Month: February 2021

Given the general FUBARed state of our democracy, Digby asked on Tuesday if Democrats even have a survival instinct. The party has less than two years to stop the slide toward autocracy. Democrats had best take off the blinders and get about it tout de suite. Their opponents believe rules are for suckers.

Presuming after rumaging around they locate the stones to pass a $15/hr minimum wage, covid rescue checks, and other legislative play-pretties the public actually wants from government, then what? Everyone has a come-to-donkies moment? Not likely.

It is not enough to improve people’s lives. They need to know you improved them and who stood in the way.

“Who’s Gonna Tell’em?” asks Josh Marshall. Good policy does not necessarily make good politics. The truth will not set voters free. Especially if Republicans succeed at keeping them from being voters and if Democrats fail to let them know it was Democrats who made their lives better.

Marshall writes:

This belief that good policy will take care of itself is deeply rooted in the technocratic, meritocratic mentality that animates so many professional Democrats. There’s a lot to that worldview that is good and we should celebrate. This is one of its blindnesses. There is no good policy that isn’t conjoined to good politics. You just have to do the politics because there’s no good policy without building, nurturing and sustaining constituencies for good policy. That’s the only way good policy can be sustained over time, from election to election. Because the most ingenious and humane policy is a failure if it isn’t sustained, if voters don’t know that it happened, why it happened and what they need to do to make it keep happening.

To wit with all of this, Democrats are in the midst of passing a massive COVID relief bill which will spend almost two trillion dollars to revive the economy, speed the vaccination program that will crush the COVID epidemic and address entrenched inequalities that predate and have been deepened by the crisis. It will also send out fat checks to tens of millions of households – ones two Georgia senators ran on with the explicit commitment of the incoming President himself. The bill is overwhelmingly popular with the public at large and it seems likely that few and quite likely no Republicans at all will vote for it. When you do something that popular, that you promised you’d do and your political opponents are all refusing to support it … you absolutely, positively have to tell everybody. It’s negligence not to.

Naturally, those meritocratic biases will get in the way. Democrats’ congressional campaign arms (and the DNC) will prefer to hoard their funds for re-electing members in 2022. To attact opposing candidates. To rig the game for incumbents against primary challengers. And in open federal seats, to rig the game in favor of middle-of-the-roadsters picked in Washington, D.C. over rising progressive stars in the several states.

What they need to spend cash on — and immediately — are ads “in every district in the country that is remotely in play and frankly even ones that aren’t in play and telling everyone this: The country is in crisis. President Biden just delivered and every Republican including [add name here] refused to support the plan.”

Get ahead of the narrative, says Marshall rightly, or Republicans will.

It is always the case. But it is especially the case now – given the that everything the Democrats do over the next two years has to be part of an integrated plan – both doing and publicizing – to convince as many Americans as possible to go into the 2022 midterm election believing that it is important to them personally that Democrats retain and expand their congressional majorities. Did you like your $2,000 check? Well, Democrats brought you that, even after Senate Republicans tried to filibuster those checks. Every Republican including [add name here] voted against it. Again and again and again.

Are these ads being prepped? Is money billing allocated for this? Which groups are taking the lead? I have no idea and frankly I haven’t heard anything about anything like this happening. But it needs to. So if you care about saving the country, it’s time find ways to make this happen.

It doesn’t take much time in Washington before politicos join the Church of the Savvy where chummy “players” who know best funnel campaign funds to former colleagues who after a couple of years on the Hill set themselves up as experts in campaignin’.

Here in the Cesspool of Sin in the New Agey 1990s, people who took $50 workshops in cosmic neuro-nuclear transmigration at the Airport Ramada on Saturday were down at Kinkos ordering business cards on Monday.

Please. Get over yourselves. We are talking survival here. It’s not about you. Ditch the filibuster and get busy making good things happen for Americans. And then don’t be shy about letting voters know you did. Sooner rather than later. Hire pros worth paying. You’ll find more in Hollywood than in D.C.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a “nonpartisan straight arrow,” must rule on whether including a $15/hr minimum wage provision in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package meets the statutory requirements for passage via the budget reconciliation process. If so, 50 Senate Democrats plus Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaker can pass the legislation via fast track authority. Otherwise, the bill faces the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold to bring it to a floor vote.

