Patterico's Pontifications

12/3/2021

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 4:24 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Buckle up!

First news item

MTG explains the co-opting of the Republican Party :

1. There are a lot of people that need to hear this.

We Conservatives in the @HouseGOP aren’t the fringe.

We actually represent the base of Republican voters, which is approximately 70%.

And when the party learns to represent Conservative Americans, we will never lose again.

2. All the so called political experts always push Republicans to the middle to get the “swing voters.”

All that has done is create the Uniparty, which has led us to this disaster.

Do you want to know why Trump is the most popular Republican in history?

3. Because he appeals to the common man and woman.

You can’t fool them, they see through the bull-shitters.

When Republicans learn how to truly represent the workers, traditional families, & restore rural America with #AmericaFirst policies then the party will earn their vote.

Second news item

This needs to stop:

“I just want to tell you Officer Brown, you’re taking money out of my kids’ mouths,” Stephen Lara said as Nevada Highway Patrol officers confiscated his life savings.

Police pulled over Lara near Reno on February 19. After he consented to a search, the officers discovered nearly $90,000 in bundled cash in Lara’s backpack. Although Lara was not arrested or charged with a crime, the officers claimed the money was drug trafficking proceeds and seized through a practice known as civil asset forfeiture.

It was only after Lara sued the DEA for blowing its deadline to either give him his cash back or file a forfeiture case against it in federal court, and only after The Washington Post post reported on his case, that the government agreed to return his money. Lara is still pursuing lawsuits against the DEA and the Nevada Highway Patrol.

“I find it even more concerning that if this could happen to me, as a combat veteran who served overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, this could happen to anybody,” Lara says in the Institute for Justice video.

This, even though the report notes that the officers said there is nothing illegal about carrying large amounts of cash:

“So, as you know, right—I’m a vet, he’s a vet, you’re a vet—it’s not illegal to carry currency or have currency,” the officer says. “It does make us ask questions about why someone has $100,000. I can understand why someone doesn’t trust banks in this day and age.”

“I have nothing to hide from you,” Lara responded. In fact, he had years of bank receipts documenting cash withdrawals.

Video at the link.

Third news item

Discussing China, and the West’s increasing concern over tennis star Peng Shuai, sports commentator Bob Costas criticizes the IOC for being bed with China, and their affinity for the authorian regime. He also calls out Nike, the NBA, and others who have lucrative deals with China and remain silent in the face of CCP’s human rights abuses:

Interestingly, back in 1996, Costas found himself in hot water for making similar comments during the Olympic opening ceremonies:

“Every economic power including the United States wants to tap into that huge potential market, but of course there are problems with human rights, property rights disputes, the threat posed to Taiwan.″

NBC ended up apologizing to China for his comments.

Fourth news item

If Alec Baldwin didn’t pull the trigger, then how did the bullet from the gun that he was holding kill the cinematographer?:

When Stephanopoulos pointed out that it wasn’t in the script for the trigger to be pulled, Baldwin replied, “Well, the trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.”

“So you never pulled the trigger?” Stephanopoulos responded.

“No, no, no, no, no,” Baldwin said. “I would never point a gun at anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never.”

His claims don’t necessarily line up with those who were there when the incident happened:

…according to search warrant affidavits released by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, after authorities arrived on the scene the day of the shooting, Oct. 21, they wrote that “the prop-gun was fired by the Actor Alec Baldwin.” From the hospital, Souza also told investigators that Baldwin had been sitting in a pew in the building and was practicing a cross draw when suddenly there was a “whip and then a loud pop.”

Mamie Mitchell, the script supervisor who was standing 4 feet away from Baldwin and called 911 to report the shooting, said in a lawsuit that the actor “intentionally, without just cause or excuse, cocked and fired the loaded gun even though the upcoming scene to be filmed did not call for the cocking and firing of a firearm.” According to her complaint, the script did not call for the gun to be discharged.

While Stephen Gutkowski says it’s possible Baldwin didn’t pull the trigger,

In Baldwin’s case, though, the claim is at least somewhat more believable. That’s because the gun involved is more prone to firing without the trigger being pulled. And, even though it’s a modern replica of an antique design, it’s possible it did not include modern safety devices.

However, a single-action revolver with the old-style firing mechanism can fire without either the hammer being cocked or the trigger being pulled. When the hammer is down on that kind of revolver, the firing pin protrudes and, if a live round is loaded in the chamber underneath, a sharp enough jolt can cause the pin to strike the round’s primer with enough force to set it off.

it’s hard to square that with what he said later in the interview:

Baldwin claims he acted at the direction of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when he accidentally shot and killed her.

“I cock the gun. I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’” Baldwin told ABC. “And then I let go of the hammer of the gun, and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.”

This version of events is even more difficult to square with the idea that Baldwin never pulled the trigger.

When the hammer is pulled back on a single-action revolver a series of sears on engaged which prevent it from moving back towards the chamber without the trigger being depressed. There are scenarios where the gun might be able to fire after the hammer is pulled back but without the trigger being pulled. However, they’re even more unlikely than a misfire with the hammer all the way down.

Fifth news item

Saving a nine-year-old child bride in Afghanistan:

Driving through a snow-capped mountain pass, the young mother huddles together with her six children in the backseat of a car after leaving their makeshift camp in northwestern Afghanistan.

Carrying only a blanket for warmth, 9-year-old Parwana Malik balances on her mother’s lap beside her siblings, as the family is rescued by an aid group that saves girls from child marriage.
“I am really happy,” Parwana said during the journey. “The (charity) rid me from my husband and my husband is old.”

At the time, Parwana’s father Abdul Malik said she cried day and night before, begging him not to sell her, saying she wanted to go to school and study instead…

Even before the Taliban took over, hunger was rife in the impoverished country, and now young girls are paying the price with their bodies — and their lives.

“Afghan young girls (are) becoming the price of food,” leading Afghan women’s rights activist Mahbouba Seraj told CNN. “Because otherwise their family will starve.”

Heartbreaking and horrible:

Seraj said…that some girls forced into marriage die during childbirth because their bodies are too small to cope. “Some of them can’t take it. They mostly die pretty young.”

Sixth news item

Parents charged:

A prosecutor filed involuntary manslaughter charges Friday against the parents of a 15-year-old accused of killing four students and wounding seven other people at a Michigan High School.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were charged with four counts each of involuntary manslaughter.

The semi-automatic gun used in the shooting was purchased legally by Crumbley’s father last week, according to investigators.

“The parents were the only individuals in the position to know the access to weapons,” Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said Thursday. The gun “seems to have been just freely available to that individual.”

She said then that the parents’ actions went “far beyond negligence.”

Ethan Crumbley has been charged as an adult with two dozen crimes, including murder, attempted murder and terrorism.

Seventh news item

Nikki Haley looks to 2024:

NIKKI HALEY finally landed a one-on-one with DONALD TRUMP after he rejected her request for a sit-down in February, following her condemnation of his actions on Jan. 6. While Haley faced the prospect of being one of Trump’s sworn enemies ahead of a potential 2024 presidential campaign, she praised him during a recent speech in Iowa and said she won’t challenge him in a primary (something Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS hasn’t done).

So last week, nearly 10 months after the first snub, Trump finally granted her a visit to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring. “He doesn’t see the point in making enemies,” a source close to Trump said, adding that the former president is still skeptical of Haley because of her back-and-forth statements about him. “He likes teasing people,” another aide said.

Eighth news item

Omicron here:

A Hawaii man has tested positive for the super-mutated Omicron variant of the coronavirus despite having no history of traveling outside the state. It brings the number of cases detected in the U.S. to at least eight. The man in Oahu is aged under 65, previously had COVID, and is only experiencing mild to moderate symptoms. However, the fact he hadn’t left the state indicated that Omicron has been widely circulating in the community for a while.

Omicron there:

Norwegian officials said at least 50 people have been infected with the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, The Associated Press reported

Officials said on Thursday the new cases were connected to a company’s holiday party at a restaurant in the capital of Oslo.

Via the New York Times, you can see which state/country have current cases of the Omicron variant:

omicron

Ninth news item

Playing politics during a genocide:

This week, a private U.K.-based investigative panel released what it says are classified Chinese government documents that appear to show how Chinese President Xi Jinping personally laid the groundwork for the systematic forced assimilation of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. It’s the most damning proof to date of the ongoing Uyghur genocide. So why can’t Congress pass a simple bill to stop the products connected to that genocide from ending up in U.S. homes and businesses?

Yet the Democrat-led Congress can’t seem to get the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Senate unanimously in July, to President Biden’s desk. Pointing to procedural issues and promises of future action, Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate can’t seem to agree on a strategy to pass the bill through both chambers, despite publicly claiming they support it.

On Wednesday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the co-sponsor of the Senate’s version of the bill, pushed to add it as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass piece of legislation. Senate Democrats objected under a procedural rule that bars amendments that affect appropriations. Rubio called that a dodge.

“This is about the fact that they don’t want this bill to pass over at the House,” Rubio said on the Senate floor, referring directly to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Rubio also said U.S. corporations that profit from forced labor in China, such as Apple and Nike, have been lobbying against the bill, which is true.

Meanwhile, Biden administration officials have been quietly telling lawmakers to slow down. Administration sources confirmed that in an October call between Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the other co-sponsor, Sherman made it clear that the administration prefers a more targeted and deliberative approach to determining which goods are the products of forced labor. She also told Merkley that getting allied buy-in was critical and more effective than unilateral action.

“To be clear, the Department of State is not opposing this amendment,” a State Department spokesman told me. “We share the Congress’ concerns about forced labor in Xinjiang.”

In other words, while the administration supports the legislation in public, they are asking Democrats to essentially water it down in private. Sherman’s specific criticism relates to a part of the bill that would require a presumption that all products coming from Xinjiang are tainted by forced labor unless the importer can prove otherwise. This happens to be the exact provision corporations are also objecting to. Maybe it’s a coincidence.

Tenth news item

Whatever the rules are, they should be applied equally across the board, and it should not matter who is behind the wheel, or who the victims are. No matter what anyone’s race, religion, sex, or favorite ice cream flavor is, reporters just need to report the known facts, clean and simple. But, as a point of fact, SUVs are unable to make a decision to plow into a crowd:

CNN was the center of intense backlash on Sunday over a tweet suggesting that the SUV involved in the Waukesha parade attack was responsible for the massacre that resulted in six deaths.

Darrell Brooks was charged with intentional homicide after driving his red SUV through a crowded street commemorating the holiday season, claiming six lives of those ages 8 to 81 and injuring dozens more.

On Sunday however, CNN appeared to place the responsibility on Brooks’ vehicle, making no mention of the career criminal behind the wheel.

Untitled

Other examples:

wapo

nbc

MISCELLANEOUS

Cool:

A rising star among the UK’s passionate “detectorist” community has found a buried hoard of 65 objects, many of which are bronze axes.

It’s being called a once-in-a-lifetime find, one which had to be handled by archeologists, and which is now undergoing the British government’s Treasure Review to determine if the nation will purchase the artifacts.

Milly Hardwick from Suffolk was out detecting in a field with her dad Colin, when the 13-year-old made the find.

“It was my third time out and I didn’t quite know what I was doing,” Milly told the BBC. “I got a signal and yelled at my dad and when he started digging he went ‘this could be an axe’, and he was joking around about it.”

It’s thought the axes and other objects, 65 in total, date from around 1,300 BCE. After finding the first 20, the father-daughter team had to cover the site back up until archeologists could come the next day.

Have a great weekend.

–Dana

295 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Hello.

    Dana (174549)

  2. I haven’t been told whether it’s Omicron, but I did return from Thanksgiving in Utah with a case of Covid. It came on right after Thanksgiving dinner. I want to call it a breakthrough infection, but it broke out on exactly the six-month anniversary of my second Moderna shot, so maybe it wasn’t breaking through much at that point. If you’re considering a booster, get it.

    My symptoms were rather mild. I had a runny nose, congestion, and a general feeling of weakness. No cough, sore throat, or trouble breathing. I did lose my sense of smell. I got tested after returning to Reno, and it was confirmed. The past couple of days I’ve been symptom-free apart from the sense of smell, which is starting to return. Days ago, when I couldn’t smell at all, I was about to make some coffee, and then I realized it was pointless. Might as well drink hot water!

    In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have gone to my sister’s house, since she and her husband are anti-vaxxers. They both came down with Covid around the same time I did. It’s possible that I infected them, but I’m going to invoke Occam’s Razor on this one. Two to one odds, plus an anti-vaccination enhancement.

    Am I the first commenter here to have Covid?

    norcal (d9c78c)

  3. Glad your symptoms were mild and you’re feeling better, norcal. I can’t remember if anyone else here has said they’ve had Covid. Maybe Sammy Finkleman…

    Dana (174549)

  4. I wish you a complete and speedy recovery, norcal.

    nk (1d9030)

  5. Dana, thank you for the latest open thread. Regarding you comment on the headlines from the Waukesha tragedy; it appears that it’s consistent with how the Charlottesville crash was initially reported.

    https://twitter.com/dabernathy89/status/1463887304901242899?s=21

    Also it’s consistent with a 2015 incident where a woman crashed her car in a parade in OK, “Car Slams Into Crowd….” That had nothing to do with politics so it didn’t get much national media attention

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-car-slams-into-crowd-at-oklahoma-state-university-homecoming-parade-2-dead/

    I don’t know why this is the standard but it appears to be consistently applied, regardless of what the right wing resentment machine asserts.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  6. I’ve said before that I like guns. I own several. But I think our public policy around guns needs to change. I don’t want to ban them. In additional to people enjoying their safe use (a totally legitimate reason to own them) they provide for self defense and are a hunting tool. So I’d like a policy that maintains our rights but addresses the problem of too many guns in the wrong hand.

    I don’t know if we need to make the last legal owner liable for any harm caused with they gun or put a tax on bullies (already too expensive) but we’re the only 1st. World country with this problem, it should be solvable.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  7. RE- Michigan shooting. Toobin beclowns himself again on CNN. Asks why authorities held a presser before the shooter’s ‘parents’ could be found, arrested and placed in custody. Apparently, he forgets the presser held on a case he made his TeeVee bones around- in LA– when the coppers were on the TeeVee doing a presser while ‘actively searching’ for a certain ‘fugitive’ — named OJ Simpson. Toobin: truly a jerkoff.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  8. If this timeline of events about the shooting from the Detroit Free Press is accurate I can understand why the charged the parents. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2021/12/03/oxford-high-school-shooting-timeline/8854011002/

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  9. Suspect in Waukesha holiday parade crash was released on low bail because of ‘human error,’ DA says

    The Milwaukee County District Attorney said “human error” was to blame for the suspect in the Waukesha, Wisconsin, Christmas parade tragedy being released on low cash bail.

    District Attorney John Chisholm said Thursday that the domestic abuse incident was “very serious” and Brooks should have received a higher cash bail.

    He was instead given an “inappropriately” low bail by an overworked assistant district attorney, according to Chisholm.

    He told the County Board’s Judiciary, Safety and General Services Committee that the unidentified employee has about two-and-a-half years of experience and had a tough workload during the time she was reviewing Brooks’ case.

    According to Chisholm, the employee was in the middle of a jury trial and was reviewing almost two dozen felony-level cases, which included Brooks’.

    She also did not have access to Brooks’ risk assessment system, which is used to determine high-risk or violent offenders, because it had not yet been uploaded, Chisholm said.

    “Given the volume of cases she was dealing with, given her jury trial that she was working on, she simply charged the case. She looked at the previous bail, saw that it was $500 and she doubled it,” the DA said in a live stream of the meeting.

    “That’s it. That’s a mistake. That’s human error. It set in motion a chain of events that resulted in a tragedy.”

    Oh well. That’s it. Let’s move on. She’ll get dinged on her review, I guess.

    “I put the finger on myself and that’s my obligation, that’s my responsibility,” he said.

    Yeah, sounds like it. Don’t be so hard on yourself, Mr. Woke DA.

    JF (e1156d)

  10. DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 12/3/2021 @ 5:32 pm

    Grandstanding prosecutor milking the deaths of four kids for all they’re worth, I’d say. If she didn’t go for a makeover and a new outfit before the presser, I’m Chinese. Twelve counts of unlawful possession of a firearm? Terrorism? Charging the parents with involuntary manslaughter? Come on!

    nk (1d9030)

  11. @norcal@2 I’m glad your symptoms are pretty mild and hope you get better soon. I think mg has said he had covid at some point. I may or may not have had it in March 2020. It was already in my community and something nasty went through the adults at my school, resulting in several cases of pneumonia, one of my coworkers vomitting so much that he tore the lining of his stomach, and people who said they were almost too tired to get from their bed to the bathroom. I just had fever, congestion, and was falling asleep every couple of hours. But it was before there was available testing, so who knows.

    And now for comments on the links…

    MTG isn’t a conservative, she’s a nutcase. I know a number of conservatives and she ain’t one.

    IANAL but Civil asset forfeiture seems legally sketchy to me. How is it legal for them to confiscate something if they don’t even know of a crime being committed and how can you confiscate assets you can’t prove are the result of crime, even if someone is convicted of one? How does any of that fit with presumption of innocence or property law?

    How is it surprising if the IOC is in bed with China. They belong to the oldest profession and go with whoever pays them most.

    Item 6. I don’t know what the legality is in charging the parents, again IANAL, but I would think that the only way they would be likely to be found guilty would be if they knew he had the gun at school.

    However, the other factor may be related to the fact that many parents whose child has made a threat or done something concerning are most concerned about their child not being punished too harshly, which is understandable, however what they really need to be concerned about is their child’s mental state that led them to act in the concerning way. It does you no good to save them from suspension only to have them act violently in a way that will get other people killed and them imprisoned later. If you’d like a story about a situation I’ve been dealing with where I know, KNOW, there will be a major problem if the kid doesn’t get help soon but there’s nothing I can do about it, feel free to ask.

    9. Nancy should quit screwing around and pass the bill. I know it could cause major short term problems and would likely cause a rise in prices, which would be unpopular, but sometimes you have to make a stand.

