Zombie viruses and other possibilities

 As Arctic permafrost melts for some reason that has nothing to do with climate change, scientists warn of new pandemics caused by "zombie viruses," a/k/a "Methuselah microbes."  I find this oddly comforting.  No living organism will have any natural immunity to these long-dormant bugs, vaccines will be developed, stupid humans will refuse to get them and a golden age will be ushered in.  Or else we'll all die and no longer have to endure the steady drip of events.  I don't have a preference.

For instance, 2024 will kick off with synchronized cicadas.  For the first time since 1803, two cicada broods will emerge at the same time in the vicinity of Springfield, Illinois.  One bunch hatches every thirteen years and the other every seventeen, and this year -- bingo!  If you live in Springfield, maybe plan a vacation in June.  Anyplace but the Arctic.

Ron DeSantis "suspended" his presidential campaign yesterday because campaigns are now suspended, like viruses in the ice, threatening to run amok if the temperature changes.  The governissimo said farewell with his customary grace, citing a quotation he attributed to Churchill.  ("Success is not final;   failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts."  Strange words to quit with.)  According to the Atlantic it originated with "a Depression-era advertisement for Anheuser-Busch."  For those playing Irony Bingo, A-B is the maker of Bud Light, Dylan Mulvaney's favorite brew.

No Labels, the loose coalition of Democratic has-beens and Trump fifth columnists, has learned an important lesson from Greedy Amin:  Always play the victim.  They want the Justice Department to investigate activists and "Democratic-leaning groups" who oppose them.  Joe Lieberman, Pat McCrory, Jon Huntsman, I know it's been a while but that's called "politics."  Nobody owes you a platform, especially since No Labels implies No Principles, No Policies, No Beliefs.  Put together something worth writing about and people will write about it.

NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard must have wanted to know how shameless Elise Stefanik has become in her Trump-slobbering, so he asked her if she believes he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll, for which a jury has already found him culpable.  When Hillyard arrived in New Hampshire as pool reporter (so others wouldn't have to endure another day of Trump dementia), he found himself barred from covering the day's events.  Trump mouthpiece Steven Cheung said they don't cancel reporters based on their coverage, despite their having done so since 2016.  Hillyard was allowed to cover one event yesterday.

In other First Amendment news, the Ouray County (Colorado) Plain Dealer had an article about arrests being made at the home of the chief of police in 2023.  A seventeen-year-old alleged rape by several men at an underage drinking party.  Nearly all copies of the paper disappeared from racks and vending machines around Ouray.  The paper posted the story on social media and re-published it in a subsequent edition.  Small-town journalism has long been under attack but usually not so brazenly.

Children in Cameroon will soon receive the new RTS,S malaria vaccine, which has already been tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi.  Ninety-five percent of malaria deaths occur in Africa, mostly among children under five.  A mother in Douala who brought her baby to a clinic for vaccination said, "I have three children and all are always sick with malaria.  I hope the vaccine will help her not to be sick like her sister and brother."  Anti-vaxers please note, and stay away.

Subscribers to Ministry of Truth Social opened their phones to a cornucopia of abuse today, more than 42 repetitive attacks on E. Jean Carroll despite the trial being in recess.  Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered a one-day postponement because one juror reported symptoms of covid.  Trump gets restless when he can't play golf.

Joe Biden is not on the ballot in the New Hampshire Democratic primary but someone wanted to make sure he didn't even receive write-in votes.  Democratic voters got robocalls featuring a fake AI-generated Biden voice urging them to stay home tomorrow.  The state is investigating.  Dean Phillips wouldn't take a cue from the Wohl-Burkman playbook, would he?

Meanwhile, Trump was addressing an issue close to the voters of Rochester, New Hampshire -- the re-naming of military installations.  I'm told this is verbatim:  "We won world wars out of forts.  Fort Benning, Fort This, Fort That, many forts.  They changed the names, we won wars out of these forts, they changed the name, they changed the name of the forts.  A lot of people aren't too happy about that.  They changed the name of a lot of our forts.  We won two world wars out of a lot of these forts and they changed the name.  It's unbelievable."

Yes.  Unbelievable.  When you type the word "forts" over and over it starts to look wrong.

On CBS, Nikki Haley was talking about Trump's propensity to "buddy up with dictators," and how as his UN ambassador she had to tell him to cool his "bromance" with Putin.  I wonder if she heard him on Fox News proclaiming that we should not come to Taiwan's defense in the event of a Chinese attack because "they took our business away."  In other words, US microchip companies like Intel built their plants in Taiwan because it's cheaper.  One of these days Trump will have to decide whether he hates Jyna and its "kung flu" or loves Jyna and the millions it pumped into his hotels.

In perhaps the most disturbing news of the day, the white nationalists have attached themselves to Shakespeare.  By twenty-first century standards he was pretty racist -- there are all kinds of reasons high school teachers will no longer assign The Merchant of Venice and white actors are discouraged from playing Othello, but that's not what I mean.  Two weeks after the 2021 coup the Folger Library in Washington received a letter mailed December 29 in Minnesota, warning that the insurrectionists would block access to the library to prevent anyone escaping from the Capitol through a connecting tunnel.  "This is nothing personal to the library itself...we are simply citizens practicing our 1st amendment rights and are only involving you by happenstance."  A UCLA scholar named Arthur L. Little, Jr., has a whole book called White People in Shakespeare detailing the ways white nationalists identify themselves with the conspirators in Julius Caesar.  I'll have to find it when I feel stronger.  Is the central figure in western literary culture racist?  Does the Bible justify slavery?  Was Emily Dickinson gay?  These questions will not be answered in the Washington Post, and I'm all out of nuance today.