Patterico's Pontifications

10/29/2021

Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:53 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

A tale of two Foxes…

Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe’s reason for not getting the COVID vaccine:

I, as a 36-year-old woman with no underlying conditions, have a 99.97 percent chance of survival against Covid. So I was on the fence because it didn’t make sense to get vaccinated for a virus that is not a threat to my life, nor one that I fear. But now, I’m doubling down as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden’s tyranny, because now it’s a fight for freedom. Now it’s a fight against tyranny in America and that’s what this is all about. We are literally fighting right now for the future of this country.

Fox News host urges viewers to get a COVID vaccine:

Fox News host Neil Cavuto, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week, returned to the air on Sunday to urge viewers to get vaccinated—hours after Fox contributor Lisa Boothe bragged that she is not getting the shot in some kind of twisted protest of the Biden administration. Cavuto, who has multiple sclerosis and is fully vaccinated, said the shot probably stopped him from getting severely ill. “It’s not about left or right, not who’s conservative or liberal. Last time I checked, everyone, regardless of political persuasion is coming down with this,” he said. “Life is too short to be an ass. Life is way too short to be ignorant of the promise of something that is helping people worldwide… Stop the deaths. Stop the suffering. Please, get vaccinated.”

Coming to Cavuto’s defense and condemning the death threats he received after imploring viewers to get vaccinated:

Second news item

Tribal warfare:

As probably will surprise no one, the polarization spiral between the left and the right has only gotten more intense in the last three years. Most alarming is the growing acceptance of political violence as a justifiable method for achieving political goals. A survey in 2019 found that approximately one-fifth of partisans in both parties believed that violence against the opposing party would be at least “a little” justified if their party lost the 2020 election. Between 2020 and 2021 the share of students surveyed who said violent protest was “never acceptable” dropped from 82% to 76% and at most elite schools it was even lower.

…The Hidden Tribes study, published in 2018…surveyed 8,000 Americans in December 2017 and used a statistical technique to identify groups of people who had similar core beliefs. They found seven groups. The one furthest to the right they labeled the “Devoted Conservatives.” This group makes up 6% of the population. Its members are “deeply engaged with politics” and hold “strident, uncompromising views.” Devoted conservatives see themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat from the far left. This group was clearly overrepresented in the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

The group furthest to the left were the “Progressive Activists.” This group, which makes up 8% of the population, is “highly sensitive to issues of fairness and equity, particularly with regards to race, gender and other minority group identities.” Progressive Activists talk frequently about “power structures” and how they cause and maintain inequality. They are the most active of all groups on social media. This group is clearly overrepresented in campus protests and in mass marches for progressive causes.

Although the Devoted Conservatives and Progressive Activists make up just 14% of the US population, they wield enormous influence on American political discourse as they passionately express their hatred for each other—despite their unexpected similarities. It may not surprise you to learn that the Devoted Conservatives were the whitest of all seven groups (88% white), but would you have expected that the Progressive Activists were the second whitest (80%)? Likewise, it may not surprise you to learn that the Progressive Activists—who were the most highly educated—reported the highest annual income, but would you have guessed that the second wealthiest group was the Devoted Conservatives?

[Ed. This is an excerpt from a report by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff (from Persuasion). Sign up and you too can receive thoughtful and challenging writing like this.]

Third news item

Challenging “wokeness”:

Another sign of this dis-enlightenment: the modern fashion that treats stereotyping as sophisticated analysis. We’re told much about a vague monolith of white people ever ready to circle the wagons and defend white interests. Robin DiAngelo’s best-selling “White Fragility” is Exhibit A of this trope, and her latest book, “Nice Racism,” includes a chapter titled “Why It’s OK to Generalize About White People.” But the existence of racism does not, as DiAngelo suggests, make it valid to propose that there is a kind of undifferentiated body of white people with indistinguishable interests.

White America consists of myriad groups and individuals, whose actions and non-actions, intentional and not, have a vast range of effects whose totality challenges all thinking observers. Writers like DiAngelo, who wield enormous influence in our current discourse, encourage the assumption that white people act as a self-preservationist amalgam. This notion of a pale-faced single organism stomping around the world is a cartoon, yet smart people hold this cartoon up as an enlightened way of thinking, and it has caught on.

I also suspect I am hardly alone, when hearing the term “systemic racism,” in quietly wondering how useful it is to use the same word, racism, for both explicit bigotry and inequality, even if the latter is according to race. In his similarly best-selling “How to Be an Antiracist,” the Boston University professor Ibram Kendi begins by defining a “racist” as “one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or expressing a racist idea.” He then defines an “antiracist” as “one who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.”

Fourth news item

If Trump is your standard of measure, you’ve given your hand away:

“He is just not in any way the kind of toxic waste dump that Trump became,” said Matt Bennett of the center-left group Third Way. “I would guess that even if Biden isn’t over 50 [percent public approval] next year, you’re going to see him campaigning with a ton of congressional Democrats.”…

One Democratic strategist who manages House and Senate races said that given Biden’s dismal polling, he would advise his candidates not to get anywhere near the sitting president.

“There’s just no evidence that Biden is a net positive in the suburbs,” he said.

But Biden, so far, has not been shunned. In Virginia, where Biden beat Trump by more than 10 percentage points last year, many of the state’s most prominent Democrats participated in a photoline with the president Tuesday, including five House Democrats from across the state.

Fifth news item

False flag, my ass:

The Fox icon has previously suggested Jan. 6 was a possible FBI set-up, through critics have “dismissed this idea as a conspiracy theory,” writes Newsweek. On Wednesday, Carlson said he believes the documentary “answers a lot of the remaining questions from that day.” The trailer says the project will tell “the true story behind the War on Terror 2.0 and the plot against the people,” writes Vice News.

To which Liz Cheney said just shut-up already:

Sixth news item

Let’s see this in every high school across the nation:

A group of about 40 dads who roam the campus of Southwood High School and refer to themselves as “Dads on Duty” say they have the momentum to take their efforts nationwide.

“No matter what side of the political end that you’re on, we all have a love for children,” LaFitte said. “We all have a love for doing what’s right.”

With the high school’s permission, the group of dads showed up after 23 students were arrested in a rash of fights. The students said there hasn’t been another incident since.

“We stopped fighting and people started going to class,” one student said.

“You ever heard of ‘a look?'” another added, describing the firm stares from the men.

It was the dad looks and the dad jokes that helped turn things around, the men said.

“Nothing is more important than being a father,” LaFitte said.

“So just to be here makes a big difference,” another dad Tracy Harris added.

Never, ever underestimate the powerful presence of a dad.

Seventh news item

Ah:

The Lincoln Project took credit for a stunt in which a group of people wielding tiki torches in the style of a 2017 “alt-right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, showed up outside a Glenn Youngkin event.

“Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginians what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican Party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it,” the Lincoln Project, a political action committee made up of ex-Republicans, said in a statement.

Before the source of the stunt was known, former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s campaign portrayed the group as genuine supporters of his Republican opponent.

Eighth news item

To each his own, I guess:

A social media influencer defended herself Wednesday after she was criticized for sharing photos of herself posing in front of her father’s open casket.

In the photos, Jayne Rivera, 20, was wearing a fitted, black one-sleeve blazer dress as she stood by her father’s coffin, which was adorned with an American flag. She posed with her hands in prayer in one picture.

Rivera…told NBC News in an interview that she “understood the negative reception,” but clarified that the photos were taken “with the best intentions in a manner my father would have approved with had he still been alive.”

“Everyone handles the loss of a loved one in their own ways; some are more traditional while others might come across as taboo,” the content creator said in a statement Wednesday. “For me, I treated the celebration as if my father was right next to me, posing for the camera as he had done on many occasions prior.”

And because Patterico appreciates photographic confirmation of a story:

Untitled

Ninth news item

Enes Kanter is at it again. Good on him:

Have a great weekend!

–Dana

382 Responses to “Weekend Open Thread”

  1. Happy Weekend!

    Dana (174549)

  2. So far, the American death toll from COVID is more than 765,000.

    That’s more than our death toll in either the Civil War or World War II.

    (In the Civil War, as in most of our wars up to World War II, the majority of deaths were from disease, not combat. The death toll from COVID is now greater than the combat deaths from all our wars combined.)

    The death toll from COVID is now greater than the populations of Wyoming, Vermont, DC, and Alaska, and will soon pass the population of North Dakota.

    One other way to look at at the death toll is — though it is now declining — that it is still roughly equivalent to five large passenger planes crashing and killing everyone on board, every day.

    As I have said before, we could have done much better. You don’t have to believe me, but you should believe a genuine expert, Deborah Birx.

    (For the record: I agree with Birx that Trump deserves a very large share of the blame, but when I said “we”, I meant just that. Almost all of us could have done better. And we still can, if we work together.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  3. I, as a 36-year-old woman with no underlying conditions, have a 99.97 percent chance of survival against Covid.

    Shorter: It’s all about me.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  4. The Lincoln Project

    Closer to the Lenin Project.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  5. For the good Dana, by way of apology for such downer comment — although I do believe we need to face facts on the COVID toll — some wonderful wildlife photographs.

    (The first is titled “Explosive sex”.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  6. That’s more than our death toll in either the Civil War or World War II.

    Facts don’t matter any more. All that matters is what the politicians say. SUre, well astill ahve the freedom to say 2+2=4, but if Trump says 3 or Bernie says 117, no one will lsiten.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  7. Prediction: By January, here will be two kids of people in this country: Those that are vaccinated, and those without jobs.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  8. Texas House to launch investigation into school library books

    The chairman of a Texas state House committee tasked with conducting investigations is launching a probe into books that school librarians keep on their shelves in the wake of a measure the legislature passed earlier this year to bar teaching of critical race theory in public schools.

    In a letter to the Texas Education Agency and unnamed school superintendents, state Rep. Matt Krause (R) asked school leaders to identify the number of copies of hundreds of specific books they have sitting on library shelves, and how much money the districts paid to purchase those books.

    …….. Krause asked the districts to provide information about books that deal with sexuality, sexually transmitted disease, AIDS and HIV and “material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”
    ………
    ……… Many deal with abortion, teen pregnancy, sex education or the life experience of young LGBT people. Others deal with the Black Lives Matter movement or the concepts of anti-racism.

    Also on the list are some more popular works, including:

    — “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” a 1967 novel by William Styron written as a first-person narrative of an 1831 slave revolt in Virginia.

    — “The Cider House Rules,” John Irving’s 1985 novel about a protagonist whose childhood mentor is an obstetrician who performs abortions.

    — “V for Vendetta,” the 1982 graphic novel by Alan Moore about a dystopian, post-apocalyptic England ruled by a fascist regime, which became a hit movie in 2005.

    — “The Handmaid’s Tale,” another dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood about a post-revolution United States in which women are subjected by a ruling class of men. Krause specifically asks about a graphic novel form of the book.

    — “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy” and “Between the World and Me,” an essay collection and memoir by author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

    The letter went to school districts without a vote from the full committee on investigations. State Rep. Victoria Neave (D), the vice chair of the committee, called the letter “politically motivated.”

    In a statement, the Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA) called the letter a “political overreach” and a “witch hunt.”
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (893091)

  9. The chairman of a Texas state House committee

    SMDH

    But this is just the way that people on the Right act out. People on the left are just as stupid. They do things like sic the FBI on parents at school board meetings or drum of a cancel mob on Twit, or whatever that thing is.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  10. All a Texas student needs to learn how to read is cattle brands and The Good Book.

    nk (1d9030)

  11. I look around us, and I cannot help but think of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again; but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    I am genuinely afraid of the future. Sleep well, friends.

    Simon Jester (71a49c)

  12. I’m shocked that Liz would embrace the whole cancel culture deplatforming language of the left! Shocked!

    frosty (f27e97)

  13. One, Ms. Boothe is a selfish idjit. She’s at war with her employer’s corporate policy, not Biden.
    Two, the Lincoln Project doesn’t just oppose Trumpists, they support Democrats and are now mostly Democrats. They’re basically working on McAuliffe’s behalf, a guy who was the hackiest of sleazoid Clintonian hacks. The group should’ve disintegrated after the election.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  14. Nice hit on that tribalism article, definitely going to do a dive on it.

    Here’s an update on the Trump train kkk act lawsuit related to that Biden bus last year…
    https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/29/trump-train-texas-highway-crash-police/

    It seems the local PD refused to act on 911 reports of trumpsters behaving badly. I suspect the lawsuit will not go well for them.

    Glenn (a56320)

  15. I thought I’d chime in with an account of Campus PC culture out of control; three University of Florida s professors have been forbidden from helping out with a voting rights lawsuit, possibly on direction of the governor, Saint DiSantis:

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/10/campus-pc-has-never-been-more-out-of-control#disqus_thread

    The theory is that it’s a state university and the professor’s lawsuit challenges the state, which is therefore in conflict with the interests of the State.

    Victor (4959fb)

  16. Hard to believe those Lincoln perverts had time to break away from raping children to cheat on another election.

    mg (8cbc69)

  17. comment image

    mg (8cbc69)

  18. The china flu vaccine doesn’t work well enough to be mandated.

    mg (8cbc69)

  19. All a chicago student needs to learn how to read is a loaded pistol and a 6-pack of Colt 45.

    mg (8cbc69)

  20. To have a government official say that a media correspondent should be taken off the air would be considered beyond the pale, if it was Trump.

    But it’s just Liz Cheney, so carry on.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  21. Worth Reading: This Atlantic article, “Four Measures That Are Helping Germany Beat COVID”.

    For instance: Free and accessible COVID tests.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  22. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/30/2021 @ 5:33 am

    For instance: Free and accessible COVID tests.

    I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

    frosty (f27e97)

  23. Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/29/2021 @ 10:12 pm

    The group should’ve disintegrated after the election.

    They’ve been the same group of lying grifters with the same goals all along. None of that’s changed. They’ve still got lying and grifting that needs to be done to push their agenda and cover the cost of their proclivities.

    frosty (f27e97)

  24. The Lincoln Project gets caught trying to throw VA to McAuliffe with a smear of his opponent and CNN attempts to turn Ted Cruz into a nazi for his stand against the corruption in the White House and DOJ.

    Are you paying attention yet?

    Onudman (96b2a0)

  25. Then how come it’s McAuliffe, his campaign, and his allies who are denouncing the tiki-tootsies in the strongest possible terms and not Young Trumpkin?

    nk (1d9030)

  26. #23 Perhaps we have different definitions of “free”:

    Germany usually makes it very hard for people to start a new business or change the use of a commercial building. So I have, over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, been astounded by how many brand-new testing centers have sprung up in unusual locations. Berliners can get themselves tested for COVID-19 in a Greek restaurant, in a historic church, and in the foyer of an opera house.

    As a result, the majority of people in German cities now live within walking distance of a testing center. They don’t need an appointment, and they get their results by email in less than 15 minutes. Until recently, they did not pay a cent for these “citizens’ tests.

    (Emphasis added.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  27. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/30/2021 @ 7:05 am

    Someone is paying for them. They didn’t drop out of the sky like mana from heaven.

    frosty (f27e97)

  28. Losing in the courts:

    Court Rules Against Religious Exemption for New York Healthcare Workers’ Vaccine Mandate
    ……..
    Three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled against plaintiffs in two cases brought by healthcare workers who said New York’s mandate violated their Christian beliefs. The state required all workers in hospitals and nursing homes to receive at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine by Sept. 27 or face termination.
    ……..
    Friday’s ruling means the cases will continue in lower courts, but the state’s policy will remain in place until they are resolved.
    ……….
    Supreme Court declines to block vaccine mandate for health workers in Maine
    The Supreme Court declined Friday to block Maine’s requirement for health care workers to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, even though it doesn’t contain a religious exemption.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented, saying they would have blocked the mandate. Two of the court’s other conservatives, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, said they agreed the court should not take the case, because it came on an emergency appeal without benefit of a full briefing.
    ………
    ……… (T)he state eliminated all non-medical vaccination exemptions in 2019. It said falling inoculation rates were causing communicable diseases to spread more rapidly.
    ………
    Federal judge tosses out Southwest Airlines pilots’ petition against vaccine mandate
    ………
    Texas District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn denied (the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association’s, SWAPA) request for an injunction, stating it was “premature” under the Norris-LaGuardia Act, a 1932 law that gives labor unions the right to organize and strike or use other economic means to influence management.

    SWAPA also had argued that Southwest violated the Railway Labor Act, alleging the airline failed to maintain a status quo during the ongoing “major” dispute between the parties. That dispute is a previous lawsuit filed by SWAPA involving claims of unfair labor practices during Covid. “The Court agrees that it lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the parties’ disputes as to the complained-of policies,” according to the ruling.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  29. We don’t know whether any of the COVID vaccines will have adverse long-term effects, and we can’t know, because they haven’t been in use long enough.

    We do know that COVID has long-term adverse effects, of which one of the most troubling is “brain fog”, the inability to think clearly.

    And it occurs to me that “brain fog” might explain some of the odder comments we see from time to time, here.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  30. https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/482174/#respond

    Biden regime wants to use taxpayer dollars to make illegal aliens millionaires. That’ll stop the invasion.

    NJRob (455209)

  31. @31. NJRobb, we are on the same page on this one. He’s also paying $80 million to Dylan Roof’s victims’ families because … wait for it … the FBI did not properly background-check him when he bought the gun. “What happened to qualifies immunity?” a lawyer might ask. “Nothing”, is the answer. “This is pure graft to the left-wing lawyers who worked and paid to elect him.”

    nk (1d9030)

  32. I, as a 36-year-old woman with no underlying conditions, have a 99.97 percent chance of survival against Covid.

    More of this binary choice simplistic crap. There are more outcomes than total death and total recovery. Lungs, hearts, brains, you want to avoid damage to those things.

    Unfortunately the same simplistic conversation surrounds the vaccine itself. There is no oxygen left for a nuanced discussion of vaccine longterm risks for kids. Since journalism isn’t about trust or information, and just about grabbing attention through outrage, it’s tough to have the bandwidth for another political debate about another non-political thing.

    Dustin (a145cf)

  33. “Now it’s a fight against tyranny in America and that’s what this is all about. We are literally fighting right now for the future of this country.”

    Literally it’s not about either of those things. History will have the final word.

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  34. This feels true.

    Most people — even at Facebook — think that the big problem with social media is that it makes people angrier than they might otherwise be, and more likely to believe false things. But our research suggests that online hostility isn’t a product of social media and algorithms. People who are angry when they talk about politics online are angry in offline political discussions, too. And when they share misinformation, it’s generally not because they are making a sincere mistake. It’s because they want to stick it to the people they hate, whether or not the actual complaint is true.
    […]
    In a recent article, we show that most people in the United States and Denmark agree that online discussions are much more hostile than offline discussions. The results of our study, however, suggest that it’s not the Internet that transforms otherwise nice people into angry trolls. People who are jerks online are jerks offline, too. We do find that the kind of people who are obsessed with politics are often frustrated, angry and offensive. But they tend to rant about politics in offline interactions as well.

    Who are these people? We find that the biggest factor associated with political hostility — online and offline — is status-seeking. Some people crave higher social status and try to intimidate others into recognizing them. Aggressive status-seeking is rooted in offline frustrations, which have been increasing since the 1980s, boosted in part by the 2008 global financial crisis and now the coronavirus pandemic.

    The jerks of the world just have a bigger platform to show everyone their jerkiness.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  35. Then how come it’s McAuliffe, his campaign, and his allies who are denouncing the tiki-tootsies in the strongest possible terms and not Young Trumpkin?

    nk (1d9030) — 10/30/2021 @ 6:37 am

    Considering the tiki-tootsies were already outed as DNC operatives running a false flag, the denouncement was little more than a staged event. Wrestlemania events are less scripted.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  36. Boston.com: An FDA advisor said we need to give kids vaccines to fully understand their safety

    “I do think it’s a relatively close call,” said adviser Dr. Eric Rubin of Harvard University. “It’s really going to be a question of what the prevailing conditions are but we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

    https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2021/10/26/fda-panel-backs-pfizers-low-dose-covid-19-vaccine-for-kids/

    The Hill: Vaccinated just as likely to spread Delta variant as unvaccinated: study.

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/579068-vaccinated-just-as-likely-to-spread-delta-variant-as-unvaccinated-study

    There are people who believe this vaccine (plus its 2nd dose plus all the boosters to come) should be mandated for employment, to participate in society and attend school.

    I believe they should have the freedom to choose yay or nay.

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  37. “I do think it’s a relatively close call,” said adviser Dr. Eric Rubin of Harvard University. “It’s really going to be a question of what the prevailing conditions are but we’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

    They just started testing on this age cohort in March of this year. That was seven months ago, and we know that the vaccines are effectively useless after 6-8 months. Because God forbid that we actually extend the trial period out to a year, in the face of new data that’s emerged in the last 2-3 months, so we can actually determine if they’re even viable or not at that point.

    No way are my kids getting this stuff; one of them has JIA, and we have to give her methotrexate to keep her flares down. We’ll pull them out and homeschool them before we give them rushed, front-loaded “vaccines” that don’t even work through two seasons.

    Wonder how long until the FDA starts up its Booster of the Month Club.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  38. The Lincoln Project is composed of professional campaigners who formerly worked for Republicans. Now that they are utterly toxic to the GOP they are attempting to curry favor with “moderate” Democrats, since they need jobs. Failing that they will feed off #NeverTrump with the so-called Lincoln Project, which is increasingly unrelated to any goals of the right.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  39. Then how come it’s McAuliffe, his campaign, and his allies who are denouncing the tiki-tootsies

    Because they got caught and the blame landed on McAuliffe. And they denounced it is such unclear terms …

    “What happened today in Charlottesville is disgusting and distasteful and the McAuliffe campaign condemns it in the strongest terms,” McAuliffe’s campaign manager Chris Bolling tweeted. “Those involved should immediately apologize.”

    …that a less-aware person might think they were denouncing the “Youngkin racists.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  40. “You ever heard of ‘a look?’” another added, describing the firm stares from the men.

    It was the dad looks and the dad jokes that helped turn things around, the men said.

    “Nothing is more important than being a father,” LaFitte said.

    Would this be an opportune time to return to all of that feminist academic nonsense about “toxic masculinity”?

    JVW (ee64e4)

  41. Unfortunately the same simplistic conversation surrounds the vaccine itself. There is no oxygen left for a nuanced discussion of vaccine longterm risks for kids.

    If I had a young child, I would probably go for the one-shot J&J vaccine for a number of reasons.

    1) It is one shot, always better with kids
    2) It is not mRNA, but a better-understood technique that does not involve co-opting some of the body’s cells to manufacture a protein.
    3) It’s not necessary to get the most effective vaccine for a child — nearly anything will be adequate.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  42. Someone is paying for them. They didn’t drop out of the sky like mana from heaven.

    It is a lot “freer” than 2 weeks in intensive care, also “free” to German citizens.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  43. ……… (T)he state eliminated all non-medical vaccination exemptions in 2019. It said falling inoculation rates were causing communicable diseases to spread more rapidly.

    States have been doing this for a while with childhood-disease vaccines, like MMR and chickenpox. The religious (and particularly the “personal belief”) exemptions are loopholes that make any mandate toothless. California eliminated them for all schools some time ago, and has gone further and sampled medical exceptions to see if they are being abused. (Spoiler: yes they have been, and some doctors have lost licenses as a result).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  44. The Lincoln Project is composed of professional campaigners who formerly worked for Republicans. Now that they are utterly toxic to the GOP they are attempting to curry favor with “moderate” Democrats, since they need jobs. Failing that they will feed off #NeverTrump with the so-called Lincoln Project, which is increasingly unrelated to any goals of the right.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 10:01 am

    Yeah they seem to have to be uglier, more nasty, bigger liars, to have a purpose for democrats.

    And of course, now that we know the nazi actors were democrats, who showed up literally saying they were with the GOP candidate, and the Mcauliffe’s campaign spent the day condemning the GOP candidate and even his voters for being nazis, what’s Reuter’s say? They say the neo nazi display was from a ‘republican group the Lincoln Project’.

    So the scam is pretty clear. LP will do awful things, and if it works, the press will say the GOP target was responsible. If it fails, the press will say the GOP’s Lincoln Project did it. There’s no risk to the democrats unless this scam is called out all the time.

    And all that does is lower the bar. It makes people like me a little more likely to vote for a bad republican.

    how come it’s McAuliffe, his campaign, and his allies who are denouncing the tiki-tootsies

    They literally painted GOP voters as these democrat actors. They injected nazism into this election. Spinning that into a positive for McAuliffe is crazy. I’m sorry, but it’s just nuts. McAuliffe should actually withdraw from the race over this. There’s no way we want someone like that to hold a position of trust, and this clumsy dirty tricks campaign is totally in line with McAuliffe’s career as a fixer for a dominant democrat politician. I very much hope he loses and everything thinks it’s because of the Lincoln Project.