MacDonough must rule whether the minimum wage provision is “incidental” or not to the bill’s impact on the budget (Washington Post):

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is leading the charge as the Senate Budget Committee’s new chair to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025, has been collecting outside opinions to make the case. “Sanders argues that the measure qualifies as fiscal since the nonpartisan CBO found it to increase deficits by $54 billion over 10 years,” Bloomberg’s Erik Wasson and Laura Davison report. “Opponents say the budget impact is ‘merely incidental’ compared to the overall labor market impact. The wage provision may also violate Senate rules against adding to deficits after 10 years, and therefore would require offsetting savings or revenue to qualify.”

President Biden has already primed voters for disappointment, suggesting the $15/hr minimum wage might have to face a vote as a stand-alone bill.

To make things worse, the Post reports, Democratic senators Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) “have expressed doubts about the $15 an hour wage increase going through reconciliation process.” Manchin seems unmovable. “My only vote is to protect the Byrd Rule: hell or high water,” he told CNN last week. “Everybody knows that. I’m fighting to defend the Byrd Rule. The president knows that.”

(West Virginia’s current poverty rate is the fourth highest in the country behind New Mexico, Louisiana, and Mississippi — Poverty Rate by State 2021.)

Jordan Weissmann of Slate explains in more detail what’s going on with MacDonough’s decision:

Whether they succeed will largely boil down to how the parliamentarian interprets a single word contained in a law governing congressional procedure: Incidental. Beyond the fate of the minimum wage, her reading of this all-important adjective could also have serious implications for major Democratic priorities such as immigration reform.

Does this seem preposterous? It should. Vast swaths of the Biden administration’s agenda currently hang on the subjective linguistic judgment of an unelected congressional functionary, whose jobs is to advise senators on matters of procedure. But that’s the reality we’re currently stuck in, since moderate Democrats have refused to junk the Senate filibuster, preferring instead to force their party through joint-popping procedural contortions in order to pass laws.

To be specific, the party is attempting to enact its COVID rescue through budget reconciliation, the baroque maneuver that bars filibusters on certain tax and spending bills, allowing them to pass with a bare majority. This process is governed by a statute known as the Byrd rule, named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd. Crucially, it states that in order to pass via reconciliation, each provision of a bill must have an impact on the federal government’s finances that is not “merely incidental“ to its nonbudgetary components.

MacDonough gets to make that call. Unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster first. But then, the decision to eliminate that anti-democratic relic of the Jim Crow era must also get by Manchin and Sinema.

As the saying goes, with friends like that….

This Seth Meyers take on the Texas power crisis is the best. Via the National Memo:

The devastating winter storm in Texas, with its cold blast of death and destruction, is still fresh in the minds of many Americans. So is the way thatTexas Republicans mishandled the situation, with their focus on brazen political attacks rather than humanitarian action.

With grace and humor, Seth Meyers closely inspects the outrageous lies about the crisis — from Republican officials and Fox News hosts alike — that they all blurted out at the most inappropriate time. It’s “A Closer Look,” and it only hurts if you’re one of those bozos. Otherwise it’s grimly funny.

I’m with Tom on this Neera Tanden nomination. I think it’s probably sunk because I guess Joe Manchin (and probably some others) believe they need to offer up a human sacrifice to the Republicans in the name of bipartisanship. And that is worrisome. If Manchin becomes stubborn on this issue, we have a very serious problem. They absolutely must nuke the filibuster or the Democrats are going to find themselves with a Senate minority — and a Mitch McConnell veto — for a very long time to come.

The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie takes up the issue by noting that Barack Obama had urged the Democrats to end the filibuster and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and adds:

Obama asked Democrats to kill the filibuster and pass a voting rights bill because it was the right thing to do. But there’s a stronger argument: that if Democrats don’t do this, they’ll be at the mercy of a Trumpified Republican Party that has radicalized against democracy itself.

