So much for that (already long debunked) theory

A report on a new planetary carbon audit that came up with these key findings:

• CO₂ out-gassed to the atmosphere and oceans today from volcanoes and other magmatically active regions is estimated at 280 to 360 million tonnes (0.28 to 0.36 Gt) per year, including that released into the oceans from mid-ocean ridges
• Humanity's annual carbon emissions through the burning of fossil fuels and forests, etc., are 40 to 100 times greater than all volcanic emissions

Telling each other conspiracy theories has killed the Right

Jonathan Chait explains how The Federalist started a false and conspiracy laden claim about the whistleblower rules changing, which was taken up with enthusiasm by Trump and his cult followers, but the Intelligence Inspector General has denied it completely.  Does the Federalist retract?  No, it  claims some element of vindication to gloss over the fact they were completely wrong and have mislead and dumbed down the Trump base, again.

And how about this for a complete disgrace - a key Trump adviser using language bound to fire up the lurid conspiracy of the dangerous armed wingnut Trump base:

Of course he does

Hey, just dropped into Mark Latham's twitter feed, to see that now he's devoting time to defending Trump, including re-tweeing Trump's "you can't impeach me, I'm too great at being President" tweets:

How pathetic.

Latham, with his obsession with testosterone fuelled Right wing takes on matters, truly belongs with the losers at Catallaxy.  Maybe he is already commenting there?

Today's Trump madness

Even Ed Morrissey, one of the more conservative columnists at Hot Air, is embarrassed with Trump's use of "treason":

It’s incredible that we have to explain this to adults, but what Trump describes here bears absolutely no resemblance to treason — not even in a moral sense, let alone the legal sense over which Trump rants. Article III Section 3 of the Constitution establishes the only legal definition of treason:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

In other words, it requires a declaration of war (which we haven’t had since World War II) and explicit aid to the enemy named by it. Bzzzzt! Thank you for playing! Nor is what Schiff did treason in a moral sense; he’s attacking Trump, not the United States of America. We do not have lese majeste laws in the US; one is allowed to criticize the president, even unfairly, even dishonestly, without it being a case of treason....

If Barack Obama had accused Republicans pushing the birther conspiracy theory of treason and called for their arrest, his critics would have screamed for Obama’s impeachment. If Trump wants to make a case that Schiff’s dishonest about him abusing his office, then just stick to that. It would be a lot easier to defend Trump against allegations of abusing the powers of his office if Trump wasn’t going all Red Queen in demanding Schiff’s arrest for a non-existent crime. Just sayin’. 

The New York Times notes this:

WASHINGTON — President Trump was repeatedly warned by his own staff that the Ukraine conspiracy theory that he and his lawyer were pursuing was “completely debunked” long before the president pressed Ukraine this summer to investigate his Democratic rivals, a former top adviser said on Sunday.

Thomas P. Bossert, who served as Mr. Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he told the president there was no basis to the theory that Ukraine, not Russia, intervened in the 2016 election and did so on behalf of the Democrats. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Bossert said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump nonetheless tried to get Ukraine’s president to produce damaging information about Democrats.

And in Australia, of course our jellyback and sycophantic PM would say this in response to a phone call from Trump:

"The Australian Government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation," a Federal Government spokesperson told the ABC.

"The PM confirmed this readiness once again in conversation with the President."

 And of course, lots of Australians would be thinking "so that's why the reception in Washington looked rather over the top."

I'd love to know the questions Barr will put to our government:  "So, this Alexander Downer - come on, level with us, is he some sort of spy?"

In further examples of Barr debasing the role of AG:

Finally, I was amused by the sarcasm in this:

Sounds cool

The Guardian notes:

Sweden’s navy HQ is returning to a vast underground cold war fortress designed to withstand a nuclear attack, in what has been seen as a defensive move against a resurgent Russia.

After a 25-year absence, the navy will once again be commanded from beneath billions of tonnes of granite as the country strives to build up its defences in response to the perceived threat from Moscow.