    Dustin (a145cf)

  45. The Hill: Vaccinated just as likely to spread Delta variant as unvaccinated: study.

    The Lancet. Long a bastion of anti-vax. It’s where Wakefield published his MMR->autism lie.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  46. I very much hope he loses and everything thinks it’s because of the Lincoln Project.

    Oh, I’d be OK if they blamed Biden and his left-wing administration.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  47. Hmmmm, https://phys.org/news/2021-08-people-outrage-online.html

    “The team found that the incentives of social media platforms like Twitter really do change how people post. Users who received more “likes” and “retweets” when they expressed outrage in a tweet were more likely to express outrage in later posts. To back up these findings, the researchers conducted controlled behavioral experiments to demonstrate that being rewarded for expressing outrage caused users to increase their expression of outrage over time.”

    and …

    “Our studies find that people with politically moderate friends and followers are more sensitive to social feedback that reinforces their outrage expressions,” Crockett said. “This suggests a mechanism for how moderate groups can become politically radicalized over time—the rewards of social media create positive feedback loops that exacerbate outrage.”

    Good thing no “up votes” at Patterico….

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  48. Most people — even at Facebook — think that the big problem with social media is that it makes people angrier than they might otherwise be

    I’ve been online in one guise of another since the late 70’s and CompuServe’s Issues SIG. One thing that is clear, and I probably have done this too, is that people are less civil online than they are in person.

    Why? Not entirely clear. There is the lack of the fear of a punch in the mouth, of course, but it’s more than that. I think that empathy is hard when you aren’t face-to-face. I also think that the medium is too restricted; you cannot see facial expressions or body language that would otherwise inform you as much as the words they use. Statements can be taken in a different light than was intended all too easily, and people in an argument will often tend to assign the worst possible connotations to ambivalent words.

    Replacing human face-to-face interaction — or even phone calls — with social media limits the range of discussion markedly and most people don’t realize how much information they are missing.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  49. Regarding McAuliffe and the tikis — how many people have already voted? This once again demonstrates why long early voting periods are a bad idea. Move elections to weekends, running them Friday-Sunday to avoid Sabbath issues and get as many people as possible to vote with a common set of information.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  50. Here’s on small bit of good news:

    A German woman who joined the Islamic State group (ISIS) was sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison for letting an enslaved Yazidi girl die of thirst in the sun.

    During her time in Iraq, Jennifer Wenisch stood by while her then-husband and ISIS fighter tied up a Yazidi girl outside their house in scorching heat and left her to die of thirst, the court heard. The 5-year-old had been tied up as a punishment for wetting her bed.

    The little girl and her mother had been sold to the couple. When the girl’s mother began to cry, as she watched her daughter die, the man threatened to shoot her.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  51. @48: Yes, this too, which actually rewards a lack of civility and promotes tribalism. Pretty sure you could get the same results using monkeys.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  52. @51: Too light a sentence. I actually favor the death penalty for slave-holding.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  53. Good point about early voting. Now we know Terry’s senior campaign people will lie to our faces and do terrible things. We have a good idea that Terry isn’t fit to lead. So votes from a couple days ago didn’t have all the facts.

    It shouldn’t be such a big deal, but character is coming through at the end of the campaign quite a bit.

    Gotta ask: would Terry and these democrats dressed as tiki nazis cheat if they were counting ballots? I think they would, every chance they got, so if democrats are truly sick of Trump fans doubting the election outcome, maybe they should class it up a bit.

    Dustin (a145cf)

  54. Gallup: COVID-19 Vaccine Now Required for 36% of U.S. Workers
    The latest Gallup COVID-19 tracking survey finds 36% of U.S. employees saying their employer is requiring all its workers without a medical exemption to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The percentage has steadily increased each of the last three months, rising from 9% in July.

    In addition to those saying their employer is mandating vaccination, the Oct. 18-24 survey finds 39% of U.S. workers saying their employer is encouraging but not requiring them. This percentage has declined from 62% in July as those who say their employer requires vaccines has risen.

    Meanwhile, 25% of U.S. workers say their employer has not indicated a vaccine policy……

    More U.S. employees say they favor mandates (56%) than are opposed to them (37%). ……

    A combined 75% either strongly favor (45%) or strongly oppose (30%) them.……
    ……..
    Thirty percent of all U.S. workers are strongly opposed to employer vaccine requirements, and of these, 52% — equivalent to 16% of all U.S. workers — say they would be “extremely likely” to look for a job with a different organization if they disagreed with their employer’s policy on vaccine mandates.

    Forty-five percent of U.S. workers strongly favor employer vaccine requirements, and 33% of this group says they are extremely likely to look for a different job over disagreements about employer vaccine policy. That translates to 15% of all U.S. workers.
    ……..
    …….. Seventy-five percent of U.S. adults employed full or part time are vaccinated, and another 5% say they plan to be.

    That leaves 21% unvaccinated according to combined data from the September and October surveys……..

    …….. (V)accination rates lag most among blue-collar workers, among whom 56% are currently vaccinated, 5% plan to be and 38% do not intend to get vaccinated. The vaccination rates among white-collar, education and healthcare workers all exceed 80%………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  55. 35 percent of voters in new poll say 2020 election should be overturned
    …….
    The poll, conducted by Politico and Morning Consult, found that 22 percent of registered voters said the results of the 2020 presidential election should “definitely” be overturned, and 13 percent of those polled said they should “probably” be overturned.

    Forty-three percent of those polled said the results should “definitely not” be overturned, and 12 percent said they should “probably not” be overturned. Eleven percent of respondents said they remain unsure.

    Sixty percent of Republicans polled said the election results should definitely or probably be overturned, while 30 percent of GOP respondents said the vote should probably not or definitely not be overturned. Ten percent said they do not know.

    For comparison, only 16 percent of Democrats and 27 percent of independents said they think the election results should be overturned.
    ……..
    Roughly 1 in 4 Republicans polled — 23 percent — said they believe (it is very likely or somewhat likely the election results will be overturned) as did 18 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Independents.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  56. Candidates die, or get caught in porn shops, or say something really stupid. The Constitution suggests that voting should be on a particular day, particularly the presidential election:

    The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

    … although there is some ambiguity here.

    Also, there is this case on point: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1152639.html

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  57. During her time in Iraq, Jennifer Wenisch stood by while her then-husband and ISIS fighter tied up a Yazidi girl outside their house in scorching heat and left her to die of thirst, the court heard. The 5-year-old had been tied up as a punishment for wetting her bed.

    God, this is so horrific and sad, it’s just unimaginable. I want to know what happened to the husband, who was obviously calling the shots.

    Dana (174549)

  58. There is no provision for overturning an election. The election was over and finalized when the House and Senate accepted the Electoral Votes on January 6th. Something the Trump side understood all too well.

    Even if Biden confessed on live TV that he had orchestrated a rigged election, the election could not be “overturned.” There would be some pressure for impeachment, of course, but that would not necessarily result in Trump resuming the office.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  59. I want to know what happened to the husband, who was obviously calling the shots.

    From the same article:

    Wenisch’s husband, Taha al-Jumailly, is facing a separate trial in Frankfurt, with a verdict due next month. The deceased girl’s mother was kept as a house slave by Wenisch and al-Jumailly.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  60. Employment interview:

    Question 14: We are requiring all new employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Are you vaccinated against COVID? If not, are you willing to be so vaccinated before beginning work?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  61. Mastodon issues 30-day ultimatum to Trump’s social network over misuse of its code
    ……..
    In a post to the Mastodon blog, founder and CEO Eugen Rochko explained that the problem is not simply that Truth Social uses Mastodon, but that it does so while claiming ownership over the site’s code. People inspecting the code of the pre-launch site last week found it was very clearly using Mastodon’s code without acknowledgment.

    “The terms of service included a worrying passage, claiming that the site is proprietary property and all source code and software are owned or controlled by them or licensed to them,” he wrote. “Mastodon is free software published under the AGPLv3 license, which requires any over-the-network service using it to make its source code and any modifications to it publicly accessible.”
    …….
    This sort of license is common in open source software, which is provided free of charge even in many cases to large corporations, which are free to use and modify it — as long as they do so publicly and make their work part of the overall development of the tool. This has produced a rich environment of collaboration between people volunteering their time and companies whose engineers are essentially being paid to contribute.

    …….. The consequences of violations are not at all clear and depend on many factors. For instance, if a company were to use the open source software under a free license in order to avoid paying for an available paid license, a lawsuit might be filed seeking monetary damages for lost income. Or a suit could purely be motivated by a desire to keep the code open…..

    The sheer number of license violations out there means many will slip through the cracks, but the Trump social network’s highly public flouting of the license probably won’t. Rochko’s post says that if Truth Social doesn’t comply by acknowledging and posting the Mastodon-sourced code for review, their license to said code will be revoked on November 26 (30 days after a letter explaining all this was sent to Truth Social’s chief legal officer).

    “Someone using the code without a license would be infringing on our copyright,” Rochko told TechCrunch in an email. “The avenues for fighting copyright infringement would be open to us then.”
    ……..
    Related:
    Trump’s $300 Million SPAC Deal May Have Skirted Securities Laws
    ……..
    (Patrick Orlando, a Miami banker) had been discussing a deal with Mr. Trump since at least March, according to people familiar with the talks and a confidential investor presentation reviewed by The New York Times. That was well before his SPAC, Digital World Acquisition, made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month. In doing so, Mr. Orlando’s SPAC may have skirted securities laws and stock exchange rules, lawyers said.
    ……..
    SPACs aren’t supposed to have a merger planned at the time of their I.P.O.

    Lawyers and industry officials said that talks between Mr. Orlando and Mr. Trump or their associates consequently could draw scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Another issue is that Digital World’s securities filings repeatedly stated that the company and its executives had not engaged in any “substantive discussions, directly or indirectly,” with a target company — even though Mr. Orlando had been in discussions with Mr. Trump.
    ……..
    Securities lawyers said that any conversations between Mr. Orlando’s and Mr. Trump’s teams anytime before the I.P.O. in September might constitute an indirect discussion of a potential deal and so would have needed to be disclosed.

    “The prospectus broadly denies that any talks have taken place,” said Usha Rodrigues, a professor at the University of Georgia Law School and one of the leading academic experts on SPACs. “If they were in fact engaged in discussions at the time of the prospectus, that raises questions regarding a potential securities violation.”

    Some bankers said they disagreed with that interpretation.……
    ………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  62. That was seven months ago, and we know that the vaccines are effectively useless after 6-8 months.

    False. Effectiveness has been reduced, mainly because of Delta, not zero.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  63. That was seven months ago, and we know that the vaccines are effectively useless after 6-8 months.

    Define “effectively useless.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  64. Boston.com: An FDA advisor said we need to give kids vaccines to fully understand their safety

    It’s not like they have no data whatsoever (e.g. several billion doses worldwide in older folks), but in the end you cannot get those last few decimal points without actually doing it.

    Maybe they should try it on little African kids first?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  65. To be clear, John Eastman wasn’t just some academic pointyhead who wrote a paper positing a theoretical hypothetical situation, he was more actively involved than he let on with the Trump coup attempt.

    As Vice President Mike Pence hid from a marauding mob during the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, an attorney for President Donald Trump emailed a top Pence aide to say that Pence had caused the violence by refusing to block certification of Trump’s election loss.

    The attorney, John C. Eastman, also continued to press for Pence to act even after Trump’s supporters had trampled through the Capitol — an attack the Pence aide, Greg Jacob, had described as a “siege” in their email exchange.

    “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote to Jacob, referring to Trump’s claims of voter fraud.

    Eastman sent the email as Pence, who had been presiding in the Senate, was under guard with Jacob and other advisers in a secure area. Rioters were tearing through the Capitol complex, some of them calling for Pence to be executed.

    There are moments when pivotal decisions unalterably change course of history, and Pence’s decision to ignore Trump/Eastman and follow the Constitution and Electoral Count Act was one of those major decision points. Despite all the pressure, Pence didn’t buckle, sticking to the right choice.
    Jacob’s previously unpublished op-ed is here. The blame-shifting by Eastman is especially egregious. This riot was because of Trump (with the help of his legal “advisors” like Eastman), not Pence.
    Also, Eastman is the hyperpartisan who made the ridiculous claim about Kamala and her natural-born citizenship. Like his POTUS “client”, Eastman is not a good person.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  66. Define “effectively useless.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 12:27 pm

    Drastically reduces chance of getting a severe infection, but does not eliminate it.

    Like seat belts. Useless.

    Dustin (a145cf)

  67. Gottlieb would have been a way better administration Covid spokesman than Fauci.

    “We’ve seen 690 deaths in children under the age of 18. 150 kids ages 5-11,” says @ScottGottliebMD. “To put that in perspective before we had a vaccine for Chickenpox we would lose about 90 kids a year to Chickenpox.”

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  68. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 10:16 am

    Maybe. I’d need to see the numbers on that. A very small fraction of the people getting these tests would end up in intensive care and the tests only limit further exposure to other people that might happen after the tests and those people also have a low probability of needing intensive care. On the other hand, if every person in Germany was getting a test weekly those numbers add up.

    At least we agree that free is a bit of a obfuscation?

    frosty (f27e97)

  69. At least we agree that free is a bit of a obfuscation?

    You don’t actually have to take out your wallet and pay on the spot. Even if you do, and pay by credit card, the pain is diminished.

    But lots of things are “free” that aren’t really. That free coffee at work, for example. The only question is whether the lack of instant cost feedback is meaningful.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  70. I posted the story about the “social media influencer” because it was funny in a “you’ve got be kidding way,” and because it presents an apt observation about modern culture and how self-consumed people are with themselves. Of course, that in itself is nothing new, but social media provides the ultimate platform to put oneself front and center in every life event we all go through, to one degree or another. Birth, death, and everything in between. People never tire of seeing themselves as the center of attention.

    Dana (174549)

  71. Of course, that in itself is nothing new, but social media provides the ultimate platform to put oneself front and center in every life event we all go through, to one degree or another. Birth, death, and everything in between. People never tire of seeing themselves as the center of attention.

    Yeah, in a certain sense I feel really sorry for the young woman and am willing to give her a pass on that fantastically self-centered behavior. Everyone deals with grief in a different way and, frankly, this is probably the only way that the young lady knows how.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  72. Social media tends to amplify narcissism, and makes you responsible for all your associations and the actions of these associates. Jane liked Trump and you’re still friended? OMG!!

    Etc.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  73. According to this Daily Beast article, the FBI helped catch Jennifer Wenisch. If so, good for them.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  74. I agree overall with your take, JVW. However, there is something intrinsically sad about a young woman grieving her father with provocative photos of herself in front of his casket. I think we can say that yes, everyone grieves in their own way, while at the same time making an observation of that specific method of grieving and how it reflects society at large. I think the generation that grows up only knowing social media (don’t know if that’s X, Y, or millennials) and those that come after them will increasingly risk losing the ability to not be front and center during the inevitable events of life.

    Dana (174549)

  75. I simply cannot connect provocative photos with a dead father and the ensuing grief. It doesn’t compute with me. They have no relationship to one another and it’s bizarre.

    Dana (174549)

  76. I didn’t see the Carlson docudrama, but have noticed that most of the “January 6th was a false flag operation” people focus on two people in particular who were very active, were in videos, audio and photos exhorting people, they were inside the building, throwing stuff at police, tearing down barricades, instigating but never arrested or charged.

    I’m of the opinion that Former VP Al Gore’s docudrama has hurt the USA more than the Carlson one ever will, so I am unconcerned

    steveg (e81d76)

  77. One question about Ms. Rivera and glam shot in front of her dad’s coffin: What this nature or nurture? Was her dad a shallow selfish tw@t who passed his boorish behavior and sketchy parenting down to his attention-seeking daughter, or did she just happen to come out this way, resistant to her dad’s good parenting? Perhaps a little of both, but it doesn’t put her off the hook for this particular moronic decision.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  78. Gottlieb would have been a way better administration Covid spokesman than Fauci

    Gottlieb is a shill, I mean board member, of Pfizer.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  79. KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor: October 2021

    With the expected expansion of vaccine authorization to younger age groups in the coming weeks, the latest KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor indicates that vaccine uptake has slowed among 12-17 year-olds, with half of parents saying their teen has gotten vaccinated or will do so right away. About three in ten parents of 5-11 year-olds (27%) are eager to get a vaccine for their younger child as soon as one is authorized, while a third say they will wait a while to see how the vaccine is working. Three in ten parents say they will definitely not get the vaccine for their 12-17 year-old (31%) or their 5-11 year-old (30%).

    Parents’ main concerns when it comes to vaccinating their younger children ages 5-11 have to do with potential unknown long-term effects and serious side effects of the vaccine, including two-thirds who are concerned the vaccine may affect their child’s future fertility. With talk of possible school vaccine mandates, over half (53%) of parents are worried their child may be required to get vaccinated for COVID-19 even if they don’t want them to. Some parents also express concerns related to access or information-related barriers to vaccination, including larger shares of lower-income parents who are concerned about missing work to deal with children’s vaccinations (51%), having to pay out-of-pocket to get their child vaccinated (45%), not being able to get the vaccine from a trusted place (48%), or having difficulty traveling to a vaccination location (38%).

    The pace of vaccine uptake also appears to be slowing among adults, with 72% saying they have gotten at least one dose, the same share who said so last month. Partisanship continues to be a sharp dividing line in vaccine attitudes, including among fully vaccinated adults, with nearly four in ten fully vaccinated Republicans saying they are unlikely to get a booster dose when it’s recommended for them.
    ……..
    With the Delta surge abating in most of the country, the Monitor finds that about half the public has returned to their normal pre-pandemic activities and many expect to engage in regular holiday traditions, including a majority of parents who say their kids will be trick-or-treating this Halloween. Some groups remain more cautious, including Democrats, vaccinated adults, and Hispanic parents, one-third of whom say their children will not be trick-or-treating this year specifically because of concerns about COVID-19.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  80. Over 60 percent of Republicans plan to use Trump’s TRUTH Social: poll
    …….
    The Morning Consult/Politico poll of 1,999 registered voters found that 61 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of Trump voters plan to log on to the platform either “a lot” or “some” of the time.
    ……..
    When it came to Democrats, 72 percent said they don’t plan on using the site at all, while just 7 percent said they’ll use it a lot and 11 percent plan to use it some, the poll found.

    At the same time, just 30 percent of Independents plan to use the platform either a lot or some while 53 percent said they won’t use it at all, according to the poll.

    Of all voters, 15 percent said they’ll use the platform a lot and 22 percent said they’ll use it some while 49 percent said they won’t use it at all.
    ………
    See post 56 for link to poll toplines.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  81. One question about Ms. Rivera and glam shot in front of her dad’s coffin: What this nature or nurture? Was her dad a shallow selfish tw@t who passed his boorish behavior and sketchy parenting down to his attention-seeking daughter, or did she just happen to come out this way, resistant to her dad’s good parenting? Perhaps a little of both, but it doesn’t put her off the hook for this particular moronic decision.

    I think you could ask this question to the majority of under 35-year-olds today. I don’t know the answer but from perusing social media/IG/TikTok, etc., it’s clear to see that young people are enamored with themselves and are compelled to put it all out there. Protecting one’s privacy is a quaint notion, apparently.

    Dana (174549)

  82. Gottlieb is a shill, I mean board member, of Pfizer.

    True, but he’s also been consistently right and sensible about the pandemic and how to deal with it, more than anyone else I can think of. The worst thing he did for Trump was quit the FDA in April 2019, well before CV19 went down.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  83. #68 Scott Gottlieb’s book looks interesting. And has a 4.6 rating over at Amazon.

    It would be helpful if some of the commenters here — for instance, NJRobb, frosty and Obudman — would give us reviews of the book in a week or two.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  84. Mike Lindell Thinks ‘Every Person In The World’ Will Be Talking About His Multi-Day Thanksgiving ‘Marathon’ To Overturn The 2020 Election
    ………
    “I cannot wait to drop this Supreme Court case the Tuesday at 9 a.m. before Thanksgiving and the whole world is going to be watching all this unfold over Thanksgiving,” he told Steve Bannon on Friday (watch it above). “We’re going to do a marathon from Wednesday night of Thanksgiving all the way to Sunday.”
    …….
    Lindell thinks the marathon will be a conversation starter around the turkey day table and that it’s “going to be a uniting” experience, while Bannon opined it could lead to “fistfights.”…….
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  85. Dana – Of course you’re busy, but, if you have a minute or two, I’d be interested to hear which of those wildlife photos I linked to at #5 you like best.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  86. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 1:14 pm

    Exactly. Would you have a different opinion of those tests if you knew they costs $10, $100, or $1000? Would you feel differently if you knew where that money was going and where it came from? I would in both cases. For most people the answer seems to be no. That’s why someone can call a subsidy “free” and get offended if anyone questions it. The “it’s free” crowd has done a very good job of hiding the true cost of a variety of things that they are making all of us, and future generations, pay for.

    frosty (f27e97)

  87. Jim Miller @ 86,

    What interesting photos! Personally, I love the dueling reindeer (subject, aesthetic, composition). But I think the most strikingly powerful photo of the bunch is the one of the mountain gorilla. What a remarkable capture. Evocative, beautifully shot, wonderful composition. I’m impressed. The photographer knew what they were doing. PS, I just visited this specific photographer’s IG page, and yeah, I can confirm that he really knows what he’s doing. Great stuff.

    Dana (174549)

  88. social media provides the ultimate platform to put oneself front and center in every life event we all go through,

    I don’t understand the psychological imperative to make one’s life public all the time. I may be unusual in the degree to which I shrink from having a public profile, but I have plenty of relatives and acquaintances who don’t seek fame or desire much public attention.

    Not too long ago I was fascinated by someone who became a pop star in his early twenties, but began to get dubious about fame as soon as he had it. He was 23 or so when he said he had wanted to be famous, but came to realize it was a way of trying to compensate for something missing in his life — specifically, the father who had been mostly absent since he was maybe eight or nine years old.

    The group he was in disbanded, then revived rather accidentally a decade later, but almost didn’t because this one member was so reluctant to get back on stage. He went along with it (when it was expected to be just one small tour), enjoyed it for a few years, got wealthy, then bowed out, for understandable reasons.
    He was so firmly resolved to regain anonymity that he resisted much cajoling and perhaps some guilt-tripping to participate in anniversary events later on — though his mother sat down with the other moms for a chat in a documentary.

    Point is: I understand that guy, at least in this respect. The rejection of celebrity is really simpatico in a time when so many people think it’s the summum bonum.

    Radegunda (205f21)

  89. #88 Dana – I agree with you about the reindeer, and the mountain gorilla aesthetically — but, as a sentimental fellow, I like the chimps picture better than either, even though it is less impressive as a photo. (I hope that makes sense.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  90. I love my privacy (and anonymity) and make efforts to protect it. I don’t understand people who feed off fame and popularity and give people access to so much of their lives. I think part of this phenomenon is due to having grown up with social media and having a convenient tool to make everything public. But I also think it appeals to an inherent need for approval and acceptance, especially in teenagers. The latter group is particularly vulnerable to such a draw. When that sought-after approval and acceptance doesn’t come, it can be devastating, and with tragic results. It’s a weird sign-of-the-time conundrum: Becoming popular and getting the much-wanted approval and acceptance, one has to put their life out there. So when they do put it out there and acceptance and approval don’t follow – let alone popularity – there remains horrible devastation for the massively insecure to navigate. This is all-around unhealthy for young people.

    Dana (ae6596)

  91. Employment interview:

    Question 14: We are requiring all new employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Are you vaccinated against COVID? If not, are you willing to be so vaccinated before beginning work?

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 11:19 am

    “Depends. Is the company going to be paying for my membership in the Booster of the Month Club?”

    False. Effectiveness has been reduced, mainly because of Delta, not zero.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/30/2021 @ 11:39 am

    True. If your “vaccine” doesn’t prevent infections rates from increasing in highly vaccinated populations after 6-8 months, it’s not a vaccine. It’s a temporary prophylaxis.

    Define “effectively useless.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 12:27 pm

    Check every “highly vaccinated” country where case rates have risen after 6-8 months.

    Drastically reduces chance of getting a severe infection, but does not eliminate it.

    Like seat belts. Useless.

    Dustin (a145cf) — 10/30/2021 @ 12:51 pm

    Except when case rates increase, we can ignore those. That was the fault of a new variant, not our Magic Coof Juice.

