Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo put himself on the national map thirteen years ago for picking up a story print media assured him was a nothing-burger: W Bush’s purge of US Attorneys who were either prosecuting corrupt Republicans or who had declined who join the permanent Republican campaign into chimerical Democratic voter fraud. (For this, he became the first Internet journalist to win a George Polk Award.)

He looks to be onto another big one: diversion of medical equipment from both the national stockpile and orders placed by states and hospitals, to politically-connected middlemen, who are then selling them to these same desperate institutions at whatever price the market will bear. In some cases, equipment that was purchased by taxpayers is being resold to be bought by taxpayers a second time. Shipments are even being intercepted by Customs at entry and not seen again. Kickbacks in the form of political contributions to Trump and the GOP are inevitably part of the scheme.

Like the Biden pay-for-play, this crime has the advantage (to the liberals) of being remarkably easy to understand. I have no doubt Congress will be interested.

Remember to invite your friends.

Topic: Coronavirus Data Update

• How to look at growth
• What is the story in Florida?
• Epstein update
• Remember

Time: Apr 5, 2020 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/866828148?pwd=TXRCM3AyRVBZZ2c2OW90N3dtS2E4dz09

Meeting ID: 866 828 148

Password: [our house number; link works without password]

Topic: Coronavirus Data Update
Time: Apr 5, 2020 05:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/866828148?pwd=TXRCM3AyRVBZZ2c2OW90N3dtS2E4dz09

Meeting ID: 866 828 148
Password: [Our house number; but the direct link should work without it]

One tap mobile
+16699006833,,866828148# US (San Jose)
+13462487799,,866828148# US (Houston)

Dial by your location
+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
+1 253 215 8782 US
+1 301 715 8592 US
+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
Meeting ID: 866 828 148
Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/aOi8o4ed9

1. Discussion of the direction of the group in the absence of physical meetings. Many participants endorsed the social value of the meetings, and some mentioned getting information that they had not synthesized from their own reading. Of course, we also serve as a central point for distributing postcards and text/card projects.
   Action item: Everyone should have their own wine and, optionally, cheese, chips, or pretzels, since we can no longer serve communally.
2. The undersigned gave an explanation of some of the more interesting data presentations of coronavirus data. For example, the chart below shows how early intervention in Kentucky did better than later intervention in Tennessee. (This does not extend at this time to deaths, which are not in the chart: KY 8, TN 7.)
   This was accompanied by a refresher on semi-log charts, and why they are being used to graph cumulative cases and deaths. I recommend the charts at the Financial Times and a site called Worldometer. The differential slopes suggest that certain states that have been slow with social distancing, like Louisiana and Florida, are in trouble. Louisiana is even catching up to New York.
3. There was enough interest that an extra meeting will be added for next Sunday at 5:00 pm (Zoom, obviously), where I will go back over this material with updated data. And this time, we will record it! A Zoom link and a review of exponents and logarithms will be posted later.
4. Naomi discussed texting technologies, and we are distributing a document from EBAA on the programs themselves and which organizations use which. Almost everyone uses Slack for communication between volunteers.

Winning the Internet today is an interview of Hoover Institute and NYU Law Professor Richard Epstein by Isaac Chotiner (occasional player at the Piedmont Bridge Club) for The New Yorker, already available online [possible paywall].

Epstein is a giant of libertarian legal studies. The interview shows he is also a pompous ass who doesn’t realize his putative skills in cross-examination do not make him a qualified epidemiologist. Chotiner is in bold below.

This is the most powerful avowal of Dunning-Kruger Effect we may ever see from the right wing.

Background

On March 13, Epstein web-published an article (which apparently inspired the Trump Mob’s thoughts of an Easter Economic Resurrection) that, using a sophisticated cherry-picked model based on multiple false assumptions of virus behavior, predicted 500 total USA COVID-19 deaths. On March 19, faced with the superiority of the 11th-grade exponential growth model to his libertarian fantasy, he changed some fudge factors and replaced 500 with 2500. Just in time, too; we crossed 500 on the 23rd. Less than 24 hours later, the 2500 death prediction was replaced by 5000.

