It's The Privatization, Stupid.

TheFalconAndThe

SnowcloneVille


James Carville, the rapidly aging Ragin' Cajun who once ran strategy for Bill Clinton, has been in the news a lot recently for all the wrong reasons.

Essentially, over the past few weeks Carville had been pushing the post-Biden mini-primary concept that is pretty much dead-as-a-doornail now that the Obamas have gone all in for Kamala Harris.

Anyway.

A long time ago it was Carville who came up with the winning slogan 'It's the economy, stupid', for  Clinton's first successful presidential campaign in 1992.

Which brings us to the 'snowclone'  of a header sitting atop today's post...

It seems that our finest of the fine provincial political pundits are all a twitter about whether or not the Dipperian claim that the Cons will cut four billion out of the healthcare budget is legit.

But the real story is one that even the Dean of Legislative Press Gallery, the good Mr. Palmer, was able to recognize, albeit in a partially buried lede:

...(BC Conservative) Party leader John Rustad would only say that the goal of reducing waiting lists would probably mean an initial “spike” in spending before levelling off a few years on.

That’s quite likely, given the Conservative plan to speed up delivery of surgery and other medical procedures by allowing patients to access non-governmental (read: “private”) clinics...

Hmmmm...

Mr. Rustad's euphemistic 'patients first' edge of that big fat wedge sure is nice and thin, eh?

____

Of course, Mr. Carville didn't always win...His losses include the presidential campaigns of John Kerry in 2004, Hillary Clinton in 2008 and Michael Bennett (who?) in 2020.

I did my best to come up with a sub-header that coupled Kevin Falcon and Ross Perot but I just couldn't quite get there today...Maybe next time...Although, the way things are going it's not clear that Falcon will even come close to garnering Perot's 18.9% on Election Day...

Off topic, but....Beer's post is good today.

.

Japandroids Resurgent.

ThisHouseThatYouCall
HomeVille

Lotusland's own Japandroids, my favourite band of the 2010's, are back!

For a limited time at least:

Celebrated Vancouver rock duo Japandroids have announced that they're breaking up and releasing their final album. The farewell LP Fate & Alcohol will arrive October 18 through Arts & Crafts and ANTI- Records, and the single "Chicago" is out now...

What's really going on?

It's not entirely clear, and there are no tour dates as of yet. 

Could it be that these two (still) reasonably fresh faced fellows have decided that they want to leave their musical youth frozen in exuberant amber while they move on to other things?

I dunno for sure.

Anyway...

Here's my warbly, feedback- and fuzz box-freed version of their most well known tune...

 

_____

I put this arrangement together before, as I explained to littler e., I stumbled across this kid's version...Something has seeped into my brain there, I reckon.

.

Norm!

WhereEverybodyKnowHis
NameVille


The best BC Poli Blogger in the business, Norm Farrell, is out for a little while while he gets some of his plumbing scrubbed.

For those who have been paying attention, Norm is the most diligent digger out there who gathers the data first, critically analyzes the data second, and then writes the post, third.

The result is wonderful edifying stuff like the following, posted last September:

...Site C was conceived when output per MW of capacity was higher than it has been in recent years. BC Hydro has regularly claimed that 1,100 MW capacity at Site C will annually produce 5,100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity. That would be 4.64 GWh per MW of capacity, almost a quarter more output than BC Hydro’s dams have collectively produced in the last five fiscal years.

Site C has the extra disadvantage of being constructed on unstable land. Because of that, energy produced will be the costliest large source of electricity in BC. If Site C produces only 4,100 GWh of electricity each year, the energy will be unconscionably expensive...

The passage above is from just one important post amongst many about Site C that I know from personal correspondence is a real thorn in the side of those involved in decision making processes.

But, again, if you've been paying attention you already all this about Norm's work.

However, there's a little secret you might not know about Norm*.

Which is that, as great as it is to read his stuff it is even more enjoyable to sit down and talk to him about pretty much everything under the sun.

And I, for one, am very much looking forward to both the reading and the chatting with Norm as soon as he's back in the saddle again.

OK?


_____

*Of course, if you ever listened to Norm chat with Ian Jessop on CFAX 1070 back in the old days this is no secret for you...Here's a sample of one such chat.


.

The Strong Man Alliance.

Despots
'RThemVille


"I get along very well with President Xi. Great guy. He wrote me a beautiful note the other day..."

"Kim Jong-un. He's a lotta nuclear weapons. I got along with him great."

"And Orban was right. We have to have somebody who can protect us.

Donald Trump

Grand Rapids Michigan, July 20, 2024

.

He's Baaaack!!!

Link
GeeIt'sGoodToBeBack
HomeVille


Donald Trump's very own Paulie Walnuts Manafort is back, on both the Republic Convention floor and in the inner sanctum.

