"How can the Washington Post say the court decisions on his vaccine or testing mandates were 'out of his control'?"

"Biden and his legal team are supposed to figure out a way to implement his policies that *won’t* get blocked by courts! Those court decisions didn’t happen at random; they happened because judges looked at what the administration did and decided that it didn’t comply with the law."

Writes my son John, at Facebook, commenting on "A year ago, Biden unveiled a 200-page plan to defeat covid. He has struggled to deliver on some key promises" (WaPo).

"Biden and his legal team are supposed to figure out a way to implement his policies that *won’t* get blocked by courts!" — We are all expected to pursue our goals and desires within the limits of the law. But we still can complain about the law that stands in our way and excuse our failure to achieve by pointing at this pesky law.

Sometimes you push the limits of the law and hope to convince judges. With a slightly different configuration of the Supreme Court, the vaccine mandate would have succeeded. Blaming the Court is worth doing to set up judicial appointments as a campaign issue.

And would the implementation of the vaccine mandate have served Biden's interests? Isn't he better off with it failing? He can point to it and say that he tried so hard and not be burdened with the realities of driving so many people out of employment, leaving businesses inadequately staffed, and imposing on the intimate personal bodily autonomy that his Party ordinarily celebrates. 

By the way: "Activists look ahead to what could be the 'last anniversary' for Roe" (NPR).

Speaking of the pending abortion case... did the Texas legislators "figure out a way to implement [their] policies that won’t get blocked by courts"? I'd say they deliberately overreached well-known law because they wanted to convince the Court to change it and, failing that, they wanted political credit for trying.

"Is support for free speech correlated with intelligence?/3 studies on that question all point to the answer: yes!"

My son John blogs.

Not phrenology. Phenology.

Phrenology is the pseudo-science of studying bumps on the skull ("When the forehead is perfectly perpendicular, from the hair to the eyebrows, it denotes an utter deficiency of understanding").

Phenology is...

... the study of plant and animal activities and when they occur each year. Phenology is a real science that has many applications. In farming and gardening, phenology is used chiefly for planting times and pest control. Certain plants give a cue, by blooming or leafing out, that it's time for certain activities, such as sowing particular crops.... Indicator plants are often used to look for a particular pest and manage it in its most vulnerable stages. They can also be used to time the planting of vegetables, apply fertilizer, prune, and so on....

We were worried that we were going to have a freeze last night, and Meade said to look at the lilacs. They're an indicator plant. If they're opened up, then we would not get a frost. Those within earshot all thought — But how does the lilac know the future? I was going to the Arb, and I made sure to photograph the lilac:



It's indicating that there will be no freeze, and sure enough, there was no freeze. The lilac knew. There was a lack of lie in that indication.

Another thing about yesterday: It was the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles' "Let It Be." That includes "Dig a Pony," which has those lines: "You can celebrate anything you want... You can penetrate any place you go... You can radiate everything you are... You can imitate everyone you know... You can indicate everything you see... You can syndicate any boat you row..."

John Lennon wrote that song, which he called "a piece of garbage." Wikipedia says it has a "multitude of strange, seemingly nonsense phrases which were strung together in what Lennon refers to as a Bob Dylan style of lyric." I don't trust these putdowns. That's a way of speaking to the press (a Bob Dylan way by the way). But "Dig a Pony" — with all its "-ate" words — does feel like Bob's "analyze you, categorize you, finalize you, or advertise you...."

I'm willing to believe you can celebrate anything you want, penetrate any place you go, radiate everything you are, imitate everyone you know, and indicate everything you see.

Look! There's the lilac, telling the truth again.

I left out "syndicate any boat you row" because that's getting into metaphor. Genius lyrics tells me "syndicate" is a British way to say "incorporate," and, at the time, The Beatles were turning themselves into "Apple Corps."  To get back to phenology: "When apple trees shed their petals, sow corn."

