Who's Pulling The Strings?

It's been pretty much conventonal wisdom that President Biden is a puppet, and someone else is pulling the strings. Over the past couple of weeks, I've become convinced it's Cruella De Vil, better known as Speaker Pelosi. What clinched it was the report fromm Bob Woodward's new book, Peril. According to the New York Post,

A transcript of a call [between Gen Mark Milley and Speaker] Pelosi two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, obtained by the “Peril” authors, has her ranting at Milley about Trump’s access to nuclear weapons.

“If they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this? …

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”

Milley reportedly responded: “Madam Speaker. I agree with you on everything.”

The Army, of course, reports to the president as commander in chief, not to the House speaker. The call suggests, though, that Pelosi was giving Milley implicit orders, which included disregarding the authority of the president and defense secretary on the basis that the president was crazy, and the defense secretary was presumably kissing the president's butt. Under at least some circumstances, this would be cause for removal and potentially court martial.

But this also suggests Speaker Pelosi's view of her implicit authority, especially with a man of weak character now in the White House. The difficulty is that the Speaker's actual authority extends only so far, and even if Biden is in her pocket, the Senate is effectively tied, Sen Manchin is less easily bullied, and Manchin's own leader, Sen Schumer, has been keeping a very low profile.

The leverage Manchin has, which nobody has mentioned, is that senators can switch parties. In 2001, Sen James Jeffords, a Republican, became an independent and caucused with the Democrats, which switched the balance of power in the Senate. Cleary the potential exists for Manchin to do the same, which would halt the entire Democrat legislative agenda. Biden, in the Senate in 2001, must clearly be aware of this. Bullying Manchin is not an option.

Thus we see in Axios,

President Biden failed to persuade Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to agree to spending $3.5 trillion on the Democrats' budget reconciliation package during their Oval Office meeting on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Defying a president from his own party — face-to-face — is the strongest indication yet Manchin is serious about cutting specific programs and limiting the price tag of any potential bill to $1.5 trillion. His insistence could blow up the deal for progressives and others.

The problem for Cruella Speaker Pelosi is that she needs the support of the far-left faction of House Democrats for the full reconciliation package, and their position is currently that any reductions are non-negotiable. For Manchin to insist on substantial reductions in the package endangers its support in the House. He's effectively giving Biden, which is to say Pelosi, two bad options: get a partial infrastructure bill, requiring Pelosi to work out a compromise with the leftists, or see Manchin defect to the Republicans and lose everything.

One one hand, I'm not sure if Pelosi isn't the one suffering mental decline, because it seems as though her grip on power is loosening, while she's in denial. On the other, there's really too much in it for Manchin to back down. Apparently no amount of behind the scenes baksheesh has been sufficient to get him to do it so far; at minimum, this makes him a very important guy, effectively on a par with the House Speaker. He's not someone you can bully, and he's starting to like it that way.

Cruella is going to have a problem with this. You do not cross this lady.

Vaccine Mandates And Strategic Incompetence

On Monday, I speculated about the impact of Biden's workplace vaccine mandate on OSHA. It turns out that I underestimated the problem:

“[B]efore the first legal challenges against the mandate roll in, the Biden administration faces the more immediate conundrum of whether the chronically resource-strapped Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is up to the task of enforcing it,” Business Insider noted Tuesday.

“It’s reeling from deep staffing cuts under the Trump administration, and its fines are relatively low and often fought out in long court battles,” experts told the outlet.

The Trump cuts left just “1,798 total OSHA inspectors, federal and state, coming out to one inspector per 82,881 workers and just $3.97 budgeted per covered worker,” according to Business Insider. According to a similar report from Reuters, “OSHA now has an estimated 800 safety and compliance inspectors to cover the more than 100,000 private-sector companies affected by the new rule.”

