, in the middle of the deadliest pandemic in a century, but this time we actually have a vaccine that can crush it completely. Huzzah! Except that so many of us refuse to take it that the virus is getting a second lease on life. I wonder what our grandparents, who could only pray for such a thing during the Spanish flu, would think of us if they could see what's happening today?

According to our politicians, the United States is in a new Cold War, this time against China. Like the previous one, both sides are competing for favor with smaller countries and periodically issuing hawkish pronouncements. And as with the Soviet Union before it, China's record on human rights is dismal, as we've seen in its treatment of both dissidents in Hong Kong and Uyghur minorities in the far reaches of the northwest.

But you know what's missing this time around? There are no Vietnams, no Afghanistans, no Nicaraguas, and no Pragues. There is no Iron Curtain. There is no realistic fear of thermonuclear war. There's a bit of skirmishing over economic zones in the South China Sea, but that's about it. The two sides are lashed together in an economic marriage that neither one can afford to break.

This is a pretty pale imitation of our original Cold War. Instead of hiding under their desks during duck-and-cover drills, our kids are hiding under their desks playing with their Foxconn-made Nintendos.

If this isn't progress, I don't know what is.

The good news this morning is that the Supreme Court once again refused to kill off Obamacare:

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, saying Republican-led states do not have the legal standing to try to upend the law. Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote the court’s 7 to 2 decision that preserves the law that provides millions of Americans with health coverage.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M Gorsuch dissented.

The bad news is that the case was decided on standing, not on its merits (or lack thereof) and even at that two justices dissented. Hell, even Clarence Thomas was willing to toss it out, but Alito and Gorsuch couldn't bring themselves to do it.

But at least it won. Surely no major law in American history has ever gone through the destruction test that Obamacare has, but with any luck this was its final trial. It's now the law of the land, permanently.

Here’s the officially reported coronavirus death toll through June 16. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.