Democrats have already written the kind of voting rights bill Obama spoke about. It’s the For the People Act, designated as H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate. If passed and signed into law, it would establish automatic, same-day and online voter registration, protect eligible voters from overly broad purges that remove them from the rolls, restore the Voting Rights Act with a new formula for federal preclearance (which would require select cities and localities to submit new voting rules to the Justice Department for clearance), re-enfranchise the formerly incarcerated, strengthen mail-in voting systems, institute nationwide early voting and increase criminal penalties for voter intimidation.

House Democrats introduced H.R. 1 in 2019 at the start of the 116th Congress. Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader of the Senate, denounced the bill as a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party” and told reporters it was dead on arrival. “This is a terrible proposal,” he said that March, “it will not get any floor time in the Senate.”

McConnell no longer controls the floor, but with a de facto supermajority requirement in the Senate, the For the People Act is still dead on arrival. That is, unless Democrats kill the legislative filibuster and restore majority rule to the chamber. Right now, Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are the most vocal Democratic opponents of ending the filibuster. “I want to restore the 60-vote threshold for all elements of the Senate’s work,” Sinema said earlier this month, seemingly mistaking McConnell’s Obama-era innovation for an age-old tradition. Manchin has also been emphatic about keeping the supermajority requirement, telling Politico that he will “not vote in this Congress” to change the filibuster.

Manchin, who has been winning elections in West Virginia for the last 20 years, is safe in his seat for as long as he wants it. Sinema, on the other hand, is much more vulnerable. Not the least because Arizona’s Republican state Legislature, to say nothing of its Republican Party, is all-in on “stop the steal” and Donald Trump’s war on mail-in voting. Arizona Republicans have already introduced bills to limit voter registration drives, require notarized signatures for mailed ballots and forbid voters from actually mailing-in completed ballots.

Arizona Republicans are not alone. To date, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U.’s law school, Republicans in 33 states have introduced more than 165 bills to restrict voting, part of the national conservative backlash to the results of the 2020 presidential election. A bill in Georgia would put new restrictions on absentee and in-person early voting; four different bills in Pennsylvania would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting less than two years after Republican lawmakers voted it into law.

Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican in the House, captured the mood of the party when, on Sunday, he refused to say that the election wasn’t stolen from Trump. “Once the electors are counted, yes, he’s the legitimate president,” Scalise said in an interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, speaking of Joe Biden. “But if you’re going to ignore the fact that there were states that did not follow their own state legislatively set laws. That’s the issue at heart, that millions of people still are not happy with and don’t want to see happen again.”

This is euphemism. There was no issue with the election. State legislatures passed laws, courts interpreted them, and officials put them into action. This was true in states Trump won, like Texas and North Carolina, as much as it was in states he lost. It almost goes without saying that the real issue, the reason Republicans are actually unhappy, is that Biden is president and Democrats control Congress.

Devoted to Trump, and committed to his fictions about the election, Republicans are doing everything they can to keep voters from holding them and their leaders accountable. They will restrict the vote. They will continue to gerrymander themselves into near-permanent majorities. A Republican in Arizona has even proposed a legislative veto over the popular vote in presidential elections, under the dubious theory that state legislatures have unconditional, unlimited and unrestricted power to allocate electoral votes.

The good news is that Democrats in Congress have it in their power to stop a lot of this nonsense, to pre-emptively weaken the rising tide of voter suppression. All it takes is a simple vote to make the Senate work according to majority rule, as the founding fathers intended.

The alternative is to allow the supermajority requirement to stand, to allow endless stagnation, to abdicate the authority of Congress to govern the country and tackle its problems, to deny the party of collective action the ability to act for the public good and to give the party of plutocrats and demagogues free rein to twist the institutions of the American republic against its values.

There can be no bipartisanship and comity until the Republican Party stops being batshit insane. And they will not stop being batshit insane as long as they keep winning with their undemocratically manipulated minority. The incentives are all the other way. The Democrats have to do whatever is necessary to stop this assault on voting rights in this country or we are all sunk.