I've also seen commentary from lawyer-YouTuber Robert Barnes that almost all current mandates lack a key provision for religious exemption. While the OSHA workplace rule will likely take some time to roll out, and lawsuits against it can't be filed until it is, other local vaccine mandates are already being challenged for lack of a religious exemption. A New York State mandate has already been rejected by a federal judge:

A federal judge temporarily blocked the state of New York on Tuesday from forcing medical workers to be vaccinated after a group of health care workers sued, saying their Constitutional rights were violated because the state's mandate disallowed religious exemptions.

But this is the same state mandate that already forced a hospital to stop delivering babies when key staff quit rather than get the shot. The lack of religious exemption isn't the only basis for lawsuits against local mandates. A group of LAPD officers filed suit against a municipal mandate:

The lawsuit, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims the mandate violates the employees’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process, and asks the court to provide immediate and permanent relief from the requirement.

The six LAPD employees suing include individuals “who could not assert a medical or religious exemption” to the vaccine requirement, as well as individuals who have “experienced and recovered from COVID-19″ and have natural antibodies to fight the virus, the complaint states.

A major problem for vaccine mandates is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The HIPAA Privacy Rule regulates the use and disclosure of protected health information, which is any information that is held by a provider regarding health care. With a few exceptions like court order or limited law enforcement, this information, which includes vaccination status, may not be disclosed without the patient's authorization.

Requiring someone to show his vaccination certificate to an airline agent, TSA, bus driver, barber, bartender, bouncer, or maitre d' is clearly a violation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule. As far as I can see, nobody in the White House, OSHA, CDC, or local health departments has thought this through. For that matter, the religious exemption is extremely broad. You don't have to prove you're a member of a designated sect to be able to claim it, because any designation from the government of which beliefs qualify constitutes an establishment of religion and is a violation of the US First Amendment.

Thus if anyone demands my vaccination certificate, I can claim it's against my religion, full stop, and anyone, especially a bouncer or whatever, risks getting into hot water for denying me service. I personally carry a copy of my certificate in my wallet and will show it when requested just to get on with my day, but not everyone feels this way. We'll likely see a proliferation of court cases well before the Biden-OSHA mandate goes into effect, if it ever does.

So if President Biden wanted to make a big show of Doing Something about COVID while making the whole effort meaningless and unenforceable, he could hardly do a better job than he has. Strategic incompetence?

Larry Elder Loses California Recall

Current vote tallies suggest Larry Elder has overwhelmingly lost the California recall election; he conceded last night. I was briefly optimistic when polls showed the race even, but more recent polling and analysis of the mail-in voting proved to be, if anything, too sanguine about the eventual outcome, which was disastrous for Elder.

I've seen little analysis so far of the reasons for this. One factor, I think, goes to Rush Limbaugh's frequent reply when people urged him to run for office: he'd say he knows how to attract a radio audience, but he knows nothing about how to attract votes. The applies all the more to Elder, who has been an also-ran host at lackluster Salem Media along with figures like Hugh Hewitt and Sebastian Gorka.

I occasinally tuned into his radio show when I was in the car now and then, but I found nothing to maintain my interest. He was saying many of the right things, but nothing new or compelling.

I think this carried over into his campaign, which consisted mainly of soundbites on Fox and other right-leaning media. One might argue that funding restrictions for recall candidates limited his ability to spend on ads, but the ads I did see were pretty bland.

It seems as if his announcement lent a measure of interest to the the recall in the beginning -- he was at least a better choice than Caitlyn Jenner, while the other leading Republicans were uninspiring -- but his message, insofar as he had one, never quite caught on. People were tired of Newsom, but he's up for reelection next year anyhow. The one good thing the recall did was keep Newsom from imposing new lockdowns for much of 2021, while a looming election in 2022 will now probably curb his wish to impose much more.

California does face a series of problems. including the results of the political alliance between the elites and the Lumpenproletariat, which include homelessness and the rise in both petty and violent crime. Other issues include deferred public water and highway projects, while the endless high speed rail boondoggle has sucked investment away from them. Forest management errors have led to worsening wildfires. Public education needs serious reform.

