Week in Review

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Week in Review

03/26/2022

For the week 3/21-3/25

[Posted 8:30 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,197

“Putin’s War” in Ukraine is now over one month old.  An article on the website of Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, captured by a web archive tool, quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying 9,861 Russian servicemen have been killed and 16,153 wounded in what Moscow calls its special military operation in Ukraine.

The newspaper later accused hackers of planting fake news on its site, though the article stayed up for more than six hours before it was removed.

If the figures were true, the Russian death toll from the month-long war would equate to about two-thirds of the estimated 15,000 servicemen who died during the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979.  Russia has not officially updated its casualty figures since stating on March 2 that 498 had been killed and 1,597 wounded.

NATO estimated this week that 7,000 to 15,000 Russians soldiers had been killed, along with six generals.  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday he had no information on casualty numbers. 

The United Nations said it had confirmed 1,081 civilian deaths as of today, adding that the real toll was likely higher (see the below story on Mariupol).

What is clear is the human toll is huge.  Ukraine has yet to reveal accurate figures on its own war dead as well.  And the toll on Ukraine’s cities and towns, and infrastructure, is catastrophic.

Also clear is that thousands of Russian mothers are beginning to learn through one source or another that their son isn’t coming home.  They will be calling for Putin’s head.

Late Friday, Moscow signaled it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists in the east as Ukrainian forces went on the offensive to recapture towns outside the capital Kyiv.

The Russian Defense Ministry said a first phase of its operation was mostly complete and it would now focus on “liberating” the breakaway eastern Donbas region.

“The combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been considerably reduced, which…makes it possible to focus our core efforts on achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbass,” said Sergei Rudskoi, head of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate.

Battlelines near Kyiv have been frozen for weeks with two main Russian armored columns stuck northwest and east of the capital.

And in the first big sign that Western sanctions on Moscow were impacting investment from China, sources said state-run Sinopec Group, Asia’s biggest oil refiner, halted talks on a petrochemical investment and a venture to market Russian gas.

Is Vladimir Putin beginning to face reality?  You know I’m the ‘wait 24 hours’ guy.

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As he left for the NATO summit on Wednesday, President Biden said that Russia’s potential use of chemical weapons against Ukraine was “a real threat.”  Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that in the administration’s determination that Russia was committing war crimes, the U.S. would work to prosecute offenders.

The assessment of senior officials in the administration is that Putin’s tendency when boxed in is to escalate rather than back down.  I wrote since day one he’s a cornered rat, which everyone is now picking up on, though I’ve yet to see anyone mention, in talking about Putin’s destruction of Grozny (and later Aleppo), that the pretext for his going into Chechnya, upon taking office in 1999, was to bomb his own people while they were asleep in their apartments, the Moscow apartment bombings, and blame it on Chechen terrorists.

This is who Vlad the Impaler has always been.  He will lash out.

As President Biden put it bluntly Monday: “His back is against the wall” and “the more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday urged an end to the “absurd war,” warning that the conflict is “going nowhere, fast” and that the Ukrainian people are “enduring a living hell.”

“Continuing the war in Ukraine is morally unacceptable, politically indefensible and militarily nonsensical,” Guterres told reporters in New York.

“Even if Mariupol falls, Ukraine cannot be conquered city by city, street by street, house by house,” Guterres said.  “This war is unwinnable.  Sooner or later, it will have to move from the battlefield to the peace table.”

Guterres talked of over 3.5 million refugees, now 3.7 million (2 million of which are in Poland), and over 10 million Ukrainians displaced, which is one-quarter of the nation’s population. 

Guterres noted the reverberations being felt globally “with skyrocketing food, energy and fertilizer prices threatening to spiral into a global hunger crisis.”

Guterres added: “The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”

Thursday, Western leaders, in a string of summits in Brussels convened to rally international efforts to end the invasion of Ukraine, declared they would work together to close loopholes to prevent Russia evading economic sanctions and undercut its ability to wage war.

Appeals from Kyiv for direct intervention to protect its cities from aerial bombardment were rebuffed again, though NATO announced it would bolster military preparedness and that members would send further arms to help Ukraine.

“The single most important thing that we have to do in the West is be united,” President Biden declared as he arrived to join a European Council as a rare overseas leader invited to join the top-level EU summit.  Then many of the leaders shifted over to a G7 summit that included Japan.

NATO earlier agreed to send thousands of extra troops in four new battlegroups to Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria to bolster its eastern flank, as Ukraine warned Russia could attack member states if not prevented.

“I’m sure you understand that Russia does not intend to stop in Ukraine. Does not intend, and will not. It wants to go further, against the eastern members of NATO.  The Baltic States, Poland – that’s for sure,” President Volodymyr Zelensky warned NATO leaders as he addressed the 30-member alliance by video link.

Zelensky said many lives had been lost because Western countries had not agreed to impose a no-fly zone when the invasion began one month ago and called for NATO members to offer him 1 percent of their aircraft and tanks to help even up the fight with Russia.

But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said that while anti-tank weapons, air defense systems and drones supplied to Ukraine by member states had proved “highly effective,” there were limits to what the alliance could do.

“We have a responsibility to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war in Europe, involving not only Ukraine and Russia but NATO allies and Russia,” Stoltenberg said.

Washington and Brussels announced they would provide over $1.6 billion in humanitarian aid to Ukraine, collectively, while working together to decrease EU dependence on Russian energy imports, a step likely to increase deliveries of liquified natural gas from the U.S.

The U.S. and the UK announced fresh sanctions hitting Russian businesses and elites.

President Biden said Russia should be expelled from the Group of 20 major economies.

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I remain convinced Pope Francis may yet play a leading role in any kind of peace talks/negotiations (Turkey’s President Erdogan could be another key figure).

The pope continued his implicit criticism of Russia on Sunday, calling the conflict in Ukraine an unjustified “senseless massacre” and urged leaders to stop “this repugnant war.”

“The violent aggression against Ukraine is unfortunately not slowing down,” he told about 30,000 people in St. Peter’s Square gathered for his weekly address and blessing. “It is a senseless massacre where every day slaughters and atrocities are being repeated,” Francis said in his strongest condemnation of the war, which has so far avoided mentioning Russia by name.  “There is no justification for this,” he added.

“I beg all the players in the international community to truly commit themselves to stopping this repugnant war,” the pope said, drawing loud cheers and applause.  “Even this week missiles and bombs hit civilians, the elderly, children and pregnant mothers,” he said.

Francis spoke about his visit on Saturday to a Rome hospital that is treating children wounded in Ukraine.

“One was missing an arm and another had a head wound,” he said.  Francis also asked people to guard against potential human trafficking of those fleeing Ukraine.

“The blood and tears of children, the suffering of women and men who are defending their land or fleeing from bombardment shakes our conscience,” Francis said in a message to a Church conference in Slovakia.

President Zelensky talked with the pope a second time on Tuesday.

“(I) told his Holiness about the difficult humanitarian situation and the blocking of rescue corridors by Russian troops.  The mediating role of the Holy See in ending human suffering would be appreciated,” Zelensky said in a tweet.

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--In a new Associated Press-NORC national poll, only 36% of Americans approve of President Biden’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 56% disapproving.

--The United States will welcome up to 100,000 refugees from Ukraine.  Initially, the White House said the U.S. would accept refugees from Ukraine, but officials expected most would want to remain in Europe to stay close to their homeland or to family members around Eastern Europe.  But refugee agencies had urged the U.S. to do more.

--NATO warned on Wednesday against Russia’s war in Ukraine sliding into a nuclear confrontation between Moscow and the West.  “Russia should stop this dangerous irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference.  “But let there be no doubt about our readiness to protect and defend allies against any threat anytime.”

“Russia must understand that it can never win a nuclear war,” he said on the eve of NATO summit in Brussels.  “NATO is not part of the conflict…it provides support to Ukraine but isn’t part of the conflict.”

“NATO will not send the troops into Ukraine… It is extremely important to provide support to Ukraine and we are stepping up.  But at the same time, it is also extremely important to prevent this conflict from becoming a full-fledged war between NATO and Russia.”

--Mariupol was a city of 430,000 prior to the war and now the Ukrainian government says at least 100,000 want to leave but cannot, while Russian forces were preventing humanitarian supplies from getting through.  Food and medical supplies have essentially run out.  As President Zelensky said, the city has been reduced to “ashes.”  You’ve seen the pictures.  You find yourself just shaking your head…who the hell would do such a senseless thing?

The number of dead given there by the mayor, a week ago, was nearly 2,200.  Local officials today, citing witness accounts, said as many as 300 people may have been killed in the bombing of a theatre in Mariupol on March 16.

Capturing the city of Mariupol helps Russian forces secure a land corridor to the Crimean Peninsula, and Ukraine noted today that Russia had partially accomplished this.

--The Ukrainian Navy destroyed a large Russian troop ship in the port of Berdyansk, a Russian-occupied city in the south of the country.

--Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that special envoy Anatoly Chubais, an architect of Russia’s post-Soviet economic reforms, had resigned, adding that he did so of his own accord.

Earlier on Wednesday, Reuters reported that Chubais had quit his post, in the highest profile protest by a Russian figure against the Ukraine invasion.  He reportedly left the country. 

