The opera last night was “Marnie” – based on the same bool as the Hitchcock movie. It premiered in 2019 to good reviews and good audience response too. So it’s very new. (I’m a fan of the mezzo-soprano for whom it was written, Isabel Leonard, and was lucky enough to get to see her in person in another new opera, “Cold Mountain,” when it premiered in Santa Fe.) I’m sure the movie left out things that were in the book, and the opera has left out things from both, but it’s still a plenty twisted story.
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Short Takes –
The New Yorker – Out-of-Practice Trump Forgets to Strand Rally Crowd in Parking Lot
Quote – “People have come to expect that, at the conclusion of one of our rallies, they will be marooned in the middle of nowhere for hours, often in inclement weather,” Harland Dorrinson, a Trump aide, said. “On Saturday night, we didn’t get it done.” Dorrinson said that the entire Trump team would be conducting a postmortem of the rally to find out why attendees were able to leave the event without incident. Click through for details. Andy, it’s harder to strand a crowd when it’s small to begin with and much of it gets boored and leaves early.
Daily Beast – YouTube Permanently Bans Right Wing Watch, a Media Watchdog Devoted to Exposing Right-Wing Conspiracies
Quote – “What are we going to do?” he asked. Launched in 2007, Right Wing Watch has posted thousands of clips of prominent right-wing figures making controversial comments, perhaps most famously including televangelist Pat Robertson and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In fact, Right Wing Watch’s exposure of Jones’ false and conspiratorial rhetoric was key to YouTube and other social-media platforms eventually removing his channel InfoWars from their sites. Notably, many of the right-wing outlets and personalities that Right Wing Watch chronicles are not currently suspended or banned from posting content to YouTube, while RWW has been booted for merely exposing their comments and content—something Mantyla noted as being particularly ironic. Click through for full story. This is NOT good news. They are still on Vimeo, at least.
Independent – GOP senator says roads and bridges are ‘a woman’s problem’ because women ‘do the shopping’
Quote – “My wife says that roads and bridges are a woman’s problem if you will,” said Mr Cassidy. “Because oftentimes it is the woman – aside from commuting to work – who’s also taking children to schools or doing the shopping…. And the more time that she spends on that road, the less time she spends doing things of higher value,” he added. Click through for absolutely not satire. Yes, Senator, women are human beings, and human beings need roads and bridges. (And your wife sounds brainwashed.)
Glenn Kirschner – Bill Barr’s Shocking Atlantic Interview Reveals Incriminating Evidence of Trump’s Corrupt Intent (Referring to oneself in the third person has a name – it’s called “illeism.” It is not exclusive to marcissists – far from it – but they, monarchs, and toddlers are probably the groups which use it the most.)
Meidas Touch – Joe Tripp – On other words, it’s not right v. left, it’s up v. down. Seriously – see The Political Compass. https://www.politicalcompass.org
CNN – Stelter: I watched Hannity’s show for a week. Here’s what I found. Political amnesia is real. If you don’t think so, that’s because you have it. (It can be slective.)
Rebel HQ – OK, funny, but the message is serious. And there will be people injured – there always are.
A different kind of blast from the past – an interview.
Dodo – Two Orphaned Baby Foxes Go Nuts When They Meet For The First Time
I’m trying to get little smarter about finding the news,since letting it come to me is not always enough any more. We’ll see how it goes in the long run. We can be glad Colleen is recovering even though the recovery is not yet complete. I also heard from Carrie B last night, and she has a couple of spots on her face which she worries may be cancerous, and is stalled waiting for a referral to a dermatologist. Prayers for her please.