Elder paid only lip service to these issues and effectively acknowledged that with Democrat supermajorities in the legislature, his only ability to effect change in a one-year term would be to use the bully pulpit. Heck, he has a radio show for that.

The current establilshed ourder may be corrupt and unpopular, but Republicans have to present a serious alternative. Talk radio hosts have limited effectiveness, something Limbaugh himself fully understood.

Biden's Handlers Cut His Feed Again

It was noted during Biden's visit to Boise yesterday that at the point where he began, "Can I ask you a question? . . . One of the things that, ah . . . I've been workin' on with some others . . . is . . ." his handlers cut his feed. By now, this isn't new. On one had, there was a story last week about how his handlers cringe and mute the volume on their own screens when the boss goes off script.

On the other, everyone who's had to put up with Uncle Ted knows this signals the start of a ponderous and rambling discourse that's meant to display in tedious detail what a genius he is. But once again, I disagree with the people who think this is a sign of mental decline. I knew Uncle Ted. He was like that all his life. The main thing that got him going that way was a few too many Old Fashioneds.

This actually reminds me of the story that went around during the 2020 campaign that began with the quote from Obama, "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up". Farther down, you'd read:

While in office, young Obama aides are reported to have dismissed Biden, even 'eye-rolling' when the VP would begin speaking, while former members of the administrations have also treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.

'In the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile,' Ben Rhodes, Obama's former deputy national security adviser, wrote.

Former FBI Director James Comey also said that 'Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, 'Can I ask something, Mr. President?'

'Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z,' Comey added.

It wouldn't surprise me that everyone who knows Biden recognizes "can I ask something?" as the signal that we're headed off for five or 10 minutes in Direction Z, and they cut his feed. Biden is Uncle Ted, and likely his morning pick-me-up gets him going that way.

But, er, can I ask something? We're told that the administration is in a make-or-break moment to push its legislative agenda past wavering Democrat senators, and Biden is key.

Biden assured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he was ready to push for filibuster reform. Biden’s pressure would aim to help Schumer convince moderate Democrats to support a carveout to the filibuster, a must for the party if it’s going to pass new voting protections without Republican votes. According to a source briefed on the White House’s position, Biden told Schumer: “Chuck, you tell me when you need me to start making phone calls.”

But Biden is Uncle Ted, not LBJ. LBJ wouild grab people physically, push his face up against theirs, and not let them go until they went along. Biden will make Zoom calls and ramble on about his son Beau. And he's always been this way. If he were senile, people might cooperate out of sympathy. Instead, he's Uncle Ted.

I don't see this having a good result. Obama knew his man.

Have They Thought This Through?

I haven't seen much discussion about what the actual COVID mandate that Biden announced last Thursday will actually look like. For instance, various groups, unions, and states have announced they'll file suit against the mandate, but they can't even start until OSHA publishes the actual rules -- so far, I've seen nothing about when this will take place.

But let's say the rules go in, and they turn out to be fully constitutional, no problem, the Supreme Court refuses to intervene in any of the cases that come out. What could go wrong?

We really don't have solid numbers on exactly how many people would be affected by the current mandate. Anywhere from 60 to 80 million in the US are unvaxxed. We don't know how many work for companies that come under the mandate and would need to fire unvaxxed employees. Nor do we know how firm the unvaxxed will be when faced with getting the shots or losing their jobs.

But we're starting to get a taste of how this could turn out. In upstate New York,

An upstate New York hospital will stop delivering babies later this month, in part because of employee resignations over a requirement they be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Six maternity staff members resigned from Lewis County General Hospital during the past week, worsening an existing staff shortage, the Watertown Daily Times reported. The department has seven other unvaccinated employees who also could decide to leave, hospital officials said.

. . . Services also may have to be curtailed in five other departments if staff members resign rather than be vaccinated by the state’s Sept. 27 deadline for health care workers, authorities said.