Long before his headfirst dive down the rabbit hole, I’ve been chronicling the adventures of the man I’ve often described as the dumbest man in the US Senate. He pulled out all the stops in today’s hearing about January 6th. Honestly, he’s worse than the looniest talk radio host.

Aaron Rupar at Vox followed the fireworks:

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin … used his questioning time during Tuesday’s Senate hearing to read excerpts from a January 14 article published by the Federalist that argues “agents-provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” were behind the assault on the Capitol, rather than actual Trump supporters, as was the case.

“I think these were the people that probably planned this,” said Johnson, after reading from the article.

Ron Johnson is using his questioning time during the Capitol security hearing to promote a conspiracy theory that the January 6 insurrectionists weren't actually Trump supporters, but were "provocateurs" and "fake Trump protesters" pic.twitter.com/t72QkHDbaG

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2021

Ron Johnson is using his questioning time during the Capitol security hearing to promote a conspiracy theory that the January 6 insurrectionists weren’t actually Trump supporters, but were “provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” pic.twitter.com/t72QkHDbaG— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2021

But as anybody who has watched videos of the January 6 insurrection can attest, the mob that breached the Capitol in a riot that left five dead waved Trump flags and chanting things like, “We want Trump!”

And the rioters were in Washington, DC, in the first place to attend a “Stop the Steal” rally Trump promoted heavily, before being riled up by Trump in a speech in which he invoked “fighting” more than 20 times just before the unrest at the Capitol began.

Furthermore, as observers of right-wing internet forums took note of in the weeks before January 6, the insurrection was clearly organized online by Trump supporters who weren’t trying to hide what they hoped to achieve.

On January 6, armed Trumpist militias will be rallying in DC, at Trump's orders. It's highly likely that they'll try to storm the Capitol after it certifies Joe Biden's win. I don't think this has sunk in yet.

— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) December 21, 2020

Finally, many insurrectionists arrested in connection with the riot have cited their support for Trump as the reason they were in Washington, DC, on January 6 in the first place, saying things like “I’m here to see what my President called me to DC for.”

Despite all this evidence, hardcore Trump supporters in Congress have repeatedly tried to shift blame for the insurrection onto others, impugning everyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to antifa.

Johnson has been one of the worst offenders in this regard. During a Fox News appearance earlier this month, he suggested Pelosi was somehow responsible for the insurrection because as speaker of the House she didn’t do more to make sure Capitol security was adequate.

Ron Johnson absurdly floats that Nancy Pelosi is somehow responsible for a MAGA mob descending on the Capitol for a deadly insurrection pic.twitter.com/hUi6SydEe1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 7, 2021

Then just two days ago, Johnson was back on Fox News lamenting enhanced security measures at the Capitol, falsely claiming the idea that some Trump supporters are “armed insurrectionists” couldn’t be “further from the truth.” That comment received no pushback from host Maria Bartiromo, but it ignores the reality that the reason the Capitol is militarized in the first place is the January 6 attack by Trump supporters on the legislative branch, which at the time was in the process of certifying Biden’s Electoral College win.

Johnson wasn’t the only person who tried to shift blame during Tuesday’s hearing. Under questioning from Johnson, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund said he didn’t believe the attack on the Capitol was foreseeable.

“A breach of the Capitol was not something anybody anticipated,” Sund said.

But Sund is wrong. Chatter on right-wing internet forums in the weeks leading up to January 6 made clear that Trump supporters were not only planning to gather in DC but hoped to “storm government buildings” and “kill cops.” (Officer Brian Sicknick died after rioters breached the Capitol.)

Congress is somehow debating whether this insurrection was planned before January 6th, or if it was planned by Trump supporters.

Here's the kind of conversation that was happening on 8kun on 1/5.

"As many Patriots as can be… We will storm the government buildings, kill cops." pic.twitter.com/bKEuJTJaPQ

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) February 23, 2021

There’s more on two of the Big Lie’s most vociferous collaborators, Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, at the link. It seems pretty clear that even if the insurrectionists had found Pelosi, Pence and McConnell and done their worst, these people would be finding reasons to excuse it. But that’s understandable because they are complicit. If they hadn’t eagerly stroked Trump’s massive ego by pumping up the absurd conspiracy theories around the “stop the steal” nonsense, this might not have happened.