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Short Takes –
Axios – Bill Barr on Trump’s election fraud claims: “It was all bullsh*t”
Quote – Barr said that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been urging him to speak out against Trump’s false claims since November but would not do so himself. McConnell did not want to upset Trump as he needed Trump to campaign in Georgia. “Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell said, according to Barr. “And so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.” Click through for as much of this profile in cowardice as they are willing to print from a book not yet released
Insider – 14 years after a sexual assault in Tampa, a man has been charged with rape because he entered his own DNA into a genealogy database
Quote – DNA evidence was collected at the time but did not find any matches, and the case remained unsolved for more than a decade. In 2020, however, detectives revisited the case and began to search genealogy testing databases, including GEDmatch and FamilyTree, two services often used by people who are researching their ancestry, to find potential matches…. Florida was the first state to establish its own forensic genealogy unit in 2018. Similar units have since been created in California and Utah to solve cold cases. Click through for more. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, even to Florida.
The Guardian – Rattlesnakes everywhere: the odd consequences of California’s drought
Quote – Surprisingly, disease-carrying mosquitoes, which most people associate with wet times rather than dry, thrive in cities during times of drought when waters recede and grow still. Webb explains that human-made structures like pipes, pits and ponds are prime spots for stagnant water to become a breeding ground for the insects. “Fish and other animals that live in these systems die and the mosquitoes have free rein”. Click through for details, and a multitude of consequences, obviously, of climate change. And yet, some still deny it.
Glenn Kirschner – NY DA Vance to Indict Trump Org. Will this Inspire Other Jurisdictions to Finally Indict Trump? (I guess now we know what it takes to make Glenn be a smart-ass. “Tip of the Weisselberg” indeed.)
MSNBC covered multiple aspects of the Chauvin sentencing – TRMS – Judge Sends Message With Historic Prison Sentence For Derek Chauvin
Prosecutor In Chauvin Trial: ‘Sense Of Peace’ With Sentencing
MSNBC also paid considerable attention to the Trump** saga – TRMS – Increasing Pressure Threatens To Burst Trump Bubble With Potentially Concerning Fallout
NYT: Trump Admin. Considered Using Military On Floyd Protests – The 11th Hour
Expected Charges Against Trump Org. Are Far From ‘Minuscule’ – The Last Word
Corey Ryan Forrester – An important PSA…
Beau – Let’s talk about Biden’s plan for the interpreters and more…. This is (at least mostly) good news, but it comes with a cost. We owe Beau tthanks for the warning, and need to be ready.
Yesterday was strange – not that nothing happened around the nation and the world, but that so many of the things that did happen were so odd. We can blame climate change for some of it, but not for all, certainly. I think I remember that Colleen’s delayed surgery was for carpal tunnel or somethiing of the sort – if so, she may be recovering just fine but not feel up to commenting yet. I hope that’s the case, but also hope to hear soon.
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Short Takes – News of the Weird today!
WFAA – ‘Once you see one, you’ll see another’: Have you seen one of these worms in your yard? They’re toxic. Here’s how you deal with them.
Quote – “The way this flatworm harms our ecosystem is it eats earthworms, which are necessary for our forests, our crops…our gardens to survive,” Morgan-Olvera said, “In order for it to digest earthworms, it secretes a chemical, or a neurotoxin, and that can cause an allergic reaction on your skin if you’re handling it.” Click through for full story, including what – and what not – to do.
NBC News – Vehicles stuck on Detroit freeways after torrential downpour
Quote – [I]t was predicted that the city would get close to two inches of rain Friday night, but nearly seven inches fell. “The intensity of these storms exceeded the design standards for pump stations and combined sewer overflow facilities serving the Detroit region,” Brown said at a press conference on Saturday. There was so much rain that there was nowhere for the water to go, he explained, other than flooding streets and basements. Click through for more. (But there’s no such thing as climate change. Right.)
NextShark – Australian Woman Who Woke Up From Surgery With Irish Accent May Be Stuck With It for Life
Quote – This week, Yen underwent a brain scan which confirmed “nothing wrong.” But she was diagnosed with Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS), a rare medical condition that may be triggered by neurological or psychological damage, according to speech pathologist Kirrie Ballard. “Foreign Accent Syndrome is a legitimate disorder. It’s described as a person’s speech changing, so that it sounds as though they’re speaking in a different accent to their habitual accent,” Ballard told 60 Minutes. Click through for the story. Bizarre, but true. And it says a lot about how we humans treat each other – none of it good.
