A Business Call Gets Stood On Its Head

Just days ago, my wife and I were feeling sorry for Brandon Brown, the NASCAR driver who, during an interview after a victory, inadvertently became the viral anti-Biden meme when the interviewer deliberately misinterpreted the crowd's "[redacted] Joe Biden" chant as "Let's go, Brandon!" It seemed as though his good fortune suddenly went bad on him, since without any action or expression on his part, his name suddenly became an in-your-face political statement, the sort of thing that conventional sponsors avoid like the plague unless it's Black Lives Matter.

A week or so ago, articles were running on the difficulty the guy was having lining up sponsors, especially, as one writer puts it,

“Let’s Go, Brandon” is a manifestation of the class warfare that increasingly characterizes American society. It’s the cry of the working class, bold and joyous, utterly uncontrollable. It has energy and cheer, while the pathetic moaning of the ruling caste’s spokescreatures is rote, boring, and bereft of any power. The regime-approved memes our elite’s minions repeat on cable and in social media are the chant of serfs.

There used to be mainstream ads that even echoed this -- "Have a Coke and a smile," for instance, or for that matter, Apple's "1984" ad, or its "Think Different" campaign. As of this morning, Brown's problems have gone away. A sponsor realized there was money to be made in the bold and joyous, in energy and cheer.

NASCAR driver Brandon Brown is now being sponsored by a cryptocurrency named after the politically charged 'Let's Go Brandon' chant he unwittingly inspired, days after complaining that the phrase had cost him sponsorships.

'I'm excited to welcome @LGBcoin_io aboard my No. 68 Chevrolet Camaro as our 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series full season primary partner!' Brown announced on Twitter Thursday. Brandon shared a glossy video of himself walking up to his red, white and blue shevy [sic] emblazoned with the LGBCoin logo.

Brown, 28, unintentionally sparked the phrase the national anti-Biden chant after NBC sports reporter Kelli Stavast confused the crowd jeering 'F*** Joe Biden' for 'Let's Go Brandon!' at a NASCAR event in Alabama on October 2.

. . . 'We are proud to support Brandon this season, to help him continue his American dream,' James Koutoulas, LGBcoin HODLer and founder of Typhoon Capital Management, said in a press release.

'If we do our job right, when you think of us, and you hear, 'Let's Go Brandon,' you'll think and feel, 'Let's Go America.'

In wake of the new sponsorship, Brown - who is being referring to as 'America's Driver' by the cryptocurrency - will sport a red, white and blue Camaro with the logo and wordmark of LGBcoin during the upcoming season.

After securing funding from a portfolio of crypto entities this past year, he is now the first NASCAR driver to land multiple crypto deals.

He also distinguishes himself as an early attractor for meme and crypto partnerships.

'Having the financial support of LGBcoin is incredible, especially at such a pivotal time in our team's growth as we work to build to the next level of competition,' the pro-racing driver said.

This sort of thing, properly applied, has worked effectively in the past.

Two Vignettes Of The Morning After

According to The Daily Wire,

On Tuesday night, President Biden and his wife Jill, both of whom are triple-vaccinated, took a walk on a deserted Rehoboth Beach with their German Shepherd puppy during their Delaware vacation, but despite the fact there was reportedly no one within 10 yards, still refused to take their masks off. Last July, Biden insisted, “Don’t have to mask if you come home to Delaware with me.”

“The President, 79, even continued to wear his mask after the First Lady, 70, took hers off. It’s not clear who Biden believed he was protecting or who he felt he needed protection from as the only other people on the beach, the secret service, didn’t come within 10 yards,” The Daily Mail noted.

A few days earlier,

A pre-Christmas flight got dicey when a woman now dubbed ‘Airline Karen’ got into an altercation with another passenger.

The ATL Uncensored Twitter account posted a nearly two-minute video of a woman standing with her mask down below her chin while on Flight 2790 from Tampa, Florida on Dec. 23. The woman repeatedly tells an older male passenger who is seated to put his mask on.

. . . "Sit down, Karen. You’re a god—- Karen, sit down,” the man fires, to the vocal amusement of other passengers. The back-and-forth continues as flight attendants attempt to defuse the situation.

When the man calls her a “b—-“, Cornwall strikes him in the face and continues attempting to attack him as an attendant holds her back and the man yells, “That’s assault, now you’re going to jail!”

According to the UK Daily Mail,

The former Baywatch actress dubbed 'Delta Karen' for punching an 80-year-old man in the face on a Tampa-to-Atlanta flight, threatened to kill her mother and stepfather and kidnap their children, court documents claim.

Patty Cornwall's stepfather filed a restraining order against her in July 2020 claiming she made the threats while living at their house.

. . . Spoeri claimed his stepdaughter, who has now been released on bail following Thursday's air rage incident, had already been detained two or three times before by the authorities for mental health reasons.

So far, nobody has juxtaposed these two episodes, and I'm not sure why. In the case of the Delta Karen, an 80-year-old man stands up to a domineering, entitled, unstable woman "to the vocal amusement of other passengers". On the Rehoboth beach, a 79-year-old man, apparently fearing a similar reaction from entitled and unstable Karens in tne elites, performs an act of supererogation in continuing to wear his mask beyond even the most prudential exhortations of the public health authorities.

President Brandon is not, ever, going to say, "Sit down, Karen!" to the vocal amusement of anyone. Indeed, as I anticipated, he backtracked on Monday's assertion that there was no "federal solution" to COVID. But this leads me to a pearl-clutching analysis of the "Let's go, Brandon" phonomenon I ran into this morning:

When a caller used that expression to President Joe Biden's face during a livestream on Christmas Eve, it prompted widespread cheers on the right.

This is bad, and for multiple reasons. It's bad to spew vulgarity in public spaces, whether or not it's concealed by a modestly clever slogan. But it's worse to teach other Americans, especially children, that it's acceptable to practice politics by hurling insults at those on the other side of partisan disagreements.

. . . "Let's go, Brandon!" [doesn't] assert a fact or claim that could be argued about or disputed. However much you may disagree with the assertion, it's possible on principle to marshal evidence for and against the claim that Biden is a socialist, or a crook, or that he stole the 2020 election. But that's not what these slogans are about. They are insults intended to dishonor and offend the president and the 81 million or so Americans who voted for him. That makes them inimical to reason and deliberation. They express anger, and their aim is to provoke it in return. They are roughly equivalent to telling your neighbor to go to hell.

They are also roughly equivalent to telling your neighbor, "Sit down, Karen!" Or for that matter, the vulgarism behind "Let's go, Brandon!" is almost exactly the same as Churchill's V gesture, which does not actually mean "Victory".

This isn't the high school debate team. At this point, the national mood is calling for more people to tell the Karens to sit down.

Constitutional Crisis!

I've been saying for a couple of weeks that we're in the Morning After phase of a moral panic, and part of the hangover this time is a quiet constitutional crisis. Part of the issue now, though possibly not the underlying one, is that nobody in the line of succession, the president, the vice president, or the speaker, is up to the job, and I'm not sure if we have the luxury of three years, or even 11 months, for this to work itself out.

People are starting to notice.

[Historian] Jon Meacham scares his audience, Democrats, into thinking that if Trump runs and loses again, he will do as he did in 2020 and refuse to accept the loss. He will again claim the election was stolen from him. Meacham appeared on Fareed Zakaria’s Sunday show on CNN and when asked if such a scenario would present a constitutional crisis, Meacham responded by saying, “It’s an unfolding one.”

