Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
Some California beaches will be open this weekend. But if you’re planning on going, stationary activities, like sunbathing or reading, are a no-no. Open beaches are for “active recreational use” only. Think surfing, paddling, or walking…
Please feel free to share any news items you think readers might be interested in, and make sure to include a link.
First news item
The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press.
The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.
The trove of emails show the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their work quashed by political appointees with little explanation.
…
White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the documents had not been approved by CDC Director Robert Redfield. The new emails, however, show that Redfield cleared the guidance.
Second news item
Team Trump explores ways to have a Trump campaign rally during a pandemic:
President Donald Trump is thirsting to hold campaign rallies again. And among his campaign and White House advisers, a possible solution has been discussed that could allow for such MAGA gatherings even in the midst of a global pandemic: the mostly defunct, rural tradition of the drive-in movie theater.
According to three people familiar with the preliminary discussions, Trump aides and operatives have spent weeks exploring alternatives to the standard Trump 2020 rally that could allow for social distancing while still allowing for a modest number of attendees. Much of the focus has been on sprawling outdoor venues, such as large fields. And one of the top ideas for this coronavirus-era workaround that is currently being floated would rely on repurposing drive-ins for a political gathering.
Fun fact: There are 305 drive-in theaters in the United States, with 549 screens.
Third news item
Police tried to make an arrest shortly after 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was fatally shot on February 23 but they were blocked by Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, two Glynn County commissioners said Friday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Thursday charged Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, with murder and aggravated assault, two days after graphic footage emerged of them shooting Arbery while he was out jogging. Commissioner Allen Booker told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday: “The police at the scene went to [Johnson], saying they were ready to arrest both of them. These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation. She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael.” Commissioner Peter Murphy said officers at the scene in February concluded they had probable cause but “were told not to make the arrest.”
Video of the shooting is here. Consider yourselves warned.
Note:
Gregory McMichael, 64, and his 34-year-old son, Travis McMichael, were arrested Thursday evening and face charges or murder and aggravated assault in Arbery’s killing on February 23, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Fourth news item
Raise your hand if you’re surprised: Trump White House retaliated against employee:
A federal watchdog said it has found “reasonable grounds” to believe that the administration retaliated against a top public health official who says he was ousted after raising alarms about an unverified coronavirus treatment, his attorneys said Friday.
Attorneys for Rick Bright, former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), said the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) determined that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “violated the Whistleblower Protection Act by removing Dr. Bright from his position because he made protected disclosures in the best interest of the American public.”
The OSC, an independent federal agency, said Bright should be reinstated for 45 days while the agency investigates Bright’s case, his lawyers said. Such a recommendation would not be binding, however.
Fifth news item
Citing that “concern and anxiety around this November’s election,” [Gov.] Newsom signed an executive order requiring counties to mail voters a ballot. He had already mandated all-mail voting for a series of special elections, including an upcoming 25th Congressional District special election Tuesday in Southern California…Both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee blasted Newsom on Friday. Trump spokesperson Tim Murtaugh accused the governor of “a thinly-veiled political tactic” that would “undermine election security” and invite fraud, and an RNC spokesperson said the campaign organization was “weighing our legal options to ensure the integrity of the election.”…Newsom’s does not shutter in-person voting centers, which advocates say are especially important to lower turnout blocs like low-income and foreign-born voters. Newsom said that would ensure the enfranchisement of “people that otherwise are not familiar with mail-in ballots, are uncomfortable with them, may have disabilities.”…“We still want an appropriate number of physical sites for people to vote as well,” Newsom said.
Sixth news item
Coronavirus hits the president’s inner-circle, so why aren’t staff members wearing masks?
Several former White House personnel said they have asked previous colleagues still working at the White House why staff members on the grounds, and especially those in proximity to Trump, were not automatically following a protocol of wearing masks and being regularly tested before this point.
“The president sees it as a sign of weakness to wear masks and so people just haven’t been doing it,” one current employee responded, according to a person familiar with that conversation.
Another former security official said that in the wake of the H1N1 avian bird flu outbreak in 2009, the White House developed a strategy for mask-wearing and regular testing in certain conditions to protect the president.
“It’s not like they don’t know how to do this,” the former official said. “I fear politics is influencing these decisions. More than 70,000 Americans have died. Are you going to wait until it’s 100,000?”
Have a great weekend.
–Dana
Good morning.
Dana (0feb77) — 5/9/2020 @ 8:35 amGood morning!
I thought this was pretty hilarious…
https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1258438663610011653
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 8:39 amCalifornia started with ballot harvesting, now they move on to trusting people to only use their ballots in voting. Who could predict what will happen next. 1 party rule is so healthy. Just ask China.
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:29 amMailing out ballots to last-known addresses is an invitation to fraud. Why is this even a question? It is not hard to imagine a new kind of “ballot harvesting” operation aimed at misdirected ballots.
Here in New Mexico the state Supreme Court refused to allow such, and voters were required to ask for an absentee ballot, which could be done quickly and easily on-line.
Considering that the general election is in November, this wave of infection will have passed and people may be willing to brave the wilds of the voting place in person anyway.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:33 amRob, I can’t speak to California specifically, but most states have a system in place which ensures that if an absentee ballot is received, the person can not cast a vote in person…and if they vote in person, any absentee ballot received afterwards is not counted.
So double voting is not a realistic problem.
It is amusing to see Republicans, who have spent years clamoring about voter fraud that doesn’t really exist (ie, in person fraud), suddenly waking up to the voter fraud problem (absentee ballots) that has always existed.
Kishnevi (a1b7cb) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:50 amKevin, remember that if the virus does have a resurgence in the fall, October/November is a likely time for it to start peaking.
Kishnevi (a1b7cb) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:51 amhttps://twitter.com/AlexBerenson/status/1258824253434212360
More evidence against the lockdown.
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:53 amKishnevi,
we’ve complained about ballot stuffing and the dead voting for years including before I was born. See JFK’s election.
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:54 amThe other big problem California is courting is that for this past primary election they ended up taking seven weeks to count all of the ballots and finalize the results. Some of that was due to the coronavirus, but state officials from the very beginning had granted themselves a leisurely 30 days to accomplish the task. I don’t know if that’s going to fly in a general election, with so many items on the ballot and so many likely close votes on initiatives and referenda. I can easily imagine a scenario where a tax increase measure is failing on election night by two or three percentage points, only to have it announced on December 3 that the manual recount has determined that it did indeed pass by a couple thousand votes. I for one would call into question that sort of result.
JVW (54fd0b) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:55 am@6. Picture the bumper stickers for the ‘bring out your dead campaign’ this Fall:
“Cough it up: Vote Trump”
… or perhaps:
“President Biden: How Does That Grab ‘Ya?”
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:01 amwe’ve complained about ballot stuffing and the dead voting for years including before I was born. See JFK’s election.
Yes, but by and large did nothing about it. Voter ID laws do nothing to stop that. The laws passed under Gov Walker in Wisconsin are the only instance I know of in which absentee ballot fraud was addressed. The rest of the time the GOP seems fussed only about people showing up on Election Day who shouldn’t be.
Kishnevi (a1b7cb) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:02 am“ More evidence against the lockdown.”
– NJRob
Extrapolate from that data set and see if the numbers look appealing at a national level.
Leviticus (69df94) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:07 amThey do. What is your issue with them? The high level of contagion? We knew that from the beginning. Staying locked down doesn’t change that.
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:10 amI’m guessing that there probably weren’t a lot of 60-80 year-olds working in that meatpacking plant, either. Or immunocompromised people.
Leviticus (69df94) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:11 amSweden hasn’t locked down its businesses but it is still suffering economically (WSJ paywall) because many of its citizens are choosing to stay home. We don’t know yet whether Sweden will have more or fewer per capita deaths without a lockdown compared to other countries, but it seems we do know what people choose to do has an impact.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:12 amAnd the plant was obviously not locked down.
Kishnevi (a1b7cb) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:13 am“ Staying locked down doesn’t change that.”
– NJRob
Ummmmm….. yes it does. You think any companies with 2500+ remote workers have an infection rate of 44%?
Leviticus (69df94) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:14 amOctober/November is a likely time for it to start peaking.
Actually, no. Unless “start peaking” means “there are a few cases by then”. Hard to parse that.
The flu season may start then, but it peaks Dec-Feb. And folks like me, who always vote (as does everyone over 60) will have sent in our ballot requests. Youngsters will go to the polls, should they bother, but they are particularly at risk.
And, frankly, I’m not in the “everyone-must-vote” camp. If you haven’t figured out how to vote by, oh, late October, your vote is just random noise anyway. Better you satay home than vote according to the last ad you heard or what your horoscope says.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:16 am*hey are NOT particularly at risk.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:17 amCompanies that have 44% infection rates are not that way because of the lack of a lockdown, but because their workers feel it necessary to work while sick.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:18 amA few days ago I noted that the “tyranny of experts” theme that conservatives & libertarians have long used against arrogant & overbearing bureaucratic elites and left-wing statists has turned into the weird idea that scientific experts don’t really know much about the fields they have studied intensively; that they’re stuck in dogma; that their vision is too “narrow” — and therefore we should listen to people who rely on “common sense” and “wisdom” — i.e., whichever pundit or think-tank intellectual presumes to have native wisdom that surpasses all expertise. (Or presumes to have identified the one expert who knows exactly how all the other experts are wrong.)
The notion that (the speaker’s own) common sense and wisdom see more clearly than expertise could ever do has lined up perfectly with Donald Trump’s belief that he knows more than anyone else about pretty much everything. When Trump speaks, his devotees believe he is expressing “common sense” wisdom that surpasses mere knowledge.
The president of Hillsdale College, e.g., says that Trump has “wisely” offered valuable suggestions for treating Covid-19 that the “experts” in scare quotes can’t or won’t see because their vision is too “narrow.” (Too narrowly focused on what various substances have been shown to do to the human body?)
It’s quite bizarre. And the writers of anti-expert polemics don’t recognize the irony of their own intellectual arrogance as they attack the intellectual arrogance of people who know stuff they don’t.
Radegunda (c9f012) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:19 amThis seems like the makings of an argument that a more targeted quarantine(elderly and weakened) would have been very effective and maybe a total lockdown was an overstep.