The top secret naval base on Muskö, about 25 miles (40km) from Stockholm, resembles a cross between Tracy Island from Thunderbirds and the film set of You Only Live Twice, where James Bond grappled with arch villain Ernst Blofeld in his headquarters beneath a volcano.

Completed in 1969, it boasts cavernous underground docks that can shelter warships, with miles of tunnels, offices and a hospital.

Yes, he is panicking

I find it pretty telling that the Trump cultists are still running with "nothing to see here" regarding impeachment, despite the fact that the Trump tweet rate is at "panic stations" levels, indicating that even their Dear Leader knows he is in trouble. 

I haven't checked for myself, but someone on Twitter said a short time ago that he's re-tweeted 50 or 60 times today or yesterday, including the one that mentions "civil war" - always a great look in a President!

I wonder - maybe one way of knowing something is truly "up" would be by news of a meeting between some high level Republicans and Lachlan or Rupert Murdoch.   Because their whole problem is the bind of how they dump Trump without losing all of his cult followers, and the key to his cult is to be found at Fox News.

Update:   I keep feeling a bit torn about whether to describe Trump cultists as incredibly dumb, incredibly blind, or both.  I mean, a lot of these people hold down jobs - academics or professionals some of them - so is it a case of cult blindness just makes you seem dumb?   Were Germans who hated Hitler having this discussion amongst themselves in the 1930's?

Update 2:  For Steve Kates, there is no reason to expend charity, given his routine, hyperbolic condemnations of all of those who do not agree with him:  

What does get me down is that there is not more disgust in America such that not only will PDT with certainty win the election, but the Republicans will also sweep the House and pick up another half dozen in the Senate. If the Dems represent somewhere near the middle of where political sentiment now is, the West is truly lost and we will all in good time end up with political controls on our lives similar to those in China.

As for our diseased and addled media, anyone at the ABC, to take just one example, who thinks there is a case for any Democrat candidate to win against PDT is a terrifying example of political inanity, with zero morality and less judgement.

Dumb and nasty. 

Update 3:  David Von Drehle writes on the importance of Fox News in any move on Trump:

With impeachment gathering steam, the fate of President Trump is in the hands of a single institution. Not the Senate, though that’s the body established by the Constitution to make the ultimate decision to remove a president. I’m thinking of Fox News....

As it happens, Trump’s crisis finds Fox News at a turning point. With the sale of his company’s movie arm to Disney, founder Rupert Murdoch has cashed out a large part of his empire while anointing his eldest son, Lachlan, the chief executive of the media business. The death of Roger Ailes, accused sexual harasser and Fox News visionary, opens the way to fresh thinking — which the channel sorely needs, given its median audience age of about 65 .

Amid this flux, it is intriguing that Fox News added a veteran politician to its rather compact board of directors earlier this year and placed him in charge of nominating future board members. Paul D. Ryan, former House speaker, has as much reason as any conservative Republican in America to nurse a gigantic grudge against the president. To have him advising the new Fox News leadership on strategy and future directions cannot bode well for the aging star of the Donald Trump Show.

Von Drehle goes on to argue that Paul Ryan has every reason to seek revenge on Trump, and as such, his role at Fox is bad news (for the President.)

Not exactly "corruption"

Lots of writers who think Trump is good for impeachment for his dealings with Ukraine nonetheless admit that the Hunter Biden "jobs for the boys" story is not a great one for Joe Biden either.

This article at The Atlantic:   Hunter Biden’s Perfectly Legal, Socially Acceptable Corruption talks about how this is happening all the time on both sides of politics probably takes it too far with using "corruption" in the headline, though.

I guess that one of the problems of dealing with it, though, is that there is also a legitimate case for saying that the children of political figures should not be unduly punished by having certain jobs that they may legitimately be well qualified to hold off limits only because of what their parent does.  (Not that I am saying Hunter fits into that category.)   I don't know how you could stop the children of politicians benefiting from the perception that they are influential with their parent.