According to the UK Daily Mail,

Presidential historian and former Biden speechwriter Jon Meacham said that he believes if ex-President Donald Trump runs for a third time in 2024, America may be thrown into a civil war as Democrats continue to press for voting rights legislation.

Meacham, a regular CNN contributor, appeared on Fareed Zakaria's Sunday show on the network, where the host said Trump will claim he won regardless of the results in 2024.

'Doesn't that present us with a constitutional crisis?' Zakarias asked.

'I think it's an unfolding one,' Meacham replied, calling it 'an interesting use of the word crisis.'

Meacham said the riot at the Capitol on January 6 was the closest America came to forfeiting its Democracy since the Civil War.

I don't think we can dispute that people across the political spectrum -- Meacham is on the left and a Biden speechwriter -- have had an instinctive feeling that something was hinky about either the November 3, 2020 US presidential election or the January 6, 2021 demonstration at the US Capitol that protested that election. I'm an agnostic about whether the election was stolen, although clearly as a practical matter, US citizens generally have come to behave as though it was legitimate and are working through the political process to redress grievances in future elections.

And so far, it appears that they may well succeed. 2024 is a long way off for prognostication, but Trump at this point continues to dominate the political scene, consistently winning hypothetical rematches against Biden, while his endorsements of other Republican candidates are important. But even if he were to fade -- something we can't rule out -- there are other strong potential Republican candidates, including now Ted Cruz, who performed well in 2016.

What Meacham and others of the elite who were quick to agree with him on the CNN show reocognize is that the see-saw political settlement that emerged in the 1970s, resulting first from Nixon's landslide defeat of McGovern in 1972 followed by his forced resignation in 1974 and Carter's election in 1976, is coming apart. Biden and Pelosi both began their political careers during this period and advanced as conventional machine politicians.

Their problem is that the Republican party has adapted over the succeeding decades, while the Democrats have continued to rely on formulas developed during Watergate. Both Bush administrations owe a lot to Gerald Ford, but the Bushies are gone, with a tiny rear guard led by Lynne Cheney. On the other hand, the Democrat strategy against Trump following his upset election was pure Nixon era, to concoct media-driven scandals and try to drive him from office via congressional investigations, and when that didn't work, they simply repeated the effort expecting a different result. We now hear the January 6 committee will redouble its efforts in the new year. Good luck with that.

The problem with the current national mood is that whatever the Democrats were trying to accomplish in 2020, it simply didn't work, and we're seeing the results on a daily basis. That seems to be bothering everyone, but for now, we don't have any kind of resolution.

"Is It Covid-19 Or A Cold?"

"A doctor explains how to tell the difference." This story is on today's CNN live COVID news feed.

While Covid-19 cases are sharply rising across the US, the winter season is also a time for the common cold. Symptoms for the two can certainly look the same — sore throat, runny nose, cough and headache, among others.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed gives guidance to people trying to figure out if they have been infected and need to get tested or if they just have a cold.

. . . "Even though with Omicron, it's less likely that you're going to lose your sense of smell or sense of taste, those are really specific for Covid-19," he said.

Another common symptom with Omicron is a headache, El-Sayed added.

I'm subscribed to Alex Berenson's substack, and his reaction this morning was

Guys, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly: it is OVER.

The Omicold (pronounced Immacold) variant is about to bring this clown show to its inevitable conclusion.

. . . When your media water-carriers have to write articles explaining the difference between Covid and a cold… it’s over.

So why won’t Uncle Joe just say so? Because the current strategy isn’t working - not politically, and not for the country. It’s time to surrender to the ro like you did to the Taliban and to inflation.

Well, President Brandon is at least moving in that direction. Yesterday he told the governors on a call that “There is no federal solution” to COVID. For now, it appears that this statement is meaningless, since it doesn't look like the administration will drop its efforts to defend its various vaccine mandates as their cases come before the US Supreme Court.

It's just an effort to dodge the conundrum I've noted here, that nothing he's done over the past year has had any effect on the pandemic, yet when it does play itself out -- as it currently appears to be doing -- he'll get no political credit for that, either. Best just to step away from the whole thing, but on the other hand, withdrawing the vaccine mandates would make him look weak.

Meanwehile, with Omicron, The Science is collapsing as well:

There are legitimate concerns about the trajectory of the newest variant, Omicron, and public health experts are paying close attention to the exponentially mounting cases, particularly in the United Kingdom, which in the past has functioned as a canary in the Covid-19 coal mine for the U.S.

. . . [T]he rapidly mounting case numbers and overall transmissibility have been alarming, particularly in the U.K. According to a Dec. 10 government technical briefing (see page 17), Omicron cases were expanding by 35% per day.

But there’s something else different this time around, at least in the U.K.: the statistical relationship between Covid-19 cases and deaths appears to have broken down with Omicron.

. . . In earlier waves, rising death rates would follow an increase in cases; the impact of rising cases on death rates could be seen visually and validated statistically. Deaths would follow cases upward, and peak roughly two to three weeks after new cases began trending downward. With Omicron, however, we not only don’t see the rise in death rates that were associated with the first waves, but we actually see a continuing decline in death rates, despite a radical increase in cases.

As of today, panic porn headlines have taken a hiatus, and over the past week or so, advice from the public health authorities to ban unvaxxed relatives from Christmas dinner has been muted. As of this morning, other than in New York, where Mayor DeBlasio is a lame duck, there don't seem to have been mass cancellations of New Year's celebrations.

I think we're definitely entering the Morning After phase of the 2020 moral panic. In the aftermath, though, we're left with a quiet constitutional crisis.

NASA Hires Theologians To Prepare Earthlings For Alien Life

How are government theologians, on contract or on the payroll, not a violation of the Establishment Clause of the US First Amendment?

NASA is looking to the heavens for help with assessing how humans will react if alien life is found on other planets and how the discovery could impact our ideas of gods [sic] and creation.

The agency hired 24 theologians to take part in its program at the Center for Theological Inquiry (CTI) at Princeton University in New Jersey, which NASA gave a $1.1 million grant to in 2014.

CTI is described as building 'bridges of under understanding by convening theologians, scientists, scholars, and policymakers to think together - and inform public thinking - on global concerns.'

So let's back up. Theology is literally the "study of God". As even our Hollywood Episcopalian rector explained back in the day, it isn't the study of whether there's a God, it's the study of the God Who exists, and as a practical matter in the West, it's the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Central to that tradition is a creation in which a unique creature, Man, is fashioned in God's image, equipped with reason, skill, language, and free will to operate in creation toward a mutual destiny with God.

Now, things may very well be otherwise. Buddhists, Mormons, and Scientologists are not much in tune with the Christian creeds, but at least the US First Amendment prevents the government from choosing sides. In modern times, though, governments have sought the convenience of eliminating Judeo-Christian moral traditions that stand in the way of eugenic or redistributionist policies. The governments that wish these things most fervently seem to think that materialist, anti-religious, or at least anti-Judeo-Christian, views are most tolerant of such policies.

One of the chief obstacles to more widespread anti-Judeo-Christian materialism as relates to the observable universe has been Fermi's Paradox, which according to Wikipedia says

The Fermi paradox is the conflict between the lack of clear, obvious evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for their existence.