Chubais, who once served as former President Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff, left his post as Vlad’s special representative for ties with international organizations.  He had been blamed by many Russians for allowing a small group of tycoons to enrich themselves in the privatizations of the 1990s while millions of Russians were left in poverty amid economic collapse and crisis.  In more recent years he continued to call for economic reform and was one of the most high-profile liberals associated with the Russian government.  In 2010 he warned that the rise of fascism was Russia’s single biggest threat and could rip the country apart.

--Inflationary expectations for the year ahead among households in Russia rose to an 11-year high of 18.3% in March from 13.5% in February, central bank data showed on Wednesday.

--The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected U.S. warnings that it may be preparing to conduct cyber attacks in response to Western sanctions, and said it did not engage in “banditry.”

President Biden on Monday told businesses to do more to protect themselves against possible cyber attacks, warning there was “evolving intelligence” that Moscow was exploring options on that front.

--President Zelensky told the Italian parliament on Tuesday that his people were clinging to survival.  “For Russian troops, Ukraine is the gates of Europe, where they want to break in, but barbarism must not be allowed to pass,” he said, adding that the consequences of the war were already being felt in many parts of the world.

“The most terrible thing will be the famine that is approaching for some countries.  Ukraine has always been one of the largest food exporters, but how can we sow (crops) under the strikes of Russian artillery?”

I’ve written before how the likes of Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen and others have come to rely on Ukrainian wheat in recent years and the war has caused wheat prices to skyrocket – rising by 50% in the last month.

Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Roman Leshchenko said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s spring crop sowing area may more than halve this year from 2021 levels to some 7 million hectares, versus 15 million hectares before the invasion.  Leshchenko, in an interview, said Ukraine had large stocks of corn, but “how to export it later is a very difficult question.”

But Leshchenko submitted his resignation on Thursday and gave no reason.  Ukraine’s parliament then said he was being replaced by Mykola Solskyi, who is widely seen as an important figure behind reforms that opened the land market in Ukraine last year, lifting a longstanding ban on the sale of farmland.  The move was intended by President Zelensky to unlock opportunities for investment in the agricultural sector although the invasion may sharply reduce the 2022 harvest and exports in the 2022/23 season.

--Japan was furious Tuesday after Russia withdrew from peace treaty talks and froze joint economic projects related to the disputed Kuril Islands because of sanctions imposed by Tokyo over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  Russia and Japan have still not formally ended World War II hostilities because of the standoff over the islands just off Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, known in Russia as the Kurils and in Japan as the Northern Territories.

The islands were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.  Japan has imposed sanctions on 76 individuals, seven banks and 12 other bodies in Russia, and included defense officials and the state-owned arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he strongly opposed Russia’s decision, terming it “unfair” and “completely unacceptable.”

“This entire situation has been created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s response to push this onto Japan-Russia relations is extremely unfair and completely unacceptable,” he said.

--Finland’s national railway operator said on Friday it would suspend services between Helsinki and St. Petersburg in Russia on Monday, closing the rail link between Russia and the European Union. Russia had canceled its passenger train routes to EU countries in 2020 due to Covid-19 restrictions but this route, known as the Allegro, remained open.

The border between Finland and Russia remains open for crossings by private car.

--Russia’s space director said on Thursday that Europe had wrecked cooperation by imposing sanctions against his agency, and rockets that were meant to launch European satellites would now be used for Russian companies or countries friendly to Moscow.

--As I told you would be the case, Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison on Tuesday for fraud and contempt.  The 45-year-old was already serving a 2 ½-year sentence at a prison camp east of Moscow for parole violations related to charges that he says were fabricated to thwart his political opposition.  His existing sentence will be incorporated into the one handed down on Tuesday, according to his lawyers, both of whom were briefly detained after the hearing.

After the sentence was pronounced., Navalny tweeted: “I want to say: the best support for me and other political prisoners is not sympathy and kind words, but actions.  Any activity against the deceitful and thievish Putin’s regime.  Any opposition to these war criminals.”

This is how Russian justice progresses.  For the worst critics, they just gradually escalate, from a fine and release, to a minor sentence, to a not-so-minor sentence, to a major sentence.

It’s why I said Marina Ovsyannikova, the Channel One state TV news editor who was fined and released after holding a “NO WAR” poster during an evening news show, will not be free long, especially as she has vowed to stay in the country.

Recall, Navalny was poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve toxin during a visit to Siberia in 2020.  He was lucky he was able to receive emergency treatment in Germany.  He then returned to Moscow and was arrested shortly thereafter on trumped up charges.  He blamed Vlad the Impaler for the attack.

--Russia’s stock market jumped in its first, limited trading session since the West unveiled punishing sanctions nearly a month ago, but the rally was overshadowed by government moves to prevent foreign investors from selling shares.

The benchmark MOEX index rose around 4%.  Only 33 shares out of 50 on the index were allowed to trade in the shortened session.  Russian energy giant Gazprom PJSC rose 13%, while its peer Lukoil PJSC rose 12%.  Energy prices have surged since the last time they traded.

To prevent a selloff, Russia’s central bank banned short selling, where investors bet that a stock’s value will decline, and blocked foreigners, who make up a huge chunk of the market, from selling their shares.  The Kremlin also directed a Russian sovereign-wealth fund to buy around $10 billion in shares.

If foreigners could sell they probably would.  Russian shares in London and New York plunged after the start of the war and many have been delisted or suspended because of the sanctions.

--Today, President Putin accused the West of trying to cancel Russia’s rich musical and literary culture, including composers Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff (who happen to be my two favorites) in the same way it had cancelled “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling.

Speaking in a meeting with leading cultural figures broadcast on national television, Putin complained of the cancellation of a number of Russian cultural events in recent weeks and compared it to actions taken by Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

“I am talking about the gradual discrimination against everything linked to Russia…

“The last time such a mass campaign to destroy objectionable literature was carried out, it was by the Nazis in Germany almost 90 years ago,” Putin said.

Vlad referred to the likes of Valery Gergiev, general director of the St. Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre, who was dismissed as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic after he failed to condemn Russia’s invasion.

Spain’s Teatro Real, one of Europe’s major opera houses, has cancelled performances later this year by Russia’s Bolshoi Ballet.

Auction houses have canceled sales of Russian art (which I long called the most undervalued in the world…Russian classical art from the 1800s…like at Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, perhaps my favorite art museum in the world).

You now have various orchestras canceling concerts of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff music.

But J.K. Rowling quickly distanced herself from Putin, posting an article on Twitter critical of the Kremlin and its treatment of Alexei Navalny.

Some commentary….

David Ignatius / Washington Post

“As the Ukraine war nears a month of brutal fighting, Vladimir Putin is obsessed with Ukraine, angry at his generals, paranoid about enemies at home and abroad, and wrapping his bloody deeds in spiritual language almost mystical in its vision of Russia’s past and future.

“Putin’s mind-set was on display at a stadium concert last week, as he invoked a Russian Orthodox warrior-saint who spoke of his own battles as ‘thunderstorms’ that would ‘glorify Russia.’

“ ‘This is how it was in his time; this is how it is today and will always be,’ Putin said of Fedor Ushakov, an 18th-century admiral reputed never to have lost a battle and canonized as a saint in 2001, shortly after Putin became president.

“Putin’s short remarks offered a reminder that his personality is more complex – and perhaps more dangerous – than the usual stereotype of him as an ex-KGB officer who wants to revive the Soviet Union.  Putin is something different – a Russian Orthodox Christian believer rather than an atheist, with an ideology closer to Benito Mussolini’s fascism than Vladimir Lenin’s communism.

“Penetrating the riddle of Putin’s psyche is a life-or-death matter these days, as the Ukraine war grinds on and the world worries about the danger that a Putin will escalate with chemical or even nuclear weapons.  Experts say Putin isn’t irrational in the usual clinical sense. But he has entered a realm where his decisions are driven by a grandiose sense of his place in Russian history. In his own mind, his mission is transcendent….

“(At the concert speech), Putin described the bloody assault as salvation for Ukraine – and spoke of a religious duty ‘to relieve these people of suffering.’  Astonishingly, he quoted the Bible to justify his blitzkrieg: ‘I recall the words from the Holy Scripture: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’

“Putin’s words sound perverse, even blasphemous, to us in the West.  Putin’s army has bombed maternity hospitals, shopping malls and opera houses in Ukraine. But this twisted version is evidently what Putin believes….

“Putin’s rage at Western elites and their Russian friends was on vivid display last week, in a March 16 video speech. He ranted at ‘scum and traitors’ who supported ‘the so-called collective West’ rather than Russia.  He scorned those who ‘cannot make do without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom, as they call it.’

“Russia’s enemies are immoral, Putin argued.  ‘They believe that everything is for sale and everything can be bought, and therefore they think we will break down and back off.  But they do not know our history and our people well enough.’

“Take a good look at the face of the West’s adversary in Ukraine. Putin does not appear to be simply a bully or an opportunist, who can be swayed by economic pressure or vanquished by arms.  He believes deeply in the evil that he is doing.  He sees the destruction of an independent Ukraine almost as a religious duty.

“Two obvious warnings emerge from his narrative: Handle the volatile mix that is Putin with care, lest it explode in a far wider war.  And do not let him succeed.”

David Sanger / New York Times

“The fear is that the aftermath of the invasion has rapidly transformed Europe into two armed camps once again, though this time the Iron Curtain looks very different.  The opportunity is that, 30 days into a misbegotten war, Russia has already made so many mistakes that some of the NATO leaders believe that, if the West plays the next phase right, President Vladimir Putin of Russia may fail at his apparent objective of taking all of Ukraine.

