Author: condor

The Manchurian Cantaloupe Just “Lost It” On Covid Vaccine Makers. Ugh.

~ condor ~ Leave a comment

No, the CDC is not “being ripped apart” — by a wholly internal, organic struggle.

What actually happened was this demented Tangerine 2.0 fired the real scientist who’d been the head of the CDC (while we were off the grid). And another real scientist, who’d been the head of the vaccine effort realized that his best option was to quit entirely. That is what happened Mr. Trump. Still — here are some of Cheetolini’s ravings on his social media site — as of Monday night:

…”With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.” They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don’t seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to the CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!!”

Trump’s remarks are likely to further cloud the prospects of COVID vaccine makers, which have come under pressure since his reelection last November amid his pledges to revise the U.S. immunization policy for COVID vaccines….

Indeed this is a fraught moment — for those of us who believe science (rather than politics) — should decide US public health policy. Onward, just the same.

नमस्ते

Seems Trumpians / Noemites Think That Governments “Own” Children. Wrong. Once In The USA, They Too Have Due Process Rights: LGML v. Noem, Et Al.

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Trump seems to think that parents own teenage children. They do not. And certainly, governments… do not.

Just as in a divorce /custody hearing, their interests must be considered. So the ruling is plainly correct: once on US soil, they too have due process rights. If either the parents or the government presents a danger to the children, they are naturals for asylum purposes. So here it is:

…[Tangerine 2.0 / Noem] hereby provides notice that that final minor alien of the four mentioned in the fourth status report was returned to ORR custody at approximately 1:30am EDT [off of the DC tarmac]. The other alien mentioned in the fourth status report was also placed in ORR custody today.

Defendants are not aware of any other putative class members that have not been returned to ORR custody.

Respectfully submitted this September 1, 2025….

[Earlier] MINUTE ORDER: The Court ordered the Plaintiffs to file a status report by August 31, 2025, at 6:30 PM. They have not done so. The Court ORDERS the Plaintiffs to show cause why a status report was not filed by that deadline. The Plaintiffs remain under their obligation to file a status report addressing their understanding of whether the putative class members have been deplaned and returned to ORR….

PRIOR MINUTE ORDER: The Court has reviewed the Plaintiffs’ Complaint and Motion for Temporary Restraining Order. Given the exigent circumstances, it has determined that an immediate Order is warranted to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set.

As the Plaintiffs have satisfied the four factors governing the issuance of preliminary relief, the Court accordingly ORDERS that:

1) The Plaintiffs’ [2] Motion for TRO is GRANTED;

2) The Defendants shall not remove any of the individual Plaintiffs from the United States for 14 days absent further Order of the Court; and

3) The parties shall appear for a hearing on August 31, 2025, at 3:00 p.m. in Courtroom 14 before Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan.

A zoom link will follow….

[Original Order:] The Court ORDERS that the Defendants cease any ongoing efforts to transfer, repatriate, remove, or otherwise facilitate the transport of any Plaintiff or member of the putative class from the United States. The putative class includes all Guatemalan unaccompanied minors in Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement custody as of 1:02 AM on August 31, 2025, the time of the filing of the Complaint, who are not subject to an executable final order of removal.

“[B]ecause courts may issue temporary relief to a putative class, [the Court] need not decide whether a class should be certified as to the detainees’ [] claims in order to temporarily enjoin the Government from removing putative class members.” A. A. R. P. v. Trump, 145 S. Ct. 1364, 1369 (2025) (citing 2 W. Rubenstein, Newberg & Rubenstein on Class Actions § 4:30 (6th ed. 2022 and Supp. 2024)). Signed by Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan on 8/31/2025, 12:37 PM….

Now you know. Onward, resolutely.

नमस्ते

While I Was Off Grid — Overall, Mpox Cases Declined — But Ghana Endures An Alarming Spike In Clade 1b Cases…

~ condor ~ Leave a comment

I have quite a few narratives to catch up on here — and this one is among the most pressing: with Tangerine having taken USAID off the map, and cutting contributions to international humanitarian aid more broadly… what would have been short lived outbreaks have become… long-term public health crises, at least in nations with very limited resources.