    At least I don’t have to replace my seat belt on a quarterly-semiannual basis because it doesn’t perform its intended function anymore.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  92. FWO, you lost me when you scare-quoted vaccine, which is typical anti-vax talking point.
    The Lancet study, which makes it dubious because Lancet is involved, concluded that effectiveness went from 88% to 47%. That’s not “effectively useless”, particularly since the hospitalization and death rates are still a fraction compared to the un-vaxxed.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  93. On long sailing voyages (more than a month), scurvy was a terrible problem, sometimes killing more than half the sailors on a ship.

    Gradually, physicians figured out that it was caused by a deficiency and that it could be prevented by feeding sailors the right foods. One of the foods they experimented with was sauerkraut, which is not a bad choice, since it is high in vitamin C, and can last for months, even on sailing ships.

    But, there was a problem: British sailors were unused to it, and were not eager to eat this sour stuff. So, the famous Captain Cook solved that problem as follows:

    He had it served on the captain’s table, as if it were reserved for officers. The officers pretended to love it, and the men quickly wanted it too. (And often pretended to like the sour stuff.)

    Now, Factory Working Orphan will be disappointed to learn that the men had to keep taking this medicine regularly, that a single dose would be sufficient for just a few days. But those British sailors were stout fellows, and were able to put up with the taste, and the frequent doses.

    (Later the British navy began using sweetened lemon juice for its medicine, and that worked well, too. Perhaps we should give candy bars to the vaccine resistant, who, however briefly, are able to overcome their irrational fears.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  94. I just added a ninth news item: Enes Kanter is at it again. Good on him!

    Dana (174549)

  95. British sailors were unused to it, and were not eager to eat this sour stuff.

    Many years ago I spent some time in Germany, and when I went to visit different towns I wanted a cheap way to get some vegetables in my daily diet. I found pull-top cans of speck sauerkraut, i.e. with bacon, and I could eat the whole can before I moved on to the next town.

    British navy began using sweetened lemon juice for its medicine,

    What about the limes, as in “limeys”? But yeah, adding honey is much to be recommended.

    Radegunda (620b30)

  96. Jim Miller @ 90,

    I get that. It is a warm photo and has lovely dark tones. It just doesn’t move me like the gorilla photo.

    Thanks for the link. Those “sex explosion” groupers were something else. Who knew?!

    Dana (174549)

  97. FWO, you lost me when you scare-quoted vaccine, which is typical anti-vax talking point.

    Considering I’ve had more vaccines injected in to me in the last 20 years than you have, thanks to deployments when I was enlisted, plus the fact that all three of my kids have gotten their full schedule of shots, your “anti-vax” pejorative holds less water than a sieve.

    The Lancet study, which makes it dubious because Lancet is involved

    Funny, I never made a single mention of that.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  98. I’m curious, FWO: Did you protest when you were given vaccines/inoculations before deployment? I was talking to a former Marine who did several deployments and he didn’t object to being dosed repeatedly before leaving the country but objects strenuously to the COVID vaccine. Did fear of getting arrested or dishonorably discharged keep you from speaking out, or did you feel confident in the injections you were getting?

    Dana (174549)

  99. Now, Factory Working Orphan will be disappointed to learn that the men had to keep taking this medicine regularly, that a single dose would be sufficient for just a few days. But those British sailors were stout fellows, and were able to put up with the taste, and the frequent doses.

    Vitamin C is not a medicine, Jim, it’s a basic vitamin that the sailors were deficient in. It’s definitely not a vaccine, and I doubt Captain Cook told them initially that 1-2 lemons would fully protect them from scurvy.

    Are you really comparing a vitamin to a vaccine?

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  100. Those “sex explosion” groupers were something else. Who knew?!

    The audience of the movie The Little Mermaid? I have seen a parody in which Ariel tells Eric “the facts of life” as they pertain to mermaids. (Yeah, I’m kidding.)

    nk (1d9030)

  101. #96 Radegunda – Limes came later, when the British were unable to get enough lemons from Spanish possessions, because Spain was allied with Britain’s enemy, France. West Indian limes are not as high in vitamin C as most lemons, so they weren’t as good a solution. And the way the British navy treated their limes further reduced the level of the vitamin.

    Some of the final work on scurvy wasn’t done until World War II, when there were experiments on volunteers (conscientious objectors in Britain, prisoners in Iowa) to deliberately induce scurvy — and then cure it with Vitamin C. (I believe the volunteers all recovered fully.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  102. #100 FWO – “Are you really comparing a vitamin to a vaccine?”

    Sure. They are both medicines used to prevent specific diseases.

    Now here are my questions for you: Do you agree that more than 750,000 Americans (and more than 5 million world wide) have died from COVID? Do you think that high a death toll might call for emergency measures? If so, are there any that you would approve of, that are not being done, in the United States, right now?

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  103. I’m curious, FWO: Did you protest when you were given vaccines/inoculations before deployment?

    You mean the ones that had been used in some form for decades prior to getting them?

    Did fear of getting arrested or dishonorably discharged keep you from speaking out, or did you feel confident in the injections you were getting?

    They never had to threaten us to take vaccines that had been in use for decades. But there’s one that happened not even 20 years ago which resonated enough that over 260,000 DoD members–most of them civilian, but not all–still haven’t gotten a single COVID shot.

    That was the anthrax vaccine. There WAS a huge outcry against THAT one after thousands of service members came down with adverse effects. Those who refused to take it had their careers ruined for doing so, and the DoD denied for years that there was a problem with it. Eventually, the reports on adverse effects got so bad–one GAO survey of Air Guard and Reserve members in 2002 reported an 85% reaction rate–that a judge forced the DoD to stop mandating it. Thankfully, that mandate had been dropped after I went in, and that was the only vaccine I turned down when it came time to ship out.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  104. Sure. They are both medicines used to prevent specific diseases.

    A vitamin is not medicine–it’s a nutrient found in every naturally occurring food on the planet.

    Now here are my questions for you:

    Thanks, I’ll pass.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  105. #105 FWO “[Vitamin C] is a nutrient found in every naturally occurring food on the planet.”

    Now you are just being silly.

    Check for yourself: Find a container of milk or yogurt, and look at the list of ingredients. Then get some rest, and exercise.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  106. Jim — thanks for the full story on lemons & limes. I had wondered long ago “Why limes, not lemons?” But assumed it had to do with availability.

    Radegunda (620b30)

  107. #105 FWO “[Vitamin C] is a nutrient found in every naturally occurring food on the planet.”

    I said vitamin, not Vitamin C. Any reason you’re making up what I actually wrote?

    There’s plenty of vitamins in milk and yogurt, too. That doesn’t make them medicine.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  108. Gottlieb is a shill, I mean board member, of Pfizer.

    And Fauci is a shill, I mean a life-long bureaucrat.

    The difference? Pfizer is in the business of dealing with these problems, the bureaucracy is in the business of maintaining the problems.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  109. Exactly. Would you have a different opinion of those tests if you knew they costs $10, $100, or $1000? Would you feel differently if you knew where that money was going and where it came from? I would in both cases.

    Hard to say what the cost is. I know that you can buy a test kit at CVS for maybe $40, and there is a markup there, of course. Then again “cost” includes distribution, application, blah blah blah, and government tends to add costs overmuch. But maybe in Germany they’re more efficient.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  110. I said vitamin, not Vitamin C. Any reason you’re making up what I actually wrote?

    He is, you aren’t. He’s bringing your claim from #100 forward and you’re trying to whitewash it.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  111. Wildlife photos: I like the reindeer one because it doesn’t look like a photo. I’m not entirely convinced that it is!

    Radegunda (205f21)

  112. He is, you aren’t. He’s bringing your claim from #100 forward and you’re trying to whitewash it.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/30/2021 @ 6:25 pm

    He said I wrote Vitamin C when I wrote vitamin. Here’s the actual sentence in case you missed it:

    A vitamin is not medicine–it’s a nutrient found in every naturally occurring food on the planet.

    Where did I write Vitamin C?

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  113. Considering I’ve had more vaccines injected in to me in the last 20 years than you have, thanks to deployments when I was enlisted, plus the fact that all three of my kids have gotten their full schedule of shots, your “anti-vax” pejorative holds less water than a sieve.

    Here’s a simple question, FWO: Have you had a Covid shot?
    I’m not optimistic that’ll answer, given that you failed to answer my previous two questions.
    Oh, and the vaccines have had reduced effectiveness, that’s clear, hence the booster to elevate efficacy. You continue to not back up your anti-vax claim that they’re “effectively useless after 6-8 months”.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  114. Where did I write Vitamin C?

    When you said “Vitamin C is not a medicine, Jim…” You’re welcome.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  115. CNN: Vaccination protects people against coronavirus infection much better than previous infection does, a team of researchers led by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

    Comment:

    “When CDC studies show the absolute opposite of every other study in the world on the issue, dont people get it? Then again we’ve been masking 2 year olds for almost two years”.

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  116. Florida judge rules Trump can’t skirt Twitter’s terms just because he was president, in latest legal setback
    ………
    U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. granted Twitter’s motion to transfer the case from the Southern District of Florida to the Northern District of California, which is required by a clause in the company’s user agreement that all Twitter users sign. The case stems from Twitter permanently suspending Trump shortly after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that led to five deaths and injuries to hundreds of people.

    While Trump’s attorneys have argued that his status as former president exempts him from Twitter’s clause, and that it was in the public interest for the case to stay in Florida, Scola was unconvinced. In his 13-page ruling, the Miami judge noted that Trump, who lives in Florida, “has not advanced any legal authority to support his contention.”

    “The Court finds that Trump’s status as President of the United States does not exclude him from the requirements of the forum selection clause in Twitter’s Terms of Service,” wrote Scola, an appointee of President Barack Obama. “The Plaintiffs have failed to satisfy their heavy burden to show that this case should not be transferred.”
    ……..
    Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Neither Linda Cuadros nor a spokesperson for the American Conservative Union, who are listed as co-plaintiffs in Trump’s lawsuit, immediately responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
    …….
    On Sept. 1, Twitter filed a motion in the Florida court to transfer the case to California, as required by the company’s terms of service. As Scola mentioned in his ruling, Twitter’s terms of service, which say that all disputes in federal court must be brought in San Francisco, have been in effect since 2009 — the same year Trump started tweeting.
    ………
    Before Tuesday’s ruling on the Twitter case, another Miami judge ruled that Trump’s censorship lawsuit against YouTube would be headed to California, per the company’s terms of service. Trump accused YouTube of violating his constitutional rights by terminating an account he started as a private citizen and maintained during his presidency.

    U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, said in his Oct. 6 ruling that Trump and his attorneys had no legal authority in saying that a “former federal official is exempt from a forum-selection clause to which he agreed to in his individual capacity.”
    ……….
    “These arguments do not share a nexus with Florida and instead raise general national issues related to social media platforms,” Scola wrote (in the Twitter case).
    >>>>>>>>>>

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  117. Some conservatives voted for this, Rip.

    nk (1d9030)

  118. Does Taiwan’s Military Stand a Chance Against China? Few Think So
    ………
    Soldiers, strategists and government officials in Taiwan and the U.S. say the island’s military is riven with internal problems, many of which have built up over years of calm and economic prosperity and now are eating away at Taiwan’s ability to deter China.

    Among the most pressing concerns are poor preparation and low morale among the roughly 80,000 Taiwanese who are conscripted each year and the nearly 2.2 million reservists.
    ……..
    In interviews, Taiwanese soldiers and reservists expressed concerns about training and readiness. One said he watched American war movies during training after running out of useful things to do. Another said he spent a lot of time reading and drawing, and that there wasn’t much to worry about anyway. Public opinion polls and interviews suggest many Taiwanese expect the U.S. to take charge if serious danger arises.

    Two young men described how they had put on extra weight to get disqualified from military conscription, a practice some Taiwanese youths say is common. One said he stuffed himself with large meals every four hours for a month, including McDonald’s combo meals, to gain enough pounds to be exempted.
    ……..
    Currently, the U.S. maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” in which it aims to prevent conflict by declining to say what it would do if clashes break out. Some U.S. foreign-policy experts want the U.S. to explicitly commit to intervene if China attacks Taiwan. Others worry that even small gestures by Washington could provoke Beijing and entangle the U.S. in foreign trouble.
    ……..
    Taiwan used to require about two years of mandatory service for men. It now requires four months. After that, they become reservists, with some, though not all, called up again every one or two years for a refresher course that usually lasts five to seven days. The period will be extended to two weeks beginning next year. Plans to phase out conscription entirely have been stalled by difficulties in attracting volunteers.
    ……..
    Current and former U.S. officials and military analysts say Taiwan must spend more on weapons such as sea mines and coastal cruise missiles that would better deter an amphibious invasion. That might allow it to beat back an invasion for a few days, providing time for the U.S. to come to its defense or for it to impose enough casualties to force a rethink in Beijing.
    ……..
    Recruitment also has been undermined by the view that China wouldn’t invade because it would be too damaging for its international standing, or because nations such as the U.S. would intervene.

    “If China dares to make any trouble, wouldn’t the rest of the world issue sanctions against it?” said Ian Su, a 25-year-old insurance broker from the central county of Changhua who trained as a signal operator last year.
    …………
    Taiwan is another country that has placed its future in someone else’s hands. It shouldn’t depend on the US to defend itself. Recent war games have shown the US would be unable to respond successfully to a Chinese attack. China doesn’t care about international opinion, it will do what ever is in its interests. Unfortunately, domestic political pressures will involve the US in defending a another country unwilling to defend themselves.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  119. Putin is again rattling his saber in the general direction of Ukraine.
    The Russian Federation, of which Putin is the head of, agreed to respect Ukrainian sovereignty by memorandum and treaty, in exchange for Ukraine giving its nukes to the Russian Federation. Putin welshed on the deal in 2014.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  120. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/30/2021 @ 5:08 pm

    Do you think that high a death toll might call for emergency measures? If so, are there any that you would approve of, that are not being done, in the United States, right now?

    Do you know how many people go missing each year? We’re talking vanished without a trace. Any idea? It’s close to the covid number and there have been recent years when it’s been higher. Does that require emergency measures? I don’t think most people are even away it’s happening. Covid still isn’t the leading cause of death. Do those other things require emergency measures? It doesn’t seem like they do.

    We’ve already taken enough emergency measures. More than enough probably. The marginal utility of more people getting vaccinated against covid doesn’t justify firing people and there’s no need to force children to get it.

    Firing people will end up causing more harm than the vaccines would prevent.

    frosty (f27e97)

  121. @119 does china stand a chance against america and taiwan?

    asset (f69794)

  122. It’s close to the covid number and there have been recent years when it’s been higher.

    Although you don’t quote a specific number, it’s misleading because most people who go missing end up being non-missing (example here). The Covid dead do not later become undead or non-dead, even on Hallows Eve.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  123. “3 days left and McAuliffe is making a “significant shift” …

    CNN: Terry McAuliffe says Virginia election ‘is not about Trump’ after making former President central figure in campaign

    Voters seeing Trump cheered everywhere he goes while people all around the country (and even Europe) are chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” and “F**k Joe Biden” can’t really be helping.

    McAuliffe had this in the bag just a few weeks ago. And many voters no longer trust the the news media pulling out all stops to correct the correction when they can get more reliable info thru social media.

    Incredible but news media really is that bad.

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  124. When you said “Vitamin C is not a medicine, Jim…” You’re welcome.

    Post #100

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  125. When CDC studies show the absolute opposite of every other study in the world on the issue

    Well, if that weren’t horsesh1t, you’d be right.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  126. @117: And the funny thing is that Trump’s 1st Amendment challenges to what Twitter is doing stand a better chance in the 9th Circuit. The “It’s our site and we can ban who we want” argument works better in the South.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  127. it’s misleading because most people who go missing end up being non-missing

    I hear that almost 3000 went missing after 9/11.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  128. Prediction: China will invade and occupy the Kinmen Islands (aka Quemoy) before very long. They are Taiwan territory, a few miles off the coast of China proper, at the mouth of Xiamen harbor. They are indefensible.

    Also: The US will not use nuclear weapons to defend Kinmen, as was threatened in the 1950s.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  129. Intelligence failures:

    Four U.S. Intelligence Agencies Produced Extensive Reports on Afghanistan, but All Failed to Predict Kabul’s Rapid Collapse
    Leading U.S. intelligence agencies failed to predict the rapid Taliban takeover of Afghanistan prior to the final withdrawal of American troops and instead offered scattershot assessments of the staying power of the Afghan military and government, a review of wide-ranging summaries of classified material by The Wall Street Journal shows.

    The nearly two dozen intelligence assessments from four different agencies haven’t been previously reported. The assessments charted Taliban advances from spring 2020 through this July, forecasting that the group would continue to gain ground and that the U.S.-backed government in Kabul was unlikely to survive absent U.S. support.

    The analyses, however, differed over how long the Afghan government and military could hold on, the summaries show, with none foreseeing the group’s lightning sweep into the Afghan capital by Aug. 15 while U.S. forces remained on the ground.
    ……….
    In late April, DIA said that the Afghan National Defense and Security forces are “likely to hold Kabul while Taliban focuses elsewhere,” according to one summary. A week later, the agency raised the potential for the Afghan government to splinter but said it would keep control of Kabul.

    A June 8 report noted the potential for Afghan security forces to collapse in key provinces, but still Kabul would hold.
    ………..
    The CIA, by contrast, consistently warned of potential collapse after a U.S. pullout, the summaries show. During the last year of the Trump administration, the CIA reported that it saw three different scenarios after a U.S. military withdrawal: a garrison state, where Mr. Ghani’s military would control Kabul and its environs; a divided country with the government and Taliban each controlling parts of Afghanistan; or a complete Taliban takeover.

    By April 2021, the CIA was warning of isolated highways, which jeopardized the Afghan government’s tenuous grip on power, and that Afghanistan would pose a terrorism threat outside its borders once the U.S. exited.

    A month later, the CIA predicted the government’s collapse without U.S. support, but saw that occurring a short time after the U.S. withdrawal.
    ………….
    Duh. It shouldn’t have taken too much analysis to show that the Afghan government was completely on life support and 100% dependent on the US. See here. It was right in front of their noses.

    China tests new space capability with hypersonic missile
    China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise.

    Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

    The missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles, according to three people briefed on the intelligence. But two said the test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realised.

    The test has raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China’s military modernisation.

    “We have no idea how they did this,” said a fourth person.
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  130. @117: And the funny thing is that Trump’s 1st Amendment challenges to what Twitter is doing stand a better chance in the 9th Circuit. The “It’s our site and we can ban who we want” argument works better in the South.

    What 9th Circuit case law leads you to that conclusion?

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  131. Kanter/2024

    mg (8cbc69)

  132. So biden craps his pants with the pope, one of you backers must smell the charmin.

    mg (8cbc69)

  133. Well, if that weren’t horsesh1t, you’d be right.

    Online prescription mills peddling pills to the poor in spirit and means.

    nk (1d9030)

  134. I did a casual “internet survey”. Worse than the peddlers of ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and anti-depressants for Covid-19, are the prophylactic antibiotic prescribers giving antibiotics for heartburn and flatulence and creating methicillin-resistant bacteria strains.

    nk (1d9030)

  135. people all around the country (and even Europe) are chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” and “F**k Joe Biden” can’t really be helping.

    “Ma, ma, where’s my pa?”
    “In the White House, ha-ha-ha!”

    Sore losers (tongue-)lashing out.

    nk (1d9030)

  136. Joe Biden – last seen riding in 80-car caravan on his way to a conference where he’ll pledge to lower America’s fuel useage.

    Literally cra__ing himself to extinguish American sovereignty.

    And there are conservatives who voted for this.

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  137. 133, it ain’t big unless Murphy goes down and Sliwa pulls the upset of upsets. Youngkin is ham-smoked better central casting Baker/Hogan and probably the sophisticated NotTrump 2024 horse.

    urbanleftbehind (c073c9)

  138. @123 That’s an interesting way to avoid the point of the comment. But I don’t think you’ve made your point:

    Police forces have the option of classifying each missing person’s report, and just under half of them provide such a classification. Of that number, 95.4 percent are classified as “runaways.”

    That means that more than half of them aren’t classified at all.

    Just because the police classify them as runaways and close the case when they don’t have the resources or desire to actually investigate doesn’t mean that’s what happened. It means that no one cares enough to find out and we don’t treat it as any sort of emergency. I’d say “most” of the runaway classifications fall into that category.

    The Covid dead do not later become undead or non-dead, even on Hallows Eve.

    A significant fraction of the covid dead had underlying conditions and “most” of the people with underlying conditions have the choice to get the vaccine and protect themselves. We’ve got stats that children aren’t at risk and we’ve got stats that the vaccine doesn’t stop transmission. The current vaccines will be less effective on any new variant that might be a threat and it looks like we’re moving out of the pandemic and into covid being endemic. We’ve got a large number of people who have 1 shot or natural immunity.

    It’s misleading to claim we need additional emergency measures. Especially claiming we need to fire people who don’t comply.

    frosty (f27e97)

  139. @122 No, but Joe has already given every signal that they don’t need to worry about it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  140. Well said frosty.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  141. Anyone see where Florida virus rates are now?

    It’s almost like there’s no link between what we’ve been claiming are the treatment and the cause.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  142. Biden says domestic terrorism is the most lethal threat facing this country?

    LOL

    I guess he included the crisis actors his side is hiring to smear Youngkin.

    Newflash, gramps: those paid actors don’t count.

    If you want to talk about lethal threat, you could say COVID, or opiods, or car crashes.

    So glad that tottering old geezer runs the show.

    Hoi Polloi (998b37)

  143. One of the most popular foods in the world (and especially in the United States) is refined sugar:

    Fully refined sugar is 99.9% sucrose, thus providing only carbohydrate as dietary nutrient and 390 kilocalories per 100 g serving (USDA data, right table).[40] There are no micronutrients of significance in fully refined sugar (right table).

    So, no vitamins — or minerals.

    (Brown sugar has a teensy bit of minerals.)

    Incidentally, “The European Union, the United States, Japan, and many developing countries subsidize domestic production”.

    Belgium, according to the article, consumes the most sugar per person, 40 kilograms per year. 35 is typical of countries having at least middle incomes.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  144. https://dailycaller.com/2021/10/28/broward-school-elementary-students-gay-bar/

    Broward County School Board member Sarah Leonardi attended the field trip and commented, “I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone … the students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community!” She also mentioned that this is an annual trip hosted by the gay bar for children.

    Photos from the event show 18 children who appear to be under the age of ten wearing masks and matching t-shirts outside Rosie’s. (RELATED: Transgender Teen Elected High School Homecoming Queen By Wide Margin)

    Rosie’s menu items include “Naked Sweaty Lovin’,” “Beet Your Brains Out” “Rhoda Cowboy,” “Ivana Hooker” and “Young Ranch Hand,” according to its website. The restaurant characterizes itself as a place to “see” and “be seen,” and it describes its staff as being “like family (the good kind, that you would choose to have.)”

    Grooming 101.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  145. Fact checking at it’s best.

    How Popular Are ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Songs, Really?

    frosty (f27e97)

  146. @148 I don’t know anyone who eats sugar by itself as a “food”. If you’re doing that I’d say it isn’t good for you. You should diversify your diet.

    And you do know what subsidies are. Are you sure that sugar isn’t just “freer” than it would be otherwise?

    frosty (f27e97)

  147. #121 frosty – It isn’t difficult to find missing person numbers:

    The vast majority of missing persons cases are resolved relatively quickly. For example, in 2012, there were 661,000 missing persons cases reported; more than 659,000 of them were resolved within a year. Additionally, researchers say that the number of missing person cases has declined over the past decade as better communication has made it easier to keep in touch with and track persons. Still, more than 17,000 missing person cases and 13,000 unidentified body cases remain open in the United States.

    And the numbers don’t support your argument, since 13,000 is much smaller than the yearly death toll from COVID in the United States. And that’s without considering the larger COVID death toll that shows up in “excess death” measurements, or the fact that some of the 13,000 are, almost certainly, suicides.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  148. That’s an interesting way to avoid the point of the comment.

    The point of my comment is you made a bogus comparison, frosty. A fraction of the reported missing stay missing. Quote:

    In 2018, 612,846 missing persons cases were entered into the National Crime Information Center records, though on any given day, a smaller number are active.

    On the last day of 2018, the NCIC reports 85,459 cases were active.

