Patterico's Pontifications

12/31/2021

New Year’s Weekend Open Thread

Filed under: General — Dana @ 12:51 pm



[guest post by Dana]

Happy New Year’s Eve! A neighbor here on the West coast told me that they always ring in the new year with New York and thus are in bed by 9:30 pm. Sounds good to me. With that, I am not doing a year-end round-up of notable news items because I just don’t have the energy to meet the expectation. However, please feel free to do so in the comments section if you’d like. With that, let’s go!

First news item

Presidents Biden and Putin chit-chat as Russia has massed 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, continues to demand that Ukraine never be allowed in NATO while telling Biden there will be a “complete rupture” if sanctions are put on Russia if it invades Ukraine:

“President Biden urged Russia to de-escalate tensions with Ukraine. He made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” Psaki said in a statement Thursday.

“President Biden also expressed support for diplomacy, starting early next year with the bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue, at NATO through the NATO-Russia Council, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. President Biden reiterated that substantive progress in these dialogues can occur only in an environment of de-escalation rather than escalation,” she added.

A senior administration official told reporters on Thursday that Biden laid out two paths for Putin — diplomacy leading toward de-escalation or punitive measures like economic sanctions and beefed up military assistance to U.S. allies in the region.

According to the report, the administration is keeping mum about why Russia requested the call.

Second news item

Official arm of the GOP pushes (in a now deleted tweet) anti-vax information:

Untitled

It’s like the GOP doesn’t want the pandemic to end.

Better late than never: At odds with the House Judiciary GOP, Trump continues to tout the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines:

Appearing on the right-wing YouTube channel Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) on Thursday night, Trump wholeheartedly expressed support for the COVID-19 vaccines, which he noted has “saved millions of lives.” “We’re very proud of the vaccines,” he continued, while trying to thread the far-right needle. “But the mandates, they should not be—and they are trying to enforce these mandates, and it’s so bad for people and for our country.”

All of this pro-vaccine talk from Trump is not going over well with his loyalists. From Info Wars to Candace Owens, MAGAland has clearly been caught off guard by Trump extolling the effectiveness of the vaccines.

Third news item

“Test to stay”:

As another surge of Covid cases has swept the U.S., school districts around the country are pushing to keep classrooms open next week when students return from winter breaks.

At-home testing kits will be given out to classrooms if students test positive, with students taking two tests over the course of seven days. Students who are asymptomatic and test negative can return to school the day after their first tests.

This is certainly a change for the better. I hope all officials are on board with keeping kids in school as much as possible.

Third news item

Gov. Kristi Noem on minimizing the spread of Covid-19: just wash your hands!!:

She later added, “I tell people consistently: take the emotion out of this discussion. Start studying the science and the facts and let’s get back to the basics. Still, Pete, the number one thing that people can do to slow down the spread of a virus? Go wash your hands. Go wash your hands. I’m shocked by the amount of times that I have to go remind people of that. And if you’re sick, stay home.”

Noem must have missed this:

Evidence suggests the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination program has substantially reduced the burden of disease in the United States by preventing serious illness in fully vaccinated people and interrupting chains of transmission. Vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others, although at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.

Fourth news item

Glenn Loury on unspeakable truths about racial inequality in America:

Violence on such a scale involving blacks as both perpetrators and victims poses a dilemma to someone like myself. On the one hand, as the Harvard legal scholar Randall Kennedy has observed, we elites need to represent the decent law-abiding majority of African Americans cowering fearfully inside their homes in the face of such violence. We must do so not just to enhance our group’s reputation as in the “politics of respectability” but mainly as a precondition for our own dignity and self-respect.

On the other hand, we elites must also counter the demonization of young black men, which the larger American culture has for some time now been feverishly engaged in. Even as we condemn murderers, we cannot help but view with sympathy the plight of many poor youngsters who, though not incorrigible, have nevertheless committed crimes. We must wrestle with complex historical and contemporary causes internal and external to the black experience that help to account for this pathology. (There’s no way around it. This is pathology. The behavior in question here is not OK. That one can adduce social-psychological explanations does not resolve all moral questions.)

Where is the self-respecting black intellectual to take his stand? Must he simply act as a mouthpiece for movement propaganda aiming to counteract “white supremacy?” Has he anything to say to his own people about how some of us are living? Is there space in American public discourses for nuanced, subtle, sophisticated moral engagement with these questions? Or are they mere fodder for what amount to tendentious, cynical, and overtly politically partisan arguments on behalf of something called “racial equity?” And what about those so-called white intellectuals? Do they have to remain mute? Or must they limit themselves to incanting anti-racist slogans?

I don’t know all of the answers here, but I know that those victims had names. I know they had families. I know they did not deserve their fate. I know that black intellectuals must bear witness to what actually is taking place in our midst, must wrestle with complex historical and contemporary causes both within and outside the black community that bear on these tragedies, must tell truths about what is happening, and must not hide from the truth with platitudes, euphemisms, and lies.

I know, despite whatever causal factors may be at play, that we black intellectuals must insist each youngster is capable of choosing a moral way of life. I know that, for the sake of the dignity and self-respect of my people as well as for the future of my country, we American intellectuals of all colors must never lose sight of what a moral way of life consists in. And yet we are in imminent danger of doing precisely that, I fear.

Read the whole thing.

Fifth news item

Going after Liz Cheney and trying to catch up with her hefty war chest:

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. are co-hosting a pair of January fundraisers for Wyoming Republican Harriet Hageman, the Trump-backed primary challenger running against GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, according to an invitation to be sent out to GOP donors Thursday…Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, are listed as the special guests for the two fundraisers.

Hageman is looking to close the financial gap with Cheney, who through the end of September had more than $3.6 million in her campaign account. Cheney has seen her fundraising numbers swell this year, as she drew attention for her criticisms of former President Donald Trump, including her January vote to impeach him, and her prominent role on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Hageman, who has received Trump’s endorsement, reporting having about $245,000 in the bank at the end of September, after launching her campaign just weeks earlier.

Sixth news item

Biden needs to stop saying things that aren’t true:

“The first rule of pandemic crisis response is that public officials must be sane, sober, and truthful in communicating with the public.” Trump has many skills, but that’s not one of them. As Jacob Sullum (who wrote the “Case Against Biden” companion piece), has previously observed, “Trump lies routinely, reflexively, and extravagantly, but his supporters do not seem to hold it against him.”

Well, supporters of all politicians at all times, including of President Biden at this time, need to develop more exacting standards. It’s not OK for a pandemic-era political leader to say, as Biden did just two weeks ago, that if you’re vaccinated, you “do not spread the disease to anybody else.”

It is not acceptable for a president to claim, as he did Tuesday in a single tweet, that Build Back Better is “fully paid for” (it’s not), that it “will not increase the deficit” (it would), and that it “won’t raise the taxes by one penny for anyone making less than $400,000 a year” (counters the Tax Policy Center: “roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of middle-income households would pay more in taxes in 2022”). Such hyperbolic balderdash is worthy of a 24-year-old social media intern at a hack think tank; not the Commander in Chief of allegedly the greatest nation on Earth.

Democratic self-governance requires a certain modicum of citizen self-respect. If elected executives can lie with impunity, they will lie with impunity, and the chances of those lies turning out somehow to be “noble” are roughly slim, none, and fat. There’s a pandemic still on, a world wracked with its usual uncertainties, and oncoming calamities we cannot currently see. Dishonest federal leadership will only make all those things worse.

Seventh news item

A view on the possible erosion of Christian values:

Pagans thought that the collapse of their beliefs would mean the collapse of Rome. Many 21st-century conservatives believe something similar about the erosion of Christian values: that the liberties of our open society are parasitical on our Christian inheritance and that when that inheritance collapses, civilization will, too.

Ms. Delsol does not see things quite that way. The ethics of the Christian age, she notes, were shot through with unacknowledged borrowings from the pagan values Christianity replaced. (Consider stoicism or the Hippocratic oath in medicine.) In the same way, today’s post-Christian progressivism comes with a large helping of Christianity. Why use Christian matrimony to unite gay couples, for example, rather than a new institution less wrapped up in Christian values? Because that is just the piecemeal way that civilizational change happens.

So if another civilization comes to replace Christianity, it will not be a mere negation, such as atheism or nihilism. It will be a rival civilization with its own logic — or at least its own style of moralizing. It may resemble the present-day iconoclasm that French commentators refer to as le woke. (The term means basically what it does in English, except that French people see wokeness as a system imported wholesale from American universities and thus itself almost a religious doctrine.)