BuDuh (56b7a6) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:21 am17. “Infection rate” of 44%? That’s impossible to know unless every one of those employees is tested. And then, of course, there’s the fact that they may show up positive on a serological test but negative on a PCR test if they’ve ever had it, which could mean that they won’t (read: can’t) get it again.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:21 am22. I said that very thing back in early March: Isolate the vulnerable.
Here in South Dakota, most CoViD-19 infections and virtually all deaths fall into two categories: meatpacking plant workers and nursing home residents. I am neither, so my chance of actually getting sick is vanishingly small. My chance of actually harboring live virus is somewhat higher, but that’s a chance I am willing to take.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:23 am“ Companies that have 44% infection rates are not that way because of the lack of a lockdown, but because their workers feel it necessary to work while sick.”
– Kevin M
If the doors were locked, the sick workers would not be able to work next to the not-sick workers, no matter how necessary they felt it to be.
Seriously: why are smart people tying themselves in knots to deny something this obvious?
Leviticus (69df94) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:24 amThis is a perplexing disease because there is an argument that those who have primary immunodeficiencies (those who are born immune-compromised as opposed to acquiring it later in life with cancer, autoimmune disease, etc.) can get it but may not be as severely impacted because their immune systems don’t respond.
The virus itself doesn’t seem that bad — some people never even know they have it. What is killing people is their immune systems going into overdrive following infection, the cytokine storms. Older people, the ill, and even the very young (perhaps those with “relatively” strong immune systems?) are at risk because their bodies cannot deal with the impact of the cytokine storms, but the innately immunocompromised may not respond that way. This is speculation. Don’t try this at home.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:25 am25. 21.
For those of you who put your trust in “expertise,” please google “Ignaz Semmelweis.” It’s a particularly apt subject in today’s political climate.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:26 amBut we are seeing more and more healthy people dying of this.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:27 amBut weren’t they working because they were considered an essential industry, Kevin and Leviticus?
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:28 am“ This seems like the makings of an argument that a more targeted quarantine(elderly and weakened) would have been very effective and maybe a total lockdown was an overstep.”
– BuDuh
I think that’s a viable argument, for sure. Those (like Gryph) who have been making that argument from an early stage may feel some vindication in that regard.
Leviticus (69df94) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:32 am30. Thank you, Leviticus. I may be right or I may be wrong, but it’s nice for at least one person here to acknowledge that I’m not (and that I wasn’t) crazy.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:37 am“For those of you who put your trust in “expertise,” please google “Ignaz Semmelweis.” It’s a particularly apt subject in today’s political climate.”
Ok… Who is the modern day Ignaz? Is it Alex Jones?
Davethulhu (a122fb) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:40 am32. Let me put it to you another way, Dave. Ignaz Semmelweis proposed hand washing in maternity theaters and the “experts,” that is, the doctors who stitched up bleeding episiotomies with unwashed hands, found his assertions insulting.
So if you want an example of a modern-day Semmelweis, I’d say Doctor Erickson and Doctor Massihi look like it to me. Only time will tell if, like Semmelweis, history can vindicate them.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:47 amLockdowns are hard questions. The balancing of safety vs freedom is a difficult issue in lots of areas. It is especially hard here when we know so little about this disease.
I feel certain the innately immune-compromised would have been locked down and most places did lock down nursing homes, but we don’t really know if they are the most at risk. In my town, the worst cases were at one nursing home that locked down but the staff brought it in.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:49 am34. It’s a hard question when fear and uncertainty rule the roost. Lockdowns are of limited utility in nursing home situations unless you’re willing to engage a sanitarium model and reserve entire facilities for treating known, sick CoViD-19 cases. And in that case, you have to be absolutely certain that each and every employee of such a facility is well enough to not be contagious.
Pipe dreams? Maybe. But then again, I’m not the expert, am I?
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:53 amIf we knew everything about this disease … it would have been much easier to deal with, but we didn’t and we don’t. Thus, fear and uncertainty aren’t surprising, and being cautious strikes me as sensible.
However, I am glad different places are trying different approaches. It is like a hundred clinical trials so we can see what works. My guess is there are different answers for dense urban areas and for people living in close proximity (like high rises and nursing homes) than for people living in less dense areas.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:03 am36. Yeah, I know what you mean. But for all the “common sense” that gets bandied about, people tend to forget (or willfully misremember) that dumping a bunch of confirmed CoViD-19 cases in nursing homes was the worst response that could have been actioned. And it’s exactly what Governor Cuomo did in New York.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:11 amEssential liberty vs temporary safety.
Do you know if the staff brought it in, or, like my governor did, were sick patients ordered back into the facilities where they infected others?
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:14 am38. Why one or the other? It could have been both. It was almost certainly a combination of both up in New York.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:15 am“Jim Clapper, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, said: “I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting or conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.” Compare that to his Twitter feed.
Former Obama administration U.N. ambassador Samantha Power was asked by the committee if she had any evidence of collusion with the Russians. She replied this way: “I am not in possession of anything – I am not in possession and didn’t read or absorb information that came out of the intelligence community.”
Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice said: “I don’t recall intelligence that I would consider evidence.”
And here’s former Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Asked if she saw evidence of Russian collusion, Lynch replied: “I do not recall that being briefed up to me.”
Tucker Carlson lays out the revelations of the released documents on the Russian Collusion smear while calling for Schiff’s resignation:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-adam-schiff-should-resign
harkin (a5ef55) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:16 am_
In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. government turned down an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America
It was Jan. 22, a day after the first case of covid-19 was detected in the United States, and orders were pouring into Michael Bowen’s company outside Fort Worth, some from as far away as Hong Kong.
Bowen’s medical supply company, Prestige Ameritech, could ramp up production to make an additional 1.7 million N95 masks a week. He viewed the shrinking domestic production of medical masks as a national security issue, though, and he wanted to give the federal government first dibs.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen wrote that day in an email to top administrators in the Department of Health and Human Services. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
But communications over several days with senior agency officials — including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and emergency response — left Bowen with the clear impression that there was little immediate interest in his offer.
“I don’t believe we as an government are anywhere near answering those questions for you yet,” Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that same day.
In the end, the government did not take Bowen up on his offer. Even today, production lines that could be making more than 7 million masks a month sit dormant.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:18 am……..
41. Prestige Ameritech went through the same s**t with government entities and health care networks during the H1N1 outbreak and the SARS outbreak before that. When China can’t supply them enough masks, they go to Prestige. And then when the outbreak dies down, Prestige has to lay off over half its workforce.
What I didn’t see in that article is that Bowen offered to make the masks on the condition that the government pay him upfront for a predetermined, contracted number rather than stiffing him and his employees at some future date TBD. Every entity, government and private, refused. So Bowen decided he would learn from his past mistakes and not expand the plant yet again, only to have to turn his employees back out in a matter of months.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:21 amWe know. It was non-medical staff.
I disagree with your formulation of essential liberty vs temporary safety. You trivialize safety when you characterize it that way. We could just as easily call it temporary liberty vs essential safety. Both are important. There are no easy answers and the sooner we accept that, the better.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:24 am43. Benjamin Franklin would disagree with you, DRJ.
Anyhow, despite my lack of expertise in the mortuary sciences, there are a few things I know for sure with absolute and 100% certainty: You will die. I will die. Everyone you know will die at some point, before you or after you. You may be crushed at the time or manner of death of some of your loved ones, or you may somehow miraculously be able to accept it all. I don’t know that. But I do know that sooner or later it will happen. You can delay it, but you can’t prevent it.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:28 amI made my week’s batch of oatmeal again this morning, using last week’s variation on the recipe: 4.5 cups of almond beverage, .5 cups of half and half, i cup water, divide into six portions and not eight. Yield this time was 6.7 ounces per serving and not last week’s 7 ounces. Utterly delicious. This is the recipe I’m sticking with.
Patterico (115b1f) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:29 am18, there might not have been a St. Reagan if not for “random noise” suddenly musing about its past four years.
urbanleftbehind (22e614) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:31 amSure, there are lots of times when a lot of experts are wrong about somethin. But Semmelweis had a medical education. He was a physician. He researched a question and made empirical observations. He formulated a thesis and tested it. He surely had a good measure of expertise.
The story is a long way from demonstrating that the common sense of the average American or Fox talker or Donald Trump is more reliable than all the experts put together.
The “don’t trust the experts” crowd don’t offer a plausible theory on whom we should trust instead, and why, on a given topic. And I’ve often seen them citing people who actually do specialized research in that area, and come up with an unorthodox conclusion, in an effort to demonstrate that “experts” per se don’t know what they’re talking about.
Radegunda (c9f012) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:35 amTribe refuses South Dakota governor’s request to remove checkpoints
Leaders of a Sioux tribe in South Dakota on Friday refused a request by the governor to remove checkpoints on state and U.S. highways, arguing it must protect itself from the highly infectious novel coronavirus.
In a public response to Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R), Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman Harold Frazier wrote that the tribe would “regretfully decline” to move the checkpoints, adding that the reservation is an “island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death.”
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:39 am…….
The tribes, which are in the western and southern parts of the state, have set up the checkpoints to limit travel to and from the reservations. According to guidelines from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, residents and visitors can pass through the checkpoints only to complete “essential activities,” such as medical appointments or getting essential supplies.
…….
The problem with this disease is that so little is known, and almost weekly, a new symptom appears. Consider last month, we didn’t hear about children developing a more serious inflammatory syndrome with COVID-19. Also, the disease has been confirmed to present in any number of ways now, not just what we originally were told to watch for. Because it’s so hard to get a thumb on it, there remains an uncertainty as to the end results for our country.
Dana (0feb77) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:40 am49. The problem with this disease is that the more we know, the more uncertainty gets thrown back in our faces by “experts” and politicians who use the uncertainty as a tool to leverage their own power. It’s quite possible that those different presentations weren’t/aren’t CoViD-19 at all. And if you don’t think the “experts” that work for our government would lie to us? Just remember that Dr. Fauci was one of the “experts” during the AIDS crisis who said they shouldn’t shut down the gay bathhouses because of “discrimination.”