    Misc- Good for Milly. I hope she gets at very least a special viewing with someone who can talk to her about how cool and special her find is. (and money, she should get money)

    Nic (896fdf)

  12. Thanks for the well-wishes, guys.

    Nic, I would love to hear your story.

    norcal (d9c78c)

  13. MTG isn’t a conservative, she’s a nutcase. I know a number of conservatives and she ain’t one.

    That’s the point: the GOP has traditionally been the party that conservatives affiliate with because it best repaints their values and platforms. But now we are seeing that the party has been co-opted by nutcases like MTG. Their priority is Trump. He determines what is important to them, what the “truth” is, and the direction the party will go.

    Dana (174549)

  14. “I don’t know why this is the standard but it appears to be consistently applied, regardless of what the right wing resentment machine asserts.”

    The media is just repeating the police characterization. You see the same passive voice in police shootings.

    Davethulhu (67c626)

  15. (sorry about the length)

    This started a couple of weeks ago. One of my girls came in upset. She’s super sweet, very polite, I see her at lunch sometimes when I have lunch duty she’s pretty much friendly with all the different social groups, she helps new kids, she’s never in any of the drama, and she’s a pretty good student.

    There was a boy that she had been assigned to do a group project with in one of her classes 2 years ago. He had decided that this made them best friends, but he wanted more. She has never hung out with him. She waves in the halls if he waves at her, but they don’t talk. (she says she didn’t want to be rude)

    They had texted a little in a casual way, but when he asked if he could hug her and she said no, she wasn’t comfortable with that, he sent back an angry text about how mad he was that she was breaking up with him (they weren’t going out) and she blocked him. He’s texted her from several different phones and she’s blocked him each time. He’s posted comments on her instagram and she privated it and refused his friend request. All the time he’s sending her texts and comments like they are in a relationship and she’s not answering. He started texting her friends to try and get them to help her see that she should care about him as much as he cares about her. Her friends blocked him.

    Then he started sending emails from his school account to hers. She can’t block him there, but she muted him and never responds (I know this because she opened up everything when asked, all the embarrassing and silly posts with her friends, dream posts, private posts about boys she likes, everything, she really really wants this to stop) The emails on the school email started getting darker, about how she’s making him angry, about maybe wanting to do something to himself, maybe something to her, non-specific. He mentions that there are knives at his house, again, very concerning but still non-specific. The knife email is what finally made her say something. And that was the right thing to do. The emails are classic stalker type emails of a person who is almost out of control

    As I have said in the past, I’m not very high up the food chain, so I got our VP involved, which is when the girl opened up everything. She doesn’t want waves, just wants him to stop and wants to feel safe at school. The VP pulls the boy in. I talk to the girl’s mom, who is obviously very concerned (and she definitely definitely should be). The girl is being brave, she says she can go to class, but I give her a pass that lets her leave class a little early to get a friend in a nearby class to walk with her between classes without them worrying about being a little late (she was very responsible with it). After talking to the boy, who admits everything, the VP talks with his school counselor and the psych, everyone is very concerned, but there aren’t any specifics.

    They hit up the principal and the principal consults with the district. The judgement from the district is that what we can do is suspend him for two days, provide 6-10 sessions with our psych, and recommend the parents get the kid outside counseling.

    They call the boy’s mom and ask her to come to the school, she says she can’t, but she agrees to zoom and they explain what is going on. Mom’s biggest concern is that the boy not be suspended. While I understand that concern, it is not really our biggest concern (and shouldn’t be hers), which is what we explain to mom. The psych talks to her about what unhealthy obsession looks like, stalking behavior, talks about concerns with his threats that look like he’s hinting at suicide or assault. Mom is sure he doesn’t mean any such thing. They recommend that she immediately take him to get evaluated. Mom just wants to know what his punishment will be. She objects to the two day suspension and will not come to pick him up (“he should be in class learning, not in the office because some little slut lied about him” “Ma’am, we will be sending you a copy of the emails with the girl’s information redacted, we’d like you to take a look at them.”). So he sits in the office all day until the kids are gone and mom arrives, angry that we hadn’t released him to walk home (we told her an adult would need to pick him up and get the suspension paperwork and have a talk with the VP). Mom did finally agree to let the psych see him after the VP suggested that they might require further meetings if she didn’t.

    The girl’s mom, in the meantime, has been thinking on this, the girl has come home and told mom what was happening and showed her all the emails and texts and has also had some time to think about things and is more worried herself now, and mom knows that the boy is still going to be going to school with the girl and, even though they don’t share any classes, mom is still concerned (she’s right to be, those emails are a nightmare if you know what you are looking at). So she calls and talks to the VP for a while and then requests short term ISP for the girl while they get things figured out, but maybe law enforcement (we are not supposed to say, but this is the correct choice). However, law enforcement doesn’t think they can do anything unless the boy is more specific in his threats.

    It has been several weeks now. The boy is back at school. The boy’s mom has not gotten him evaluated and the rumor is that he is saying things, but we can’t get any specifics other than some heard from someone else. Boy’s mom is uninterested in hearing what we have to say, even though she has the worrisome emails (he didn’t make any threats, he was just angry she says). The girl is doing computer work at home until after Christmas and her mother is really mad because she feels like the girl is being punished, especially since she is thinking the girl might have to change schools to avoid the boy, which isn’t fair to her. And we don’t have any good solutions. The boy hasn’t really done anything concrete and maybe he never will, but he might. The girl may be perfectly safe, but she may not be. And we have no options.

    But I have seen the emails. They were not written by someone who is firmly grounded in reality. They were written by someone who is very angry and is blaming his anger on other people and is making implied violent threats. He is a ticking time-bomb. Someday he will do something to himself or someone else unless he gets help and his mom isn’t getting it for him. And we can’t do anything other than watch him and worry.

    tl;dr: We have a boy at school who is sending stalker emails to a girl. The boy’s mom isn’t going to get him help. The emails show a very high level of skewed thinking of the type where the sender is likely to become violent to himself or another. And there isn’t anything else the school can do.

    Nic (896fdf)

  16. @13 nutcase MTG voted against biden’s infrastructure boondoggle

    good decent Republicans Anthony Gonzalez and Adam Kinzinger voted in favor

    tell me who’s conservative

    JF (e1156d)

  17. The Dayton Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced they have officially closed the investigation into the deadly shooting in the city’s Oregon District in 2019.

    Twenty-four-year-old Connor Betts used a .223-caliber firearm to kill nine people and injured 17 others at Ned Peppers Bar on Aug. 4.

    Betts was shot and killed by police less than a minute after the first shots were fired.

    According to a report from the FBI, the investigation involved over 125 interviews in multiple states, review of over 950 surveillance videos amounting to approximately 400 hours of footage and analysis of electronic devices, social media content and other evidence.

    The FBI says the evidence indicated that Betts was solely responsible and was not directed by any organization or aligned to any specific ideological group.

    https://www.10tv.com/article/news/local/ohio/investigation-into-deadly-dayton-shooting-officially-closed/530-d65c363b-6090-40fe-ab09-c4b2b0848e43

    Davethulhu (67c626)

  18. I would hate to see Nikki Haley kiss the ring — it’s the end for any GOP politician going forward. Short term gain, long term disaster.

    Better she walks in, slaps him across the face, calls him a traitor and then walks out. In 2028 or 2032 it will be seen as an act of patriotism.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  19. Do you want to know why Trump is the most popular Republican in history?

    3. Because he appeals to the common man and woman.

    Short sentences, small words, simple concepts.

    “the salt of the earth … you know … morons”
    — Waco Kid, Blazing Saddles

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  20. Playing politics during a genocide:

    So, pass a law that assesses criminal penalties on corporate leaders who assist in genocide. Or just ship them to The Hague on genocide charges.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  21. So I’d like a policy that maintains our rights but addresses the problem of too many guns in the wrong hand.

    Combination trigger locks are cheap and won’t slow you down all that much if you need the gun. I keep locks on mine.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  22. MTG isn’t a conservative, she’s a nutcase. I know a number of conservatives and she ain’t one.

    She’s the kind of “conservative” we used to have in the 60’s, out in front of the black school kids with an axe handle. It took decades to rid conservatives of that image.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  23. My wife and I had it last March, norcal. Hope you are ok. I had no sense of smell for a month and lost taste buds for a couple weeks. Felt like a hangover for a few days. Worked everyday in my shop. Antibodies are high according to our recent blood tests.

    mg (15c28b)

  24. Will DCSCA be making us say Jennifer Crumbley’s name soon?

    https://abc7chicago.com/oxford-school-shooting-michigan-shooter-ethan-crumbley/11296940/

    urbanleftbehind (9f05a9)

  25. More here on red states and Covid.
    Maybe it’s CV19 burnout, but I’m not trippin’ about Omicron. Just get the vax, get the booster and live life. I think Jonah is channeling my attitude.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  26. Just get the vax, get the booster and live life.

    Same. Vaccinated & boosted, and getting on with it.

    Without many more vaccinated, we just have to live with it. It’s unfortunate, too, given the incredible access to and availability of the vaccine.

    Dana (174549)

  27. Sidney Powell’s obligation to pay court costs in Michigan is chump change compared to what she’ll paying Dominion, but the judge’s ruling is a taste of her future.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  28. Short sentences, small words, simple concepts.

    “the salt of the earth … you know … morons”
    — Waco Kid, Blazing Saddles

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/3/2021 @ 7:59 pm

    Who’s dumber, the liberal arts college grad with the master’s degree paying off $50K or more in student loan debt while working a phone bank at an NGO, or the plumber who got a trade certification and is making a middle-class wage?

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  29. I’m not sure what inspired this artist’s rendering of Ted Cruz, but it’s funny, disturbing and hurts the eyes.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  30. @FWO@28 The Liberal arts grad would tell you there are different kinds of intelligence and the plumber has a phd in English.

    Nic (896fdf)

  31. MTG’s babbling would be interesting, maybe even worrisome, if they were more than the product of an overheated still. That will happen, you know. If the copper tubing gets too hot it acts as a catalyst and turns ethanol into methanol.

    nk (1d9030)

  32. @FWO@28 The Liberal arts grad would tell you there are different kinds of intelligence and the plumber has a phd in English.

    Nic (896fdf) — 12/3/2021 @ 9:48 pm

    That would be the liberal arts grad inhaling copium.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  33. Maybe, but the plumber does have a phd in English (I am not actually kidding, I’ve had three different plumbers with various graduate degrees in English)

    Nic (896fdf)

  34. Maybe the plumber could fix the still?

    Trumpmuffins say whatever comes into their heads. They have no regard for truth, facts, or reality.

    nk (1d9030)

  35. Trumpmuffins say whatever comes into their heads. They have no regard for truth, facts, or reality.

    nk (1d9030) — 12/3/2021 @ 10:06 pm

    If your side continues to get outflanked by people that you consider to be low-class smoothbrains, I can see why that would create resentment on your part.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  36. Thank you for that story, Nic. It was well-written and very disturbing. It proved what I’ve thought for a long time about the education system: The parents are the problem.

    When my mother taught school, she had parents who would deny bad behavior by their children, and point to their children’s position in their local Mormon church instead. She also had a principal that went behind her back and changed a student’s grade to appease the parents. (I think I told you about that before.)

    norcal (d9c78c)

  37. I had no sense of smell for a month and lost taste buds for a couple weeks.

    mg (15c28b) — 12/3/2021 @ 8:20 pm

    Oh, no. Please, please no.

    I’m one week into this not smelling stuff situation. I don’t know if I can last a month. At this point, I’d rather have a fever and be able to enjoy food and drink.

    norcal (d9c78c)

  38. https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/newly-discovered-comet-leonard-to-fly-by-earth-soon-in-once-in-a-lifetime-event-how-to-see-it/

    On a different note, something interesting and fun for those of us that are on the east coast.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  39. I’m one week into this not smelling stuff situation. I don’t know if I can last a month. At this point, I’d rather have a fever and be able to enjoy food and drink.

    norcal (d9c78c) — 12/3/2021 @ 11:40 pm

    My daughter, son-in-law, his mother, his stepfather, my ex-wife, her husband, and about 15 friends or acquaintances and had COVID-19. All of them have had it from three days to a couple of weeks. My daughter had it for three days and took another five days to get her sense of smell back and then she complained that she was sad because she could smell her husband‘s farts and my grandsons poopy diapers.

    I know 14 people who took a certain protocol that shall not be named and had no symptoms anywhere from three hours to three days after taking it. I know two people out of those who did not take it who are still having problems with their sense of smell.

    I hope you get well soon, like my daughter.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  40. As for those who say just take the booster. I took the Maderna vaccine in January and February and had severe adverse reactions. After the first shot I thought I was going to die. After the second shot I had five months of respiratory attacks and for some reason the severity of my Parkinson’s symptoms accelerated. One of the only good things about early onset Parkinson’s (for over 25 years) is that the symptoms proceed at a much slower pace than someone who gets it in their 60s. I know that correlation does not mean causation, though about 4400 people have reported to the CDC’s VAERS database Parkinson’s like symptoms.

    In October 20 I started having involuntary movements from my hips and torso that are apparently not Parkinson’s nor related to any medication I am taking. They are still researching. One of the neurological specialists who works at USC Keck research Hospital where they give out COVID-19 vaccines like candy and constantly barrage everybody with email messages saying get the vaccine told me that I should never have taken the vaccine. He said that because of the type of Parkinson’s I have and my other autoimmune problems I should never have taken the vaccine and definitely not take the booster.

    One size does not fit all. It looks like at least a minority should not take the mRNA vaccines. When I was at my daughters for Thanksgiving my son-in-law‘s sister and her boyfriend were telling everyone that they should get vaccinated and that they were selfish if they didn’t get vaccinated. When I told her what happened to me and what the doctor said her boyfriend told me that that was bullshit and that I was being a jerk and I was endangering everybody’s life among other things. The amount of hostility was shocking. Everyone demanded that they apologize and he gave me a non-apology apology and said I was still wrong even though I had been vaccinated in January and February.

    I left. I had not talked politics and I just responded to what they were saying . I could not deal with that much hostility. With my 45 year old niece dying, not of Covid but hospital neglect in September and my mom dying last month and my wife of 17 years abandoning me and filing for divorce over 5 months ago there’s just too much negative going on already.

    I ended up going to my daughters the next day and had a very nice time with her, my wonderful son-in-law, and my two grandchildren. And the Thanksgiving leftovers tasted good too.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  41. Who’s dumber, the liberal arts college grad with the master’s degree paying off $50K or more in student loan debt while working a phone bank at an NGO, or the plumber who got a trade certification and is making a middle-class wage?

    Wouldn’t know. Plumbing isn’t easy. There are other degrees you could get. I had my student loans paid off before I was 25.

    But there’s this: Anyone who thinks that Trump is smarter than they are is almost certainly right.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  42. Without many more vaccinated, we just have to live with it. It’s unfortunate, too, given the incredible access to and availability of the vaccine.

    And vaccine + past infection probably is better than either alone. It’s really not a trap.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  43. Who’s dumber, the liberal arts college grad with the master’s degree paying off $50K or more in student loan debt while working a phone bank at an NGO, or the plumber who got a trade certification and is making a middle-class wage?

    My brother dropped out of high school and make good money as a carpenter, until he was up against “recent immigrants” willing to work under the table for $5/hr. Now he pretty much just drinks on SSDI. I do get that Trump capitalized on some real pain, but the truth is that Trump did nothing for these people except talk and hold rallies.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  44. @41 Kevin, I’m wondering if a booster on top of initial vaccination six months ago and current recovery from Covid might be overkill.

    norcal (d9c78c)

  45. Just like he did nothing for the fools who ransacked Congress for the Trumpster. They all seem quite shocked there was no pardon.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  46. That’s the point: the GOP has traditionally been the party that conservatives affiliate with because it best repaints their values and platforms. …

    Dana (174549) — 12/3/2021 @ 6:54 pm

    After being disappointed time after time since 1980 by the Republican party in Washington I’m beginning to think that not very many conservatives actually end up in Washington. Either that or there’s something in the water that changes them when they get to Washington and they forget their campaign promises. It’s disappointing and sad.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  47. @41 Kevin, I’m wondering if a booster on top of initial vaccination six months ago and current recovery from Covid might be overkill.

    Like a flak jacket on top of a bullet-proof vest?

    Since the vaccination contains no actual virus, your only real worry is some auto-immune thing. I see nothing of the sort reported.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  48. I wonder what is in two of my comments that caused them to be awaiting moderation while the third went through without any problem?

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  49. The GOP is not, nor has it ever been a “conservative” party. It has had conservative candidates, sure, but the “RINO” complaint mistakes a wing of the party for the whole party.

    And of course we have to talk about “what do you mean by Conservative?” At one point in meant segregationist. Then it meant small government and fiscal restraint. Now it seems to mean using the power of the State to enforce Christian values.

    It’s a word, like “liberal” which has lost all meaning.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  50. If your side continues to get outflanked by people that you consider to be low-class smoothbrains, I can see why that would create resentment on your part.

    Outflanked? I’d say overrun. Bell curve.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  51. Tanny O’Haley (8a06bc) — 12/4/2021 @ 12:45 am

    I completely agree, Tanny. Good to see you again. Also, thank you very much for the commenting script; I find it a valuable time saver.

    felipe (484255)

  52. “My brother dropped out of high school and make good money as a carpenter, until he was up against “recent immigrants” willing to work under the table for $5/hr.”

    I feel sorry for your brother, but is it accurate to suggest that most carpentry jobs are now done by illegals for less than minimum wage? I googled and saw scores of carpentry jobs in my area, with pay ranging from $32k-$96k. I understand that he tried relocating….Alaska if I recall correctly….and that moving with a family complicates things….and that lack of consistent success breeds depression and cynicism, but it’s a complicated path to see how government is really going to solve his problems. I agree that government can have some role in helping individuals displaced from sectors by automation or less expensive foreign competition, providing subsidies for training programs, relocation, and perhaps standing money for construction projects. But in times of huge deficits and mounting debt….and the GOP being on record that infrastructure spending is no longer affordable…and Trump not going that route either….I think personal reinvention has to be the route….and with the economy ramping up, I can’t imagine being stuck working today for minimum wage. Hoping government solves illegal immigration to free up more low-end jobs doesn’t seem like the best plan…or a reason to believe in Trump…..