Emptywheel, who knows a thing or two million, opines on what this means:

...Among all the other criminals and insurrectionists, Manafort no longer sticks out.

And with JD Vance’s selection as VP, Manafort’s support for a pro-Russian Ukraine also looks banal, rather than alarming. But there is likely a backstory few want to pursue.

Back in May, when Paul Manafort’s return was first reported and then denied, 24sight described how (as he had done in 2016), Paulie had been and kept working the back channel...

{snip}

...Trump is running not just as someone who explicitly wants to be a Dictator from Day One, someone who supports all the same policies as a Project that targets divorce and birth control along with the very idea of civil service.

He is running with Russian help on a plan to give Russia what it wants, starting, but not ending, with Ukraine on a silver platter.

Trump, and the guy Trump pardoned for lying about what happened with Russia in 2016, are simply picking up where things left off.

_____
Obvious Earworm in the SubHeader Machine...This!



.

His Most Exalted Excellency, Lord Governor Of The Albertalands?

SnarkToday

SnarkTomorrowVille

In case you missed it, pardoned criminal and serial passport changer Mr. Conrad Black is no longer a member of Great Britain's House of Lords:

Former media baron Conrad Black, who famously but unsuccessfully sued then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in his fight to secure a British peerage, has been removed from the House of Lords over his lax attendance.

House of Lords Speaker Lord McFall announced Wednesday (July 10th) that a number of lords have ceased to be members of the House "by virtue of non-attendance," including the Montreal-born Black, known as Lord Black of Crossharbour...

Mr. Black's response?

...When reached Wednesday, Black said he not aware that his membership had been terminated. He told CBC News it didn't really matter to him but he was surprised he wasn't notified first...

But don't cry for he, former Lord Tubby.

After all, given that it was one Mr. Donald J. Trump who pardoned Mr. Black for his federal US'ian crimes...

If and when the petrolbraum portion of the 2025 doctrine is invoked and David Climenhaga's Albertalands are annexed to ensure that fossil fuel extraction keeps on keepin' on, would it be any surprise if Mr. Trump were to name the good Mr. Black governor?

______
Snark (def'n): an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.


.

For Graham.

TheBestThingAboutBlogging
IsTheCommentsVille

A few months ago, after Mr. Musk started re-directing anything on his platform with twitter.com in it to his new web address, I wrote a post about how this could be a bonanza for those who try to make their living by phishing.

And, while the post was about, essentially, internet fraud, I couldn't help myself by making a non-material aural connection, paired with a dig, to the band Phish.

Which led reader Graham to gently explain why he enjoyed the band together with a helpful example of a song that could be used to ease one's way into the band's sonic world.

And, having taken Graham's (real, not fauX) bait, I must say that my appreciation of Phish evolved a little after I gave stuff like the following a long listen while banging away at the keyboard down in the subterranean homesick bluesroom a few Saturday's ago:




Anyway...

Today, Marc Maron posted one of his longest of long form interviews with Phish guitarist and frequent songwriter, Trey Anastasio.

It's an example of why Maron is the godfather of the long form podcast because this one goes literally everywhere for a good one hour and forty minutes, sans the ACasting and the noodling.

I learned a lot and I know that Graham will really enjoy it (if he hasn't already listened given the long arm of the Phish-Head law).

It's....Here.


.

Peace With (Dis)Honour?

 

The only real question is...

Will that be the Richard Nixon version or the Neville Chamberlain version?

Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, particularly when it comes to Ukraine.


__________
Tip 'O The Toque to the the imitable emptywheel.

Dan Nexon, writing at LGM, has a detailed analysis of the 'mission'.

.

Would You Buy A Self-Driving System From This Man('s Data)?

TheEmporer'sNewSilkRoad

ClothesVille


Well, well, well.

Would'a thunk it.

It turns out that there are grunts in the machine.

Tesla's machine learning machine that is:

Tesla's self-driving cars seem like a marvel of machine learning.

But in reality, the company relies on a small army of human "data annotators" who continuously improve how the cars drive by reviewing camera footage from thousands of Tesla drivers and teaching the vehicle how to behave like a human driver, like deciding when it's appropriate to use a blinker or identifying a construction cone.

Business Insider has learned that those annotators focus their efforts on two high-profile categories of drivers: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a select set of "VIP" drivers...

So, there you have it.

If you buy a car from the good Mr. Musk and you take your hands off the wheel you just might drive like him.

But is that really the goal of the fine folks at Tesla who control the grunts/annotators?

Perhaps not:

...(Business Insider) spoke with over a dozen current and former Tesla employees, all but one who spoke on condition of anonymity, who said images and video clips from Musk's Teslas received meticulous scrutiny, while data from high-profile drivers like YouTubers received "VIP" treatment in identifying and addressing issues with the Full Self-Driving software. 