As a 2015 article put it, "If life is so easy, someone from somewhere must have come calling by now."

Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi blurted out, "But where is everybody?" (although the exact quote is uncertain).

In fact, the whole history of Mars probes so far may be characterized as a great vindication of Fermi, with successive expeditions, ranging from photo overflights to rovers digging beneath the soil, proving fruitless in detecting even the tiniest fossil evidence of ancient life, despite the confident predictions of the neo-Darwinian model that, given the presence of water, organic elements, and enough time for the process to occur, life must certainly have emerged from the primordial ooze there as it did on earth.

The names of the NASA Mars rovers to date suggest progressive stages of frustration with this project: Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Might the next ones move on to Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance? I've come increasingly to believe that the whole space exploration effort, especially following the passing of Wernher von Braun, who did come to see a transcendent purpose in it, has been an epic boondoggle of an attempt to refute the Judeo-Christian picture of creation, with Man created uniquely in God's image. Get rid of that, and everything is permitted.

It's been an immense expenditure of national and world treasure to find even a single microscopic piece of material evidence to contradict it, and so far, it's failed. But no matter, we'll find it yet, if not under Martian sands, then most certainly in the ammonia oceans under the ice of Jupiter's moons. Whenever it happens, with keen foresight, the government will have a team of theologians on the payroll to prepare us earthlings for the event. The only one mentioned so far by name is The Revd Dr Andrew Davison MA DPhil (Oxford) MA PhD, an Anglican. I'm sure he'll do just fine, with those degrees and all, and Anglicans are certainly at the forefront of permitting everything.

The ray of hope is that Musk and Bezos are replacing the feckless government objectives with an efficiency borne of crass commercialism, which I find reassuring.

"Let's Go Brandon, I Agree!"

I guess everyone was on holiday when President Brandon made his remark, and so far, I've seen little worthwhile commentary. The best was

COVID has not been shut down as he promised. And his Build Back Better agenda has been torched as well. So, yes—'let's go Brandon’ and Merry Christmas.

Biden agreeing that he should go screw himself is probably the greatest Christmas gift of all time.

But does this say anything about Brandon's mental condition? It was a complete, coherent statement generally reflective of context. If the caller had said, "Let's go, Yankees!" And Brandon had agreed, there would have been absolutely nothing notable about it. On the other hand, if the president had been muttering about spiders creeping up his arms, that would have been something more clearly indicative of a problem. But we didn't see anything like that.

I think it was simply a gaffe, something Biden has been known for throughout his career. Granted it was a gaffe at the historic level, approaching Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake!" -- and Brandon may yet surpass himself and even Marie Antoinette in the time remaining to him -- but it was just a gaffe.

This is not to suggest there isn't a basic problem, just that the problem isn't pathological. He's dumb as a rock, but he isn't sick in any traditional sense, which really removes the 25th Amendment as a solution to the ongoing quiet constitutional crisis.

There's actually a second data point that for me is almost as concerning:

President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden did not go to church for Christmas, but instead chose to watch the Mass virtually from the White House.

The White House did not explain why Bidens skipped the church for Christmas, as the president typically attends Catholic Mass regularly.

Although US Catholic bishops typically dispensed Catholics from the obligation to attend Sunday mass during he pandemic, this obligation was restored in both Washington, DC and Wilmington, DE last summer:

On June 2, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory and the Bishops of the Province of Baltimore issued a joint statement lifting the general dispensation from the obligation of Catholics to attend Mass on Sunday and Holy Days, beginning the weekend of June 26 and 27.

The statement is signed by Cardinal Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington; Archbishop William E. Lori of the Archdiocese of Baltimore; Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of the Diocese of Arlington; Bishop Barry C. Knestout of the Diocese of Richmond; Bishop Mark E. Brennan of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston; and Bishop William Francis Malooly, Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Wilmington.

So although President Brandon considers himself a "devout Catholic", skipping mass on a day of obligation, which includes both Christmas and regular Sundays, is a no-no. This year, observant Catholics must attend mass on both December 25 and the next day, December 26, which is a Sunday. Strictly speaking, Brandon must now make it to Reconciliation and confess not one, but two mortal sins, as well as a likely third, scandal, since as a public figure he set an example of skipping mass.

And of all people, Brandon or Dr Jill could hardly be better placed to make a call to the archdiocese and have them send over a priest for private masses on both days, no questions asked.

I think this goes not to the president's mental health but to a serious spiritual deficiency, which we also see in nominal Catholic Speaker Pelosi, where some sense of entitlement seems to exempt both of them from ordinary obligations. And as best I can see, they've both been that way all their lives. This isn't age related. And does either do anything close to tithing not just their official salaries, but the multimillions in graft, lagniappes, and baksheesh that clearly stream their way?

I think this is not least among the issues that underlie the current national disquiet. Pretending it's senility or dementia, or even simple incompetence, dodges the actual problem.

Merry Christmas

“I Want To Start By Acknowledging How Tired And Worried You Are"

I tried to watch Biden's latest COVID speech on the web, but it became plain after just a few minutes that it was flat, listless, and desultory. I think it's fair that he himself may have been tired and worried, but the country at large was busy with Christmas and fairly confident that Biden would be too terrified to try to lock anything serious down, so nobody actually paid much attention. I looked at Politico's account of the speech:

But even he must know he faces a near-impossible task, as he tries to glue back together some sense of unity in a Humpty Dumpty of a nation consumed by disease, division and distrust. The combination of a worn-out public, mixed messaging from health officials and stiff skepticism from large swathes of the country mean the president will struggle to break through.

. . . But restoring trust, and his own political sheen, is difficult when Biden is also the de facto voice of pandemic response at a time of plummeting trust in science and expertise, particularly (though not exclusively) among Republicans.

It's notable that in this address, unlike prior ones from both Trump and himself, he wasn't flanked by the likes of Drs Fauci and Birx. No prestige to be drawn from them now. His problem is that the moral panic narratives that drove the 2020 election and the leftist optimism of 2021 have run their course.

It didn't help, for instance, that in the public health establishment's effort to revitalize vaccination hysteria, two fully vaxxed and boosted US senators tested positive over the past weekend, but this simply confirmed the growing public awareness, and indeed the forced acknowledgement by the public health establishment itself, that the fully vaxxed and boosted can contract and spread COVID. As one commentator noted, it's as though the highway safety people have had to acknowledge that seat belts don't necessarily work.

This in turn destroyed the most recent attempt to identify folk devils for the panic, the anti-vaxxers and the unvaxxed. Last week, Biden tried to threaten them with, if not the power of the law, at least the wrath of the Almighty:

"For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death... for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm," Biden continued.

This week it was,

“If you’re not fully vaccinated, you have good reason to be concerned. You’re at higher risk of getting sick and at higher risk of passing it to your friends and family.”

. . . “Because Omicron spreads so easily, we will see some vaccinated people test positive – perhaps in large numbers. Vaccinated people may get sick, but they are still protected from severe illness and death.”

This is not the FDR of Pearl Harbor:

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

. . . I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

. . . With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

If from nothing other than a rhetorical standpoint, Biden's speech in contrast was a tired acknowledgement that there's really not much we can do. Get vaxxed. It's actually slightly better than not getting vaxxed. Please get vaxxed. But the daily reports are that the most vaxxed US regions, and the most vaxxed countries, are the ones with record COVID surges.