And so, while Clade 1b (the more lethal strain) cases overall are now declining globally. . . Ghana is suffering mightily:

…Ghana has seen an “exponential” increase in mpox cases over the past week, while there have been smaller increases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Guinea, Burundi, and Kenya, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Ghana now has 313 confirmed cases, an 87% increase over the previous week when it had 167 cases, said Professor Yap Boum, the institution’s deputy lead on mpox at a media briefing on Thursday. Ghana and Guinea have both applied for vaccines to Africa CDC….

Now you know… boarding, for the Chi this evening. Grin.

नमस्ते

Power Alley: Zydus Posts Good But Not Great Data, In Primary Biliary Cholangitis Space (Other On-Market Competitors Include Gilead and Intercerpt)…

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Each of the three other on market competitors have posted more impressive response data [but one of them now comes with an FDA mandated boxed warning].

Still, Zydus will enter a market that is not yet even remotely saturated. There are approximately 7.6 million to 13 million sufferers world-wide — with an incidence rate of about 18 cases per 100,000 population… dotting the globe. So we shall as ever see how it progresses, when Zydus meets with FDA after New Years. Here’s the latest, from Fierce reporting:

…Zydus Therapeutics has racked up a phase 2b/3 win in primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), clearing the path to a filing to establish the company as a challenger to Gilead Sciences, Intercept Pharmaceuticals and Ipsen.

The phase 3 part of the trial randomized 149 people to receive the PPAR agonist saroglitazar or placebo. After 52 weeks of daily oral dosing, 48.5% of patients on the Zydus drug met the biochemical response, achieving the primary endpoint of the trial. Zydus plans to discuss the data with the FDA with hopes of filing for approval in the first quarter of 2026….

Now you know — and I’m blogging from a coffee corner, at the tiny Burlington, Vermont airfield — heading back to the city of big shoulders this noon-time. [Always sad to leave the lake house, but] the steel and glass canyons call — if for nothing else, to catch up on Abrego, and the Guatemalan teenagers’ plights in the tiny hands of Tangerine 2.0.

Onward.

नमस्ते

Odd “Conservative” View: Bill Glahn Thinks Governments “Own” Children?!

~ condor ~ Leave a comment

That’s an odd stance for a “conservative”outlet. They are all 14 or older. Here in America, that means they have a say in their own future. They are not chattels.

Bill thinks the Guatemalan government owns these children. Odd.

If they made it onto our soil, they have our due process rights. Period. Read up, son.

Bill — wake up. They are entitled to show that they fear abuse — in their home country — by their parents or their government.

That’s black letter law.

Shut yor’ pie hole, man. At least until you get… educated on US law.

Out.

Or Maybe, John — The Markets Figured His Tariffs… Were Wildly Unlawful, Pretty Quickly.

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Hinderaker overnight writes that maybe Trump’s tariffs were smart policy… given that the markets have largely recovered from the first down-draft when he announced them.

This is just preposterous.

John is trying to justify his having previously said that Trump was a “serious president”.

In point of fact, his tariffs have been chaos and have now been ruled three times to be unlawful.

And one of them is an appellate court of three judges.

[Hinderaker himself earlier said he thought them to be unlawful.]

So the most logical explanation for the recovery of the markets is that the markets are imbued with crowd-sourced savvy… and reflect the considered wisdom of millions of sophisticates — who well-knew that his tariffs would never stick.

What a dunce Hinderaker is!

Other than chaos, the tariffs have achieved nothing, and to say that they were “smart” is to assume that they have run their course…

Actually, they’ve barely gotten started (and will be halted in October — by the Supremes —forever!) and the mess has been crystal clear.

So… I’m leaving Vermont by jet… after a great ten days… of summer’s end fam vacay… tonight.

Out.

[U: Doubled Idiocy By Paul!] Hey Paul! Mortgage Fraud?! Yes — Bring It!

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Tonight, Paul feels that a Fed. Board Member (and separately, NY AG Leticia James) should be removed, on thread-bare allegations that they each separately claimed to have two “primary” residences — when seeking a mortgage.

Y A W N.

Fine. Let’s make the obvious trade — then: we’ll give you those two… the second AFTER Trump resigns.