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  53. “After being disappointed time after time since 1980 by the Republican party in Washington”

    I’d be interested to know what exactly you thought government should/could achieve? Also, government is fundamentally about compromise and we’ve moved from a modest amount of that in the ’80’s to ideological gridlock now. Politicians mostly are about owning the other tribe to fund raise and stay in power. You see some good people retiring from politics because outside of finding pork for your district, nothing much gets done…and we keep rolling up debt without any serious plan for resolving it. But the kicker is that it’s us that has created the tribalism, helped along by technological bubbles and media reinforcing the status quo.

    Narrow electoral margins aren’t conducive to making big social change…..so most of the expectation on the Right for eliminating Obamacare root and branch…or on the Left to implement Bernie’s and AOC’s socialist wet dream….just can’t happen…much of it becomes theater to fund raise. Until we change, they won’t change. I see a lot of hate and demonization of neighbors in politics….we lack common purpose, empathy, and good faith….we now obsess and treat everything as entertainment. There just doesn’t seem to be any backrooms left where people can sit down outside of TV and podcast view to actually get things done. We’ve done it to ourselves…and too few see it.

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  54. My BMI was just under 25 the last time I was weighed. Probably every Trump supporter outflanks me.

    nk (1d9030)

  55. Here’s a nice family portrait for their Christmas cards.
    I was hoping the parents would pay some sort of price for making it way too easy for their spawn to take a Sig Sauer 9mm to school for a little bit of murder.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  56. Ironic, that John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark are attempting to seek protection, using the Constitution they tried to destroy.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  57. Worth reading: Jack Shafer’s latest column: Here’s his summary question: “Cable News reaches a tiny fraction of the country, so why does the rest of the media care so much about the stupid things it says?”

    (Shafer admits he has erred in paying too much attention to all that stupidity.)

    The noise and nonsense distracts us from thinking about serious problems, and their possible solutions.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  58. @56 i hope the parents meet justice for their incredibly stupid decisions

    and are held to account by a DA unlike the one who also made incredibly stupid decisions leading up to the Waukesha massacre, for which similar outrage seems to be held back

    note that the kid is being charged with terrorism

    and the bad decisions pertaining to him were not informed by a twenty year long violent rap sheet

    JF (e1156d)

  59. I’d be interested to know what exactly you thought government should/could achieve?

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f) — 12/4/2021 @ 5:38 am

    Things Republicans have promised to do when they campaign like reduce the size of government, reduce taxes permanently, reduce the debt, reduce regulations, defund a whole bunch of stuff like Planned Parenthood, get rid of Obamacare which ended up costing me a huge amount of money in health insurance costs and less healthcare.

    I’d also like to see them get rid of unconstitutional departments like the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the EPA to mention a few. If it’s not in the enumerated powers of the federal government listed in article 1 section 8 and the 16th amendment of the US Constitution then it doesn’t belong as part of the federal government.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  60. JF requested: “tell me who’s conservative”.

    Well, to begin with, Edmund Burke.

    In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals.[5] Subsequently in the 20th century, he became widely regarded as the philosophical founder of conservatism.[6][7]

    His brief and brilliant speech to the electors at Bristol is a good place to start, if you want to understand his thinking.

    Always glad to help out.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  61. Speaking of cable news, Jim, FoxNews is really the 800-pound gorilla in the right-wing media orbit. It sort of explains some of the outrageousness that goes on there, what with guests and contributors trying to rise above the noise and get attention in a quest for more and more gigs.
    If they were smart, they’d try to offload all the crazy over to FoxNation and try to keep their main brand closer to straight news. That, or there needs to be a true non-nutty right-of-center competitor to FoxNews.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  62. Funny line from Shafer’s piece linked above:

    “but can we agree that cable news has devolved over time from a useful headline service to a day-to-night eldercare operation? It’s one thing to tolerate cable news. It does, after all, keep people employed. But do we really want to continue to indulge an aged minority’s irrelevant obsession with who said what on cable news? Can’t somebody turn the damn thing off?”

    How true….and I too am a fan of old people

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  63. Nic – You reminded me of this story from my youth. When I was in my little rural high school, an older science teacher told me about a man who came in to complain about his son’s dirty language — which the man was sure his son had learned in school.

    The man complained using exactly the language he was complaining about. Something like this, I suppose: “Where in the blankety-blank is Johnny learning all those blankety-blank dirty words?”

    (I still haven’t figured out what I would have told the man, after all these years.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  64. @61 thanks, Jim Miller

    any with a pulse?

    JF (e1156d)

  65. Tanny, I agree with much of everything you want there….the trouble is that you need 60 votes in the Senate to get most of that done…..and 60 conservative votes at that. Getting that tidal wave of change usually requires the other party to be in charge during a typhoon of negative events. The DEM swing due to Iraq War fatigue and the housing collapse got them to 60 votes….dislike of Obamacare scored a swing but not one sufficient to overcome the 60-vote fillibuster-proof majority needed to go it alone. But the DEMs going it alone on Obamacare showed you what happens….it doesn’t stick….like something broadly popular like Social Security. The initiative becomes the focal point for the other party to attack and attack and attack….and unfortunately the GOP showed that they really had no coherent plan beyond that and so we sit now with the worst of Obamacare and no free-rider controls.

    Part of the issue is ideological gridlock and the complete lack of good faith in politics….but part is also that the parties need to persuasively sell their ideas…..and it seems we really don’t have broadly-viewed venues interested in serious discussions….they prefer poop tossing…..and the quality of politicians is regressing….as we prefer poop throwers to actual statesmen.

    I agree with you that we need to pay for the government that we authorize….which might mean cutting back on some stuff…and making tax rates adjust to pay for other stuff. The problem is that no one wants to cut “their stuff”….and some entitlement stuff remains pretty popular, especially with people that religiously vote. That’s why we need bipartisanship…and have both sides give up something to get something that is more important. But the climate no longer facilitates this. Anyone that proposes cutting deals is cutoff and marginalized by the base and its media. We are no longer realistic about what 55 Senate votes gets you (let alone 51)…and we no longer value incrementalism….it’s like baseball going all-in on the homerun over fielding talent to score with singles and doubles. Part of this “anxiousness” is manufactured. If I listened to a lot of Talk Radio, I think I too would be chronically upset with a lack of results. Maybe we need to recalibrate our expectations….

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  66. 59, sometimes the case that doesn’t check the boxes in the majority of parental neglect / malfeasance is the one you need to open the door to prosecuting more common abuses such as a child killers raised in active gang households etc. An Afrikaner* ban in 1990_1994 might have provided precedent for a Muslim bam a decade later.

    *Actually maybe not, but perhaps solely on account of this wise gentleman, who I also hear dabbles in space travel.

    urbanleftbehind (c073c9)

  67. I feel sorry for your brother, but is it accurate to suggest that most carpentry jobs are now done by illegals for less than minimum wage?

    Union jobs are higher pay and exclude illegals. General construction jobs also generally don’t include illegals any more — not worth the trouble — but it was much different in the 90’s. In the southwest, though, most tradesmen speak Spanish as a first language even though they are not themselves immigrants. It’s a situation that has normalized, but there are still dislocations.

    My comment was not that government should fix every problem, but that government hasn’t really been trying (and in some cases has been digging the hole). Importing workers, through lax immigration policies that hand out green cards, or H-1B, coupled with outsourcing of assembly work for products that are then imported, is something that government did not have to assist.

    Trump addressed these problems in a very forceful way. The problem though is that his ham-handed approach and general incompetence did little to correct them, and in some cases made them worse.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  68. I question the timing. Of the prosecution of the parents. On the heels of oral argument in the Supreme Court in a case that might overrule Roe v. Wade.

    nk (1d9030)

  69. I’d also like to see them get rid of unconstitutional departments like the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the EPA to mention a few.

    When many of the agencies were created, Congress reserved the power to veto regulations, on the theory that the agencies were legislating by delegation, and any law could be blocked by a majority of either house.

    The Supremes struck those provisions down (INS v Chadha) without touching the now-unfettered regulatory authority.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  70. In the 19th century, Burke was praised by both conservatives and liberals

    In the 19th Century “liberal” meant something quite different.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  71. That, or there needs to be a true non-nutty right-of-center competitor to FoxNews.

    I’d settle with a single actual cable news show. They don’t even have Headline News any more. Do you remember when “This is CNN!” meant news and not opinion? Now it’s all Crossfire.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  72. Nic@15, great story. Really well written and I appreciate you sharing it.

    Time123 (0ef19f)

  73. #71 Kevin, true enough, which is why I have used “leftist” for years to describe politicians like Obama. Sometimes, for those who know a little history of the word, it is useful to qualify it with “classical” — and, as it happens, most of the Liberal parties in the world, are actually classical liberal parties.

    My favorite example is Australia’s Liberal Party, which often gets described by American journalists in phrases like this one: “Australia’s conservative Liberal Party”.

    Now, those on the left often describe themselves as “progressive” — while advocating ideas no newer than the 19th century.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  74. I don’t know exactly what a conservative is, but I know it’s not someone who conspires to subvert the Electoral College and incites a mob to violently overthrow Congress when the subversion conspiracy is stymied by his Vice President.

    Three successive wives along with the occasional concurrent mistress, and from time to time afternoon quickies with hookers with or without spanking and golden showers, are also indicative but not necessarily determinative when his other choices are playing golf and jerking off. A man whose daddy left him enough money to live on in luxury all his life has to find ways to occupy himself.

    nk (1d9030)

  75. Perhaps Putin is sabre-rattling about Ukraine to divert attention from his Covid policies, which are killing his fellow Russians by the hundreds of thousands. At 810k excess deaths, puts Russia at 5,549 deaths per million (which assumes that all the excess deaths are attributable to CV19), 2nd behind only Peru.
    Biden’s appeasement on Nord 2 isn’t helping.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  76. If they were smart, they’d try to offload all the crazy over to FoxNation and try to keep their main brand closer to straight news. That, or there needs to be a true non-nutty right-of-center competitor to FoxNews.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 12/4/2021 @ 7:48 am

    Except there’s not enough straight news to have a 24 hour straight news network. By default straight news will be the minority of the programming and opinion shows will be the majority. Shows will most likely be tailored to their base audience. It is my understanding that Fox News still out performs all the other cable news networks.

    Good thing I cut cable in 2010 and don’t watch any of the cable “news” shows.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  77. Among living cartoonists, the best conservative is Michael Ramirez. Here’s a recent example of his work.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  78. If I listened to a lot of Talk Radio, I think I too would be chronically upset with a lack of results. Maybe we need to recalibrate our expectations….

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f) — 12/4/2021 @ 8:17 am

    Good thing I no longer listen to Talk Radio. I mostly stream music to my car radio and since I don’t have an antenna on my vintage car I don’t get any of the Talk Radio shows.

    One of the problems I’ve had with Mitch McConnell and other Republican Senate majority leaders is their refusal to bring up bills that they know they will lose. If they did that they could at least tell the people who voted at them in that they tried.

    I believe bipartisanship is mostly a myth. That’s one of the features of our government is that they don’t agree. I’ve never liked it when they do agree. It’s usually bad news for me and good news for those on the left.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  79. I should have been more precise. This is better: Among living American cartoonists, the best is conservative Michael Ramirez.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  80. Now, those on the left often describe themselves as “progressive” — while advocating ideas no newer than the 19th century.

    And a New Deal Democrat could reasonably be called “conservative.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  81. I’ve never liked it when they do agree.

    When the Stupid Party and the Evil Party agree, the result is Stupid and Evil.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  82. Chester Doles is Marjorie Taylor Greene’s kind of Republican. It doesn’t matter that he’s a neo-N@zi and Klan member, because he’s an “ardent supporter” of Trump, and that’s all that matters in today’s GOP.
    BTW, the convicted felon (for assaulting a black guy, among other felonies) is running for office in Lumpkin County, GA.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  83. I watched some of the first debate between Trump and Biden, and had a suspicion that I don’t recall sharing with anyone. But now I will.

    Some background from a Washington Post editorial:

    President Donald Trump willfully deceived the American people about the pandemic, the gravest public health catastrophe in a century. He knew the coronavirus was highly transmissible early on, but concealed it. He wrongly claimed that rising case numbers resulted from more diagnostic testing. He made a false assertion that doctors were inflating the death toll from covid-19 to “get more money.” There were so many other deceptions.

    Now we learn he was hiding one more big and dangerous secret. Three days before a presidential debate, Mr. Trump knew but did not say he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Instead, he carried on his campaign and presidential schedule, endangering all those with whom he came in contact.

    (There was a negative test later, though we don’t know when. Since Trump was hospitalized shortly after the first test, it is nearly certain that it was correct, and the negative test false.)

    Now, here’s my suspicion: When I watched that debate, I was struck by the way Trump kept talking, loudly, toward Biden, rather than toward the camera. And Trump may not know much, but he knows where the TV cameras are.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  84. Brilliant.
    Being threatened with destruction by de facto theocratic dictatorship really sharpens the senses. And the espionage.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  85. Indeed, Paul Montagu.
    Thanks.

    mg (15c28b)

  86. One of the areas where Democrats and Republicans should work together, intelligently, is in responding to the increasing hostile actions of Russia and China in space:

    “The threats are really growing and expanding every single day. And it’s really an evolution of activity that’s been happening for a long time,” Gen. David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations, told me in an interview on the sidelines of the recent Halifax International Security Forum. “We’re really at a point now where there’s a whole host of ways that our space systems can be threatened.”

    Right now, Space Force is dealing with what Thompson calls “reversible attacks” on U.S. government satellites (meaning attacks that don’t permanently damage the satellites) “every single day.” Both China and Russia are regularly attacking U.S. satellites with non-kinetic means, including lasers, radio frequency jammers and cyber attacks, he said.

    Let me repeat, “regularly”.

    (Be interesting to know whether Tanny agrees with me that the parties should work together on these threats.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  87. Another thing to blame Paul Ryan on perhaps, mg.

    urbanleftbehind (c073c9)

  88. Part of the issue is ideological gridlock and the complete lack of good faith in politics

    Another problem is the zeal to ascribe perfidy to people who acted in good faith but didn’t deliver the desired results. Thus the vile attacks on Republican officials who did their job impartially in the 2020 election, and the vicious harassment of ordinary citizens who served as election workers, did their job as they were supposed to, and then were painted as villains by fanatical Trumpers trying to find evidence to support their conspiracy theories.

    Seeing the other side as evil is not new in politics, but some new dimensions have been added.

    First is how a political party adopted Trump’s narcissistic delusion that he couldn’t possibly lose unless the other side cheated, and that robbing Trump of victory was “the crime of the century.” That delusion, or self-delusion, provides a pretext to use extraordinary means to ensure victory next time (if not before).

    Second is how the GOP made a hero out of someone conspicuously lacking in personal virtue and integrity, and either reduced any concerns about character to mere “personality,” or insisted that the absence of personal virtue was actually a strength, because “he isn’t afraid to challenge traditional norms” and he would smash what needed to be broken. (On the other hand, it would still be imperative for political opponents to respect rules and norms.)

    Also add in the belief that any compromise — which is normal and necessary in a democratic republic — is giving in to the devil.

    Put these together, and you have 1) a permission structure to use extreme measures to gain political victory; 2) the elevation of dishonesty, selfishness, and cruelty to the status of political virtues; and 3) a quasi-religious imperative to take a “by any means necessary” approach to politics.

    Radegunda (8fb14d)

  89. (There was a negative test later, though we don’t know when.

    According to what I’ve read, that negative test was from a less accurate method, not one that could have provided any confidence that the first was a false positive.

    Then, the candidates were supposed to get tested before the debate, on the same day. But Trump arrived too late — golly, sorry about that! — so the “honor system” was extended to an obviously dishonorable man, and then the whole Trump family conspicuously refused to wear masks.

    The heroes of today’s GOP don’t even try to look like decent human beings.

    Radegunda (8fb14d)

  90. @norcal@37 Thanks, though I wish the story didn’t exist. Parents can act in ways that they think helps their kids, even though it doesn’t help them. Kids make dumb decisions, it’s normal, but they need to learn better and denying that it happened or letting them off the hook doesn’t do that.

    @JimMiller@64 Oh, God, we all have one of those stories. Mine is the time I was admin for a parent teacher meeting and one of the teacher concerns was that they had to keep giving the kid detention for swearing in class and dad turns to the student and says “don’t (effing) swear in (effing) school! Do you (effing) hear me?”

    @Time123@73 Thanks. Though I as I said above, I wish none of it had happened, or at least that there was something that seemed to be actually helping the situation.

    Nic (896fdf)

  91. Iran and nukes or cream cheese, urbanleftbehind?

    mg (15c28b)

  92. #91 Radegunda – Thanks for adding those important details.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  93. Then, the candidates were supposed to get tested before the debate, on the same day. But Trump arrived too late — golly, sorry about that! — so the “honor system” was extended to an obviously dishonorable man, and then the whole Trump family conspicuously refused to wear masks.

    I recall speculation on the day of the debate that he must have COVID just because he was getting needlessly close to Biden while yelling. I guess that’s pretty dark, but in Trump’s mind it would level the playing field.

    Biden was a terrible candidate and has been a terrible president, and he was the price most of the country was willing to pay. Shame on the democrats for not offering a decent option, for a very long time, and shame on the GOP for not listening to Cruz in 2016, and shame on cruz just because I mentioned him and he’s very shameful.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  94. Here’s a surprise:

    As of Friday morning, only two states in the US have blizzard warnings — and they are Alaska and Hawaii. Yes, you read that correctly. In fact, more snow has fallen in Hawaii this season than in Denver, Colorado.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  95. “I believe bipartisanship is mostly a myth. That’s one of the features of our government is that they don’t agree. I’ve never liked it when they do agree. It’s usually bad news for me and good news for those on the left.”