In my thirty-five years in the Foreign Service across the world, I put a Cajun spin on it. I call it Gumbo diplomacy.

Wherever I was posted, I’d invite people of all walks then make homemade gumbo. Thats how you break down barriers, connect, and see each-other as humans. pic.twitter.com/Au1Qd7Yczq

— Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@LindaT_G) November 24, 2020

Linda Thomas-Greenfield was confirmed as US Ambassador to the UN. This story shows why she is such an excellent choice for the job.

Anyone who has served a big pot of gumbo to family and friends knows exactly what Linda Thomas-Greenfield means when she refers to “gumbo diplomacy.”

She captured national attention when she used the term on Nov. 24, when accepting President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Her point: that you can’t help but warm toward someone who has labored over the fragrant, dark brown soup and is now ladling it into a bowl for you.

Thomas-Greenfield, a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service, explained how she would invite her counterparts in countries such as Nigeria into her home to cook and eat together: “I put a Cajun spin on it. … It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people and starting to see each other on a human level. A bit of lagniappe is what we say in Louisiana.”

Still, like many who make gumbo regularly, she faced a hurdle when The Washington Post asked her to share her recipe. “I don’t have one,” said Thomas-Greenfield, who is awaiting a Senate confirmation hearing that could have her following in the footsteps of George H.W. Bush, Madeleine Albright, Andrew Young and Susan Rice. “I’ve never cooked gumbo from a recipe. I learned it from watching.”

The career diplomat is used to finding ways around obstacles, however, so she simply walked herself through the process, jotting down do’s and don’ts, going into detail when she felt it was essential and loosening the reins where she could. While she’s all about flexibility, she does have strong opinions when it comes to gumbo: “Do not use tomato paste or sauce. I hate red gumbos. … Gumbo should have a nice brownish color.”

“Each time I make gumbo, it’s different,” she said. “No two gumbos are alike, and that goes for others who make gumbo, as well.”

Thomas-Greenfield, 68, has had plenty of opportunity to share her gumbo around the world, including in Gambia, Kenya, Jamaica, Liberia, Pakistan and Switzerland. She began working in the Foreign Service under President Ronald Reagan, then served as ambassador to Liberia under President George W. Bush and assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Barack Obama. She retired from the State Department in 2017, after the inauguration of President Trump.

Thomas-Greenfield said she is eager for the appointment to Biden’s Cabinet because it will “give me an opportunity to really bring back to our foreign policy the relationships and the values that have been so key to our success as a country. Those values that I think relate to gumbo diplomacy are generosity, hospitality, its kindness … all of that.”

[…]

Around the world she invited people to her house for her gumbo:

“It causes people to relax. You’re sitting around. You’re talking about food. You’ve had this really important conversation around human rights. Now, you’re having a conversation about what you put in your gumbo and what a roux actually is, but you’re also talking about a certain issue happening in a country.”

Trump’s last confirmed UN ambassador was a big donor, climate denying dilettante.

This story in the LA Times about the “California variant” is quite concerning. I think you can be sure that it’s not just confined to here, although that’s bad enough. We do have 38 million people in this state. But this variant’s been around since mid-2020 so it’s almost sure spread all over the country by now.

The good news is that the vaccines still appear to work, although at somewhat diminished effectiveness, similar to the South Africa variant.

We just have to get everyone vaccinated as quickly as humanly possible and stay hunkered down until we do:

A coronavirus variant that emerged in mid-2020 and surged to become the dominant strain in California not only spreads more readily than its predecessors, but also evades antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines or prior infection and it’s associated with severe illness and death, researchers said.

In a study that helps explain the state’s dramatic surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths — and portends further trouble ahead — scientists at UC San Francisco said the cluster of mutations that characterizes the homegrown strain should mark it as a “variant of concern” on par with those from the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil.

“The devil is already here,” said Dr. Charles Chiu, who led the UCSF team of geneticists, epidemiologists, statisticians and other scientists in a wide-ranging analysis of the new variant, which they call B.1.427/B.1.429. “I wish it were different. But the science is the science.”

