The Lab Leak Possibility

 For what it's worth, which is nothing, my memory is that early on the theories of the origin of the virus were the wet markets in Wuhan and a weaponized virus from the Wuhan lab, a theory according to something I read this week which was being pushed by Bannon. 

So when I read the Vanity Fair article, this passage strikes me as off:

 But on April 30, 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out an ambiguous statement whose apparent goal was to suppress a growing furor around the lab-leak theory. It said that the intelligence community “concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified” but would continue to assess “whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Seems to me the ODNI was trying to suppress the Bannon--weaponized theory since they left open the lab-leak possibility.  And part of the push-back by US scientists was denying there was evidence in the virus genome of human manipulation, which would be a smoking gun for the lab leak. 

The other aspect was the determination by Trump and politicos after the virus hit the US to tie it to China--"Wuhan virus" etc. There's past precedent for using a location's name to identify a virus, but not for using it to attack the location.    So there were two triggers for Democrats to push back. The push back was perhaps as lacking in nuance as the Bannon/Trump positions.

Now I'll go back to reading the Vanity Fair article.

Eight Thousand Posts

 I just noticed I've so far published 8001 posts.  Ann Althouse rightfully boasts of her record of daily posting since she began, which was before me. I can't say the same.  I've missed some days, particularly in recent years, and the pace of my blogging has slowed to a post a day.  Some days I'm pretty dry, as today.  It's been drier since Jan. 20. 

I've probably got another 6,000 draft posts.  Sometimes I get an idea for a post, create one with just the title, then go off to do something else.  By the time I get back, I'm wondering what I was going to write, or at least the energy to write on the subject has dwindled away.  Sometimes I write part of one but don't have even the ghost of an ending (endings have always been a problem) so don't publish.  

A few times I've found the subject too controversial; I didn't want to get into it.  That's usually the case with issues of race.  

One of these years I'll go back and skim my past writings, see whether they've stood up.  Not today. Too tired after gardening and errand running. 

Inflation and Women's Lib

 From yesterday's conversation with my cousin--some idle speculation on the interrelated threads of suburbanization, car ownership, feminism, women working and inflation:

• after WWII we had a lot of people moving to the suburbs, the Levittowns, or the Manassas Parks where my in-laws moved to.
• if the household owned one car, then the wife was stuck at home (see yesterday's post on food trucks), or dependent on clubs/associations where one woman could provide transportation.
• there was, I think, more inflation in the economy than we've become used to in the last couple decades.  Inflation around the Korean War, worries about inflation in the 50's and early 60's, actual inflation beginning late 60's.
• inflation made it harder and harder for the one-wage earner family to manage, particularly as the boomer generation was exploding, increasing the pressure for women to go to work.
• the return to work would increase the returns from a second car, which would in turn liberate women a bit more.
• all of which undermined some of the women's associations, like the League of Women Voters and the AAUW. But the experience of the workplace and the paycheck would empower women.

I've not done any research for statistics to back up these threads, but they fit my general impressions.

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Decline of the Deliveryman

 Made a discovery this morning talking with my cousin, who mentioned the deliverymen/vendors in her neighborhood in Berwyn heights in the 1930.  The family had one car, so when her father was at work her mother was dependent on walking or public transportation.  The area was affluent enough (many UMd college professors and researchers at USDA Beltsville) so that it was worthwhile for trucks to sell meat and cheese, fruits and vegetables, and bakery (3 different trucks--she didn't mention milk which was even available in our more rural area in the 1940's but I assume they had it). I'm visualizing these as mobile farmers markets, though the milkman model would allow for advance orders, so maybe not.

I assume this was an evolution from the older horse-drawn vendors as the suburbs evolved from close in to car-mobile. And I'm guessing that as women went to work and had their own cars, the deliveryman/vendor model was no longer effective or economical.

Makes me muse on today's model--it's probably more efficient energy wise for groceries to deliver than for people to drive to the store.  But people like the  power to inspect and choose.  So will the effect of the pandemic be to somewhat increase the miles driven by grocery/vendor deliveries and decrease the miles driven by consumers to stores?  

[Update: found this link, not very descriptive though.]

[Update: a more informative link about horse-drawn wagons. Note: my cousin remembers the trucks as markets, not as delivery.  Unlike the milkman where you could leave an order in the empty milk bottle.]