    I didn’t opine about “emergency measures”, but I’m already on record as being opposed to governmental vaccine mandates on private businesses; they should be able to make their own choices about whether to vaccinate their workforce.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  149. Kanter/2024

    mg (8cbc69) — 10/31/2021 @ 2:55 am

    Kanter was born in Turkey as is not eligible to be President.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  150. Anyone see where Florida virus rates are now?

    Yes, the damage has been done. They were middle of the pack in deaths and new cases per million before the wave hit, and now they’re 8th worst and 7th worst, respectively.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  151. Correction: Kanter was born in Switzerland and still isn’t eligible to be President.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  152. When you said “Vitamin C is not a medicine, Jim…” You’re welcome.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/30/2021 @ 8:11 pm

    Here, Paul, since you seem to enjoy putting words in peoples’ mouths, as well:

    A vitamin is not medicine–it’s a nutrient found in every naturally occurring food on the planet.

    You’re welcome.

    But yes, Boomers, Vitamin C is not medicine. Nor is a vitamin comparable to a vaccine. You guys are really reaching to make your arguments here, especially when you’re calling refined sugar (a process that requires industrial methods to create) “food.”

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  153. #146 “Anyone see where Florida virus rates are now?”

    Sure. You can see the rates and compare them to other states in this table. And we see that the death rate per million in Florida is substantially higher than in the US as a whole (2770 per million versus 2315). And that is in spite of Florida’s weather advantage, and the fact that the virus came there later than it did to, for example, New York.

    If you click on Florida in the table, that will take you to graphs. Both the “cases” and “deaths” graphs show that Florida leaders did not learn from the experience from other states, since the recent Delta variant bump — after vaccines were widely available — was the worst in Florida, by far.

    We can be grateful that, despite this obvious failure of Florida’s leaders, the cases and deaths are now on down trends.

    (I assume most now understand that COVID is more likely to be transmitted indoors, so places with colder climates will suffer more in the winter.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  154. https://fee.org/articles/new-report-shows-growth-of-the-welfare-state-has-fueled-long-term-declines-in-the-labor-force/

    massive labor shortage continues to grip the nation and hold back our economic recovery. With countless pandemic and policy factors influencing the shortage, there’s a heated debate over what’s keeping so many workers out of the labor force. But a new study confirms that the growth of the welfare state is playing a massive role—and that this trend began long before the pandemic.

    Published by experts on the Republican side of the Senate Joint Economic Committee, the analysis reports, “the U.S. has witnessed an unprecedented rise in disconnected prime-age workers over time.” As shown in the graph below, the men’s labor force participation rate has fallen from more than 97 percent in 1955 to 89 percent prior to the pandemic, while the women’s labor force participation rate has declined in recent decades as well.

    Pay people not to work and they don’t work. Shocking.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  155. Here’s a simple question, FWO: Have you had a Covid shot?

    Simple questions from simple people–I already said several weeks ago that I got one, Paul. As I pointed out above, I’ve also gotten every shot for my kids on the normal vaccine schedule. The “anti-vax” pejorative you love to sling out doesn’t really apply for the vast majority of people protesting the measures being enacted to coerce the populace in to taking this.

    You guys are hardly ones to criticize Trump voters for loving “big government” when you support massive federal surveillance programs and ruining people’s livelihoods for not taking one specific, highly degradable “vaccine”.

    I’m not optimistic that’ll answer, given that you failed to answer my previous two questions.

    Most of your questions aren’t worth the time to answer, since you love spouting false dichotomies and making things about me instead of facing up to the failure of your political class the last 30 years. Oh, you eventually admitted that Iraq was a cluster, but your first reaction was to spout some made-up false choice.

    Oh, and the vaccines have had reduced effectiveness, that’s clear, hence the booster to elevate efficacy. You continue to not back up your anti-vax claim that they’re “effectively useless after 6-8 months”.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/30/2021 @ 7:59 pm

    Cases in highly vaxxed nations wouldn’t be going up if the “vaccines” weren’t effectively useless after 6-8 months.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  156. Poor Jim and Paul just continue to double down. It’s okay. I understand. Banging the table will help.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  157. https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/10/31/nyc-firehouses-already-shutting-down-over-vaccine-mandate-n425972

    On Thursday, we looked at the possibility that the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) might need to close up to 20% of the firehouses in Gotham due to manpower shortages caused by the city’s vaccine mandate for municipal employees. It was similarly possible that they would need to take an equal portion of ambulances out of service. This caused a great deal of consternation across the five boroughs because of the threat of increased response times for structural fires and medical emergencies. Well, as the old saying goes, that didn’t take long at all. By yesterday morning, the FDNY was already in the process of shutting down no less than 26 fire stations, impacting all five boroughs. And more may be on the way. (NY Post)

    This will surely help keep people alive.

    Come on supporters of mandates. Say it with me. “Mandates save lives.”

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  158. Here, Paul, since you seem to enjoy putting words in peoples’ mouths.

    False, FWO. You claimed you said nothing about Vitamin C and I cut-and-pasted your own words accurately. You’re gaslighting if you continue to deny it.
    I didn’t opine on Vitamin C or vitamins in general. That’s between you and Jim.
    But I will say this. A vaccine is defined as…

    a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease.

    …per Oxford, so Vitamin C doesn’t qualify as a vaccine because it doesn’t stimulate antibodies, but it does qualify as a medicine, as defined…

    a compound or preparation used for the treatment or prevention of disease, especially a drug or drugs taken by mouth.

    …because it prevents diseases like scurvy. These words, they mean things, no?

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  159. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/10/31/disastrous-new-poll-showing-biden-approval-ratings-in-freefall-spooks-dems-on-halloween-1156448/

    To say that the honeymoon is over for Joe Biden would be a huge understatement as the nation’s 46th president’s approval ratings are in a death spiral that is rapidly gaining momentum, according to a new poll that is a nightmare scenario for the Democratic party.

    Large numbers of Americans are now waking up to the fact that they were conned by campaign trail promises and the claims of the media that putting Biden into the White House would usher in an era of stability, national unity, and an economic rebound for a country that was brought to its knees due to the coronavirus pandemic.

    Instead, the nation is divided as never before as a result of Biden’s authoritarianism and fondness for race-baiting demagoguery, his failure to contain COVID, skyrocketing energy and food prices, an unprecedented supply chain crisis, and a humiliating loss of stature on the world stage after the administration cut and run in Afghanistan, surrendering the country to the terrorist coddling Taliban.

    Americans are slowly becoming aware of the Biden bamboozle and the just-released poll from NBC News puts Biden’s approval rating at a miserable 42 percent, a number that has appropriately arrived on Halloween, badly spooking Democrats and their media mouthpieces.

    Most concerning for the ruling party is that according to the poll, “7 in 10 adults, including almost half of Democrats, believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction,” a sign that voters could be ready for a major course correction in next year’s midterm elections and could shatter Democrat dreams of permanent one-party rule by stripping them of control of Congress.

    That is a whopping 71 percent of Americans who believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

    Here’s some polling you must have missed Rip.

    You’re welcome.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  160. That’s absurd Paul.

    Scurvy is caused by a Vitamin C deficiency, just like a whole host of illnesses are caused by a Vitamin D deficiency. That doesn’t make the vitamin medicine or a vaccine.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  161. Simple questions from simple people–I already said several weeks ago that I got one, Paul.

    Good for you, FWO. Here’s another question: Who won the election, Trump or Biden?

    Most of your questions aren’t worth the time to answer, since you love spouting false dichotomies and making things about me instead of facing up to the failure of your political class the last 30 years. Oh, you eventually admitted that Iraq was a cluster, but your first reaction was to spout some made-up false choice.

    Your ongoing evasions to my other questions are noted.
    As for my “eventually admitted” about Iraq, you’re making sh-t up. I broke with my RedState colleagues in 2006, so much so that they bumped me off the front page, calling for Rumsfeld’s sacking and for implementation of a counterinsurgency strategy.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  162. Scurvy is caused by a Vitamin C deficiency, just like a whole host of illnesses are caused by a Vitamin D deficiency. That doesn’t make the vitamin medicine or a vaccine.

    Rob, I just said Vitamin C wasn’t a vaccine. You really need to read better and not make knee-jerk reactions because it was me who said it.
    Vitamin C is a medicine, by definition, because it’s a disease preventive.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  163. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/10/ted-cruz-grills-merrick-garland-about-possible-conflict-of-interest.php

    Following Merrick Garland’s recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, we posted the portions of his testimony in which he answered (and sometimes evaded) the questions of Sen. Tom Cotton and Sen. Josh Hawley. In this post, I want to add Garland’s exchanges with Sen. Ted Cruz.

    Cruz did his usual effective job, and the entire thing is worth watching. Towards at the end, at around the seven minute mark, Cruz raised the question of a possible conflict interest Garland had in issuing his infamous memo calling on the Feds to investigate and possibly prosecute parents whose criticism of school boards can be viewed as “harassing” or “intimidating.”

    One of the main grounds on which parents are vehemently criticizing school boards relates to the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to children. Apparently, Garland’s son-in-law sells material to public schools for use in the teaching of CRT.

    If parents are investigated for forcefully criticizing the teaching of CRT, or if they are deterred from making forceful criticism, the effect might well be more teaching of CRT than would otherwise occur. And the more teaching of CRT that occurs, the greater the potential for Garland’s son-in-law to make money.

    Accordingly, Cruz asked Garland whether he sought an ethics opinion from the Department of Justice before issuing his memo directing federal involvement in school board/parent relations. Garland repeatedly refused to answer the question directly. But his response — to insist that there was no reason to seek ethics advice — made it clear that Garland sought none.

    Garland’s basis for saying there was no need for ethics advice was his assertion that his memo would have “no predictable effect” on his son’s business. I think that’s wrong. The predictable effects of his memo are (1) a diminution of pressure on school boards to abstain from teaching CRT, leading to (2) more teaching of CRT than would occur absent Garland’s memo, leading to (3) more business for Garland’s family member.

    Senator Cruz is a treasure and he helps us look behind the curtain.

    Too bad so many are blinded by their partisanship to see the service he’s doing for the citizens of America.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  164. False, FWO. You claimed you said nothing about Vitamin C and I cut-and-pasted your own words accurately

    True, Paul. Jim substituted one general term in that sentence for a more specific one. It wasn’t what I wrote, but he did it anyway to bolster his argument.

    You’re gaslighting if you continue to deny it.

    As if your opinion on “gaslighting,” like “anti-vax,” is worth the electrons you wasted to type it out.

    a compound or preparation used for the treatment or prevention of disease, especially a drug or drugs taken by mouth.
    …because it prevents diseases like scurvy. These words, they mean things, no?

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/31/2021 @ 9:18 am

    Scurvy is caused by a nutritional deficiency, not a contagious illness. Yes, words do mean things, and you’re ignoring it:

    Vitamin: Any of various organic substances that are essential in minute quantities to the nutrition of most animals and some plants, act esp. as coenzymes and precursors of coenzymes in the regulation of metabolic processes but do not provide energy or serve as building units, and are present in natural foodstuffs or are sometimes produced within the body. (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

    Huh, no mention of medicine there. What a surprise.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  165. @158 Jim already has his excuse ready for covid spikes in blue northern states

    if covid is more likely to be transmitted indoors in the winter, that would explain florida’s spike in the summer, eh Jim?

    well no, cuz the point is to blame desantis and so the excuses can only work one way

    JF (e1156d)

  166. Paul,

    you need the help with reading comprehension. I said using a vitamin to cure a vitamin deficiency doesn’t make it a vaccine or medicine. Thanks.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  167. Good for you, FWO. Here’s another question: Who won the election, Trump or Biden?

    Biden, clearly. It’s not relevant to this discussion, but bringing up these irrelevancies is certainly your stock-in-trade.

    Your ongoing evasions to my other questions are noted.

    Your refusal to acknowledge the failures of your political class and deflect to the accuser is also noted.

    As for my “eventually admitted” about Iraq, you’re making sh-t up.

    I’m not making it up at all, Paul. Your first reaction to my pointing out your political classes failures was to offer up a false dichotomy on civic nationalism. After cottoning to the Iraq debacle, you then weakly attempted to make the whole thing about me, rather than face the fact that the failures of the neocons is what led to Trump snatching the party out of your hands.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  168. I said using a vitamin to cure a vitamin deficiency doesn’t make it a vaccine or medicine. Thanks.

    Yes, and you’re only half right.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  169. It’s not relevant to this discussion, but bringing up these irrelevancies is certainly your stock-in-trade.

    This is an open thread, FWO, so any topic can be introduced at any time, but thanks for acknowledging that you’re not a Trumpy cultist. The rest of your comment is gaslighting. I asked you a question, and you’re just lathering on a load of bullsh-t.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  170. This is an open thread, FWO, so any topic can be introduced at any time, but thanks for acknowledging that you’re not a Trumpy cultist. The rest of your comment is gaslighting. I asked you a question, and you’re just lathering on a load of bullsh-t.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 10/31/2021 @ 10:00 am

    That’s a fine excuse for avoiding the failures of your political class, Paul, particularly the circular reasoning that anyone not going along with your tortured rhetorical framework is “gaslighting.”

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  171. Here’s some polling you must have missed Rip.

    You’re welcome.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 10/31/2021 @ 9:24 am

    As I mentioned earlier, most people here were uninterested in my posts about presidential polls, so I stopped. Thanks for picking up the slack.

    You forgot to link to the top lines.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  172. What 9th Circuit case law leads you to that conclusion?

    A generally [classically] liberal reading of the 1st amendment, combined with a distrust of businesses and corporations in particular. Southern districts seem the opposite.

    It’s not a giant difference, but there is one.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  173. Further, California’s state courts have quite clear precedent about the rights of public expression in the “town square” even if that town square is privately owned. It’s why people can petition outside the supermarket even though the supermarket owners don’t want them there.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  174. Youngkin is ham-smoked better central casting Baker/Hogan and probably the sophisticated NotTrump 2024 horse.

    So, what is this? Trumpies want McAuliffe?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  175. Garland’s basis for saying there was no need for ethics advice was his assertion that his memo would have “no predictable effect” on his son’s business. I think that’s wrong. The predictable effects of his memo are (1) a diminution of pressure on school boards to abstain from teaching CRT, leading to (2) more teaching of CRT than would occur absent Garland’s memo, leading to (3) more business for Garland’s family member.

    This is highly speculative at best, unlike the conflicts here, here, and here.

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  176. Further, California’s state courts have quite clear precedent about the rights of public expression in the “town square” even if that town square is privately owned. It’s why people can petition outside the supermarket even though the supermarket owners don’t want them there.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 10:28 am

    And backed by the US Supreme Court in PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins (447 U.S. 74 1980).

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  177. “Pay people not to work and they don’t work.”

    Amazing to see “labor force participation rate” returning after a mysterious 4 year disappearance. Nature is healing.

    Davethulhu (56c731)

  178. https://therightscoop.com/rufo-destroys-mcauliffes-ridiculously-false-claim-that-crt-isnt-in-va-school-curriculum/

    Remember just a few months ago when we had people on here pretending Critical Race Theory wasn’t in our schools and wasn’t being used to try and indoctrinate our young. Good times.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  179. Apparently, a Southwest pilot said “Let’s Go Brandon!” over the plane’s PA system. Southwest says:

    “Southwest does not condone Employees sharing their personal political opinions while on the job serving our Customers, especially when comments are divisive and offensive,” the Texas-based airline said in a statement to The Washington Post on Sunday.

    “Southwest is conducting an internal investigation into the recently reported incident and will address the matter directly with any Employee involved,” the statement continued. “The airline apologizes for this event — an action that was not reflective of the Southwest Hospitality for which we are known.”

    The usual suspects are all up for a cancellation:

    Many users on social media, where the airline was trending on Sunday morning, threatened to boycott Southwest.

    Harvard professor and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem tweeted that “every passenger on that flight has standing to file a complaint with the FAA,” over the incident, urging Southwest to investigate the pilot. While former Democratic California congressional candidate Regina Marston went further, calling for “a firing right now of the pilot.”

    Not sure how such a complaint would be filed. Probably not a checkbox for “lese majeste”

    Since SW’s territory includes quite a few Red states, where firing the pilot could lose them customers, I’m betting that, at most, the pilot gets briefly suspended.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  180. 180, Trumpies will take Youngkin any day, but the VAGOP (or RPV as it’s correctly called) wisely elevated him over known Q/Steal kook Amanda Chase,who at this time last year was the presumptive gubernatorial nominee. Youngkin has been milquetoast enough to become instant “not-Trump but Trump policy supporting” presidential fodder or at least a good VP prospect.

    urbanleftbehind (017663)

  181. That’s a fine excuse for avoiding the failures of your political class, Paul, particularly the circular reasoning that anyone not going along with your tortured rhetorical framework is “gaslighting.”

    I initially asked you this: “FWO, so the alternative to all the meany Republicans of the past is to follow Trump and go with his nationalist populist xenophobia? There are no other options?”
    Your non-answer basically devolved in a angry little rant about neocons, including your factless assertion that the “neocons and the Bush Republicans” took no blame for “their failures”. You’re obviously emotionally triggered and not rational.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  182. This has been an informative thread. Today I learned that sunshine, clean air, clean water, exercise, and not having risky sex with hookers, i.e. condoms, are all medicine. None of them are vaccines though.

    And people make a meal of refined sugar.

    frosty (f27e97)

  183. @184 The lifecycle of the narrative is slowly getting shorter. Things like “the vaccine stops covid” and all of the talk about herd immunity is in the rear view mirror. It wasn’t that long ago that saying we’ll need booster shots was anti-vax because it implied the vaccine wasn’t as effective as advertised.

    There’s still some “there’s no CRT” while we shift to “it’s racist to oppose CRT”.

    Remember when people used to say that if you’ve got an issue with the schools take it to the local school board meetings? That didn’t work out as hoped and we needed to switch to “these people coming to the school board meetings are terrorists”.

    frosty (f27e97)

  184. https://www.webmd.com/brain/acute-disseminated-encephalomyelitis-adem

    Doctors think ADEM is an autoimmune disease. That means your immune system attacks your body’s own cells and tissues as if they were bacteria or viruses.

    Experts don’t know exactly what triggers it, but it could be a reaction to an infection. Most of the time, the attack happens when a child is getting over a common illness, like a cold or stomach bug.

    ADEM sometimes follows a vaccine, especially certain rabies shots and the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. But research hasn’t found a direct link.

    It’s logical (in a person predisposed to it becaause they were previously infected with something with a similar antigen, or because their body might have been a bit predisposed to manufacturing thise harmful antibodies)

    The same thing causes rheumatic heart disease.

    https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/rheumatic-heart-disease

    The disease results from damage to heart valves caused by one or several episodes of rheumatic fever, an autoimmune inflammatory reaction to throat infection with group A streptococci (streptococcal pharyngitis or strep throat). It most commonly occurs in childhood, and can lead to death or life-long disability.

    Rheumatic heart disease can be prevented by preventing streptococcal infections, or treating them with antibiotics when they do occur.

    Because he antibiotics limit the stimulation of the immune system. Varous oathogens tend to cause various different autoimmune diseases. And sometimes foods. Cow’s milk, given before the age of 6 months (after which it now longer gets into the bloodstream) is a known trigger for juvenile diabetes.

    One important notes:

    A general stimulation of the immune system can trigger or worsen something, which in turn can be caused by an unrelated infection or an unrelated vaccine.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  185. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the following is true:

    “Vaccines don’t work as well against Delta as they do other variants.”

    Does this mean that vaccines don’t work? Or that they are suddenly less useful? I think it’s more likely that it means that Delta is more prevalent because all the other variants have been eliminated by the vaccines?

    We see this phenomenon (and the same arguments) regarding the flu vaccine, best summed up in the statement “I don’t get the flu shots because it never protects against that year’s outbreak.”

    After due consideration, I respond with “Well duh!”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  186. Biden now says his presidency (or the future of the Democratic Party) is at stake this week.

    They’ve postponed again the vote on the bills – this time till Tuesday (they don’t want to go past Tuesday because McAuliffe losing in Virginia could scare away some moderate votes.)

    Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is telling the House progressives not to vote for the small bill unless he or they are satisfied with the big bill.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  187. #158 I want to give you a better source for Florida COVID deaths. (For some time, I have noticed that the Worldometer site was inconsistent in its Florida data. The case rates were high, but the death rates were not. I assume the Worldometer folks are using a script to get the data, and that there is a bug in the script.)

    Fortunately, the Washington Post is also tracking the data and their numbers are consistent.

    Currently, Florida is averaging 127 COVID deaths per day. The only state that is higher is Texas, at 130.

    Florida’s per capita deaths are 12th, behind Montana, West Virginia, Idaho, Kansas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Georgia, Ohio, Wyoming, South Carolina, and Kentucky.

    In the past week, cases rose 14.4 percent in Florida.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  188. What an absolute smear of the name Lincoln that these Lincoln Project bastards spend their donations hiring people to cosplay as neo nazis, and their non-apology admitting to this after caught red handed started with an enormous “DONATE” button.

    They will only gain notoriety and wealth for it too.

    Dustin (150498)

  189. Pentagon may not immediately fire vaccine resisters

    Facing criticism that mandates for coronavirus vaccinations could force the Defense Department to fire thousands of civilians, contractors and troops, the Biden administration is signaling that vaccine resisters may get more time to comply.
    …….
    The deadlines for vaccination vary, depending on the type of employee. And they have not changed. The first of them arrives next week, on Nov. 2, for active-duty Air Force personnel, and official service figures show that some 4% of the active-duty Air Force is still not fully vaccinated.

    Three administration officials in the last couple of days have described the deadlines not as the dates when an ax will fall but rather as the start of an education process designed to convince those who are resisting vaccination to reverse course.
    ……..
    The deadlines for people whose work connects them to the Pentagon to get fully vaccinated generally fall in November and December, though Army reservists have until June of next year to get their shots.
    ……..
    On Thursday, Stephen Morani, the Pentagon’s acting assistant secretary for sustainment, addressing the Nov. 22 deadline for Defense Department civilians to be fully vaccinated, described the enforcement process as more pedagogical than punitive.

    “There will be escalation in disciplinary actions that will go through a process,” Morani said at a House Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee hearing. “Nobody is going to be fired on the 22nd. Education is critical in this space — to educate people about the safety of it and the risk of not having it.”
    ……….
    The Navy and Marine Corps stand out as being clear that processing for separation will occur whenever a sailor refuses to be vaccinated on schedule without an allowable exemption. Other punishments may occur, officers say, but not in lieu of separation, which servicemembers can appeal.

    The Army, Air Force and Space Force meanwhile, have been less precise on how enforcement will play out.
    ………
    To be sure, even after all the educating, counseling and cajoling, some troops and Defense Department employees and contractors — perhaps thousands — may decide not to be vaccinated and accept the consequences.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (fbc353)

  190. JF – I am not sure I understand your argument. I don’t know what Florida summer spike you are talking about.

    And, I would consider Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota Republican (or if you prefer, “red”) states — and all of them typically have tough winters that force people inside. Which suggests to me that they are going to have a harder time controlling COVID this winter than states with warmer climates. And that may be happening already, if you look at per capita deaths.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  191. In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”, Alice has this conversation with Humpty Dumpty:

    “There’s glory for you!”

    “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ Alice said.

    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”

    “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,'” Alice objected.

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.”

    Now it seems to me that frosty and NJRobb are taking the Humpty Dumpty position. (Sometimes.) So frosty objects to calling COVID tests in Germany “free”, even though that is what the author called them, and fits the ordinary meaning of the word, since those getting the tests did not pay for them. And NJRobb objects to calling a Vitamin C pill used to cure the disease of scurvy, “medicine”.

    In that conversation, Humpty Dumpty goes on to say that “which is to be master” is what matters, so I think we can guess at their motives for this quibbling.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  192. #194 Dustin – You are right, of course. And I would add that it was a stupid thing to do. (It reminds me of a famous cynical comment: ‘”C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute”, a statement often rendered in English as “It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.”‘)

    (There are many better ways to attack Trump. For instance: I have long thought that his political opponents should have a balloon made showing Trump as a little boy — with his pants on fire, and fly it at every Trump meeting. With, of course, guards to protect the balloon crew.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  193. @196 Jim, have floridians and texans spent the past six to seven months largely indoors?

    i think you’re in wash state, so maybe you don’t understand

    or perhaps you want to quibble humpty dumpty style about what inside means, like you quibble about what spike and summer mean

    and i don’t need to guess at your motives

    JF (e1156d)

  194. so the alternative to all the meany Republicans of the past is to follow Trump and go with his nationalist populist xenophobia?