    Fighting Soviet expansionism was bipartisan. Reagan never had the Senate yet he passed massive tax reform. Immigration proposals trended bipartisan until it became the 3rd rail of right-wing politics. I remain convinced that a path-way to either citizenship or legalization…for long residing illegals without criminal records….would probably get 90% of the enforcement initiatives the GOP wants…with little practical downside. The debt ought to be bipartisan…but politicians have too short-term and self-interested of a view….debt means payouts to keep their seats. Our current path is that we will have to hit a catastrophe before some wild scramble which will be too little, too late. People on both sides need to grow up and take it seriously. I get that compromise tends to look like a slow slide to more socialism rather than the libs quick jump….and few subsidies/programs ever disappear…but we also have an ageing society in the midst of globalization….as Kevin frequently reminds us…..the GOP can’t have blinders on as to where we’re at

    With regards to votes that have no chance of passing…on one hand, I am a fan of making the opposition actually filibuster…though watching Senators read children’s books is both painful and painfully amusing. On the other hand, symbolic votes can be come reasons to actually not pursue meaningful legislation. One example, there were over 40-some votes on rescinding Obamacare….yet nothing like Tort Reform that would be aimed at improving the process. I get that the two sides are coming at this problems differently….and I favor/applaud market-based solutions that don’t put the government on the hook for more subsidies…..but the GOP also never meaningfully addressed making health insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions….and that’s a feature of Obamacare that remains popular.

    [PS: I wasn’t implying that you listened to Talk Radio too much….but I know many who do…and the conditioning is remarkable]

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  96. Mg, that’s the first 2 of many…also the dairy operators probably got to him on immigration and Binger-Kraus probably grew up as fanboys.

    urbanleftbehind (c073c9)

  97. @24. More importantly, ULB, when does the tipster collect their $20,000– or is it really $14,000 in Bidenland?

    “Late Friday, U.S. Marshals announced a reward of up to $10,000 each for information leading to their arrests.”

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  98. Either are enough to buy a fixer upper in that part if the world, residual effects of a white mayor and inflation be damned. But this collar reminds me of when Scott Petersen tried to get into Mexico with a blond surfer wig.

    urbanleftbehind (c073c9)

  99. AJ – I think you mean Reagan never had control of the House, not the Senate.

    (The 1980 Republican Senate victory may, partially, explain the party’s defeat in 1986. They had not fielded as strong candidates in 1980 as they might have, if they had been expecting a win. Then, in 1986, some of those candidates were up for re-election.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  100. I’d also like to see them get rid of unconstitutional departments like the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the EPA to mention a few. If it’s not in the enumerated powers of the federal government listed in article 1 section 8 and the 16th amendment of the US Constitution then it doesn’t belong as part of the federal government.

    I agree, along with the National Park Service and NASA, though it’s amazing how conservatives have a soft spot for these agencies.

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  101. Hearsay: A statement made by law enforcement offered by the media to nk for the truth of the matter asserted.

    They were going to go on the lam and leave the kid in the lurch? Why do I find that hard to believe?

    nk (1d9030)

  102. “General construction jobs also generally don’t include illegals any more — not worth the trouble”
    This is not the case in the custom home business in my SoCAL county.
    Starting construction wage here is well over minimum at $18-20HR with entry level laborer skills but willing to work hard. The highest paying jobs in carpentry are for extraordinarily precise finish work and many of those people have “soft” college degrees. Lots of college degrees in high end electric work and in smart home systems, home IT. Fewer in plumbing, but the more expensive the home being built, the more likely your finish plumber has a college degree.
    Sprinkled through there are a substantial number people who did not finish high school because nearly all of the Mexican guys did not even attend high school and probably started picking sweeping up after people until someone showed them how to read a tape. People make the mistake of equating intelligence with education and the guys who move to the top from Mexico are flat out smart, they are ambititous, eager to learn and very competitive about quality in the workplace

    “In the southwest, though, most tradesmen speak Spanish as a first language even though they are not themselves immigrants.”

    I sometimes would go all day without speaking English. I taught my foremen construction English, their kids learn English in school and help their parents. Now we speak a 50-50% mix using the easiest, most effective, polite word regardless to language. It sounds uneducated but it actually a very efficient, descriptive way of communicating

    steveg (e81d76)

  103. Mauna Kea elevation 13,803 above sea level
    19,700 below sea level reaching the ocean floor.
    Makes it taller than Everest.
    Ceremonial ground up on that Mnt. The natives went to the top without proper attire and froze to death. The snow consistency compares to bubble gum and cinder blocks. Happy skiing.

    mg (15c28b)

  104. And don’t let anybody snow you about juvenile court. These days it is strictly a prosecutorial tool. In marginal cases. To deny kids bail and trial by jury.

    nk (1d9030)

  105. … but the GOP also never meaningfully addressed making health insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions….and that’s a feature of Obamacare that remains popular.

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 12/4/2021 @ 11:41 am

    Is making health insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions in the enumerated list of federal powers in article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution? If it isn’t, then they shouldn’t be addressing it no matter how compassionate it may be.

    The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  106. #105 mg – They should bring in some Swiss to fix the snow quality problem up there.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  107. @72. ‘”That, or there needs to be a true non-nutty right-of-center competitor to FoxNews.”
    I’d settle with a single actual cable news show. They don’t even have Headline News any more. Do you remember when “This is CNN!” meant news and not opinion? Now it’s all Crossfire.’

    The first thing you have to remember about cable news today is the primary objective of every outlet is to make money off their product. The days of television news as a loss-leader or public service are long gone. The prescience of ‘Network.’

    The ‘Anderson Cooper 360’ of today goes against what Turner originally envisioned. When Turner started CNN, his focus was to make the news the star, not the anchors or news readers. And it essentially began as just that–but it wasn’t taken all that seriously by broadcast network brass along w/other cable channels when cable was in its infancy. [Chicken Noodle News- remember?!] or by advertisers. [Recall a media buyer in a meeting trying to pitch purchasing ad time on CNN to stretch the ad budgets because it was cheaper compared to broadcast buys on CBS– or even Turner’s other cable outlet, Superstation TBS– which had shotgun reach to a national audience– and none of the product mangers went for it.]

    And unlike the other cable venues at the time, which could purchase/lease/tap libraries of inert programming collecting dust on shelves to sell ad packages around [like TVLand or History Channel] CNN had to create a great deal of original programming… [Larry King, Crossfire, travel, cooking, business shows, which eventually spun off into channels all their own– ‘Showbiz Tonight’ – that sort of thing] … or just swipe it.

    CNN didn’t have much original news sourcing at their start- a lot of the news telecasting video feed they tapped from other sources– w/a CNN bug supered in the screen corner became an issue. It was a form of pirating– and other outlets complained- hence the proliferation of logo bugs on feeds by all outlets. And though the 24/7 concept was a viable business platform [Turner’s Headline News channel was essentially a rip-and-read wire service format] — U.S. viewers weren’t tuning in to see what was happening in New Delhi or Sydney. [Hence CNN International was eventually launched.] So to fill time for U.S. audiences, CNN invented a lot of filler programming.

    It was the Gulf War, along with the technology advances of portable satellite systems and lightweight cameras that transformed CNN- w/live negotiations and battlefield feeds from Baghdad, or fighting in Moscow during the Second Russian Revolution that brought the viewers and the ad revenue in. It was a remarkable real-time transformation. [Today, it’s even easier -and cheaper- w/phone cameras.] But it also turned the field correspondents and desk anchors/news readers into ‘stars’ [the curse of television] -which conflicted w/Turner’s original idea. Reporting from the Pentagon made Wolf Blitzer’s career… and revived Peter Arnett’s in the field. [Do remember the ‘Scud Stud’ too?]

    CNN became a cash cow- there was suddenly a profit in news to be made– [that prescience of ‘Network’ thing]– something that constantly eluded the broadcast networks [until Roone Arledge turned ABC News all glitzy, sporty, and entertaining.] I penned countless memos at CBS pitching to package programming and put the inert CBS News archives to use to make a buck only to be told that nobody would want to watch, advertise or even purchase on videocassette any old news again. They were wrong– [just as the movie studio execs believed nobody would buy old movies on videocassette- so they leased rights to their dead libraries for pennies and missed making millions.] Hence cable MSNBC was launched — CNBC evolved and Fox began as well as FBN, etc., etc., and the race to make a buck began. And to do that they had to target their audiences to hold viewers- which meant shaping program line-ups and content to attract the audiences be the most profitable– especially in an era when ratings can now be tallied to the minute against the news packages aired.

    The news media landscape today is what it is- chasing profits. Seek salvation through the managing editors, for the suits- the Frank Hacketts- only see and seek the $.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  108. Breaking-

    CNN fires Chris Cuomo

    No presents for you!

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  109. @110. Cuomo gets ‘Zucked.’

    … and Toobin smiled.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  110. RIP Army Col. Edward Shames (99).

    Col. Edward Shames, the last surviving officer of the historic World War II parachute infantry regiment of the US Army known as Easy Company, died Friday at the age of 99.
    ………
    During World War II, Shames “was a member of the renowned Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division now known globally as the ‘Band of Brothers,'” according to the obituary. The story of Easy Company was later immortalized in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”…….

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  111. Porky Seltzer is making it sound like Walter Cronkite was fired. Cronkite had better ratings. Ham for the Holidays, Brian? Could be Porky’s head is on the block, too. It’s all about ratings, pork chop.

    “Let’s get after it” no more.

    And that’s the way it is, Saturday December 4, 2021.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  112. If you recall, Coop- who wan’t al lthat pleased at the time- had his two hours nightly cut to one when Zuck bumped Cuomo up from the morning broadcasts to prime time.

    … and Toobin is still smiling.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  113. Jim Miller – Dryest powder I know of is in Utah. {Alta}

    mg (15c28b)

  114. Wayne County GOP canvasser William Hartmann dies following battle with COVID-19
    William Hartmann, the Republican member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers who made national headlines for initially refusing to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election, died Tuesday following a battle with COVID-19.
    ……….
    It is unclear whether Hartmann was vaccinated. His Facebook page includes posts and memes downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, comparing vaccine passports to Nazi Germany and blasting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus.

    In one Facebook post, Hartmann appeared to question the efficacy of the vaccine. “If the ouchie is so great, why do they have to offer bribes?” he wrote, apparently referencing incentives offered to some individuals to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
    ……….

    Marcus Lamb, Christian Broadcaster and Vaccine Skeptic, Dies of Covid at 64
    ……….
    After contracting the virus, Mr. Lamb, who frequently suggested on the air that people pray instead of getting inoculated, was taken to a hospital when his oxygen levels dropped “all of a sudden,” his wife said in a broadcast on Nov. 18. It was not immediately clear when he had tested positive for the virus.

    Daystar Television Network, which the Lambs founded in 1997, did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
    ………
    Instead of getting vaccinated, “we can pray, we can get ivermectin and budesonide and hydroxychloroquine,” he said, referring to several drugs that have not been approved for Covid treatment by the Food and Drug Administration. He denounced vaccination mandates for schoolchildren.
    ………..
    Last month, on a Daystar show, Jonathan Lamb said his father’s Covid infection had resulted from “a spiritual attack from the enemy.”
    ………..
    Sad. Unfortunately those who proselytize against vaccinations as “evil” are doing harm to their followers and themselves. They are the true “Branch Covidians”.

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  115. CNN sees ratings spike for Chris Cuomo’s show – after his suspension

    The anemic ratings for Chris Cuomo’s CNN show shot up — after he disappeared on suspension.

    The total number of “Cuomo Prime Time” viewers spiked to 897,000 on Tuesday night when Anderson Cooper filled in for the missing host, according to Nielsen TV ratings data posted online by AdWeek’s TVNewser website.

    That figure was up nearly 19 percent from Monday, when Cuomo attracted just 754,000 pairs of eyeballs.

    https://nypost.com/2021/12/02/cnn-sees-ratings-spike-for-chris-cuomos-show-after-his-suspension/

    Cuomo was a legend in his own mind. Compare the 750,000 to 900,00 viewers to this:

    Twenty-seven million to 29 million viewers, on average, tuned in every night to hear Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  116. @117. Postscript- source: forbes.com for ‘Twenty-seven million to 29 million viewers, on average, tuned in every night to hear Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  117. Trump faces flurry of investigations beyond Jan. 6 probe

    They may pretend to kiss the ring, but many want him gone. When he falls there will be a lot of crocodile tears, and some quiet parties.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  118. Twenty-seven million to 29 million viewers, on average, tuned in every night to hear Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News.

    When there are only 3 channels it’s easy.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  119. LOL, this is legitimately the best laugh I’ve had in weeks:

    Fernand Amandi
    @AmandiOnAir
    Well argued, thought provoking piece by @kramos1841 in @Salon where he makes the case that when it comes to @TheDemocrats, humility is their kryptonite.
    7:00 AM · Dec 3, 2021

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  120. Lara Logan draws outrage for comparing Fauci to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele on Fox News
    Lara Logan, once a lauded foreign correspondent for CBS News’s “60 Minutes” and now a boundary-pushing Fox News guest commentator and streaming show host, drew fierce condemnation for on-air comments Monday night comparing the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
    ……….
    “What you see on Dr. Fauci — this is what people say to me: that he doesn’t represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele,” she said. “Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps. And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this, because the response from covid, what it has done to countries everywhere, what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, the poverty, it has obliterated economies. The level of suffering that has been created because of this disease is now being seen in the cold light of day.”
    ……..
    Early Tuesday morning, the Auschwitz Museum’s official Twitter account released a statement seeming to condemn Logan’s remarks without naming her. “Exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful,” the organization said. “It is disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline.”

    Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that works to combat antisemitism, issued a statement to The Washington Post on Tuesday saying that “there’s absolutely no comparison between mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and other covid-19 mitigation efforts to what happened to Jews during the Holocaust.”
    ………
    Fox News representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
    ……..,
    Related:

    Lara Logan Digs In: Goes After Auschwitz Museum, Blasts Out Fauci Conspiracies
    ……….

    On Tuesday, Logan sprayed Twitter with links to conspiracy theories about the White House chief medical adviser, including articles that falsely claimed that HIV does not cause AIDS.

    She also retweeted a user with one follower who wrote: “Shame on the Auschwitz Museum for shaming Lara Logan for sharing that Jews like me believe Fauci is a modern day Mengele.”

    After this, the Auschwitz Museum said that Logan had blocked them on Twitter.
    ……….
    Fox News did not respond to requests for comment about Logan’s initial remarks or her subsequent tweet spree.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  121. Rip, it’s all performance-news now.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  122. A courtesan must cater to her clientele’s penchants. Do Australians still own Fox, BTW?

    nk (1d9030)

  123. More Related to #122:

    From respected journalist to trolling opinionist: What happened to Lara Logan?

    I’m not surprised about LL’s change. At least a couple of other CBS journalists (Sheryl Attkinson, now with Sinclair Broadcasting; and Bernard Goldberg, now with Fox News) have turned and now bite the hands that fed them (and no doubt continue through their pensions).

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  124. When there are only 3 channels it’s easy.

    Easy? Hardly. Actually there were 4- CNN began ops in mid 1980- about 9 months before Cronkite retired- and you had to have cable to get CNN, which wasn’t so easy to access in areas then (like in NYC) but w/ABC News, CBS News, NBC News– even PBS’ MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour — and then add the other three cablers- CNN, MSNBC, Fox… 27 to 29 million nightly is quite impressive, Kev. And given his responsibilities as the managing editor all the more so.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  125. Do Australians still own Fox, BTW?

    No. Murdoch is now a US citizen.

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  126. @122. He be the “I represent science,” Faucian Bargainer. Ever the bureaucrat spinning, merely trying to deflect from his own failings. If it’s not a senator who nails him, it’s a reporter who pegs him. The Biden bureaucratic pattern: always the other guy who is flawed. Like Joe blaming his grandkid for giving him a “cold,” not Joe himself for failing to practice protection from infections as he preaches. Ba-thumpa- the grand kid goes under bus.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  127. Heh! So is George Soros. “One million dollars.”

    nk (1d9030)

  128. Do Australians still own Fox, BTW?

    ‘Disney bought 21st Century Fox; the Murdoch family retained control of the news business. In March 2019, Fox News became part of Fox Corporation. Fox Corporation is a publicly traded company. However, the Murdoch family holds a majority 39 percent stake in Fox Corporation.’ –

    https://marketrealist.com/p/who-owns-fox-news/

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  129. You know what made Fox succeed? Blondes, leg lights, lip gloss and cleavage rouge.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  130. norcal (d9c78c) — 12/3/2021 @ 4:56 pm Am I the first commenter here to have Covid?

    Dana (174549) — 12/3/2021 @ 5:06 pm

    Glad your symptoms were mild and you’re feeling better, norcal. I can’t remember if anyone else here has said they’ve had Covid. Maybe Sammy Finkleman…

    Your memory is better than you think. I think I had it from about March 20 to 30th 2020, and reported it to New York City, but it has not been verified. I should have checked a long time ago.

    I lost appetite and had temperature. It was what I would call mild (for Covid) and it would have been mild, because I was not near anyone who coughed or anyone known to have it. I probably got immunized. I may have been partially immune to begin with because I’ve had a lot of colds but few in recent years, sand there are four coronoviruses that now circulate causig colds – one is thought by some now to have been the 1890-1 flu

    MAY HAVE BEEN PARTIALLY IMMUENE TO BEGIN WITH

    I took Vitamin C and a lot of folic acid. Some panthothenic acid and crushed pineapple too. I had no appetite, and didn’t miss food.

    It would have been Covid because I never had a cold like that, and because that’s where it was circulating at first – in the Jewish community even the far fringes of it. That’s how it first got to New York, probably from people who took skiing vacations in Italy, and subsequent contacts and contacts of contacts.

    In the beginning most cases are mild and not because the virus mutates later. It’s that an infected person probably gives many more people a small viral dose than a big one, but as time goes on, the average viral exposure gets larger because there are more people who start off with a greater and greater viral load and the percentage of people with symptoms and serious symptoms rises. THEY SHOULD HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT LONG AGO but R0 is treated as a stable figure, changing only with the virus and preventative measures. I think the only reason R0 for other diseases looks stable is because this is an average over a long period of timed multiple transmissions

    The coronavirus usually has to pass through several people before it starts regularly causing serious disease. When it hits a new area, or when we get a perhaps more easily transmissible variant (Omicrcron is said to have something the common cold has) it always circulates unnoticed . That’s why any new variant has spread around quitea bit before it is detectwd

    ,
    – this besides that it takes – pick a number – about 100 cases for doctors to notice a new disease.