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:43 amJust remember that Dr. Fauci was one of the “experts” during the AIDS crisis who said they shouldn’t shut down the gay bathhouses because of “discrimination.”
I get that the conclusion was wrong, but how was it a “lie”?
It’s quite possible that those different presentations weren’t/aren’t CoViD-19 at all.
Sure. Very few thing are unpossible. It’s quite unlikely, however. Unless you can suggest a viable cause for the effect.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:52 amThe problem with this disease is that the more we know, the more uncertainty gets thrown back in our faces by “experts” and politicians who use the uncertainty as a tool to leverage their own power.
You really take is personally, huh? Did science throw out uncertainty by discovering new information, or was it somebody throwing it in your face? Are you edging toward the “hoax” conspiracy theory?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:15 pm“I get that the conclusion was wrong, but how was it a “lie”?“
– Ragspierre
Ah, so now people can draw incorrect conclusions without being “liars” or “lying.” That’s good – that’s a newfound layer of nuance, relative to the other thread.
Leviticus (6159e1) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:18 pmRIPMurdock: seems to me that if the tribes are actually sovereign in their own lands, they have the right to do this, and if their doing so violates US law, then US law is internally inconsistent and incoherent on the subject of tribal sovereignty.
aphrael (7962af) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:21 pmAh, so now people can draw incorrect conclusions without being “liars” or “lying.”
How’s this for nuance; a public policy can be wrong or shades of correct. A statement of fact that is fundamentally false is a lie. A statement of opinion can be mistaken or correct, depending on its predicates.
Words matter.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:29 pmThat’s good for nuance! Proud of you.
Now apply the nuance to your comments, instead of calling people who disagree with you “liars.”
Leviticus (6159e1) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:33 pmRIP Richard Wayne Penniman – aka ‘Little Richard’
Good Golly, Miss Molly: was Long Tall Sally… Tutti Frutti!?
DCSCA (797bc0) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:35 pm> A statement of fact that is fundamentally false is a lie.
It is not a “lie” unless it is *known to be false by the person speaking it*.
The word “lie” contains at least two signifiers: a signifier about the content (it’s not correct) and the intent of the speaker (they intend to deceive). The intent of the speaker actually matters more than the content.
A true statement uttered by someone who believes it to be a false statement — that is a lie.
aphrael (7962af) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:35 pmA false statement uttered by someone who believes it to be true is *wrong*, but it isn’t *a lie*.
Sad, indeed DC…he did a turn to gospel not unlike Kanye West today.
But that reminds me:
Next on TheRoot.com: They Stole Rock N Roll AND the term Karen from us.
urbanleftbehind (22e614) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:38 pm“Let me put it to you another way, Dave. Ignaz Semmelweis proposed hand washing in maternity theaters and the “experts,” that is, the doctors who stitched up bleeding episiotomies with unwashed hands, found his assertions insulting.”
For every Ignaz, there are a thousand cranks and charlatans.
Davethulhu (a122fb) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:41 pmNow apply the nuance to your comments, instead of calling people who disagree with you “liars.”
I did, and it was not a question of a disagreement with ME, but with the truth.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:45 pmA true statement uttered by someone who believes it to be a false statement — that is a lie.
A false statement uttered by someone who believes it to be true is *wrong*, but it isn’t *a lie*.
Ummm…no. But we are obviously not going to agree. A true statement can’t be a lie, and where the notion it CAN be derives is…well, outside my kin.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:49 pmRaggy preaching to me about “expertise” when he can’t even define the words “lie” and “liar…” That is rich.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:50 pmMoana, I haven’t preached anything to you. I asked a few questions, and I certain can define a lie.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:53 pmIf I believe something to be false, and declare it to be true, I am lying. Whether it *actually is* true or not is irrelevant — in that situation, I’m proclaiming something as true that I believe to be untrue. In that situation, I’m deliberately trying to mislead someone. In that situation, I am committing a moral and ethical crime *regardless* of the accidental fact that I’ve failed to do what I’ve intended to do.
If, on the other hand, I believe something to be true, and declare it to be true, I’m not lying. I am not deliberately trying to mislead someone. I have committed no moral and ethical crime. I may be *wrong*, but making mistakes and being wrong about something are not moral and ethical crimes.
A *lie* is an intentional act of deception.
aphrael (7962af) — 5/9/2020 @ 12:53 pm“What did you do during the COVID-19 lockdown, Patterico?”
“I perfected a recipe for oatmeal.”
Not that I am making fun of this; it’s a hell of a lot more than I have accomplished during the same time. But it does seem to lend credence to the idea that we are all going to emerge from this as expert chefs, raging alcoholics, or a little bit of both.
JVW (54fd0b) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:09 pmWhat about a statement made as fact without regard for its truth or falsity? I put that as a lie if it is, in fact, false.
Many times people are motivated by something other than outright deception, and they will leave the truth behind as they follow an agenda. And remember, it is often the case a liar has first come to fully believe their lies. Are they not lying?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:09 pmI’m pushing for raging chef and expert alcoholic.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:10 pmI would add pregnant and chubby to the list…
Dana (0feb77) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:11 pmThere, Dana, you left me….
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:14 pmI haven’t dined on restaurant food since St. Patrick’s Day. Yes, I know that is not at all helping out the local economy, but I have my reasons for following this plan. So I have made every single meal at home for nearly two months now. Some nights I put real effort into it and attempt new recipies. Other nights I just go to old standbys that I like (spaghetti and sausage, tacos, tostados), and sometimes I just get lazy and take the easiest path (frozen dinners, soup, salad, popcorn). I’ve probably been snacking more than I normally would which isn’t a great thing, though it is no fault of my own that god made tortilla chips, guacamole, and salsa taste so good.
My favorite beer emporium now delivers half-gallons of fresh draft beer in sealed plastic containers on Tuesdays and Fridays. I make sure to get one every Friday, though I sometimes skip the Tuesday delivery. So because I am not dining out, I probably am not drinking any more than I would in a normal week.
Once all of this is lifted (the optimistic side of me), it will be interested in seeing what lockdown changes become the new normal. There is some talk that restaurants should do more al fresco dining for health reasons, which might push my town to relax some regulations which have made it difficult to implement. And I wonder if between the restaurant closings and the expected economic slowdown that people are going to be more likely to dine at home in general.
JVW (54fd0b) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:33 pmI couldn’t care less if the WH employees wear masks. They’re all getting tested on a regular basis. newsflash: If you don’t have the virus, wearing a mask accomplishes nothing. This is just another boring “Gotcha” story.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:42 pmIs anyone in Calf. going to pressure Newsome to open the state up, or is anyone a good a little Democrat who follows their leader? I saw some activity in Orange County about the Beaches, but that’s it. Pretty sheep like for a state of 40 million.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:45 pmIf I say “Star Wars came out in 1979,” does that make me a liar?
Leviticus (6159e1) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:47 pmAny lawyer who said so in front of a jury or a judge would be a fool.
Leviticus (6159e1) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:48 pmR.I.P. Little Richard, the father of us all
Icy (6abb50) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:54 pmThe fact that the experts are still learning about a novel virus doesn’t mean they know less than the average person or the pundits claiming to speak for “common sense.” The experts who predicted that the disease would spread rapidly were certainly more correct than the anti-experts who said “It’s just a poorly run nursing home in a far corner of the country. What’s the big deal?” Or: “It’s just New York City. What does that have to do with Real America?”
Of course it’s wise to ask questions, weigh one viewpoint against another, be wary of unwarranted or cynical power grabs. But it isn’t wise to put your trust in Laura Ingraham on a medical question, or to see Donald Trump as particularly wise about anything, or to believe that all the epidemiologists in the country are party to a massive hoax.
Radegunda (c9f012) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:55 pmToday’s Word of the Day is “Karen”. I hadn’t heard this bit of slang until a few days ago, but now the Trumpalistas are using it to describe the folks who are urging Americans to wear facial coverings. It’s become a meme, because karens can also be anti-maskers. In this NYT piece, Karens are "the policewomen of all human behavior"; more accurately, the unappointed and unwanted policewomen. The Urban Dictionary defines them thus:
I suspect there will no children of GenZers named "Karen" for a long while.
Paul Montagu (c18f4a) — 5/9/2020 @ 1:59 pm#78 — I wonder if any of the people pushing that meme actually know anyone named Karen who fits that description.
Radegunda (c9f012) — 5/9/2020 @ 2:28 pmIt seems ageist to me, since Karen hasn’t been a popular name for decades.
77. Well there you go, Rad: Two assumptions on which you are absolutely dead-wrong…
1. I didn’t vote for Trump, and if you remember, back in the day I was one of his most vocal critics here before the CoViD-19 hit the fan.
2. I don’t like Ingraham or Rush, precisely because of their unabashed support for Trump. That does not preclude me from incidentally agreeing with other of their assertions (like the lockdowns need to end), but to say that I want the lockdowns to end because I put my trust in Laura Ingraham or Donald Trump? That borders on defamatory.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 2:35 pmOh, and here’s a gem for you screeching Karens out there:
Georgia’s numbers have exceeded expectations. And by that, I mean in a good way.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 2:36 pmLooks like Obama is commenting on the Flynn case, and got smacked down hard by Prof Turley. Funny how the Bulwark Boys and David French’s grand “conservative” principles didn’t allow them to do the same.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/9/2020 @ 2:57 pmIf you’re a “reasonable Conservative” you don’t win any points with CNN or the WaPo by taking on President Obama. Better keep going after Trump.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/9/2020 @ 2:58 pmI’m not too sad over Little Richard dying, because i thought the 87 y/o had died 10-15 years ago. Anyway, I liked some of his songs, and he seemed like a cool guy unlike many musicians and singers.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:00 pmIf the doors were locked, the sick workers would not be able to work next to the not-sick workers, no matter how necessary they felt it to be.
Seriously: why are smart people tying themselves in knots to deny something this obvious?
Time and again, we see the situation where sick workers “can’t afford to miss work” and infect others. Usually low-paid workers. THis particularly was the case in nursing homes and assisted-care facilities.