“That does not mean the Ukrainians will win. Their country is shattered, millions are dispersed and homeless, and among leaders who gathered in Brussels there was a sense of foreboding that the scenes of destruction and violence could go on for months or years.  No one saw an outcome in which Mr. Putin would withdraw.  Instead, there was concern he could double down, reaching for chemical, or even tactical nuclear, weapons.

“But there was a surprising tenacity about taking on Mr. Putin – a sense that did not exist broadly across Europe until the invasion began, and that has only intensified since.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“The public message out of Thursday’s meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels is sure to be heavy on unity and resolve in support of Ukraine. But the unfortunate reality is that the democratic alliance confronting Vladimir Putin still isn’t doing enough to ensure the Russian’s defeat. And behind the scenes, some leaders would prefer if Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to a peace settlement sooner rather than later.

“The stunning fact of this war is that the Ukrainians have rescued Europe and the U.S. as much as NATO is assisting Ukraine.  Kyiv’s stalwart resistance, at great human cost, has given the West a chance to stop the advance of Russian imperialism before it imperils NATO.  The war has exposed the Russian military as weaker than our intelligence services and the Pentagon thought.  Against all expectations, Ukraine may be winning.

“Most surprising, the Ukrainian resistance has renewed a sense among the people of the West that their countries stand for something more than welfare-state ease and individual indulgence.  Ukrainians are showing that freedom has a price, often a fearsome one.

“Yet Western leaders still seem worried of what would happen if Ukraine won.  That’s especially true in the Biden Administration, which has taken many good steps – but typically under pressure from Congress or Europe, and typically late.  President Biden is rightly outraged by Mr. Putin’s brutality, and he calls him a war criminal, but he still seems afraid of doing what it takes to defeat him….

“It’s hard to resist the conclusion that Mr. Putin has succeeded in intimidating Mr. Biden and other leaders with his threats of nuclear escalation. This concern may justify the decision not to assist Ukraine with a NATO no-fly zone, which could require U.S. planes to attack Russian radars and missile defenses inside Russian territory.

“But it shouldn’t be an excuse for caution in doing everything short of that to help Ukrainians defeat Mr. Putin.  If the nuclear threat works to stop NATO support now, the Russian will use it in the future against NATO proper. The essence of deterrence is credibility, which means persuading Mr. Putin that his resort to nuclear weapons in Ukraine will be met with a requisite response.  The same goes for chemical or biological weapons.

“Our fear is that Mr. Biden, and perhaps other NATO leaders, will lean on Mr. Zelensky to agree to let Ukraine become one more ‘frozen conflict’ like Georgia. Russia would be able to keep the Ukrainian territory it occupies in return for no more bombing.  Mr. Putin would be able to consolidate control over those areas and rearm to threaten Ukraine again in the future.  The NATO leaders could put that fear to rest if they said publicly that sanctions against Russia won’t be lifted until its troops leave Ukraine.

“We’ve said before that a country goes to war, hot or cold, with the President it has. We want Mr. Biden to lead and succeed in Ukraine.  But he needs to lead more decisively – and with a goal not merely of military stalemate but of Ukrainian victory.”

Biden Agenda

--Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was promised a respectful and thorough examination of important legal issues in her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. But then many of the Republican senators decided to focus on child pornography and the hearings went off the rails.

“What I regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications to be a justice on the Supreme Court, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences,” Jackson told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) after hours of questioning Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a White House spokesman accused Hawley of baiting followers of QAnon, which parrots the bizarre conspiracy theory that Washington is run by a cabal of sex offenders.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz asked Jackson if she thought all babies were racist.

And also told her: “I believe you are for children, obviously your children and other children. But I also see a record of activism and advocacy as it concerns sexual predators that stems back decades, and that is concerning.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Monday, “The hearings are going to be challenging for you, informative for the public, and respectful by us.”

Two days later, he was interrupting Jackson’s attempts to explain how the rise of the internet has affected sentencing for people facing jail for possessing child pornography and how Congress has not updated laws.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) questioned in a conversation with local reporters whether the Supreme Court should have been in the business of protecting interracial marriage.  He later clarified his comments.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy – who opposes Jackson’s nomination for other reasons – has argued that the smear about sexual predators is “meritless to the point of demagoguery.”

But after Hawley read, in detail, the disgusting facts from one case involving child pornography, raising the White House’s claim that there was a connection between QAnon’s unfounded obsession with the topic, Hawley on Wednesday made the jump to the coming elections.

“If they want to dismiss parents’ concerns about their children’s safety and they want to dismiss concerns about crime as a conspiracy theory, take that argument to the polls,” he said.

Editorial / Washington Post

“Not all Judiciary Committee Republicans went off the rails. Sen. Ben Sasse (Neb.) questioned (Jackson) respectfully on the originalist philosophy of judicial interpretation.  Others posed questions about substantive due process, the doctrine under which the court has established rights not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution.  Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) congratulated the Democrats on running a fair hearing.  Throughout, Judge Jackson gave thoughtful – if not particularly revelatory – responses.

“Unfortunately, their colleagues’ antics distracted from their more productive questioning, and from what should have been the order of the day: recognizing the historic nomination of the first Black woman to sit on the Supreme Court and using the opportunity to probe thorny legal questions in good faith.

“Neither side is blameless in the politicization of the confirmation process. But, particularly after they iced out then-Judge Merrick Garland in 2016, Republicans have done the most damage.  The clownish performances by Mr. Graham and others continue them on that trajectory.”

Michael Gerson / Washington Post

“Jackson’s main Republican questioners are not focused on qualifications, temperament, or even judicial theory.  Their clear objective has been to trip up the nominee by asking about the latest Republican culture-war debates.  It is surprising to me how little Republicans have emphasized judicial theory. For now, the culture war is all.

“This is not just change; it is decay. Republicans have gone from arguing about the intent of the Founders to reproducing the night’s lineup of questions from Tucker Carlson.

“This has, no doubt, been favorable to the judge’s confirmation. In the comparison of intellectual seriousness, Jackson is the clear winner.  She is a responsible judge of moderate temperament, as well as an admirable human being, who will often do liberal things on the high court.  What else could Republicans expect at this circumstance?”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“Republican senators tried to portray Judge Jackson as soft on crime, in particular on sentences for child pornography offenders. The effort wasn’t persuasive, though the claim that Republicans were harder on the Judge than Democrats were on Brett Kavanaugh is ludicrous.  Democrats demanded that Justice Kavanaugh withdraw his nomination based on uncorroborated claims that he was a sexual harasser and alcoholic.

“Judge Jackson is likely to be confirmed as the 116th Justice of the Supreme Court. Although this wouldn’t change today’s 6-3 Court majority, the game is long, and two of the conservatives are in their 70s. It doesn’t take much imagination to see a Justice Jackson writing for a Liberal Court within a decade, certainly two.

“That’s a setback for conservative legal principles, but it’s the reality of a Senate run by Democrats.  President Trump’s election-fraud self-indulgence cost the GOP two Georgia Senate seats, and the price of that defeat keeps going up.”

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Wall Street and the Economy

If there was any lingering doubt that the Federal Reserve was embarking on a more hawkish rate policy in the coming 18-24 months, that was cast aside Monday when at a meeting of the National Association for Business Economics, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the central bank is prepared to raise interest rates by a half percentage-point at its next meeting if needed, deploying a more aggressive tone toward curbing inflation than he used just last week.

Powell indicated that half-point hikes may be on the table when policy makers next gather May 3-4 and at subsequent sessions.

“There is an obvious need to move expeditiously to return the stance of monetary policy to a more neutral level, and then to move to more restrictive levels if that is what is required to restore price stability,” he said.

“If we conclude that it is appropriate to move more aggressively by raising the federal funds rate by more than 25 basis points at a meeting or meetings, we will do so,” Powell added, in a speech titled “Restoring Price Stability.”

In a Q&A after, Powell said, “My colleagues and I may well reach the conclusion that we’ll need to move more quickly and, if so, we will do so.”

On the economic data front, it was a very light week.  New home sales for February were disappointing, coming in at a lower-than-expected 772,000 annualized pace.  And February durable goods were down -2.2%, -0.6% ex-transportation, both worse than consensus.

The flash PMI data for March from S&P Global* was 58.5 on manufacturing (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction) and 58.9 on the service sector, 6- and 8-month highs respectively.  I have to admit, I normally don’t mention these figures because it’s a relatively recent data set, versus the ISM and Chicago area numbers I’ve reported on since day one of this column.

*The IHS Markit data (now S&P Global after completing a merger between the two) for Europe and elsewhere that I refer to has a lengthy history as well.

Anyway, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow barometer for first-quarter activity is just 0.9%.

We did have some terrific news on the jobless claims front, a seasonally adjusted 187,000 last week, the Labor Department reported Thursday, the lowest level in over 52 years, since September 1969 (as the New York Mets were racing to the World Series).

Continuing claims, a measure of the total number of people on the unemployment rolls through regular state programs, moved down to 1.35 million for the week ended March 12, the lowest level since January 1970 (the New York Knicks winning the NBA title months later…these were good times to be a New York sports fan, I can’t help but muse).

One more…the United States and Britain did reach a resolution to end a controversy over steel and aluminum tariffs.