The internal Fox wars still hot

An interesting post at Hot Air by Allahpundit - Chris Wallace from Fox has thrown petrol on the fire between between the two camps at his network. Here's the key part of it:

According to Wallace, diGenova is working with Giuliani on the Biden business with Ukraine. The guy whom Tucker invited on as some sort of dispassionate legal analyst to counter Napolitano turns out to be a secret participant in the matter that’s being analyzed, Trump’s interactions with Zelensky and his government. I didn’t see the first Tucker segment with diGenova but you can watch the second here. He’s introduced merely as a former U.S. Attorney, and Carlson prefaces their conversation by noting that legal opinion is split on the point about a “thing of value” that Napolitano had made. In other words, diGenova was presented to the audience as nothing more or less than a seasoned lawyer whose acumen led him to a different opinion than Judge Nap’s. Tucker even laughed at one point at Shep’s claim that diGenova is a “partisan.”

Now here comes Wallace to imply that the entire segment was basically a fraud, with diGenova concealing a glaring conflict of interest....

Did Tucker know and conceal the information? Presumably he was in the dark, but he’s a buddy of Trump’s and has been known to talk foreign policy with him by phone. Did Trump ever idly mention to him that Rudy *and Joe diGenova* are working on the Ukraine thing? Also: Did Fox executives know of diGenova’s role? If so, why did they conceal the conflict of interest? If not, will there be any sanction against diGenova for not disclosing his involvement in the Ukraine stuff before appearing on a segment to comment on it?

Relatedly, who greenlit this on-air revelation by Wallace? It’s to Fox’s credit that they allowed it to be reported knowing the questions it would raise about diGenova’s segments this week and his role on the network going forward, but I’m surprised that they allowed it to be done in such a showy way. They could have relegated it to a story on the Fox News website and then quietly warned Tucker not to have him back on, or at least to be forthright about disclosing his role in the Ukraine matter next time.
 

Late movie review - Spotlight

It's on Netflix, and I've been meaning to watch it for a while.

It's very competently made, and I think Mark Ruffalo is the stand out actor in it.

But I was surprised that the story did not have more examples of actual obstructionism from the Catholic establishment.  My son said he was expecting thugs for the church to come around and threaten one of the journalists.  I didn't trust the white haired editor (or whatever he was) - I thought it would turn out he had actively suppressed previous stories.  But even that theory came to naught.   As Peter Bradshaw said in his review:

We keep hearing about how the church is going to come after reporters who dare to challenge its authority – but this never really happens, and there is none of the paranoia of a picture like Alan J Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976) or Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999).

So, yes, worth watching, interesting and competent, but a bit lacking in the level of intrigue and emotional impact.  So I would put it down as over-praised (93% on Metacritic.)   

An interesting idea has more credibility than I expected

From Gizmodo:

What If Planet Nine Is A Bowling Ball-Size Black Hole?

“Primordial black holes” are a class of proposed objects that formed as a result of the chaotic early days of the universe. Like any other black hole, they would be incredibly dense regions where gravity warps space so much that light cannot escape.

But these would weigh far less than stars, since they weren’t formed out of stars like the black holes we’ve actually observed — they would have formed out of places of leftover extra density in the rapidly expanding early universe. (And no, they wouldn’t contribute significantly to dark matter, the mysterious stuff that seems to comprise the lion’s share of the universe’s mass.)

Unwin and his collaborator Jakub Scholtz, a junior research fellow at the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology at Durham University, proposed that perhaps a primordial black hole whizzed by, interacted with the solar system’s other members, and became trapped in an orbit.

I asked Uniwn and Scholtz whether such an object would evaporate from tiny physical effects called Hawking radiation; they said that no, even a five-Earth-mass black hole would last for a very long time, far longer than the age of the universe.

If the planet really were a primordial black hole, rather than a planet-sized mass of regular matter, then it would be no use trying to find it with typical planet-searching means.

A figure in the paper, shared above, demonstrates that a five-Earth-mass black hole could fit in the palm of your hand (yes, this encounter would kill you), and a 10-Earth-mass black hole would be the size of a bowling ball.

 I didn't realise Hawking radiation would work so slowly.

