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Merck Is Still Pretty Compelling — At $106… With Q4 2022 Earnings Due Next Wednesday

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In times of general consumer price inflation, and a fairly stagnant job market, overall… the “counter-cyclicals” — or defensive stocks… often become screaming buys (as was true in the late 1970s). This is — again — one of those times.

True, in the heady “go-go” times of early 2022, these big pharmas looked pretty… boring (cough! when compared to… Bitcoin!)… but while Bitcoin is now down over 75% in the last 12 months, Merck is up over 44%.

How’z ’bout them marbles?

And, with this recent pull-back to around $106 this week, on the NYSE… it is hard to argue with the name remaining a very solid buy in 2023 — its longer term demographic markets are… compelling. Life-saving, in fact.

Condor predicts… the company will post results that are either in-line, or a slight beat, at the GAAP EPS line, net of acquisitions, this coming Wednesday. [And that is no mean feat — in and of itself, in these volatile times.]

And in a choppy market, getting a cash juggernaut, at about a 12 or 13 Earnings Multiple… knowing that will continue to mid 2030s… is a very solid risk adjusted bet.

I’ll hush now — have a great weekend.

नमस्ते

Hayward Proves The Adage, From the ‘60s, True… Unintentionally About Conservatives, Of Course.

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This — in the grand pantheon of utterly stupid stuff Steve believes… may be minor. But I’ll call him out on… his utter cluelessness, on race… since he wants to believe a fairy tale version of who he really is. And so do his fellow hard right frothers, at Powerline.

This afternoon, he posts a chart that is… laughable in several respects. Self mocking.

First, Steve fails to consider that most of those he calls “liberals” long ago came to grips with the sad reality: very few whyte people who say they have “very close Black friends…” would hear in return, that the Black people they imagine in their statements… considered them a close friend.

But not Hayward’s MAGA GOP-ers! They are shamelessly unaware of their… myopic view of the world.

These whyte MAGAts (despite clear math suggesting that fewer than 5% of all Black people consider themselves even moderately hard right Republicans — or less than 1% of all GOP party members) think that ALL 200 or so hard right black Americans… are their personal, very close friends.

No — it is just a delusion held by people who’ve never had dinner in a black person’s home, let alone spend several weeks each year vacationing together. Nope, all that Steve’s chart proves… is most hard righters (in having missed every lesson of the 60s and 70s) have a very loose grip on reality, when it comes to close inter-racial friendships.

Face it Steve: there simply aren’t enough Black people in America… for half of ALL Republicans… to have actually personally befriended them, and closely so.

Thus, his only proves that the racism we saw Tangerine shout openly, when on the tarmac at one of his 2019 rallies, he shouted “look at my African American, there!”… runs deep in GOP.

A single black guy. But ask Trump: he’s a good friend of his.

Sheesh. Be honest Steve… what home cooked meal did you last eat in a Black family’s home?

Out. [Keep a peaceful thought for Memphis tonight.]

More — And More — Of Our History, Long Lost In The Sands — Some Four Millennia In The Past In Egypt, Being Rediscovered By The Egyptians…

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I do find it stirring, that yet another necropolis laid under the sands for nearly 4,000 years… undisturbed… slumbering as the world above utterly forgot it was ever there.

And now, Dr. Zahi Hawass, perhaps the most recognizable face of archeology in Egypt — is bit by painstaking bit — letting these long muted voices… call out, and speak to us, from their sarcophagi. Here’s the latest, from AP’s reporting, this morning:

…The artifacts, unearthed during a year-long excavation, were found beneath an ancient stone enclosure near the Saqqara pyramids and date back to the fifth and sixth dynasties of the Old Kingdom, spanning from roughly 2500 B.C to 2100 B.C., the excavation team said. . . .

The Saqqara site is part of a sprawling necropolis at Egypt’s ancient capital of Memphis, that includes the famed Giza Pyramids as well as smaller pyramids at Abu Sir, Dahshur and Abu Ruwaysh. The ruins of Memphis were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in the 1970s….

This history of human life runs long, and it runs deep — deep, into Africa, into the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania — stretching back almost two million years, give or take… and it is decidedly not primarily the history of pale Europeans. We would do well to bear that in mind.

And keep a sense of humility about our place in the much larger pantheon of time, out of mind. Do keep a peaceful thought, in your meditations — for the other Memphis, tonight… and the life and legacy of young Tyre Nichols. His horrific end was indeed… murder, by cops.