The result is that Tesla's Autopilot and FSD software may better navigate routes taken by Musk and other high-profile drivers, making their rides smoother and more straightforward...

Hmmmmm...

Could it be that the grunts have actually been told to very carefully input data into the machine that will give their boss and his friends super smooth hands- and mind-free rides on their most used routes that the peons laying out the moola for his vehicles will never get?

And if that were the case would it be a surprise?

______

Awhile back we had a super sharp post-doc in the group who developed a machine learning-based pipeline to 'predict' the functional importance of gene variants found in the population based on the levels and sub-cellular location of the protein product of said gene. The analysis itself was quite straightforward but it was amazing how important the original calls by the grunts/annotators looking down the barrel of the microscope were in helping to 'train' the machine (being a grunt with discerning eyeballs was actually my job in the project)...This labour-intensive front end of such projects, I think, is not that well appreciated.


.

What, Exactly, Is The Plan Of The French Left?

IsEverythingStill

PossibleVille


First, what is this 'new' French left we have been going on about in the last couple of posts?

Noted humanist FrancoEcon guy Thomas Picketty, writing with his colleague Julia Cage in the Guardian, explains:

...This alliance takes its inspiration from the Popular Front – which in 1936 emerged under the threat of fascism to govern France. This leftwing coalition of socialists and communists represented a real change for the working classes, with policies such as the introduction of a two-week paid vacation and a law limiting the working week to 40 hours. Such social change was made possible by electoral victory, but also by the demands of civil society and by pressure from the trade unions, which organised a wave of factory occupations. There was a clear sociopolitical competition between working people and the ruling classes that led to a political conflict between the left and right...

In other words, the argument is that this New Popular Front (NPF) is the real deal rather than the soft, squishy faux social deal that the French were most recently served, as reader Danneau has noted, by Mitterrand and Hollande.

But what is this NPF proposing to do, exactly?

Back to Cage and Piketty...

...The detailed NFP economic manifesto was launched last month with full costings. Because – and this is new – the NFP’s plans are balanced from a budgetary viewpoint: investment in future growth and productivity as well as in energy and climate transition could be made affordable through progressive wealth taxation, the introduction of an exit tax, effective taxation of multinational firms and a long-awaited fight against social, fiscal and environmental dumping. This programme would also give workers more power within the companies that employ them by improving corporate governance (for example, reserving a third of seats on company boards for employees’ representatives, following similar provisions that have existed for decades in Nordic countries and Germany)...

Now, of course, if the NPF can do even half of that it will be a great victory for all, especially those folks most feeling the squeeze of late stage capitalism's end game.

And, again according to Cage and Piketty, truly helping those most squeezed is the real key to effectively dealing with the rise of the far right:

...(P)eople in smaller cities and rural areas are drawn to the far right first and foremost because of socioeconomic concerns: they lack purchasing power, they suffer most from the lack of investment in public infrastructure and they feel that they have been abandoned by governments of all stripes in recent decades.

The NFP’s policy platform credibly addresses how to finance a strategy of inclusive investment. By contrast, the far right argues in favour of repealing the existing tax on real-estate multi-millionaires. It claims it will finance its policies by targeting foreigners and welfare recipients, but this will simply generate more economic disillusionment and more tensions.

_______
FunFactInThePostWritingMachine...In doing a little background digging on Piketty I learned that he refused the Legion of Honour because, according to him, 'it is (not) the government's role to decide who is honourable'....Imagine that!


.

What Can The French Left Do Now?

FromAspirationToInspiration

PopularFrontRevisitedVille


Yesterday, we noted how the French Left rose to the occasion electorally on Sunday in a way that seems to have stymied, at least for now, the rise of the racists who are pretending they aren't.

But now that the French Left has a chance to do something, what should they do?

One of the original members of Left Blogistan, Ian Welsh, a guy who is still as prolific as ever, has a few ideas:

...For the Left to take over in the next election they need to deliver at least a bit. It may not be impossible: the right might vote with them on some issues, such as rolling back the pension age increase (which they opposed) and they may be able to convince the center to vote with them on other issues.

In addition, when they are stopped from pursuing popular policies like taxing the rich to pay for social programs, they need to scream to high heavens and make the case that with a majority they will be able to deliver their entire program.

Much of the problem in France has been that when Neoliberals want to do the right thing, like fight climate change, they do it in the most regressive way possible, hurting workers and farmers, rather than making the rich pay. Outlawing private jets and taxing the rich, then using the money to pay farmers to make necessary changes rather than forcing farmers to take the hit is a winning policy...

In other words, Ian is saying that the French Left now has a chance to step on the proverbial CO2-free gas pedal and that they should do so rather than triangulating away into the non-productive nothingness of half measures that has become the dominant NeoLib way.

But can that possibly work?

Stay tuned for the next post...



.

How Did The French Left Do It?