A similar deal was reached between the UK and the EU last year, but a deal with the U.S. was held up by the Biden administration over the separate issue of the post-Brexit trading rules to apply to Northern Ireland and British threats to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

As part of the agreement, steel and aluminum exporters from the UK will have “a high level” of tariff-free access to the U.S. market.

In return the UK will remove additional taxes it had levied on U.S. products such as bourbon, Levi’s and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

The 25-percent tariff on steel and 10-percent tariff on aluminum were imposed by the U.S. under the Trump administration during a dispute with the European Union in 2018.

Europe and Asia

We had flash PMI readings for the month of March in the eurozone, courtesy of S&P Global (again, formerly IHS Markit), and the composite figure was 54.5, a 2-month low, with manufacturing at 53.6, a 5-month low; the service sector 54.8.

Germany: 53.9 manufacturing, 55.0 services.
France: 51.0 manufacturing, 57.4 services.

UK: 52.6 manufacturing, 61.0 services.

Chris Williamson / S&P Global

“The survey data underscore how the Russia-Ukraine war is having an immediate and material impact on the eurozone economy and highlights the risk of the eurozone falling into decline in the second quarter.

“Had it not been for the easing of Covid-19 containment measures to the lowest since the start of the pandemic, business activity would have weakened far more sharply in March. This short-term boost from the rebound will fade in the coming months.  Meanwhile, the war has aggravated existing pandemic-related price pressures and supply chain constraints, leading to record inflation rates for firms’ costs and selling prices, which will inevitably feed through to higher consumer prices in the months ahead.

“Businesses are themselves bracing for weaker economic growth, with expectations of future output collapsing in March as firms grow increasingly concerned about the impact of the war on an economy that is still struggling to find its feet from the pandemic.

“While the headline indicators on current output from the PMI survey may have beaten expectations, the detail reveals a significantly darker economic outlook compared to February, signaling slower growth and higher inflation in the months ahead.”

Brexit: According to Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility, Brexit has left Britain a “less trade intensive economy” because the nation has “missed out on much of the recovery in global trade.”  The government’s independent analyst was reporting on the state of the economy for Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s Spring statement to Parliament.

Sunak also distanced himself from Boris Johnson, who has compared Ukraine’s fight for freedom to Brexit, saying Brexit wasn’t analogous.  When Johnson made the statement to Conservative Party members last weekend, former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt described the remarks as “insane.”

Separately, inflation in the UK rose to 6.2% in February, the highest since 1992, and worsening a historic squeeze on household finances.

Turning to Asia…there was nothing on the data front worth noting on China, while Japan reported its flash PMI figures for March…50.6 on manufacturing vs. February’s 49.3; 48.7 on the service sector, still contraction due to lingering Covid restrictions, but up from February’s 44.2.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan said on Tuesday it was premature to debate an exit from ultra-loose monetary policy, including on how to whittle down its massive holdings of exchange-traded funds, per BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda.

Street Bytes

--After a brutal stretch, stocks rallied a second week, with the Dow Jones advancing only 0.3% to 34861, but the S&P 500 rose 1.8% and Nasdaq 2%.  Nasdaq’s gain is 10%+ in the past two weeks.

Earnings season is around the corner, and the market has to face the realization that the Federal Reserve is going to be more aggressive than first thought, and I’m not convinced the market has really accepted this.  Let alone what Vladimir Putin’s, Xi Jinping’s, or Kim Jong Un’s next move will be.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.97%  2-yr. 2.27%  10-yr. 2.47%  30-yr. 2.58%

The yield on the 10-year is at its highest level since May 2019, and rising mortgage rates are clearly biting when it comes to the housing market.

Global bond markets have suffered unprecedented losses since peaking last year, as central banks including the Federal Reserve look to tighten policy to combat surging inflation.

Bloomberg noted that its Global Aggregate Index, a benchmark for government and corporate debt total returns, had fallen 11% as of a few days ago from a high in January 2021; the biggest decline from a peak in data stretching back to 1990, surpassing a 10.8% drawdown during the financial crisis in 2008.

[The yield on the German 10-year, 0.58%, is its highest since Oct. 2018.]

Money managers have been spoiled by years of consistent gains, backstopped by loose monetary policy.  No longer.

Corporate bonds are particularly vulnerable to mounting stagflation threats, as slowing growth could lead to credit risks in some securities/companies.

Eurozone government bond yields rose this week as investors priced in more aggressive monetary tightening from the Federal Reserve to tame rising inflation.

The German 10-year rose to 0.51%, its highest since October 2018

--Oil prices jumped 5% on Wednesday back up to $114 on West Texas Intermediate as disruptions to Russian and Kazakh crude exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipeline added to worries over tight global supplies.

The pipeline carries oil exports from Kazakhstan on Russia’s Black Sea coast accounting for about 1.2 million barrels per day, or 1.2% of global demand.

Additionally, U.S. crude stocks fell 2.5 million barrels last week, government data showed, compared with expectations for a modest increase.  Crude production in the U.S. remained flat at 11.6 million barrels per day for the seventh straight week.

Separately, Saudi Arabia’s cabinet emphasized on Tuesday “the essential role” of the OPEC+ agreement in bringing balance and stability to oil markets, Saudi state news agency SPA reported.  The statement came days before OPEC+ is scheduled to meet, and it indicates little chance the grouping will decide to raise oil output at a faster pace, despite calls from the likes of the United States to do so.

The alliance has been raising output by 400,000 barrels per day each month since August to unwind cuts made when the pandemic hit demand.

On a different note, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, announced plans to sharply increase the amount it invests in energy production, after it reported a doubling of profits in 2021.  The firm aims to boost output significantly over the next five years…only not necessarily now.

But then today, a Saudi Aramco storage facility was hit by a missile strike from Houthi rebels in Yemen and oil rallied on the news, true damage to global supply not known as yet, and crude finished the week at $112.62 on WTI.

--China Eastern Flight MU5735 was enroute from the southwestern city of Kunming to Guangzhou on the coast, Monday, when the jet suddenly plunged from a cruising altitude of 29,000 feet at about the time when it should have been starting its descent before landing.

The jet briefly pulled out of a 22,000-foot nosedive before a second dive sent it crashing into the ground.  Flight data suggests a battle for control of the plane.  Debris was found over six miles away from the crash site.

There were no survivors among the 123 passengers and crew of nine.  The video of the jet crashing to earth is horrifying.

Weather along the flight path did not pose any danger to the aircraft and air controllers had communication with it after take-off and prior to its rapid descent.  But Chinese authorities said the plane did not respond to repeated calls during its descent.

The plane was only six years old and China Eastern, as well as the Chinese aviation industry in general, have established strong reputations.  It was the first fatal commercial flight in China since August 2010, when an Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines hit the ground short of the runway, catching fire and killing 44 of 96 passengers and crew.  Investigators on that one blamed pilot error.

With the lack of communication, there are concerns about the stability of the crew, but the airline said their family lives appeared to be fine and they were highly experienced.

China Eastern and two subsidiaries immediately grounded more than 200 Boeing 737-800 jets out of a sense of caution and not any perceived safety issue.

Chinese emergency workers found one of two black boxes, the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, and based on an early assessment, a Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) official told a media briefing that it appeared to be in relatively good shape.

But the jet essentially disintegrated upon impact, although some debris and human remains have been found.

“An initial inspection showed that the exterior of the recorder has been severely damaged, but the storage units, while also damaged to some extent, are relatively complete,’ CAAC official Zhu Tao said.  The black box was sent to an institute in Beijing.

Significantly, Chinese authorities invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to take part in the investigation.

For Boeing, the timing is awful as it works to recover from several crises, notably over its 737 MAX model

--A jury found a former Boeing Co. pilot not guilty of deceiving air safety regulators about a 737 MAX flight-control system later blamed for two fatal crashes.

The decision in a Fort Worth, Texas, case was reached after less than two hours of deliberation and acquitted Mark Forkner on all four counts of wire fraud.  Forkner had been accused of misleading a training official at the Federal Aviation Administration about an automated cockpit feature to reduce how much training pilots would need to fly the plane, thus making the jet more attractive to airlines.

Forkner had been the only person charged in relation to the crashes, with his attorneys arguing he had been made a scapegoat for the accidents, which claimed 346 lives.

--The airline trade group that supported a federal mask mandate for all air travelers has asked the Biden administration to end the mask requirements and eliminate other Covid-19 protocols for travelers.

Airlines for America, which represents American, Delta, United, Southwest, Alaska, JetBlue and other carriers, released a letter Wednesday addressed to President Biden, saying “the persistent and steady decline of hospitalizations and death rates are the most compelling indicator that our country is well protected against disease from Covid-19.”

“Now is the time for the administration to sunset federal transportation travel restrictions, including the international predeparture testing requirement and federal mask mandates,” the letter said.

The U.S. Travel Assn., which represents the country’s travel agencies, issued a similar letter Wednesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention two weeks ago announced a one-month extension to the mask mandate for passengers on planes, buses, trains and transit hubs, to April 18.  The CDC also said it was developing guidance to ease the mandate as soon as April.

--TSA checkpoint travel numbers vs. 2019….

3/24…90 percent of 2019 levels
3/23…86
3/22…86
3/21…89
3/20…93
3/19…94
3/18…90
3/17…88

--Nike beat fiscal third-quarter estimates and said margin will continue to expand as consumer demand for its brands continues to drive growth in its direct-sales business.