The justification for the BLM riots, systemic racism in society merely reflected in universal police misconduct, has been steadily collapsing in the second half of this year. The COVID narrative, that Science led by Dr Fauci would prevail over an anti-Science Donald Trump and defeat COVID, is collapsing with Omicron and a determination to restore a normal Christmas season.

Ex presidents don't hold press conferences. Period. Donald Trump will hold one on January 6 to contest the House "insurrection" investigation. I'm not sure if he'll make a comeback, nor if he does that it'll be an unalloyed good thing, but it's a sign that things are changing. Big time.

"Is There Pirate Treasure On Oak Island?"

With a great deal happening but no news, I figured I'd turn to a subject I've intended to cover for some time anyhow, the Oak Island treasure and the current status of the search. We went to cable in 2012, not long after the Curse of Oak Island series started on the History Channel, and for several years I didn't bother with it, taking what I now recognize is the elitist approach that the whole thing is a fraud. It wasn't until about season 5 that I started paying attention, and after several years, it's become our must-watch show above all others.

The YouTube link above consists of a university-educated toff from the UK sneering at the whole enterprise, which for me is an indication that he simply doesn't watch the show. He does mention the current main players, the brothers Rick and Marty Lagina -- he mispronounces their names, which are spoken with a hard "g", another clear indication that he's probably never watched the show, and he basically dismisses them as a couple of rich eccentric Americans.

The problem is that the Laginas, especially Marty, are rich, but they aren't trust fund dilettantes. The family money seems to come from Marty, who first made a fortune from fracking, but when that became politically incorrect, he sold that business, turned around, and made another fortune from wind power, currently much more politically acceptable. This is a canny guy. He runs a vineyard as a sideline, but it looks like much of his surplus wealth goes to indulge his older brother Rick, a retired postal worker, who'd grown fascinated with the Oak Island mystery after seeing a Readers Digest article in January 1965.

To me, the actual story arc of the show revolves around Marty, even though Rick is the true believer. Marty pretty clearly began the project from love of Rick, but for much of the story was a treasure skeptic until very recent finds. On the other hand, the fact remains that Marty is an extremely canny guy. Whether or not Rick was chasing a will-o-the-wisp, when he sank money into the island, he was careful to negotiate a very favorable agreement with the province of Nova Scotia that ensured, should there actually be treasure on the island, that it would get 10%, the Laginas and their partners the remainder.

This was maybe a decade ago, when it was plenty easy for the province to sign anything on the bet that the Laginas were just as crazy as all the unsuccessful searchers had been for 200 years. Crazy indeed. The History Channel had also been negotiating with the Laginas from the start to run a show along the line of their other fare like Ancient Aliens, but it looks like Marty also held out with them for the best deal possible, and he now pretty clearly has control of the show, leaving aside the money it brings in. I agree with the YouTuber to some extent when he says, "There definitely is money there, if you own the History Channel." But Marty gets a cut, and he ain't done.

The problem for the province is there's incresingly money there in the presence of the show, but worse, Marty's canniness is coming through year on year. He runs what can only be characterized as a business operation behind the scenes. The dialogue alone in the show suggests that this is a structured operation, with Marty as CEO with signature authority, Rick as COO, and other Lagina family members and business partners with strictly delegated areas of authority. My surmise is that there are attorneys and accountants -- good ones -- behind the scenes. The intent is to make money.

We now get to the current state of the story arc: over the past couple of years, the systematic effort Marty has sponsored, with serious investment money to bring in heavy equipment for search and excavation, has been making it more likely that something important is actually down there. The YouTuber above thinks it's just random coins, brooches, and baubles that don't prove much of anything, but just in the last two seasons, the Lagina operation has uncovered a road, acknowledged to be a major piece of European civil engineering from the 1500s or 1600s, leading from a potential dock to the money pit area.

Among other things, this has led Marty to buy up almost all the rest of the island. He's a canny guy.

This in turn has led the province to realize there's more to the project than they'd thought when Marty negotiated the first agreement, and over a few seasons, it has been trying to increase its control over the operation. They appear to have unilaterally revised the agreement to place archaeoligists who report to the province on site, with increasing requirements to approve all activity. Marty up to this year has gone along, since academically respectable archaeologists on site do nothing but increase the prestige of the Laginas.

This has also done a great deal for the neighboring area around Lunenburg, NS. Occasional interviews with local business owners indicate that the popularity of the show has extended what had been just a fair-weather vacation season to year-round business. Tourists swarm to pubs sometimes featured on the show in hopes of spotting the Laginas there. Stores, restaurants, bed and breakfasts, and so forth all benefit. The Irving Company, a New Brunswick based player in construction and heavy equipment, is also doing quite well.

This year, Nova Scotia made a heavy-handed effort to shut down much of the operation on the island on the archaeological excuse that First Nations artifacts had been discovered in the search, and nothing much could be undertaken until the First Nations had also gotten involved. Right.

Marty is a canny guy. A not much emphasized plot line over recent episodes suggests the province is backing down. After all, the Irving Company wants the business. The Lunenburg businesses want the search to continue. Marty kicked most of the archaeologists off the island as the province finds it will nevertheless actually approve new excavations. It's good not to have bad publicty on one of the most popular TV shows. I've got to assume the offstage attorneys also earned their fees.

The show is popular because it's an American story, much as UK toffs miss the point. My admiration for Marty Lagina grows by the week.

The Quiet Constitutional Crisis

The heretofore unmentioned circumstance is entering public discourse:

Vice President Harris asserted that Joe Biden is president — not Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — during a tense exchange on Charlamagne Tha God's Comedy Central show.

Charlamagne asked Harris to name the country's "real president."

"It's Joe Biden. And don't start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he's president," Harris told the host of "Tha God's Honest Truth" on Friday in an interview on the weekly late-night program.

More remarkable is an op-ed in The Hill that suggests -- for the first time I'm aware in polite discussion -- that the Spiro Agnew option is potentially on the table.

The last vice president of the United States to resign was Spiro Agnew in October 1973. Should Vice President Harris be the next?

. . . Ironically, as more and more Republicans hope that Harris remains on the ticket — especially as the candidate for president — a growing number of Democrats are publicly vocalizing their concerns about President Biden and Harris as viable candidates three years from now.

Agnew, Richard Nixon’s vice president, resigned after pleading no contest to a felony count of tax evasion. His resignation came just 10 months before Nixon resigned the presidency in disgrace. Their resignations set off a “musical chairs” version of appointed vice presidents, and soon after, Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller assumed the country’s two highest offices.

I first mentioned the Agnew scenario here back on July 3 as I noted the increasing chatter about Harris's poor performance. but nobody polite at that point mentioned Agnew or any potential two-shoe drop. The implication in the link above is that influential people are thinking past a likely 2022 midterm defeat and are beginning to worry that neither Biden nor Harris is a viable 2024 candidate, while Donald Trump hasn't gone away and is beating Biden in polls.

But I think making Biden and Harris a theoretical issue for 2024 is a polite disguise for actually saying the problem is much more immediate. The two people now in the presidential line of succession are Vice President Harris and Speaker Pelosi. Should Harris be coaxed into resigning, Pelosi would be second in line over a period in which a new vice president would need to be nominated and confirmed, which, with congress very narrowly divided and few obvious choices for her replacement, could be long and contentious.