Example:
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-seventh-senior-dies-atria-willow-wood-nursing-home-20200406-aydoubszjnh2lm3vq4eroomxcm-story.html
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:00 pmIMO, Little Richard was a National Treasure, just as James Brown was.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:03 pmUniversal vote-by-mail doesn’t benefit any political party, study finds
Republicans forget that they pushed for liberal absentee voting rules to benefit their older, white voters. The same voters being hit hard by COVID-19. As an aside, I voted absentee for 40 years because my first polling place was in a convalescent facility. Couldn’t stand the smell of death in the air. Voting by mail is probably too convenient for those who want suppress the turnout.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:03 pm76… Amen, Icy! I still get a thrill every time I hear the drum intro to “Keep a-Knockin”
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:07 pm88… like the WaPo is a disinterested arbiter of what’s fair. As easy to manipulate and cheat as harvesting is.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:10 pmIt takes quite a lot of searching to reach past the liberal filter (which finds 100s of “Whistleblower fired” articles), but this, from Politico tells the otehr side of the story:
HHS was firing him for other reasons, but he’s now made his stand on being opposed to Trump when backing him didn’t work.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/22/hhs-ousts-vaccine-expert-as-covid-19-threat-grows-201642
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:12 pmU.S. will purchase $3 billion in products from farmers, Trump says
Between trade adjustment bailouts for Chinese tariffs, normal farm bill payments, and now this, American agriculture I must have of one highest levels of federal assistance ever. It really pays to farm!
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:15 pmbut now the Trumpalistas are using it to describe the folks who are urging Americans to wear facial coverings.
Oh, teh NeverTrumpGumps are having their feelings hurt? KARENs go far beyond worrying about facial coverings. They’re the type that call 911 to report two kids playing horse at the park, or a few more cars than normal parked in front of a neighbor’s house. Generally busybodies who want to tell other people how to live their lives. If you’re old enough to remember Margaret Dumont or Gladys Kravitz, you’ll get the drift. Politics are usually progressive.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:24 pmRe: #88. The Republicans dreaded motor voter acts in the early 90s, but the Contract With America wave of 94 may have been facilitated greatly in the first election it was national.
urbanleftbehind (22e614) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:29 pmFight Over Virus’s Death Toll Opens Grim New Front in Election Battle
…….
…… With implications for how quickly businesses and their employees return to something like normalcy, the fight to shape the official record is adding a grim new front to the presidential campaign.
Since the outset of the crisis, elements of the right have sought to bolster the president’s political standing and justify reopening the economy by questioning the death toll. ……..
…….
…… Mr. Trump’s media allies as well as some in the anti-vaccine movement, have repurposed fringe theories about “deep state” bureaucrats undermining the president to argue that the official numbers should not be trusted.
They have a found a receptive audience, and a booster of their ideas, in Mr. Trump himself. For the president, the death toll has become a pivotal political indicator, as important to his re-election prospects as his approval ratings and his standing against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in swing-state polls.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:34 pm……..
…….. One draft government report projected as many as 3,000 deaths a day by the end of May. Yet according to administration officials, Mr. Trump has begun privately questioning the models and the official death statistics.
His skepticism is shared by others in an administration that has regularly disregarded the advice of scientists. On Tuesday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a model that showed deaths dropping to zero by the middle of May. ……….
……….
Haiku back to being Prof. Reynolds’ alter ego.
urbanleftbehind (22e614) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:45 pmYour are absolutely dead-wrong to assume that I was making assumptions about you in every detail of my comment. I’m referring to a general scorn for “experts” that’s being expressed by a lot of people who believe they are naturally smarter, and who tell us that Donald Trump is wiser and more far-seeing than the experts.
I have actually seen people argue that gaps in the knowledge of experts somehow proves that they are only reacting to the latest facts on the ground, with no more credibility than anyone else.
And I’ve seen people actually argue that Donald Trump has more wisdom on a medical crisis than people who have devoted their careers to studying epidemiology or practicing medicine.
It’s a trend among some “conservative intellectuals” & pundits, amplified by the segment of the populace that hero-worships Trump. There’s some truth in the proposition that the elevation of Trump represents a hostility to knowledge, or resentment of people who have diligently acquired it.
Radegunda (c9f012) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:48 pmSeems like low expectations. 51 Georgians died yesterday and the death rate is projected to peak at 61 per day on May 28th. But I wish them luck.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/9/2020 @ 3:50 pmWhite House aides rattled after positive coronavirus tests and officials send mixed messages on how to respond
……..
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, both task force members, said they are self-quarantining or teleworking for two weeks after exposure to a coronavirus case at the White House.
……
……[S]everal administration officials said White House staffers were encouraged to come into the office by their supervisors, and that aides who travel with President Trump and Vice President Pence would not stay out for 14 days, the recommended time frame to quarantine once exposed to the virus.
The conflicting ways in which officials and aides are responding after two staff members were diagnosed with coronavirus this week — Pence spokeswoman Katie Miller and a military valet to the president — continued to raise questions about how the White House is responding to the challenge of maintaining a safe work environment for Trump, Pence and their staff.
……..
……. Now that Redfield and Hahn are both staying away, some officials said they don’t know if they should keep going to work at the White House. Staffers who had potentially been in contact with Miller were still getting calls on Saturday from officials trying to gauge their exposure to the virus, according to one person who received a call.
……..
But concerns were evident at the White House, where there is worry that if Miller and the unidentified personal valet to Trump are infected, then multiple officials may potentially be at risk.
After news of Miller’s diagnosis, aides were going through seating charts, looking at her schedule to discern where she had been and then trying to question anyone who may have been close to her in a room. Emails were sent about possible exposure, and staffers were called.
……….
Miller was regularly in the Oval Office and around Trump while the daily coronavirus task force news briefings were ongoing, but has not been since the briefings ended a couple of weeks ago. She was in the task force meeting in the Situation Room on Thursday, and she sat in the back row facing Pence on the far right side, closer to the door, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Miller, who had told other colleagues that she did not have symptoms, attended a senior staff meeting on the coronavirus at 8 a.m. on Friday and was near other aides, rattling some of her White House colleagues. Neither Trump nor Pence were in the meeting.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:11 pm………..
Little Richard, genius:
https://youtu.be/5ydBkmgJi-g
Icy (6abb50) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:19 pm93… should’ve also mentioned there are plenty of male KARENs.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:32 pm@92 “farmers, ranchers and specialty crop growers”
I hope that is who the money goes to, but I have a cynical suspicion that it’s going to go to agribusiness like foster farms, Conagra, Delmonte, and Dole instead.
Nic (896fdf) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:33 pmFranklin’s quote was about government power to tax for public safety vs private rights, and Franklin was on government’s side.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:43 pmI don’t know what Franklin would say now, Gryph. My guess is he might say he sees your point, just as I said to you weeks ago in the comments. But it is not clear he would say liberty trumps all safety concerns, as is apparent if you read his quote in context.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:48 pm“I hope that is who the money goes to, but I have a cynical suspicion that it’s going to go to agribusiness like foster farms, Conagra, Delmonte, and Dole instead.”
After the ringing success of the SBA loans and grants, I’m sure your suspicions are unfounded.
Davethulhu (a122fb) — 5/9/2020 @ 4:57 pm94… The Republicans dreaded motor voter acts in the early 90s, but the Contract With America wave of 94 may have been facilitated greatly in the first election it was national.
Any documented evidence of that, ULB?
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:04 pmFWIW, Gryph, I think the extra time helped us and our health care system. Health care learned some medicines help and some don’t. They learned what symptoms to expect and ways to manage them. They got time to acquire more PPE and ventilators, and got experience and time to train. We all have far more information to decide which risks we *individually* want to take and which we don’t, and we can decide for ourselves in most states. That is an important aspect of liberty to me.
All of this helped our economy because — whether is is a war, natural disaster, pandemic, or other turmoil — the economy doesn’t work when businesses and consumers are afraid to transact business.
DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:12 pmTrump is losing ground with seniors when it comes to his handling of the virus.
Given that COVID-19 is particularly serious among seniors, you would think the Trump campaign (I mean Administration) would take steps to protect this voting bloc. But i guess not
Ripmurdock (9f7600) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:29 pm106. Maybe it did. I think there’s room for disagreement either way, given how the numbers shook out. But it’s not as if we don’t do this sort of research every day, on an ongoing basis, to fight diseases like Ebola and seasonal flu.
And let’s be honest here. In any event, I think in order to approach this honestly, we have to examine why people (businesses and consumers are always people) were afraid to transact business. It’s clearly not because CoViD-19 was the worst plague to come upon us since the Spanish Flu of 1918; it wasn’t. Something else stoked that fear.
And if it were up to those “business and consumers,” do you think most of them would have closed on their own without government diktat? If not, that doesn’t sound like people are very afraid of a virus. If so, why was the government diktat necessary?
In the past month-and-a-half, I’ve been accused of all kinds of stupidity and failure to exercise “common sense.” But that sort of misses the point of freedom as a philosophical construct. If I’m not free to be stupid, if laws force behavior on me in the name of “common sense,” I’m not free. So as much as I reject the notion that I am stupid or lacking in common sense, even assuming that I am, so what?
I’ve defended the rights of smokers to do their thing even though I don’t smoke. I’ve defended the rights of drinkers to do their thing even though I got that out of my system decades ago. And hell-to-the-YES I think smoking and drinking are stupid, poisonous acts. But I would be a hypocrite to believe as I do and then fail to defend stupidity. It’s not because I think people should be stupid, but because I would hope that my countrymen would defend my rights whether or not they agree with what I’m doing. And so I am doing my level best to defend the common American business[wo]man, though I am not entrepreneurial myself.
Right now, I’m about as disappointed as a person can be in my countrymen. But it will not shake my faith in my republic. I will continue to stand up for what I believe is right.
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:40 pmThree young children have died in New York of a mysterious, toxic-shock inflammation syndrome with links to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Saturday.
…….
As of Saturday, more than 73 children in New York have been sickened by the rare illness, which has some similarities to Kawasaki disease and was publicly identified for the first time earlier this week.
Governor Cuomo said many of these children, some as young as toddlers, did not show respiratory symptoms commonly associated with the coronavirus when they were brought to area hospitals, but all of them tested positive either for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or for its antibodies.
Ripmurdock (9f7600) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:45 pm…….