    I remember when Red-Blooded Conservatives were ridiculing G.W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and his father’s “kinder, gentler” posture. The Bushes couldn’t be proper conservatives because they didn’t adhere to Limbaugh’s “rugged individualism” but instead promoted heretical ideas like caring about the less fortunate.

    So it was amazing when Trumpistas stepped forward with claims that the entire GOP before Trump had been composed of (or at least dominated by) heartless libertarians who cared only about the rich, while the Orange God — never known to give up anything for the benefit of those who didn’t inherit millions and who didn’t have a wealthy dad who could bail them out of their costly mistakes — was the first Republican in generations to care about the Average Man (though he showed no inclination to sit down and talk with average people).

    I’ve seen Trumpistas claim that the old GOP deliberately engineered lower wages and only Trump wanted workers to be paid more — even though Trump in his first debate said “Our wages are too high,” and doubled down on it afterward. I’ve seen Trumpistas claim that only Trump understood the importance of social benefits programs — but it was the eeevil heartless G.W. Bush who raised the issue of whether entitlements would still be solvent for younger generations, and who launched a new initiative with the aim of making social services more effective.

    And what was Trump’s main domestic policy achievement? A supply-side tax cut (and more convoluted tax forms under the guise of simplification) and the deregulation long championed by the heartless libertarian Republicans of the past.

    Oh but what about the tariffs? They didn’t bring back manufacturing jobs. They imposed higher costs on American consumers. They bankrupted farmers, so Trump gave them a huge bailout to buy their votes. They are one reason for today’s supply-chain problem.

    “Trade wars are good and easy to win,” said the guy who just intuitively understands every policy question better than all the experts put together. He also said he could pay down the national debt in eight years by negotiating better trade deals. Gee, why didn’t the experts ever think of that?

    What Trump had going for him was that some people around him actually knew some things and weren’t crazy. But there’s a lot of intellectual dishonesty in the effort to portray him as towering over all others in wisdom, integrity, patriotism, and compassion for the little guy.

    Radegunda (620b30)

  195. https://therightscoop.com/rufo-destroys-mcauliffes-ridiculously-false-claim-that-crt-isnt-in-va-school-curriculum/

    Remember just a few months ago when we had people on here pretending Critical Race Theory wasn’t in our schools and wasn’t being used to try and indoctrinate our young. Good times.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 10/31/2021 @ 10:47 am

    It’s a moral panic fabricated specifically to stoke outrage. Ruffo has directly admitted that.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  196. @184 The lifecycle of the narrative is slowly getting shorter. Things like “the vaccine stops covid” and all of the talk about herd immunity is in the rear view mirror. It wasn’t that long ago that saying we’ll need booster shots was anti-vax because it implied the vaccine wasn’t as effective as advertised.

    You can talk about narrative all you like if it makes you happy to pretend you haven’t been wildly wrong on this but the facts remain clear; the vaccine is safe, dramatically reduces spread and has an even larger reduction is severe outcomes. Recent article out of Israel showed that 65% of severe cases came from the 13% of the population that’s unvaccinated. Data from NHI in the Uk and areas of the US that report breakthrough cases show similar results.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  197. I wish conservatives were as concerned about decades of “Lost Cause” history being taught in schools as they are about CRT.

    Davethulhu (56c731)

  198. @203 surprise, looks like you don’t have a specific example

    JF (e1156d)

  199. The Washington Post reports its investigation of Jan 6th and the events leading up to it.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  200. It’s a moral panic fabricated specifically to stoke outrage.

    No, it’s attempts in several places to get a radical agenda into schools. It doesn;t have to be widespread to be a problem. If some schools in rural Mississippi were still teaching about the benefits of slavery and the War of Northern Aggression, people would be riled up, too.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  201. “The Trump presidency radicalized America’s governing and chattering classes, who saw in his election the fulfillment of one of the dark possibilities of democracy—that the people would elect a demagogue intent on bending the arc of history backward—and felt themselves summoned to act as guardians of the Republic righting the course of that arc. We were in a state of exception that it was both their warrant and their duty to decide.

    The standards and practices that marked our professional classes as elites deserving of our trust in ordinary times (impartiality, procedural correctness) were no longer applicable. In a time of “literal white nationalists in the White House” putting “babies in cages,” these protocols would in practice end up colluding with an existential danger. Departures from those practices become not just excusable but a moral imperative.

    Thus was undertaken a principled abandonment of scrupulousness in reporting, proportionality in judging, and the neutral application of rules once held to be constitutive of professional authority, all in favor of a politics of emergency. The new politics demanded loyalty and unanimity in an effort to defeat the usurper at any cost. The loss of proportionality in judging and scrupulousness in reporting created an echo chamber in which the bulk of the governing and chattering classes confirmed and exacerbated self-generated fantasies and fears of foreign subversion and fascists on the march.”

    https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-lets-go-brandon-freakout-goes

    Really fine piece on the freak out that forced so many to drop any pretense of standards or honesty, even some that we previously trusted to deal with an even hand.

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  202. @184 The lifecycle of the narrative is slowly getting shorter. Things like “the vaccine stops covid” and all of the talk about herd immunity is in the rear view mirror. It wasn’t that long ago that saying we’ll need booster shots was anti-vax because it implied the vaccine wasn’t as effective as advertised.

    The goalposts whip around in that so fast, and there are so many strawmen embedded in it, it’s really hard to find one thing to rebut.

    For one thing you conflate the duration of protection with the effectiveness of protection. It is possible that natural immunity lasts longer that a vaccine, but is far less effective at preventing or reducing disease from a different strain. Those natural antibodies were created with only one job — the virus at hand.

    We are seeing information that says that natural antibodies may indeed last longer AND that vaccine antibodies offer more protection (over a shorter period). There is no contradiction there. It may be that this means that I need to get a shot annually, while someone else needs to roll the dice with the virus every two years. So be it, I don’t have an issue with needles. I have an issue with ventilators.

    This all gets back to the silly argument I hear every year with the flu vaccine: “The only strains that seem to go around are the ones the vaccine doesn’t cover.” This shouldn’t be a shock, but it seems it is to some folks.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  203. As far as there being no center to American politics, there actually is: The bipartisan consensus that lasted from 1980 to 2010 or so failed in the end. It overstayed its welcome and the solutions it found were eventually overwhelmed by the unintended consequences it engendered. There is a consensus that we need a new way forward.

    Both parties are reacting to this failure, in different ways, and unfortunately they are not currently seeking consensus. Rather they are seeking domination. They will both fail in that, and if they persist, one or more may fail utterly, since someopne else may offer a platform that makes sense instead of the two screeds they’ve been offered.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  204. Which suggests to me that they are going to have a harder time controlling COVID this winter

    If people are forced inside, they are not intermingling, so transmission of disease seems less likely. Pretty sure people don’t go casually visiting in Alaska in January.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  205. @152 You’re thinking phrases like “resolved”, “closed case”, and classified as “no longer missing” means they’re found? I think it just means officials stopped looking. I don’t think you’ve got any idea what happens to the people who go missing.

    If you don’t like that issue though we can look at other things that kill a lot of people but don’t cause the mass hysteria that covid has caused. You’ve probably already looked at those though and have perfectly good reasons for thinking it’s still a good idea to destroy the economy and reorder society for covid.

    frosty (f27e97)

  206. #199 JF – I am not familiar enough with the two states to tell you what proportion spend most of their summers indoors. (For the record; In both states, the peak came in the fall.)

    I did quiz some visitors from Houston a few years ago, and they told me that I was right to think that they spent much of the year beginning each day in an air-conditioned house, driving to work in an air-conditioned car, and then working in an air-conditioned office. If they went out for entertainment, then I assume in most cases, it would have been to another air-conditioned location.

    (DrJ might be able to give you a better answer.)

    However, there have been studies on the effect of weather on COVID spread; this seems like a reasonable one:

    Lower air temperature (within the 20–40 °C range), lower specific humidity, and lower ultraviolet radiation were significantly associated with increased Rt. The fraction of Rt attributable to temperature, specific humidity, and ultraviolet radiation were 3.73% (95% empirical confidence interval [eCI]: 3.66–3.76%), 9.35% (95% eCI: 9.27–9.39%), and 4.44% (95% eCI: 4.38–4.47%), respectively. In total, 17.5% of Rt was attributable to meteorological factors. The fractions attributable to meteorological factors generally were higher in northern counties than in southern counties. Our findings indicate that cold and dry weather and low levels of ultraviolet radiation are moderately associated with increased SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility, with humidity playing the largest role.

    So, weather makes a difference, but it doesn’t determine the level of transmissibility.

    If you have seen a better study, please share it with us.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  207. the freak out that forced so many to drop any pretense of standards or honesty,

    Hilarious to see Trumpists pretending to care about standards and honesty — after all their praise for Trump’s brash disregard of standards and norms, and their blanket indulgence of his inveterate lying. The more ludicrous and demonstrably dishonest Trump’s assertions, the more his apologists revere him.

    Trump openly takes the position that whatever doesn’t flatter himself is false, and whatever doesn’t serve his interests is wrong. He openly takes the position that an election he loses is necessarily illegitimate.

    Trump is emphatically not fair or charitable in his judgment of other people. He is extremely overgenerous in his assessment of himself.

    Trumpists follow right along, zealously trashing people who are far better human beings, while giving Trump every possible indulgence and benefit of the doubt. “Let Trump be Trump” — as if “being Trump” were the highest measure of virtue. Obviously Trump thinks it is, but why must anyone else adopt that rule?

    People that I previously trusted to care about integrity and virtue chose to insist that none of it matters anymore because Trump — or more bizarrely, to pretend that Trump represents a higher form of integrity and virtue. They have become terribly unfair and ungenerous in their assessment of previous Republican leaders, and they hold Trump to be totally not responsible at all for any shortcomings in his policies.

    Trumpists are pretending that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the resurgence of the Taliban — that he would never have given an inch to such bad guys — as if the Doha deal never happened; as if Trump hadn’t called for faster withdrawal; as if he hadn’t said he expected the Afghan government to collapse after the process he started was complete.

    Trumpists are pretending that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was an unalloyed good — though the Iranians stepped up enrichment as a result, and resumed attacks on Americans in Iraq, and hardliners gained more power.

    Trumpists totally ignore the bad results of Trump’s tariffs — which were supposed to be his special genius move to care for average Americans.

    They pretend that he was totally on top of Covid from Day One and did everything in record time — though people who sat in task force meetings came away with a very different sense, and his own public statements treated it as something that would magically go away, and he was mostly worried about how it would affect his reelection. Other people in the admin did some things right — but not because Trump is such a unique genius of leader.

    Back in 2015/16, a huge cult grew up around the principle that criticizing Trump was the mark of a traitor. Conservative media outlets adopted a policy of “Don’t criticize Trump,” at least not in a serious way. Trumpists long ago demonstrated that even-handedness is not what they want.

    Radegunda (48f6c8)

  208. Time123 (9f42ee) — 10/31/2021 @ 2:39 pm

    You can only claim I’ve been wrong based on what you’ve imagined I’ve said. I’ve never said the vaccine was dangerous. I’ve never said it didn’t reduce the spread, and I’ve absolutely said it did reduce the chances of severe outcome.

    I’ve said there could be side effects and people should have a right to choose. And I’ve said mandates are wrong.

    I’ve said the claim that it stops the spread was misleading and false and counterproductive.

    I’ve said the primary purpose of the vaccine is to keep people from getting sick.

    Everything I’ve ever said was consistent with what was obvious to anyone who didn’t live in a binary pro-vac/anti-vax world.

    frosty (f27e97)

  209. Credit where due:

    Last Tuesday, the New York Times published a solid article by Andrew E. Kramer describing how global warming was helping Russia’s far north. The fact that global warming would help some nations is not a secret, but it gets less coverage than it should.

    This Sunday, the lead article in the Seattle Times, by Hal Bernton, is titled “A bigger role for nuclear energy as climate change intensifies?” For years, I have argued that, if you believe that global warming will, net, hurt humans — and can do arithmetic — you will favor the expanded use of nuclear power. (I am not alone in that view; all three of Obama’s energy secretaries hold it, for example.)

    But that view has been drowned out by Green superstition, and so, instead of rational arguments on the subject from our news organizations, we have received, for example, the uninformed rants of a troubled Swedish teenager.

    I don’t expect much more on either subject, but it is good to see these two substantial pieces.

    (For years, I have wondered whether “Czar” Putin favored global warming — but maybe I am just too suspicious.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  210. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 3:41 pm

    Those natural antibodies were created with only one job — the virus at hand.

    I’ve heard respectable people make what sounded like the exact opposite argument. The vaccine loses effectiveness against future strains because it was made to target specific proteins of the variant it was designed against whereas your immune system has the entire virus to work with. This is why coronaviruses become endemic and your body can fight off variants. If what you said was true every new coronavirus variant would be a novel virus.

    The vaccine antibodies most likely offer a stronger response over a shorter period because they’ve already primed your immune system. It’s still responding to the protein markers it saw in the vaccine when you’re exposed to the live virus.

    I don’t really care if people choose to get the vaccine or not and at this point you aren’t arguing with me. You’re conflating my comment on the shifting narrative with some position you think I’ve got on the underlying issue. I can think the vaccine is fine and also point out that we collectively can’t seem to keep our story straight.

    frosty (f27e97)

  211. Last Tuesday, the New York Times published a solid article by Andrew E. Kramer describing how global warming was helping Russia’s far north. The fact that global warming would help some nations is not a secret, but it gets less coverage than it should.

    At the same time relaesing a lot of methane, which is going to add to the problem.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  212. I’ve heard respectable people make what sounded like the exact opposite argument. The vaccine loses effectiveness against future strains because it was made to target specific proteins of the variant it was designed against whereas your immune system has the entire virus to work with.

    If the protein is a common denominator to multiple strains, it will be widely effective. To the degree that the target protein changes (and it doesn’t change completely), sure, it is less effective.

    The body’s defense is created on a trial-and-error basis and the first thing that works is golden. It may be good against something else, or it might not be. Hard to say what part of the virus it glommed onto. This will vary from individual to individual and strain to strain.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  213. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/31/2021 @ 1:23 pm

    I noticed you’re switching back? Now you don’t know what a subsidy is?

    I guess you don’t have much choice. Otherwise doing the humpty dance right after citing it would look out of place.

    frosty (f27e97)

  214. The real issue with accepting natural immunity as oppose to vaccine is that it is trivial to see who has gotten the vaccine. Finding who has natural immunity requires either believing assertions (unreliable) to antibody tests (cost money and often inconclusive, as the antibodies vary).

    Suppose they said OK, we can test you for antibodies, but 1) it might be inconclusive and 2) you have to pay for the tests. So, that’s $500 and then we need to draw some blood….wait, you want the free vaccine now?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  215. how global warming was helping Russia’s far north.

    It’s going to be awhile before I contemplate moving to Yakutsk. But it’s true that the downside of too much cold is often overlooked — except when it’s blamed on global warming.

    Radegunda (48f6c8)

  216. Radegunda – One surprise in the article (for me, anyway): Now that ships can cross the Arctic (most of the time), a freighter can get from South Korea to the Netherlands in 13 fewer days.

    Kevin – You are right about the methane which is, as I am sure you know, a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. (Though it doesn’t last as long in the atmosphere.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  217. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/31/2021 @ 4:37 pm

    you will favor the expanded use of nuclear power

    Nuclear gets attacked by the oil industry as well. The game the Saudi’s have been playing is almost played out though.

    It’d be a good idea for us to bring more nuclear online sooner rather than later because that’s not a quick thing.

    frosty (f27e97)

  218. Now it seems to me that frosty and NJRobb are taking the Humpty Dumpty position. (Sometimes.) So frosty objects to calling COVID tests in Germany “free”, even though that is what the author called them, and fits the ordinary meaning of the word, since those getting the tests did not pay for them.

    Sorry Jim Miller, but I too have a strong revulsion to the way the word “free” is abused. I don’t care if you are merely quoting the way in which some mindless reporter or politician has bandied it about, the word is the most grossly misused term in our vapid political era, and it bugs the hell out of me.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  219. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 4:52 pm

    Why do we need to know who has the vaccine? Why do we need to plan for long term extensive testing? Your chance of getting seriously ill from covid is very low. It’s getting lower all the time.

    I get the feeling you’re thinking this is like polio, HIV, or Ebola? I we need to treat everyone as untouchable plague victims unless they’ve got the right paperwork.

    We’ve got the vaccine. Let people make up their own minds and stop trying to control people. We should be talking about sequencing which the US isn’t doing a good job of and instead of booster shots we need to be talking about new versions of the vaccine.

    frosty (f27e97)

  220. #194
    Dustin

    I agree. At first I was thinking how embarrassing that stunt was, but they seem capable of doing worse, so I’ll wait.. who was the black guy in the photo?
    At first I thought it was Clayton Bigsby the blind black white supremacist from the Chappelle skit
    Hope everyone has had a great weekend.

    steveg (e81d76)

  221. #225
    A board full of lawyers knows better than anyone that nothing is free.
    I’d be very happy to have 1% of the legal costs that surrounded the development of all the “free” COVID vaccines

    steveg (e81d76)

  222. Sorry Jim Miller, but I too have a strong revulsion to the way the word “free” is abused.

    Your privilege, JVW. It’s a free country.

    nk (1d9030)

  223. Garbage collection is way delayed. I thinkthey are just now picking up the garbage from Saturday morning. The NYC vaccination mandate did not yet go into effect

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  224. @214 The TLDR version for a lot of people on both sides; Trump made me abandon my principles, honesty, also critical thinking, and any desire to be civil.

    frosty (f27e97)

  225. Your privilege, JVW. It’s a free country.

    Aaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhh!

    OK, good one.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  226. 197. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/31/2021 @ 1:23 pm

    And NJRobb objects to calling a Vitamin C pill used to cure the disease of scurvy, “medicine”.

    In the United States, there’s an important legal distinction. The FDA would not allow it to be sold without going through a whole permitting process f it was a drug, instead of a food.

    Vitamin C is often used to help cure disease — and a lot of folic acid and maybe a tinge of zinc and other vitamins can help too. Pantothenic acid maybe. Folic acid I think helps protein synthesis.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  227. @229 We should put you down as a NO on reparations then?

    Hyundai has a funny take on “it’s free” in one of their recent commercials. Turns out that squeegee wasn’t free.

    frosty (f27e97)

  228. Jim — I watched several documentaries in a series called “Most Dangerous Ways to School.” One of them is about Yakutsk, and I kept wondering why the people were so set in remaining in a place where it’s miserable to go outdoors most of the time. It’s a fascinating series. The Himalaya (India) one is astonishing. So is the one from Nepal.

    Radegunda (620b30)

  229. Halloween music:

    Can’t stop thinking ’bout it
    It fills me with unease
    Out there by the roadside something’s buried
    Under sycamore leaves

    (Does anyone know how to avoid a line space before the final line of a verse? It pops in not matter what I do.)

    Radegunda (620b30)

  230. 214. Radegunda (48f6c8) — 10/31/2021 @ 4:24 pm

    Trump…openly takes the position that an election he loses is necessarily illegitimate.

    He doesn’t do it that way, because it would be self-evidently absurd. De facto maybe.

    Trump is emphatically not fair or charitable in his judgment of other people. He is extremely overgenerous in his assessment of himself.

    Oh, yes. And he can’t believe that.

    Trumpists are pretending that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the resurgence of the Taliban — that he would never have given an inch to such bad guys — as if the Doha deal never happened;

    Some say he would have reversed himself. And also that he Taliban violated the agreement. Biden acted like the Taliban were committed to attacking American troops if Biden kept them there.

    Trumpists are pretending that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was an unalloyed good — though the Iranians stepped up enrichment as a result, and resumed attacks on Americans in Iraq,

    Trump seems to have stumbled into a way to stop it for more than a year – he called off an attack at the last minute on the grounds that no people or no Americans got killed by an attack on Saudi Arabia.

    Trumpists totally ignore the bad results of Trump’s tariffs

    This is just stupid on their part. He was not a big special genius. But some things worked. He even put a stop to Kim Jong Un’s blustering by telling him that he had a bigger nuclear button and his button worked!

    They pretend that he was totally on top of Covid from Day One and did everything in record time — though people who sat in task force meetings came away with a very different sense

    But he did do some things (like rush the vaccine, and, to a lesser degree, the antibodies) which few other possible presidents would have done – and what he did wrong, he stopped when it got enough criticism.

    Hi biggest fault was that he didn’t dissent more from his medical advisers.

    Hia motives were bad. and his own public statements treated it as something that would magically go away, Which it should. He didn’t pull that idea out of the air. It’s Farr;s law of epidemics. It’s what happened with the 1918 flu. I know he didn’t pull it out of the air, because at the same time he was touting a vaccine he said it would disappear even without a vaccine.

    and he was mostly worried about how it would affect his reelection.

    Yes, and he thought his election would be most impacted by an economic slowdown, because that;s what all the political consultants say. So he was focused on preventing lockdowns.

    Other people in the admin did some things right — but not because Trump is such a unique genius of leader.

    No, but mainly because he appointed right or center right Republicans. Except when it came to monetary policy — and there he was right.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  231. #233 Folic acid is necessary for human DNA and RNA production — something I favor — and prevents neural tube defects:

    In the US, mandatory fortification of enriched breads, cereals, flours, corn meal, pastas, rice, and other grain products began in January 1998.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  232. Scene: Karen goes to the Jewel and sees the sign: “Chocolate Eclairs, BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE” She picks up one box and heads to the checkout.
    Cashier: That will be $5.13
    Karen: No, it’s free!
    Cashier: Eh?
    Karen: The sign says “BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE”. Well, I only want the free one.
    Cashier: Errm … it doesn’t work that way, ma’am. You have to pay for for one to get the free one.
    Karen: (Voice rising) But I don’t want the one I have to pay for! I only want the free one!
    Cashier: Is this going to be on YouTube?
    Karen: I want to speak to the manager!

    Before we started calling them Karens, they were known as nudniks.

    nk (1d9030)

  233. 221. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 4:52 pm

    The real issue with accepting natural immunity as oppose to vaccine is that it is trivial to see who has gotten the vaccine. Finding who has natural immunity requires either believing assertions (unreliable) to antibody tests (cost money and often inconclusive, as the antibodies vary).

    The biggest problem with seriological tests is that you might get false negatives. You won’t get false positives.

    And, of course, it’s more expensive, and it involves needles and takes a little while..

    But if NYC is willing to pay its employees who now get vaccinated $500, they could well offer this test.

    Suppose they said OK, we can test you for antibodies, but 1) it might be inconclusive and 2) you have to pay for the tests. So, that’s $500 and then we need to draw some blood….wait, you want the free vaccine now?

    It’s not inconclusive. What could be inconclusive is the degree of immunity, Maybe it was a recent very mild infection and not a long ago vaccine-equivalent infection.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  234. He doesn’t do it that way, because it would be self-evidently absurd. De facto maybe

    He made very clear before the election that he would not accept a loss as legitimate — even though his internal polling said it was likely. Everything he’s done subsequently demonstrates that he won’t accept a loss as legitimate. He even claimed that Dems cheated to win the popular vote in 2016. His psychology dictates that he must always be the winner, always be lauded as he greatest.

    Some say he would have reversed himself. And also that he Taliban violated the agreement.

    And some very strongly imply, at least, that Trump wouldn’t have been so stupid as to empower the Taliban. But he did, and he said the Taliban would fight terrorists for us. News reports show that some admin. officials foresaw a Taliban-let government. In June this year, right after claiming full credit for the process of withdrawal, Trump said that the Afghan government wouldn’t last once it was completed — not because of how the process was being done, but because it was the logical end result of the process he started.

    Getting all our troops out — quickly — was the imperative that Trump reiterated, without qualification. And he wanted all the credit for it — until the downside became clear. The outcome fully vindicated the early criticism of the Doha deal.

    Trump seems to have stumbled into a way to stop it for more than a year –

    The Iranians didn’t “stop” the enrichment for a year+ because Trump left the deal. They decided after a year that they were no longer bound by the restrictions of the deal because the U.S. had pulled out. They are now closer to a nuke. By July 2019, people in the Trump admin. were saying hey maybe we should negotiate a new deal sorta like the one we left. Trump thinks everyone else has been stupid and that he just knows what will work better. That’s not true, but his fans are committed to believing so.

    But he did do some things (like rush the vaccine, and, to a lesser degree, the antibodies) which few other possible presidents would have done

    It’s purely speculative to say that “few other possible presidents” would have thought it was a good idea to get a vaccine available as soon as possible. It’s actually a ridiculous notion. It assumes that few other people would have cared much about effectively meeting an unusual challenge to public health. Trump wanted everyone to think that Covid was no big deal and they should just keep shopping. Anyway, Warp Speed was Alex Azar’s idea, not Donald Trump’s towering genius.
    And what are the wrong things that he stopped doing after criticism? Giving those press conferences where the public could see how far his self-estimation exceeded his intelligence?