नमस्ते

Sort Of Like Opening Off-Broadway, In “Previews”… “Lucy” Will Get A Early Look — At A ~700 Meter Asteroid, By November 4, 2023…

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Due to some nifty calculations worked out by Raphael Marschall, a Lucy collaborator at the Nice Observatory in France (see image — but if I remember correctly, he was the first to spot an interstellar visitor, in 2019, as well), the NASA team has given a green-light, to adjust the trajectory, ever so slightly — starting in May 2023, so that the lithe lil’ craft might send us imagery a full year early, of at least one asteroid of interest by November 4, 2023. Cool!

[My prior backgrounder, on the NASA /SWRI Boulder Lucy mission here.]

Although it will mostly be a demonstration of the new techniques for accurately capturing close up images of very small asteroids, we are likely to get some real “Mr. DeMille close ups” from this encounter. That is, we are likely to beam back high res photographic images of it — from a distance of only about 280 miles. Whoosh….

The rock involved is under a half mile in size, and is (in the prose of Norman Maclean) “from the basement of time,” itself. It was almost certainly formed of the ancient primordial dust… not long after our local disk began to accrete matter, into larger clumps… so perhaps over 6 billion years ago. It is, quite literally, early star stuff. Here’s the SWRI Boulder / NASA story:

“…There are millions of asteroids in the main asteroid belt,” said Raphael Marschall, Lucy collaborator of the Nice Observatory in France, who identified asteroid 1999 VD57 as an object of special interest for Lucy. “I selected 500,000 asteroids with well-defined orbits to see if Lucy might be traveling close enough to get a good look at any of them, even from a distance. This asteroid really stood out. Lucy’s trajectory as originally designed will take it within 40,000 miles of the asteroid, at least three times closer than the next closest asteroid….”

This asteroid was not identified as a target earlier because it is extremely small. In fact, 1999 VD57, estimated to be a mere 0.4 miles (700 m) in size, will be the smallest main belt asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft. It is… more similar in size to the near-Earth asteroids visited by recent NASA missions OSIRIS-REx and DART than to previously visited main belt asteroids.

The Lucy team will carry out a series of maneuvers starting in early May 2023 to place the spacecraft on a trajectory that will pass approximately 280 miles (450 km) from this small asteroid….

We will await this particular day, in November of 2023… with much excitement, indeed. Grin. Snow ending; some sunshine emerging here, now.

नमस्ते

Johnson: Somehow This Guy Thinks Novels… In France — Are Americans’… Reality. Wow.

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Scott Johnson is not usually quite as delusional as Hinderaker or Hayward… which is to say he is usually wrong, but not lost in a time-tunnel.

Today, though — he’s lost in a… time-tunnel. His cheese has slid, off his cracker.

He neglects to mention that a fair portion of the people without papers in NYC are there because Gov. Abbott and Gov. DeSantis… have declared war on blue states.

Florida and Texas — or the state GOP, more precisely, in each of those states… has decided that committing the felony of kidnapping people who have lawful federal asylum hearings in their states, as a condition of being released on bond… is not a big deal.

Even though it is these states’ official actions that are causing the federal felony kidnappings.

So — whatever some goofy old French novel might posit, it cannot compare even remotely, to the reality of GOP Governors… committing pattern felonies against other humans, day in and day out — for over a year now.

Do sit down, Scott.

Out.

Hinderaker’s Mind: Gone — 100% “Buggy” — Still. Damn.

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Perhaps after being pulled aside by one of his saner brothers, at his father’s memorial yesterday — in the Dakotas… Hinderaker grudgingly now admits that “leftists” cannot “make” anyone in the US eat bugs.

So it is, that John has felt the need to (again!) explain what he sees as a vast liberal conspiracy… in which only liberals own cattle ranches, and in which they alone are the ones making red meat more expensive. Uh-huh.

This is just sad, really — and I am sure one or two of his brothers told him so, over drinks a couple nights ago — or last night, even.

Even his “walked back” version tonight has all the markings of a paranoid, delusional and yes, now mostly-senile… mind:

“…If you think liberals are just trying to expand our field of choice — it’s up to you whether you want to eat bugs or not! — you don’t know liberals. After all, we could have been eating crickets and mealworms all along if that was our idea of a good dinner. But we have already seen skyrocketing prices for meat and other commodities in grocery stores. The liberals’ plan is to make meat prohibitively expensive before extinguishing its consumption altogether….”

His attempt at being more “plausibly reasonable” — in his buggy accusations… is actually more frightening than his earlier (more fantastical) versions… because it is now clear that he is not in on the joke that the hard right is playing on its rubes: Hinderaker, it seems, is the butt of the inside joke, and wholly unawares, too.

It is hard, truly… to watch the real-time, day-by-day decline, of what was at least some years ago… an agile mind.

Damn. Out.

[U] Mike Pence: I Think “The Fly” Took Those Classified Documents… Heh.