TheyHaveADifferentWordFor

EverythingVille

By now you've probably heard about this, summarized by Jon Henley in the Guardian:

The New Popular Front (NFP), a four-party left-green alliance, was the shock winner of Sunday’s French parliamentary election, returning 182 deputies to a 577-seat assembly now split between three large opposing blocs, none with a majority...

Now.

Leaving aside all the hung/not hung parliament business to come for the moment...

How did the NFP actually do it?

...The NFP was cobbled together in haste after President Macron decided to dissolve parliament last month following his camp’s heavy defeat in the European elections, with the far-right National Rally (RN) polling at more than 30%.

{snip}

...So as not to split the anti-RN vote in potential three-way runoffs, the NFP stood down 132 mainly third-placed candidates. But more than 80 centrists also pulled out in favour of NFP candidates, and many centrist and centre-right supporters then voted left to block the RN...

We've talked a lot about strategic 'voting' around here in the past and whether or not it is effective.

But the apparently stunning effectiveness of strategic 'candidating'?

That's a new one!


.

Daily Multivitamin Use....What Is It Good For?

Supplement

ThisVille

What good is taking a multivitamin every day if you are over fifty and you aren't suffering from a chronic disease?

Well...

According to a new longterm study of 390,000 US'ians that started back in 1993, it would appear that it is good for absolutely nothing:

...Daily multivitamin use was associated with a higher mortality risk compared to non-users (Hazard ratio 1.04, 95% confidence interval 1.02-1.07). That is, mortality was 4% higher among multivitamin users. There were no differences in mortality when looking at heart disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular mortality...

The paper, from a group at the US National Institutes of Health published in JAMA Open Network, is here.

Commentary, quoted from above, is by pharmacist Scott Gavura at Science-Based Medicine.


______

Earworm in the header is even more Ron Obvious than usual...

Ron Obvious, the original version?...This!

Ron Obvious, revisited (but not so often recently)?...This!

Of course, it is very likely that we will be quoting RO No2 much more often as the provincial election approaches later in the summer into the fall.



.

Progress? We Don't Need No Stinking Progress!

WhistlingDixiePastThe
DogParkVille


As per that year 2025 project thingy that may very well soon be fully backed by the six of the finest US'ian Supremes that big money and/or the Federalist Society can buy:

But.

Before we here in Central Lotusland and the surrounding environs get all smug about a certain coming fall election, the following is taken straight from our very own BC Conservative Party's kinda/sorta platform called 'A Common Sense Plan For All British Columbians' under the sub-heading of 'Culture and Freedom':

Now.

Leaving aside the 'I'm not prejudiced, you're prejudiced!' projection behind Door Number 3 for the moment...

Do you hear what I hear?

.

New On The Crawl.

AllTypeIsLinear,CuratedAndAlgorithm-Free

AroundHereVille


New on the 'BlogCrawl' that is...

It's creaky, especially given that you now have to delve into the guts of the old blogspot code to add new stuff, but readers often mention that the BlogCrawl over there on the left side bar is one of the main reasons they stop by here regularly (if you're on your phone, scroll down to the bottom and hit 'View Web Version' to see it).

Anyway, here are three new additions:

Tim Bray, software guy, who now lives in Lotusland. I've added his blog for no particular reason other than he has lots of interesting things to say about all kinds of, well, things, including a recent trip to Seattle so that he could take his teenage daughter and a friend to a rock show at the Woodland Zoo that led to his visiting a Jazz Club to see a group called GoGo Penguin in the interim. Go figure.

A tour diary by Ben Sinclair of 'The Beths', my current favourite band from New Zealand. And here I thought Mike Watt was the most obsessive, ever, with this kind of stuff. The thing about Ben's diary that is so fun is that it is both comprehensive and good, with great little embedded movies together with some really insightful stuff about what it's like to be an indie band kinda/sorta making it on the road. The most recent post is about a trip from Palm Springs to Las Vegas at the end of their most recent tour a couple of months ago (they'll be back out on the road again soon, starting in mid-August). 

Katelyn Jetelina's Epidemiology blog is a good one. I've been following her stuff for awhile now for reasons that are pretty obvious. Her most recent post nails down why gun violence really and truly is a public health issue in the U.S. This includes the almost impossible to fathom fact that firearms-related injury is now the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in that fine country.

_____

Like Mr. Bray, I recently took a trip with one of my daughters, in this case littler e., to see a show in Seattle. Only in our case we went to the same event, together, to see the fantastic Adrianne Lenker at the Paramount theatre downtown...e. bought the tickets because it was my Father's Day present...Imagine that!...That's us at the top of the post.

And, for Bigger E....I've dug out the story of a long ago road trip to Las Vegas with, not a band, but instead my former editor...More to come on that one sometime soon, I hope, once this latest round of damnable grants is done....

Earworm in the header for this fine Canada Day weekend?...Of course...This!

.