    Hi biggest fault was that he didn’t dissent more from his medical advisers.

    Because Trump knows medicine and epidemiology better than all the medical advisers, right? Trump has boasted that he basically ignored Fauci or did the opposite of what he said. Dr. Birx says that more lives could have been saved if Trump had taken the threat more seriously. But what do they know? Trump just “instinctively” knows better.

    but mainly because he appointed right or center right Republicans

    And no other Republican president would have had the wisdom to appoint right and center right Republicans? One of the weird things about Trump apologists is how they are very very certain that whatever Trump happened to do right would not conceivably have been done by anyone else.

    Trump’s main economic policy success was well in line with establishment Republican thinking. His tariffs were not, and they did more harm than good. Because Trump really doesn’t as much as he thinks.

    Radegunda (620b30)

  235. It’d be a good idea for us to bring more nuclear online sooner rather than later because that’s not a quick thing.

    Frosty, I think that we all agree on this. Even if someone doesn’t see “climate change” as a huge issue, it just makes a lot of sense to pump less stuff into the air we breathe.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  236. Your chance of getting seriously ill from covid is very low. It’s getting lower all the time.

    It’s not zero and I know people who died who I didn’t think would die from it.

    Look, what has been going on is that we’ve all been waiting for this crap to go away and, incrementally, we’ve been taking the measures that seemed reasonable. But it hasn’t gone away. Partly because the Chinese keep pumping out we get new variants, partly because some people feel invulnerable and ignore precautions. Like the Thanksgiving slaughter of grandmas last year.

    The whole “I’m all right Jack” attitude — like that Fox bimbo in the first item up top — is the kind of thing that makes people crazy. If the pandemic had ended by now, no one would be going on about vaccines. But it hasn’t and the natural reaction is to look to see who’s not working with the team.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  237. It’s not inconclusive. What could be inconclusive is the degree of immunity,

    A false negative is “inconclusive” if you are expecting a positive result. You might call it “wrong”, but to anyone else it does not show what you want it to show. So, “inconclusive.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  238. BREAKING NASA scientists & engineers at JPL are protesting against the White House vaccine mandate Monday, November 1, 2021 from 7 AM-Noon PST, demanding alternatives to “the vaccines dubious performance,” & citing a list of demands including a route to a nonMRNA vaccine.

    https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/jpl-employees-to-protest-federal-covid-19-vaccine-mandate

    Obudman (96b2a0)

  239. list of demands including a route to a nonMRNA vaccine.

    The J&J vaccine is a non-mRNA vaccine. So, stupid people at JPL. Who knew?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  240. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 8:21 pm

    It’s one thing to treat the virus as a serious issue. It’s another thing to embrace the mass hysteria. We don’t have a vaccine for the economy. We’re just hoping it’s not as bad as it looks.

    There’s one thing covid and Trump have in common. We’ve burned everything down trying to stop them.

    If you’re looking around and making lists you can count me out of that team regardless of my vax status. I can also promise you I won’t be on my deathbed wishing other people did what they were told. That anti-vax pr0n is obnoxious. I’d prefer a little more fu.

    frosty (f27e97)

  241. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/jen-psaki-tests-positive-for-covid-19
    Another vaccine success.
    NJRob (89f853) — 10/31/2021 @ 4:19 pm

    I’m betting she doesn’t wear masks, except when the camera is on, and isn’t too concerned with the diagnosis. She knows that she will recover just like she would with a mild case of the flu.

    Hoi Polloi (ade50d)

  242. Not even a mild case of the flu. No symptoms at all. Only a positive test. Because she is vaccinated.

    nk (1d9030)

  243. Sammy going back to the discussion of what the superintendent in London said. It looks like he’s trying to explain it as a misunderstanding where he claims to have been answering in the context of bathroom policy and trans people. He also apologized, which is good because even if that explanation is 100% true his answer was still misleading and I don’t see evidence that h provided better information without prodding. The link also provides some explanation for how the case was viewed internally why they transferred the student.

    I had been viewing the transfer as a huge mistake, but this is making me rethink that. Given that he went on to assault another kid it’s obvious something different should have been done, but if you view it in the moment where the known facts were that a girl accused her boyfriend of raping her and the police were involved I’m not sure yet what the better answer is. There are plenty of examples at the college level where lack of due process results in what looks like unjust outcome for men accused of assault. I think something different should be done for K-12, but again I don’t have an answer right now.

    Any thoughts?

    https://www.lcps.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=1&ModuleInstanceID=274904&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=416164&PageID=1

    Lastly, I want to speak to my comments at the June 22nd board meeting related to bathrooms. Board Member Barts asked a question about discipline incidents in the bathrooms that I wrongly interpreted as incidents involving transgender and gender-fluid students. I did this because I was viewing the question in light of the general questions and debate around policy 8040 that was occurring at the time. Multiple board members asked questions about the process, the experiences of students, and plans for transgender students and bathroom use during that discussion. My mindset was in line with that subject. At another point in that conversation, Chair Sheridan asked a question specifically about incidents involving transgender students, and I responded in the same manner. I regret that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families. I should have asked Board Member Barts clarifying questions to get to the root of her question, rather than assuming what she meant. I will do better in the future.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  244. The only strains that seem to go around are the ones the vaccine doesn’t cover.” This shouldn’t be a shock, but it seems it is to some folks.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 3:41 pm

    There’s a little more going on here than that. They guess the flu strain in advance and there have been years when they guessed completely wrong. This isn’t a case of the vaccine “working” when the strain the vaccine was meant to target didn’t circulate.

    As you say, it might be a silly argument. I’m not sure I’d go that far as to mock it. But it’s a silly argument people should have a right to make.

    frosty (e374e1)

  245. 94. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 10/30/2021 @ 4:25 pm

    He had it served on the captain’s table, as if it were reserved for officers. The officers pretended to love it, and the men quickly wanted it too. (And often pretended to like the sour stuff.)

    That;s how, I read today – I don;t know f it is true – Frederick the Great got people in Prussia to grow potatoes. He declared it a royal vegetable and had it garded, so it was stolen and used. (ptherwise I read that it was used because peasants could hide it from the army and it was very efficient)

    Let’s see here.

    https://medium.com/@_miguelferreira/frederick-the-great-potatoes-and-the-art-of-rebranding-645682b412d9

    Back in the 18th century, Frederick II of Prussia (also known as Frederick the Great) was looking for ways to feed his nation and lower the price of bread. He proposed the potato as a suitable new addition to the nation’s diet.

    But peasants resisted growing it. They said that potatoes looked dirty and had no taste.

    So King Frederick decided to rebrand it as a royal vegetable, planted a royal field with potato plants and ordered his guards to protect them.

    Now here’s the real kicker — the guards were instructed to pretend not to notice in case local peasants tried to steal from the King’s garden.

    Before long, peasants started stealing these “royal potatoes” and growing them in secret. And boom, suddenly everyone was eating potatoes.

    It still culd be an urban legend.

    I recently saw in a book – not the book I checked – a chapter about Frederick the Great and the potato. It said he discovered it when he was sent by his father to some outpost as punishment. It didn;t have this story, though. It said it was being grown by peasants so they’d have something to eat after confiscation.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  246. 241. Radegunda (620b30) — 10/31/2021 @ 7:59 pm

    He made very clear before the election that he would not accept a loss as legitimate — even though his internal polling said it was likely. Everything he’s done subsequently demonstrates that he won’t accept a loss as legitimate. He even claimed that Dems cheated to win the popular vote in 2016. His psychology dictates that he must always be the winner, always be lauded as he greatest.

    But it’s not his formal position that he can’t lose. He may do it every time, but he can;t state things that way.

    SF: Some say he would have reversed himself. And also that he Taliban violated the agreement.

    And some very strongly imply, at least, that Trump wouldn’t have been so stupid as to empower the Taliban. But he did, and he said the Taliban would fight terrorists for us. News reports show that some admin. officials foresaw a Taliban-let government. In June this year, right after claiming full credit for the process of withdrawal, Trump said that the Afghan government wouldn’t last once it was completed — not because of how the process was being done, but because it was the logical end result of the process he started.

    When he said that in June, was he still for it? Or was that meant as criticism?

    Getting all our troops out — quickly — was the imperative that Trump reiterated, without qualification.

    Yes. This was one place he and Biden were in agreement, or Biden didn;t dare to disagree. This is generally amore Dem position.

    SF: Trump seems to have stumbled into a way to stop it for more than a year –

    The Iranians didn’t “stop” the enrichment for a year+ because Trump left the deal.

    No, I didn’t mean stop the nuclear enrichment. I meant stop Iran from doing attacks on Americans in Iraq. It did stop. Maybe until now (they just did a drone attack, but in Syria.
    The U.S. and Iran are edging closer to war but so far avoiding it, because Iran doesn’t want that.

    I don;t expect diplomacy to firce Iran to stop its nuclear program. Now by cancelling the agreement, Trump pocketed the destruction Iran had already made. However, he did nothing else, except recognize reality. He had no plan.

    SF: But he did do some things (like rush the vaccine, and, to a lesser degree, the antibodies) which few other possible presidents would have done

    It’s purely speculative to say that “few other possible presidents” would have thought it was a good idea to get a vaccine available as soon as possible.

    The thing is few would have made it possible so soon. All the permanent officials were predicting a vaccine would not be ready tlll much later.

    It’s actually a ridiculous notion. It assumes that few other people would have cared much about effectively meeting an unusual challenge to public health.

    Few would have dared to disagree or interfere with the normal bureaucratic process of drug approval. And he pushed money, ordered in advance etc.

    Trump wanted everyone to think that Covid was no big deal and they should just keep shopping. Anyway, Warp Speed was Alex Azar’s idea, not Donald Trump’s towering genius.

    But Alex Azar had the backing of the president, who wanted this over as soon as possible. Yes, Trump wanted people tothink itwas no big deal, but he tried to affect reality, too.

    And what are the wrong things that he stopped doing after criticism? Giving those press conferences where the public could see how far his self-estimation exceeded his intelligence?

    Hydrozochlorquine for one. Everything he reversed himself on.

    SF: Hi biggest fault was that he didn’t dissent more from his medical advisers.

    Because Trump knows medicine and epidemiology better than all the medical advisers, right?

    Because he listenedd to a wide variety of opinions, not just the standard ones, and the standard ones were wrong in many ways. He listened too much to the experts. He should have stopped it with the ventilators (which killed people) much sooner.

    Trump has boasted that he basically ignored Fauci or did the opposite of what he said.

    Nothing wrong with that.

    Dr. Birx says that more lives could have been saved if Trump had taken the threat more seriously. But what do they know? Trump just “instinctively” knows better.

    DR. Birx was talking about lockdowns I think. It wouldn;t have saved lived – just bought time. Trump didn’t know better but he also didn;t think Dr. Fauci and others knew better. Standard operating procedure was rotten,

    SF: but mainly because he appointed right or center right Republicans

    And no other Republican president would have had the wisdom to appoint right and center right Republicans?

    Few would have been as consistent, but on this Trump was not alone.

    One of the weird things about Trump apologists is how they are very very certain that whatever Trump happened to do right would not conceivably have been done by anyone else.

    That’s wrong. It depends.

    Trump’s main economic policy success was well in line with establishment Republican thinking. His tariffs were not, and they did more harm than good. Because Trump really doesn’t as much as he thinks.

    This is right. And he was far distanbt from most presidents, including Republicans, on immigration – and that was the worst thing about him.

    That’s how he got elected, though. Because propagandists for a union and some others had been bombarding Americans FOR OVER 40 YEARS WITH PROPAGANADA AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, mainly on talk radio. They had shut people up, But they hadn’t actually got people to agree that THE LAW MUST BE ENFORCED.

    It was a nice issue for Trump. His opponents would neither disagree nor agree with him – and just in case they would agree, he mixed in a little bit of craziness, like Mexico paying for the wall.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  247. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 10/31/2021 @ 8:12 pm

    Even if someone doesn’t see “climate change” as a huge issue, it just makes a lot of sense to pump less stuff into the air we breathe.

    The effect per year is too small to matter, and even to matter over a century. (so what if certain extreme events occur, on average, every 15 years instead of once every ten, or a certain threshhold is reached 6 years later. Nothing that is being proposed passes any reasonable cost/benefit analysis and all the goals are strictly arbitrary, and both impossible to meet and not enough to work according to the climate models.)

    If you think it is a good idea to pump less stuff into the air, the remedy is to pump something else into the atmosphere to counteract it. (this is reversible in case it turns out to be a mistake_

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  248. The mRNA is just another live virus type vaccine except it is self-limiting.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  249. Time123 (9f42ee) — 11/1/2021 @ 6:56 am

    Given that he went on to assault another kid

    The second one was different. It wasn’t in a bathroom, but in an empty classroom and it wasn’t rape or sodomy, but forcible touching. So he learned something: be careful and bathrooms are not good, even though the girls may get half undressed there.

    it’s obvious something different should have been done,

    You have the same problem with no bail.

    but if you view it in the moment where the known facts were that a girl

    All of 14. Or is t 15? The boy was still 14.

    accused her boyfriend of raping her and the police were involved I’m not sure yet what the better answer is.

    They did decide that they couldn’t attend the same school.

    . I think something different should be done for K-12, but again I don’t have an answer right now.

    A quick preliminary hearing.

    The fact that they had a prior relationship didn’t argue that he’d assault someone with whom he didn’t.

    I guess the second girl also agreed to meet privately with him.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  250. 249. nk (1d9030) — 11/1/2021 @ 6:50 am

    Not even a mild case of the flu. No symptoms at all. Only a positive test.

    Nevertheless counted as another case, and treated like she infect someone else. (which is maybe possible, but it probably would also not be noticeable, although after a few generations, going through unvaccinated people, it might lead to a dangerous case.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  251. Sammy, I think you’re right about a quick preliminary hearing. But what I’m trying to think about is how to react when you don’t already know that the accused is guilty. “Your GF accused you of rape so we’re going to expel you until after the criminal trial” doesn’t seem like a great rule. But maybe I’m over simplifying.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  252. @Enes Kanter.

    Does he realize how many years this evil, tyrannical regime has existed in China??

    Now Xi may have set things up so that it’s more likely to fall after him because he has no successors picked. But it’s got a long half life.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  253. This from Fox News, showing the damage being done to the English language by wokesters:

    A shooting at a Sacramento, California, Walmart has left one man in critical condition, while the suspect remains at large.

    The victim was taken to a local area hospital where they were expected to undergo surgery, officials told a local TV news station.

    I guess I should be glad they didn’t say “one person.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  254. Nevertheless counted as another case, and treated like she infect someone else. (which is maybe possible…)

    If at al, then for a very brief period. The virus has to take hold of some cells and get busy before there is enough virus to expel in (say) a sneeze. Without symptoms, there is no sneezing and probably only a few infected cells, for a very short time as the antibodies that the body knows how to build mop it up.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  255. On election eve, Trump touts ties with Youngkin

    An endorsement Youngkin doesn’t need.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  256. The mRNA is just another live virus type vaccine except it is self-limiting.

    Where did you get this information, Sammy? Because it is total bullpucky.

    The mRNA vaccine has no virus of any kind. It simply has instructions to cells to build a stand-alone protein for the immune system to train against. Then, later, when the real thing shows up, the body already has the response in its repertoire and can act immediately (rather than farting around trying out defenses as happens without a vaccine).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  257. An endorsement Youngkin doesn’t need.

    It’s not about Youngkin, of course.

    As I’ve said before, the GOP will not recover while Trump is alive.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  258. The mRNA is just another live virus type vaccine except it is self-limiting.

    Now, the J&J vaccine (not mRNA) does have a virus in it, but not the COVID one. It has the viral equivalent of the white lab rat, a toothless carrier of the spike protein that doesn’t even invade cells. It just hangs out for a skeet shoot.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  259. The question is whether Trump’s endorsement will get the Trumpbots down to the polls more than it will repel undecideds. Certainly it would have been bad for Youngkin if Trump had told his “people” to stay home. I guess STFU isn’t an option for Donald Trump.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  260. She knows that she will recover just like she would with a mild case of the flu.

    Not even a mild case of the flu. No symptoms at all. Only a positive test. Because she is vaccinated.

    The main reason that I want everyone vaccinated is not that I fear getting deathly ill (at least not now). I’m as vaccinated as they will let me be, and wasn’t wearing a mask last night as I gave out candy to about 200 little virus-vectors.

    No, I just want this crap over, and (frustratingly) it does not seem to be going away because people who think they are invulnerable keep contracting the virus and spreading it around. So, vaccinate all these fools so it stops. Not for me, but for some who cannot make antibodies easily.

    Until this stops, people suffering from cancer, HIV, lupus, kidney disease, diabetes or those taking steroid meds or anti-rejection meds — a whole host of people who have broken immune systems — cannot rely on herd immunity.

    Sure, natural immunity happens eventually, but they only do so by spreading the virus until everyone has it. Vaccines are safer for the community as a whole. It’s not about you.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  261. “No, I just want this crap over,

    So you’re an emotionally incontinent wreck who’ll do whatever someone with a soothing tone and framed certificate tells you to, then?

    The way to make it over is to stop making it being over contingent on ‘testing’, whatever that is. Declare it over and it will be over.

    “and (frustratingly) it does not seem to be going away because people who think they are invulnerable keep contracting the virus and spreading it around.”

    Yes, they’re called the ‘fully vaccinated’, who spread it as readily as the ‘unvaccinated’.

    “So, vaccinate all these fools so it stops. Not for me, but for some who cannot make antibodies easily.”

    But it never did stop with the first, second, or third “vaccination”. Because we don’t have a vaccination, we have a pharma PR regime that wants to associate nice words with not-so-nice-working drugs that don’t fulfill their intended purpose.

    The facts are simple and libertarian: They want to make free government money, and they’ll lie as much as it takes to whoever believes it to get that money.

    “b-but it makes the symptoms less bad maybe!!!” How do we even know that? From the studies that THEY commissioned?

    Bort License (7ee4e0)

  262. Attempt to make agreement with ideology favoring reverse discrimination – or more – into an academic qualification:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/diversity-tyrannical-equity-inclusion-college-marginalized-race-11634739677

    . Many scientific disciplines, including my own area of physics, had too few women and minorities in the 1970s and ’80s. Newly established diversity offices developed procedures to counter the possibility that underlying issues might interfere with ensuring both excellence and diversity. As chairman of a physics department in the 1990s, I had to write a statement justifying each appointment we made that went to a white man.

    Once entrenched, the DEI offices began to grow unchecked. They became huge and expensive offices not subject to faculty oversight and now work to impose “equity” not only by discriminating in favor of female and minority candidates but by demanding and enforcing ideological commitments from new faculty.

    Traditionally, applicants for a science faculty position submit published articles, recommendations from mentors and colleagues, and a statement of their proposed research and teaching interests. University selection committees use this information to assess their qualifications for research and teaching.

    Several years ago, one began to see an additional criterion in advertisements for faculty openings. As a recent Cornell ad puts it: “Also required is a statement of diversity, equity and inclusion describing the applicant’s efforts and aspirations to promote equity, inclusion and diversity through teaching, research and service.” This sort of requirement became more common and is now virtually ubiquitous. Of the 25 most recent advertisements for junior faculty that appeared in Physics Today online listings as of Oct. 15—from research institutions like Caltech to liberal-arts colleges like Bryn Mawr, and even in areas as esoteric as quantum engineering and theoretical astrophysics—24 require applicants to demonstrate an explicit, active commitment to the DEI agenda.

    This isn’t merely pro forma; it’s a real barrier to employment. The life-sciences department at the University of California, Berkeley reports that it rejected 76% of applicants in 2018-19 based on their diversity statements without looking at their research records. A colleague at a major research institution, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her students, wrote to me: “I have a student on the market this year, agonizing more on the diversity statement than on the research proposal. He even took training where they taught them how to write one. It breaks my heart to see this.” Other colleagues relate that their white male postdocs aren’t getting interviews or have chosen to seek jobs outside academia.

    This is happening not only in universities. Last week the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a biomedical research charity, announced a $2.2 billion initiative aimed at reducing racial disparity, made possible by a contraction in its funding of significant research for senior investigators. The initiative includes $1.2 billion in grants for early-career researchers. Science magazine reports that because antidiscrimination law prohibits disqualifying applicants on the basis of race and sex, the recipients will be chosen based on their “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” in the words of the institute’s president, Erin O’Shea. How? “Diversity statements,” she says, are “a very promising approach.”

    The DEI monomania has contributed to the crisis of free speech on campus. As Mr. Abbot’s cancellation illustrates, even tenured senior faculty aren’t immune. Stephen Porter, a North Carolina State education professor, has sued the school, alleging that it “intentionally and systematically excluded him from departmental programs and activities that are necessary for him to fulfill his job” for speaking out against the DEI agenda.

    All this creates a climate of pervasive fear on campus and shuts down what should be an important academic discussion. After I wrote an article in these pages about the intrusion of ideology into science, I heard from faculty around the country who wrote under pseudonyms that they were afraid of being marginalized, disciplined or fired if administrators discovered their emails.

    Beyond these fearful faculty members, and talented would-be scientists who will be dissuaded or excluded from academic research, DEI offices are working to indoctrinate incoming students. This year at Princeton, the New York Post reports, freshmen were required to watch a video promoting “social justice” and describing dissenting debate as “masculine-ized bravado.” If such efforts succeed, a new generation of students won’t have the opportunity to subject their own viewpoints to challenge—surely one of the benefits of higher education.

    Critics have likened DEI statements to the loyalty oaths of the Red Scare. In 1950 the University of California fired 31 faculty members for refusing to sign a statement disavowing any party advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. That violated their freedom of speech and conscience, but this is worse. Whereas a loyalty oath compels assent to authority, a DEI statement demands active ideological engagement. It’s less like the excesses of anticommunism than like communism itself.

    <i? Mr. Krauss, a theoretical physicist, is president of the Origins Project Foundation. His newest book is “The Physics of Climate Change.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  263. It probably isn’t really only racial balance but joining with the “progressives” in other things. They want to see whom a person is allied with.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  264. 262. Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/1/2021 @ 9:57 am

    An endorsement Youngkin doesn’t need.

    But Trump does, He wants to argue he has coattails.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  265. The way to make it over is to stop making it being over contingent on ‘testing’, whatever that is. Declare it over and it will be over.

    LMAO. I think we’ve tried that already and didn’t like the resulting number of dead people.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  266. “It simply has instructions to cells to build a stand-alone protein for the immune system to train against. Then, later, when the real thing shows up, the body already has the response in its repertoire and can act immediately (rather than farting around trying out defenses as happens without a vaccine).”

    An absolutely terrible and ill-informed description that’s naturally propagandized to the ignorant.

    The advantage of the real virus is that the body recognizes it as an intruder and tries everything against it that it can, spike protein or otherwise while the disadvantage of a spike protein producer instruction (that the body is made to create itself, from its own cells, which hopefully aren’t supposed to be doing other things or get recognized as foreign for producing it, which autoimmune response is just as likely) is that you’re only attacking one part of the virus’ operation for an indefinite period, which is probably why the vaccines are failing to pick up on evolved variants, assuming that they didn’t just accelerate the evolution of a viral variant already by focusing on too narrow a solution.

    Natural immunity is comprehensive and more likely to catch first and second order mutants because it’s an immume response based on what the virus actually is and how it actually acts. Immunity from attenuated viruses (that actually take real work to mass produce) and the supremely lazy but cheap ‘mRNA spike protein producers’ is less reliable depending on what is left out.

    Anti-Spike Aktion (631238)

  267. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/1/2021 @ 10:19 am

    So, vaccinate all these fools so it stops.

    Even if you vaccinated 100% of the people with any of the current vaccines it wouldn’t “go away”. It shows every sign of becoming endemic. It will eventually fade into the background and join the other coronaviruses that are part of what make up the common cold.

    If your goal is zero deaths from covid-19 your options are wait or stop counting. The vaccine will get you fewer but not zero.

    frosty (f27e97)

  268. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/health/if-youve-had-covid-do-you-need-the-vaccine.html

    ….While many people who have recovered from Covid-19 may emerge relatively unscathed from a second encounter with the virus, the strength and durability of their immunity depends on their age, health status and severity of initial infection.

    “That’s the thing with natural infection — you can be on the very low end of that or very high end, depending on what kind of disease you developed,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.