Before the announcement of the deaths attributed to the new illness, fewer than four children under age 10 had died of the virus in New York, according to the most recent breakdown from the state. ……
………
102. I know the context in which Franklin made that quote. I know that the question was not whether there should be taxes for public safety, but what should be taxed and how. That’s a pretty weak tea assertion considering how much money our federal government has
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:46 pmborrowedprinted out of thin air without any intention of making good on that debt. Since Ben Franklin was a businessman himself, I can’t imagine he would approve of any of the government shenanigans of the last 107 years or so.109. “Linked to the Coronavirus,” huh? I can’t help but think that every death that can be linked to CoViD-19 is an opportunity for people that want to keep these lockdowns going, no matter how tenuous the link.
Screeching Karens: We can’t use these drugs! They’ll take months to test!
Also Screeching Karens: These kids got sick and had Coronavirus! There must be a link! No! We don’t have time to test!
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 5:48 pmIf the storyline doesn’t jive with the storyline in Trump’s head, no matter the facts, then he’ll just adios it.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/9/2020 @ 6:17 pmExhibit A: Dr. Bright said things that Trump like about HCQ…removed from his post for retaliatory reasons.
Exhibit B: HHS IG Grimm identified criticial medical shortages…replaced.
Exhibit C: When the CDC comes out with reasonable and systematic guidelines for restarting the economy…buried.
This happens so much and so frequently that we’re getting desensitized to all the corruption from the very top.
Two federal judges bitch-slapped Reichsstatthalter Andy Beshear (NSDAP-KY), invalidating his orders prohibiting in person church services. The decisions were too narrowly tailored for my taste, based on Herr Beshear’s orders not being narrowly tailored enough. Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove wrote. “If social distancing is good enough for Home Depot and Kroger, it is good enough for in-person religious services which, unlike the foregoing, benefit from constitutional protection.”
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/9/2020 @ 6:20 pm112. I was warning the Trump Humpers about corruption at the highest levels of Trump, Inc. years before he ascended the Oval Office. I was anti-Trump before it was cool. 😛
Gryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 6:54 pmAin’t never even been close to cool, Gryph. It’s at the opposite end…
Heart’sWorld’s Filthy LessonThere’s always the silver bullet
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 5/9/2020 @ 7:08 pmWhile sitting in the Laugh Motel
The world’s filthy lesson
Like a hundred miles to hell
Oh, Corona
If there was only something between us
If there was only something between us
Other than our masks
Something from our skies
Something from our skies
Something in our blood
Something from our skies
Fauci
Fauci?
Who’s been wearing Melania’s clothes?
It’s the world’s filthy lesson
World’s filthy lesson
World’s filthy lesson
Falls upon deaf ears
(World’s Filthy Lesson)
It’s the world’s filthy lesson
World’s filthy lesson
World’s filthy lesson
Falls upon deaf ears
Falls upon deaf ears
(World’s filthy lesson)
(World’s filthy lesson)
(World’s filthy lesson)
Oh Corona
If there was only some kind of future
Oh Corona
If there was only some kind of future
Under these well-traveled skies
Something from our skies
Something from our skies
Something in our blood
Something from our skies
Me, too. Never supported him, never will.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/9/2020 @ 7:25 pmhttp://www.theforvm *dot* org/diary/bird-dog/trump-2012-not-chance
For those of you who’ve heard about or seen Plandemic (a good friend of mine linked to it on FB), here’s a good takedown.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/9/2020 @ 7:27 pmI was over at Professor Reynold’s place just now, and the word “Covidiot” came to mind. It’s really rife with ancephalic commenters.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 8:48 pmAs deaths mount, Trump tries to convince Americans it’s safe to inch back to normal
……..
……… President Trump and his advisers shifted from hour-by-hour crisis management to what they characterize as a long-term strategy aimed at reviving the decimated economy and preparing for additional outbreaks this fall.
But in doing so, the administration is effectively bowing to — and asking Americans to accept — a devastating proposition: that a steady, daily accumulation of lonely deaths is the grim cost of reopening the nation.
Inside the West Wing, some officials talk about the federal government’s mitigation mission as largely accomplished……
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 8:53 pm………
…….Trump and some of his advisers are prioritizing the psychology of the pandemic as much as, if not more than, plans to combat the virus, some aides and outside advisers said — striving to instill confidence that people can comfortably return to daily life despite the rising death toll.
…….
……. The president predicted the virus eventually would disappear even without a vaccine — a prediction at odds with his own science officials.
……..
…… Some of Trump’s advisers described the president as glum and shell-shocked by his declining popularity. In private conversations, he has struggled to process how his fortunes suddenly changed from believing he was on a glide path to reelection to realizing that he is losing to the likely Democratic nominee, former vice president Joe Biden, in virtually every poll, including his own campaign’s internal surveys, advisers said. He also has been fretting about the possibility that a bad outbreak of the virus this fall could damage his standing in the November election……
…..
….. But Trump’s outward projections of assurance and hope masked the more sober acknowledgments of some outside advisers and experts who worry the number of deaths will either stabilize around 2,000 per day or continue to climb over the next month.
……….
Trump has been a complete and utter failure in all this. No leadership, no effective strategy against the virus, no solutions, just lies and tantrums.
nk (1d9030) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:08 pmI wanted to write FUBAR but his FU is not beyond all recognition, it is entirely within recognition. Most worthless President ever.
nk (1d9030) — 5/9/2020 @ 9:10 pmAnencephalic.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:13 pmGood word.
Yes. Even if I can’t spell it.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:27 pmIs Cuomo a mass murderer or a serial killer?
mg (8cbc69) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:09 pmIs Cuomo a mass murderer or a serial killer?
I think so.
JVW (54fd0b) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:20 pm34. DRJ (15874d) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:49 am
Worst posssible mistake they could make, and all the experts were for it. (Here you had nobody saying it is wrong)
The politicians have limited common sense and too many are friendly to nursing homes.
In New York still infectitious patients releasd from hospitals were sent t nursing homes. Nursing homes had no way of containing the infection, even f you argue they had a legal reposibility to do so.
Locking down nursing homes enabled to an epidemic to wage unchecked. Nobody complained, and nobody took their fmily members out of there.
But??
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:21 pmGryph (08c844) — 5/9/2020 @ 10:26 am
Here the situation is the opposite: it’s the wrongheaded experts who say to wash hands.
Almost all this hand washing is unnecessary for this disease – it was said in order to say that staying six feet away from an infectious person was enough. Another explanation other than breathing it in was then needed to explain transmission when the second case was not that near the first. This was the story they came up with the flu, and they’re sticking to it.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:34 pmYou can’t gaslight a virus.
But bless his heart, he’s still gonna try.
Dave (1bb933) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:52 pmRipmurdock (70e093) — 5/9/2020 @ 8:53 pm
I’m sure he heard it from someone. That’s what happened with the 1918 flu.
https://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/Number18_article5.htm
Many ,any ears later, they obtained the DNA for people buried in the tundra in Alaska.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
Some people say the same thing will happen here.
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/03/826522320/throughline-the-1918-flu-pandemic-differs-from-coronavirus-crisis
Jeremy Brown os a physician who is the d author of the book “Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History.” and also the director of the Office of Emergency Care Research at the National Institute of Health.
But the coronavirus doesn’t disappear in warm weather. Some warm countries have outbreaks.
Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, global warming has suddenly been reversed. eight of the first 26 days in April had below average highs and it aIost snowed in New York City today (May 9) I would say because they are still, or again burning coal in China and maybe the drop in high altitude emission and flight near the Arctic circle is possibly a reason.
……..
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:53 pmDave (1bb933) — 5/9/2020 @ 11:52 pm
John Podhoretz wrote:
https://nypost.com/2020/05/07/lock-down-isnt-a-strategy-but-neither-is-open-up
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 12:11 am127. It can’t hurt to wash hands. I was using Semmelweis as a broader analogy to explain why I don’t put much trust in experts at times like these.
I may have mentioned it upthread, but Semmelweis wasn’t simply ignored. He was treated with active contempt by doctors who considered themselves an elite class standing above the great unwashed masses, including the midwives who had never been to a proper medical school. How dare he suggest that their hands were dirty enough to need washing! And yet somehow, the wards in which newborn infants were delivered by midwives instead of doctors had a far lower rate of puerperal fever than those delivered by trained doctors.
It wasn’t until just a few years after Semmelweis’ death that Louis Pasteur garnered recognition for his germ theory of disease, around the same time that Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic surgical protocol. Semmelweis himself died a broken and penniless man in an insane asylum, possibly having been beaten to death by an orderly (though the exact cause of his death remains uncertain).
Gryph (08c844) — 5/10/2020 @ 1:23 amHappy Mothers Day, moms.
mg (8cbc69) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:16 amWhat made the obama administration think they could get away with it? Was it because Obama is a cult leader who can abuse the Constitution and say it is evil and that it should be destroyed? Or does it have to do with elitists who think they knew better then and continue to believe now that they know what’s best for an America who is dangerously close to sliding into a Banana Republic. If anyone thinks the coup is over don’t kid yourselves. The coup is more active than Covid-19 at the nearest old folks home. And it will stay active until the entire lot of hacks and outright criminals who plotted it are thrown in prison. If they get away with it get out a copy of 1984 and figure out which role you will play.
mg (8cbc69) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:28 amJustin Amash appeared on HBO for an interview with Bill Maher the other night. I missed it, because I don’t much care for Maher, but here’s a good summary of the interview.
https://reason.com/2020/05/09/hbo-host-bill-maher-thinks-third-party-candidates-cant-win-justin-amash-says-hes-wrong/
Maher makes the typical criticism of Amash’s candidacy, assuming he wins the Libertarian nomination, that he’ll take votes away from Biden, assuring a Trump victory. Amash responds that he wants to take votes away from both Biden and Trump. He also says there are a large number of Americans, around 45%, who are disaffected with both major parties, and that this year many will vote for a third party candidate.
The problem with Maher’s argument is that Biden is not the Democratic nominee, yet. He might be forced out of the race or could lose at the convention, paving the way for any one of a number of other candidates. There’s no telling what the super-delegates will do, or who they will nominate. They could conceivably draft a governor or some other elected official who didn’t even run in the primaries.