More Boris Johnson

Um, wouldn't this be enough to sink most politicians, let alone Prime Ministers?:

The woman allegedly granted thousands of pounds in public funding by Boris Johnson reportedly told friends they were having an affair at the time.

Former model turned technology entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri allegedly received £126,000 in public money and had privileged access to three foreign trade missions led by the prime minister during his time as London mayor.

The Sunday Times has now reported that Ms Acuri confided to four friends that they had been having an affair during his time in City Hall. The paper said that David Enrich, now finance editor of The New York Times, claimed he had been told of the affair by two of her friends when he was working for another newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, in 2013.

His account was said by the Sunday Times to corroborate that of other sources who had spoken to Ms Arcuri.

Yet more in the ongoing series: outstanding brilliance of Boris Johnson still undetectable

Come on, Tim and Jason - my couple of not completely nutty readers who like Boris Johnson.  Surely you can't defend his UN speech as not embarrassing, can you?:

Bredan O'Neill an even bigger idiot than I thought

I'll explain it this way:   I've always disliked Brendan O'Neill's polemic style, and as a result, I haven't even paid all that much attention to his actual arguments.  And besides, Andrew Bolt likes him, so what are the chances I would?

But I see overnight that O'Neill has joined the stupid group known as "populist Right wingers who whine about the Left being dangerous thugs, while actually being the ones calling for violence."  He was on the BBC saying that Brexiteers "should" riot, being quick to qualify it by noting that such riots should not involve breaking shop windows.  (I don't think he went on to explain the exact details of the Marxist libertarian concept of "appropriate rioting".)

My Twitter feed then goes on to show me that O'Neill has over the last year been making some readily ridiculed claims that Ireland is not really that big a fan of the EU, when polling actually shows up to 90% in favour of staying.  The bemused reaction of fellow panelists (especially comedian Andrew Maxwell) is fun to watch (it's the second clip at this link.)  

More violent Brexit wankery dreams are to be found from Delingpole at Breitbart:

The more the minority Remainer Establishment carries on with its trickery, its cheating, its lies, its double-dealing, its canting, its hypocrisy, and its shenanigans, the more the majority of us will loathe it with every fibre of our beings.

We’re all too angry and determined now to accept anything but total victory.

And when we do finally crush our enemies, see them driven before us and hear the lamentation of their women, well, I doubt many of us are going to be able to spare one tear of pity. Rarely in history have bastards so totally had it coming to them!

The funny thing is, Delingpole is, physically, a scrawny human who says he has an illness that many suspect is hypochondria.   He would be the last man you would expect to be able to fight off anyone in the street.   As with many on the wingnut populist Right, it's easy to interpret the fantasies of violent victory over their enemies as psychological compensation for physical inadequacies.  (A point I've made about Catallaxy frequently too.)

Along those lines, apparently, Brexiteers don't like being told this:

We find that voting Leave is associated with older age, white ethnicity, low educational attainment, infrequent use of smartphones and the internet, receiving benefits, adverse health and low life satisfaction.

but they're not good with facing up to facts.  Such as the simple one - people voted for Brexit without understanding the complexities of achieving it, and the damage a "no deal" Brexit would cause.

Before baby formula

Science magazine notes that it's now thought that these are 3,000 year old baby bottles, from Germany:

 The carbon isotopes inside two of the vessels suggested they held milk from ruminants, such as cows, sheep, or goats. The other once held milk from another type of mammal, perhaps pigs or humans. That means babies were drinking animal milk from bottles at least 3000 years ago, the team reports today in Nature. It wouldn’t have met babies’ nutritional needs the way breast milk or modern formula does, but it could have been used as a supplementary food during weaning.

Or, I suppose, they could just be for putting milk in your ancient tea?

Anyway, the one on the right looks a bit like a fat kangaroo, no?

Send it to J Soon as well

Here's the sketch, which I think is brilliant in concept, but perhaps could have been a bit funnier in execution:

Yes of course - a court saying the Parliament has to meet is a dark era for democracy

Gawd, Brendan O'Neill is an annoying twerp given to histrionics over everything, but I think he might have reached a new peak of ridiculousness in his Spiked editorial about the Supreme Court telling the PM that he just can't close down Parliament:

Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a vile assault on the democratic order. In finding that Boris Johnson’s proroguing of parliament was unlawful, and that parliament is not prorogued, the 11 justices have made an explicitly political decision in favour of the Remainer elite....