    [In other words a positive test, with only a yes or no, is the wrong metric – an antibody test would be much better -SF]

    Those with powerful natural immunity may be protected from reinfection for up to a year. But even they should not skip the vaccine, experts said. For starters, boosting their immunity with a vaccine is likely to give them long-lasting protection against all the variants.

    [This is plain nonsense. There’s no way I see for that to make sense. All the vaccines now are against the “Wuhan flu” variant – SF]

    …Without that boost, antibodies from an infection will wane, leaving Covid-recovered people vulnerable to reinfection and mild illness with variants — and perhaps liable to spread the virus to others.

    [Antibodies will wane, but that’s not the only source of immunity. Antibodies circulating in the blood always wane if a person is not re-exposed. At least to something, even an unrelated virus. -SF]

    How immunity from infection and from vaccination compare is difficult to parse. Dozens of studies have delved into the debate, and have drawn contradictory conclusions.

    Some consistent patterns have emerged: Two doses of an mRNA vaccine produce more antibodies, and more reliably, than an infection with the coronavirus does. But the antibodies from prior infection are more diverse, capable of fending off a wider range of variants, than those produced by vaccines.

    [the vaccine totally ignores those parts of the virus distant from the part that infects. But this ma make no difference. It does mean that the antibodies, which are different in each person, are not as likely to become useless because the virus is getting more successful but only over time. -SF]

    Studies touting the durability and strength of natural immunity are hobbled by one crucial flaw. They are, by definition, assessing the responses only of people who survived Covid-19. The road to natural immunity is perilous and uncertain, Dr. Nussenzweig said.

    [Somewhat perilous. That’s prospectively. But mostly, with exceptions like Dennis Prager, people are talking after the fact. This is like what’s now called variolation (used by George Washington on his troops) versus vaccination for smallpox – SF]

    Only 85 percent to 90 percent of people who test positive for the virus and recover have detectable antibodies to begin with. The strength and durability of the response is variable.

    For example, while the immunity gained from vaccines and infection is comparable among younger people, two doses of the mRNA vaccines protected adults older than 65 better than a prior infection did.

    Research published by Dr. Iwasaki’s team in May showed a stepwise increase in the level of antibodies with rising severity of infection. About 43 percent of recovered people had no detectable neutralizing antibodies — the kind needed to prevent reinfection — according to one study. The antibodies drop to undetectable levels after about two months in about 30 percent of people who recover.

    [But did they have a serious infection? ]

    Other researchers may find different results depending on the severity of illness in the participants, said Fikadu Tafesse, an immunologist at Oregon Health & Science University.

    [I think the NYT can do better to straighten out the confusion and the misinformation.]

    In terms of the quality of the antibodies, it makes sense that invasion by a live virus would produce a broader immune response than would injecting the single protein encoded in the vaccines, he and others said.

    The virus would stimulate defenses in the nose and throat — exactly where they are needed to prevent a second infection — while the vaccines produce antibodies mainly in the blood.

    “That will give you an edge in terms of resisting a subsequent infection,” Dr. Gommerman said.

    Fragments of the virus may also persist in the body for weeks after infection, which gives the immune system more time to learn to fight it, while the proteins carried by the vaccine quickly exit the body.

    Several studies have now shown that reinfections, at least with the earlier versions of the virus, are rare.

    At the Cleveland Clinic, none of 1,359 health care workers who remained unvaccinated after having Covid-19 tested positive for the virus over many months, noted Dr. Nabin Shrestha, an infectious disease physician at the clinic.

    [But they should be almost all under 65. We’re talking here probably about the first year of the pandemic]]

    …The clinic tested only people who were visibly ill, and may have missed reinfections that did not produce symptoms. The participants were 39 years old on average, so the results may not apply to older adults, who would be more likely to become infected again.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  269. Anti-Spike Aktion (631238) — 11/1/2021 @ 11:44 am

    The spike protein includes an element of the virus that it cannot do without without becoming harmless and extinct.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  270. #235 Radegunda – I think some live in those awful places because that’s where they grew up, especially if they don’t have an easy way to move and make a living elsewhere. And I think some, especially young men, see it as way to prove how tough they are.

    Incidentally, I think people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk should be studying those places because — if we ever have Moon colonies and Mars colonies — they will be, especially at first, underground.

    (This isn’t a new idea; you can find it in Asimov’s 1952 novella, The Martian Way, and Heinlein’s 1947 short story, It’s Great to Be Back. Incidentally, in the Heinlein story, the couple who had moved back to Earth decides to return to the Moon, in large part because the Moon colonists are better people, selected to be smart, and easy to get along with.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  271. And then there’s the Caves of Steel. And anything having to do with the detective Wendell Urth/,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  272. “The spike protein includes an element of the virus that it cannot do without without becoming harmless and extinct.

    Presumptuous nonsense that flies in the face of all recorded experience with Covid in particular and viruses in general. Seasonal flus are seasonal for a reason. And ‘harmless’ does not correlate with ‘extinct’. No flu vaccine has ever survived beyond a single season and there was never a reason to make them mandatory.

    Viruses have a high enough replication rate and a small enough genome that every single and double mutant for a current strain is practically possible within a single host. There will always be a resistant strain, or a now-dormant strain, or a deactivated strain, that with enough under-the-radar replication and reverse mutation can pop right back up as an active and more deadly strain when the conditions are better for it. Natural selection and opportunistic replication never stops!

    The remedy for this is not making ourselves dependent on experimental pharmaceuticals or widespread practitioners of an antisocial distant shut-in lifestyle that attenuates the immune system we have and makes it less able to face the everyday threats when you do go out.

    Anti-Spike Aktcon (ad0b03)

  273. Indian Prime Minister doesn’t believe in rushing to solve global warming.

    India has announced plans to cut its emissions to net zero by 2070 – missing a key goal of the COP26 summit for countries to commit to reach that target by 2050.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the pledge at the Glasgow conference.
    . . .
    In contrast, China has announced plans for carbon neutrality by 2060, while the US and EU aim to hit net zero by 2050.

    CO2 emissions are falling, slowly, in the US and the European Union, but rising rapidly in China and India, though, per capita, the emissions in China and India are still much below ours and the EU’s.

    (As you probably know, Chinese “Emperor” Xi is not attending the conference.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  274. My wife results on her physical came back with this-
    Covid antibodies very elevated Value- 502.4 Normal 0.8
    I’m no dr. But I can read stats.

    mg (8cbc69)

  275. Climate change opponents. A new white paint that reflects 99% of sun light has been developed that if everyone paints their roofs with actually 1% of earths surface will stop global warming and actually start to cool planet. Read about it over at democratic underground.

    asset (432b3c)

  276. Everyone should have ones antibodies tested.

    mg (8cbc69)

  277. Shsshh, mg…. you’re going to tempt the pharma-vampires

    urbanleftbehind (c2e573)

  278. McAuliffe’s closing message: Va has too many white teachers

    “50% of the students at Va. schools K-12, 50% are students of color & yet 80 percent of teachers are white. We all know what we have to do in a school to make everybody feel comfortable in school. So, let’s diversify”

    He can’t help himself.

    Onudman (9ff85d)

  279. 285, it’s actually his patronizing f.u. to black voters who would have been voting against (or at least not voting for) Va Dems for the quick hook of Lt Gov Justin Fairfax and McCauliffes beat of 2 Abrams proteges in the primary.

    urbanleftbehind (c2e573)

  280. asset (432b3c) — 11/1/2021 @ 2:51 pm

    A new white paint that reflects 99% of sun light has been developed that if everyone paints their roofs with actually 1% of earths surface will stop global warming and actually start to cool planet. Read about it over at democratic underground.

    Of course, not everyone is going to do that, and what be accomplished if they did?

    You know it;s easier for the arth to get into a runaway cooling than a runaway increase in temperature.

    Snow is white.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  281. “The spike protein includes an element of the virus that it cannot do without without becoming harmless and extinct.”

    274. Anti-Spike Aktcon (ad0b03) — 11/1/2021 @ 2:08 pm

    Presumptuous nonsense that flies in the face of all recorded experience with Covid in particular and viruses in general.

    I said if </i? it would mutate at a crucial area. Of course it won't. But that would mean the vaccine will always work. Flu vaccines stop working because the part of the protein cover that it focuses on does not include the essential part needed to infect. Of course even limited to the spike area, there's still a whole lot of irrelevant places on the virus for the immune system to target.

    Seasonal flus are seasonal for a reason. And ‘harmless’ does not correlate with ‘extinct’.

    No, but if the virus could not infect people, and there were no variants that were harmless for that reason, it would become extinct.

    No flu vaccine has ever survived beyond a single season and there was never a reason to make them mandatory.

    INfluenza mutates much more than Covid, and the vaccine focuses on a part of the virus that changes, but is not crucial.

    Viruses have a high enough replication rate and a small enough genome that every single and double mutant for a current strain is practically possible within a single host.

    In fact of the viruses churned out by infected cells, most are defective – occasionally you get an improvement. The easier mutations occur more than once

    There will always be a resistant strain, or a now-dormant strain, or a deactivated strain, that with enough under-the-radar replication and reverse mutation can pop right back up as an active and more deadly strain when the conditions are better for it. Natural selection and opportunistic replication never stops!

    Well, it isn;t always so natural. This strain had to be forced in a lab.

    The remedy for this is not making ourselves dependent on experimental pharmaceuticals or widespread practitioners of an antisocial distant shut-in lifestyle that attenuates the immune system we have and makes it less able to face the everyday threats when you do go out.

    Yes, avoidance of all exposure to all pathogens ultimately makes people more vulnerable. But we’re talking about ages 5 to 10 or so. The body can handle new to it pathogens much better in childhood,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  282. And there are different antibodies from an infection (to all parts of the virus) than to the vaccines used in the USA,

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  283. Lost me at “experimental pharmaceuticals”.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  284. Everyone should have ones antibodies tested.

    Mandate it?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  285. Lost me at “experimental pharmaceuticals”.

    Lost me at “all those people dependent on life-saving drugs”, or whatever he was blabbing bout.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  286. BREAKING: Loudoun Official Claimed He Might Not Have Seen Email Informing Him Of Sex Assault — Despite Responding To It

    Obudman (9ff85d)

  287. “I said if it would mutate at a crucial area. Of course it won’t. But that would mean the vaccine will always work. Flu vaccines stop working because the part of the protein cover that it focuses on does not include the essential part needed to infect. Of course even limited to the spike area, there’s still a whole lot of irrelevant places on the virus for the immune system to target.”

    Targeting the virus is targeting the virus. The immune system targets as many places on the virus and other foreign variants as it can match in an immune response. It’s looking for things that don’t match what should be in the body.

    “No, but if the virus could not infect people, and there were no variants that were harmless for that reason, it would become extinct.”

    Viruses are not bacteria, they’re essentially dead till they enter living tissue they can replicate in, and can thus generally remain on surfaces and elsewhere to reinfect for much longer than living bacteria can.

    “INfluenza mutates much more than Covid, and the vaccine focuses on a part of the virus that changes, but is not crucial.”

    SARS-cov-whatever has been around for at least a decade or more and quite possibly beaten out influenza the past year or two. We’ve gotten a new variant of it at least every 2 years or so. It is endemic. It’s background risk. It’s always going to be a factor even if the Chinese weren’t using US grant money to make it as infective as possible to as many living creatures as possible.

    “In fact of the viruses churned out by infected cells, most are defective – occasionally you get an improvement. The easier mutations occur more than once”

    Yes, and as I mentioned before, the virus replicates and mutates fast enough even in a single host that new variants are generated and spread quicker than any control measures. Don’t waste your time, energy, money, or society on it. No new virus has so far proven being worth any generalized or society-wide lockdown.

    “Well, it isn;t always so natural. This strain had to be forced in a lab.”

    And it can be eventually defeated, either in a lab, after years of actual testing, or by the immune system.

    “Yes, avoidance of all exposure to all pathogens ultimately makes people more vulnerable. But we’re talking about ages 5 to 10 or so. The body can handle new to it pathogens much better in childhood”

    And there’s no reason to inject children with an untested “vaccine” whose actual results of preventing the viral spread is highly doubtful and whose side effects of sudden episodes of myocarditis and other unpredictable follow-on effects are nontrivial and not the type of thing children are prepared for. Kids are statistically in less danger from Covid then they are from vaccine side effects, full stop. You want guinea pigs, pay for them yourself, out of your own pocket, and get a control group this time.

    Anti-Spike Atcon (d842f4)

  288. Other absolutely nontrivial effects that we’re seeing from this VAX EVERYONE hysteria:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_antigenic_sin

    “When the body first encounters an infection it produces effective antibodies against its dominant antigens and thus eliminates the infection. But when it encounters the same infection, at a later evolved stage, with a new dominant antigen, with the original antigen now being recessive, the immune system will still produce the former antibodies against this old “now recessive antigen” and not develop new antibodies against the new dominant one, this results in the production of ineffective antibodies and thus a weak immunity.

    “Original antigenic sin is of particular importance in the application of vaccines.[8] In dengue fever, the effect of original antigenic sin has important implications for vaccine development. Once a response against a dengue virus serotype has been established, it is unlikely that vaccination against a second will be effective, implying that balanced responses against all four virus serotypes have to be established with the first vaccine dose.[9]

    The specificity and the quality of the immune response against novel strains of influenza is often diminished in individuals who are repeatedly immunized (by vaccination or recurrent infections).[10] However, the impact of antigenic sin on protection has not been well established, and appears to differ with each infectious agent vaccine, geographic location, and age.[7] Researchers found reduced antibody responses to the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine in individuals who had been vaccinated against the seasonal A/Brisbane/59/2007 (H1N1) within the previous three months.

    “Viruses like HIV are highly variable and undergo mutation frequently; due to original antigenic sin, HIV infection induced by viruses that express slightly different epitopes (than those in a viral vaccine) would fail to be controlled by the vaccine. In fact, the vaccine might make the infection even worse, by “trapping” the immune response into the first, ineffective, response it made against the virus.

    Rushed ‘universal’ vaccines narrowly targeted to specific proteins are worse than no vaccines at all!

    https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/mass-vaccination-may-permanently

    The universal vaccination campaign has coincided with a marked increase in the volatility of Corona and vast changes to regional and temporal patterns of infection. For the first time, SARS-2 has departed from the seasonality observed by other human coronaviruses. Official discourse has laid all of this at the feet of the Delta variant, but it is very doubtful even the scientists and bureaucrats responsible for this line really believe it. Mass vaccination has drastically altered the environment in which SARS-2 circulates. This was always expected to change the behaviour of the virus – just not in this precise way. In return for only limited protection against severe outcomes, the vaccines appear to encourage the spread of SARS-2, in multiple different ways. In continuing to insist on mass vaccination, our public health bureaucrats are doing the bidding of the virus. There is no other way to look at it.

    Anti-Spike Akton (a86009)

  289. More of that high quality fact checking. Fortunately we’ve got our top men researching it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  290. Lost me double with “untested” and the scare quotes around vaccine.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  291. https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2021/11/01/twitter-locked-pj-medias-account-for-telling-the-truth-about-gender-n1528635

    As I said when the left pushed the farcical gay “marriage” and I told everyone it wouldn’t stop there. You can call a dog’s tail a leg, but it doesn’t make it so.

    When you make someone believe something they know is a lie, you’ve broken them and they’ll believe anything. They’ll even love Big Brother.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  292. I note that Rittenhouse is being tried as an adult. It would be awkward if they charged him with being a minor in possession of a gun.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  293. The back slapping sophisticated vaxaholics don’t know schiff.

    mg (8cbc69)

  294. #301 Like that old phrase tea******r, the joke was funny for about a week then quickly got old. What I can’t take is the gleeful infliction of tedium.

    The problem with culture war blogging is the arguments are old when you start and the repetition makes them older quick. Since I got on Dana’s case about this a few posts back — I think I am being equal opportunity on this one.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  295. From mg’s AmericanThinker:

    “Let’s Go Brandon!” is a proud, out-stretched “digital” hand gesture to the over-reach of an inept, unintelligent, inexperienced, but inexplicably cocky and arrogant, mentally-diminished senior citizen who is playing house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and is playing disastrous games with America’s most trusted institutions and her citizens. Most Americans cannot believe the rapid, nine-month decline in their country, their quality of life, their country’s international reputation and standing and, consequently, their diminished security in a frightfully dangerous world.

    and later

    Best yet, “Let’s Go Brandon” is an intervention with our more moderate Democrat-voting relatives, friends, and neighbors, so that they may come to grips with what they have wrought on the country. They must all be carefully, gently, but truthfully, led to repentance for having given our birthrights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness to those who seek our destruction.

    Ahh, you see, it’s a gentle intervention. It sure persuades me to see the world as the “Thinker” does. Unfortunately, reality is a tad bit more boring. A knotted up Senate shuts down 95% of the progressive agenda (yes, some can get through via reconciliation but red-state Senators like Manchin will slow that too)….and any and all executive action can be reversed in 2024….provided the GOP actually desires governing….vs just giving “digital” fingers to everyone. But that is why the hard Right is afraid to discard Trump and find more articulate and forthright leaders. They want to give the finger more than they want to solve problems…..and Trump is the biggest middle finger around. Unfortunately they just don’t objectively see Trump. All the flaws are simply media lies and exaggeration….it’s just mean-tweets and Russia, Russia, Russia. It’s nothing exactly that a blog comment can overcome….it’s engrained….cultivated over five years….rationalized to the point of muscle memory. The hard right doesn’t want to abandon Trump…it’s who they are….

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  296. Let’s go Brandon seems on par with Cheeto Jesus. It’s not a new thing. The stature of people doing lets go Brandon seems to be a bit higher, but maybe I just don’t remember house reps calling Trump Cheeto Jesus on the floor of the house.

    But since MAGA doesn’t really differentiate between comics, elected official, or whatever I don’t think the distinction will be considered important even if it’s true, and I don’t know that it is.

    MAGA is a movement based on cultural grievance. They’ve been losing the culture war for years and there’s no sign that any of those loses are going to be reversed. Their champion actually gleefully disrespected many of the virtues they used to claim to value and they had to just suck it up. It makes sense that the losing team would trash talk from the stands. It also makes sense that the nimrods who comprise their political opposites would act deeply offended. It feels like the political equivalent of 2 kids sitting in the back seat doing the “I’m not touching you” thing for a long car ride.

    We’re not a very serious people.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  297. AJ, your analogy of Trump being a middle finger at the left is been thought of before.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-only-middle-finger-available/

    Rich Lowery does a good job here, but if it were written by a lefty I feel like it would have created outrage.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  298. mg, if the only choice is between “back slapping sophisticated vaxaholics” and idiot ignorant vaxophobes, I pick the former.

    Dear Christians: if you want to avoid taking the Mark of the Beast I would suggest that you start by avoiding anything that injects LUCIFERASE into your body.

    This Einstein is the Newmax White House correspondent.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  299. Meant to share this earlier.

    Good Article by Nick Grossman about cancel culture and the flaws in comparing it to the Cultural Revolution.

    https://grossman.arcdigital.media/p/no-america-is-not-experiencing-a

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  300. @303 and @304; I think the general response when anyone attempts to point out the boring, monotonous, tedious, and inconsistent criticisms of Trump has been to point and laugh. Any comments in this area are dismissed as “defending Trump” or being a Trumper.

    Since 2016 NeverTrump has taken what you’ve described as a long ride with brats in the back and added an awful smell while shouting “I’m not doing anything. It’s my imaginary friend”.

    A large contingent of NeverTrump has made it clear that voting Biden was a middle finger to MAGA land. That hasn’t worked out so well and it’s no surprise that the desire is to keep focusing on Trump.

    frosty (f27e97)

  301. #308

    A large contingent of NeverTrump has made it clear that voting Biden was a middle finger to MAGA land. That hasn’t worked out so well and it’s no surprise that the desire is to keep focusing on Trump.

    I think you know that’s nonsense, frosty. People who voted for Biden of the neverTrump variety have ample disdain for Trump, and fear of his contempt for Democracy to vote against Trump on the merits. I prefer a doddering Biden to coup-plotter Trump. Sorry.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  302. Frosty, you misunderstood my point. I don’t see much difference between “Let’s go Brandon’” and “Cheeto Jesus” I recognize that what small difference I do may see isn’t generally considered meaningful.

    I think the people acting shocked that the MAGA is insulting the president they oppose are either not understanding the movement (for reasons I laid out), or being disingenuous.

    Hope that’s more clear.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  303. Watching MSNBC and CNN portraying Glenn Youngkin as some sort of KKK Grand Wizard in an attempt to drum up the black McAuliffe vote is crazy.

    Obudman (9ff85d)

  304. “I think the people acting shocked that [anyone] is insulting the president they oppose are either not understanding the [history of politics] or being disingenuous.”

    Fixed.

    Obudman (9ff85d)

  305. Paul Montagu (5de684) — 11/2/2021 @ 7:00 am

    Luckily, or unluckily depending on your POV, there are more than 2 choices.

    frosty (f27e97)

  306. Luckily, frosty, luckily.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  307. Appalled (1a17de) — 11/2/2021 @ 7:28 am

    I think you know that’s nonsense, frosty. People who voted for Biden of the neverTrump variety have ample disdain for Trump, and fear of his contempt for Democracy to vote against Trump on the merits. I prefer a doddering Biden to coup-plotter Trump. Sorry.

    Sure, there are people with valid reasons mixed in with their contempt for whoever they think the other team is. There are exceptions to every rule. Just like there are exceptions to the “Trump was a middle finger” observation.

    But I would point to all of the claims that anyone was/is better than Trump, statements along the lines of R’s need to run these Trumpkins out of the party and if that means losing elections, the constant whine that it’s Trump’s party, etc. that have been made independent of any policy and say that, yes, it’s fair to say there are middle fingers going up on both sides.

    frosty (f27e97)

  308. Karma in the land of the Taliban.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  309. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/11/the-earthquake-next-time.php

    In the Virginia race, Terry McAuliffe inflamed opposition by saying that parents should stay out of the schools and let teachers and administrators run them. Subsequently he doubled down, saying the same thing again, rather than backing off. McAuliffe isn’t a very good politician, and many people considered these comments merely to be gaffes.

    Actually, though, McAuliffe said what Democrats think. American Experiment polled this in Minnesota, asking, whom do you trust to decide what is taught in the public schools, parents, or teachers and principals? Overall, 42% said they trust parents, while 36% said they trust teachers and principals. But the partisan division was stark. Republicans say they trust parents over educators by 69% to 31%. Democrats, on the other hand, don’t think much of parents. They trust teachers and principals over parents by 54% to 18%.

    This discrepancy reflects a major fault line in our society. You can see how sharp the division is in the cross tabs to our poll. Of those who favor teaching Critical Race Theory in the schools, only 9% want parents in charge of the schools. They know that they are subverting our families and our country, and that what they are doing is not popular. Conversely, of those who oppose teaching CRT in the schools, 81% want parents in charge, while only 9% prefer teachers and principals.

    We have seen similar poll results in other states. In Virginia, 70% of Democrats said they want school boards to have more influence on curricula than parents.

    The Left has declared war on America’s families. The public schools are an important battleground in that war. These issues–Should we be teaching racism and anti-Americanism in the schools? And who, ultimately, is in charge of educating our children?–are winners for conservatives and Republicans.

    Anyone excusing the anti-Americanism and racism at the core of CRT should be dismissed.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  310. Time123,

    thanks for the radical left’s opinion on how CRT and cancel culture isn’t a thing. I’m shocked those that are rampaging through institutions feel that way.

    Here’s more from your “enlightened” leftist Nick Grossman:

    We have a white nationalist terrorism problem. And Tucker Carlson is helping the terrorists.

    That’s a serious accusation, and I don’t make it lightly. I’ve been teaching about terrorism for 15 years, primarily focused on the jihadists of al Qaeda and ISIS. But recently I’ve added more material on white nationalists to my courses, because they’ve committed the deadliest terrorist attacks in the United States in recent years, and some of the deadliest around the world.

    Tucker hasn’t committed violence, provided material support, or anything direct like that. But his popular Fox News show regularly makes the same arguments as the terrorists, pushing the conspiracy theory that motivates their violence. It’s as if, after the September 11th attacks, a prominent TV host worked diligently to convince Americans that al Qaeda’s view of the United States was right.

    There’s clearly all that white nationalist terrorism all over the place. So much terrorism taking place it’s in the news every day. Just ask Alec Baldwin.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  311. the constant whine that it’s Trump’s party, etc.