It's increasigly plain that the problem isn't Donald Trump in 2024. The problem is Biden and his successors now, with potentialy urgent issues like a Russian invasion of Ukraine or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan on the radar. The US probably doesn't have the luxury of the 10 month interregnum it had in the Agnew-Nixon maneuver.

What's beginning to occur to me -- and I'm not sure why it's taken so long -- is that political leaders are normally well spoken. The most poorly spoken president in my lifetime other than Biden was Dubya, but his problem was in large part just that he spoke Texan, not Yale, and with a teleprompter, he was fine. Biden is never anything but a stream of misspeaks, malapropisms, stutters, slips, slurs, and hypercorrections, and the teleprompter has no effect. Harris never comes off as anything but shallow and unserious. Advice from Peggy Noonan that she should serious up and rise to her potential reponsibilty is delusional.

Pelosi is an octogenarian corrupt machine politician in a safe seat, and her communication skills are generally at a par with Biden and Harris. Her histrionic public style verges on drag queen. Leaving policy issues completely aside, none has actual leadership qualities. But considering the now certain failure of the BBB, which Pelosi had characterized as her "legacy", she's become as much a lame duck as Biden.

I think it's increasingly likely we'll be seeing an Agnew scenario, sooner rather than later. Whom will they nominate to replace Harris? I don't rule out Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, As I Said

According to the UK Daily Mail, US Omicron cases have doubled overnight:

The number of confirmed Omicron cases in the U.S. has nearly doubled in a period of 24 hours, and six Northeastern states saw a record number of daily COVID cases this week as the variant is now confirmed in 44 states, with New York hit the hardest.

As of Saturday morning, there were 830 cases of the Omicron COVID-19 variant confirmed by DNA sequencing across the country, a 97 percent increase from Friday morning's tally.

In reality, the true number of Omicron cases is much higher, as only 1 to 2 percent of all cases are sequenced for variant markers, but the testing data shows a disturbing national trend.

The problem is that as is increasingly reported from Europe, the Omicron variant is far milder. The Daily Mail story continues at length to conflate Delta with Omicron, but its graphs simply illustrate another point I've been making:

There's little difference between the late 2020 peak and the late 2021 peak nationally, despite the fact that by the Daily Mail's count, 72% of US residents have had at least one dose of vaccine since the 2020 peak. According to this site, 203,479,206 people or 62% of the population have been fully vaccinated. Of those, the percentages in vulnerable populations are far higher. But this has had no remotely proportional impact on cases or deaths overall in the US, currently based on the Delta variant.

The public health establishment has simply had no good explanation for this state of affairs. Its strategy throughout has been to scold the plebs for insufficient adherence to whatever the current prescription is: too many block parties; not enough masking; not enough social distance; not enough jabs; not enough boosters. In response to the new wave, it's going to be rinse, repeat.

In fact, I found a really good example of the current credentialed line in a recent New York Magazine story South Africa's Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

First, there’s the simple limit to testing capacity. As things increase, our testing capacity doesn’t increase as fast, and so we’re missing more and more cases. That can give you a distorted picture — it could look like a plateau in Gauteng, but you could imagine it’s really a much higher crest.

I also bet we can expect a lot more underreporting of Omicron, compared to previous wave, because it’s more mild, either through existing immunity or through actual reduction of intrinsic severity. And if, on average, you’ve reduced the severity of cases, there’d be a lot of people that don’t bother to come to the hospital or to get tested. And so as a rough guess, you might go from like one in 10 cases reported in South Africa to one in 20 or even one in 30 cases — that wouldn’t seem unreasonable to me. And that makes it so that at the same caseload of Delta versus Omicron you could actually have three times as many infections with Omicron.

We could also have a change in generation interval. If we have Omicron kind of doubling at this very fast two or three day rate, you don’t actually have to have Rt be three. You could have actually just made the whole thing faster without having the number of secondary infections being much higher. And we don’t have no way [sic] of knowing that at this moment.

It's a lot of entre nous patter sprinkled with jargon leavened by "I also bet", "rough guess", "kind of", and "just made the whole thing faster", concluding with "we don't have no way of knowing that at the moment". I'm not going to check if this guy is an MD, PhD, both, or neither. He isn't a credible spokesman.

This is the looming problem with the received narrative. It's putting out Ponzi scheme numbers on how fast things are gonna get worse, such that if they don't get a whole lot worse in a matter of weeks, they'll start to lose any remaining credibility. Remember that they're claiming cases will double at a rate ranging from every 1.5 to 3 days, such that by sometime next month, everyone in the world will be sick, and there'll be nobody left to infect but the space aliens. But if things do get a whole lot worse, they look just as bad, because after more than two years, they've proven themselves utterly feckless to deal with the problem and lose any remaining credibility anyhow.

If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze, and have a ball. If that's all.

"Viral Blizzard"?

I comtinue to think we're going through an effort to reboot the scary flashing red circles of March 2020. Even the conserative aggregators are running clickbait headlines about a new "viral blizzard":

A former COVID-19 adviser for President Biden's transition on Thursday warned of a “viral blizzard” that is about to hit the U.S. as COVID-19 cases rise and concerns about the omicron variant continue to fester.

Michael Osterholm, who served on Biden’s coronavirus advisory team during the transition, said in an appearance on CNN that the health care system could be overwhelmed as omicron becomes more prevalent in the U.S.

"I think we're really just about to experience a viral blizzard," Osterholm told CNN's Erin Burnett. "I think in the next three to eight weeks, we're going to see millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out."

But Dr Osterholm has been a consistent COVID entrepreneur, outdoing even Dr Fauci. A little over a year ago, he said,

Shutting down businesses and paying people for lost wages for four to six weeks could help keep the coronavirus pandemic in check and get the economy on track until a vaccine is approved and distributed, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a coronavirus advisor to President-elect Joe Biden.

Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said earlier this week that the country is headed toward “Covid hell.” Cases are rising as more people grow tired of wearing masks and social distancing, suffering from so-called “pandemic fatigue,” he said Wednesday. Colder weather is also driving people indoors, where the virus can spread more easily.

That is to say, in November 2020, fully six months after lockdowns were finally lifted, he wanted to reimpose them for "four to six weeks". Yeah, like 15 days to flatten the curve. It looks like not even Dr Fauci bought into that one. So I've got to put "viral blzzard" in the context of last year's "Covid hell". We got through hell, I assume we'll make it through a blizzard.

Next we have Omicron more likely to reinfect than Delta, no milder -study, which was the lead at one of the aggregators yesterday:

Dec 17 (Reuters) - The risk of reinfection with the Omicron coronavirus variant is more than five times higher and it has shown no sign of being milder than Delta, a study showed, as cases soar across Europe and threaten year-end festivities.

The results of the study by Imperial College London were based on UK Health Security Agency and National Health Service data on people who tested positive for COVID-19 in a PCR test in England between Nov. 29 and Dec. 11.

Aha! Imperial College London! The same institution that foisted the discredited models that led to the 2020 lockdowns on us! I'm entitled to be skeptical here, too.