    If we graded cases A through D with D being the worstT

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  131. @125 oh my, the scourge of media bias at fox news

    anyway, in other news

    CNN fires Chris Cuomo

    JF (e1156d)

  132. Accidentally sent prematurely.

    If we graded cases A through D with D being the worst – cases would go A -> B -> C -> D as it got passed along,

    SF: I MAY HAVE BEEN PARTIALLY IMMUNE TO BEGIN WITH

    This seems to have dropped out of the thinking, but I read no reason to suppose this isn’t so. There is some overlap between the common cold coronaviruses like OC43 and Covid. And 40% of the people started out with this partial immunity.

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34273512

    Immunity against seasonal human coronavirus OC43 mitigates fatal deterioration of COVID-19 …

    Results: Inpatients with COVID-19 who produced antibodies against OC43 did not develop severe or fatal pneumonia. Antibody titres against the corresponding epitope of SARS-CoV-2 did not differ between inpatients with severe and mild COVID-19. Antibody titres against the OC43 epitope increased more than those against SARS-CoV-2 during the first 2 weeks of COVID-19.

    Conclusions: Immunity to seasonal human coronavirus OC43 effectively enhanced recovery from COVID-19. Detecting cross-reactive antibodies to OC43 may help to predict prognosis for patients with COVID-19.

    There you have it.

    It’s completely missing from the public health guidance. But facts are stubborn things. As of the beginning of 2020, Covid-19 was not equally novel to all people. Even the idea of it being a (completely) novel virus is wrong. Of course there are substantial differences between OC43 and the two SARS viruses, OC43 might be called SARS-CoV-0

    This onne claims the immunity doesn’t last (but most people who were exposed to OC43 were not exposed recently. If you find some, it lasts.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1083-1

    We monitored healthy individuals for more than 35 years and determined that reinfection with the same seasonal coronavirus occurred frequently at 12 months after infection.

    Reinfection! But not the same severity maybe. And they can be asymptomatic, too. And that coronavirus can be mutating.

    We were not able to identify strain variation, which could play a role in susceptibility to reinfection. HCoV-NL63, HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-HKU1 all show different co-circulating genetic clusters1. The situation is even more complicated for HCoV-229E, which shows continuous genetic drift.

    A person vaccinated against anything can have a subsequent mostly asymptomatic case (with limited ability to pass it along) some dcctors have been saying. In the absence of mass testing, how is anybody even going to know this is going on? How instantly is the body going to react? It’s not instant after some time has passed. That perspective is just now coming to be realized.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  133. 126, DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 12/4/2021 @ 4:42 pm

    [cable] wasn’t so easy to access in areas then (like in NYC)

    It was not available at all in the 4 outer boroughs until 1995. It was only available in Manhattan – I think 2 companies had two separate territories there,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  134. 5, Time123 (9f42ee) — 12/3/2021 @ 5:11 pm

    I don’t know why this is the standard but it appears to be consistently applied, regardless of what the right wing resentment machine asserts.

    Rush Limbaugh used to talk about SUVs (and not drivers) being blamed for crashes. (He seemed to think this was an environmentalist trope, and they didn’t do this with other kinds of vehicles)

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  135. One more conservative tonight for JF: George Will:

    George Frederick Will (born May 4, 1941) is an American libertarian-conservative political commentator and author. He writes regular columns for The Washington Post and provides commentary for NBC News and MSNBC.[1] In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America,” in a league with Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).[2][3] He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977.[4]

    In one very important way he differs from Edmund Burke; Burke thought religious beliefs were essential for representative government; Will describes himself as an “amiable, low-voltage atheist”.

    (Since the Trump defeat in 2020, it is my impression that Will’s columns have improved, though they aren’t as good as they were at his peak.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  136. Russia is mobilizing to invade Ukraine in January, and was also planning a coup. Biden is planning to talk to Putin. Putin has claimed that he wants a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, among other things,

    To do that, you’d have to see Russia as a power that operated outside international law, but maybe you could make an arrangement like was done with the Soviet Union with Finland (and with Austria in 1955) and with regard to Afghanistan until Leonid Brezhnev allowed Soviet subversion to move along at its own momentum without any input from the top and they nearly succeeded in Portugal in 1974 and succeeded in 1973 in Afghanistan which started the whole thing. There was a subsequent coup in 1978 and then in 1979 they attempted a de-Stalinization but this was treated like the first Soviet intervention. The Soviet Union actually wanted to improve the situation in Afghanistan in December, 1979.

    The Soviet Union was caught red handed toppling a government because U.S. spy satellites had been reprogrammed to pass more often over the region because of the taking the hostages in Iran. We got the Islamic terrorists because Reagan let Pakistan take control of distributing the anti-Soviet military aid. They only aided Islamic fundamentalists, but most Afghans were not remotely close to them.)

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  137. I think insisting on double blind clinical trials in which people almost certainly have to die before a vaccine can be authorized is more in the spirit of Josef Mengele.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  138. But I don;t think that’s what Lara Logan was talking about,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  139. 103. nk (1d9030) — 12/4/2021 @ 12:31 pm

    They were going to go on the lam and leave the kid in the lurch? Why do I find that hard to believe?

    Thwy are believd to received help in hiding.

    Sounds like a conspiracy. The question is, what exactly?

    The lawyer for the parents say the gun, which he bought for his son on Black Friday, was kept locked up (and therefore he didn’t just let his son have it, knowing what evil thoughts he had)

    I think the claim is also made the school knew just as much as they did, if not more, about his dangerousness, and the school didn’t have to let him back into the school once the parents refused to agree to counseling. They could have searched him or his possessions. (and if they had what different thing would have happened that day? He would have only been more motivated, if he knew.)

    I think the prosecutors know more than what they are letting on, and they think the parents may actually have plotted this.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/us/crumbley-parents-charged-michigan-shooting.html

    On Monday, when a teacher reported seeing their son searching online for ammunition, his mother did not seem alarmed.

    “LOL I’m not mad at you,” Jennifer Crumbley texted her son. “You have to learn not to get caught.”

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  140. There are times when I think parents deliberately make the names of their children hard to spell. For example: Sharyl Attkisson. She has a first name and a family name that are both easily confused with other, more common names. (And I was making those two mistakes when she first came on the scene.)

    (For the record: I give her mixed reviews, and think that she needs to be more self critical — or find someone she trusts to do that for her.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  141. The parents sound like Jimmy Burke of Lufthansa robbery fame, as described in the book “Wise Guy” by Nicholas Pileggi. Still. this probably wasn’t the crime they wanted their son to do.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  142. I think maybe they just don’t want their children to have the same name. It’s probably not an attempt to defeat text searches.

    BTW, He’s not this James Crumbly

    https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/20/books/20crumley.html

    Sept. 19, 2008

    James Crumley, a critically acclaimed crime novelist whose drug-infused, alcohol-soaked, profanity-laced, breathtakingly violent books swept the hard-boiled detective from the Raymond Chandler era into an amoral, utterly dissolute, apocalyptic post-Vietnam universe, died on Wednesday in Missoula, Mont. He was 68 and lived in Missoula…If Mr. Chandler and Hunter S. Thompson had collaborated to produce a literary offspring, Mr. Crumley would unquestionably have been the result. In just seven private eye novels he carved out a genre that might properly be called gonzo gumshoe, set mostly in the back alleys, seedy bars and wild, forbidding countryside of Montana.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  143. This story is too funny not to share:

    An Italian man raised eyebrows this week and made global headlines when he arrived at a vaccination center in northern Italy and tried to fool health workers into administering a coronavirus vaccine into a prosthetic arm.

    The man “could face criminal charges”.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  144. I am a fan of James Crumley, the late author. I have read all his private eye books. He belongs to the C[oo]ckoocloudland school of writing which considers realism to get in the way of a good story and the writers should just make sh!t up. I have never read Hunter S. Thompson, but as much as I enjoyed Crumley, he was no Raymond Chandler. Nowhere near.

    nk (1d9030)

  145. A favorite, n? The Long GoodBye, The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely or something else?

    mg (15c28b)

  146. nk?

    mg (15c28b)

  147. The three you mention are equally candidates for first place with me, mg. The High Window and The Little Sister would fall a little behind, then The Lady In The Lake, and Playback would bring up the rear but by no more than a length.

    nk (1d9030)

  148. 149. Follow up question nk who are some of your other fave mystery/crime authors? I believe you mentioned Ross McDonald one time. I like him pretty well. I like Thomas B Dewey.

    JRH (52aed3)

  149. So then, bar for being fired from CNN is somewhere above handling yourself in front of a dozen people, and somewhere below stalking and harassing sexual assault accusers.

    Good to know CNN has ‘standards’.

    mg (15c28b)

  150. All the Black Mask Boys, JRH. And one girl, Leigh Bracket, who worked on the screenplays for both The Big Sleep and the Empire Strikes Back. Paul Cain, Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Frederick C. Davis, Raoul F. Whitfield, Theodore Tinsley, W.T. Ballard, and of course the immortal Dashiell Hammett.

    From among others, a great one is Merle Constiner but he’s hard to find. I like Thomas B. Dewey, too, and then there’s Richard Deming, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe, and Brett Halliday’s Mike Shayne stories, and Carroll John Daly who invented the first hard-boiled detective with Race Williams.

    And this is by no means an exhaustive list.

    nk (1d9030)

  151. Oh, man, how could I leave out Norbert Davis? Click the link for the most comprehensive (and free) collection. I recommend Max Latin, Bail Bond Dodd, and Doan & Carstairs, not necessarily in that order, as top notch, and the rest are very good too.

    nk (1d9030)

  152. If you are looking for something different in detective stories, you might take a look at Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy collection:

    The Lord Darcy stories are set in an alternate world whose history supposedly diverged from our own during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart, in which King John never reigned and most of western Europe and the Americas are united in an Angevin Empire whose continental possessions were never lost by that king. In this world a magic-based technology has developed in place of the science of our own world.

    The longest and best story in the collection, “Too Many Magicians”, is a clever “locked room” mystery.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  153. They may pretend to kiss the ring, but many want him gone.

    But 74-plus million don’t.

    “They” don’t get it. The 74-plus million will find another vessel to pour their passions into. And it won’t be one of “they.”

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  154. Via Rex Chapman, this one of the funniest Twitter roasts I’ve seen, all starting with Sharon Weiss burning the pumpkin pie and blaming Marie Callender for it.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  155. Peter Wehner has a few things to say about Tucker Carlson when he praised Alex Jones, with Carlson gushing that…

    “Jones is often mocked for his flamboyance, but the truth is he has been a far better guide to reality in recent years–in other words, a far better journalist–than, say, NBC News national-security correspondent Ken Dilanian or Margaret Brennan of CBS.”

    Aaron Blake summarizes Jones’ “guide to reality” here…

    • Claimed the federal government has turned “weather weapons” on its citizens.
    • Claimed the government has used chemicals to turn people gay — and that “the majority of frogs in most areas of the United States are now gay” because of the experiments.
    • Said people would “let [Robert] Mueller rape kids in front of people, which he did,” before walking back the assertion.
    • Promoted the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton and top aides were running a satanic sex-trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizza restaurant, then backtracked and apologized.
    • Suggested the following were inside jobs and/or false flag operations: 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, Charlottesville, the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the Brussels terrorist attack and the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
    • Falsely connected the Chobani yogurt company and its employment of refugees to child sexual assault and a rise in tuberculosis. (Jones later settled a defamation suit brought by Chobani.)
    • Was sued after Infowars falsely identified the shooter in the Parkland massacre.
    During divorce proceedings a few years ago, Jones’s own lawyers said the man people saw on Infowars was “playing a character.” “He is a performance artist,” one lawyer said.

    And let’s not forget that Alex Jones has been involved in multiple “Stop the Steal” protests, perpetuating Trump’s Big Lie about a “stolen” election.
    This is where FoxNews is at, and when you add Carlson’s alt-universe Patriot Purge nonsense, we’re watching this purported conservative turn into a nutter right before our very eyes, and it’s all for the ratings, and this is right where this GOP is at as well. Sigh.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  156. ‘Biden is planning to talk to Putin. Putin has claimed that he wants a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, among other things…’

    And Chamberlain talked to Hitler. Joe is so out of his league dealing w/Putin. If Joe believes any goofy threat of ‘economic sanctions’ –cobbled together by the likes of Blinken and crew– are going to stop Russian tanks from “liberating Ukraine” from the perils of Western decadence and return it to the Russian Empire Putin sorely misses, Ukraine is screwed. Europe will be cold to it, too- especially if Vlad just shuts off the energy links- pipelines, electricity and such- in the winter months. He’s got them by the short-and-curlies.

    Remember 1968- when Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia? I was in Europe in August of ’68 and recall the summer chill of it well. Per wiki: “The United States and NATO largely ignored the situation in Czechoslovakia. While the Soviet Union was worried that it might lose an ally, the United States had absolutely no desire to gain it. President Johnson had already involved the U.S. in the Vietnam War and was unlikely to be able to drum up support for a potential conflict in Czechoslovakia.

    Biden disastrously bumbled America out of Afghanistan just a few months ago [Remember the $85 billion in equipment abandoned] — and has little support to drag the U.S. or push a wary NATO he stiffed into another conflict. Putin’s holding the winning hand against this putz– [always a pair of deuces, too] ‘tanks’ to basic geography. And time. Both on his side.

    Joe has no credibility in dealing w/Putin. He ain’t Corn Pop. Russia is a country that rolled tanks over the frozen bodies of their own countrymen battling Adolf and endured unspeakable hells –so Joe’s not going to spook ex-KGB Vlad with words. If Putin wants Ukraine returned to the Russian Empire, he’ll take it on his own schedule. And if he rolls, it’ll be a green light for Xi to plan the ‘liberation’ of Taiwan as well when they orchestrate the invitation in. America is supposedly going to ‘defend’ Taiwan, too. You want to go to war with China over Taiwan now with the collection of stumblebums in the Pentagon, at State and in the WH?? Nope. Time is on China’s side, too.

    Joe can’t even correctly recall his Arab–Israeli history, confusing the ’67 Six-Day War with the Yom Kippur War of 1973 during the WH menorah lighting celebration for Hanukkah, claiming he went to Israel during the Six Day War to act as a liaison. During the Six Day War, Biden was a 25 year-old in his second year of law school. He’s a national embarrassment.

    Between Xi and Vlad, the ‘Free World’ is leaderless. The West is screwed until this sad old man is put out to pasture.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  157. Eastern ukraine. Afganistan was a cake walk compared to the rest of ukraine and it borders on nato countries. Whats stopping you from picking up a rifle and go defend eastern ukraine besides guts?

    asset (848b0c)

  158. Afganistan was a cake walk compared to the rest of ukraine and it borders on nato countries.

    A 20 year cake walk went stale real fast.

    Whats stopping you from picking up a rifle and go defend eastern ukraine besides guts?

    Pfft. Feel free to be suckered to volunteer your own asset to keep Europe warm and snug; fool ‘US’ once; shame on you; fool ‘US’ twice, shame on We; fool US three times and we’re damned fools.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  159. @152-3 and 154,

    Thanks nk, and Jim too, for the recommendations. I have read a bit of Richard Deming, but not the others. I will check them out!

    JRH (52aed3)

  160. I don;t think Vladimir Putin will invade Ukraine unless he’s successful in instigating a coup in Kyiv – even a coup that, without help, could not last more than a few days at the most.

    The idea would be that the new government would invite Russia in. This is not strictly for legal reasons – there are reasons that are practical for this.

    Biden talking to Putin can only work to reduce Putin’s uncertainty – and that is not a good thing. Uncertainty as t what would happen is one very important thing restraining Putin.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  161. Like many others I like Tony Hillerman’s Navajo detective stories; like a few others, I also like his “The Fly on the Wall”, for its picture of statehouse reporters, fifty years ago.

    And I have started on Robert Galbraith’s “Troubled Blood”, which I bought to protest the way trans activists were treating J. K. Rowling. (I assume you know that Galbraith is the name she uses for her Cormoran Strike stories.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  162. One more conservative for JF: Ben Sasse:

    Sasse is considered politically conservative. The American Conservative Union’s Center for Legislative Accountability gives him a lifetime rating of 94.[46] The politically liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave him a 2019 score of 5%.

    Unlike George Will, Sasse would agree with Burke on the importance of religion to republics; he was, after all, the president of a small religious university. And a very successful president.

    (You might be able to learn from Sasse’s latest book.)

    Would some other commenters help JF on the question, please? I have other things to do today.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  163. Norcal,

    My comments finally got out of moderation. #40 was in response to one of your comments. #41 what is the other comment that was released from moderation if anyone wants to reply to them.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  164. Two peas in a pod:

    Chris Cuomo, who was fired by CNN for helping his brother Andrew fight sexual harassment charges, is now facing allegations of his own. The lawyer for Charlotte Bennett, one of the women whose allegations led to Andrew’s resignation as governor of New York, has a new client who says Chris is also a creep. Lawyer Debra Katz informed CNN that her client, a former “junior colleague” of Cuomo’s at another network, was sexually harassed by the anchor. The woman making claims said she came forward because she was “disgusted by Chris Cuomo’s on-air statements in response to the allegations made against his brother, Governor Andrew Cuomo.” Both unemployed Cuomo brothers have denied all allegations.

    Not many men seem able to handle significant power with any sort of wisdom/humility. They invariably end up believing their own publicity.

    Dana (174549)

  165. Tanny O’Haley,

    I’m sorry but I just looked through all of the spam, pending, and trash folders and didn’t see any comments from you. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry too because I know it’s difficult for you to comment. If you’d like to re-write them now, I’ll make sure to check those folders quickly to make sure nothing gets hung up.