Eighth news item

In which I agree with Kevin D. Williamson’s review of the new Netflix film Don’t Look Up:

Kyle [Smith] faults the film for failing to live up to Dr. Strangelove, and it doesn’t, but the 2020s offer very different material from the high–Cold War era. Dr. Strangelove’s power comes in part from the contrast between the real-world seriousness of the figures who populated the early-1960s military-industrial complex and the absurdity of the movie’s world. In our time, the absurdity itself is very much in the public square and a political factor in its own right. Meryl Streep’s performance as a trucker-cap-wearing populist president (coded red for Republican, but also a friend of progressive tech titans) is terrifying because it is so easy to imagine such a figure actually being elected president.

Miscellaneous

Flying in to 2022:

thumbnail_IMG_9070

Going into the new year, I am pressed to remember to treat others with an extra measure of grace. I say this because this was a particularly hard year for me. An unexpected situation arose which found a near-stranger – albeit a relative – living in my home for nearly 7 months while withdrawing from six years of morphine dependency due to chronic 24/7 pain from catastrophic surgery. The individual desperately needed a quiet respite and constant help to bring them back to some semblance of good physical, emotional, and mental health. For me, it was exhausting, unfamiliar, and isolating. For them, it was a second chance. This situation, along with caring for an elderly parent who this year unexpectedly lost the ability to independently walk, was overwhelming. Sitting down to write a post, no matter how sloppy or elementary it may have been (and there were a lot of those!), was therapeutic and provided a small window of escape. I offer this glimpse into my life only as a reminder that we are all going through stuff. Hard stuff, painful stuff, hurtful stuff, and stuff that will forever change us – for better or worse. During these mean seasons, it can be like stumbling blindly on hot coals during the day and collapsing on a bed of nails at night. Thus I am determined to remember that my hard year may have been a cakewalk for others experiencing something far worse. During this year, what might have seemed like a personal slight may have simply been a lack of energy, what might have seemed like rudeness may have just been the weight of knowing that there were still a dozen things left on the to-do list before X woke up from a nap, and what might have seemed like a lack of concern may have just been the inability to shake off the pressure at home. This past year, I’ve been on both sides of this particular coin. All of us only have so much emotional bandwidth, and there are times when it just can’t be spent on you – or me. With that, I’m hoping to refrain from jumping to judgment about others because I know what this year has been like for me but I don’t necessarily know what it’s been like for you. Grace upon grace to us all, we fragile and limited creations.

P.S. Obviously, politicians are exempt from this effort and open to criticism and judgment 24/7 unless I know they are going through some catastrophic family event. If they do the stupid stuff they’re fair game!

Happy New Year!

–Dana

563 Responses to “New Year’s Weekend Open Thread”

  1. 2022? I can’t believe it.

    Dana (5395f9)

  2. Thank you, Dana, for all you do. And may you have a happy — and healthy – New Year!

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  3. telling Biden there will be a “complete rupture” if sanctions are put on Russia if it invades Ukraine

    No, Vlad, the complete rupture will have BEFORE we put on sanctions. Enjoy going through “containment” a second time, this time with voters.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  4. MAGAland has clearly been caught off guard by Trump extolling the effectiveness of the vaccines.

    Sooner or later they’ll get on board.

    You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to re-learn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane.’

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  5. Evidence suggests the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination program has substantially reduced the burden of disease in the United States by preventing serious illness in fully vaccinated people and interrupting chains of transmission. Vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others, although at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.

    If the CDC says it then it must be true. They’ve been spot on this entire time.

    It’s like the GOP doesn’t want the pandemic to end.

    Yep, it’s that crafty group of R’s and the unvaxxed who just won’t let this gravy train end.

    There’s no reason to think the $36b Pfizer expects in revenue for 2021 to have had any effect on anything. And that doesn’t include another $12b they’re expecting from the 4th quarter. No, those guys clearly want to do everything possible to put an end to this profit-center pandemic.

    frosty (f27e97)

  6. Noem must have missed this:

    Evidence suggests the U.S. COVID-19 vaccination program has substantially reduced the burden of disease in the United States by preventing serious illness in fully vaccinated people and interrupting chains of transmission. Vaccinated people can still become infected and have the potential to spread the virus to others, although at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.

    She’s not the only one. Still, her advice “If you’re sick, stay home!” seems to be ignored by many.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  7. Gotta love the way that some people pick and choose what CDC pages are truth and which are not. If it’s about someone having a bad vaccine reaction, or a whole list of public claims that the CDC is required by law to accept and post, well it’s God’s honest truth. But if they say anything sane about vaccines, it must be the Deep State.

    Not that I want to argue this any longer. “This isn’t argument, this is contradiction!”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  8. Kimberly Guilfoyle

    You’d think a billionaire’s son could do better.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  9. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/31/2021 @ 1:25 pm

    Yep, I’m glad The Science(tm) caused the CDC to update those quarantine guidelines. Or maybe The Data(tm) did it.

    I know Fauci is Science. Has anyone declared themselves Data yet? Maybe they’re still trying to figure out how to get around the Star Trek trademarks.

    frosty (f27e97)

  10. Democratic self-governance requires a certain modicum of citizen self-respect

    “A war to end all wars!”
    “I am not a crook”
    “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky”
    “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

    Trump’s problem was not that he lied (he did) but that he was such a BAD liar, and had a press willing to point it out.

    Biden is not a particularly good liar either, but he at least has a press that covers for him.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  11. I know Fauci is Science.

    Fauci is a mouthpiece for the bureaucracy and a turd. That does not make him necessarily wrong.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  12. 2021: an average year. Worse than 2020, better than 2022. So, average.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  13. Flying in to 2022…

    And already giving it the bird. 😉

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  14. You see, frosty, I know what Science IS and what it is not. What you see every day is not Science. It is polarized politics all manipulating and distorting what they are told by the actual practitioners (and Fauci is not a practitioner, he’s the other thing). They figure, probably correctly, that their audience cannot tell sh1t from Shinola.

    I don’t listen to these people, I don’t watch any news belief-baiting network, or accept anything on the internet at face value. But then I have a lot of training in what Science IS, and what it is not, and know what Shinola looks like.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  15. All of this pro-vaccine talk from Trump is not going over well with his loyalists.

    Maybe you need to redefine “loyalist?”

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  16. The FIRST Omicron DEATH!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI5E8z89c9U

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  17. Being a ‘caregiver’ in any capacity is tough, ’round-the-clock-work-for-free, Dana. It’s a relentless grind that teases and tests the limits of compassion. You hang in there- and make time for yourself to recharge so as not to overload your circuits and blow a fuse.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  18. My double-vaxxed girlfriend has covid and I expect I’ll have it in the near future.

    But this too shall pass.

    NJRob (082807)

  19. Thank you for your efforts, Dana, and grace. Here’s to a better and great New Year for all.

    Looks like Rep. Jordan didn’t get the pro-vax memo from Trump.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  20. @14. I see. At least I think I do. When you say “these people” do you mean people like Maddow and Lemon? Because they say a lot of the same things you say.

    frosty (f27e97)

  21. Speaking of manipulating and distorting here is an enlightening video:

    Fauci Takes Professional Gaslighting to New Levels, Now Admitting Children Hospitalized COVID Cases is Wrong

    December 30, 2021 | Sundance | 378 Comments
    This admission is exactly what people have been arguing for two years. This exact point, and the “with COVID -vs- from COVID” argument within the false narrative, is what justified Big Tech to ban COVID critics from their speech platforms.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/12/30/fauci-takes-professional-gaslighting-to-new-levels-now-admitting-children-hospitalized-covid-cases-is-wrong/

    Who would have imagined?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  22. The Vigilant Fox
    @VigilantFox
    ·
    3h
    Dr. Malone discusses his suspension from both LinkedIn and Twitter for the crime of promoting “vaccine hesitancy.”

    He argues that if the risks are not discussed, informed consent is not possible.

    “Informed consent is not only not happening, it’s being actively blocked.”

    https://mobile.twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1476999105595547656

    Anthony Fairall
    @jeremybenthem1
    · 2h
    Replying to @stkirsch
    Robert Malone pointing out that Reuters are the fact checkers for twitter….and are tied to Pfizer.

    @joerogan looks genuinely shook by this.

    The truth will come out.

    https://mobile.twitter.com/jeremybenthem1/status/1477008220317233158

    Malone is a nutcase. Right?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  23. Dana-
    You’ve been great to us.
    It sounds like you need your own peace, joy and recovery in this season.
    May God’s blessings be upon you, may your heart be glad. Praying Psalm 23 over you.

    steveg (e81d76)

  24. @14. I see. At least I think I do. When you say “these people” do you mean people like Maddow and Lemon? Because they say a lot of the same things you say.

    I’m not quoting them, and they aren’t quoting me. But perhaps — on this topic — they happen to be right. And, frankly, if I had to pick between them and Hannity or Carlson, I’d be hard pressed to choose. As I said, a pox on all their houses.