But this leaves aside the question of how the mandate will be enforced once the rules are issued. How many employers have more than 100 workers? We're talking about some percentage of 60 to 80 million potential employees. It sounds like at least some employers will have their operations seriously limited if key employees are firm enough to quit or be fired. Will they risk penalties by looking the other way?

Where will OSHA find the staff to cover this completely new responsibility? Will they need training? What will happen when, inevitably, brand new power-mad OSHA inspectors shut companies down for bogus reasons?

Assuming this could seriously affect corporate operations, will exceptions need to be made? The US Surgeon General seems to be telegraphing this possibility, as it affects potential vaccine passports for flying. In a CNN interview:

[Vivek] Murthy was also defensive of Biden not announcing vaccination requirements on airplanes despite expanding these requirements to U.S. businesses and companies.

. . . And we know that, when it comes to mandating vaccines for travel, there are important issues around equity that would have to be worked out to ensure that people, for example, if they had to travel in the case of emergency to see a relative who got sick, would be able to do that, even if they weren't vaccinated,' he said.

But wait. What if GE is forced to fire a single mom with ten kids? What if those fired are overwhelmingly in minorities? Will equity apply there, too? But forget equity. You know darn well the reason the airlines don't want vaccine passports, it would cut their patronage by 40%. But if Ford or UPS loses 40% of their line workers, it'll have the same effect. Heck, what if you have to fire 40% of the police?

Will there need to be equity tribunals to solve these problems? You might say that some of the unvaxxed who get fired could go to work for the equity tribunals, except they'd be federal employees who'd need to be vaxxed.

In the same interview, Murthy says Biden has more regulations he'll announce this week. I seriously question whether anyone has thought any of these through.

Well, handsome is as handsome does. These are the people who brought us the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Uncharted Territory

Two data points over the past week bought to mind the image above, which is explained on this site:

[Nelson] Rockefeller, then vice-president of the United States, was on a campaign swing through upstate New York on Sept. 16, 1976, with Sen. Bob Dole, who had been selected to be President Gerald Ford’s running mate for the 1976 election. When someone in a group of heckling leftie SUNY Binghamton students gave Rockefeller the finger, Rockefeller gave it right back, much to the delight of Dole in the background.

At the time, Rockefeller’s finger flashing was scandalous and the gesture was referred to thereafter as “The Rockefeller Salute”. Rockefeller refused to apologize for his outburst. “I was just responding in kind”, he said, neatly avoiding the point that the apology was not expected to go to the hecklers but to the general public. Bob Dole was asked by a reporter why he didn’t join Rockefeller in “the salute”. He replied, “I have trouble with my right arm”.

This was a departure from public decorum to be sure, but what's interesting is that Rockefeller, a 24-karat lizard person, unhesitatingly and unabashedly gave the populist response to the hecklers, and there seems to have been at least an undertone of amusement in the national reaction, certainly implied in its characterization as the "Rockefeller Salute". But overall, this departure from decorum set no precedent, possibly because Rockefeller was a lame duck.

But something's changed over the past week. I first noticed it in the vehemence of the heckling Biden received from residents of Manville, NJ:

This was actually a couple of steps beyond a bunch of lefties giving a lame duck vice president the finger. And my view here has been that Biden isn't out of it, at least due to cognitive decline. He heard every word of the heckling in Manville, it rankled, and I seem to be the only person in the country to recognize that Biden's sudden firing of all the Trump appointees from the military academy boards was his direct response to it. I still think I'm right.

The next data point is the emergence of gleeful "[expletive] Joe Biden" chants at college football games as the new season gets underway. If you wish, you can find them on YouTube, but I won't link directly. According to this site,

Thousands of college football fans made their political stance clear by breaking out in “F–k Joe Biden” chants during multiple different games over the weekend.

“[redacted] JOE BIDEN chant at the first Coastal Carolina football game,” tweeted Old Row Sports along with a video of the anti-Biden cheers.

The chants became a movement as college football fans across the country celebrated their return to packed stadiums to watch the sport.