    Dana (174549)

  166. RIP Bob Dole (98).

    Rip Murdock (25d26f)

  167. Bob Dole has passed away

    Dustin (0ee127)

  168. Would some other commenters help JF on the question, please? I have other things to do today.

    The folks over at The Dispatch in general, and French and Jonah in particular. It’s worth the annual subscription.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  169. Dana (174549) — 12/5/2021 @ 8:57 am

    I sent Patrick an email last night. Maybe he released them from moderation. They are comments number 40 and 41.

    Thank you

    Tanny O'Haley (de379d)

  170. R.I.P. Bob Dole

    Icy (6abb50)

  171. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/us/politics/bob-dole-dead.html

    The Nixon apologist who ‘tried to shut down the live television coverage of the Watergate hearings’ has died.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  172. RIP Bob Dole…and damn Ross Perot of 1996 he actually hurt the R ticket more in that year than in 92.

    urbanleftbehind (95c6b1)

  173. 🙄

    Dustin (0ee127)

  174. “The amount of hostility was shocking.”

    Yeah, sounds like epic virtue signaling on those younger-people’s part….and an inability to listen and actively consider what you were saying. It’s not too tough to understand that there are people out there who are immune-system compromised that shouldn’t take the risk…but it’s hard for people to get out of their thought-bubble. Good luck moving forward.

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  175. @nk and others. The New York Times book review is soliciting nominations for the best book of the last 125 years )i.e. since 1896 when it came under current management)

    Maybe some people would like to give them some variety – books that people actually like to read, or find worthy, like The Gulag Archipelago or Escape from Red China. There are probably some even more obscure books worth nominating.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/insider/why-we-want-readers-to-choose-the-best-book-of-the-past-
    125-years.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/24/books/best-book-vote.html

    CprrectionL: it may be too late to nominate anything (which I wanted not in hopes of success but to be a little more real) but at least you can vote for least junky and boring of the 25 finalists they pocked.. (they are all “classics”)

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  176. They are also all novels. (fiction),

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  177. “The folks over at The Dispatch in general, and French and Jonah in particular.”

    I agree…they certainly come from a conservative perspective and the comment section is quite civil. I may join in the New Year.

    I think it’s a bit harder to pick out strong conservatives in government right now because gridlock means all we see is posturing and not much of an agenda (there’s a need for a new Contract with America and a revitalizing voice). Trump’s influence isn’t helpful. He tends to make things about him, people who have slighted him, or just pot stirring. The GOP’s agenda is sporadic at best…yes, it’s anti-illegal-immigrant and for some sort of election reform…..but other than being skeptical about masks, being against CRT, still wanting to repeal Obamacare, being against economic regulation generally, and acknowledging that Biden stinks….I don’t see a really coherent conservative theme that is building to substantive change.

    But I also acknowledge that much of this depends on what conservative issues matter most to you. A primarily social conservative will have different priorities than a mainly economic conservative or a libertarian-leaning conservative. So there’s that…

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  178. 41. Tanny O’Haley (8a06bc) — 12/4/2021 @ 12:37 am

    It looks like at least a minority should not take the mRNA vaccines.

    It wouldn’t be mRNA vaccines specifically, but any vaccine that strongly stimulates the immune system in general.

    Of the two mRNA vaccines, the Moderna is much stronger. They were deliberately designed to be as strong as possible, in order to maximize the chances of FDA approval (but the spacing was cut as short as possible, although that is the opposite of ideal separation, in order to get approval as soon as possible – although they didn’t want to complete their application before Election Day 2020.)

    Moderna wanted to try half doses, at least for the second shot, but they wouldn’t let them.

    …my son-in-law‘s sister and her boyfriend were telling everyone that they should get vaccinated and that they were selfish if they didn’t get vaccinated. When I told her what happened to me and what the doctor said her boyfriend told me that…I was being a jerk and I was endangering everybody’s life among other things. The amount of hostility was shocking…

    Everybody wants to think that they got it right, especially since this is not supposed to be debatable.

    All this talk of censorship is very bad even though some deliberate misinformation and incredible balderdash is being spread. The people who have it right are actually being too cautious.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  179. Would some other commenters help JF on the question, please? I have other things to do today.

    Jim usually gets busy when he misrepresents George Washington and vaccine mandates. So I figured this must be another such caper.

    Here is the 2020 ratings from ACU:

    https://acu-ratings-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/ACU_Ratings_US-2020.pdf

    And here is the “Age of Trump” voting records:

    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/

    And here is a bonus conservative rating from GovTrack:

    https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/report-cards/2020/senate/ideology

    Using Sasse as a conservative benchmark you can then compare members of the senate who achieved higher scores and then compare that with how they voted with Trump. Unfortunately for Jim, it makes the case that Trump was far more conservative than he cares to admit.

    It is a real millstone for the compromise conservatives that post here that stick with the “best candidate that can win” plan. The more dedicated conservatives, one would think, would be incredibly pleased to have a president that a 94% conservative voted with more than 84% of the time.

    According to the data senators that are more conservative than Sasse voted with Trump even more often.

    I don’t know if this will help JF in the way you had hoped, Jim.

    I do have some advice for JF, though. Your life will be much better to just sit back and watch this echo chamber while waiting for JVW to post something interesting that deserves comments.

    BuDuh (9ca12b)

  180. “The amount of hostility was shocking.”

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74) — 12/5/2021 @ 11:45 am

    Yeah, sounds like epic virtue signaling on those younger-people’s part….and an inability to listen and actively consider what you were saying.

    It’s been drummed into them that they’re not supposed to listen.

    It’s not virtue “signaling,” it’s virtue itself. But even if the best policy were indeed for everyone to get vaccinated and a booster, it would be a still further leap to say that not doing that could seriously endanger other people. They’re not thinking; they’re listening,

    They can’t accept that personal experience might counter-indicate the vaccine because the messaging is that the standard advice is 100% right, and nothing must be allowed to contradict it because it will cost lives.

    Anytime anyone is given an imprimatur of infallibility, of course, their error rate is going to rise.

    It’s not too tough to understand that there are people out there who are immune-system compromised that shouldn’t take the risk…

    The issue with Tanny O’Haley is not being immune compromised, but having the immune system targeting the wrong targets. (the vaccinations ramp everything up – and so might a serious infection) There may be ways to handle it, but we are still in very primitive times for that. You need an antibody to the wrong antibodies I think, or something that gives a person more checks and balances.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  181. The Michigan couple sound like gun enthusiasts. Maybe another gun enthusiast gave them a place to stay for a few so they could get away from the screaming horde of reporters outside their home, dogging every movement.
    Maybe they all are doomsday preppers.
    There are gun owners who are seeing ammunition shortages as disconcerting and maybe even conspiratorial. They are prone to doing web searches for ammo at good prices, and might even think some batches from overseas that look cheap should be bypassed because they’ve possibly been salted with super hot rounds by intelligence services.
    Maybe this couple are part of that, it not illegal..

    Some parents were raised around guns, taught to handle them safely and shown how to access those weapons for self defense within the home at an early age. Parents of this type of lineage may assume that their children will behave in a manner similar to their own experience. If this is the case here then the parents thought wrong.

    Law enforcement would to have to show me something better before they ask me to convict the parents of anything.

    steveg (e81d76)

  182. DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 12/4/2021 @ 10:41 pm

    . If Joe believes any goofy threat of ‘economic sanctions’ –cobbled together by the likes of Blinken and crew– are going to stop Russian tanks from “liberating Ukraine” from the perils of Western decadence and return it to the Russian Empire Putin sorely misses,

    They are threatening also military assistance to Ukraine.

    I don;t think Putin is planning something without a coup, or at least a contender for the government. The difference with Czechoslovakia 1968 is not only that Czechoslovakia was not part of NATO but Czechoslovakia was part of the Warsaw Pact. But Ukraine is not allied with Russia.

    The coup can be stopped. It was in Iraq with the assassination of General Soleimani, although Biden won’t try it that way.

    If Putin wants Ukraine returned to the Russian Empire, he’ll take it on his own schedule.

    Putin doesn’t want to start anything he can’t stop.

    And if he rolls, it’ll be a green light for Xi to plan the ‘liberation’ of Taiwan as well when they orchestrate the invitation in. America is supposedly going to ‘defend’ Taiwan, too. You want to go to war with China over Taiwan now with the collection of stumblebums in the Pentagon, at State and in the WH??

    That would lead to a big boycott of China, and maybe the deposing of Xi. (it happened to Mussolini and Khrushchev.)

    One thing I’m thinking of is that several countries might try to co-ordinate their invasions so that they happen at the same time. Still very risky.

    Joe can’t even correctly recall his Arab–Israeli history, confusing the ’67 Six-Day War with the Yom Kippur War of 1973 during the WH menorah lighting celebration for Hanukkah, claiming he went to Israel during the Six Day War to act as a liaison. During the Six Day War, Biden was a 25 year-old in his second year of law school. He’s a national embarrassment.

    Biden said Golda Meir was Prime Minister then, but his story may not \be true for 1973 either.

    Here’s his usual story:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/us/politics/biden-netanyahu.html

    Mr. Biden often recalls a visit he paid as a 30-year-old senator in the fall of 1973 to Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir, on the eve of an attack on Israel by a coalition of Arab states in what is known as the Yom Kippur War.

    Saying he was shaken by the scale of the threat to Israel, Mr. Biden has called that “one of the most consequential meetings I’ve ever had in my life.”

    He saw it coming??

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  183. Sadly, we lost Bob Dole and “Bob Dole” in 2021.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  184. If Joe believes any goofy threat of ‘economic sanctions’ –cobbled together by the likes of Blinken and crew– are going to stop Russian tanks from “liberating Ukraine” from the perils of Western decadence and return it to the Russian Empire Putin sorely misses,

    Well, Donald the Great thought economic sanctions would stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons after he withdrew from the JCPOA. What actually happened was that the Iranian regime announced that it considered itself no longer subject to JCPOA limits, and then accelerated its uranium enrichment, and became more bellicose. The sanctions hurt the population a lot more than the regime, and now there’s a more hardline president in Iran.

    Trumpistas sitll glorify their hero’s decision to leave the “disastrous” nuclear deal — failing to acknowledge the objective evidence that withdrawing has been more disastrous. They can’t abandon their core doctrines that anything Trump did must be better than anything Obama did; that the experts are always wrong while Trump is instinctively right; and that everything Trump did was by definition in America’s best interest because he loves America more than you!

    Those doctrines are believed by people who are smarter than Donald Trump, but for whatever reason they’ve given themselves wholly to the cult.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  185. The evidence on vaccines keeps mounting. Trump voters hardest hit.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  186. Trump voters hardest hit.

    If the libs are for it, you gotta be against it. Them’s the rules.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  187. Trumpista:

    Sasse Statement on Iran Deal
    May 8, 2018

    U.S. Senator Ben Sasse issued the following statement following the President’s announcement today.

    “The Iran deal has always been terrible. Today is a reminder that if you live by the Presidency, you die by the Presidency. We ought to be clear about this: Donald Trump isn’t ripping up a treaty; he’s walking away from Barack Obama’s personal pledge. Two and a half years ago, President Obama made a bad deal with Iran without support from Congress, and today President Trump is pulling out of President Obama’s personal commitment, and he doesn’t need Congress’s support to do so. American foreign policy makes lasting progress when it is led by the President, approved by Congress, and presented honestly to the American people.”

    https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2018/5/sasse-statement-on-iran-deal

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  188. @188. Iranians ain’t Russians.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  189. RIP Bob Dole…and damn Ross Perot of 1996 he actually hurt the R ticket more in that year than in 92.

    There was no way that Bob “Back to the 50s” Dole was going to win in 1996. Adding all of Ross Perot’s votes to Dole’s would still have Clinton [barely] ahead in the popular vote. Dole lost by 8.5%

    In 1992, GHWB lst by 5.5% with Perot taking almost 19%. Moving Perot’s vote to Bush would have had Bush winning in a landslide.

    Your assertion that Perot cost Dole more than he cost Bush is quite wrong.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  190. @191: Even #NeverTrump doesn’t say that Trump was always wrong. They DO say that Trump was always a turd.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  191. The evidence on vaccines keeps mounting. Trump voters hardest hit.

    Only because Trump lost. If it was President Trump pushing vaccines, all right-0thinking people would be against them, and legions of Nobel prize-winners would be publishing screeds on the unwisdom of mandates.

    Out problem is not Trump voters, per se, but the divisions in the country. There are those who would view the sun going nova as a positive thing, if only the other side could be blamed.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  192. Did you know that someone can be #NeverTrump AND #NeverBiden at the same time?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  193. “the tax collector for the welfare state.”

    –Gingrich on Dole.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  194. If it was President Trump pushing vaccines..

    But that is the problem innit, Kevin. Even out of office, Trump could’ve been pushing vaccines, but any “pushing” from him has been conditional or a snippet in a long word salad. Trump could have saved the lives of his own supporters but he’s a self-centered muhfuh who puts himself first always.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  195. But Perot’s vote was 50/50 R/d in 1992, whereas it was probably 90/10 R/d in 1996.clinton wins an electoral victory in 1992 and Dole wins an electoral victory in 1996 if the Perot votes are split by those differing percentages. At some point I’ll do a spreadsheet.

    urbanleftbehind (c2e573)

  196. Perot’s vote was largely a “balanced budget” vote in 1992 and a pure protest vote in 1996. I’d say you have the splits backwards, too. Do you have backup?

    In 1992, Perot beat Bush in Maine and Clinton in Utah. His top five states were Maine, Alaska, Utah, Idaho and Kansas — all strong GOP states in 1988, and all but Maine strong GOP states in 1996.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  197. Trump could have saved the lives of his own supporters but he’s a self-centered muhfuh who puts himself first always.

    The objection to vaccines is anti-Biden, not pro-Trump.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  198. 119: RIP Army Col. Edward Shames (99)

    From the obit:

    When Germany surrendered, Shames “and his men of Easy Company entered Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest where” Shames “managed to acquire a few bottles of cognac, a label indicating they were ‘for the Fuhrer’s use only,’ said the obituary. “Later, he would use the cognac to toast his oldest son’s Bar Mitzvah,” according to the [official] obituary.

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/04/politics/edward-shames-easy-company-world-war-ii-band-of-brothers/index.html

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  199. Trumpista:

    Sasse Statement on Iran Deal
    May 8, 2018

    That statement was made in 2018. In 2019 the Iranians ramped up their nuke program, rather openly.

    Within the Trump administration there was discussion of trying to get Iran to come to the table and make a deal not much different from the one that Trump abandoned.

    By the time Trump left office, the evidence was in that his withdrawal from the JCPOA had resulted in Iran being closer to having nukes.

    The Trump apologists ignore that little detail while they claim that Trump always made the very best choice for America, because he’s supposedly so very patriotic and instinctively wise. That’s the problem. They’re not willing to assess Trump’s actions with intellectual honesty — any more than Trump is willing to admit any fault or error in himself.

    Those are the same people who pretend that Trump would never, ever have done anything to empower the Taliban and let them take over Afghanistan — even though his Doha deal explicitly legitimized and materially boosted them, and their victory was pretty much an inevitable result of Trump’s emphatically stated intentions of getting out of Afghanistan.

    Trump claimed that the Taliban would be killing terrorists for us. And the Trumpers still insist that he just instinctively knows better than the experts.

    In November, Trump gave instructions to get completely out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa by January 20. It was the generals — with all their knowledge and experience — who warned him about vacuums. Yet I’ve seen Trumpers claim that it was Trump himself who had the wisdom to understand the problem of vacuums while all the experts with their knowledge and experience were always wrong.

    It’s basically a religious faith.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  200. You are very upset.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  201. I will point out that the Israelis agreed with Trump leaving the “deal” and still say that we should not reengage. Just because Trump was as random as the Drunkard’s Walk does not mean everything he did was wrong. You can take correct action even when it is ill-considered.

    No one should blame anyone but themselves for not getting a Treaty instead of an “agreement.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  202. You are very upset.

    You are making unfounded assumptions, while being personally insulting.

    But you love Trump, so it makes sense.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  203. It remains true that Iran began systematically violating the JCPOA in response to Trump’s withdrawal, and moved closer to nukes. But I see apologists claiming that his action was an unqualified win — which it was not.
    I’ve also seen reports that not everyone in Israel is in agreement on what the best strategy is.

    There’s also the fact that the America First Superpatriot intervened on behalf of a Turkish bank that the Justice Department was investigating for a money-laundering scheme to avoid Trump’s own sanctions on Iran. Looks like Trump was more concerned about not offending Erdogan than he was about stopping Iran from getting nukes.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  204. Fools become annoyed when they are not suffered gladly, Radegunda. We’ve got this particular guy, who all he ever has to say is “Trump tastes great and with one-third less calories he is less filling”, and then he calls the site an echo chamber (that’s what he called it) because most of us refuse to join in the “Great taste!”/”Less filling!” chorus.

    nk (1d9030)

  205. Covid news

    Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10654-021-00808-7

    steveg (e81d76)

  206. It is a real millstone for the compromise conservatives that post here that stick with the “best candidate that can win” plan.

    BuDuh (9ca12b) — 12/5/2021 @ 12:37 pm

    I learned a long time ago in software that the best product does not necessarily win. I believe this is also true in politics. I wish the best conservative who believes in the US Constitution would win. I wish people would take the small amount of time to study the US Constitution and know history. I wish people wouldn’t lie.

    From those famous philosophers The Rolling Stones, “I can’t get no satisfaction”.

    I can’t get no satisfaction
    I can’t get no satisfaction
    ‘Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try
    I can’t get no, I can’t get no
    When I’m driving in my car
    When a man come on the radio
    He’s telling me more and more
    About some useless information
    Supposed to fire my imagination
    I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
    That’s what I say
    I can’t get no satisfaction
    I can’t get no satisfaction
    ‘Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try
    I can’t get no, I can’t get no
    When I’m watchin’ my TV
    And a man comes on and tells me
    How white my shirts can be
    But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
    The same cigarettes as me
    I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
    That’s what I say
    I can’t get no satisfaction
    I can’t get no girl reaction
    ‘Cause I try, and I try, and I try, and I try
    I can’t get no, I can’t get no
    When I’m ridin’ ’round the world
    And I’m doin’ this and I’m signin’ that
    And I’m tryin’ to make some girl, who tells me
    Baby, better come back maybe next week
    Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak?
    I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey
    That’s what I say
    I can’t get no, I can’t get no
    I can’t get no satisfaction, no satisfaction
    No satisfaction, no satisfaction
    I can’t get no

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  207. Nk,

    you and Radegunda used to have better arguments and more interesting discussions before everything became pro or anti-Trump to you.