What History Should Include

 Bob Somerby comments on a news commentary show where one participant noted he hadn't been taught the Tulsa massacre and just recently learned about the Birmingham church bombing which killed four young black girls in Sunday school. 

I think it seems to Bob (who's maybe 7 years younger than I) and to me that obviously modern kids should be taught both.  

But that's a knee jerk opinion--both Bob and I lived through the reporting of the bombing so it's something of a landmark in the progression of the civil rights movement. We didn't live through Tulsa; not that it matters because the massacre did not, I believe, make any national impression--media is very different now. Given the limited time a teacher has, I'm not sure which events need to be covered--letter from a Birmingham jail, Woolworth counter sit-in, Albany Georgia, Pettus bridge, Shwerner, Chaney, and Goodman?  The laws which were passed, the Rochester riot, the Kerner commission, RFK on MLK's assassination? 

I suppose for most teachers the details have dropped out so their decision making is easier than it would be for me or Bob.

Bolton and Trump

 Reading "The Room Where It Happened" by John Bolton.

It's Trump porn, appealing to my liberal distrust of Trump and his administration. But that aside, I'm amazed Bolton stayed as long as he did.  Either Trump is more charismatic, in the sense of being able to make people lose their common sense when in his presence, or Bolton was very power hungry.

More Freedom to Choose

 Rachel Laudan has a recent post  on the variety of food stores within a 6 mile radius of her Cincinnati home.

I could do a similar post about the Northern Virginia area, centered on Reston.  One notable addition: we have Wegmans.  

It's a big change since I was a boy.  Tyler Cowen did an early book arguing this point, although focused on art, IIRC--i.e., that while the world was becoming more similar, the diversity within many cultures/countries was growing.

"Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema."

I think this is the book I remember. 

Memories of the Filibuster and House Rules

 Yesterdays failure in the Senate to take up the Jan 6 commission bill has evoked renewed discussion of the filibuster.

My memory of politics in the 1950's and 1960's was that the filibuster became an issue only in connection with a "civil rights bill".  There might have been other uses, but civil rights was the key, meaning the liberals were perpetually frustrated.  That's very unlike today, where the filibuster becomes a factor in most partisan issues. In the 1950's and early 60's the big obstacle to liberal proposals on issues other than civil rights was Rep. Howard Smith and the House Rules Committee. It took years of work by both JFK and, I think, LBJ to change the House rules to get more liberals added tot he committee. 

Back in those days breaking a filibuster required 67 votes, an almost impossible hurdle. But because party ideology was less important, national media in state elections of senators not important at all, LBJ was able to nickel and dime enough members to pass the civil rights bills, one reason why I regard him as a great flawed president.

Unmaking the Presidency

 As a glutton for punishment I'm reading that book.  One chapter discusses the Mueller investigation in the context of special prosecutors and the criminalization of oversight. The authors ding Congress for lack of effective oversight, instead ceding oversight to the criminal process of investigations through the special prosecutors.

I wonder if Congress shouldn't delegate its oversight powers to an agency set up like GAO. GAO works for Congress, not the executive, and has a good reputation, I think, unless you're a bureaucrat being critiqued.  But GAO focuses on the bureaucracy and on policy, worrying whether the laws Congress passes are being effectively administered by the executive branch.  It's my impression they rarely interview the big shots, the presidential appointees, and never those close to the president.  I'm not sure why; whether it's historical precedent or their legal charter at work.

The problem I see with my idea is that it seems like the old special prosecutor--giving a body authority to investigate without establishing limits.  That problem led to both parties agreeing not to reauthorize the statue which existed for about 20 years.  

Maybe we could look to the Congressional ethics committees, which police the members of Congress?  Maybe a standing bipartisan committee could work, relying on political forces to restrain it? The problem there might be shown in the Federal Election Commission, which is supposed to be bipartisan but has been deadlocked with vacancies for years. 

No answers here.

Rebellion Versus Riot

 Elizabeth Hinton (who was on BBC news yesterday) argues for "rebellions" instead of "riots" to describe the events in the inner cities in the mid to late 1960's. Having lived during that period, although I haven't read her book, I think she's wrong.

To me "rebellion" means a degree of central planning and organization, elements which I think were shared through many of the slave "revolts" discussed here. A "riot" usually has an instigating event, a central focus which draws in participants, but there's no central figure like Nat Turner or John Brown. 

Hinton has a point that the events from 1964 through 1968 have a continuity and similarity which makes "riots" seem an inadequate terminology.