Israeli military prepares for possibility Trump will strike Iran
Senior Israeli officials tell me they expect Israel will get prior notice ahead of any U.S. strike against Iran. But they’re concerned that won’t be sufficient to fully prepare. Thus the order to the IDF to start taking preparatory steps under the assumption that such a scenario is possible.
Successful Not-for-Profit Oxford COVID Vaccine Threatens Big Pharma Profit Logic
“The Oxford vaccine is… striking, since the point was to pay researchers, but not to rely on patent monopolies to generate large profits.” – Economist Dean Baker
— “Janet Yellen’s nomination to be Treasury Secretary is a win for the establishment and a loss for progressives and modern monetary theory proponents. So far, the Biden team is mostly establishment types, which should ease the concerns of investors who feared a more leftward tilt. Although we were skeptical that Mr. Biden was going to pick Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Treasury job, that risk has been completely removed for now.” — Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel.
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— “She is well within the orthodoxy of the economics community, and I suspect that fact along with her familiarity will lead to a largely positive response from financial markets. More broadly, from what we have seen so far, Biden appears to be mainly choosing old Democratic hands to fill his most vital Cabinet and White House posts, people from the Obama (and in some cases, even the Clinton) years. Progressives had hoped to wield major influence in the next administration, but if Biden’s personnel choices so far are any indication, he intends to govern more from what constitutes the middle of the Democratic Party today than to push the envelope far to the left.” — Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont.
Related:
The Wall Street Journal Nominates Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary
Right calls Biden a puppet of Xi as he packs his cabinet with China hawks
‘Joe Biden is China’s puppet’ is a well-worn trope weaponized by the American right wing. In the real world, Biden is staffing his cabinet with rabid China war hawks – but since when do echo chambers care about the real world?
Prior to the US election I wrote a couple of articles saying that, if Biden wins, he will be attacked by the right as a Xi Jinping puppet even as he escalates dangerous cold war aggressions with China, in exactly the same way Trump was attacked by Democrats as a Putin puppet even as he escalated dangerous cold war aggressions with Russia. This extremely obvious prediction is, of course, already coming true.
‘People are pissed’: Tensions rise amid scramble for Biden jobs
Some of the grumbling dates back to one of the main divides in the Biden campaign: people who joined the campaign before Dillon was named campaign manager in March and those who came in after. Some in the old guard feel they were underappreciated — they won the Democratic nomination! — and were layered over by Dillon hires who are now being prioritized for White House jobs.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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