    Try and realize he isn’t the President anymore. And your Chicago just topped 1,000 murders for the year.

    Congrats.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  208. The most interesting legal threat that Trump faces is an Unexplained wealth order:

    An unexplained wealth order (UWO) is a type of court order issued by a British court to compel the target to reveal the sources of their unexplained wealth.[1] UWOs were introduced by sections 1–2 of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and are governed by sections 362A–362T of Part 8 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Persons who fail to account are liable to have assets seized after an enforcement authority, such as the National Crime Agency (NCA), makes a successful appeal to the High Court.

    The power of UWOs in fighting money laundering lies in their reverse onus principle,[2] however the orders are ineffective as soon as a defendant can provide an explanation for the source of their wealth. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the defendant then wins the argument. Information obtained in the context of an UWO cannot be used in a criminal proceeding.[3]

    A judge in Scotland is now considering whether to issue one to force Trump to explain how he got the cash to buy that Turnberry golf course.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  209. I’m not sure whether Trump being full of himself made him less filling, and I’m not sure Trumps overall competence compared to Biden/Harris tastes great because its such a low bar

    steveg (e81d76)

  210. nk — As a professional matter, I am now, unfortunately, required to deal with a Trump worshiper who actually claims that because certain things were done by such an “America First” president as Trump (his campaign slogan being dispositive, I guess), therefore they had to be the correct decisions for America. And then this same person complains that other people reviled Trump’s actions just because they were done by Trump.

    This person also strongly implies that no other president really cared to do the right thing for America first.

    That’s the kind of thinking that annoys me. But I’m not “upset” by it.

    Radegunda (06c699)

  211. @197. “the tax collector for the welfare state.”

    –Gingrich on Dole.

    “He can win but he can’t lead.”

    –Dole on Gingrich.

    No love lost betwixt them two– unless you tally up the number of wives.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  212. #214 Unexplained wealth order.
    Sounds like those Mayberry Counties who pull you over for a lane violation and confiscate all of your cash because you cannot provide documentation.

    I’m amazed at how many people who just don’t like Trump or wealth applaud efforts like this one.

    steveg (e81d76)

  213. BuDuh and JF only show up here to either promote or defend Trump. Never for anything else. And that’s a fact. For him to call the site an echo chamber is not irony. It’s farce.

    nk (1d9030)

  214. nk: “Trump tastes great and with one-third less calories he is less filling”… the “Great taste!”/”Less filling!” chorus.

    EXCLUSIVE: ‘Life long teetotaler’ Donald Trump ‘drank Miller Lite, liquor and champagne at 90s New York clubs’ where he chased ‘large-breasted European models,’ claims new book

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7189873/Life-long-teetotaer-Trump-drank-Miller-Lite-liquor-champagne-90s-New-York-clubs.html

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  215. #220
    My derison is aimed at the linked book not DCSCA
    ‘Life long teetotaler’ Donald Trump ‘drank Miller Lite, liquor and champagne at 90s New York clubs’ where he chased ‘large-breasted European models,’ claims new book

    Bill Clinton didn’t inhale either back in the 80’s and the whole whole world should and did give zero f’s.
    Ask Kamala how much edible cannabis she slams down a day. Its the only thing that explains that giggle, and at least it is a current day question

    I do agree that if Trump was still drinking Miller Lite today I might be able to raise more than a bit of scorn, but I’d be a hypocrite because I had a large Coors Light today

    steveg (e81d76)

  216. I am sorry to say that US COVID deaths have passed 800,000, and appear to be trending up again, averaging more than 1,000 per day during the last week.

    And that is in spite of so many big cities having vaccination rates that have cut the deaths in them sharply:

    So while the most-vaccinated states are significantly, incontrovertibly and increasingly better off than the less-vaccinated states, the difference is even starker at the county and city level — and even as many of these highly vaccinated counties also happen to be the most densely populated.

    We could have done much better; we can still do better. And we should learn from our failures.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  217. steveg – I wasn’t applauding the possible UWO against Trump; I said it was interesting — and you seem to agree on that point.

    I don’t know enough about these UWOs to decide whether they are a reasonable and effective effort against money laundering — but I do know that money laundering is a problem, and a serious one.

    (The Panama Papers shed some light on the problem — and annoyed “Czar” Putin.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  218. Tanny – Since you may be back, can you answer my earlier question: Should Republicans and Democrats work together to meet the growing attacks by China and Russia on our space forces? (You earlier seemed to say that you never wanted them to work together.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  219. Here’s a useful site that lets you compare nations on COVID.

    (They have data on many other subjects, too.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  220. @221. Just thought the ‘less filling/tastes great’ Lite Beer reference was interesting. Did a quick search to see if he’d done any Lite Beer commercials in the 80s– a la George Stenbrenner & Billy Martin– and that link popped up.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  221. I know that Avaaz would be doing the same thing to Liz Cheney if she had a golf course in Scotland. They’re a left-wing gadfly:

    Avaaz.org was co-founded by Res Publica, a “community of public sector professionals dedicated to promoting good governance, civic virtue and deliberative democracy,”[4] and MoveOn.org, an American non-profit progressive public policy advocacy group.[5][6] It was also supported by Service Employees International Union, a founding partner.
    ….
    Avaaz’s individual co-founders include Ricken Patel, Tom Pravda, former Virginia congressman Tom Perriello, MoveOn Executive Director Eli Pariser, Australian entrepreneur David Madden, Jeremy Heimans (co-founders of Purpose.com), and Andrea Woodhouse.[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz

    Tom Pravda?

    nk (1d9030)

  222. Tanny – Since you may be back, can you answer my earlier question: Should Republicans and Democrats work together to meet the growing attacks by China and Russia on our space forces? (You earlier seemed to say that you never wanted them to work together.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1) — 12/5/2021 @ 6:06 pm

    I have not looked at it. Just too many things going on in my life right now so I don’t have an opinion. With that said I believe that anytime Republicans and Democrats work together that the Democrats gain much more (97% to 3%) than the Republicans.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  223. I don’t know about Republicans and Democrats but there’s all kinds of indications that Trump is going to work with the Democrats to elect a Democrat governor in Georgia.

    Trump’s anger at Kemp is so deep that he has at times lauded Abrams while attacking the governor. Speaking in Georgia earlier this year, Trump said of Kemp, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”

    nk (1d9030)

  224. Thomas Massie: US Congressman condemned for Christmas guns photo

    A US congressman has faced a barrage of criticism after he posted a Christmas photograph of his family posing with military-style rifles, just days after a deadly school shooting.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59543735

    Memo to Tommy Gunner: there’s a reason airlines pull their ads for a period after there’s a crash.

    “From the evidence, I believe his wisdom must walk hand and hand with his idiocy. His emotions must rule his brain. He must be a warlike creature who gives battle to everything around him, even himself.” – Dr. Zaius [Maurice Evans] ‘Planet Of The Apes’ 1968

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  225. Bob Dole’s long recovery from his World War II injuries* did not stop him from telling jokes all through his political career. (Usually privately.)

    Or from publishing two collections of political jokes, after he retired. I have this one, and have enjoyed it greatly over the years.

    Sample:

    A heckler once tossed a cabbage at William Howard Taft during a political speech. He paused, peered at the vegetable, and then placidly said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I see that one of my opponents has lost his head.”

    There are probably a few historical mistakes in the book — I know of one — but don’t consider that a great defect, in a collection of jokes.

    (*As I recall, one of his arms was so badly injured that he was unable to tie his own ties.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  226. Tanny – Well, I hope that we can agree that we should judge these things first, by whether America gains.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  227. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 12/5/2021 @ 5:55 pm

    If you want to talk about money laundering, you might be more interested in figuring out why certain individuals have created an auction house that is selling “vintage” video games for millions of dollars and they are run by the same people that started the vintage coin scam in the 1980s.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  228. Tanny,

    Thank you for your detailed response regarding how the people you know have fared against Covid. It’s even more impressive when I realize that typing is difficult for you.

    I’m over Covid now and free to mingle, according to my doctor. Apparently, the loss of smell goes on after one ceases being infectious.

    My sense of smell is roughly 50% back.

    Do you mind sharing what protocol the people you know followed to regain their senses of smell?

    norcal (d9c78c)

  229. 206. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/5/2021 @ 4:26 pm

    No one should blame anyone but themselves for not getting a Treaty instead of an “agreement.”

    Iran didn’t want a treaty, and indeed, you can’t really have anything stronger with the current Iranian regime.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  230. 212. Well, when you consider all the instances of shoplifting in the country, and you want to estimate what percentage of them are smash and grabs, when you round the number to the nearest percent, the percentage of smash and grabs is 0%.

    I think that’s what AOC was saying, plus that some of the reported smash and grabs are not smash and grabs, but just coincidence.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  231. norcal (d9c78c) — 12/5/2021 @ 7:03 pm

    The Zelenko protocol from frontlinemds.com. If you’re from the left or not religious that’s the crazy Nigerian Penecostal female doctor who believes in demon possession whose practice is in Texas. There you go.

    You go to their website and sign up for a telehealth appointment with a doctor from your state to make it legal and if the doctor determines you need the Zelenko protocol they send you everything you need. The last couple I know who used it said it cost $400 each. He is 72 with afib and serious cardiovascular disease and she is 67. They could both barely get up out of bed though he was worse and his cardiologist wanted to send him to the hospital for a ventilator. She is not anti-vaccine, but anti-Covid vaccine. She told me that she did not want to put her husband on a ventilator because according to her nine out of 10 people on a ventilator die and she did not want to give her husband a death sentence. I asked her why she hadn’t used this protocol and she said the doctors won’t prescribe it and the pharmacys won’t fill it where she moved to in North Carolina. I gave her this website and within a week they had the protocol and within three days her husband who could barely get out of bed was going shopping and putting away groceries and she was bagging leaves in the front yard. Before the protocol they had positive PCR tests and after the protocol they had negative PCR tests. Most of the people I know who’ve taken this protocol were not this sick and took it early after they got symptoms.

    Since I have not gotten Covid even though I’ve been exposed three times and once to a couple I talked to for over an hour face-to-face and she gave me a big hug before she left. Then three days later she gives me a call and says you need to get tested because they tested positive. Because my family is deathly afraid of getting Covid I’ve had 12 PCR tests. In this case I had to do two because apparently the CDC said get the test within 3 to 5 days and the Los Angeles County public health department says 7 to 10 days. I wonder what happens if you get the test on the sixth day ? Both tests came back negative.

    I am not a doctor and my experience with this is strictly anecdotal, not personal, and is not an approval or an advertisement. It’s just informational because I was asked a direct question.

    Looking at the time I started and the current time this took me 48 minutes to compose and correct. I hope I got everything. I think I’m getting better.

    Tanny O'Haley (8a06bc)

  232. @norcal,

    Glad you escaped the worst of it. Fingers crossed the sense of smell recovers fully soon.

    lurker (59504c)

  233. Iran didn’t want a treaty, and indeed, you can’t really have anything stronger with the current Iranian regime.

    1. Explain to them the US policy about wars with nuclear-weapons states.
    2. Then point out that they are walking away from a existing treaty that says we won’t do that otherwise.
    3. There is no 3

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  234. I don’t know about Republicans and Democrats but there’s all kinds of indications that Trump is going to work with the Democrats to elect a Democrat governor in Georgia.

    He already did that with both senators. How many times does he get to kick over the board? Charge him with treason, in DC, and see what the jury decides.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  235. “He can win but he can’t lead.”

    –Dole on Gingrich.

    Especially with Dole’s RINO foot-dragging.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  236. I did not vote for Dole in 1996, and I am happy with that.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  237. @242. Always found Dole’s constant use of the third person when referring to himself to be strange. You can almost hear him muttering to the nurse when born; when asking for his divorce; exiting a taxi cab or bargaining with the Almighty on his exit strategy, saying: “Bob Dole wants out!”

    Norm MacDonald’s impression of ‘Dole’ on SNL was hilarious- and spot on, too.

    https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/norm-macdonald-cold-opening/n10910

    https://uproxx.com/tv/bob-dole-norm-macdonald-snl-impersonation/

    Even Dole appreciated it:

    ‘WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) – Former U.S. Senator Bob Dole is remembering the late Norm Macdonald for his comedic talents. Macdonald portrayed the senator from Kansas on Saturday Night Live. The two met about a week after Dole lost the 1996 election. “Norm @normmacdonald was a great talent, and I loved laughing with him on SNL,” tweeted Dole.’

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  238. Wonder if the dipstick in the white house has checked the oil level.

    mg (15c28b)

  239. Tanny @237. No succubus? Bummer.

    Look, those quack cures are just faith healing with medications for props. They play the odds that the patient is not terminally ill in the first place and that he will recover naturally. Personally, I’d use chicken soup and aspirin and, for those who drink, a double shot of grape brandy as needed.

    nk (1d9030)

  240. Fauci uses chickenschiff.

    mg (15c28b)

  241. When you see fluvoxamine in the cocktail, you know you’re being shucked. Fluvoxamine is a mood improver. An SSRI. Helps with being depressed and worried. Add an anti-inflammatory, have your medical practice in a state where it’s hard to suit for medical malpractice, have all your assets in your wife’s name, and you’re in business.

    nk (1d9030)

  242. Great affectionate amusement, nk.
    lmao

    mg (15c28b)

  243. I also do not trust Fauci. He is not a scientist, he is a bureaucrat. What made two administrations keep him on as the face of the fight against the pandemic? He knows where the bodies are buried? He controls the succubi? That’s as good as it gets in DC?

    nk (1d9030)

  244. Our political fanatics may want to look at this primer into Georgia politics, which is going to be really interesting in 2022 and have national ramifications, like it or not.

    https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/david-perdue-is-running-for-georgia-governor-now-what/7ALKXLF6ARCWXNNRALTDLDDBUA/

    Appalled (1a17de)

  245. Quite a bit has come out about the parents of the boy in Pontiac, Michigan. They asked them to take them home. He probably had the gun in the backpack while he was there with them in the principal’s office or whatever, but nobody knew. They said if they didn’t agree to counseling in 48 hours they would contact child protective services.

    BIG MISTAKE on the part of the school. That probably triggered the shooting. He was there and that put him under time pressure.

    Boy explained note that he can’t stop thought and please help referred to a video game.

    After reports of the shooting, his mother texted him “Don’t do it” or some words like that (illogical because if they heard reports of a shooting, he had already done it) and his father went home, looked for his gun, which was in his bedroom in an unlocked drawer, found it missing and called the police saying it was probably his son.

    Their lawyers had facts wrong. Their flight did not look like just a flight from notoriety, They withdrew $4,000 cash from ATM and shut off their cellphones. Artist who helped them says did not know a warrant was out for their arrest and when he found out he called police. (pther interpretations are possible)

    Both he and his wife had DUI in 2005, and his mother wrote bad checks – resolved witout jail time

    Fathe had an 18 year old son from a previous relationship that lasted 6 or 7 years – he married his wife almost immediately after they broke up and mother of other child had difficulties with him later.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  246. 249. nk (1d9030) — 12/6/2021 @ 5:51 am

    What made two administrations keep him on as the face of the fight against the pandemic?

    For Trump: Removing him wold look political ad he can ignore him if he wants. For Biden: Keeping him and saying he is his chief medical adviser (on the pandwmic only?) is political.

    Both wanted to avoid being accused of distorting the facts for political reasons.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  247. I am trying to understand why having a part of the Omicron virus resemble something from the common could lower resistance.

    Anyway it is reported to be both more infectious and less serious. Seems to me a possible response is to welcome Omicron and hope it displaces Delta.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  248. Stria as turned into a narco state, exporting mostly amphetamines to the Arab Middle East, but may be expanding into other drugs according to the New York Times:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/world/middleeast/syria-drugs-captagon-assad.html

    Illicit speed is now the country’s most valuable export, far surpassing its legal products, according to a database compiled by The Times of global captagon busts.

    In recent years, the authorities in Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have seized hundreds of millions of pills, most of them originating from one government-controlled port in Syria, some in hauls whose street value could exceed $1 billion, according to law enforcement officials…

    ,,,,More than 250 million captagon pills have been seized across the globe so far this year, more than 18 times the amount captured just four years ago.

    Even more concerning to governments in the region, the Syrian network built to smuggle captagon has begun to move more dangerous drugs, like crystal meth, regional security officials say…

    …Captagon was originally manufactured by a German pharmaceutical company as a stimulant to treat attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy. In the 1980s, users in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states started taking it recreationally to get an energy boost, banish fear and stay awake to study for exams, work, party or drive long distances.

    Its white pills were stamped with two crescents, giving it the Arabic nickname “abu hilalain,” or “the one with two moons.”

    After it was found to be addictive, it was banned internationally in the late 1980s. But to continue feeding the gulf market, illicit captagon production took off, including in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, a hub of hashish production and a stronghold of Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group that is now part of Lebanon’s government.

    While the pharmaceutical Captagon contained the amphetamine fenethylline, the illicit version sold today, often referred to as “captagon” with a lowercase c, usually contains a mix of amphetamines, caffeine and various fillers. Cheap versions retail for less than a dollar a pill in Syria, while higher quality pills can sell for $14 or more apiece in Saudi Arabia.

    After the Syrian war broke out, smugglers took advantage of the chaos to sell the drug to fighters on all sides, who took it to bolster their courage in battle. Enterprising Syrians, working with local pharmacists and machinery from disused pharmaceutical factories, began making it.

    Syria had the needed components: experts to mix drugs, factories to make products to conceal the pills, access to Mediterranean shipping lanes and established smuggling routes to Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq.