    Does it bother you to quote Hannity, even though you have 40 IQ points on the man?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  25. #8
    KevinM
    Regarding Ms Guilfoyle.
    I prefer women who look good without makeup, but everyone has a thing

    steveg (e81d76)

  26. Malone is a nutcase. Right?

    Yes, he is, and his wife padded his mRNA contributions in Wikipedia.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  27. I see Mother Jones is calling Liz Cheney a hero of 2021.
    Liz should know that is also an expiration date.
    The Mother Jones endorsement isn’t going to be helpful with the Wyoming GOP

    steveg (e81d76)

  28. Dr Robert Malone Discusses the Absence of Informed Consent and The Silencing of Vaccine Query

    December 31, 2021 | Sundance | 12 Comments
    Dr Robert Malone was recently removed from the Twitter platform for providing raw scientific information and his interpretation surrounding SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, variants and vaccines. Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times.

    Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is, in essence, one of the most prominent experts in the use of vaccines to advance public health.

    After his voice was removed from Twitter, Dr. Malone appeared with Joe Rogan to discuss the issues and events surrounding silencing of vaccine inquiry and the lack of informed consent {Direct Rumble Link Segment}. The full 3-hour interview with Joe Rogan is available on Spotify – LINK HERE.

    https://rumble.com/vrpwg4-dr.-robert-malone-on-why-he-was-banned-from-twitter.html

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/12/31/dr-robert-malone-discusses-the-absence-of-informed-consent-and-the-silencing-of-vaccine-query/

    The Rumble link is good.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  29. Ron DeSantis accompanied wife to cancer treatment while AOC and other critics suggested he was ‘missing’

    While critics slammed DeSantis for being noticeably absent from the public view in recents days, it was revealed that the absence was due to the governor accompanying his wife to her cancer treatment.
    https://thepostmillennial.com/ron-desantis-wife-cancer-treatment-critics-aoc-missing?utm_campaign=64471

    The 81 Million are a real class act.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  30. Happy 2022 to Dana, JVW, and Patterico. May the upcoming year be good to you all.

    HCI (ed8ecd)

  31. You have been good to us, Dana. Thank you! I wish you health and happiness in the New Year, and may your herds be fecund, your fields verdant, your herdsmen watchful, and your milkmaids chaste.

    nk (1d9030)

  32. RIP Betty White
    1/17/1922 – 12/31/2021

    Demosthenes (fdbac3)

  33. @8. Kimberly Guilfoyle

    She is woman hear her roar: never fails to remind me of those 40-something, weather-worn media broads in NYC we’d see perched on a stool at the bar in Hurley’s after 7 PM on a Friday night– a Virginia Slims dangling from their lips, nursing their third Stinger w/a red Jimmy Choo dangling from one foot.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  34. Sorry. Hadn’t seen the notices on the other thread.

    Demosthenes (fdbac3)

  35. #33

    As Bill Burr says… with Cheetos dust in her cleavage

    steveg (e81d76)

  36. I see Mother Jones is calling Liz Cheney a hero of 2021.

    ‘A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich.’

    It’s a 1978 movie about a black junior high school student who becomes a heroin addict.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  37. 29, to be fair, they might know about the situation with DeSantis’ wife but their only similar experience was with a two-timing two Americas phony

    urbanleftbehind (50a852)

  38. 1978 had another black heroin addict movie with Phillip Michael Thomas – Death Drug (aka Angel Dust the Wack Attack)

    urbanleftbehind (50a852)

  39. The 81 Million are a real class act.

    BuDuh (4a7846) — 12/31/2021 @ 3:36 pm

    Amazing you think a few nuts on twitter represent everyone who didn’t vote for Trump.

    Amazing.

    Meanwhile Trump celebrated John Mccain getting cancer, Romney getting COVID, and mimicked a guy with cerebal palsy so… the less than 81 million are a real class act, I guess?

    Dustin (0ee127)

  40. There are a lot of crazies out there, Dustin.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  41. Happy New Year, everyone.

    Thank you Patterico, Dana, and JVW.

    Dana, I wish you the very best with what you have shared about your personal life.

    See you in 22!

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  42. I agree. But I can’t even wrap my mind around your argument.

    You’re upset someone wasn’t compassionate about illness, and because of that we all should have voted for a guy who was famously ugly about illnesses?

    It’s stupifying. If you prefer, it’s Bidenfying.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  43. After having endured 5 years of everything bad that Trump did being considered as a representation of me, I plan on having quite a bit of fun yanking chains over The 81 Million. They are a very stupid group and deserve mockery.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  44. Kevin Williamson has a nice New Years’ message.

    The Republican Party in particular may be a lost cause, but I do have some hope that the American people at large still may be able to recover some of that conservative sensibility. My read on the populist madness of recent years is that Americans have come to feel that many of the important things in life are beyond their control, and they are desperately trying to reassert that control. I do sympathize, but, with age and experience, I also have come to understand that many of the most important things in this world never were within my control in the first place, and the words of the hymn “I Can’t Even Walk” mean more to me than they used to. But there are some things that are in my control, and I mean to exercise that control where I can.

    As William F. Buckley once put it: “I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.”

    Keeping an early bedtime is a small personal assertion, maybe even a trivial one. But, as it turns out, keeping Winston Churchill’s daily personal routine doesn’t make you Winston Churchill. And so I currently am very much inclined toward conserving — time, attention, energy, resources, anger — having spent too many years in an ongoing New Year’s Eve celebration, convinced (or almost convinced) that I was having a good time. So I will do what I can do, and take such modest improvements as are available where I find them. I have never understood those strange people who insist they have “no regrets” and have always assumed that they either are too stupid to understand what it is they should regret or that they simply have never really had anything to lose. Lost time is a thing worth regretting, and nations have their poison years just as individuals do. If we are to commit ourselves to a New Year’s resolution, perhaps it should be to work to have no more of those lost years, to do what we can where we can while we can.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  45. After having endured 5 years of everything bad that Trump did being considered as a representation of me, I plan on having quite a bit of fun yanking chains over The 81 Million. They are a very stupid group and deserve mockery.

    BuDuh (4a7846) — 12/31/2021 @ 6:12 pm

    Eh, I guess I get it, but it would have been easier to get your joke if you had explained it.

    It also falls into the pattern of Trump arguments. complain about something terrible from people who probably didn’t do it, and when it’s pointed out Trump actually did do it, explain it’s OK, because that thing was so bad when people who weren’t trump did it.

    But yeah, Trump supporters got associated with Trump’s behavior a lot more than Biden voters want to be associated with ice cream brain, so you get partial credit.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  46. The Xi regime is coming up with its own version of the Internet Research Agency troll farm, although their operation is more insidious.
    I expect to see a lot more white monkeys in 2022.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  47. I never compared to Trump in the comment, Dustin. You wanted to present a moral equivalency.

    My comment was simply and timely with the current group of clowns. The Biden voters have ushered in an era of chaos.

    The 81 Million are garbage Bidenistas.

    BuDuh (c0be48)

  48. Anyway, I don’t want to argue over how I failed to amuse you.

    Happy New Year!

    BuDuh (c0be48)

  49. Thank you for the partial credit! I glossed over that on the first reading.

    👍

    BuDuh (c0be48)

  50. I never compared to Trump in the comment, Dustin.

    Yeah, true, you just said everyone who didn’t vote for trump did something mean to a guy whose wife was sick. Trump and whether someone preferred Trump to the current loser just isn’t that relevant to how charitable people are to politicians taking a day off (apparently a very fashionable thing to freak out about, usually from the left, but not always).

    Maybe just stop seeing these issues based on Trump or trump support and it will be more fun watching the dems implode? It’s not Team R that wants Trump on everyone’s mind. they want Biden on everyone’s mind. Think it over.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  51. Switched on CNN to see ball drop; jaw dropped instead; Carrot Top zip lining across Vegas, Oteri on stage w/a toilet in Times Square while Pinky & The Brain did tequila shots.

    Memo to Vlad:

    Liberate Ukraine.

    Tonight.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  52. When Joe Biden first got elected to the U.S. Senate, this is what Betty White and Caitlyn Jenner looked like:

    https://ifunny.co/picture/when-joe-biden-first-got-elected-to-senate-this-is-qEQyS7228

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  53. Happy New Year, everybody! Click for Greek New Year carol.

    nk (1d9030)

  54. I see Mother Jones is calling Liz Cheney a hero of 2021.

    If those are cross-over primaries, the “progressives” will cross over to vote for the Trumpkin, not Liz. If there is more than one Trumpkin, they will vote for the stupidest one.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  55. Biden is one of the youngest Senators to have ever been legally elected, being 30 years and one month old when the new Senate was sworn in. Most of the others took office before they were 30, despite the Constitutional requirement.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  56. The Biden voters have ushered in an era of chaos.