Californians, along with the rest of the country, have been bracing for the rise of a more transmissible coronavirus variant from the U.K. known as B.1.1.7. But they should know that a rival strain that is probably just as worrisome has already settled in, and will probably account for 90% of the state’s infections by the end of next month, said Chiu, an infectious diseases researcher and physician.

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The U.K. and California variants are each armed with enhanced capabilities, and the likelihood that they could circulate in the same population raises the specter of a return to spiking infections and deaths, Chiu said. It also opens the door to a “nightmare scenario”: That the two viruses will meet in a single person, swap their mutations, and create an even more dangerous strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The new evidence that the California variant could make people sicker, and vaccines less effective, should spur more intensive efforts to drive down infections, Chiu said. Those should include both public health measures, such as masking and limits on public activities, and a campaign of rapid vaccinations, he added.

The new analysis is currently under review by the public health departments of San Francisco County and the state, which collaborated in the new research. It is expected to post late this week to MedRxiv, a website that allows new research to be shared before its formal publication.

Over five months starting on Sept. 1, the California strain, which is sometimes referred to as 20C/L452R, rose from complete obscurity to account for more than 50% of all coronavirus samples that were subjected to genetic analysis in the state. Compared with strains that were most prominent here in early fall, the new strain seems to have an enhanced ability to spread, Chiu said.

Exactly how much more transmissible the California strain is remains an open question, he added. But the evidence that it’s more contagious comes from several sources.

Samples collected from a range of counties, and using a variety of collection methods, suggest the variant is 19% to 24% more transmissible. But in some circumstances, its advantage was much greater: In one nursing home outbreak, B.1.427/B.1.429 spread at a rate that was six times higher than its predecessors.

Researchers also discerned uniform patterns of the variant’s expansion in counties across the state. When infection rates rose, they typically did so in tandem with growing evidence of the California strain’s presence.

The variant’s enhanced propensity for spread was also evident in laboratory results. An analysis of viral samples from around the state showed that compared with people infected with other strains of SARS-CoV-2, those who were infected with the California strain had viral loads in the nasopharynx that were twice as high.

That, in turn, made it highly likely that each person infected with the new strain would go on to infect more people.

B.1.427/B.1.429’s genome includes three mutations that affect the crucial spike protein, which the virus uses to sneak into human cells and convert them into factories for its own production. One of those three mutations, dubbed L452R, affects the so-called receptor binding domain, helping the virus attach more firmly to target cells.

That adaptation has not been seen in coronavirus variants that have caused worry elsewhere.

In a UCSF lab, scientists found that the L452R mutation alone made the California strain more damaging as well. A coronavirus engineered to have only that mutation was able to infect human lung tissue at least 40% more readily than were circulating variants that lacked the mutation. Compared with those so-called wild-type strains, the engineered virus was more than three times more infectious.

In the lab, the California strain also revealed itself to be more resistant to neutralizing antibodies generated in response to COVID-19 vaccines as well as by a previous coronavirus infection.

Compared with existing variants, the reduction in protection was “moderate … but significant,” the researchers said.

The coronavirus strain that’s now dominant in South Africa — and that has raised concerns about evading the immune system’s defenses — has been shown to reduce the effect of neutralizing antibodies by a factor of 6.2. With the California strain, the effect of these antibodies was reduced by a factor of two.

“I do anticipate over time it is going to have an effect on vaccination,” Chiu said. Though the magnitude of the effect varied from sample to sample and was less pronounced than with the South Africa strain, “it still is concerning,” he said.

Ominously, the new study also suggested the California variant could have greater virulence.

That observation is based on the medical charts of 324 patients hospitalized at UCSF, a relatively small sample. Still, the researchers found that the 21% of these patients who were infected with B.1.427/B.1.429 were more likely than their counterparts to have been admitted to the ICU, and they were 11 times more likely to die. That finding held up even after researchers adjusted for differences in the patients’ age, gender and ethnicity.