    As the war dragged on, the country’s economy fell apart and a growing number of Mr. al-Assad’s associates were targeted with international sanctions. Some of them invested in captagon, and a state-linked cartel developed, bringing together military officers, militia leaders, traders whose businesses had boomed during the war and relatives of Mr. al-Assad.

    Captagon labs are scattered across government-held parts of Syria, according to Syrians in areas where the drugs are produced — in territory controlled by Hezbollah near the Lebanese border; outside the capital, Damascus; and around the port city of Latakia.

    Many of the factories are small, in metal hangars or empty villas, where workers combine the chemicals with mixers and press them into pills with simple machines, according to two Syrians who have visited them. Soldiers guard some facilities. Others bear signs declaring them closed military zones…

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  249. More scientific evidence on face masks:

    Wearing face masks and maintaining social distance are familiar to many people around the world during the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Evidence suggests that these are effective ways to reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, it is not clear how exactly the risk of infection is affected by wearing a mask during close personal encounters or by social distancing without a mask. Our results show that face masks significantly reduce the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to social distancing. We find a very low risk of infection when everyone wears a face mask, even if it doesn’t fit perfectly on the face.

    (Emphasis added.)

    I don’t like wearing masks, but I am willing to follow the best scientific evidence available, for myself, and for others I may encounter.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  250. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/12/russia-hoax-whitewash-era-begins-3.php

    Why won’t the prestige press come clean on its role in the Russia hoax? Crisis management consultant sketches out the deterrents in his Wall Street Journal column “The media stonewalls on the Steele dossier.” Dezenhall frames the basic problem this way, in terms of incentives:

    The Pravda media has an agenda that won’t stop for the truth.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  251. A fairly large breakout on a cruise ship where all individuals were vaccinated.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  252. https://therightscoop.com/watch-pack-of-chicago-youth-swarm-city-bus-driver-beating-kicking-and-stomping-him-until-cop-slowly-steps-in/

    Chicago teens doing what Chicago teens do when they know the leftists running government won’t prosecute them.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  253. 17 out of 3,200 is a “large breakout”? That’s a 0.5% case positivity rate, none of whom had serious adverse symptoms. This is an example of the vaccines working.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  254. The video here is why Jake Tapper is one of the best in cable news. Well done.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  255. Ill gladly eat some crow, Kev. It would have taken a 33% Clinton/67% Bush split of Perot votes to result in a Bush electoral reelection (274 to 264, pop vote 52.3 M to 51.5 M). Dole would have needed 99% of Perot votes to beat Clinton 278 to 260 (with a popular vote loss margin of -280,000, 47.48 M Clinton to 47.20 M for Dole). Pennsylvania was the last stand in both scenarios.

    urbanleftbehind (2b8b29)

  256. Not a problem. I’ve had my share of crow-eating. It’s not like this is rocket science.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  257. I see that Chris Cuomo is dropping his SiriusXM gig. Maybe the brothers can retire to that island that Epstein isn’t using any more.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  258. This is an example of the vaccines working.

    People never see it that way. I am always hearing that the flu vaccine is NFG because it never covers the strains that are spreading.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  259. I don’t like wearing masks, but I am willing to follow the best scientific evidence available, for myself, and for others I may encounter.

    The thing about exponentials is that when you reduce the exponent the numbers get smaller rather quickly.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  260. Off-topic:

    Already crippling their economy with the Great Firewall, China is instituting more data restrictions that remove even more information from the system. They are now formally choosing to lie to themselves. The end is not far.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  261. Biden’s fascist DOJ going after Texas yet again. This time for redrawing maps that don’t maximize leftist voting power.

    NJRob (7b9806)

  262. @2

    Am I the first commenter here to have Covid?

    norcal (d9c78c) — 12/3/2021 @ 4:56 pm

    I’ve had it before I had my shots.

    I didn’t have the usual symptoms, but I was totally knackered. I didn’t leave my bed for 3 days and was so devastatingly tired for 7 days. Never experienced tiredness like that before.

    whembly (1a398e)

  263. @267

    Biden’s fascist DOJ going after Texas yet again. This time for redrawing maps that don’t maximize leftist voting power.

    NJRob (7b9806) — 12/6/2021 @ 1:51 pm

    Didn’t SCOTUS ruled these cases are non-justicable in the last few years?

    whembly (7c17c7)

  264. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/6/2021 @ 1:21 pm

    They are now formally choosing to lie to themselves.

    Just now?

    The end is not far

    I wouldn’t say so, but Xi Jinping has now created a system that has a high chance of not outlasting him. Give it 14 years

    No more rotation in office, and no successor. This creates high vulnerability of an end.

    Xi has not left the country since corona started.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  265. Xi has not left the country since corona started.
    I’d love to have him over for tea.

    mg (15c28b)

  266. Nunes goes from unofficial Trump water-carrier to official paid Trump water-carrier, with the transition made easier for him by gerrymandering.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  267. https://nypost.com/2021/12/06/nyc-employers-must-soon-mandate-proof-of-covid-19-vaccine-de-blasio/

    DeBlasio doing everything he can to turn Gotham into Snake Pliskin territory before he leaves.

    NJRob (fccf69)

  268. That you think 17 is out of 3200 when they altered all vaccinated and would not have come into contact with each other.

    They all needed a negative test to get on the ship.

    Norwegian Cruise Line has one of the most stringent immunization policies in the industry, requiring that all passengers, including children, and crew members take antigen tests and be fully vaccinated before boarding. Children who are not eligible for a vaccine are prohibited from traveling.

    But still it spread rapidly in just a week.

    Thankfully the fear is greater than the reality.

    NJRob (fccf69)

  269. Yes they did Whembly.

    NJRob (fccf69)

  270. When they were all vaccinated*

    NJRob (fccf69)

  271. They were all tested before entering and exiting the ship, and twice during the cruise. They made three stops in Central America before arriving in NO, but it’s still possible that passengers and/or crew were infected prior to embarking.
    No one of import has credibly claimed that the vaccine would the stop the spread in its tracks. Reduce it, yes. Stop it, no.
    The low positivity rate and lack of adverse symptoms is a favorable outcome, and the passengers and crew can thank the vaccines for it.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  272. 274. NJRob (fccf69) — 12/6/2021 @ 4:03 pm

    Thankfully the fear is greater than the reality.

    It’s not fear. It;s the principle which they call “an abundance of caution” which, this time, the fficials, despite taking some extreme measures, are trying to tamp down, because they don’t want to take other extreme measures.

    All the evidence goes to show that Omicron is less bad, not more bad, than delta. They just can;t rigorously prove it, nd they argue, that infections could be mild in South Africa because 90% of those people who have not been vaccinated are probably immune (for these purposes they pay attention to non-purposeful acquired immunity.

    Everyone also knows Omicron originated with one [1] immunocompromised individual, probably with HIV, but they throe in maybe this happened in animal reservoir (it would look far different) or that it spread in some population where nobody is being tested, and did not escape until this point.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  273. I read something that can explain the distinction between more contagious and giving more serious disease. A varient can be more contagious because it survives better in droplets in the air. And this is probably because it is more positively charged, enabling some constituents included in the droplets to better protect it. Delta is more positively charged than what went before, and Omicron even more so.

    A lot of this was determined by mathematical modeling, adjusting the modeling till they got something more in line with reality. It requires a lot of access to computers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/01/science/coronavirus-aerosol-simulation.html

    It was printed on today’s newspaper (Tuesday, December 7, 2021 New York Times Science section

    …The mucins, for example, did not just wander idly around the aerosol. The negatively charged mucins were attracted to the positively charged spike proteins. Charged atoms such as calcium fly around the droplet, exerting powerful forces on molecules they encounter.

    Dr. Amaro speculated that the mucins act as a shield. If the virus moves too close to the surface of the aerosol, the mucins push them back in, so that they aren’t exposed to the deadly air…

    ….This discovery may help explain how the Delta variant became so widespread. Delta’s spike proteins have a more positive charge than those on earlier forms of the coronavirus. As a result, mucins huddle more closely around them. That attraction could potentially make the mucins a better shield.

    Every now and then, one of the simulated coronaviruses flipped open a spike protein, surprising the scientists. “The Delta variant opens much more easily than the original strain that we had simulated,” Dr. Amaro said…

    ….Dr. Amaro and her colleagues are making plans to build an Omicron variant next and observe how it behaves in an aerosol. They want to wait for structural biologists to work out the three-dimensional shape of its spike proteins before getting started. But just looking at the early findings about Omicron, Dr. Amaro already sees one important feature: “It is even more positively charged,” she said.

    Because Omicron’s spike proteins are even more positively charged than Delta’s, it may build a better mucin shield in aerosols. And that may help make it even more transmissible.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  274. Biden warns Putin in video call that U.S., allies will take ‘economic and other measures’ if Russia escalates conflict with Ukraine

    I was hoping for sterner stuff. Even Jimmy Carter threatened the USSR with war if they screwed around in the Middle East.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  275. Moving tanks or helicopter groups from Poland to Ukraine would send a clearer message.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  276. Remember Pearl Harbor.

    mg (8cbc69)

  277. Remember Pearl Harbor.

    Putin does.

    And today, Joe asked him to remove the missiles from Cuba or he’ll blockade Bermuda.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  278. 273. Re: De Blasio’s vaccine mandate:

    He said he was doing it because he doesn’t want people to evade the already-existing mandates by getting a different job, and to get ahead of Omicron. (he’s posturing, although it’s real too with him. But he’s posturing because he is planning to run for Governor and hopes this will be seen by some people as a good thing. He’s posturing because he doesn’t concern himself with details or practicalities or whether this will be upheld in court. He is posturing because he says he wants New York City to be the first community in the country to do this. Whether he can actually command this or not.

    His term is running out so he can’t wait. I’m sure that’s why he put in the December 27 deadline – and for two [2!] completed Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations at that! (not just an initial dose, as previously)

    He wants to appear to be the most proactive in fighting Covid. Or the most loyal to what seems to be the “best” conventional public health thinking. (he’s joining in with what is sort of like the Listerine school of medicine – if it hurts, or if people don’t like it, it must be good.)

    He came out with this, not even noticing that Omicron is probably not bad, and that in two weeks they will probably acknowledge that.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  279. Biden likes to take the middle ground.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  280. I said @255 on 12/6/2021 @ 7:28 am

    Seems to me a possible response is to welcome Omicron and hope it displaces Delta.

    This thought has been echoed (or rather anticipated) by Bret Stephens of the New York Times:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/06/opinion/michigan-roe-dole.html

    Bret: To be totally frank, Gail, I’m struggling to see good news these days, except for a hope that the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus might end up proving more transmissible but less deadly than past variants. The result could be that it will, in essence, vaccinate the unvaccinated world by infecting them, and help bring the most deadly part of the pandemic to an end. But that might just be my wishful thinking getting ahead of the facts.

    Gail: Um, suspect you’re a tad overoptimistic.

    I said that about (mild cases) vaccinating the unvaccinated too, earlier,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  281. The original SARS (2007 article)

    https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2007/03/the-sars-scare.html

    IN A MATTER OF MONTHS in early 2003, severe acute respiratory syndrome spread to 29 countries, killing nearly 10 percent of the people it infected. No drug could stop SARS, and the disease propagated wildly through the ranks of healthcare workers. One patient, a “super-spreader,” infected 143 people, including every one of the 50 doctors and nurses who treated him. Eerie scenes of Chinese cities being disinfected by spray trucks and Canadian doctors in full biological containment gear flashed on television screens around the world. At the height of the epidemic, one Canadian infectious-disease expert who had come down with SARS herself predicted that the virus would spread around the globe: “If we don’t have a vaccine—yes, we are all going to get it,” she told Canadian television. Her opinion was shared by many that spring. With symptoms resembling those of a common cold or garden-variety flu, SARS frequently escaped diagnosis, aiding its spread. And once the symptoms did become known to the public, every cough in a subway or a plane was suspect. Then SARS became a super-spreader of another sort, a scourge of national economies: it became a carrier of fear itself, with costs measured in billions of dollars.

    Ironically, in this age of high-tech medicine, the virus was eventually brought under control by public-health measures typically associated with the nineteenth century—isolation of SARS patients themselves and quarantine of all their known and suspected contacts—rather than a vaccine. But it was tools of the modern era, including high-speed communications and sophisticated computer modeling, that allowed epidemiologists at Harvard and in the United Kingdom to initially determine that such an approach could work at all. The relatively slow spread of the SARS virus as compared to flu made it more a warning to humanity than the full-fledged pandemic that was feared: had SARS been more infectious or incubated more rapidly, such old-fashioned containment methods would have failed.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  282. There are probably any number of more dangerous diseases than Covid, some even with vaccines, that nobody is paying any attention to (because they are rare)

    When someone has a cold they never test to see exactly what it is.

    I read an obituary in the New York Times (of a doctor or former doctor, at the CDC in Atlanta who died asaresult of falling down stairs) which ended as follows:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/science/sherif-r-zaki-dead.html

    “There are so many viruses and bacteria we don’t know anything about, that we don’t have tests for,” he added. “A hundred years from now, people will not believe the number of pathogens we didn’t even know existed.”

    That quotation is repeated from a 2007 article:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/health/02deat.html

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  283. Eighty years since Pearl Harbor — which makes it a good day to remind everyone of Roberta Wohlstetter’s brilliant study explaining why we were surprised by the attack: Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

    In the years since I studied it, I have come to believe that one additional reason we were surprised was that we, along with the British and The Dutch, saw the attack south toward the Philippines and what is now Indonesia, before the Pearl Harbor attack — and assumed that what we saw was the whole thing.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  284. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 12/7/2021 @ 5:15 pm

    I have come to believe that one additional reason we were surprised was that we, along with the British and The Dutch, saw the attack south toward the Philippines and what is now Indonesia, before the Pearl Harbor attack — and assumed that what we saw was the whole thing.

    Pearl Harbor was treated, after the attack, almost as if it was the whole thing or the main thing.

    Japan attacked Pearl Harbor to keep the United States out of the war taking place elsewhere. Or out of the fighting, at any rate.

    Byy the way, the biggest contributor to the Carter presidential center was one of the people most;y responsible for Pearl Harbor. He was for attacking more in China, rather than atacking Russia and personally flew to Mussolini to make sure Japan could join the Axis.

    https://www.voltairenet.org/article30028.html

    …Sasakawa was also arrested in 1936, accused of having organized a crime syndicate in China, but he was soon released. In parallel with these mafia activities that intertwine with the activities of the Japanese diplomacy [1], Sasakawa tried to strengthen his influence in the Japanese political circles. In 1939, in an effort to consolidate the alliance between Italy and Japan, he met with Mussolini whom he enthusiastically described as the “perfect fascist and dictator”. Being an admirer of the “Duce”, he had his militias march in black uniforms. In 1942 he was elected as a member of the Diet, the Japanese parliament. Its program, ultra-nationalist and militarist, served the economic interests of the “lords of the war”, and basically demanded the intensification of military operations in South-Eastern Asia…

    ….US President Jimmy Carter runs with Ryoichi Sasakawa, who was his main financing source for his post-presidential political campaigns and programs….

    ….The Sasakawa Foundation similarly co-sponsored, along with the Jimmy Carter Foundation, the “Sasakawa-Global 2000”, a farming program directed to ten African countries [14]. A close friendship between the former US president and the Japanese godfather was the origin of this philanthropic collaboration….

    ….Ryoichi Sasakawa died in 1995 without the so much coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

    Start if footnote 1:

    ] Contrary to the thesis of American historiography*, World War II did not last from 1941 to 1945, nor from 1939 until 1945, as European historiography presents it, but from 1931 until August 17, 1945. It did not begin in Europe with the invasion of Poland by the troops of Adolf Hitler’s Reich in September 1939, but in the Asian border. In 1931, Japan invades the Chinese province of Manchuria.

    Not really, Every history I know tells you about the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 (and a subsequent expansion into more of China in 1937) but that cannot be said to be the start of World War II, since it was a war limited to China.

    And American historiography mostly uses the dates 1939 to 1945 – it’s just that describing wars the United States was involved in, and casualties, the year 1941 is used for the start. But World War II itself goes back to September 1, 1939.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  285. Inside the headquarters of the World Health Organization (WHO), there is a small monument dedicated to the memory of Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Japanese war criminal during World War II. In the picture, a security guard of the organization kindly poses next to the statue of Sasakawa. The plaque reads: «A friend of the World Health Organization».

    Another interesting thing:

    Footnote 3:

    The regiment 731 of the Japanese imperial army settled in the Chinese city of Harbin in 1931. The prisoners’ camp of Harbin served as a laboratory for experimentation on human beings. Japanese scientists used Chinese prisoners and, from 1942 on, they also used American and Soviet prisoners in experiments trying to determine if human resistance to certain mortal diseases had to do with the “race” of the ill ones. Three thousand human beings were used as guinea pigs and had horrible deaths caused by typhus, the bubonic plague, cholera and syphilis in the experiments of the Japanese Mengel whose real name was ShiroIshii. When the Soviet Red Army freed Harbin, the last surviving “laboratory human beings” were gassed and the Japanese tried to erase any evidence of such experiments in the Camp 731. Shiro Ishii returned to Japan. The American secret services offered him his freedom in exchange for the results of his experiments in Harbin. Shiro Ishii peacefully dies in 1959 and he was never bothered for his past.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  286. The New York Times contradicts itself in a single article:

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/08/world/asia/peng-shuai-china-censorship.html

    First, the censors quickly expunged Ms. Peng’s allegations, which she posted on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter….Even as the censors broadly muted discussions, they were careful to leave some references to Ms. Peng. They kept Ms. Peng’s account on Weibo, but made it nearly invisible by removing it from search results. They disabled comments on Ms. Peng’s posts, and on other older articles that mentioned her name.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  287. https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/wait-did-trump-just-expose-a-colossal-security-crisis

    On today’s podcast, we discuss Donald Trump’s oddly casual revelation that he believes Russia stole our hypersonic technology research—and then that research got into China’s hands. Isn’t this the biggest story ever? And why is Biden giving Putin what he wants with a big summit? And why are Democrats losing Hispanics? Give a listen.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)


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