    After the buttoned-down order and steely-eyed clarity we saw from the Trump administration.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  57. Kevin M. take some notes from nk, he has humor in his cutting remarks about us.

    mg (8cbc69)

  58. Stay healthy, NJRob.

    mg (8cbc69)

  59. Where was this verve around October 2013 or October 2017 when it could have made a material difference?

    https://www.businessinsider.com/andy-cohen-anderson-cooper-bill-de-blasio-cnn-new-years-2022-1

    urbanleftbehind (50a852)

  60. I think that

    After the buttoned-down order and steely-eyed clarity we saw from the Trump administration.

    is pretty funny, mg. I would call it irony, although others might see it as sarcasm. The difference can be subtle.

    nk (1d9030)

  61. Chaos is the time when a strong leader emerges and makes thing ordered again. See, e.g., [whichever strong leader who has control of his country comes to mind]. Trump’s tragedy was that … there was not enough chaos, I guess.

    nk (1d9030)

  62. Here’s a silver lining to the pandemic.

    The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with a decline in reported injuries related to high-heeled shoes among US women. If this resulted from fewer women wearing such shoes, and such habits influence future behavior, the result may be fewer injuries in the future.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  63. Maybe the guy should’ve consulted with Dennis Prager on how to catch it (link).

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  64. The pointless election audit in TX is indeed proving to be pointless.

    The Texas secretary of state’s office has released the first batch of results from its review into the 2020 general election, finding few issues despite repeated, unsubstantiated claims by GOP leaders casting doubts on the integrity of the electoral system.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  65. Meanwhile, a bunch of neurotics in Vermont dinging positive on their home tests and showing no symptoms whatsoever are “taking up space for those truly in need”:

    COVID-positive Vermonters with no symptoms clog up ERs
    By Olivia Lyons
    Published: Dec. 22, 2021 at 2:11 PM MST

    RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – Some Vermonters who are able to find antigen tests and then test positive are clogging up emergency rooms.
    The emergency department at the Rutland Regional Medical Center has been overwhelmed with asymptomatic folks.
    Dr. Rick Hildebrant is RRMC’s medical director. He says some people who test positive with a rapid test go to the emergency room looking for a PCR test.
    The Vermont Hospital Association says it’s hearing similar stories from other parts of the state.
    Hildebrant says those who are asymptomatic and receive a positive antigen test should stay home and reach out to their primary care provider.
    He says the only time to go to the ER is if you have a positive test and are very sick.
    Hildebrant says the flood of asymptomatic people is preventing others in need of immediate care from getting it.

    When this latest variant emerged in South Africa a few weeks ago, it was pretty apparent early on, despite media scaremongering that 1) it was going to run through pretty much everyone, due to its multiple spike mutation profile and vaccine-evading abilities (unlike its neighbors, SA has relatively high vaccine rates) 2) the actual incidence of hospitalization and death, regardless of location or overall vaccination rate, was going to be incredibly low, regardless of vaccination status. That’s why we’re seeing so many people who’ve gotten the jab, and even boosters, catching COVID now.

    When even the “vaccinated and boosted” are getting it, it’s time to accept that there’s literally nothing that can be done to limit exposure.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  66. @54 liz seems to be way too smart to figure that out

    such a massive war chest, brimming with out-of-state cash, yet 18 points down as the incumbent

    she’s also too smart to figure out that hitching your wagon to nevertrump means helping the democrat win, and she’s not a democrat

    we should all be as smart as liz

    JF (e1156d)

  67. Factory Working Orphan (2775f0) — 1/1/2022 @ 8:07 am

    Maddow has assured us all that the vaxxed can’t spread the virus. All of these places where it’s spreading are somehow being driven by the bad habits of the unvaxxed.

    Vermont is probably a case of 4 or 5 Trumpers from FL going around in ninja outfits and breathing on everyone. NYC’s biggest spike ever might take a few more.

    frosty (f27e97)

  68. mg (8cbc69) — 1/1/2022 @ 1:51 am

    One of the interesting things about 2021 was seeing nk, time, and kevin get on the same team.

    frosty (f27e97)

  69. Here’s a question, or perhaps a set of questions for you all: Near the end of November, Jeff Bezos gave $100 million to the Obama Foundation. From Michael Lewis (in Liar’s Poker), I learned that financial successes generally have a plan when they do something.

    So, what is Bezos’s plan? Why now? Why that amount? Why the Obama Foundation? (The New York Times reporter, Nicholas Kulish, notes that Amazon has drawn criticism for its labor practices (rightly in my opinion), and that Barack Obama is still a power in the Democratic Party.)

    (The article is probably behind their paywall. I have a hard copy.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  70. #67 “we should all be as smart honorable as liz”. Fixed that for you. In particular, we should all honor the oaths we take, in her case, to defend the Constitution.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  71. TheZvi has a good 56-point summary on the state of the virus, vaccines and treatments

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  72. Here’s one clue about the Bezos donation, Jim.

    In return for the donation, Mr. Bezos asked that a plaza at the Obama Presidential Center be named for the civil rights leader John Lewis, who died last year. The center, being built in Chicago, will include a library, a museum, an athletic center and more.

    But there are probably a few attached strings we don’t know about.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  73. @71 liz is The Constitution like fauci is The Science

    JF (e1156d)

  74. @73 i’ve heard bezos bought WaPo to preserve journalistic integrity

    source

    JF (e1156d)

  75. I think this was an interesting post I came across today. Buyer beware as I have no way to confirm the author’s credentials but it seems in line with other experts:

    “None of these trends are particularly surprising, if you understand and have been following the science.

    Vaccinations proved effective against infection and severe disease by OG Covid, for at least an initial period of several months.

    Delta upended that understanding, because it appeared to replicate more rapidly, to higher numbers viral counts, in people’s nasopharyngeal cavity. This made it more infectious. But the vaccines were still effective in stopping those infections from spreading deep into the lungs, which is where Covid causes the real respiratory issues.

    Omicron has brought a new set of facts to the table. With Omicron, we’re talking about a virus that more effectively evades the available vaccines, due to its many mutations. But fortunately, with these mutations has come a lack of severity, as Omicron tends to result in upper respiratory issues that are easier to treat and faster to resolve, and the vaccines seem to provide some protection against severe disease. So the vaccines don’t effectively prevent against Omicron, perhaps just due to its mutations, perhaps also because it replicates more rapidly like Delta.

    The only vaccine strategy that currently seems effective against infection by Omicron is to trigger a new burst of antibodies, which getting a booster does. That’s why that’s been the recommendation. This isn’t a long-term fix – it seems that, after the initial burst fades, people will become once again vulnerable to Omicron, because the T-cell memory that the vaccines build isn’t effective against Omicron.

    Ideally we’d pick and choose one or two of these variants and design a vaccine around them. We would then be able to design something that would prevent against infection, just like the vaccines initially did against OG Covid. But from a strategy standpoint, manufacturers need to focus their efforts on their existing technologies and manufacturing supply chains. Fragmenting the effort to chase strains appears to be (in the view of the policymakers, at any rate) less effective than simply getting more people vaccinated or boosted.

    With that being properly understood, we can see better why NYC is having a big surge. We’re highly vaccinated, but booster rates are still relatively low. There are a lot of people who are “fully vaccinated” against Covid, but with vaccines that were not designed to provide protection against infection by Omicron, which is itself a very infectious version of the disease. So it’s spread very rapidly here – with all the tourist traffic and travel and whatnot – and will spread just as rapidly in the rest of the country in time.

    It’s not proof that vaccines don’t work against infection. It’s proof that vaccines don’t provide long-term protection against infection by variants like Omicron or, to a lesser extent, Delta. But boosting provides some short-term protection and should continue to protect against infection from less-mutated versions of Covid, to the extent they’re still circulating.”

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  76. Trickle down “pay to play”. Who knows (Bezos probably does, he’s not dumb, you know) what Democrat officials, elected or appointed, will get phone calls from Obama when Bezos needs something done or not done? It’s The Chicago Way. “Please help my friend as much as you can.” And if the calls don’t get the job done, Bezos’s “charity” will at least still look on the presentence report.

    nk (1d9030)

  77. Good article by Jonah about how the elites have failed us this past year
    https://gfile.thedispatch.com/p/top-down-letdown

    I think the one arena he missed was the riots and lawlessness that permeated our cities. In many cases the political elites excused it or failed to effectively suppress it. Still, the absence of true leaders does not excuse the masses for going down horrible paths. We need to own the government we are stuck with and recognize which behaviors are keeping us mired in tribalism…..

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  78. We need to own the government we are stuck with and recognize which behaviors are keeping us mired in tribalism…..