But then Trump is not the Republican nominee, yet, either, although he almost certainly will be. The point being that until the conventions are held and nominees are named, everything up to now is left unresolved.
The conventions themselves may be problematic, as may rallies and campaigns in general. Restrictions on large public gatherings and travel complicate things greatly.
The Libertarian National Committee is struggling with these issues. They had to cancel their convention, set to be held in May at a hotel in Austin. Now, they’re planning to reschedule and hold their convention in July at a hotel in Orlando.
https://reason.com/2020/05/09/libertarian-party-to-choose-its-presidential-ticket-in-virtual-vote-over-memorial-day-weekend/
But that may be problematic as well, again due to social distancing and travel restrictions. They might end up holding a virtual convention. That sounds smarter than trying to hold rallies on large screens at drive-in theaters.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 5/10/2020 @ 7:52 amIts amazing how the R party attracts liars like the Amash. He ran as a “true blue” Republican and a conservative, but then turns around and declares himself a “Libertarian”. Bill Weld did the same thing, except he went from being a “life long Republican” to a Democrat, back to a Republican, then to a libertarian and then back to a trump hating Republican.
The D’s rarely put up with this sort of nonsense. If you don’t have certain policy beliefs you don’t get nominated. PERIOD.
rcocean (846d30) — 5/10/2020 @ 8:01 am135 BWWWWWWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA…gasp…hahahahahahahahaa…!!!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 8:29 am135. rcocean (846d30) — 5/10/2020 @ 8:01 am
So the Republican Party is where honest politicians are going to have to come out of. There’s more variety there. The have liars, but they don;t all tell the same lies, and it’s more possible to avoid endorsing nostrums. It’s less uniform. t still may be locked into a few things, but minority views exist.
While for Democrats, the only hope for modification was a billionaire like Michael Bloomberg. Republicans have Marco Rubio or Nikki Haley. (Joe Biden also, at times, tried to make things more reasonable, but it seems like he almost doesn’t know or care any more about what’s wrong with Democratic Party dogma)
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:07 amBill Weld was a friend of Bill Clinton. And also of the Bulger brothers. And a candidate who enters political races to help a candidate he’s supposedly against by drawing away votes from the mail opponent, or discouraging other candidates from running.
He was so bad his nomination as Ambassador to Mexico failed – but they dropped it quietly. He, or his supporters claimed that he was in trouble because of his positions on various social issues or because former Attorney General Ed Meese wanted revenge for the way he’s been investigated when Weld was the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Meese said he didn’t get involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Weld
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:27 amTop GOP lawmaker disclosed holdings in Chinese company he criticized
A top GOP lawmaker tapped to lead a House panel scrutinizing China disclosed his family’s investment in a major Chinese tech company linked to surveillance and censorship, according to a congressional form filed in his name.
A periodic transaction report filed on April 20 in the name of Rep. Michael McCaul, who represents Texas’ 10th district and serves as ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lists the purchase of $50,000-$100,000 worth of shares in Chinese tech behemoth Tencent Holdings in late February.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:29 am…….
McCaul has disclosed family holdings in Tencent for years, even as he has described the company as a threat to U.S. national security and an integral part of the Chinese Communist Party’s “dystopian” system of social control.
………
Azar faulted workers’ ‘home and social’ conditions for meatpacking outbreaks
The country’s top health official downplayed concerns over the public health conditions inside meatpacking plants, suggesting on a call with lawmakers that workers were more likely to catch coronavirus based on their social interactions and group living situations, three participants said.
HHS Secretary Alex Azar told a bipartisan group that he believed infected employees were bringing the virus into processing plants where a rash of cases have killed at least 20 workers and forced nearly two-dozen plants to close, according to three people on the April 28 call.
Those infections, he said, were linked more to the “home and social” aspects of workers’ lives rather than the conditions inside the facilities, alarming some on the call who interpreted his remarks as faulting workers for the outbreaks, the people said.
…….
Azar emphasized the need to keep the plants open, according to the three people on the call. He also theorized that workers were largely not becoming infected at the meatpacking plants, and were instead contracting the coronavirus from their communities.
Azar noted in particular that many meatpacking workers live in congregate housing, allowing that more testing at facilities would help but that the bigger issue was employees’ home environments. One possible solution was to send more law enforcement to those communities to better enforce social distancing rules, he added, according to two of the lawmakers on the call.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:38 am……
An HHS spokesperson on Wednesday declined to offer any evidence supporting Azar’s assertions and said the department doesn’t comment on specifics of conversations with members of Congress, but contended that “this is an inaccurate representation of Secretary’s Azar’s comments during the discussion.”
…..
At least 6,500 meatpacking plant employees have contracted Covid-19 so far, raising concerns about the conditions for a mostly low-income workforce that’s made up predominantly of racial minorities and immigrants. Some 44 percent of meatpackers are Latino and 25 percent are African American, according to an analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. …….
…….
It’s nice that while we’re arguing over the virus, lockdown, collusion, deep state entrapment schemes, Trump’s unsuitability for office as well as Biden’s etc.
Despite all that and more to raise your blood pressure and call out your on-line enemies, it should not be lost that today is a special day and we can all come to agreement over something….
…yes, Booger McFarland is OUT at Monday Night Football.
harkin (8f4a6f) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:40 am_
Uh huh, and Trump was a lifelong Democrat before he became a Republican. So, your point is?
Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, spouts conspiracy theories, makes up unbelievable alternative facts, and denies reality. He is a total fraud. He’s also a serial adulterer and divorcer, not to mention a complete failure at business and thoroughly corrupt.
Amash is none of those things. Lots of politicians switch parties. Reagan did. To call them liars is a stretch. They were simply looking for a party to whose voters their message would appeal to. That’s not lying; it’s looking for support. Amash has clearly explained every vote he has made in Congress to his constituents, and they mostly agreed with him. He left the Freedom Caucus, of which he was a co-founder, then left the GOP, because they have obviously lost their way under lying, corrupt and incompetent Trump.
Amash declared as an Independent for a short while, before deciding to declare as a Libertarian. Hopefully, he will get the nomination.
Anyway, as far as holding rallies at drive-in theaters goes, good luck with that. There aren’t very many of those around anymore, and hardly anyone goes to them. It’s so 1950s thinking, or like every other absurd idea Trump makes up nonsensical.
We had a drive-in theater down here in the 1960s and 1970s. It was quite popular back then, but it closed in the 1980s, due to lack of business.
At the time, the Walmart was on South 281, and businesses around it were flourishing. It was like an economic center, and so naturally it wanted to expand. Problem was there was a taco stand on a quarter-acre on the corner of the parking lot. Walmart offered the owner $400,000 for the land, so they could expand their parking lot. But he said, no.
So Walmart made a deal with the city. They would sell the old building, which the city converted into the DMV, and bought the closed drive-in on West 107, where they built a newer, bigger Walmart with a lot more parking space.
What happened was that businesses along South 281 closed and businesses along West 107 flourished. The reason why was because shoppers who flock to Walmart also patronize other businesses, restaurants. So all the economic activity switched from South 281 to West 107 in a few years.
It was incredible to watch. All this economic destruction and construction in less than a decade. All because this one old man wouldn’t sell his taco stand.
He passed away, then his children came to us, wanting to sell the property, thinking it was worth $400,000. Um, not any more. At most, you could get $40,000.
These sorts of things often do not end well.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 5/10/2020 @ 9:52 amhttps://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report-says-cellphone-data-suggests-october-shutdown-wuhan-lab-experts-n1202716
With all your copy/pastes Ripmurdock, how’d you miss this one?
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/10/2020 @ 10:00 amI agree that the GOP attracts liars. Just look at Trump. Or Ted Cruz.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/10/2020 @ 10:01 amWhat did Amash lie about? He’s always described himself as a libertarian.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/05/did-the-mueller-team-violate-brady/
NJRob (4d595c) — 5/10/2020 @ 10:03 amCan you imagine Trump giving obama/biden a pardon?
mg (8cbc69) — 5/10/2020 @ 12:13 pmYep. Sure can.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 12:40 pmAccept Turley misses the key point that Sullivan has already ruled on the Brady violation in December.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 5/10/2020 @ 12:45 pmR.I.P. Betty Wright, soul singer who had hit singles in 5 different decades
R.I.P. Brian Howe, singer who temporarily replaced Paul Rodgers in Bad Company
Icy (6abb50) — 5/10/2020 @ 12:54 pmIn fact, this is a clear and flagrant violation of the both Brady and the orders of Judge Emmet Sullivan.
Turley used to have an interesting thing to say occasionally. Not lately. Federal District judges have NOOOOOoooo trouble enforcing their own orders. You don’t want to find yourself astraddle that fence…
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 1:22 pmColonel Klink @148. This seems to rely upon the idea that a person is not entitled to exculpatory information until he is formally charged.
And is it the case that Flynn was not charged until right before he pleaded guilty?
Judge Sullivan didn’t rule on the merits of the arguments that the Department of Justice used to ask for a dismissal of the case.
Now Flynn was pressured by something to plead guilty.
Jst not the reasons he gives.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:00 pmThe judge ruled that Brady never came into effect because there was no not guilty plea, if I understand this correctly.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:03 pmIt is standard practice in a plea bargain for a defendant to plead guilty to a charge that he could never be convicted of involuntarily. Everybody know that.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:05 pmThe Ghost of Gawain wrote:
This is Justin Amash’s campaign website. It has been twelve days since he announced his candidacy, at a time when the Libertarian convention was just four weeks away, but he still has nothing on his campaign website but a Donate button. No issues page, no biography page, nothing to tell anyone who might be interested in his candidacy for what he actually stands.
If he can’t even get his campaign website ready to go, why would anyone think he is ready to be President.
And really, the candidates themselves don’t get their websites ready; they leave that to their minions. All Mr Amash needed to do was tell his staff, get it ready . . . but he apparently failed to do even that much.
Will “many” vote third party, ’cause they are disgusted with both major parties? That’s what we were told in 2016, but the Libertarian nominee, for whom many had some real hopes of cracking 10%, then 5%, only one 3.2% of the vote. Things didn’t turn out the way the third party candidates had hoped.