Chiu cautions, however, that this increased risk of death may not be a sign that the variant is inherently more lethal. Rather, it might simply be a reflection that its greater transmissibility caused hospitals to become so overwhelmed and healthcare resources to be stretched so thin that more deaths were the result — especially in Southern California.

Dr. Marc Suchard, an expert on infectious disease tracking at UCLA, said that some of the team’s findings would probably be refined as more virus samples were genetically sequenced and more data came to light.

“It remains critically important that we actively sequence the virus as cases are diagnosed in our state,” said Suchard, who was not involved in the UCSF work. “I am glad to see such a collaboration between academics and public health departments in California to identify the emergence of a previously unidentified lineage.”

Stay safe people. This isn’t quite over yet.

This is ridiculous:

https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1364049623355170816?s=20

Virtually everything Schlapp says is an outright lie there. And Cuomo is just completely ill-equipped to fact check him and isn’t really interested in doing that. “Pushing back” simply creates the idea that this is a “controversy” not a string of total falsehoods.

The only way to deal with a propagandist like Schlapp is to tape his interview and then interject it with corrections all the way through, all along the line, sort of the way they sometimes do 60 Minutes interviews. You can’t just let them ramble on like this. They’re literally killing people with their lies.

This will surely get me into trouble, but like Cokie’s Law, it’s out there.

Red meat is nonexistent at my house, although not fowl and fish. The ecological and ethical debate about meat consumption rages, elevated by the advent of “cellular agriculture.” Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg atThe New Republic take it head on.

The usual environmental arguments apply. And the ethical ones. The pair also focuses on the fact that meat tastes good and gives pleasure. Overcoming that has always been a hangup. Except now there are nearly indistinguishable, lab-grown alternatives to the slaughterhouse:

As Joel Stein observed in last Sunday’s New York Times, “I spend nearly as much time talking about how I want to stop eating meat as I do eating it. I care about animals and the environment and, even more, virtue signaling about how much I care about animals and the environment. I just don’t want to make any effort or sacrifice any pleasure.”

Back in 2008, when cellular agriculture seemed like futurist fantasy, ethicists Patrick Hopkins and Austin Dacey recognized this exact dilemma and wrote that what they dubbed “vegetarian meat” is “something that we may be morally required to support” because (in theory) it works with the pleasures of meat-eaters like Stein rather than against them: It doesn’t ask them to sacrifice their pleasure in the name of normative ethics. This is also what makes cellular agriculture a sadism test. If cell-based meat can reach price, taste, and nutritional parity with slaughter-based meat, and tick the other social and cultural boxes that send consumers to the butcher, the only pleasure specific to conventional meat that remains is the pleasure that comes from knowing an animal died for your dinner.

While acknowledging people’s aversion to “Frankenfoods,” the pair grant ethical exemption to subsistence cultures like the Inuit, though it’s not clear why. Simply that in remote areas lab-grown meat will remain unavailable and unaffordable? And some religious practices might further complcate the ethical calculation, they admit. Which of these new foods might be considered considered kosher or halal?

As (techno-) optimists, we think most people will decline the sadist’s meal: When given the opportunity to indulge the pleasures of meat at a similar price point without the need for animal suffering and death, many humans will take it. But we are prepared to be wrong.

Or at least not to be right anytime soon.

This is not a snide observation and not an apologia for factory farming, but something I’ve wondered about for years, another complicating ethical factor, and one I have not seen addressed in this debate (unless I just missed it). If not for animal husbandry, how many domesticated species would be extinct, endangered, or ecological pestilences like feral pigs?

A somewhat perverse measure of a political faction’s credibility is the amount of outrage engendered among its partisans for failure to meet expectations. Lefties rarely seems to get as angry at Republicans for this as they do at Democrats. Their expectations for Republicans are pretty low, after all, and they demand better of Democrats. The ones you love can always disappoint you the most.

But come on. After four years of Donald Trump in the Oval Office and him still leading their party, the double standard over Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead President Joe Biden’s Office of Management and Budget is beyond ridiculous even for Republicans.

Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney announced Monday they would oppose Tanden, President and CEO of the liberal think tank, Center for American Progress. “Her past actions have demonstrated exactly the kind of animosity that President Biden has pledged to transcend,” Collins said, referring to Tanden’s history of throwing elbows on Twitter, including at Collins.