    Unfortunately, we are stuck in a time when tribalism trumps all else. So, I really don’t think that we are “stuck” with the government because these past 5 years have been what the majority on either side want. Moreover, the fringe dwellers in both parties have now become more center and mainstream, and if they don’t yet fully dominate decision-making, they are well on their way.

    Dana (5395f9)

  79. In #54
    Kevin

    Here’s what I am responding to:

    “If those are cross-over primaries, the “progressives” will cross over to vote for the Trumpkin, not Liz. If there is more than one Trumpkin, they will vote for the stupidest one.”

    You are correct. Wyoming allows you to change party affiliation the day of the primary.
    Hopefully the people here will remember that when it comes time to excoriate the GOP as this party that left us. Primary wins by crazy people are not always what they seem. Wyoming is heavy enough red I don’t think this will happen, but stranger things have occurred

    steveg (e81d76)

  80. She is the Honorable Liz Cheney. But she’s been elevated to sainthood amongst nevertrumpers and Jim Jordan haters.

    I realize “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” but I haven’t seen anything from Cheney that proves she is honorable or bravely following the Constitution rather than running a personal agenda and swaddling herself in the Constitution.

    steveg (e81d76)

  81. nicholas kristof wants to be oregon’s next governor, he’s serious, and he has a lot of backing

    problem is, there’s a residency requirement

    fortunately he’s a democrat, so challenging it is just standard operating procedure and isn’t any kind of election shenanigans

    you know the drill

    1. the law doesn’t mean what it clearly says

    and if that doesn’t work

    2. the law is racist

    and if you have a problem with that, former officials in charge of election integrity, all democrats, will clear that up for you

    JF (e1156d)

  82. Unfortunately, we are stuck in a time when tribalism trumps all else. So, I really don’t think that we are “stuck” with the government because these past 5 years have been what the majority on either side want.

    Majority rules.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  83. https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/the-covid-insanity-has-to-end/#slide-1

    As Covid infections have surged beyond control — breaking through vaccines and boosters — the CDC now says that we have to reduce the number of isolation days for people who test positive for the virus but are basically asymptomatic. Our Phil Klein has elaborated on the arbitrariness of it all. Naturally, leave it to our Janus-faced megalomaniac, Dr. Anthony L’Science C’est Moi Fauci, to supply the risible rationalization du jour: “If you are asymptomatic and you are infected, we want to get people back to the jobs, especially those with essential jobs.”

    If we were dealing with a real plague, the insanity of this would be so obvious even the media-Democrat complex would not be able to speak of it without snickering.

    With an infectious disease that posed a serious threat of lethality to the average person, a credible positive test would call for isolation until the person was certifiably cleared of infection. Here, by contrast, the government is now saying that the certifiably infected need to get back into the general population faster. This, even though the government (a) insists on treating non-vaccinated people as if they were lepers (including those who have had Covid, even though their natural immunity makes their risk comparable to that of vaccinated people); and (b) has been coercing even people who are “fully” vaccinated (whatever that means from moment to moment) to mask up and take other precautions because being vaccinated and asymptomatic is no guarantee against transmitting the virus.

    True. But some people like the way the world is now. How do we get them to accept going back to normal.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  84. Thanks mg.

    I expect I’ll catch the bug and be fine in a week. Just need to take care of her as she gets better.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  85. @84. Don’t look now but Fauci is already moving the goalposts and downplaying hospitalizations using the “with” vs “of” distinction, that is, he’s talking about how these numbers are people “with” covid.

    Omicron is pushing this into a new phase. The NPC’s will be getting the code updates soon.

    frosty (f27e97)

  86. It’s not proof that vaccines don’t work against infection.

    Where work is defined as something other than protection from infections

    It’s proof that vaccines don’t provide long-term protection against infection by variants like Omicron or, to a lesser extent, Delta.

    Exactly

    But boosting provides some short-term protection and should continue to protect against infection from less-mutated versions of Covid, to the extent they’re still circulating.”

    Because in some alternate reality the new variants didn’t push out the old and somewhere the original variant is still circulating and by all things holy to science these vaccines are protecting us from it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  87. NJRobb – If you do catch COVID, you should be prepared for a worse case than your girlfriend’s.

    On the average, women have stronger immune systems than men. This makes them more subject to auto-immune diseases, but more resistant to infections, which are the bigger danger.

    (Example: Early in the pandemic, a grand nephew and his wife caught COVID; she had a mild case, his was more severe, though it did not require hospitalization.)

    I assume you already have an oximeter. If not, Amazon will sell you one for around 20 dollars.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  88. Most of you know this about vaccination, but for some repetition is needed:

    Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop protection from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the body’s adaptive immunity, they help prevent sickness from an infectious disease. When a sufficiently large percentage of a population has been vaccinated, herd immunity results. Herd immunity protects those who may be immunocompromised and cannot get a vaccine because even a weakened version would harm them.[1] The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified.[2][3][4] Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases;[5][6][7][8]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Not the key words: “help prevent sickness”. Those who understand simple English will realize that the “help” in that sentence is a qualifier; it is there to explain that vaccines do not prevent all infections or even all sicknesses from a disease.

    But vaccines change the odds, making infections less likely, and diseases less serious. The COVID vaccines do both, spectacularly.

    Since these facts are easily available, what should we conclude about those who say, over and over, that the vaccines are imperfect?

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  89. I expect I’ll catch the bug and be fine in a week. Just need to take care of her as she gets better.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 1/1/2022 @ 11:30 am

    Good luck and take care of yourselves.

    It’s important to Jim and his cohort that you be afraid. It would make them feel better if you were more worried. The high road is calling.

    frosty (f27e97)

  90. Since these facts are easily available, what should we conclude about those who say, over and over, that the vaccines are imperfect?

    Jim Miller (edcec1) — 1/1/2022 @ 3:24 pm

    Honest is an option. Correct is another. You’ve just described them as imperfect.

    What would we say about those who say they are perfect? What would we say about those who misrepresent what other people say?

    frosty (f27e97)

  91. There have also been some updates to the omicron symptoms. If you’ve got any of the following:

    Headaches, body aches, runny nose, fatigue, sneezing, sore throat, hunger between meals, feeling sleepy at night, heartburn after 3am chili, or inability to see in the dark

    You should take a covid test. For good luck you should take two. This PSA could have been brought to you by Abbot labs.

    frosty (f27e97)

  92. As much as you might insist it does, being reasonably concerned about one’s health does not mean being afraid. I use caution when crossing the street because I don’t want to get hit by a car. That’s not being afraid. It’s being prudent. And if that analogy isn’t satisfactory, there are a whole lot more to use. The point being: calm down and stop being so afraid other people’s reasonable concerns.

    Dana (5395f9)

  93. The Xi regime is coming up with its own version of the Internet Research Agency troll farm, although their operation is more insidious.

    Remember, these are the people who had unfettered access to the US security clearance application database for more than a year.

    When news first broke about the OPM data breach in early June of 2015, I was not overly concerned. Like many others, I initially assumed the breach involved only routine background checks; it never occurred to me that the “actual” security clearances could be held at OPM. Then, in mid-June, officials confirmed a second breach involving the security clearance files of current, former, and prospective federal employees. The compromised data included SF-86 forms which contain intimate details about the prospective employee’s personal life, family members, and other contacts.

    The first hearing in front of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, on June 16, 2015, gave yet another indication of the breadth of the intrusion. There, OPM Chief Information Officer Donna Seymour acknowledged that the information compromised in the data breach included “SF-86 data as well as clearance adjudication information.” This was a particularly dismaying disclosure. Although most media attention focused on the SF-86 data exfiltration, adjudication data is far more comprehensive and important. The adjudicative guidelines, established for all individuals “who require access to classified information,” are extraordinarily broad. They apply to all “persons being considered for initial or continued eligibility for access to classified information” and “are to be used by government departments and agencies in all final clearance determinations.”

    Under these guidelines, the scope of the information required for adjudication vastly exceeds that required by an SF-86. The desiderata ranges from information on “sexual behavior” that “reflects lack of discretion or judgment” to evidence of “foreign influence,” including a broad definition of “risk of foreign exploitation” associated with mere “contact with a foreign family member.” For instance, the information collected to adjudicate a simple Top Secret single-scope background investigation includes a “Personal Subject Interview” and “interviews with neighbors, employers, educators, references and spouses/cohabitants.” It also includes “record checks with local law enforcement where the individual lived, worked, or went to school in the past 10 years.” None this information is included on a standard SF-86.

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-opm-hack-far-worse-you-imagine

    Now they are going to USE it.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  94. she’s also too smart to figure out that hitching your wagon to nevertrump means helping the democrat win, and she’s not a democrat

    No, she’s aware that, come 2028 or so, you all will be claiming your sent her money and never liked that Trump guy anyway.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  95. When even the “vaccinated and boosted” are getting it, it’s time to accept that there’s literally nothing that can be done to limit exposure.