Revenue jumped by 5% year-over-year to $10.9 billion as Nike Direct sales surged by 17% from a year ago, the athletic apparel retailer said after the close on Monday, better than expected.

Gross margins expanded to 46.6%, also slightly better than forecasts.  Digital sales grew 22% on a constant currency basis, driven by growth in the Nike app, the company said. 

“Consumer demand for all three of our brands, Nike, Jordan and Converse, remains incredibly strong,” said Chief Financial Office Matthew Friend on a call with analysts.  “Our growth in the third quarter would have been even higher if we had greater quantities of available inventory to meet marketplace demand.”

The company said all of its factories in Vietnam are now operating, following issues with closures related to Covid, with total footwear and apparel production in line with pre-closure volumes and its plans for demand going forward.  Almost all of the supplier base is operational without restrictions, it added.

Revenue in Greater China fell 8% in the quarter, as last year’s factory closures in Vietnam, where about half of all Nike footwear is manufactured, forced the company to prioritize sending supplies to North America over the Chinese market. 

--Shares in Tesla rallied back over $1,000 as Elon Musk presided over the delivery of Tesla’s first German-made cars to clients at the carmaker’s 5 billion euro ($5.5 billion) Gruenheide plant on Tuesday, marking the start of the company’s inaugural European hub and the biggest investment in Germany’s car industry in recent history.

“This a great day for the factory,” Musk said, describing it as “another step in the direction of a sustainable future.”

But not everyone supports Tesla, with environmental groups gathering outside the plant with banners, pots and pans to express their concerns, ranging from the plant’s high water use to the trees felled to build it.  Musk had hoped to begin output from the factory eight months ago, but local authorities in Germany said it had still been completed relatively swiftly despite licensing delays.

Tesla said that around 3,500 of the plant’s expected 12,000 workers have been hired so far.   At full capacity, the plant will produce 500,000 cars a year, more than the 450,000 battery-electric vehicles that rival Volkswagen sold globally in 2021.  For now, Volkswagen still has the inside track in the race to electrify Europe’s fleet, with a 25% market share to Tesla’s 13%.

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said it has the legal authority to subpoena Tesla and Elon Musk about his tweets, and that Musk’s move to throw out a 2018 court agreement that his tweets be pre-approved is not valid.

SEC attorney Melissa Armstrong called Musk’s challenge “frivolous” and pointed out that Musk and Tesla agreed to have his tweets pre-approved by other company officials.

“Courts have long recognized that Congress has vested the SEC with broad authority to conduct investigations into possible violations of federal securities laws and to demand production of evidence relevant to such investigations,” Armstrong wrote.

The whole dispute stems from an October 2018 agreement in which Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million in civil fines over Musk’s tweets about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share.

The funding was far from secured and the EV company remains public, but Tesla’s stock price jumped.  The settlement specified governance changes, including Musk’s ouster as board chairman, as well as pre-approval of his tweets.

--General Mills fiscal third-quarter earnings improved marginally year-on-year but came in ahead of analysts’ consensus as the cereal maker raised its 2022 outlook because of accelerating prices and strong demand.

The company posted sales for the quarter ended Feb. 28 of $4.54 billion, up from $4.52 billion, with adjusted profit of $0.84 per share, up from $0.82 a year earlier and ahead of estimates.

“Our solid execution in a highly volatile environment enabled us to close the third quarter with improved momentum,” CEO Jeff Harmening said in a statement.  “Demand for our brands remains robust, and our team has shown great agility to overcome disruptions throughout the supply chain and deliver for our customers and consumers.”

The North America retail segment reported a 1% sales rise to $2.81 billion, with 30% and 22% gains for the pet and foodservice store divisions, respectively. Sales from the international segment were down 23%.

But the company gave positive guidance for the fiscal year, with a flat to 2% sales increase and the shares rallied a bit on the news.  General Mills previously forecast flat to down sales.  Net of acquisitions and divestitures, sales will grow by roughly 5%.

GIS said it expects changes in consumer behavior due to the pandemic to result in higher demand for food at home, compared with pre-pandemic levels.  An increase in pet numbers and “further humanization and premiumization of pet food” during the pandemic is also likely to have a positive impact on the company’s pet food segment, it said.

--While the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent report on consumer price inflation pegged it at 7.9 percent in February, food inflation in some products has been far higher, as all of us going to the grocery store can attest, with meat, fish, poultry, and eggs up 17 percent from last year.  Dairy and related products are about 5.4 percent more expensive.

But within the categories, milk is up 11 percent, a beef roast 19 percent, and coffee 11 percent.

And the cost of taking a vacation is also rising.  Airline tickets up 13 percent, a car rental 24 percent, hotels 29 percent, and major sporting events, up 21 percent.

--In his 2022 annual letter to shareholders, BlackRock chairman Larry Fink, head of the world’s largest asset manager with $10 trillion in client funds, indicated he may be setting aside his suspicions surrounding crypto assets, which could be a sign of legitimacy from one of Wall Street’s ultimate whales.

“BlackRock is studying digital currencies, stablecoins and the underlying technologies to understand how they can help us serve our clients,” Fink told shareholders.

Five years ago, Fink called bitcoin an “index of money laundering.”  He attributed his evolving stance to the Ukraine war.

He was right then.  He’s not now. 

For the record, Fink writes:

“A global digital payment system, thoughtfully designed, can enhance the settlement of international transactions while reducing the risk of money laundering and corruption,” Fink arguing digital currencies can also help bring down costs of cross-border payments.

“Thoughtfully designed”?  You kidding me? 

Fink did add on a different topic: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.  It has left many communities and people feeling isolated and looking inward. I believe this has exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today.”

Fink said nations have come together and launched an “economic war” against Russia.  He said BlackRock has also taken steps to suspend the purchase of any Russian securities in its active or index portfolios.

“Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to countless stakeholders, including our clients and employees, who are all looking to understand what could be done to prevent capital from being deployed to Russia,” Fink said.

Fink wrote that back in the early 1990s when the world emerged from the Cold War, Russia was welcomed into the global financial system and given access to global capital markets.  The expansion of globalization accelerated international trade, grew global capital markets and increased economic growth, he said.

BlackRock was founded 34 years ago and the firm benefited immensely from the rise of globalization and growth of the capital markets, which fueled the need for technology-driven asset management, Fink said.

“I remain a long-term believer in the benefits of globalization and the power of global capital markets.  Access to global capital enables companies to fund growth, countries to increase economic development, and more people to experience well-being,” Fink said.

The CEO said, “The money we manage belongs to our clients. And to serve them, we work to understand how changes around the world will impact their investment outcomes.”

--The average bonus paid to employees in New York City’s securities industry in 2021 jumped by 20% to $257,500, a top New York state financial regulator said on Wednesday.  “Wall Street’s soaring profits continued to beat expectations in 2021 and drove record bonuses,” New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in a statement.  “But recent events are likely to drive near-term profitability and bonuses lower,” he added, citing sluggish recovery in other sectors and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Compensation firm Johnson Associates Inc. in November said year-end bonuses (paid out traditionally from December-March), for Wall Street staffers in 2021 were set to be the highest since 2009, with investment bankers and equities traders in line for the biggest bonuses.

--Carnival Corp. forecasts a loss in 2022, hurt by surging fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The company also will miss Q1 revenue and profit estimates, weakened by Omicron’s hit to bookings.  CCL said it modified trips to avoid halts at Russian ports in summer, and cruises already scheduled to call on Russian ports for the rest of the year would be withdrawn.  Other than all this, Bon Voyage!

--Finally, we note the passing of Edward “Ned” Johnson III, who transformed Fidelity Investments into a financial giant and opened Wall Street to millions of Americans.  He was 91.

Ned Johnson inherited the Boston company from his father in the 1970s, amidst a bear market that dampened enthusiasm for the markets and the mutual funds Fidelity sold.  It was then that while Fidelity’s competitors struggled, he remade the company through a series of new ventures.

Fidelity became the first to offer a money-market fund that let investors write checks on their holdings.  The firm created a toll-free number and advertised.  It opened its own discount brokerage, furthering its reach among individual investors, and under Johnson’s watch, built the nation’s biggest 401(k) business.

It was also Ned Johnson who had the talent for marketing star managers such as Peter Lynch.

Fidelity ended 2021 with $11.78 trillion in assets under administration, or what is in Fidelity accounts as well as Fidelity funds held by rivals’ clients.  The firm’s assets under management, or the amount overseen by Fidelity’s funds, totaled $4.48 trillion, up from $3.8 trillion a year earlier.

Johnson himself was fiercely private.  The family controls 49% of FMR Corp., Fidelity’s parent.

The Pandemic

--As coronavirus infections rise in some parts of the world, experts here are watching for a potential new surge in the U.S. and wondering how long it will take to detect.

Among the issues faced is more people taking rapid Covid-19 tests at home, and fewer people getting the gold-standard tests that the government relies on for case counts.

The CDC is going to be using fewer labs to look for new variants.

Health officials are increasingly focusing on hospital admissions, which rise only after a surge has arrived.

The White House says it is running out of funds for vaccines, treatments and testing.

The availability of vaccines and treatments does put the nation in a better place, but we all know about waning immunity with the vaccines and only 50% of Americans are boosted, which is pathetic.  Personally, I’m thinking I’ll get a fourth shot in May or June, but wondering about the timing given what I see as an inevitable surge next fall.

