2:00PM Water Cooler 1/21/2025 | bare capitalism

Chicken Tune of the Day

Brown Thrasher, Might 2024 Rondeau PP–South Level Path East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. Identical location as yesterday, however completely different birds and much more energetic.

In Case You Would possibly Miss…

1. January 6 pardons.
2. DOGE Government orders.
3. Bettering surgical masks (many strategies).

In Case You Would possibly Miss…

1. January 6 pardons.
2. DOGE Government orders.
3. Bettering surgical masks (many strategies).

Politics

“So most of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in reality a rational administration of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Capitol Seizure

“Trump pardons roughly 1,500 legal defendants charged within the Jan. 6 Capitol assault” [NBC News]. “President Donald Trump on Monday issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy [despite being riddled with informers]. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.” • This from Julie Kelly was something I didn’t know:

Here is the raindrop theory–

“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JOHN DOUGLAS WRIGHT” (PDF) [Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Criminal Action No. 21-341, United States District Court for the District of Columbia]. Kollar-Kotelly was “previously presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” From page 24:

It would have been interesting to apply the “raindrop” theory of the case to the banksters who “collectively” caused the Great Financial Crash, causing “the unnecessary expenditure of substantial government resources.”

Lambert here: Patient readers, Trump just signed a hundred exective orders (EOs) [apparently only 26? Yes] and held a presser. I don’t have the capacity to synthesize all that material, which is doubtless creating “Shock and Awe” in the political class. The links that follow seem the most salient now, but that may change in the coming weeks. What I will say is that I have skimmed several of the orders, and this latest rollout is an amazing feat of staffwork (hat tip Susie Wiles) that the previous Trump administration couldn’t even have considered. (Some clever people will also have to lay the Executive Orders against Project 2025 and look for overlaps. My guess is that the Trump administration will have put its own distinction twists on a lot of it. Also, I’ll often scatter the EOs under the usual category headings (“DOGE” under “DOGE”) because consolidating 100 EOs in one place would be unwieldy.

Patient readers, I’ll return with a list of the executive orders — I’m frustrated because I don’t know how many have really been signed — after I handle some administrativia. –lambert

UPDATE Here is the list. I took it from the Whitehouse.gov page on “Presidential Actions.” There are four buckets: Executive Orders, Proclamations, Memoranda, and Announcements. (I did this because all the sources I could find were explainers, a level of abstraction away from a simple list of the documents Trump signed, which seems to me to be the obvious base for any further analysis.)

Executive Orders:

1. Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness (order)
2. Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists (order)
3. Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service (order)
4. Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing (order)
5. Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government (order)
6. Establishing And Implementing The President’s “Department Of Government Efficiency” (order)
7. America First Policy Directive To The Secretary Of State (order)
8. Protecting The United States From Foreign Terrorists And Other National Security And Public Safety Threats (order)
9. Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential (order)
10. Protecting The American People Against Invasion (order)
11. Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid (order)
12. Declaring a National Energy Emergency (order)
13. Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety (order)
14. Securing Our Borders (order)
15. Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship (order)
16. Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program (order)
17. Unleashing American Energy (order)
18. Clarifying The Military’s Role In Protecting The Territorial Integrity Of The United States (order)
19. Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information (order)
20. Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce (order)
21. Withdrawing The United States From The World Health Organization (order)
22. Application Of Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act To TikTok (order)
23. Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements (order)
24. Ending The Weaponization Of The Federal Government (order)
25. Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship (order)
26. Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions (order)

Proclamations:

1. Guaranteeing The States Protection Against Invasion (proclamation)
2. Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border Of The United States (proclamation)
3. Granting Pardons And Commutation Of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021 (proclamation)
4. Flying The Flag Of The United States At Full-Staff On Inauguration Day (proclamation)

Memoranda:

1. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal) (memorandum)
2. Organization of the National Security Council and Subcommittees (memorandum)
3. Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects (memorandum)
4. Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives (memorandum)
5. Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture (memorandum)
6. Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California (memorandum)
7. America First Trade Policy (memorandum)
8. Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel (memorandum)
9. Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis (memorandum)
10. Hiring Freeze (memorandum)
11. Regulatory Freeze Pending Review (memorandum)
12. Return to In-Person Work (memorandum)

Announcements:

1. President Trump Designates Chairmen and Acting Chairmen (announcement)
2. President Trump Announces Acting Cabinet and Cabinet-Level Positions (announcement)
3. President Trump Announces Sub-Cabinet Appointments (announcement)
4. President Trump Announces Cabinet and Cabinet Level Appointments (announcement)

So this is the scope of the work for today; Trump was busy. Perhaps a connoisseuer of Federal document types can explain why an Executive Order in one case and a Memorandum in another. I did skim some of the EOs; they seem to be of varying quality, some quite specific as to statute and regulation, others more like “good things are good” handwaving. For example, in “Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship”, this:

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to: (a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;

and:

Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.