    No, you still take precautions if you are particlularly at risk (e.g. a weakened immune system). For the rest of us, well, I’m not going to TRY to get it but I’m not going to hide in a cave either.

    The unvaxxed are playing the “vaccinated people are the problem” card, but it’s just self-serving rationalization to cover their willful actions.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  96. The unvaxxed are right in one respect — if vaccinated people get this it won’t be a big deal for most. Too bad for the unvaxxed though.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  97. BTW, I saw “Don’t Look Up” last night. Great takedown of our polarized culture and how we put political spins on cold hard facts, as if the facts care what we believe.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  98. The unvaxxed are right in one respect — if vaccinated people get this it won’t be a big deal for most. Too bad for the unvaxxed though.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:07 pm

    The funny thing is that my wife still hasn’t gotten the jab, and still hasn’t gotten sick. Not a bad record for two years.

    She’s rather contemptuous of those who act as if every unvaccinated person is going to end up on a vent and die from the coof, as well. Can’t say I blame her, considering these vaccines have been graded on a bigger curve than the circumference of the earth itself.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  99. The unvaxxed are playing the “vaccinated people are the problem” card, but it’s just self-serving rationalization to cover their willful actions.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:05 pm

    Now that is funny. Is this one of those bad habits you mentioned.

    frosty (f27e97)

  100. The unvaxxed are playing the “vaccinated people are the problem” card, but it’s just self-serving rationalization to cover their willful actions.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:05 pm

    The best part has been watching the “vaccinated and boosted” act as if the COVID vaccines are what’s kept them from getting sick after they come down with COVID ever since Omicron became prominent, even though the data clearly shows that the variant not only dodges the COVID vaccines with ruthless efficiency, its symptoms are literally nothing more than a bad cold for even the unvaccinated.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  101. Team corn-pop, frosty.

    mg (8cbc69)

  102. The point being: calm down and stop being so afraid other people’s reasonable concerns.

    Dana (5395f9) — 1/1/2022 @ 4:20 pm

    If other people weren’t using their “reasonable concerns” to justify authoritarian BS like vaccine passports and mask mandates, there wouldn’t be a reason to take those concerns in stride. But too many neurotics, particularly in blue-voting areas, have convinced themselves that no restriction is too harsh if it makes them feel safer in their own behavioral sink.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  103. I blocked the comments of the usual suspects for today, because it’s not something I want to see on New Year’s Day. But, of course, I read your comments, Dana, and the comments of the commenters I respect.

    Now, even taking people like frosty seriously, and not just as noise generators without signal, they will never comprehend that people are not only afraid for themselves in regard to Covid.

    Normal people have people they love, and friends, and neighbors, and co-workers, and many others that they come into contact with, and they are also concerned that they will pass the Covid on to them, regardless of whether they themselves get particularly sick.

    But, like I said, people like frosty have no frame of reference for that.

    nk (1d9030)

  104. Plenty of vax junkies to keep the boosters rolling for pharm aid.

    mg (8cbc69)

  105. take my jab and cram it

    mg (8cbc69)

  106. @93. If Jim is the voice of reasonable concern I’m the queen of england.

    The point being: calm down and stop being so afraid other people’s reasonable concerns.

    I say “good luck and take care” and you turn that into being upset and afraid? Are you that worried that something I say might cause someone to remain calm and clear headed? What are you really worried about?

    frosty (f27e97)

  107. Normal people have people they love, and friends, and neighbors, and co-workers, and many others that they come into contact with, and they are also concerned that they will pass the Covid on to them, regardless of whether they themselves get particularly sick.

    But, like I said, people like frosty have no frame of reference for that.

    nk (1d9030) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:26 pm

    I can understand urbanites living with that kind of crippling, free-floating anxiety, because their world practically encourages it as a social control mechanism. It would just be nice if they didn’t weaponize their own neuroses to justify telling everyone outside the Calhoun rat experiment that they have to feel the same way.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  108. BTW, I saw “Don’t Look Up” last night. Great takedown of our polarized culture and how we put political spins on cold hard facts, as if the facts care what we believe.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:10 pm

    Except it’s not even close to a takedown of polarized culture. It’s written and being signal-boosted by far-left hysterics (a commie like David Sirota is hardly a paragon of reasonable, measured, moderate thinking) who think climate change is going to kill us all, and using a planet-killing comet as a parable for their complaint that everyone isn’t freaking out about this the same way they are.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  109. Stay strong, Dana. Your sense of manners, fairness, and kindness matter so much to me personally, and to most people here.

    Thanks also to JVW and Patterico.

    Here we come, 2022….

    Simon Jester (bf08b0)

  110. nk (1d9030) — 1/1/2022 @ 5:26 pm

    But nk, aren’t we told that if you’re vaxxed, and if you’re masked, and if you socially distance that you can’t pass it on?

    I’ve never said anyone shouldn’t get vaxxed. I’m 100% in favor on people making the decision that is best for them.

    So, if you’re vaxxed and masked and distanced and not sick why should you be afraid for other people? You’re saying that if you’re healthy and vaxxed and doing everything right you should still be afraid?

    And you’re saying I’ve got no frame of reference for wondering about the mental health effects of the non-stop encouraging of anxiety and fear in healthy people who are following all of the guidelines from people who have repeatedly misinformed them?

    frosty (f27e97)

  111. Oh no FWO. I think we’re about to get the high road speech.

    frosty (f27e97)

  112. “The point being: calm down and stop being so afraid other people’s reasonable concerns.”

    Sure, but when it comes to extending this same courtesy to those on the other side of the coin, we see their views as being unreasonable.

    The level of concern over COVID does not add up with the stats.
    Its more understandable numbers wise that the anti vaxxers, but like I said before, it is an argument that takes place way way to the right of the decimal point following a 0.0

    steveg (e81d76)

  113. “Look, there is no federal solution,” Biden said Monday, according to a transcript of a conversation he had with a group of governors. “This gets solved at a state level.”

    Wasn’t this Trump’s policy that Biden criticized? But we’ve still got those federal mandates yes?

    frosty (f27e97)

  114. @113. The odd thing is I’m not even anti-vaxx. I’ll wear a seatbelt but I’m not going to pretend it prevents cancer or solves hunger in Africa.

    After a bit I might have a little fun at the expense of people who do. But we’ve reached the point where everyone must pretend or “there will be consequences” and then it’s not so funny.

    frosty (f27e97)

  115. #113 stevg – So, assuming you accept that about 1 million have died here in the United States, and about 20 million world wide (according to excess mortality estimates), what do you think the right level of concern should be?

    (If you don’t accept those numbers, what numbers do you think are reasonable?)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  116. #84 At first, I thought you were being cruel by bringing that Andrew McCarthy piece to our attention, but now I think we owe you thanks for the warning that what he writes or says should be ignored.

    (If he returns to the straight and narrow, please let us know.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  117. Plenty of vax junkies to keep the boosters rolling for pharm aid.

    Isn’t that what Bernie says?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  118. The level of concern over COVID does not add up with the stats.

    And again, two people I knew well died in April 2020. Not “stats” but real actual people with spouses and children and parents and friends. Not being “concerned” after that would be unusual. This focus on stats is crazy.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  119. who think climate change is going to kill us all

    That’s silly. Us boomers will long gone before it kills you guys.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  120. To be fair, I think we should all take our masks off and go about our days, but I ALSO think we should all be vaccinated. I suspect I will get the first but not the second. I also expect a lot of stories about tragic non-vaccinations.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  121. A thought, given talk about “statistics” and “risk.” I am willing to be that the statistic “few people like me are dying” gives a different view than “many people like me are dying.”

    The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 killed many young, health, active people as it triggered massive autoimmune reactions in people with good immune systems. Pretty much the opposite of what we have now.

    Do you suppose that the reactions of people would swap, with the young being stridently pro-vaxx and older people less inclined? Or are the young always stupid?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  122. *willing to bet

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  123. @117. If you can’t attack the message attack the messenger. And if you can’t attack the messenger at least pretend to.

    frosty (f27e97)

  124. Re: Kimberly Guilfoyle

    You think someone who had the good sense to divorce Gavin Newsom could have found a tech billionaire rather become a Trump, but at 52 I guess she’s too old, though she would live in Silicon(e) Valley.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  125. frosty – You are right. That’s exactly what McCarthy did. Congratulations for recognizing that.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  126. @122. Yes, you should be able to make more people afraid with better data but from what I can tell young people are already generally very fearful of covid. How much more fearful do you really want them to be? Have you seen the stats on anxiety and depression? You’re wanting more of that in a group that is at such low risk from covid?

    frosty (f27e97)

  127. what do you think the right level of concern should be?