But there's another issue we still need to address, something I only gradually learned to look at during my postgraduate studies in the University of Hard Knocks, a reasonability check. The numbers we're seeing in these stories suggest a dire outcome three, six, or eight weeks from now. That's what Drs Osterholm and Fauci are telling us as we speak. These predictions are supported by assertions like "more than five times higher", or the one below:

The exact number is 21,027 cases, the first time New York State has officially cracked 20,000 in a day. It’s a cinch that case counts were higher than that in the early days of the pandemic, before testing was available, but give it a week. The way Omicron spreads, they’re likely headed for a true record in daily COVID infections. In fact, if it’s true that the variant’s doubling time is two to three days, New York State could reach 100,000 cases by Christmas Day. The entire United States is averaging “only” 125,000 right now.

But "if it's true" that the variant's doubling time is two to three days, with eight days to Christmas as of yesterday and thus up to four doublings, we're actually talking about roughly 300,000 new cases per day by Christmas, aren't we? By January 1, we're up to over a million new cases per day. By January 31, we're talking something like the entire US case total to date per day, about 50 million. Two days after that, 100 million per day. Two days after that, 200 million new cases per day, after which we quickly exceed the US population in new cases per day. These are Ponzi scheme numbers. Professors of math and statistics warn us to be skeptical of such. And I have no idea where this guy, who claims to be a conservative, is getting estimates like a doubling time of two to three days.

And consider that if random people in the US had been returning from South Africa in mid-November and spreading cases at that rate, a month later we should already be looking at very noticeable numbers all over, when the current spikes in some regions are simply consistent with those we've seen over the past two years, while states like California and Florida remain flat. So far, rhe Omicron panic isn't passing a reasonability check.

But add to that the stories that, taken in context with what we already aren't seeing, suggest Omicron has in fact arrived, it's indeed spreading fast, but it's a non event:

The omicron variant has quickly surpassed the delta variant in collections taken from wastewater sampling sites in Orange County [Florida], officials said.

A sampling this week showed that omicron represented almost 100% of the strains in the samples from the wastewater facilities, Orange County Utilities spokesperson Sarah Lux said in an email.

It’s a different story when it comes to people seeking treatment for COVID-19, officials said.

“Those who are hospitalized are being primarily infected by the delta variant,” Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said Wednesday at a news conference held at the Orlando International Airport.

But remember that Florida is a state that hasn't had any sort of spike in cases even as Omicron permeates the sewers in Orlando. So I think my seat-of-the-pants estimate that if Omicron is here, we should be seeing it already is correct -- but so far, people aren't getting sick from it or even noticing it. And there's this news from South Africa:

South Africa, which announced the discovery of the variant on Nov. 25, is being watched as a harbinger of what may happen with omicron elsewhere.

. . . Currently there are about 7,600 people with Covid-19 in South African hospitals, about 40% of the peak in the second and third waves. Excess deaths, a measure of the number of deaths against a historical average, are just below 2,000 a week, an eighth of their previous peak.

“We are really seeing very small increases in the number of deaths,” said Michelle Groome, head of health surveillance for the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

More than 90% of hospital deaths were among the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, News24 reported, citing Waasila Jassat, a researcher with the NICD.

The problem is that the entrepreneurs, Biden, Fauci, Osterholm and so forth, are laying markers that we should be seeing a dire outcome in a matter of weeks, something that can easily be confirmed or discredited in a short period -- but if the virus is behaving like they claim it is, we should be seeing something much worse even now.

The Looming Conundrum Is Still Looming

A little over a year ago, President-elect Biden said this:

[A] "very dark winter" is approaching as the U.S. coronavirus case count nears 10 million.

"There is a need for bold action to fight this pandemic," Biden said in Delaware. "We're still facing a very dark winter."

Biden, whose campaign against President Donald Trump made the coronavirus a main focus, pledged to "spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once we're sworn in on Jan. 20."

Yesterday, a little over a year later, President Biden said this:

President Biden on Thursday warned of a winter of "severe illness and death" for unvaccinated Americans as coronavirus cases spike across the country.

Biden, in a meeting with medical advisers and Vice President Harris to discuss the pandemic, said the country was in a better position to deal with the omicron variant of COVID-19 because of steps taken to limit travel and increase access to boosters.

"But it's here now and it’s spreading, and it’s gonna increase," Biden said of the omicron variant, which experts think is more contagious than previous strains.

"For unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death... for themselves, their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm," Biden continued.

Dr Fauci laid down the same marker. Farther down in the story:

Anthony Fauci, Biden's top medical adviser on the pandemic, said earlier Thursday that the omicron variant will likely be dominant in the U.S. in "a few weeks" and warned of the possibility of hospitals being overwhelmed this winter.

So let me see. As best I can tell from the very sketchy and incomplete data that's been published, the Omicron variant, though first announced by South Africa on November 27, has been loose in the US, the UK, and elsewhere since about November 15. It is said to be exponentially more transmissible than the 2020 model, and it incubates in only 2 to 4 days. So why need we wait further weeks to have our hospitals overwhelmed? While regional US COVID statistics vary widely and are still driven by the Delta variant, here's the all time graph for Florida, which I think is significant because without vaccine, mask, or social distance mandates, its totals have remained low since the summer:

Given the very high transmissibility and short incubation period of Omicron, plus the relaxed attitude toward vaccines there, shouldn't we already have begun to see an alarming uptick? But if you go back to last fall and winter, cases there began to rise in late summer and peaked right around the new year. So much for last year's "dark winter".

The problem is that nothing's changed in the year since he pledged to turn things around.

"My first 100 days won't end the Covid-19 virus. I can't promise that," Biden said at an event in Wilmington, Delaware. "But we did not get in this mess quickly, we're not going to get out of it quickly, it's going to take some time. But I'm absolutely convinced that in 100 days we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better."

Last week, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, the President-elect said he will ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days after he takes office.

The conundrum is that, with the renewed doomsday rhetoric, either he's acknowledged that his COVID strategy has been ineffective, or he's sending the message that the doomsday rhetoric is an attempt to stoke continued panic over a steadily decreasing threat. Meanwhile, even the uber establishment Atlantic ran a story Where I Live, No One Cares About Covid.

Here's My Theory Of The Non Prosecution Four

Now that I've taken as good a look as can be had at the four Epstein assistants listed in the 2008 non prosecution agreement, Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff, the one thing that strikes me is that they had little in common. One was a pilot, one came from an affluent hedge fund background, while two were groomed to be Epstein confidantes from their teens. About the only thing they all did was, at least now and then, schedule nymphets for massages with Epstein. However, not all seem to have participated in those massages.

Here's my biggest question: how many $200,000 a year personal assistants does it take to schedule Jennifer for 11:00 if Heather can't make it? How many massages can a 55 year old guy handle in a day? Even at Epstein's most priapic, a dozen might be the upper limit, but hey, let's say it's 20. And it wasn't just these four who did the scheduling. Maxwell herself is alleged to have done it, and there were apparently others, which is suggested as well in the non prosecution agreement.

Nobody seems to have asked this question. Half a dozen $200,000 personal assistants with side benefits like full time nannies, fancy cars, paid hairdressers, expensive takeout, and paid education? Just to schedule Bambi if Debbie can't make it? That money must have been for something else.

Actually, I know a little about something else. I worked for three years during the Enron era for another company whose CEO pled guilty to securities fraud and spent 12 years in federal prison. It wasn't a total Ponzi scheme, but it had Ponzi elements: if revenues weren't what was expected in a given month, accounting just kept extending the days in the month until revenues added up to what they needed. The company had been operating that way from its founding.