But that’s not hard to understand. No candidate running as the Libertarian nominee has ever won a single seat in the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, or a state Senate. If one has ever won a state lower House campaign, I haven’t been able to find it. No Libertarian candidate has ever won a gubernatorial campaign.
The Republican Party was formed in 1854; within six years they won a presidential campaign, along with many congressional seats, though the collapse of the Whigs undoubtedly helped them. The Libertarian Party was formed in December of 1971, and hasn’t won anything other than some local races. Yet, since that time, independent candidates have won several races.
Maybe, just maybe, the official Libertarian Party isn’t very good?
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:10 pmWe have a legal fiction here that the only possible criminal charge against him that concerned Michael T. Flynn was this lying to the FBI charge.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:12 pmThere’s a Monmouth poll out that shows he takes a net 2% away from Biden’s lead.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/496347-biden-widens-lead-over-trump-in-monmouth-poll
But in the end he may take more from Trump.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:17 pmrcocean wrote:
The true championship of this must go to Lincoln Chafee. He was appointed to, and the elected, to the United States Senate as a Republican. Then he became an independent, and won the 2010 gubernatorial race in Rhode Island. In 2013, he registered as a Democrat. In 2015, he began a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but dropped out of that early. After moving to Wyoming — one heck of a switch from New England — Mr Chafee registered as a Libertarian, and in January of this year, announced that he’d seek the Libertarian nomination for President; he dropped out from that in April.
I tried to switch my handle to The libertarian (but not Libertarian) Dana, but the system just wouldn’t let me.
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:23 pmIt is standard practice in a plea bargain for a defendant to plead guilty to a charge that he could never be convicted of involuntarily. Everybody know that.
Sammy, that’s irrational.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:25 pm(Testing…I’m Kishnevi)
Testing (35d300) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:30 pmIt let me do it, no problem now. Perhaps you need to flush cookies?
(But I don’t link back to a website, so possibly that’s why.)
Kishnevi (35d300) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:32 pmNJRob (4d595c) — 5/10/2020 @ 10:03 am
The only thing that could be regarded as possibly exculpatory, that the interviewing agents thought Flynn sincere, was publicly known quite a while ago.
The rest of his column amounts to an extended wail that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating.
Kishnevi (35d300) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:37 pm“But in the end he may take more from Trump.”
Joe Biden took huge China contracts to enrich his son’s (and by extension his own) family fortune, Amash’s company sold shoddy Chinese products with the ‘made in the USA’ label.
There is no overlap between these two shameless China shills and Trump, they can only chase after each other’s tail. There is only one man in the race who can credibly claim to put America, and not his family, his businesses, or his fortunes first in his dealings with foreign countries
Amash the Hammer (d0feb8) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:40 pmIt’s an open thread, so I can ask a truly important question: If you were stranded on a desert island, and had plenty of brownies, but no milk, could you survive?
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:53 pmPlease identify a single contract that Joe Biden took, of any size, for any reason with China.
Are people’s children’s work with/for China specifically a disqualifier, because you may want to think about that one for a second.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 5/10/2020 @ 3:52 pm60 Minutes ran atendentious story designed to sound like it disproved the lab escape hypothesis.
It had several serious errors.
It said the doctor (whom it didn’t name – good strategy for them not to name him, so people can’t look it up) who “discovered” the virus, and Ginat whom (something was done) by the police, died.
I know who they’re talking about. It’s Li Wenliang, and he didn’t discover the virus. He notified people on his WeChat group that there were 7 cases of SARS in his hospital in intensive care, who had gotten it at the wet market in Wuhan. That’s what he had been told. Later he was told it wasn’t SARS.
And 60 Minutes didn’t say that that wet market was not known to sell bats, or pangolins. Maybe SARS 1 really began in a wet mmarket, but that doesn’t mean this one did.
And they said things that would have gone over the heads of most people, and sounded like it disproved the lab theory or at least the man-made theory. But they were talking about creating a virus from scratch. You could modify one, or try to get it mutate. Never mind, that almost certainly didn’t happen.
I learned a few things from this story. I learned that this Ecowhatever that lost the contract from NIH indeed was connected to Wuhan Institute of Vr=irology (which I think is the wrong lab) And that there was an accusation they got $3.7 million raised on April 14 at a coronavirus task force press briefing by a reporter – that wasn’t accurate since that was only a part of the $3.7 million.
and there was this nonsense claim that the research was valuable because they’d tested remdesivir on some of the viruses they;d collected. Nonsense, because first remdesivir should work for every NA virus, and if you need to test it against every candidate virus, they (by his own admission) didn;t hae SARS-CoV2. It doesn’t mean anything! 60 Minutes was just trying to put things over people.
Now the contract was cancelled they said (or rationalized) because it didn’t fit their current priorities. You could also say because there was a possibility, which could not be ruled out, caused the outbreak, and in any case, a lot of good it did to try to collect all samples of coronaviruses in bats. (irony)
Now this story pretended to rule it out by having the director of ECOwhatver declare that the WIV didn’t have that virus and that the virus or viruses like it passed from animals to human beings in a rural area.
Q. Is Wuhan a rural area?
Q> Does it not have two labs which maintained samples of viruses?
q> How comes this virus to Wuhan? (Did the epidemic not start there? And not with people associated with the wet market?)
Oh, and it was also supposed to be ruled out because the W.I.V. was sort of inspected by U.S people in 2018 and while they reported that one part of the lab had untrained people, they otherwise praised it.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:10 pm* The accusation was raised April 14.
The whole idea behind the story was that valuable research in China was cancelled because of a politically motivated accusation
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:12 pm163. The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/10/2020 @ 2:53 pm
If you had (fresh) water. Fresh water includes fruit, and maybe fish. You’re not a koala bear, which doesn’t need to drink. The principle (principal?) that is supposed to sustain the koala bear, is that a living creature eliminates approximately 10% more water than it takes in, because the “burning” of food produces H2O.
I am sort of looking at, among many other things, one or two books about stranded communities.
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson and the Grantville Gazette Volume III edited by Eric Flint.
Science fiction. Although this is more like science fantasy.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:13 pm@143-
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:26 pmToo unsourced, pure speculation.
Pence self-isolating after exposure to aide with virus
Trump may trying to pivot away from the coronavirus, but it’s chasing him.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:31 pm@143-
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:32 pmI’m also not into conspiracy theories.
Georgia AG requests federal probe in handling of Arbery case
Turning it over to the Feds is another good of both ducking responsibility and burying it.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 5:44 pmKishnevi is always testing.
Icy (6abb50) — 5/10/2020 @ 6:12 pmI have said before that the only problem with Shelley Luther is that there aren’t 10,000 or 100,000 of her. Well, it looks like there’s one more of her in Colorado. Governor Jared Polis was the only Democratic member of the House Liberty Caucus during his ten years in Congress, but it seems as though his libertarian philosophy wasn’t all that strong.
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/10/2020 @ 6:55 pmDoctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body
Today, there is widespread recognition the novel coronavirus is far more unpredictable than a simple respiratory virus. Often it attacks the lungs, but it can also strike anywhere from the brain to the toes. Many doctors are focused on treating the inflammatory reactions it triggers and its capacity to cause blood clots, even as they struggle to help patients breathe.
……
It attacks the heart, weakening its muscles and disrupting its critical rhythm. It savages kidneys so badly some hospitals have run short of dialysis equipment. It crawls along the nervous system, destroying taste and smell and occasionally reaching the brain. It creates blood clots that can kill with sudden efficiency and inflames blood vessels throughout the body.
It can begin with a few symptoms or none at all, then days later, squeeze the air out of the lungs without warning. It picks on the elderly, people weakened by previous disease, and, disproportionately, the obese. It harms men more than women, but there are also signs it complicates pregnancies.
It mostly spares the young. Until it doesn’t: Last week, doctors warned of a rare inflammatory reaction with cardiac complications among children that may be connected to the virus. On Friday, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) announced 73 children had fallen severely ill in the state and a 5-year-old boy in New York City had become the first child to die of the syndrome. Two more children had succumbed as of Saturday.
Mount Sinai has treated five children with the condition. Reich said each started with gastrointestinal symptoms, which turned into inflammatory complications that caused very low blood pressure and expanded their blood vessels. This led to heart failure in the case of the first child who died.
“The pattern of disease was different than anything else with covid,” he said.
Ripmurdock (70e093) — 5/10/2020 @ 7:02 pm……..
SARS-CoV-2, the bad seed of the coronavirus family, is the seventh. It has managed to combine the infectiousness of its cold-causing cousins with some of the lethality of SARS and MERS. It can spread before people show symptoms of disease, making it difficult to control, especially without widespread and accurate testing. At the moment, social distancing is the only effective countermeasure.
……
“ This is a virus that literally did not exist in humans six months ago,” said Geoffrey Barnes, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who works in cardiovascular medicine. …….
……..
Whitehill posted photos of the crowd on the social media site Twitter to warn others not to go to the restaurant and to “shame” the eatery, he said.
“I wasn’t even going to eat the food even if I had gotten it,” he said. “I walked in, took the picture and turned right around.” [He’d paid for his food, btw.]
Whitehill said he also filed a complaint with the Tri-County Health Department, which has jurisdiction over Douglas County. Tri-County officials on Sunday couldn’t be reached.
I hope the scofflaw finds her insurance canceled Monday.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 7:12 pmFirst, it was annunced that 15 children were affected (it turned out later this meant that they had been admitted into the hospital) but that none of them had died.
Later one boy died and then it was announced that another boy had died a week before in Westchester.
It seems to be an overreaction of the immune system.
It takes 100 cases for doctors to notice a new disease or a new syndrome.
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/10/2020 @ 7:13 pmGovernor Jared Polis was the only Democratic member of the House Liberty Caucus during his ten years in Congress, but it seems as though his libertarian philosophy wasn’t all that strong.
You spelled “stupid” when you typed “libertarian”. Odd, huh?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/10/2020 @ 7:14 pmTurley lost me at, “It was previously known that the investigators who interviewed Flynn did not believe that he intentionally lied.” That’s not what the investigators said, which is that they “saw no indications of deception” from Flynn, meaning that he didn’t act like he was lying, even though they knew spoke a blatant falsehood.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/10/2020 @ 8:10 pmSecond, the “Closing Communication” isn’t enough to cause a Brady violation. Judge Sullivan spelled out the threshold (on page 15) in his December 2018 decision, when he shot down every single previous Brady complaint.