ADDED: That link on "it was the 50th anniversary of the release of The Beatles' 'Let It Be,'" goes to my son John's post at Facebook. John states a preference for the song order in a later version of the album:

The joyously driving "Get Back" is moved from the end to the beginning (in contrast with the original album's first song, "Two of Us," which is beautiful but wasn't a particularly exciting way for a rock band to kick things off).

I said:

"Two of Us" is seared into my head as the way this thing begins. Nothing else feels right. But then, I always listened to side 2 of "Abbey Road" first, making it begin with "Here Comes the Sun." I like the quiet, hopeful beginnings. I guess the notion of "side 2" doesn't even make sense anymore, hasn't made sense for the last quarter century. And yet, I still have my 50 year old LPs.

I could do without John (Lennon) yelling at the beginning. "'I Dig A Pygmy' by Charles Hawtrey and the Deaf-Aids! Phase one, in which Doris gets her oats!" That was Phil Spector's choice, I'm reading. Is it racist? It's always felt ugly to me. But now I'm reading that "Deaf-Aid" is a Britishism for hearing aid, and that "Doris gets her oats" means Doris is getting regular sexual intercourse.

That "I Dig A Pygmy" business begins the album and goes right before "Two of Us." Only later in the album do we reach the song titled "Dig a Pony," which doesn't really have a pony in the lyrics. It's just John (Lennon) announcing "I Dig a Pony" before beginning the song. It's Phil Spector who is responsible for editing in these spoken-word bits.

ALSO: I edited this post to change the song title to "Dig a Pony." I'd had it as "I Dig a Pony," but now I'm seeing on Wikipedia that "Early American pressings of Let It Be mistitled this song as 'I Dig a Pony.'" I take issue with "mistitled." The album that was bought here in America the day it came out 50 years ago and that I've kept all these years has the correct title in my world.

In any case, the original Beatles title for the song was "All I Want Is You" (rhymes with Bob's "All I Really Want To Do" (quoted above)).

And Phil Spector is in prison.

"Density alone doesn’t seem to account for the scale of the differential between New York’s fatality rates and those of other cities."

"New York has twice the density of London but three times the deaths, and the differential is even higher [comparing NYC to] cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. Deaths have occurred disproportionately in poorer areas, where the incidence of long untreated morbidities such as heart disease and diabetes have contributed significantly. But the same is true in all other cities. The high dependence on mass transit also seems to be a factor. In other major cities, car commutes are much more common. As Joel Kotkin, a scholar of cities at Chapman University in California, says, it may be the lethal convergence of all three factors. 'If you put together density, levels of poverty and reliance on a mass-transit system, you have a hat trick,' he told me.… But even that may not explain the extent of New York’s unique catastrophe. Around the world, the highest death rates have occurred where hospital systems were overwhelmed in the early stages of the crisis. This is especially true in northern Italy. Anecdotally, at least, it seems that the same happened in New York: Large numbers of sick people never got to hospitals, arrived too late or, in the impossible circumstances that medical personnel were confronted with, were given ineffective treatment.… It will be a while before we get a proper understanding of what went so tragically wrong...."

From "The Covid-19 Catastrophe Unfolding in New York Is Unique" (Wall Street Journal), quoted at my son John's Facebook page.

John writes:

I'm not sure this is a logical argument:

"Density alone doesn’t seem to account for the scale of the differential between New York’s fatality rates and those of other cities. New York has twice the density of London but three times the deaths, and the differential is even higher for cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles."

Doesn't that assume there's a linear relationship between density and infection rates, and isn't that not necessarily the case?

My question is about the comparison of New York to northern Italy, where hospitals were overrun. Were NY hospitals overrun? I thought they weren't.  I think the 3 factors named — density, reliance on mass-transit, and the bad health conditions represented by the term "poverty" — are enough to explain what happened. These things are interactive. Shouldn't we talk about Bayes theorem?

"How could the president's address to the nation include so many false statements about the issue that's been gripping the country and the world?"

My son John asks (on his blog).