This spring and summer should be good, but the pandemic isn’t over yet.  I told you last week that it’s also not good that most states, if not all, have taken off the “states of emergency” label, which inhibits reporting.  My city of Summit, N.J., for example, recently announced the local regional health agency had submitted its last report.  In my small town, we had 800 positives in January, which fell to 100+ in February.  But now we aren’t receiving any more figures. 

The BA. 2 variant accounts for a third of U.S. cases and it’s growing.  Nothing to be concerned with, yet, but as one infectious disease specialist at Houston Methodist said this week, the national case data on BA.2 is “murky.”  He added: “What we really need is as much real-time data as possible…to inform decisions.”

--South Korea’s total Covid infections topped 10 million, or nearly 20% of its population, authorities said on Wednesday, as surging severe cases and deaths increasingly put a strain on crematories and funeral homes nationwide.

The country has been battling a record Covid wave driven by the Omicron variant even as it largely scrapped its once aggressive tracing and quarantine efforts and eased social distancing curbs.

Tuesday saw 490,000 cases, the second-highest daily tally after it peaked at 621,000 on March 16.  Deaths rose 291, Wednesday over Tuesday.

But the country’s infection and death rates are still far below those recorded elsewhere, as almost 87% of its 52 million residents are fully vaccinated and 63% have received booster shots.  The death toll, however, did double in about six weeks.  Daily fatalities peaked at 429 last Friday.

--Hong Kong’s figures, thankfully, are going down, though deaths remain at about 200 a day.  Nonetheless, the city is easing some of the world’s most stringent restrictions and looking to a full reopening of international travel, though you will need proof of vaccine and a negative test upon boarding a flight to the territory.

--Shanghai reported a record surge in daily Covid infections on Monday, though symptoms are described as “mild.”  Shanghai Disney Resort closed Monday until further notice.

--Moderna Inc. is asking regulators to authorize its Covid vaccine for children younger than 6 years old based on data showing it generated a similar immune response in young children as for adults in its clinical trial.  The Omicron variant was predominant during Moderna’s pediatric trial, and the drugmaker said two doses were around 38% effective in preventing infections in 2- to 5-year-olds and 44% effective for children ages 6 months to 2 years.  Moderna said these results were consistent with the lower effectiveness against Omicron seen in adults who had received two doses of its vaccine.

“People are automatically recalling the 95% (vaccine efficacy) from Pfizer or Moderna early on, and I don’t think those are fair comparisons because Omicron is an immune evasive variant,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins.

Adalja said the vaccine would be especially valuable to children at high risk of severe disease.  Moderna’s shot could become the first authorized shot for children under the age of 5 in the U.S.  The vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech is authorized for use in children 5 and older.

Covid-19 death tolls, as of early tonight….

World…6,137,875
USA…1,003,054
Brazil…658,566
India…516,785
Russia…366,618
Mexico…322,432
Peru…212,022
UK…164,454
Italy…158,582
Indonesia…154,463
France…141,564
Iran…139,917
Colombia…139,544
Germany…128,757
Argentina…127,846
Poland…114,736
Ukraine…107,871
Spain…102,392

Canada…37,411

[Source; worldometers.info]

U.S. daily death tolls…Mon. 269; Tues. 939; Wed. 824; Thurs. 649; Fri. 607.

Foreign Affairs

Iran: White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday the U.S. and its allies have made progress in Iran nuclear talks but issues remain, and it is unclear if they will be resolved.

“We’ve made progress over the course of the last several weeks. There are still some issues left,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Biden flew to Brussels.  He said it is “unclear if this will come to closure or not” but the allies are trying to use diplomacy to put Iran’s nuclear program “back in a box.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Thursday that the revival of the 2015 deal can happen in the short term if the United States shows pragmatism in the negotiations.

“If the United States is pragmatic, a nuclear deal can be reached in the short term,” he said, adding that the issue of sanctions relief for Iran was not yet fully resolved.

John Bolton / Washington Post

“Blind faith, laced with willful ignorance, seasoned by arrogance, is not a formula for success, as the Biden administration will soon discover. After a year of humiliating American concessions – including preemptive sanctions relief – to the planet’s most egregious terrorist state, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is rising from the dead. This appeasement will delight Iran, encourage North Korea, gratify China and Russia, appall Israel and our Arab allies, and endanger the United States and the world.

“Throughout the negotiations, few administration officials knew key details, and outsiders only broad outlines. The secrecy wouldn’t have been to defy adversaries sensitive information, since Iran knew what President Biden’s team proposed to surrender, but to keep its full extent from the U.S. public. Fear of an incandescent political reaction against the agreement was well-grounded; it will erupt shortly, with the announcement of a deal reportedly imminent. At that moment, the Senate must assert its constitutional rights on treaty-making.

“The original 2015 deal was fatally flawed. It ignored clear evidence Iran has always lied about its nuclear-weapons goals, buttressed later by overwhelming data from Israel’s stunning 2018 raid on Tehran.  It fantasized away Iran’s continuing strategic intention to obtain nuclear weapons, a deathblow to any real chance to eliminate nuclear-proliferation threats.  Pre-deal negotiations never established a baseline of Iran’s prior weaponization efforts, and its verification provisions have been repeatedly exposed as inadequate.

“Also, far from ignoring Iran’s continuing terrorist and conventional military threats, the original deal empowered them by unfreezing assets and undoing sanctions inhibiting Iran’s Revolutionary Guard capabilities.

“Most dangerously, Iran received better treatment than U.S. friends and allies, who must typically renounce uranium enrichment to receive licenses of American technology for civil purposes.  By allowing Iran to enrich uranium to reactor-grade levels, it is plain physics that Iran was thereby enabled to do 70 percent of the work required to enrich to weapons-grade levels.

“Assertions about reducing ‘breakout time’ for Iran were childishly inadequate, only pretending that the United States possessed critical information about the actual numbers and sophistication of Iran’s centrifuge cascades. Beyond these flaws, of course, were Iran’s repeated violations, exacerbating the deal’s deficiencies.

“As specifics emerge about the renewed agreement, the picture will inexorably worsen.  One particularly menacing aspect is the concept of ‘inherent guarantees’ reported by Reuters in February. Tehran demanded assurances that no future U.S. president would withdraw from the deal, a concession that would be both unconstitutional and potentially suicidal.  Instead, Reuters reported, Iran was placated by U.S. assurance of ‘inherent guarantees,’ a chilling phrase on which the coming debate could turn.

“To the extent that Biden attempts to constrain his successors, to Iran’s benefit, he risks his presidency.  Handcuffing future presidents to Iran’s advantage would be unprecedented, and dangerously so, in the history of American treaty-making.  This is not simply a disagreement about the merits of one aspect of the deal, or the deal itself, but about how much a myopic White House is willing to endanger the United States simply to finalize a deal.  If Biden is serious about preventing a nuclear Iran, the threat of another U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal provides a powerful, entirely credible deterrent of Iranian temptations to once again subvert the deal.”

---

We’ll see.  My reading of the negotiations the last few months is that Biden will not go through with an agreement that constrains his successors. He has said as much.

But, also, as I’ve written for months, no deal is just as bad as a bad deal, though I grant you, in a deal, Iran would have access to $billions it wouldn’t have otherwise, to support its terrorist activities.

We should not have pulled out in 2018.  That’s been my long-held opinion and I’m sticking to it.  I fully expect Iran to test a nuclear weapon within a month or two if things collapse.  And then it’s up to Israel, first.

It’s an awful, dangerous situation all around, and Iran, like North Korea, recognizes the opportunity in a United States that is rather distracted these days.

Meanwhile, if we thought the United Arab Emirates was ever a friend and ally, last weekend they hosted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The State Department said in a statement: “We urge states considering engagement with the Assad regime to weigh carefully the horrific atrocities visited by the regime on the Syrians over the last decade, as well as the regime’s continuing efforts to deny much of the country access to humanitarian aid and security.”

North Korea: I told you this was coming, but North Korea said Friday it test-fired its biggest-yet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) under the orders of Kim Jong Un, who vowed to expand the North’s “nuclear war deterrent” while preparing for a “long-standing confrontation” with the United States.

The report by North Korean state media came a day after the militaries of South Korea and Japan said they detected the North launching an ICBM in its first long-range test since 2017.

The launch extended a barrage of weapons demonstrations this year that analysts say are aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and remove crippling sanctions against its broken economy that has been further damaged by pandemic-related difficulties.

The Hwasong-17, which was fired at a high angle to avoid the territorial waters of neighbors, reached a maximum altitude of 3,880 miles and traveled 680 miles during a 67-minute flight before landing in waters between North Korea and Japan, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said.

KCNA claimed the launch met its technical objectives and proved the ICBM could be operated quickly during wartime conditions.

Both South Korea and Japan announced similar flight details, which analysts say suggested that the missile could reach targets 9,320 miles away when fired on a normal trajectory with a warhead weighing less than a ton.  That would place the entire U.S. mainland within striking distance.

The Hwasong-17 is believed to be the world’s biggest road-mobile ballistic missile system.  North Korea first revealed it in a military parade in October 2020 and Thursday’s launch was its first full-range test.

South Korea’s military responded to the launch with live-fire drills of its own missiles launched from land, a fighter jet and a ship, underscoring a revival of tensions as diplomacy remains frozen.  It said it confirmed readiness to execute precision strikes against the North’s missile launch points as well as command support facilities.

Japan and South Korea vowed to strengthen bilateral cooperation against the North Korean threat.