I thought that place was strange from the start, though I knew nothing about the cooked books. The departments where I worked were absurdly overstaffed, with people who did absolutely nothing even by normal corporate standards. The products they sold had extremely poor reputations in the industry. It was generally understood -- and I was told this straight out more than once -- that it would cost too much to fix bugs that were reported, and if customers pressed field reps like me about it, we were to smile and mumble something about how we were sure they were working on it.

The bottom line was that it was impossible to work there and be conscientious. This worked out for a certain number of employees; the others were eventually edged out, as I was. But the key issue was that the company needed a certain number of people who seemed to be doing, their jubs to keep up appearances but couldn't possibly if they were in fact conscientious. Those were either really stupid or really corrupt. (My boss for much of that time was one of the corrupt. I remember her shriekiing to a colleague, "You know what? I made quota last month! Can you believe it?" In retrospect, it showed she was in on the frammis.)

Epstein's multiple personal assistants with little to do but schedule nymphets from day to day strike me as a symptom. One was a pilot, but I would guess she didn't do much flying and didn't do much else. Another was a hedge fund lady, but I would guess she didn't do much hedge funding and didn't do much else. All these assistants were being paid to look pretty and not ask questions, and unless they were into fun and games with the nymhpets, that was it.

In terms of the non prosecution agreement, they were basically decoys. There had to be people who worked for Epstein who knew what was really going on -- that is, other than Maxwell -- but so far, nobody has talked to them.

That's one thing that's hinky about the whole trial.

Who Is Adriana Ross?

The odd thing about the four women named in Epstein's 2008 non prosecution agreement is how unproductive it is to try to figure out what, if anything, they actually did all day. Adriana Ross is the best example. Just as the Maxwell trial began, the UK Mirror hyped,

A former model accused of organising under-age girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse has left the US as the FBI is poised to make arrests.

Adriana Ross, 36, who was once questioned about Prince Andrew under oath, was tracked down by the Mirror as she left her home in Miami, Florida.

As she packed a case into a car she refused to answer questions about Andrew or her alleged role with Epstein.

And when she later arrived at the city’s cruise terminal with her husband, she insisted: “I have nothing to say.”

. . . On Friday night sources told the Mirror that papers were being prepared ahead of “several arrests”.

But Ms Ross is now on a cruise of all things, where the FBI could pull her off the ship at will, and there still have been no arrests. Where have you gone, J Edgar? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. The Mirror story goes on,

She was accused of clearing three computers from Epstein’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2005 before police raided it – but when asked about this she exercised her right to remain silent.

During a civil prosecution in March 2010, she refused to answer questions about Prince Andrew, whose friendship with Epstein has led to public shame.

. . . Lawyers for Epstein’s victims also tackled Ross on notes found in the billionaire’s bin purportedly showing Ross allegedly arranging when and how victims would visit him.

One read: “Adriana hasn’t confirmed Julie for 11 yet, she is keeping Brittany on hold in case Julie doesn’t call back.”

Web searches bring up slightly more background. Elsewhere according to the UK Mirror,

Polish-born [Adriana] Ross moved to the US in 2002 and was once on the books of the prestigious Elite model agency.

She wed her first husband in Miami and worked for Epstein for a number of years until his first arrest in 2007.

Since leaving his employment, Ross has qualified as an accountant and lives with second husband, Ariel Salazar, in a run-down £217,000 home.

Ross and fellow alleged “potential co-conspirators” Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff and Nadia Marcinkova could still be subject to criminal charges in New York.

According to the Daily Beast,

Court filings reveal that an alleged co-conspirator referred to as Employee-1 will tell jurors that in 2005, Epstein’s staff continued to enable his sex crimes and that she made phone calls to schedule his underage “massage” appointments.

The unnamed employee appears to be Adriana Ross, a 38-year-old former model from Poland who was among four women to receive immunity as part of Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea agreement in Florida. . . . According to prosecutors, Employee-1 will testify that in October 2005, Epstein and her superior, another co-conspirator identified as Employee-2, instructed her to help remove computers from the money manager’s Palm Beach mansion.

However, the prosecution in the Maxwell trial has rested its oddly abreviated case without calling Ross or mentioning the 2005 episode. The story continues,

In a 2010 deposition, former butler Janusz Banasiak said Ross and a male associate hauled computers out of Epstein’s lair weeks prior to Palm Beach cops executing a search warrant. Ross, whose deposition was taken a month after Banasiak’s, invoked her Fifth Amendment rights when answering questions posed by victims’ lawyers. Those queries included: “Isn’t it true that Ghislaine Maxwell delivers underage minor females to Jeffrey Epstein?” and “How much additional money or bonus were you paid to take the computers that we’re talking about out of Jeffrey Epstein’s house?”

Attorneys also asked Ross if Maxwell discussed retaliating against girls who went to the police, and whether Maxwell and Epstein had ever threatened her. One lawyer asked whether Maxwell told Ross: “Don’t worry. If we get caught we have it covered and we’ll just attack these little girls.” The ex-model replied, “I refuse to answer.”

Since coming to America in 2002 on a visa sponsored by a modeling agency, Ross has used the surnames Mucinska and Salazar.

But that's the sum total. Ross worked for Epstein from some time after her arrival in the US at age 18 until about the time of Epstein's 2006 Florida arrest, which isn't all that long, especially in comparison to the others mentioned in the non prosecution agreement. There is no evidence of a romantic relationship with Epstein; she was already too old. During that time, she apparently set up a tentative visit by someone named Julie in case Brittany couldn't make it. We might assume the visit was to Epstein for a massage and that Brittany and Julie were underage, but we certainly don't know, and nothing of this is in evidence in the Maxwell trial.

And in any case, Ms Ross is exercising her right to remain silent. At best, it looks like Adriana Ross was a low-level scheduler who was paid to look good and hand out hundred-dollar bills to nymphets. The photo above suggests she wan't terribly bright. At one point, she helped a tech guy wheel out some computers. The other week, she went on a cruise with her husband.

Is that all? What about the tech guy? Wouldn't he have known a lot more about the computers? Did they ever go looking for him?

Something's hinky here. There's some sleight of hand going on, and the press, insofar as it's paying attention, is complicit.

Who Is Lesley Groff?

Lesley Groff is a more shadowy figure among the Epsein assistants named in the 2008 non prosecution agreement. Every indication is that, with an affluent and apparenty influential husband, she has been able to lawyer up and take advantage of the legal protections built around the Epstein enterprise followindg his arrests. She began working for him as an adult and does not appear to have been groomed or brought into his circle as a sex slave. Unlike many other Epstein associates, there's no indication she ever had a romantic relationiship with him. According to the Daily Beast,

Lesley Groff was another Epstein assistant who allegedly coordinated travel for young girls, often calling to schedule “massages.” Though not directly named in Monday’s [2019 Epstein] indictment, the 51-year-old has been previously named as one of Epstein’s three female assistants. According to a 2005 Chicago Tribune story about executive-assistant pay, Epstein divulged his assistants made about $200,000.

Groff's compensation went beyond that:

The accused trafficker told the business reporter that he bought Groff a Mercedes-Benz E320 to make her commuting easier after she had a child, and he paid for a full-time nanny so that she could keep working for him. “There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood,” Epstein told the Times.

According to this source,

In a separate 2017 lawsuit, filed by an anonymous Jane Doe, it was claimed that Groff was part of a circle of female 'recruiters' close to Epstein.