    I’m not whining, it’s a fact. He’s the leader of the party. He’s the #1 fundraiser. He’s the clear front runner for the nominee. Disagreeing with him (e.g. Chaney) draws loud calls for primary challengers. It’s his party, not mine, not the Cato institute, not Mitch’s.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  312. Anyone excusing the anti-Americanism and racism at the core of CRT should be dismissed.

    CRT is just a distraction from the true menace; creeping sharia law.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  313. Or was it JK Rawling’s books leading to Satanism? Sorry, I mean D&D leading to satanism.

    Or tide pods. Probably tide pods.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  314. Time123,

    thanks for the radical left’s opinion on how CRT and cancel culture isn’t a thing. I’m shocked those that are rampaging through institutions feel that way.

    you completely misunderstood the point of his essay, which was not that it doesn’t exist but that its being wildly exaggerated.

    I’d be happy to engage with you seriously on the issue if you could demonstrate the ability to recognize what people you disagree with are actually saying and engage with that.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  315. frosty:

    I will stipulate that there may be somebody who believes:

    I like Trump well-enough, I guess, and he has the right sort of view on things but, really, those people who support him need a good old fashioned finger. So Joe it is on this ballot…

    It’s a big world.

    If you want to argue that Trump has made himself the embodiment of a certain kind of conservativism/nationalism/populism that a lot of nevertrump finds repellent — you got a better argument. Also, there are people who will vote down perfectly good people because the GOP supports Trump. That, I guess, qualifies as a middle finger to the people who support Trump.

    Appalled (1a17de)

  316. Time123,

    You put words in my mouth all the time of things I do not say and you claim I support things without evidence, but you’re complaining about others not recognizing arguments and not discussing what they are actually saying?

    Bad faith.

    NJRob (10777c)

  317. @319

    I added

    that have been made independent of any policy

    I can’t tell that

    Disagreeing with him

    is a reference to policy. There’s a tendency for this to be used in place of disloyal. If it is the former then I’d say it falls into

    there are people with valid reasons mixed in with their contempt

    frosty (f27e97)

  318. Time123 (9f42ee) — 11/2/2021 @ 9:25 am

    that its being wildly exaggerated

    This is very subjective. What is the appropriate level of CRT? I’d say zero. I don’t think there’s much room to really have much of a debate on a little racism but not to much.

    It’s also sort of a barn door after it’s been emptied situation. The original claim, and it’s a claim that is still made, is that there is no CRT being taught, that CRT isn’t a thing other than an obscure legal theory, etc. and we’re only having the discussion about it being exaggerated after it’s become clear that the original story was a lie.

    frosty (f27e97)

  319. Time123,

    You put words in my mouth all the time of things I do not say and you claim I support things without evidence, but you’re complaining about others not recognizing arguments and not discussing what they are actually saying?

    Bad faith.

    NJRob (10777c) — 11/2/2021 @ 9:33 am

    I don’t think I do either of those things.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  320. and any and all executive action can be reversed in 2024….provided the GOP actually desires governing

    I would very much like to see the Supremes smack this crap down. Treaties that aren’t treaties, highly leveraged mandates with fulcrums of Jell-O (yes, I do not support Biden’s private-sector vaccine mandates), non-adversarial consent decrees and settlements, orders to agencies to promulgate regulations (due process be damned), diverting appropriated funds to other activities, political weaponizing of the DoJ, IRS and other bureaucracies and the ideological purification of the military.

    And not just when a Republican is in office.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  321. Time123 (9f42ee) — 11/2/2021 @ 9:25 am

    that its being wildly exaggerated

    This is very subjective. What is the appropriate level of CRT? I’d say zero. I don’t think there’s much room to really have much of a debate on a little racism but not to much.

    It’s also sort of a barn door after it’s been emptied situation. The original claim, and it’s a claim that is still made, is that there is no CRT being taught, that CRT isn’t a thing other than an obscure legal theory, etc. and we’re only having the discussion about it being exaggerated after it’s become clear that the original story was a lie.

    frosty (f27e97) — 11/2/2021 @ 9:43 am

    The main thrust of his article is about cancel culture, CRT is also mentioned but he didn’t discuss it as deeply. For cancel culture he made some efforts to quantify it based on available information.

    He also made clear in the piece that while it’s being exaggerated from individual cases those cases are bad and shouldn’t be excused.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  322. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/2/2021 @ 9:56 am

    What you describe is the slow cancer eating at the country. It’s going to need some very aggressive treatment that I don’t think we’re going to like.

    I wish I had the energy to look up the case but somewhere Thomas has a dissent that simply says, in effect, we need to go all the back to Wickard and unwind all of this garbage.

    frosty (f27e97)

  323. MAGA is a movement based on cultural grievance.

    It is also economic grievance, died to the twin “evils” of outsourcing and immigration. It is more the release of several pent-up grievances that have been festering for a long time (since the 90s anyway) than it is a passing fad.

    The irony, of course, is that that Trump is such a poor leader for the movement. He expresses the rage quite well, but he is unable to do anything meaningful to rectify it.

    But “He fights!”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  324. Kevin, It seems primarily focused on the culture of the white working class more then a particular income level. In a lot of key states the big split was college / non-college educated. (Wish I had the link handy) I know a couple people in the trades who make a lot more then you’re typical degreed clerk.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  325. I wish I had the energy to look up the case but somewhere Thomas has a dissent that simply says, in effect, we need to go all the back to Wickard and unwind all of this garbage.

    In the next few years we will see Thomas being the bedrock of the Court. Maybe not to Wickard, but there are a number of mistakes since. Chadha was pretty terrible, and for the exact reasons the dissenters said it would be.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  326. I know a couple people in the trades who make a lot more then you’re typical degreed clerk.

    Auto mechanic, for one. But in some places the trades (non-union construction/maintenance trades to be exact) are pretty much closed to non-Spanish speakers. Which is where the immigration thing comes in. The outsourcing thing hits the white working class in manufacturing, mining, and similar.

    Lawyers, otoh, seem to have weathered these trends just fine.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  327. My point, though, is that this pent-up rage was well-articulated by Donald Trump but he has proven manifestly unable to lead them to the promised land. He’s not even all that good at wandering in the desert.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  328. Antibodies matter. Vaccines are for the hoaxful.

    mg (8cbc69)

  329. this case is horrifying and I hope it results in some level of time served with probation.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-killed-his-daughter-s-boyfriend-selling-her-sex-trafficking-n1282968

    (Assuming it’s been accurately reported)

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  330. So, I got a notification this morning that a review I left on Amazon in 2001 (for a “Farscape” VHS tape) was removed for “violating community standards.” Not a clue why.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  331. @337:

    Leon Gary Plauché (November 10, 1945 – October 23, 2014)was an American man known for the 1984 killing of Jeff Doucet, who had kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and molested Plauché’s son, Jody. The killing occurred on Friday, March 16, 1984, and was captured on camera by a local news crew. Plauché shot and killed Doucet, and he was given a seven-year suspended sentence with five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service for the shooting and received no prison time. The case received wide publicity because some people questioned whether Plauché should have been charged with murder or let off. Plauché stated that he was in the right, and that those in a similar position would have done the same thing

    News video of shooting

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Plauch%C3%A9

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  332. Anti-vaxx, like astrology and homeopathy, is militant ignorance.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  333. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/2/2021 @ 10:20 am

    Kudos to leaving a review for Farscape, assuming it was positive.

    If it was negative I might have to side with Amazon on this one.

    🙂

    frosty (f27e97)

  334. Nah, me and Aeryn Sun go way back.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  335. @339, I didn’t know about that case. Interesting and horrifying read.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  336. I don’t think this one is working class.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jenna-ryan-texas-trump-capitol-riot_n_617e044ae4b03072d7051889

    But I might be nutpicking here.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  337. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/2/2021 @ 10:18 am

    In his defense (and I’m not trying to defend him) he isn’t alone. There are no good answers here. Leaving things in China has several obvious problems, one of which is that China can’t scale up and it looks like they’re starting to unwind. There are people who believe China is “overtaking” the US. They aren’t and in fact the opposite is true. The gap between the US and China on a variety of key metrics is expanding in favor of the US.

    Most people don’t want tariffs but this number depends on who you’re talking to. Lower taxes or subsidies for various industries is loaded with political problems. Basically, no one can command companies to hire and produce in the US and no one really wants to do what’s required to encourage it. It’s probably going to get solved by itself and we’re going to start missing that “Made in China” stuff fairly soon.

    On top of that there are arguments in favor of manufacturing offshore.

    You can talk about UBI or other social programs that might make unemployment or low employment livable but that ignores fundamental psychological issues. It’s all chuckles and laughs to poke at the white working class, etc. but there are a lot of people of every race who want to do something more than collect a check. We’re not doing a very good job there. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking there’s a concerted effort to do the opposite. A sort of “Oh, that adds meaning to your life. Well, let me see that for a minute. Opps, slippery fingers. Sorry I broke that.” kind of thing going on.

    If Trump is the only one speaking to that we’re not going to like the result. And as far as I can tell that’s what’s going on.

    frosty (f27e97)

  338. Actor Kristy Swanson, Who Spread Virus Misinformation, Is Hospitalized With COVID-19

    Actor Kristy Swanson, the original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” said Monday she has been hospitalized in New Jersey after contracting COVID-19.

    “Prayers for me please. Yesterday I took an ambulance ride to the hospital. I’m still here with pneumonia, I’m on oxygen etc, all covid related of course. I’m in good spirits and in great hands,” she tweeted.

    Swanson said she was “at the tail end” of her COVID-19 infection when it “jumped into my lungs.” She said she was being treated at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly with blood thinners and baricitinib, a rheumatoid arthritis drug authorized by the FDA for emergency use to treat COVID-19.

    Swanson, a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, frequently shares misinformation about coronavirus on Twitter, where she has close to 390,000 followers. Recently she promoted debunked conspiracy theories that the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, “murders puppies.” She has also shared anti-mask and anti-vaccine content, including a tweet last month in which she suggested the government implemented vaccine mandates to make money.

    In response to a New York Post report Monday characterizing her as anti-vaccine, Swanson tweeted, “I have NEVER said I am anti-vax.”
    …….

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  339. Some polling stations in VA reportedly requiring masks in counties with no mask mandate.

    “Just got this text. They were trying to require masks at my polling place in a jurisdiction with no mask mandate in place.”

    “URGENT: Some voting locations are making voters wear a mask in order to vote. YOU CAN NOT BE TURNED AWAY FOR NOT WEARING A MASK.”

    They’ll try anything.

    Obudman (9ff85d)

  340. Antibodies matter. Vaccines are for the hoaxful.

    Where do I order the bumper sticker for that slogan?
    A friend of mine caught the Covid just after last Christmas. She got tested for antibodies last August, and her antibodies were basically zero. What does she do now?

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  341. He (Trump) expresses the rage quite well, but he is unable to do anything meaningful to rectify it.

    The MAGA movement rages for rages’ sake. If the grievances are “rectified”, then where does the movement go? The MAGA movement is based on conspiracy theories.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  342. NYC police unions warned vaccine mandates would pull 10,000 officers off streets. So far, the number is 34.
    …….
    Fewer than three dozen uniformed officers out of about 35,000 were placed on unpaid leave on Monday when the deadline expired, in addition to 40 civilian NYPD staff out of roughly 17,000, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said in a news conference.

    Many more await a decision from the city on their requests for religious or medical exemptions, Shea said. In total, 85 percent of NYPD staff are vaccinated, he added.
    ……
    About 9,000 city employees overall were placed on leave-without-pay status on Nov. 1, out of a workforce of more than 300,000, while roughly 12,000 had applied for a religious or medical exemption to vaccination and were waiting for a response from the city, (Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said during the same news conference).
    …….
    Meanwhile, hundreds more New York City firefighters than usual called in sick in the week leading up to the Nov. 1 deadline, Fire Commissioner Daniel A. Nigro said Monday, in a sign of continued opposition to the vaccine mandate within that group.
    …….
    Related:

    6 Firefighters Suspended for Taking Truck to Threaten NY Senate Staff Over Vaccine Mandate
    Six FDNY members of Ladder 113 have been suspended for allegedly driving their truck to a state senator’s New York City office and threatening his staff over the vaccine mandate for city workers.

    The on-duty firefighters drove an in-service ladder truck to state Senator Zellnor Myrie’s office in Brooklyn on Friday and questioned staff as to where the politician lives, a department spokesperson confirmed. The crew is accused of telling his staffers they would have “blood on their hands” Monday when unvaccinated workers must go on unpaid leave.

    The group of firefighters also allegedly told the staff that if a fire was reported at Myrie’s home they would not respond.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  343. Frosty,

    I think the best exposition of the malaise that Trump exploited can be found here, from Feb 2016:

    Charles Murray: Trump’s America

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  344. If the grievances are “rectified”, then where does the movement go?

    I dunno. Where did Reagan’s go after he largely did what he said he’d do?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  345. My basic point is that TRUMP cannot deliver.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  346. @346 do keep us updated, Rip

    how bummed will you be if she pulls through?

    JF (e1156d)

  347. @345,

    Frosty, it’s a tough problem. Free trade makes us generally richer, but not everyone individually. Additionally it’s forced change on a model of life that didn’t want change. Trump is hardly the first person to try and fix it, but he may be the first president that focused on how angry it made some people.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  348. There;s a write-in race by the incumbent mayor in Buffalo who lost a primary – he’s even distributing rubber stamps.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  349. Recently she promoted debunked conspiracy theories that the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, “murders puppies.”

    She’s been hanging around Glenn Reynolds too much.

    a tweet last month in which she suggested the government implemented vaccine mandates to make money.

    That would be the last thing I’d accuse government of doing (the “make” part).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  350. Free trade makes us generally richer, but not everyone individually.

    Nor every situation. There are ways to take advantage of free trade that makes the other side poorer in the short run (and people eat in the short run).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  351. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 11/2/2021 @ 11:18 am

    My basic point is that TRUMP cannot deliver.

    My basic point is that someone should try. Because the underlying problem is real.

    frosty (f27e97)

  352. > Would this be an opportune time to return to all of that feminist academic nonsense about “toxic masculinity”?

    JVW, i’m late to the party on this so you may not see it, but —

    in general, that phrase isn’t used to mean that *all masculinity is toxic*. it’s used to note that masculinity comes in toxic forms and in benefical forms, and that we should be discouraging the toxic forms and encouraging the beneficial forms.

    what’s interesting to me is that people on the left and people on the right hear *completely different things* from the phrase.

    so i’d like to ask you: what would be a better phrase to use to encompass the idea i’m expressing in my second paragraph?

    aphrael (4c4719)

  353. Time123 (9f42ee) — 11/2/2021 @ 11:40 am

    I’m not sure people didn’t/don’t want change. It’s just which changes. All of my grandparents lived a hard life and I wouldn’t want that. I don’t even want the life my parents had for the first half of my life. The things I would like to keep are targets for some ugly people.

    he may be the first president that focused on how angry it made some people

    I’ve said this enough that I’m a broken record. He wasn’t (yes, specifically on free-trade but not the overall tactic). Trump hasn’t done anything new. He has simply used the D playbook on a different group of people. I think this is also driving some of the NeverTrump contempt. I can’t see myself ever voting D. They’re obnoxious to a degree that is difficult to talk about in polite conversation. A lot of people feel like Trump’s doing the same thing, using the same tactics, and they have the same problem.

    frosty (f27e97)

  354. American Airlines now admitting that the problems over the weekend were caused by a labor shortage, not the weather.

    Just being honest from the get-go would mean so much but they seem unable to stray from the meme.

    Obudman (9ff85d)

  355. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/10/27/report-joe-biden-releases-more-than-half-a-million-border-crossers-into-u-s/

    This is healthy for our society politically and to “stop the spread,” right.

    NJRob (f6c67f)

  356. Frosty, I think we’re sort of agreeing.

    Trump played identify politics for the white working class and gave a voice to their grievances. Some of those grievances are legitimate. If you’re a 50 year old in the rust belt a chart showing that in 15 years free trade will heal the economic damage it did to your town is no comfort at all.

    I don’t think Trump offered many actual solutions, the ones he did offer, protectionism, would be worse then the disease, and he did a terrible job actually implementing them.

    Other groups have proposed ways to this problem. All have their flaws as you highlighted with your comments on psychology.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  357. #360 aphrael – I have been thinking, recently, that any discussion of “toxic masculinity” could be improved if it were made symmetric, if those discussing it, described a parallel, “toxic femininity”.

    (For the record: I doubt that I would agree with very many academic feminists on this subject — but I think we need to find ways in America for men and women to get along with each other better.

    And here is a speculation for one place to start: I have seen no data on the subject, don’t know if any is even available, but I think it nearly certain that few of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims had fathers in their lives.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  358. @365, Jim, When I see someone use the phase; “toxic masculinity” sincerely I assume they’re talking about performative behavior that causes harm to the actor and / or others, think someone trying to be like Max Tucker portrayed himself, or a violent ‘dude bro’.

    I don’t know what you mean when you say Toxic Femininity but would be interested in understating your point better.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  359. Time123 – In the last two years of Obama’s presidency, life expectancy fell in the United States.

    Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped slightly for the second year in a row, likely fueled in part by an uptick in drug overdoses.

    The CDC on Thursday released updated data on death rates and life expectancy in the U.S., and reported that, as of 2016, Americans are expected to live until 78.6 years of age, down from 78.7 years in 2015. While that drop may not seem like much, it’s the second time in as many years life expectancy has gone down: In 2014, the figure was projected at 78.9 years.

    Now it is possible that Obama did something to stem those drug overdose deaths — especially among rural whites — but, if so, I missed it.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  360. #366 Time123 – I’m not volunteering to get into that hornet’s nest; I am just saying those who do should look at the characteristic faults of those without Y chromosomes, as well as the characteristic faults of those who have them. (And there are many places to start. For example, “mean girls”.)

    And now I have work to do, including getting back to my nuclear physics course.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  361. See 284 about anti bodies

    mg (8cbc69)

  362. Republican senator Josh Hawley worries feminism has driven men to ‘pornography and video games’

    The effort to combat toxic masculinity in the US has led men to consume more pornography and play more video games, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley claimed in a speech to a group of Republicans.

    Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Hawley addressed the issue of “manhood”, which he said was under attack, and called for men to return to traditional masculine roles.
    …….
    “Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” Hawley said.
    ……
    ……Hawley’s apparent claim to speak for all men, in the name of a return to a vaguely defined masculinity of old, swiftly became a new subject of ridicule on Twitter.
    ……
    “Hollywood delivers the toxic masculinity theme ad nauseum in television and film,” he said, going on to link traditional masculinity as “vital to self-government”.

    “Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty,” Hawley said.

    As well as pornography, Hawley tied the supposed decline in masculinity to issues including unemployment, people marrying at a later age and the preservation of liberty.
    …….
    Hawley offered few solutions to the problems he claimed to present. ……
    ……

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  363. JVW, i’m late to the party on this so you may not see it, but —

    in general, that phrase isn’t used to mean that *all masculinity is toxic*. it’s used to note that masculinity comes in toxic forms and in benefical forms, and that we should be discouraging the toxic forms and encouraging the beneficial forms.

    what’s interesting to me is that people on the left and people on the right hear *completely different things* from the phrase.

    so i’d like to ask you: what would be a better phrase to use to encompass the idea i’m expressing in my second paragraph?

    Hi aphrael, nice to hear from you as always.

    I think toxic masculinity ought to mean what you think it means, but I believe that misandrist feminism has used “toxic masculinity” to mean any male behavior that smacks of what I would call “traditional” male behavior and they might call “outdated” male behavior. For instance, I think a man who is assertive and resolute while at the same time protective of traditions yet understanding of the needs of others is behaving in a time-honored and proper manner. Yet today’s misandrist feminist seems to demand that men be submissive and timid and readily give in to whatever the academic intelligentsia determines are the current mores.

    An example of this which comes immediately to mind are the pro-sex work feminists, who demand that men accept and support the idea of their sisters, wives, daughters, etc. selling sexual favors without any sense of propriety. I have never in my life known a man who has said, “I think it’s awesome that my daughter is a stripper” or “I fully support my sister working as a licensed prostitute in a government-permitted brothel,” yet I know that there are countless Women’s Studies professors, social workers, professional advocates, activists, etc. who believe that is exactly how a man should feel, hundreds of millennia of tradition be dammed.

    To answer your question — what sort of phrase should we use to denote the idea of the yin and yang of masculinity — I’m going to go really old school on you and assert that the highest compliment a man can be given is to be referred to as “a gentleman.” And I do truly believe in the fuddy-duddy Victorian connotation of that word. But — as ever and always — I am a grumpy old curmudgeon, clearly out of times in today’s putrid culture.

    JVW (ee64e4)

  364. JVW,

    What an excellent piece of writing. It’s a shame that it is buried at comment 371 on the weekend open thread.

    norcal (b9a35f)

  365. Women are entirely defined by men, in all that they are and all that they do, and “toxic masculinity” only means that the women who use the phrase are not comfortable with their own particular fit in the definition.

    nk (1d9030)

  366. https://theaspenbeat.com
    Even in Aspen…

    mg (8cbc69)

  367. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 11/2/2021 @ 2:14 pm

    Now it is possible that Obama did something to stem those drug overdose deaths — especially among rural whites — but, if so, I missed it.

    The federal government caused these drug overdoses, by cracking down on prescriptions of Oxycontin and similar drugs, so, as any fool could have anticipated, many turned to the illegal drug market, which expanded into new, more rural, territory.. (by different drug dealers than in the cities.)

    And making heroin smuggling more difficult promoted the use by drug dealers of the very dangerous fentanyls, mostly coming from China, and made illegal one by one.

    Causing many who relapsed from rehab to overdose, besides what happened because they did not take account of their new lower toxic dose.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  368. 371. JVW (ee64e4) — 11/2/2021 @ 4:10 pm

    the pro-sex work feminists, who demand that men accept and support the idea of their sisters, wives, daughters, etc. selling sexual favors without any sense of propriety.

    I think these people are speaking of themselves, or acquaintences, and don’t want more women to do that. They just don’t want the women who do that to be regarded, or at least treated, as having acted with impropriety in getting money.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  369. NOT </b? to be regarded or at least treated s having acted with impropriety. And especially they shouldn't get cheated. So they dignify iy.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  370. https://www.newser.com/story/312958/girl-9-uses-unconscious-dads-face-to-unlock-his-phone.html

    When a Massachusetts 9-year-old heard her dad scream on Oct. 28, she found him with her unconscious mom—and then the father, too, passed out. Jayline Barbosa Brandão took quick action that is being credited with saving the lives of everyone in the house: She grabbed her dad’s phone and, needing to unlock it using facial recognition, held it up to his unconscious face before calling 911. She then got her 7-year-old sister out of the house and to a neighbor’s for help, CNN reports. First responders arrived to find Jayline’s parents suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning; they, their daughters, and the girls’ grandma were taken to the hospital, and all five survived.

    Having been without power for three days due to a storm, the family borrowed a generator and ran it outside, but near the home’s back door, for just a few minutes before turning it off due to the noise. Apparently it was too close: carbon monoxide levels of 1,000 parts per million (ppm) were found in the house; sustained concentrations of more than 150 to 200 ppm can cause disorientation, unconsciousness, and death. Experts recommend generators be run at least 20 feet away from doors, windows, or vents.

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  371. https://www.newser.com/story/312983/first-country-approves-pill-to-treat-covid.html

    The advantage this has over the antibodies is that it can be taken by mouth, and ideally, purchased without a prescription. And, no needles.

    Britain granted conditional authorization on Thursday to the only pill shown to successfully treat COVID-19 so far. It is the first country to OK the treatment from drugmaker Merck, although it wasn’t immediately clear how quickly the pill would be available, the AP reports. The pill was licensed for adults 18 and older who have tested positive for COVID-19 and have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or heart disease. Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 would take four pills of the drug, known as molnupiravir, twice a day for five days. Initial supplies will be limited. Merck has said it can produce 10 million treatment courses through the end of the year, but much of that supply has already been purchased by governments worldwide. In October, UK officials announced they secured 480,000 courses.///

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  372. Peter Navarro, who wrote the book: “In Trump Time, a Journal of America’s Plague Year” interviewed from about minute 69 to 106.

    https://wabcradio.com/podcast/the-other-side-of-midnight-with-frank-morano

    He started out as an economic adviser who did not like China, and one of the few people who lasted the entire rump Administration. He considers Pence a betrayer and Fauci as having been responsible for the extent of the virus’ spread.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  373. The November 5 show.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  374. norcal (b9a35f) — 11/2/2021 @ 5:13 pm

    I concur with Norcal, JVW. I also call you a gentleman.

    felipe (484255)


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