Prove it.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 5/10/2020 @ 8:24 pmRagspierre wrote:
Which means that you concomitantly hope that her employees are put out of a job. That’s part of it, you know?
The article noted that Miss Arellano was risking a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail, but, more seriously, the state could close her business for as long as it wished, by revoking her business license. This where our individual liberties are seriously compromised: if you have to have a license to do business, the state has you under it’s thumb.
One thing is clear: the people of Miss Arellano’s community voted, voted with their feet and with their wallets, that they were tired of this [insert slang term for feces here], and wanted businesses open, didn’t care what Governor Jared Polis (D-CO) said, didn’t care about ‘social distancing’ or wearing masks, and wanted their freedom back. The people said that Miss Arellano was doing the right thing.
Of course, the leftist fascism of today — which you apparently support — wants the government to force the public to comply with their demands, but that’s hardly surprising: being ‘progressive’ is diametrically opposed to individual rights. Given that you wrote, in your subsequent comment, that “You spelled “stupid” when you typed “libertarian”,” you agree with the suppression of individual rights.
As it happens, the officious little snitch must have gotten some blowback after the Denver Post noted his tweet; when I clicked on the link yesterday, I got the message, “Sorry, but the page you are looking for does not exist.” Trying again just now, for this comment, Twitter returns the message “This tweet is unavailable.”
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 6:47 amAs it happens, the officious little snitch must have gotten some blowback after the Denver Post noted his tweet; when I clicked on the link yesterday, I got the message, “Sorry, but the page you are looking for does not exist.” Trying again just now, for this comment, Twitter returns the message “This tweet is unavailable.”
Yes, because nutters like yourself are often vicious, threatening thugs who go after people they don’t like. Hardly remarkable that he had to pull down his tweet.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 6:56 amIf those mopes were not going to be taking my ICU room and ventilator, and infecting my paramedic, my nurse, and my doctor, I’d be fine with them eating anywhere and anyhow they wanted: Thinning the herd, reducing the excess population, raising the collective IQ, improving the gene pool, and just generally making America a better place to live.
nk (1d9030) — 5/11/2020 @ 6:58 amOf course, the leftist fascism of today — which you apparently support — wants the government to force the public to comply with their demands
This is just more of the stupid, selfish, ahistorical twaddle I see from a few here.
If the cafe failed to have hot water, it would be shut down. And two things would be true; you’d never hear about it, and you’d never bi!tch about it if you did.
Same if the cafe served tainted meat, or a number of other health code violations.
You are WAY out on the fringe, and you’re simply wrong.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:02 amRagspierre wrote:
Well, I never said anything on Twitter about him, but, like some other little snitches in St Louis whose information was released due to an open records law, sometimes they find out that other people don’t respect them.
Of course, I have never described you as a “nutter” or “often vicious, threatening thug.” Perhaps I’m not the one here to whom such descriptions apply?
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:12 amTo DanaInK-Y, this cafe owner is a Joan Of Arc.
To me, she’s a selfish, quite stupid scofflaw who has put her employees out of a job in all likelihood, exposed her insurance carrier to huge potential liability, and who screwed all the other stakeholders she should have been responsible to, to say nothing of putting her customers at risk.
Whadda gal…
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:16 amWell, I never said anything on Twitter about him, but, like some other little snitches in St Louis whose information was released due to an open records law, sometimes they find out that other people don’t respect them.
Shoot, any city or town where thugs run the streets. Golly, you’d love Mexico!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:20 amTheory of infection:
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them
A cough release about 3,000 droplets (and if 5 minutes of speaking = one cough, one sentence should release about 50) snd a sneeze about 30,000 – about ten times as bad as a cough. That’s droplets. There could be 200,000,000 viral articles (how can give the same number for both a cough and a sneeze. Anyway, these are kind of wild estimates.
Speaking is about ten times as bad as merely breathing. Loud singing is even worse than speaking.
He has a figure from influenza: 3 – 20 virus RNA copies per minute of breathing. One per 15 droplets maybe. The whole thing is a guess, and varies.
It matters how long somebody is exposed and to what. And the 6-foot distance rule is wrong – very close is worse, but it is not a boundary. Better to use the room. Airflow matters a great deal, but being upwind is not safe, just much safer. Exposure on elevators is almost always too fleeting. Some peole very far away can be infected, although they don’t like to assume that it is connected..
He gives some examples, and says in the first:
He also writes:
That means they don’t hold anywhere! because outdoors the risk is less (a big crowd outdoors is another story and being rght next to someone when they sneeze of course cold be a very, very, serious.
Again:
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:24 amThe Ragspierre who apparently doesn’t like me very much wrote:
But, of course, the cafe could call a plumber, get the problem resolved, and be right back in business.
Health department violations have the opportunity to be quickly remedied; Governor Polis’ orders simply leave all of these restaurants in limbo, not knowing when they will be ‘allowed’ to reopen. Miss Arellano said that she faced two choices: reopen, or go out of business.
Had she gone out of business, as a friend’s wife’s salon has done, the people who had been employed there would be out of a job, period. Perhaps you are still working, or securely retired, or simply have the resources to not have to worry about working for a lengthy period of time, but a whole lot of people are not so situated. The April unemployment figures showed a 7.9% increase in average hourly wages, which tells us that it has been disproportionately those at the lower end of the economic spectrum who have been disparately impacted by the job losses. The people working at Miss Arellano’s diner? Probably minimum wage or close to it, the type of people who had been living paycheck-to-paycheck, and have to work to survive.
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:27 amOf course, I have never described you as a “nutter” or “often vicious, threatening thug.”
Neither did I. I did say you’re a nutter, and that’s just thoroughly demonstrated by your posts.
What you have done is intentionally misrepresent my positions, and here you accused me of being a leftist and a fascist. It’s hilarious you’d think I’d stand for that kind of defamation without responding.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:31 amAnother quote:
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:31 amRagspierre wrote:
Her customers chose to patronize her diner. Had she gone out of business because the state was forcing her to keep her restaurant closed to dine-in meals, her employees would also have been put out of a job.
A “selfish, quite stupid scofflaw”, huh? Yeah, I am certain that is exactly how you see her. I suppose that you see anyone who is trying not to lose his business, not to go broke and have to fire all of his employees as “selfish.”
But is it not “selfish” of you to want to see other people being put out of work, perhaps losing their homes and possessions, so that you will feel safer?
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:33 amRagspierre wrote:
You have been supporting Democratic governors imposing authoritarian orders and restrictions on other people. Yeah, I do see that as fascist!
Modern day fascism is much more likely to be far-left these days, but in every other respect your posts seem to fall right in line with the definition.
If Governor Gavin Newsom said, “OK, everybody, get in these cattle cars, and we will take you to a safe quarantine facility,” I suspect you’d call anyone who refused a “selfish, quite stupid scofflaw.”
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:39 amUnder that order, restaurants, cafes, bars and coffee shops cannot offer dine-in services until at least May 26, but can fill orders for delivery and takeout as long as they follow social-distancing protocols. Polis on Friday said he’d like to see Colorado’s restaurants reopen by the end of May, if not before Memorial Day.
Tri-County health officials last week shut down the Water’s Edge Winery in Centennial because it was allowing customers to sit at tables on the patio and was ignoring social-distancing measures, department officials said last Thursday. The restaurant reopened Friday for takeout and delivery services after the owner agreed to follow all public health orders.
Giving the lie to your “in limbo” BS.
Health department violations have the opportunity to be quickly remedied…
No. They don’t. If you insist on violating the law like this scofflaw, the remedy is loss of your license.
That’s what should happen here. But the private sector will render it’s verdict in this story, too. She won’t be insurable after this unless she reforms, and it won’t matter what the state or locals do.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:44 amModern day fascism is much more likely to be far-left these days, but in every other respect your posts seem to fall right in line with the definition.
See why I aptly refer to you as a nutter? I’m a frothing-at-the-mouth free marketeer, anti-nationalist, and civil libertarian.
I’m just not in your tribe of reality deniers. I’ve illuminated this whole controversy historically. You ignored it. I’ve rubbed your nose in your crazy twisting of the law. You ignored it. I could go on, but you’d just ignore it, along with all other calls to reason.
I think this is all virtue signaling on your part. Like most of your ilk, you become tiresome quickly, and your fringe rants easily dismissed.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 7:55 amRagspierre wrote:
You are? You have been supporting draconian executive orders which have shut down businesses and restricted people’s civil liberties.
The Dana in Kentucky (408392) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:01 amYou have been supporting draconian executive orders which have shut down businesses and restricted people’s civil liberties.
Yep, with reservations as appropriate. Because I understand history, the law, and sound policy.
You want a great illustration of WHY governments have to issue orders in an emergency? Look at the photos and videos of the people at the cafe. Look at the idiot who opened her business in the fact of facts, common sense, and even the law.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:08 amAs a grown adult, I simply believe I ought to be free to make those choices myself. Anybody who has a problem with that stance is saying at least as much about themselves as they try to say about me.—Gryph
AND…
As for using words like “deadly” and “debilitating” to describe CoViD-19? It’s neither. And that is how I know you’re afraid of it.—Gryph
Ergo, THIS is why there were closure laws all over the US. Because there were nutters abroad in the land who insisted they had “rights” to deny reality as part of being an adult…bi-gawd!
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:22 amFascism is the idea of autocracy (rule by one person) without the principle of legitimacy (not a hereditary monarchy)
Sammy Finkelman (375edc) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:34 amJust got around to reading the SCOTUS opinion in the Bridgegate case, Kelly v. United States (.pdf). It’s not federal wire fraud if a government official commits malfeasance for love and not for money.
nk (1d9030) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:47 amBack on the lockdowns … the elderly, the sick, healthcare workers, police and firemen, have never been the only ones at high risk. Infants, up to the age of five, have been too. Whose baby do you want to kill for a Denny’s patty-melt?
nk (1d9030) — 5/11/2020 @ 8:55 am