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Updated: never wanting to miss a chance to speciously demonize the 46th President, Scott weighs in on Wednesday morning, with a yawner, that I gather is also supposed to be funny. No surprise: it isn’t. End, update.

I say that primarily because, just like the Biden docs… the clear public factual record establishes… that neither Biden or Pence ever lied about having them, nor hid them, nor delayed / obstructed… for 18 months — while forcing a search warrant. In sum, it should be a punchline, not a story.

Finally, over 300 (Tangerine) in no manner is comparable to the handfuls that the other two had. Oh — and there were not 45 EMPTY Classified folders in any of the Pence or Biden returns.

So… EW is right — this is (almost to a certainty), a non-story (at least in so far as anyone makes it a “horse race” narrative):

“…Until we have answers about some of the details that currently distinguish Biden and Pence from Trump — like whether they knew of the documents (both claim they did not), whether they ever accessed the documents after leaving office, whether we have reason to believe they’re harboring more — this should not be a story….”

The more we see — the worse Tangerine’s crimes appear to be.

Out.

A Surprising Set Of Stats — From The Money We All Invest, In NASA…

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It’s important — from time to time — to take stock of all the less widely known ancillary benefits we derive, as a nation, from our collective efforts to explore space. [Especially with hard right GOP operatives in the US House now threatening another debt ceiling showdown, and resulting funding cuts. And, despite the nonsense polling of Rasmussen that Hinderaker cites… most Americans without regard to party affiliations… feel shutdowns are bad for our nation.]

In that vein, I offer the following. Do recall that NASA’s satellite systems are often instrumental, in locating, and saving ships lost at sea, and hikers lost in the wilderness, and people who’ve wrecked their cars, in often remote terrain, and cannot hike out to safety.

Here’s that story:

…In 2022, NASA-developed Search and Rescue technologies enabled rescue personnel to save 397 lives in the U.S. region. Since 1979, NASA has provided technical expertise to the Cospas-Sarsat program, the international satellite-aided search and rescue effort. This technical expertise has led to the development of multiple emergency location beacon types.

The international search and rescue effort enables hikers, boaters, pilots, and other explorers to activate location beacons should they become distressed or lost. Adventurers can utilize 406 MHz frequency Cospas-Sarsat beacons, which equip users with precise and reliable emergency location services. Upon activation, these beacons send signals to satellites in space, which then relay the distress signals to ground stations. This process allows the Cospas-Sarsat network to calculate their position anywhere in the world. The network then sends the location to first responders, who initiate rescue operations.

These beacons provide explorers with a sense of safety as they venture on land, air, and sea….

So do keep that in mind, as we approach arguments in DC, over how and where we spend the taxpayers’ funds — and what all that entails, as policy tradeoffs. Onward — smiling.

नमस्ते

Interesting Letter Filed In Newark This Morning: Singapore Version Of Litigation, In Merck v. Merck Spat, Settled — More To Come?

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It certainly makes sense that the US Merck is pushing for a global resolution. After all, the main idea is to achieve certainty, and end the flow of legal expenses — which in truth, are a pure waste of money. So, a truly-global settlement ought to be the goal.

But we do learn here that the parties were able to settle in Singapore, before trial — and that both see a narrowing of overall issues — even if the ones that remain are… the thorniest. Here’s that letter, and a bit:

…The Order indicates that Your Honor determined that the conference should proceed by Zoom in order “[t]o accommodate the schedules of counsel and Mr. Kölle [Merck KGaA’s lead negotiator and chief internal trademark counsel].” Although we very much appreciate that accommodation and courtesy, we respectfully request that the settlement conference be conducted in person at the courthouse in Newark instead.

We are pleased to report that the trial between the parties in Singapore, at which Mr. Kölle’s attendance would have been required, has now been settled. Mr. Kölle is thus now available to travel to the United States for a settlement conference in this matter. He is willing — indeed eager — to make the international trip because Merck KGaA believes that an in-person conference has the greatest likelihood of being successful and is committed to making the most of the opportunity.

The parties have already engaged in numerous in-person settlement meetings over the past few months, and they are scheduled to do so again in Germany on January 25 and 26. In Merck KGaA’s experience, these past few in-person meetings have yielded substantial progress, and meeting in person has been key to working toward finding common ground on some of the thornier issues that remain outstanding — particularly given Plaintiffs’ insistence that any settlement of their U.S. litigation must be folded into a larger “global” settlement….

As regular readers know… we have followed this since even before our now decade on times, traveling to Nashville, for life sciences businesses — by about four years before that (now with a record of 3-3). And it has all been bubbling, in one form or another — for now 103 years… over a century, indeed. Grin.

नमस्ते