This was a decisively political act by 11 unelected judges who have taken sides against the government of the day, and this opens up a new, dark era in British political life.  What we have seen emerge via this judgement is a borderline tyrannical layer in British politics....

This judgement is a disaster for law and for politics.

Is it the Marxist in him, or the libertarian, who hates the idea of governments having to work within the confines of the judicial arm of government?   And who hates the idea of a Parliament meeting?
 

Trump cultist watch

*  Everyone is surprised about how quickly the whistleblower complaint was released, and it certainly once again indicates that, unbeknown to Trump, he does in fact have people around him all the time who are appalled by his behaviour.   His Narcissistic Personalty Disorder prevents him from recognising it.  Most of the Trump cultists (and all round idiots - it's a Venn set diagram that is completely overlapping) who advise him were probably incapable of seeing how the doctored memo of the call could be seen as being damaging - although Axios has an article saying that there was at least some debate within some at the White House as to whether releasing it would help or hinder.   Anyway, once again I say that, whenever Trump is gone, there are going to be some ripsnorting insider accounts of outrageous and stupid things he has said and done while President.

* Australian Trump Cult central - Catallaxy - had the ridiculous CL write a post that started:

The Ukrainian impeachment hoax is over and Donald Trump won. What was that – about 48 hours?

all before the details of the whistleblower complaint were known, and on what he seems to think was an "unredacted transcript".

Of course, they being cultists, the whistleblower complaint will have no influence.  Nor will Trump being on a recording - speaking to a bunch of diplomats (!) - hinting that the "spy" who has caused him trouble really deserves execution.   They will laugh it off, because they are not only stupid, they're stupidly dangerous.   (Once again, I am at least pleased to see that the only conservative blogger I can trust to be at least on the right page re Trump - Allahpundit at Hot Air - is pretty appalled.)

As I have written before, this presidency has given us a good feel of what it must have been like being a reasonable person in the 1930's watching the rise of Hitler, progressing from:

"Oh, that loudmouth with the silly moustache?   No way people will buy into his over-the-top act.  Germans are pretty sensible, aren't they?" to "Oh my God, when will people realise the mistake they've made giving him power - they keep excusing him no matter what he says or does."

*  Hey this is pretty hilarious:   Vanity Fair claims that the Trump State Media that is Fox News is having an internal crisis as to how to drop support of Trump without losing their audience completely:

Trump’s final bulwark is liable to be his first one: Fox News. Fox controls the flow of information—what facts are, whether allegations are to be believed—to huge swaths of his base. And Republican senators, who will ultimately decide whether the president remains in office, are in turn exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of Trump’s base. But even before the whistle-blower’s revelations, Fox was having something of a Trump identity crisis, and that bulwark has been wavering. In recent weeks, Trump has bashed Fox News on Twitter, taking particular issue lately with its polling, which, like other reputable polls, has shown the president under significant water. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest booster seems to be having doubts of his own. This morning, Sean Hannity told friends the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad,” a person briefed on Hannity’s conversations told me. (Hannity did not respond to a request for comment). And according to four sources, Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch is already thinking about how to position the network for a post-Trump future. A person close to Lachlan told me that Fox News has been the highest rated cable network for seventeen years, and “the success has never depended on any one administration.” (A Fox Corp spokesperson declined to comment.)

Inside Fox News, tensions over Trump are becoming harder to contain as a long-running cold war between the network’s news and opinion sides turns hot.

 They built a cult and don't know how to end it.

Update:   Some people around Trump blame it on Rudy Giuliani, and he's furious and sounds as if he's going to have a breakdown:

Giuliani unleashed a rant about the Bidens, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Barack Obama, the media, and the “deep state.” He has spoken freely about all these topics since the moment he became a surrogate in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Giuliani has aired far-right conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton’s health on national television. He has discussed his convictions about alleged Biden-family corruption with Trump in the White House residence. Still, until the Ukraine scandal broke, Trump’s allies were almost uniformly supportive of Giuliani to reporters, and current and former administration officials would often praise him for his loyalty.