'Groff coordinated schedules between Epstein and the various young females used for sex; made travel arrangements for the girls; tended to their living needs; and communicated with them in order to maintain their compliance with the rules of behavior imposed upon them by the enterprise,' the lawsuit said.

Groff's attorney Michael Bachner has denied the claims, saying: 'As an executive assistant to Epstein, Lesley worked as part of a professional staff that included in-house attorneys, accountants, an office manager and other office staff.

'Lesley's job included making appointments for Mr. Epstein as directed by him, taking his messages, and setting up high-level meetings with CEOs, business executives, scientists, politicians and celebrities.

'At no time during Lesley's employment with Epstein did she ever engage in any misconduct.'

This site says Groff, "now lives with her husband in a Connecticut town populated by hedge fund owners [New Canaan]".

. . . her spokesman said she was an executive secretary for the billionaire sex offender.

“After Epstein’s arrest, his attorneys set up a company (DKI LLC) to pay salaries and other overhead. Lesley considered herself to be an employee of Epstein until she resigned in 2019 but was simply being paid by the company set up by Indyke at Epstein’s direction or knowledge,” the spokesman added.

. . . Lesley Groff’s husband, Ike Groff, is a former hedge fund founder and works in real estate. It seems she has gone on and lived her life since the Epstein allegations emerged in Florida 2005. As many have.

Lesley Groff came into Jeffrey Epstein’s world in the late 90s as a personal assistant.

The Epstein victim's compensation fund has provided her legal cover as well.

Lesley Groff said Tuesday that the withdrawal of a Manhattan Supreme Court suit filed by Jennifer Araoz cleared her name.

“This is a true vindication for our client Lesley Groff who had no knowledge and no participation in any of these horrific crimes,” said Groff’s attorney Jon Whitcomb. “But as a wife and a mother, Lesley remains heartbroken for Jennifer and all of the victims.”

Araoz accused Epstein of abusing her at his E. 71st St. mansion in 2001 and 2002. The first time Araoz visited the perv’s $77 million townhouse as a freshman in high school, she waited to meet Epstein in Groff’s office, according to her suit. Her abusive “massages” of Epstein, which began when she was 14 years old, were often arranged by Groff, she claimed.

Araoz filed a claim in the out-of-court Epstein Victims Compensation Program. She accepted a settlement from the program, which required she withdraw her claims.

“Participation in the Victims’ Compensation Program requires permanent discontinuance of all legal actions against former employees of Jeffrey Epstein, including Ms. Groff,” Araoz attorney Eric Lerner said. “My client maintains the truth and veracity of all of the allegations in her pleadings.”

The overall puzzle for me with Groff is that she and her husband appear to be, at least on the surface, sophisticated and respectable people. Groff worked for Epstein at a high level for at least 20 years, by these accounts, and although she was well paid, it must have been very clear to her that hinky stuff was going on -- as best anyone can tell, Epstein's fortune was built on Ponzi schemes, embezzlement,and blackmail. The other assistants were more like upscale bimbos; Groff isn't in that league. What did she know?

Who Is Nadia Marcinkova?

According to Wikipedia,

Nadia Marcinko, also known as Nada Marcinkova (Slovak: Naďa Marcinková) (born 1986), is a Slovakian-born pilot, flight instructor, and the CEO of Aviloop, an aviation website. She is known for her association with financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell.

. . . Over the years, several news outlets have reported that Marcinko, previously known under the name of Nada Marcinkova, worked as a long-term assistant to Jeffrey Epstein and was a regular pilot of Epstein's so-called Lolita Express. It was reported that she was one of four of Epstein's accomplices (including Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, and Lesley Groff) that were given immunity from prosecution in Epstein's controversial non-prosecution agreement from 2008. The Guardian reported that Marcinkova was questioned in 2010 concerning Epstein, who was convicted of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution

. . . According to the Miami Herald, Marcinko visited Epstein "more than 70 times when he was in Palm Beach custody," after his first criminal conviction.

In 2019, in written testimony given by Epstein's underage victims, Marcinko is also described as having encouraged and engaged in sexual acts with the underaged girls, sometimes involving sex toys, at the suggestion of Epstein. In one account, according to police, Epstein told one victim Marcinkova was his "sex slave", and that Epstein had "purchased her" when she was 15 from her family in the former Yugoslavia, a claim journalist Philip Weiss had made in New York Magazine in 2007.

However, Marcinkova/Marcinko is from Slovakia, not the former Yugoslavia, and her father denies selling her to Epstein. Whatever the circumstance, as with other of his associates, she seems to have transitioned from being an underage victim to an adult protegee whom Epstein sponsored by furthering her education and professional development, and she transitioned from victim to adult enabler and coconspirator. Also at the link,

Marcinko started flight training at a flight school at the Palm Beach County Florida Airport, and with 250 hours in her logbook, she accepted an offer from Jeffrey Epstein to obtain her Gulfstream II rating and was certified shortly thereafter.

Like Sarah Kellen, she has continued in an Epstein-related business after her direct association with Epstein ended, but the extent to which the business is actually profitable is highly uncertain.

Marcinko became popular on social media, under her label "Gulfstream Girl". Gulfstream Aerospace filed a trademark infringement suit (Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation v. Aviloop LLC et al.) against her on November 18, 2013. Marcinko and Gulfstream reached an out-of-court settlement, filed on January 6, 2014, after which Marcinko changed her online name to "Global Girl".

As of 2019, she remained CEO of her aviation business, Aviloop, described by Wired as a "supremely odd aviation branding business, whose website features flawless shots of her with Gulfstreams." The business is based at an address in New York, that is in a property controlled by Mark Epstein, brother of Jeffrey Epstein.

Like Sarah Kellen, her business is or was conducted out of an Epstein-related property and represents a continuation of a business role she performed with Epstein, in her case as a pilot. However, the business itself, as with Kellen, doesn't seem compatible with a high-profile lifestyle, and this raises for me the question of whether Epstein, in addition to securing a non prosecution agreement on their behalf, also provided them with a nest egg that could serve as an inducement not to testify against him or other associates in future legal cases.

Although Marcinkova was one of Epstein's pilots, and her flight logs were among those subpoenaed by the US Virgin Islands, she was not called to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell's trial. That link also points out that in 2009, another Epstein pilot,

David Rodgers provided logs that revealed that Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell were on board Epstein’s “Lolita Express” jet[.]

The only Epstein pilot called to testify in the Maxwell trial was Larry Visoski, who claimed he never saw any inappropriate activity on the plane. This raises the question of why neither Marcinkova nor Rodgers was called as a witness if Visoski's testimony was of so little value. But according to CNN, at Maxwell's trial,

Visoski testified that Epstein paid for his two daughters' education through college and gifted him acreage at the New Mexico ranch where Visoski built himself a home. The pilot noted that it was Epstein's practice to pay for the schooling of all his employees' children because he valued higher education. He also acknowledged signing a non-disclosure agreement as a part of his employment.

Two college educations in this day and age come to nearly half a million, far more than generous for an employee benefit. It sounds more like hush money. And neither Sarah Kellen nor Marcinkova had children, so we might suspect some other emolument of equivalent value was paid to them. In general, Epstein seems to have had a remarkable ability to spot weaknesses in his marks, victims, and enablers and keep manipuating them for decades with some combination of money, guilty conscience, loyalty, and obligation.