Constitutional lawyers in the readership please correct me, but am I right that this is a little thin? Not even a citation to a court case? And “constitutionally” is doing a lot of work. Is there speech that is not constitutionally protected?

* * *

“Trump signs order to end ‘government censorship’ of social media” [WaPo]. “President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order intended to ‘immediately stop all government censorship,’ a sweeping action that could chill years of efforts to combat the proliferation of false information online. The order bans federal officials from any conduct that ‘would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.’ It also prohibits taxpayer resources from being used to ‘unconstitutionally abridge the free speech’ of Americans…. Trump’s order could have an immediate impact on years of efforts to bolster coordination between Silicon Valley and the government to combat misinformation about elections, natural disasters and public health.” • But:

TikTok is dead, free Palestine pic.twitter.com/hQKK0trAlW

— Ozymandias (@martianmarxist) January 21, 2025

Nonetheless:

so my tiktok didn’t appear the identical when i received again on, so i went and muted all adverts and turned off personalised adverts, and now i can truly see issues about Palestine and fascism pic.twitter.com/mwLLfs7shl

— jess (@jesstechnician) January 21, 2025

Eight hours down not lengthy sufficient to implement the algo modifications correctly?

* * *

“Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration” [Wired]. “At this level, Musk put his proper hand on his chest earlier than extending it straight out along with his palm going through down and his fingers touching, a gesture well known because the ‘Roman salute.’ Adopted by the fascist motion a century in the past, it was most famously utilized by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Social gathering in Germany, and is to this present day related to the fascist proper, particularly in Italy. After he first made the gesture, Musk then circled to members of the gang who have been seated behind him and, along with his again to the digicam, repeated the gesture. ‘My coronary heart goes out to you,’ Musk added… One in all many examples: “”WE ARE FUCKING BACK” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote below a clip of Musk giving the salute.’” • I have to confess that after I first noticed this take I filed below image manipulators on the lookout for symbols after which making leaps in reasoning based mostly on the symbols (which is a really dangerous behavior within the idpol area). I additionally felt that Musk has been awfully herky jerky currently (and there may be the preliminary hand-on-heart gesture, which types no a part of the Nazi salute. However now, apparently, it does:

“It was an accident!! He’s autistic!!” pic.twitter.com/eOCgJ4cPBr

— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) January 21, 2025

File this, on the very minimal, below “Any person must get this dude below management.”

* * *

DOGE

“ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S ‘DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT’” [Whitehouse.gov]. I normalize all-caps to title caps but in this case I’m not, because all the EOs have this formatting. I hope readers can give this a close reading, but while the pre-inaugural DOGE set a horrid precedent, this version seems not so bad. The EO hijacks the United States Digital Service (USDS), which Obama put in place after Silicon Valley techies saved his bacon my making the ObamaCare website work. That’s a clever idea! ” The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.” And: “In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.” • This shows, at least, somebody was thinking about process. (“Special Government Employees” were what the the pre-inaugural DOGE operatives — the dudes going around interviewing civil servants — should have been.

“‘Everyone wants him out’: How Musk helped boot Ramaswamy from DOGE” [Politico]. “Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk’s preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them. An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise…. Ramaswamy maintained to confidants as late as Saturday evening that he was actively involved in DOGE, saying he was at work writing executive orders, according to six people who had spoken with him. But a person familiar with the arrangement said he had done almost no DOGE-related work since early December. As recently as last week, Ramaswamy was hoping to achieve some early wins at DOGE before leaving to pursue a gubernatorial bid. Now Ramaswamy and his allies are laboring to put a positive spin on his departure, coming just as Trump takes office.” •

Maskstravaganza

If you are only permitted a surgical mask:

here is a non-exhaustive thread on the various modifications you can apply to surgical masks to increase their efficacy at preventing airborne illness (95% effective like N95 masks). combining these modifications will increase your mask’s efficacy 🧵

— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025

Right here is one modification:

here’s a non-exhaustive thread on the assorted modifications you possibly can apply to surgical masks to extend their efficacy at stopping airborne sickness (95% efficient like N95 masks). combining these modifications will improve your masks’s efficacy 🧵

— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025

Right here is one other:

here’s a non-exhaustive thread on the assorted modifications you possibly can apply to surgical masks to extend their efficacy at stopping airborne sickness (95% efficient like N95 masks). combining these modifications will improve your masks’s efficacy 🧵

— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025

There are much more strategies; the thread is value studying in full.