Not until the back-to-back release of the summary of the Trump-Zelensky call and the full whistle-blower complaint did the mood change among this group.

This morning, a former senior White House official told me this “entire thing,” referring to the Ukraine scandal, was “Rudy putting shit in Trump’s head.” A senior House Republican aide bashed Giuliani, telling me he was a “moron.” Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity in order to be candid.

“They’re a bunch of cowards,” Giuliani told me in response. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The president knows they’re a bunch of cowards.”...

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”

 
Heh.

The funny is, some at Catallaxy agree that Giuliani is poison, but they don't realise they are victims of his conspiracy mongering too.   

The hypersonic filler story that will never die

Just saw this on news.co.au:

I have a theory that this story sits in media companies' hard drives, with an automatic "run this ever 6 months".  It is just the most persistent "coming soon to transform your world" story that will quite possibly never come - a bit like fusion power, but on higher rotation.

More on the Biden story

A journalist who wrote about the Biden story in 2015 complains:

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Trump and Fox News just have to say "black is white" and the low information dimwits of the Right nod along without reading another thing about it.

As for Biden "bragging" about what he did - yes, he did, and with no reference to his son at all.   I would have thought sensible people would have wondered - if this is so obviously corrupt and self serving, why would he brag about it?

The reporting is that the prosecutor was sacked (at several country's request) for not investigating corruption actively enough - the sacked prosecutor then claimed he was actively investigating Biden's company, but other journalists say this is self serving and wrong: nothing was happening.

And a new investigation has been started but is progressing slowly.   And what is the "corruption" alleged against the son anyway?  Making money from a sleazy company due to family connections - yeah, right, I can why that would upset Trump supporters (sarcasm.)

Update:  As David Graham explains:

To summarize, Biden threatened to withhold aid if the prosecutor wasn’t fired, and he was. Importantly, Biden was not freelancing, but was acting as a representative of President Barack Obama. There’s no evidence that Biden was helping his son. Shokin’s former deputy, who quit in frustration over his boss’s intransigence, told Bloomberg in May that the U.S. wasn’t pushing to drop probes of Burisma. “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky,” he said. “It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.”

In effect, Biden’s pressure to install a tougher prosecutor probably made it more likely, not less, that Burisma would be in the cross hairs. But since then, the Ukrainian government has not produced any evidence of wrongdoing by Burisma, and the current prosecutor general said in May there was none. A Ukrainian interior-minister official told the Daily Beast that though Ukraine has no evidence that either Biden broke the law, the government would investigate further if the U.S. formally requested it. Hunter Biden has left Burisma’s board.

Joe Biden says he did not discuss Burisma substantively with his son, though Hunter Biden told The New Yorker it came up briefly once: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’” Given Hunter Biden’s checkered past, and the political difficulty that he has caused his father, it’s doubtful he really knew what he was doing.

Hunter Biden seems to have been trading on his father’s famous name to make a buck—a common but distasteful practice familiar from Billy Carter to Roger Clinton, and indeed up to the Trump children today. He’s not exempt from criticism for this behavior, but that isn’t the same as producing evidence that Joe Biden did anything untoward, something that no one has done so far. It’s still possible that more information will emerge that will implicate Biden in trying to assist his son, but Trump has already rhetorically convicted him without any such evidence.

But as I say, the gullible, Fox News zone that the Trump supporting Right lives in just believe anything they are told from the special information bubble they live in.

We've already forgotten about Trump and the electric chair

As Dave Roberts tweeted:

And with that, the idiotic Trump defending Right has already gaslight itself that, indeed, there is a Biden scandal that is plain to see.     

In all my life, I have just never seen a political side that is stupider.  The culture wars and internet has just made them gullible, gurgling idiots.  

Including you, JC.   How are those lungs holding out?