The United States imposed fresh sanctions against five entities and individuals in Russia and North Korea over transferring sensitive items to the North’s missile program.

Pyongyang’s series of missile launches this year (12 rounds) reflects its determination to cement its status as a nuclear power and wrest economic concessions from Washington and others from a position of strength, analysts say.  Kim’s military accomplishments also serve as a distraction while the country faces economic difficulties.

Among the other weapons tested this year are a purported hypersonic weapon, a long-range cruise missile and an intermediate-range missile that could reach Guam, a major U.S. military hub in the Pacific.

China: Sen. Marco Rubio / Washington Post

“The world now sees that the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party’s) claimed impartiality and commitment to sovereignty are a shameless, self-serving charade. That means every nation partnering with Beijing on infrastructure projects, technical investment and deployment, or advanced research should question the reliability and security of those relationships. It also means the United States and its European allies must resist perceiving China as a potential ‘tamer’ of Putin, as the CCP might have us do.  For many years, the free world has tried, in vain, to persuade Beijing to ‘tame’ North Korea – this time will be no different.

“It is naïve and dangerous to believe the United States has ‘shared interests’ with a genocidal communist regime. The delusion that we could somehow identify such interests in the absence of shared values is responsible for decades of failed U.S. policy.  Instead of cooperating with Beijing, the United States must act to prevent it from strengthening Putin and undermining freedom.

“Starved funds from Europe and the United States, Russian banks are pinning their hopes on a lifeline from China’s financial system. If Beijing crafts a workaround to aid Putin, Americans’ money, in the form of trade and investment, will begin making its way to banks that help finance the Russian military’s campaign. We cannot let this happen – which is why I have introduced a bill that would impose sanctions on any Chinese bank that attempts to help Putin escape the penalties for waging war on Ukraine.

“Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has laid bare to the world what some U.S. policymakers have been aware of for some time – that the Moscow-Beijing axis is real, and it is a growing threat to the United States and to freedom worldwide. So significant is the danger presented by this relationship that it demands a fundamental rethink of U.S. strategy.

“That begins with a willingness to punish Chinese support for Putin’s invasion.  Xi hopes to reap the benefits of a ‘no limits’ partnership with a dictator whose military bombs hospitals and slaughters civilians.  To protect our national and economic security, we must ensure that Xi and the CCP pay a price for that partnership.”

Afghanistan: In a surprise decision the hardline leadership of Afghanistan’s new rulers has decided against opening educational institutions to girls beyond Grade 6, a Taliban official said Wednesday on the first day of Afghanistan’s new school year.

The latest setback for girls’ education is certain to receive widespread condemnation from the international community, and indeed, already is, as they have been urging the Taliban to open schools and give women their right to public space.

The unexpected decision came late on Tuesday as Afghanistan’s education ministry prepared for the new year opening of school, which was expected to herald the return of girls to school.  A statement by the ministry earlier in the week urged “all students” to come to school.

However, the decision to postpone a return of girls going to school in higher levels appeared to be a concession to the rural and deeply tribal backbone of the hardline Taliban movement, that in many parts of the countryside are reluctant to send their daughters to school.

Girls have been banned from school beyond Grade 6 in most of the country since the Taliban returned to power in mid-August.  Universities opened up earlier this year in much of the country, but since taking power the Taliban edicts have been erratic and while a handful of provinces continued to provide education to all, most provinces closed educational institutions for girls and women.

This is sick.

At least in the capital Kabul private schools and universities have operated uninterrupted.

The Taliban is afraid that enrolling girls beyond Grade 6 could erode their base, said a Taliban administration member, Waheedullah Hashmi, in an interview with the Associated Press.

The United States canceled previously scheduled talks with the Taliban today over this issue.

Canada: The ruling Liberal Party and opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) reached a surprise agreement that aims to keep the minority government in power until 2025, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.  Normally, governments with a minority of seats, like the one Trudeau now leads, don’t last more than two years, but this rare agreement could permit it to last the entire four-year term, Trudeau said.

“What this means is that during this uncertain time, the government can function with predictability and stability, present and implement budgets, and get things done for the Canadians,” he said.

The two parties publicized a list of priorities they had agreed upon.  The Liberals agreed to back a national dental-care program for low-income Canadians and to move forward on a national prescription-drug coverage program, both cornerstone campaign pledges for the NDP.

The Liberals and New Democrats also said they would develop a plan to phase out financing for the fossil fuel sector, starting in 2022.  Trudeau, who has been in power since 2015, will be able to deliver on his main campaign promises, like fighting climate change or addressing a national housing shortage.

The opposition Conservatives said the deal would lead to “the decimation” of the country’s oil and gas sector.

In the House of Commons, the deal will give the government 184 seats, with a majority being 170.  The Liberals have 159 by themselves.  The deal does not create a formal coalition and new Democrats will not be part of Trudeau’s cabinet.

Canada’s premium beer industry will not be impacted in any way.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: New figures: 42% approve of Biden’s job performance, 54% disapprove; 38% of independents approve (Mar. 1-18).

The Gallup approval rating for the president has been between 40 and 43 since September.  Remarkably consistent.  The approval among independents ticked up 3 points since the last survey.

Rasmussen: 42% approve (up four points from last week), 57% disapprove (Mar. 25).

In the above-mentioned new Associated Press-NORC national poll, Biden received a 43% approval rating, 56% disapproval, with only 29% of independents approving of his job performance.

On foreign policy, just 42% approve of Biden’s handling of the topic, 57% disapproving.

On the economy, the president’s approval rating is a putrid 34%, vs. 65% disapproval.

--Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) denounced President Zelensky as “corrupt,” along with the government.

So this POS put herself in the same camp as the loathsome Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who slammed Zelensky even as he leads the fight against a Russian invasion.

“Do you agree with Madison Cawthorn that Zelensky is corrupt and that the Ukrainian government is corrupt?” Greene said, reading a question submitted by a participant in a Tuesday evening town hall.

“Yes and Yes.  That’s an easy one,” she responded.

Greene also pinned a tweet that denounces “Zelensky & Nazi militias in his corrupt country.”

The unfounded reference to “Nazi militias” echoes Russian propaganda.

Although both Greene and Cawthorn say they oppose Putin’s invasion, they were two of only eight House lawmakers to vote against imposing harsh new sanctions against Russia.

Greene spoke at a recent conference of a white nationalist group at which a cheering crowd greeted her with chants of “Putin, Putin.”  Cawthorn has called Zelensky a “thug.”

--Former President Trump withdrew his endorsement of Senate Republican hopeful Mo Brooks’ struggling campaign on Wednesday, dealing a crippling blow to the ambitions of one of his staunchest allies in the Congress. In a statement underscoring the loyalty Trump demands, he castigated Brooks – a hardline firebrand in the House – for telling voters in Alabama that it was time to move on from the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s false claims that it was stolen from him.

“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said in a statement.  “Since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my Endorsement.”

Brooks responded by accusing Trump of making unconstitutional demands to rescind the 2020 election results following their certification on Jan. 6, 2021, remove President Biden and return Trump to the White House.

“I’ve told President Trump the truth knowing full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement. But I took a sworn oath to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. I honor my oath,” Brooks said.

Brooks also showed no sign of withdrawing from the race.

Rich Lowry / New York Post

“If Donald Trump’s back-and-forth over Mo Brooks’ Senate endorsement is notably sophomoric, it’s not uncharacteristic.  Indeed, the GOP will continue to be subjected to such spectacles as long as Trump is its dominant figure.

“An endorsement from Donald Trump, as (Brooks) has learned to his chagrin, is no guarantee against future harsh denunciation….

“As everyone knows, (Trump’s) seriously considering running in 2024. It’s understandable that he’d want to try to ascend once again to the most powerful office in the land. The question for Republicans is why they’d want to go along for this ride one more time.

“The party should be entering a new, more discretionary phase in its relationship with Trump.  The best argument for him once he was nominated in 2016 was the he was the only alternative to Hillary Clinton and in 2020 that he was the only alternative to Joe Biden.

“That isn’t the case now.

“Republicans can have their pick of a variety of alternatives in 2024 who don’t personalize everything, who don’t create a haze of chaos around everything they do and who don’t carry more baggage than the underbelly of an Airbus A380-800.

“Trump, of course, has qualities other Republicans lack, but they are caught up in his radioactive persona.

“There are about 20 other potential Republican candidates: None of them has lost an election to Joe Biden, and none of them has to expend any energy trying to explain away such a defeat….

“Imagine having a nominee with a well-thought-out policy agenda, so the Republican Party doesn’t have to go platform-less the way it did in 2020.

“Imagine a nominee who can, like Glenn Youngkin did in Virginia, make serious inroads in the suburbs and win the popular vote again.

“This vista may not be probable – if Trump runs again, he’s the prohibitive favorite – but it is certainly possible.”

--Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife sent a series of texts to a top aide of then-President Donald Trump pushing to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a new report claims.

Conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas allegedly exchanged 29 texts with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, The Washington Post and CBS News reported.

The texts came as the former president’s team said it was ready to go all the way to the Supreme Court to contest the election result, leading up to and after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that temporarily disrupted Congress’ certification of Bidens win over Trump.

“Help This Great President stand firm, Mark!!!” Thomas wrote in a Nov. 10, 2020, message after most media outlets called the election for Biden, according to the Post.