If you go to the the Epstein article’s comments, you can see I offered Epstein (and several of his anonymous acolytes there) a $1000 bet we would have 10,000 deaths (double his latest wild guess reasoned estimate) by end of April. I am surprised that none have shown the least interest in this style of Applied Capitalism.

[For a sense of how crazy Epstein is, Trump himself declared today he will be a great president if he can keep deaths down to 100,000, which is Dr. Fauci’s lowest estimate given current measures for social isolation.]

Topic: Indivisible Elmwood
Time: Mar 29, 2020 04:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/283200168

Even though I don’t think it would happen to us, I have set up a waiting room, to deal with the influx of Russian bots that invade liberal Zoom sessions and take them over. I can admit you from the waiting room.

Happy New Year! (England celebrated the New Year on March 25 from some time in the 12th Century until adopting the Gregorian Calendar reform in 1750.)

Happy Birthday: My sister and my brother’s daughter.

Also on this day: (3019, Third Age) Gollum bites the One Ring off Frodo’s hand and then drops into the fires of Mount Doom, ending the reign of Sauron in Mordor. Sauron is later resurrected in the guise of a real estate developer from Queens, New York.

I had been meaning to write about the latest in Israel: the terrible mistake Benny Gantz was about to make, joining Bibi Netanyahu in a rotation “Unity” government with Bibi as Prime Minister first. (Bibi literally has to remain as Prime Minister to remain in the Knesset at all: PM is the one exemption from existing law requiring members under indictment to take leave.) But at the last minute, Gantz came to his senses, realizing his Blue and White party would crumble, lose all leverage, and his turn to be PM would never come to pass. The current situation remains fluid. Gantz’s big problem is that 4 MKs nominally in his coalition refuse to sit in his government if it relies on support from the Joint Arab List. (To show how crazy this is, Avigdor Lieberman, one of the most overtly-bigoted politicians in Israel who has called for denaturalizing Israeli Arabs and incorporating largely Arab parts of Israel into the rump Palestinian Bantustan, waived his longstanding insistence on this principle out of his even greater hatred for Bibi and his ultra-Orthodox supporters.)

So, instead, what I was going to say about Gantz, without Gantz.

Continue reading →

It was great fun to see everyone on-line today. We hope more folks can join us in two weeks.

1. We are updating the fund-raising thermometer for our new campaign as “Doctors in the House” supporting Dr. Hiral Tipirneni running to flip Arizona 6 and Nurse Lauren Underwood running for re-election in Illinois 14. What better time to ask for funds too make sure we have some medical experts in the House!
2. Time on your hands? The next two weeks everything is Wisconsin Wisconsin Wisconsin. Tony the Democrat has postcards to elect a democratic judge to their Supreme Court and Votefwd.org has addresses to encourage primary voters (scroll down to find it).
3. For texting, the Payback project does not seem to be up and running yet but another worthy campaign is run by the ACLU and can be found at go.peoplepower.org.
4. Next Zoom meeting in two weeks. If anyone want to learn how to Zoom, please us give a call or send an email or ask for help in a comment. Using Zoom is going to be vital in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: For those of you who missed the meeting and want all the details, the audio is below.

We have decided that, in view of the health emergency, we must hold meetings over the Internet until further notice.

How this will work: I have opened an account with Zoom. At 3:30 pm (early on purpose) I will post a link to the Zoom meeting here on the website. You do not need your own Zoom account to participate. The Zoom meeting should start opening in your web browser. Depending on your operating system (Mac, Windows, different versions thereof), you may have to authorize use of the microphone and, optionally, your camera if your device is equipped with one. You should be able to log on from a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet, as long as it is connected to the Internet.

Please call our landline or cellphone if you have trouble setting up or logging on. It probably is not a good idea for everyone to wait until 4:29 to try out the system.