Vaccines

“Former surgeon basic: Vaccine-preventable ailments are nonetheless a serious risk” [Jerome Adams, STAT]. The Biden Administration vaccine rollout was fantastically damaging, as we see right here. “Whereas there’s a lot to rejoice concerning the present concentrate on bettering total well being — notably the incoming administration’s emphasis on the MAHA agenda, which promotes higher meals security, vitamin, and bodily exercise — it’s essential that we keep in mind these should be priorities along with addressing vaccine-preventable ailments, not instead of them. As I’ve mentioned earlier than, you possibly can’t die of early coronary heart illness at 50 in the event you already died from polio at 5. The truth is that vaccine-preventable ailments are nonetheless a serious risk, even within the twenty first century, and we ignore that at our peril. I hear from pediatricians and well being officers throughout the nation on a near-daily foundation about their rising issues over declining vaccination charges. Mother and father who would have as soon as trusted their well being care suppliers’ suggestions are actually questioning vaccines that ought to be routine, like MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella). What’s much more troubling is that even the mother and father of long-term sufferers — youngsters who’ve obtained all their vaccines previously — are more and more opting to delay or forgo these important photographs on account of new doubts, typically fueled by misinformation. What’s worse is that the default response to well being supplier suggestions has shifted. For a lot of mother and father, the thought of questioning, deferring, or outright rejecting vaccines has change into the norm, reasonably the exception. This undermines the belief that has been constructed over generations between well being care suppliers and households, and presents a severe problem for these of us attempting to guard the well being of all Individuals, particularly our youngsters. The impression of this rising vaccine hesitancy will, in fact, be felt most acutely by youngsters whose mother and father are attempting, in deeply misguided methods, to guard them. Whereas we’re unlikely to see a dramatic rise in deaths from vaccine-preventable ailments within the U.S. within the close to time period, the non-public prices are immense. A single case of measles can result in weeks of missed college, sporting occasions, household gatherings, and different milestones. These are prices many Individuals felt have been insufferable and inexcusable throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but we’re now placing our youngsters vulnerable to struggling the identical disruptions — disruptions which are each preventable and pointless.” • As I mentioned, it’s MMR that’s under-assault. In fact, now we have already been induced to desert our youngsters to Covid — thanks, Nice Barrington dudes — so all the things’s going in response to plan.

Elite Maleficence

Maybe the CDC’s normalization of wasterwater information isn’t as dangerous as I believed:

Publish by @[email protected]

View on Mastodon

Violet Blue’s correction right here:

New data that OP is misunderstanding the change. Additional information is right here: https://t.co/PXobBA9CAg That CDC has eroded public belief on C19 hasn’t helped in any respect. https://t.co/TVZhOVdLmA

— Violet Blue® (@violetblue) January 19, 2025

TABLE 1: Each day Covid Charts

Lambert right here: I don’t like lots of this week’s charts. In wastewater, too many crimson dots concentrated within the Midwest and the Atlantic coast, so I began circling areas in crimson, once more. New York’s weirdly persistent greater hospitalization price continues. Traveler positivity is up, and worse, the dominant traveler variants are JN* and KP*, which, whereas current within the nationwide variants, are very low. And within the two dying charts, the projected deaths appear to have leveled out, when previously they decreased. Nothing earth-shattering, however it does make me queasy, and it’s effectively after the vacation bump.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC January 10	Last week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC January 18		Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16:	National [6] CDC Janurary 16:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 13:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC December 30:	Variants[10] CDC December 30
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:

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) Seeing more red and more orange, but 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.

[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.

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 41 Fear (previous close: 37 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 21 at 2:00:37 PM ET.

Architecture

“The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars” [Ex Urbe]. “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. Wealthy families built these as mini-fortresses within the city, where they could defend against riots, enemy families (think Montagues and Capulets) and invasion. Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above. This was VERY BAD for cities.” Like this:

Caption: “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy.” • Neat blog.

Zeitgeist Watch

“On what women want” [Kat Rosenfeld, The Usual Palm Tree]. Reflections prompted by the Neil Gaiman case. “There’s a moment in the Gaiman exposé where the main accuser, Scarlett Pavlovich, sends him a text message asking him how he’s doing. Gaiman says he’s struggling: he’s heard from people close to him that Pavlovich plans to accuse him of rape. ‘I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed,’ he writes. ‘It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she replies. Except: she doesn’t mean it.” But: “[I]n the article we’ve been instructed, explicitly and repeatedly, that you can’t assume a relationship was consensual just because all parties involved gave consent.” And: “The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they’ll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it’s not just sex they can’t reasonably consent to. It’s medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world’s adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can’t have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn’t mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.”

“New ‘oligarchy’ under fire as elites descend on Davos” [Agence France Presse]. Of course, the elite of the elite are at the Inaugural. “The World Economic Forum kicks off in the Swiss Alpine resort on the same day as the presidential inauguration of Trump, who will not be in Davos but will make an online appearance later in the week…. Some 3,000 participants are expected at the Swiss ski village for the forum ending Friday — including 60 heads of state or government and more than 900 CEOs — for days of schmoozing and behind-the-scenes dealmaking.” A dissenting voice: “‘I don’t want to live in a country with a few rich people and lots of poor people,’ said Morris Pearl, a former managing director at investment giant BlackRock. He is now a member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group that backs raising taxes on the rich. ‘I’m afraid that we’re going to have civil unrest if we don’t change things,’ Pearl told AFP.” • So are they, Morris. So are they.

News of the Wired

These states aren’t precisely arrange for blizzard situations.

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