A Romney spokeswoman said, “He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”

Cue Claude Rains.

A return to comity and respect might also include Collins and Romney showing a little toward the picks of the president who kicked their candidate’s butt by 7 million votes. Then again, one has low expectations for Republicans.

But Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, announced on Friday his opposition to Tanden as well:

“I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Manchin said in a statement.

Looking forward not backward is a weathervaney sort of stance in Washington, D.C. Manchin’s pearl-clutching puts him in a position to sink Tanden’s nomination.

From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

Yes, Ms. Tanden has been undiplomatic. But the case against her confirmation is weak — especially when you compare her with many of the people Republican senators have endorsed in the past.

Republican opposition to Ms. Tanden because of her sometimes-tough tweeting reflects some mind-boggling hypocrisy. Republicans spent four years playing down and forgiving President Donald Trump’s disgusting tweets. Not a single Republican voted against confirming Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Germany, despite his history of Twitter trolling — including nasty comments about the appearances of female journalists and world leaders — which was far worse than Ms. Tanden’s tweets. Mr. Manchin voted to confirm Mr. Grenell, too.

Ms. Tanden is tapped to lead Mr. Biden’s budget office, where it is important for the president to have an appointee who reflects his views. Is it unacceptable for the OMB director to be strongly partisan? Republicans didn’t think so when they jammed through Mick Mulvaney, a co-founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, to be Mr. Trump’s first OMB chair, despite Mr. Mulvaney’s destructive opposition to raising the national debt limit and avoiding government shutdowns during Barack Obama’s presidency. When Mr. Mulvaney became Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Republicans approved conservative ideologue Russell Vought to direct the Trump administration’s budget office. Ms. Tanden, by contrast, has deployed her sharp elbows to battle the Democrats’ left wing as well as Republicans on her right.

Manchin drew plenty of criticism for last week’s statements, both for showing off his double standard and for wielding it against the first South Asian women nominated to run the OMB.

What is wrong with Manchin? A gratuitous, mean spirited and sexist move. Just appalling

— Jennifer Truth Over Phony Balance Rubin 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@JRubinBlogger) February 19, 2021

I am appalled by Joe Manchin voting against Neera Tanden for OMB, a committed progressive after he voted for Bill Barr and others. How about assessing her work, competence and vision instead the tone her tweets? Stop sinking good women because they are outspoken. https://t.co/h9n0Nv1Zgp

— Ilyse Hogue is @ilyseh everywhere (@ilyseh) February 19, 2021

It's entirely ridiculous that Manchin would oppose Neera Tanden's nomination for this stated reason when he had no problem with the outright venomous partisanship of nominees like Jeff Sessions and Ric Grenell.

This is holding a woman of color to a much higher standard. Period. https://t.co/oQNnNN3ipv

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) February 19, 2021

In 1996, Coretta Scott King wrote to Congress urging it not to confirm Jeff Sessions to a judgeship.

She wrote passionately about Sessions’ decades of harm to Black people. @Sen_JoeManchin thought nothing of confirming Sessions to be the highest law officer in the land,KNOWING

— Pam Keith, Esq. (@PamKeithFL) February 19, 2021

Tanden may not be an uber-progressive’s progressive, but she has the chops to do the job, Biden wants her, and she has the support of the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus.

But in a 50-50 Senate, Manchin is flexing his new muscle. He is in a position now to be kingmaker along with moderate Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Jon Tester of Montana. Manchin, 73, is rumored to be uninterested in running again in 2024. He owns his state’s political establishment. He will not bend to pressure from inside or outside West Virginia, and is quick to let people know it:

A few weeks back, Manchin created a stir when he publicly criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for doing a TV interview with a local West Virginia station that was seen as an effort to pressure him to support the COVID-19 bill. He received a call from the White House shortly after his complaint to try to smooth things over.

With Manchin opposed to Tanden, Biden will have to coax at least one Senate Republican to support her to win Senate confirmation. Manchin is bucking to challenge Joe Lieberman’s legacy.