1. There is no sign of a youth surge in any state. This is bad news for Bernie Sanders two ways: it hurts his numbers in the primary, and it hurts his campaign to the extent he promises a General Election win based on voters who are still not showing up. Sanders is trailing most of his 2016 numbers, even if you add in all of Elizabeth Warren’s support, which isn’t realistic. His campaign’s attempt to catch flies with vinegar instead of honey seems to be backfiring.
2. We’ve had our first coronavirus-tinged result. Maine voters rejected an attempt by Antivaxers to reverse the state legislature’s restriction of vaccine exemptions to medical necessity, by almost three to one. Maine becomes the fifth state with this law; California was third; New Jersey narrowly failed to enact, but before the latest epidemic arrived.
3. The Far-Left wing of the Democratic Party is doing poorly. Nancy Pelosi’s opponent from the left, one Shahid Buttar, lost in the primary 72–12. Even 12 was better than any of the Republicans running, so under the Top Two primary rules, he gets another shot in November. Good luck. More on Pelosi below.
4. Meanwhile, in CA–25 there were two elections: the regular primary for November and the special election to finish Katie Hill’s term. The list of major candidates was identical. In both, State Assemblywoman Democrat Christy Smith is ahead, and newcomer Republican Mike Garcia is second. The special election runoff may tell us something, because the Republicans totaled together are more than Smith plus Far-Left Democrat and TV personality Cenk Uygur, whose vanity campaign crashed at 5%. Republican Steve Knight, who lost to Hill, was third and is eliminated. As for Hill herself, she’s founded a new, probably unnecessary, PAC to elect women, which is run out of the WeWork office at University and Shattuck.
5. Disaster: Republicans took the top two slots to replace Smith herself in Assembly District 38, guaranteeing a Blue-to-Red flip. The two Republicans are splitting about 55% of the vote, while four Democrats are splitting 45% with the best at about 12, distant third. We can prevent shutouts by going back to partisan primaries, or by adopting ranked-choice voting as used in our City Council races, or, less technically, by getting some of these candidates to put society’s needs over their own oversized egos’.
6. Pelosi, Part Two: The Left’s bad results were not limited to ephemera like Buttar and Uyghur. In TX-28, wretched conservative Democrat Henry Cuellar defeated liberal Jessica Cisneros. We donated to Cisneros, who was endorsed by both Sanders and Warren. Cuellar was endorsed by Pelosi and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Sanders isn’t all wrong in his attacks on Democratic leadership. They prefer suffering the occasional betrayal by Blue Dogs like Cuellar, especially when they hope to control him with offers of endorsement or committee assignments, to more challenges from the Left. I hope we don’t regret Pelosi’s choice here as much as Senate Democrats’ truly-calamitous decision to stick with Joe Lieberman after he lost his Democratic primary, which good deed he repaid by constant warfare against Obama.
7. Other California results: Josh Harder finished first, but well under half the vote. We need to see the usual increase in Democratic turnout between the primary and general. Ammar Campa-Najjar finished first, and he needs a similar turnout bump. TJ Cox, on the other hand, had a dismal primary, finishing behind the man he defeated in 2018, David Valadao, by 60–31. That should shrink as mail ballots come in, but not enough to make it look close. Besides poor turnout, Cox has had an issue with the IRS. He looks like he needs major help.
8. And on another election, Bibi Netanyahu looks stuck on 58 seats. He needs 61 to form a government. So far he has used both bribery and extortion to induce opposition members to defect. A lesson for us: notwithstanding Bibi’s aggressive, inciteful past campaigns, the center-mush opposition parties were completely unprepared for his viciousness. “No one could know he would do that” rings hollow and true at the same time. Bibi opened a phony investigation into his principal opponent Benny Gantz’s entanglement with a bankrupt enterprise (see: Burisma) to balance his own well-founded corruption indictments; he sent a rabbi with a secret recorder to talk to Gantz’s lead campaign aide, and got admissions that Gantz might not be strong enough to defend Israel from Iran, which were then leaked to mass media. (I don’t know how Trump plans to imitate that particular coup.) If we want to win, we have to prepare for every imaginable cheat, and the unimaginable, too.