    Jim Miller (edcec1) — 1/1/2022 @ 6:43 pm

    We’ll, that’s a hard question to put numbers around. But I’d say somewhere below I personally know a few people who died so I want to scapegoat people into a medical procedure against their will and I’m willing to treat them like criminals and have them fired and not allowed to engage in normal activities if they refuse. I’d also say somewhere below torching the economy and creating the real risk of a global recession or financial collapse. Also, maybe somewhere below mass hysteria and a large scale mental health crisis.

    But that’s just me and I’m just spitballing.

    frosty (f27e97)

  128. Us boomers

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 7:02 pm

    Ah, the generation of wisdom and responsibility. The covid response does seem to be the last in a long line of gifts from the boomers to the boomers that someone else has to pay for.

    frosty (f27e97)

  129. Republicans and Democrats divided over Jan. 6 insurrection and Trump’s culpability, Post-UMD poll finds

    One year after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided over what happened that day and the degree to which former president Donald Trump bears responsibility for the assault, amid more universal signs of flagging pride in the workings of democracy at home, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
    ………..
    About 4 in 10 Republicans and independents say violent action against the government is sometimes justified
    ………..
    Overall, 60 percent of Americans say Trump bears either a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility for the insurrection, but 72 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Trump voters say he bears “just some” responsibility or “none at all.”
    ……….
    Overall, the Post-UMD survey finds that 68 percent of Americans say there is no solid evidence of widespread fraud but 30 percent say there is.

    Big majorities of Democrats (88 percent) and independents (74 percent) say there is no evidence of such irregularities, but 62 percent of Republicans say there is such evidence. …….

    About 7 in 10 Americans say Biden’s election as president was legitimate, but that leaves almost 3 in 10 who say it was not, including 58 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents.……..
    ………..
    Today, 54 percent of Americans characterize the protesters who entered the Capitol as “mostly violent,” while 19 percent call them “mostly peaceful” and another 27 percent say they were equally peaceful and violent. Broken down by party, 78 percent of Democrats describe the protesters as mostly violent compared with 26 percent of Republicans. Thirty-six percent of Republicans say the protesters were mostly peaceful, compared to 5 percent of Democrats.
    ………..
    Partisan divisions also largely disappear on a question about pride in democracy itself, with 54 percent saying they are either “very” or “somewhat” proud of the way democracy is working in the United States. That includes 60 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of Republicans and 51 percent of independents.
    ……….
    Two decades ago, Republicans and Democrats were uniform in their pride in democracy, with more than 9 in 10 in each party expressing positive views. ………
    ……….
    Looking ahead, more than 1 in 3 Americans say they are not confident that their votes will be counted in the 2022 elections, including nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and under 2 in 10 Democrats. ……..
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  130. I also expect a lot of stories about tragic non-vaccinations.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/1/2022 @ 7:05 pm

    Don’t worry. Death is coming to collect everyone you don’t like. Maybe not as fast as you’d prefer and if you’re a boomer patience isn’t your friend. But it’ll get them.

    frosty (f27e97)

  131. Looking ahead, more than 1 in 3 Americans say they are not confident that their votes will be counted in the 2022 elections, including nearly 6 in 10 Republicans and under 2 in 10 Democrats.

    Those numbers will change if the R’s beat the D’s in the midterms. If that happens also expect non-stop media coverage about how democracy has failed us.

    frosty (f27e97)

  132. Alex Jones Threatens to ‘Dish Dirt’ on Trump for Pushing Vaccine
    ……….
    “Yeah, we all wish Trump would do the right thing,” Jones said on his Wednesday afternoon InfoWars program, before urging his listeners to “move on” from Trump due to his glowing endorsement of the vaccine.

    “In fact, maybe—you know what—to get Trump’s attention,” he continued, “maybe I should just dish all the dirt—you know what, you know what—I am going to dish it all on Trump next hour.”

    Jones added: “It’s not to hurt Trump, it’s so people can know how pathetic he is when you think he is playing 4D chess, going to save you and he’s not!” (Jones didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment late Wednesday night.

    The vague threat comes amid Trumpworld’s continuing meltdown over Trump’s backing of the COVID-19 vaccine. Earlier on Wednesday, pro-Trump radio host Wayne Allyn Root called for staging an “intervention” to be staged for the ex-president.
    ……….

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  133. Alex Jones also “dished dirt” on Sandy Hook. Didn’t work out for him.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  134. frosty (f27e97) — 1/1/2022 @ 7:52 pm

    I’m more concerned about the “ …….40 percent of Republicans, 41 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats saying violence is sometimes justified.“

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  135. If anyone knows how to get a DARPA operating system out of my body, please call me (666) i81-U812.

    Thanks.

    lurker (59504c)

  136. @130: Rip, did you even check your poll out?

    7. Regardless of whom you supported in the 2020 election, do you think Joe Biden’s election as president was legitimate, or was he not legitimately elected?
    Legitimate Not legitimate No opinion
    12/19/21 69 29 2

    Compare to:
    Donald Trump
    10/5/17 57 42 1

    Barack Obama
    10/5/17 85 14 1

    was that a Big Lie back in 2017?

    a Bigger Lie?

    JF (e1156d)

  137. “If anyone knows how to get a DARPA operating system out of my body…”

    I’ve been trained on the extraction. First, you are going to need a lot of petroleum jelly….and a good whiskey….make it two, the extractor will need some prepping too….

    Still, not as complicated as the turbo encabulator…one of my favorites
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  138. I’m not sure which is worse, lurker, the DARPA operating system that’s causing me to do stuff or the luciferase coursing through my body.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  139. Rip Murdock (9ff85d) — 1/1/2022 @ 8:12 pm

    That will also flip if the midterms go the other way. We could always use less scapegoating and fear mongering if you’re wanting to avoid violence. Otherwise there’s a good chance we’ll get the BLM/antifa riots back that magically trailed off and dropped out of the news when the D’s won this last cycle.

    frosty (f27e97)

  140. @139,

    I’ve always wanted one of those, but the $750 million price tag was a bit rich for me. I wonder how much they’d give me in trade for a hardly used DARPA operating system.

    lurker (59504c)

  141. @140,

    Luciferase is what gets me up in the morning.

    lurker (59504c)

  142. Just like Timothy Snyder trashed Putin-friendly narratives about Ukraine, he also trashes the latest book by Gottschall.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  143. The covid response does seem to be the last in a long line of gifts from the boomers to the boomers that someone else has to pay for.

    Hey, we’re not the Bernie and AOC groupies. That’s on someone else. I tell young folks over and over that THEY will be paying for it and probably get very little from it, but do they listen. Not my problem, I paid taxes for over 45 years, now I’m done with that.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  144. Death is coming to collect everyone you don’t like. Maybe not as fast as you’d prefer and if you’re a boomer patience isn’t your friend. But it’ll get them.

    It comes for us all. Nice to see I found your hate and bigotry spot.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  145. Those numbers will change if the R’s beat the D’s in the midterms. If that happens also expect non-stop media coverage about how democracy has failed us

    I think it will be more how the election was stolen, with the media piling on, and without any proof.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  146. Similar findings to the WaPo poll.

    Yeah, I saw that. They asked Republicans if they trusted the vote counting. But they didn’t ask Democrats, like, say Stacey Abrams.

    Why Stacey Abrams is still saying she won. (NYT)
    Did racially motivated voter suppression thwart Stacey Abrams? (WaPo)

    The lawsuit challenging Georgia’s entire elections system, explained (Vox)

    Stacey Abrams Funded Group that Pushed Voting Machine Disinformation in Georgia (GA Secretary of State)

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  147. Absolute insanity. Energy isn’t created by wishful thoughts.

    They demo’d a town to expand a coal mine.

    “Don’t Look Up” explains this, too. Did you know that it was the Japanese earthquake and tsunami that caused Germany to turn away from nuclear, never mind that there has never been an earthquake or tsunami in Germany? But facts are not important any more.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  148. Those numbers will change if the R’s beat the D’s in the midterms.

    What you will see is a polarization of seats, with Democrats gaining seats in places they’ve gerrymandered and the GOP gaining everywhere else (gerrymandered or not).

    California’s delegation after 2022 will be 44-8 (or worse). They have 44 seats locked in, despite having nothing like that support in the state. They just sink a few million middle-class votes by lumping them into black-majority districts and the like. Maxine Waters doesn’t need 90%.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  149. Compare to:
    Donald Trump
    10/5/17 57 42 1

    Really, someone should ask.

    42% said that Trump stole it in 2016!? That’s far more than make the opposite claim today.

    Also, 26% said that W stole it in 2000

    Of course, Trump called 2012 vote a ‘total sham’

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  150. Sorry, but I have to beat this dead horse a little while longer:

    Let’s suppose that Covid is now just a “bad cold.” You are certain not to die or have long-term health issues unless you are both unvaccinated and high risk. Let’s even say that you are 25, run 5 miles every morning and can do 200 pushups.