“You are the leader, with him, who is standing for America’s constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”

Thomas never mentions her husband or the court in the messages, which were among the more than 2,300 turned over by Meadows to the House select committee investigating the riot, the Post said.

But the messages allegedly include her making reference to “The Biden crime family” and urging Meadows to continue the fight.  A final message sent four days after Jan. 6 laments what Thomas calls “the end of Liberty.”

Meanwhile, Justice Thomas was released from the hospital today after going in a week ago for an infection, non-Covid-related, we were told…two days after he had been admitted.

--Former President Trump sued Hillary Clinton, alleging a vast conspiracy to malign his character and cast doubt on the legitimacy of his 2016 election win.

The suit, filed on Thursday in federal court in Florida, claims Trump and his real-estate company have racked up at least $24 million in legal expenses and suffered losses on “existing and future business opportunities” as a result of allegations that he had corrupt ties to Russia and its president.

A Clinton spokesman called the suit “nonsense.”

--We note the passing of the longest-serving member of Congress, Rep. Don Young of Alaska, 88.  He collapsed while traveling home to Alaska on a flight and couldn’t be revived.

Young was first elected to the House in 1973 and was known for his brusque style.  He was born in Meridian, California, 1933, and moved to Alaska in 1959, the same year it became a state.  He credited Jack London’s “Call of the Wild,” which his father used to read to him, for drawing him north.

“I can’t stand heat, and I was working on a ranch and I used to dream of some place cold, and no snakes and no poison oak,” Young told the Associated Press in 2016.

Rep. Young was known for supporting Alaska’s oil pipeline system and rejecting “extreme environmentalists.”

--Madeleine Albright, appointed during the Clinton administration as the first female U.S. secretary of state, died of cancer on Wednesday.  She was 84.

Albright became the highest ranking woman in the history of the United States with her ascension to the position in 1996.  She previously served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

The native of Czechoslovakia, born in Prague, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 from President Obama.

Her family, which was Jewish, narrowly avoided extermination at the hands of the Nazis.  They fled to England shortly after Hitler’s tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in 1938.  Dr. Albright’s father, a Czech diplomat wary of communism, feared he would be arrested following a 1948 coup by hardline Stalinists in Prague, so the family escaped once more, this time to the United States.

David Ignatius / Washington Post

“What made Albright truly special was that, throughout her career, as secretary of state and in the more than two decades after, she remained anchored in her values.  In her 2018 book, ‘Fascism: A Warning,’ she called the danger posed by President Donald Trump by its true name.  ‘If we think of fascism as a wound from the past that had almost healed, putting Trump in the White House was like ripping off the bandage and picking at the scab,’ she wrote. As a refugee from Czechoslovakia, totalitarianism wasn’t an abstraction.  Her family fled the Nazis in 1938, and then the communists in 1948.

“Albright was clear-eyed from the start about Russian President Vladimir Putin.  After meeting him in January 2000, just after he was first elected president, Albright wrote in a memo: ‘Putin is small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian.’ Even then, she recognized that Putin was, in her words, ‘embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.’  We’re living now with the horrifying consequences of that revanchism….

“Albright was always a passionate advocate of America’s role abroad, a stance that was severely tested during the Clinton administration.  As UN ambassador, she pressed for U.S. military intervention in the Balkan war in 1995, and again four years later after Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic attacked the province of Kosovo.  Her positions were rooted more in American values than interests; but when talking about foreign policy, she didn’t recognize a distinction….

“As the first woman secretary of state, Albright was a trailblazer. But she was a person who took herself and her achievements lightly, even as she took the world seriously.  She loved to gather friends for dinner at her home in Georgetown for an evening of good food and drink – leading the discussion with the restless curiosity she had through her life.”

--New York City Mayor Eric Adams, reeling from a weekend of extraordinary gun violence and facing pressure to make the city safer, announced Wednesday that the NYPD will renew its focus on quality-of-life offenses.

After a weekend in which 29 people were shot, one fatally, Adams told Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell and Chief of Department Kenneth Corey that last weekend’s mayhem cannot happen again.

The new initiative amounted to an escalation of “broken windows”-style enforcement.

Sewell said in a statement: “To be clear this is NOT a return to stop, question, and frisk – nor is it ‘policing for numbers.’  This is a precision-policing aimed at reducing violence in the neighborhoods seeing disproportionate numbers of shootings – and it is what the public is demanding.”

Critics see it as a return to a policing model that targeted minorities for minor offenses, fostering a mistrust of the nation’s largest police force.

Well, such critics can take their arguments and shove it.  It was a policy first adopted by former police commissioner William Bratton way back and it worked.  In all sincerity, I have zero interest in going into New York these days.  I haven’t since the pandemic.  I was going to go next week for a basketball tournament, but my school, Wake Forest, failed to advance the other night (the NIT).

Adams campaigned on the promise he would bring back a better version of the plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit, that was tasked with taking guns off the street.  The unit was disbanded nearly two years ago because it was involved in a disproportionate number of shootings and citizen complaints.

On a separate note, in one of his most controversial decisions to date, Thursday, Mayor Adams rolled back the Covid mandate that prohibits unvaccinated professional athletes from playing home games in New York City – prompting some critics to point to the likelihood of more legal challenges and others to decry the move as fundamentally unfair.

Under Adams’ new policy, athletes and entertainers who are unvaccinated – namely Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving – will be exempt from the ban. The mayor’s decision comes just two weeks before the baseball season begins and as the NBA is poised to roll into the playoffs. 

Adams justified the move during a news conference at Citi Field, saying the mandate, as it was first implemented, was unfair to local athletes and performers because it exempted their out-of-town counterparts from the restriction, but not them.

“I must move this city forward,” the mayor said.  “Today, the decision we’re making, we’re not making it loosely or haphazardly. We’re not doing it because there are pressures to do it.  We’re doing it because the city has to function.”

The mandate, put into place during the final days of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, and amidst the Omicron wave, required that all private employers require their employees to be vaccinated if they’re reporting to work in person.  It did not require athletes or performers from out-of-town to get the shot, though.

Some critics say Adams’ move is simply unfair, especially in light of a separate city mandate requiring all public employees to be vaccinated, or risk losing their jobs.

Under that rule, more than 1,400 municipal employees were fired for not complying.

As one union leader said, “There can’t be one system for the elite and another for the essential workers of our city.”

--As noted last time, the Senate unanimously approved a measure to make daylight saving time permanent across the United States, beginning Nov. 2023.

But the House is taking a more deliberate approach.  The No. 5 Democrat in the House, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) told The Hill, “We were unexpectedly sent this by the Senate.  Now, we’re trying to absorb it.”

Rep. Peter Aguilar (D-Calif.) said lawmakers should consider the broadest possible range of impacts, including farmers and children waiting at bus stops in the early morning darkness.

And that’s the debate…those who like the extra hour of daylight in the afternoon to avoid the gloomy early evenings in the fall and winter (which I kind of like), versus the early risers (moi).

The White House has still not signaled whether it supports the Senate measure, and I’m guessing the House doesn’t exactly act expeditiously on the matter.

--Temperatures 70 degrees above normal in eastern Antarctica have baffled scientists, who say that the “unprecedented heat wave” has already changed the way experts think about the Antarctic climate system.

“ ‘ It is impossible,’ we have said until two days ago,” Antarctic climatology expert Stefano Di Battista wrote on Twitter Friday.  “From today (March 18) the Antarctic climatology has been rewritten.”

The extreme temperature increase in East Antarctica, which is home to the coldest locations on the planet, was registered across the region, experts said.

Temperatures at a French-Italian research station on the Antarctic Plateau reached 10 degrees – or about 70 degrees warmer than average.

“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Jonathan Wille of the Universite Grenoble Alpes* in France tweeted.

“This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heat wave kind of event,” he wrote, referring to the extreme heat wave that affected much of Western North America from late June through mid-July last year.  A massive ice shelf then collapsed.

In the Arctic, temperatures were more than 50 degrees warmer than average.

*The late-Dr. Bortrum used to teach a class from time to time at this university.

--Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is being devastated by another mass bleaching event, officials have confirmed.

It is the fourth time in six years that such severe and widespread damage – caused by warm sea temperatures – has been detected.

Only two mass bleaching events had ever been recorded until 2016.

Scientists say urgent action on climate change is needed if the world’s largest reef system is to survive.

There are particular concerns that this bleaching event has occurred in the same year as a La Nina weather phenomenon. Typically in Australia, a La Nina brings cooler temperatures.

Scientists are now fearful of the damage that could be caused by the next El Nino.

Stretching over 1,400 miles off Australia’s north-east coast, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in the world.

Bleaching occurs when under-stress corals expel the algae living within them that gives them color and life. They can recover but only if conditions allow it.

---

Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen, including four Marines killed in a plane crash during a NATO exercise in Norway last weekend.  All four were assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Corps Air Station in New River, North Carolina.

God bless America.

We pray for Ukraine.

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Gold $1957
Oil $112.62

Returns for the week 3/21-3/25

Dow Jones  +0.3%  [34861]
S&P 500  +1.8%  [4543]
S&P MidCap  +0.2%
Russell 2000  -0.4%
Nasdaq  +2.0%  [14169]

Returns for the period 1/1/22-3/25/22

Dow Jones  -4.1%
S&P 500  -4.7%
S&P MidCap  -4.6%
Russell 2000  -7.5%
Nasdaq  -9.4%

Bulls 35.3
Bears 35.3

Hang in there.

Brian Trumbore

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