Glenn Kirschner – Giuliani Law License Suspended is Part 1 of Accountability: SDNY Criminal Investigation is Part 2
No Dem Left Behind – Hold Them Responsible
Armageddon Update – “Voting Wrongs”
Rebel HQ – Trump Fanatic Facing Extra Jail Time After GOP Law Backfires (Karma is quite a lady.)
Randy Rainbow has a Tribute Parody for Barbra Streisand – it’s not satirical, so I’m not embedding it, but I thought I’d provide the link for those who love Randy as much as I do (and as mush as he loves Barbra)
Otter Reaction to Popcorn Maker (trilingual CC) These little maniacs are pretty cute. No, we don’t domesticate otters in the US. But this isn’t in the US and these are not US otters.
Beau – Let’s talk about Texas building the wall on its own….
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
For the last six years – longer, really, but that was about the point when we started to hear so many ignorant people screaming it – the Republican Party has been demonizing immigration. As this article points out and provides evidence for, if anything about immigration starts to actually harm the nation, it will be the loss of it.
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The dip in the US birthrate isn’t a crisis, but the fall in immigration may be
Reports of an American “baby bust” may be premature. But the drop in immigration puts the nation’s demographic future at risk. Ariel Skelly/DigitalVision via Getty
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in May 2021 that the nation’s total fertility rate had reached 1.64 children per woman in 2020, dropping 4% from 2019, a record low for the nation.
The news led to many stories about a “baby bust” harming the country. The fear is that if the trend continues, the nation’s population may age and that will lead to difficulties in funding entitlements like Social Security and Medicaid for seniors in the future.
But as a statistician and sociologist who collaborates with the United Nations Population Division to develop new statistical population forecasting methods, I’m not yet calling this a crisis. In fact, America’s 2020 birth rate is in line with trends going back over 40 years. Similar trends have been observed in most of the U.S.‘s peer countries.
The other reason this is not a crisis, at least not yet, is that America’s historically high immigration rates have put the country in a demographic sweet spot relative to other developed countries like Germany and Japan.
But that could change. A recent dramatic decline in immigration is now putting the country’s demographic advantage at risk.
Falling immigration may be America’s real demographic crisis, not the dip in birth rates.
A predictable change
Most countries have experienced part or all of a fertility transition.
Fertility transitions occur when fertility falls from a high level – typical of agricultural societies – to a low level, more common in industrialized countries. This transition is due to falling mortality, more education for women, the increasing cost of raising children and other reasons.
In 1800, American women on average gave birth to seven children. The fertility rate decreased steadily, falling to just 1.74 children per woman in 1976, marking the end of America’s fertility transition. This is the point after which fertility no longer declined systematically, but instead began to fluctuate.
Birth rates have slightly fluctuated up and down in the 45 years since, rising to 2.11 in 2007. This was unusually high for a country that has made its fertility transition, and put the U.S. birth rate briefly at the top of developed countries.
A decline soon followed. The U.S. birth rate dropped incrementally from 2007 to 2020, at an average rate of about 2% per year. 2020’s decline was in line with this, and indeed was slower than some previous declines, such as the ones in 2009 and 2010. It put the U.S. on par with its peer nations, below the U.K. and France, but above Canada and Germany.
The ideal situation for a country is steady, manageable population growth, which tends to go in tandem with a dynamic labor market and adequate provision for seniors, through entitlement programs or care by younger family members. In contrast, countries with declining populations face labor shortages and squeezes on provisions for seniors. At the other extreme, countries with very fast population growth can face massive youth unemployment and other problems.
Many countries that are peers with the U.S. now face brutally sharp declines in the number of working-age people for every senior within the next 20 years. For example, by 2040, Germany and Japan will have fewer than two working-age adults for every retired adult. In China, the ratio will go down from 5.4 workers per aged adult now to 1.7 in the next 50 years.