. . . College football fans filled stadiums across the country over the weekend, many not wearing masks with zero social distancing amid concerns over the rising cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant. Many viewed this as a sign that Americans are no longer taking the virus seriously, nearly two years after the virus began spreading in the United States.

Indeed. I would take this as a sign that the national mood is changing, and COVID is one factor at the root. "[Bleep] Joe Biden" is shorthand for "[Bleep] masks, social distancing, no football, no parties" and everything else, no doubt including the teams that kneel at the national anthem. According to this tweet, the trend, which started last weekend, is continuing. It began before Biden's attempt to impose a national vaccine mandate, but the tone of scolding and divisiveness in Thursday's speech will no doubt exacerbate the protest. And it ties Biden the more firmly to what the college kids don't like.

Again, Biden isn't out of it. He's aware of these things. And from what i've covered here, he's an angry and vindictive guy. His handlers know he has poor judgment and is hard to control. He'll likely have an angry and vindictive response, sooner rather than later, but for a US president to reply in kind isn't the same as Nelson Rockefeller, a lame duck pro tem vice president near the end of this term, doing the same thing.

We're in uncharted territory.

UPDATE: Yes, he's fully aware of this stuff.

The UK, Dr Fauci, And Herd Immunity

After I put up yesterday's post, something kept bothering me. I quoted an official UK source that said, in part:

An estimated 94.1% of the adult population in England, 92.0% in Wales, 90.4% in Northern Ireland and 93.6% in Scotland tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies in the week beginning 9 August 2021. The presence of antibodies suggests a person previously had COVID-19 or has been vaccinated.

Given at least the conventional wisdom we've heard from the public health establishment, shouldn't this mean that the UK is at, or very close to, "herd immunity"? For instance, according to the Mayo Clinic, on a page specifically discussing COVID,

Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community (the herd) becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. As a result, the whole community becomes protected — not just those who are immune.

Often, a percentage of the population must be capable of getting a disease in order for it to spread. This is called a threshold proportion. If the proportion of the population that is immune to the disease is greater than this threshold, the spread of the disease will decline. This is known as the herd immunity threshold.

What percentage of a community needs to be immune in order to achieve herd immunity? It varies from disease to disease.

. . . Herd immunity can [also] be reached when enough people in the population have recovered from a disease and have developed protective antibodies against future infection.

But in countries like the UK and Israel with very high proportions of the population either vaccinated or with natural immunity, the disease simply hasn't declined. In fact, at least at the moment, the US, with full vaccination rates only above 50%, is performing better than either the UK or Israel. Denmark, with a vaccination rate of only 73.8%, has lifted the last of its COVID restrictions.

The Mayo Clinic says the percentage of a community that needs to be immune to achieve herd immunity varies from disease to disease. So what's the percentage for COVID? We don't have an answer. If Dr Fauci knows, he won't tell us what it is. Late last year, he told the Sunday talks,

"We all have to be honest and humble, nobody really knows for sure, but I think 70-85% for herd immunity for COVID-19 is a reasonable estimate," he said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, adding that herd immunity would require "something a little bit less than the 90%" of the population to be vaccinated.

Fauci had previously said it could take up to 90% of the US population to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity against the coronavirus. Fauci told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday that "when polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent," but "when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, 'I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."

So he's said he doesn't know, but he gives out numbers that suit his agenda. He's got a multibillion dollar budget, but he doesn't seem able to get anyone actually to study the problem. But in any case, the UK experience suggests that even 94% isn't enough.

Yesterday, he made a public remark that indicates he has no idea what part natural immunity plays in immunizing the herd, even though every conventional definition of "herd immunity" says there must be one:

Dr. Fauci was finally asked why people with natural immunity should be required to get the covid vaccine given studies that show we have more protection.

His response: “I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that.”

Well, I don't have a really firm answer on what's going on, either, and I'm not even Dr Fauci. But it seems to me that the public health establishment worldwide is hemorrhaging credibility.