Three courts (and five judges) have now found he committed pattern bank loan fraud — and tax fraud — into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

And as just one example, what to make of a life long Manhattan high rise real estate savant — who repeatedly swore on loan applications that his penthouse condo was TRIPLE the square footage of an entire floor of the building, while he knew he lived on only one floor (minus elevator shaft space).

Updated: a week later, Mirengoff doubles down. Hey Paulie: where’s your post calling for the immediate resignation of Donald Trump? At least three courts and five judges have found that he lied under oath about his lending / commercial mortgage applications, tripling the size of his condo. And he’s an expert in this area. Supposedly. End update.

So he got loans backed by a purported 36,000 square foot penthouse, knowing it was just over 9,000 square feet — more than quadrupling its actual collateral value.

He’s the preznit, and supposedly an expert real estate investor.

But he doesn’t know how small his condo is?!

Preposterous!

That’s felony fraud.

Paul clearly demanded his immediate resignation from all 1600 Penn. offices.

Oh. Wait. No he only made that demand of two Black women in power, neither of whom are real estate lending experts.

What a transparently malign racist he is.

Out.

Bennu’s “Star Grains” Helped Reveal Some New Secrets, About The Very Ancient Material That Became… Our Solar System.

~ condor ~ Leave a comment

Our imagination is always fired — whenever we learn more about the “primordial” stuff (stargrains) that after billions and billions of years… of melting and refreezing and endless collisions… coalesced to become our home planet, and our the rocks we call our neighbors.

Do go read the long form NASA article — it is excellent:

…Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2020, is a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.

These insights come from a trio of newly published papers based on the analysis of Bennu samples by scientists at NASA and other institutions.

Bennu is made of fragments from a larger parent asteroid destroyed by a collision in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. One of the papers, co-led by Jessica Barnes at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that Bennu’s ancestor was made up of material that had diverse origins — near the Sun, far from the Sun, and even beyond our solar system….

As the leftover materials from planetary formation 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids provide a record of the solar system’s history. But as Zega noted, we’re seeing that some of these remnants differ from what has been found in meteorites on Earth, because certain types of asteroids burn up in the atmosphere and never make it to the ground. That, the researchers point out, is why collecting actual samples is so important….

Now you know. And the forecast is for very little new material here… for about ten days, now. Keep it spinnin’ in good karma, all. Onward.

नमस्ते

Yawn. Surprising… No One, Putin Has Played Trump For The Fool. No Further Meetings.

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Well… here’s a perfect echo from all that we saw just several days ago, in Anchorage…

Putin’s spokesperson just said there are no additional meetings planned or scheduled or even being considered with Mr. Zelenskyy.

Of course, this directly contradicts all of Trump’s promises of “a lasting peace within two weeks”. Here’s the latest:

…Russia’s top diplomat made it clear Friday that Putin won’t meet with Zelenskyy until the Ukrainians agree to some of Moscow’s longstanding demands to end the conflict.

It’s a stinging setback for Trump, who had been touting his diplomatic blitz as resulting in indisputable momentum for a deal to halt a conflict he vowed as a candidate to end on Day One in office….

Once again, Trump proves that he does not understand how the big world works. And now, even more Ukrainians will die because of his false bravado. Out.

नमस्ते

Let Us All Hope That Nairobi Doesn’t Become… A ~5+ Million Souls… Flashpoint, For Mpox Clade 1b: With USAID Sidelined By Tangerine.

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This is simply… discouraging.

The reporting is impeccable, though — from CIDRAP:

…Kenya currently has one of the most worrisome mpox situations, and the virus has spread from coastal regions to Nairobi, raising the risk of exponential spread given the urban population density in the country’s capital, he said. Nairobi is also Kenya’s largest city, with a population topping 5 million people.

Clade 1b is circulating in the country, and the case-fatality rate is 2%, which is on the higher end of affected countries, Boum said, noting that Africa CDC will fast-track support to the country.

The country hopes to launch a vaccination campaign on September 1, which Boum said would ideally be conducted hand-in-hand with surveillance activities….

Now you know — onward to about 10 days largely off-grid — but seen twice at 9:17 am Central, this morning — indeed. Grin.

नमस्ते