By comparison, the worker-to-senior ratio in the U.S. will also decrease, but more slowly, from 3.5 in 2020 to 2.1 by 2070. By 2055, the U.S. will have more workers per retiree than even Brazil and China.
Germany, Japan and other nations face population declines, with Japan’s population projected to go down by a massive 40% by the end of the century. In Nigeria, on the other hand, the population is projected to more than triple, to over 700 million, because of the currently high fertility rate and young population.
In contrast, the U.S. population is projected to increase by 31% over the next 50 years, which is both manageable and good for the economy. This is slower than the growth of recent decades, but much better than the declines faced by peer industrialized nations.
The reason for this is immigration. The U.S. has had the most net immigration in the world for decades, and the projections are based on the assumption that this will continue.
Migrants tend to be young, and to work. They contribute to the economy and bring dynamism to the society, along with supporting existing retirees, reducing the burden on current workers.
However, this source of demographic strength is at risk. Net migration into the U.S. declined by 40% from 2015 to 2019, likely at least in part because of unwelcoming government policies.
If this is not reversed, the country faces a demographic future more like that of Germany or even Japan, with a rapidly aging population and the economic and social problems that come with it. The jury is out on whether family-friendly social policies will have enough positive impact on fertility to compensate.
If U.S. net migration continues on its historical trend as forecast by the U.N., the U.S. population will continue to increase at a healthy pace for the rest of the century. In contrast, if U.S. net migration continues only at the much lower 2019 rate, population growth will grind almost to a halt by 2050, with about 60 million fewer people by 2100. The fall in migration would also accelerate the aging of the U.S. population, with 7% fewer workers per senior by 2060, leading to possible labor shortages and challenges in funding Social Security and Medicare.
While the biggest stream of immigrants is from Latin America, that is likely to decrease in the future given the declining fertility rates and aging populations there. In the longer term, more immigrants are likely to come from sub-Saharan Africa, and it will be important for America’s demographic future to attract, welcome and retain them.
================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, We don’t have an immigration problem – yet. Our real problem is, what do we do with over a third of the nation habitually demonizes whatever is good for the country and worships what is evil? Would it do any good if you were to mobilize every scary figure and group of figures from every mythology ever created, and go after them with the truth? It doesn’t sound terribly promising, but I suppose it might be worth a try.
Colleen was expecting to get released after her surgery around 3 or 3:30 pm. i’m hoping she did – but I also realize that there are many benign reasons whay that may not have happened. My day here was quiet enough. I hope everyone will be kind to b=me and overlook typos, duplications, and whatnot for a week starting monday, as the Met streams 7 American operas, one each day, for the week. I’ll try not to slack off, but I may be a wee bit short on sleep by Sunday.
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Short Takes
The Hill – Department of Justice sues Georgia over voting law
Quote – The suit was announced alongside another initiative from the Justice Department to battle rising threats made against local election officials. A memo from Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco establishes a task force across the FBI, as well as DOJ’s criminal division, the civil rights division, and the national security division. Click through for the full article.
The Hill – Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years prison for murder of George Floyd
Quote – Per state guidelines, the maximum sentence for unintentional murder in the second degree is 40 years, but because Chauvin has no previous criminal record, the presumptive sentence is 12.5 years, with an acceptable deviation range of 10.67 years to 15 years. But because Cahill agreed with the prosecution’s aggravating factors motion, the judge had the discretion to increase the sentence. Click through for more, and of course it’s also being reported elsewhere.
Politico – Graham: Biden made GOP look like ‘f—ing idiots’
Quote – “If he’s gonna tie them together, he can forget it!” Graham said. “I’m not doing that. That’s extortion! I’m not going to do that. The Dems are being told you can’t get your bipartisan work product passed unless you sign on to what the left wants, and I’m not playing that game.” Click through if you don’t mind thir format which makes it a bit tough to be sure you’re still in the same article. (Personally, I’m all for any Dem who can make the GOP look like – what he said.)