    Why would you WANT a bad cold? You could get a (free) vaccine (nearly anywhere). There is a small chance of a bad reaction to the vaccine, but the chance of that is something between getting hit by lightning, and getting hit by lightning and bitten by a shark on the same day. Your risk of dying while driving to work on Tuesday is higher.

    Why have the bad cold? I really really do not get it, even from a selfish ME-ME-ME perspective. This is my disconnect on all of this. Is there a reason other than “THEY want be to, so I won’t!”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  151. *but the chance of DYING FROM that is something…

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  152. This has become a nation of sissy’s. I have a cold, lock the world down. The chicken schiff club has taken over.

    mg (8cbc69)

  153. Cantafordya just passes mail in voting, soon to be in most states. Republicans will never win again. lmmfao. Republicans are the gutless wonders of the world.

    mg (8cbc69)

  154. The covid 19 grifters will keep this going as long as possible.

    mg (8cbc69)

  155. 1-jab
    booster
    2-jab
    booster
    3-jab
    booster
    4-jab
    booster
    Are you grifters serious? or just sheep

    mg (8cbc69)

  156. Try and make me leave. Come on. Lets Go Brandon’s

    mg (8cbc69)

  157. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 12:41 am

    Who here do you think is telling people not to get a vaccine?

    That’s not a dead horse you’re beating.

    frosty (f27e97)

  158. Why would you WANT a bad cold?

    No one WANTS a bad cold. But they realize that’s something they have to live with on occasion, as part of being on this planet, and that we shouldn’t enact government mandates to get everyone to comply with taking a shot for it, or lose their livelihood or participate in society over it. We don’t even require that of real, actual anti-vaxxers who haven’t gotten vaccines for diseases with far worse outcomes.

    This is not the Black Death, smallpox, or polio, and the shots themselves don’t even compare to smallpox or polio vaccine because they don’t actually protect the vaccinated from getting infected and spreading the virus themselves, especially with Omicron. But there’s a rather significant segment of the country demanding that everyone comply with getting this one particular shot or suffer for not doing so, and for that reason alone it should be resisted.

    There’s a reason Ocasio-Cortez took her vacation in a red state, after all–even she needs a break from blue state restrictions.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  159. This:

    Cheney: “The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to the Constitution or to Donald Trump. But we cannot be both”

    Dana (5395f9)

  160. BTW; South Africa and the UK are reporting that 70-80% of the covid hospitalizations are incidental to the virus. That is, the virus is not why they were admitted. In other words, 70-80% are currently “with” covid.

    For structural reasons the US lags the UK and we’ve still got some delta that hasn’t been displaced.

    frosty (99fc9b)

  161. Trump violated The Constitution?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  162. @163. I’m amazed she’s able to completely wrap her ego in the constitution. She must be using the large print version. Granted she’s also paraphrasing Jesus so whatever the constitution didn’t cover maybe she’s thinking the Bible will.

    frosty (d991d1)

  163. Thomas Massie
    @RepThomasMassie
    In March of 2020, I tried to keep our country from going over the COVID insanity cliff.

    For that effort, Pelosi called me a dangerous nuisance, Trump said the GOP should throw me out, and Reps Cheney & Kinzinger maxed out to my political opponent.

    Too many people failed to see the bill being passed would cause massive inflation, it’s passage without members present would set the tone for nationwide mail-in ballots, the money would enable all of the lockdowns, and paying people not to work would kill productivity in the US.

    https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie

    Cheney was pretty ticked off that Massie wanted to follow The Constitution. She was so mad at the notion that she donated to a racist candidate that opposed Massie.

    She is a dangerous chump.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  164. Twitter permanently suspends Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal account over covid-19 misinformation
    ………..
    Twitter on Sunday cited a “strike” system for violations of its covid policy, which bars users from sharing content that is “demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm.” Five or more strikes lead to a permanent suspension.
    ………..
    In a statement on messaging app Telegram, Taylor Greene lambasted Twitter, saying, “Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth. That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them.”

    She maintains access to her congressional Twitter account, @RepMTG.
    ##########

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  165. MTG says she was posting information form VAERS, Rip:

    https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1477657201510600706

    Your WAPO link is behind a paywall. Do they detail the offending tweet?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  166. Trump incited the mob with incendiary rhetoric that had little foundation in fact, delighted in the actions of those who chose to penetrate the Capitol and disrupt the certification of the vote, and, as the chief law enforcement officer, refused to do anything to stop it — despite calls from congressmen, aids, pundits, and family. He chose to not perform his duty….a duty that was obvious to both his daughter and Sean Hannity.

    Now we can hindsight attempt to minimize the event….they weren’t organized….they didn’t have guns….the vote tallying would at best be delayed….no representatives were even confronted….but it misses that none of this was clearly known while Trump was enjoying the fruit of his misinformation campaign. He didn’t know who was armed or who wasn’t….and certainly didn’t know whether the Capitol Hill police would not open fire. His inaction was purposeful and malevolent.

    This wasn’t “paralysis” or “failure” — it was someone who wanted an insurrection and were surprised that others around him weren’t more excited by it. This result is now accompanied by disturbing polls indicating more and more “Republicans” are open to the need for political violence. Certainly reference to the Constitution refers to his duty to act and enforce the law…including certifying an election that he unquestionably lost. But at its heart, it’s also about what norms we want going forward with regards to the peaceful transition of power. Trump brings out the worst in people. Rudy Giuliani is unrecognizable. Ted Cruz has lost his soul. Rick Perry appeared knee deep in schemes that were short-circuited by Pence. It’s disturbing that more Republicans not only don’t want to distance themselves from Trump, but see him as their preferred leader going forward.

    It’s almost analogous to Trump watching January 6th unfold in delight….they’re not frozen….they’re having too much fun…..the GOP isn’t a serious political party

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  167. As I mentioned previously, my girlfriend tested positive with a rapid test. She got her PCR results today confirming the result. I’ll be going for a PCR test tomorrow.

    She’s already on the mend.

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  168. Cheney: “The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to the Constitution or to Donald Trump. But we cannot be both”

    The Optimates used a similar false dichotomy as justification while they were robbing the Republic blind.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  169. MTG says she was posting information form VAERS.

    Twitter didn’t disclose the specific tweet that caused her permanent suspension.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  170. Re: Cheney’s comments mentioned above (#163), you can see hear her full statement here.

    Dana (5395f9)

  171. BuDuh (4a7846) — 1/2/2022 @ 8:45 am-

    Twitter suspended Ms. Greene’s account after she tweeted on Saturday, falsely, about “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” She included a misleading chart that pulled data from a government database of unverified raw data.

    NYT

    VAERS itself is highly inaccurate since anyone can enter an adverse report, which are unverifiable:

    VAERS accepts reports of adverse events and reactions that occur following vaccination. Healthcare providers, vaccine manufacturers, and the public can submit reports to VAERS. While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. Most reports to VAERS are voluntary, which means they are subject to biases. This creates specific limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind…….

    CDC VAERS Disclaimer

    The fact that you cite conspiracy theorist (Pizzagate, Seth Rich) Jack Posobiec as a source hardly enhances MTG’s credibility.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  172. they didn’t have guns

    Some did:

    PolitiFact reviewed the case files of approximately 430 defendants who were arrested and charged for their actions at the Capitol. We found several defendants who police say were found to have brought firearms with them. Some were charged with having firearms on Capitol grounds, while others stashed them away while in Washington.

    Others brought objects that could be used to cause serious and possibly fatal injury.

    the vote tallying would at best be delayed….

    Clearly the intention was not simply to delay the tally — which would be pointless — but ultimately to change the tally. And clearly some people thought they had figured a way it could be done.

    no representatives were even confronted

    Because they had been ushered out to safety shortly before the mob could get to them. When some rabid Trumpers were starting to smash through the window of a door, you can see legislators still making their exit down the hallway. Also remember the legislators trying to barricade themselves inside the chamber while violent Trumpers were trying to force their way in. And remember that critical moment when Officer Eugene Goodman’s quick thinking diverted the Trump mob away from the Senate chamber. Also, some staffers have described hearing Trumpers try to smash through doors behind which they were sheltering.

    disturbing polls indicating more and more “Republicans” are open to the need for political violence.

    Not just polls. There are also alleged thinkers who seem to believe there’s something nefarious happening when Democrats use GOT strategies in completely legal ways, and some who are spinning revolutionary fantasies on the pretext that the whole system is corrupt and rotten if it leads to political results they don’t like.

    Never mind that the system gives Republicans a representative advantage out of proportion to the share of votes they get.

    Radegunda (219e30)

  173. Posobiec had a quote, Rip. I used his link so you could read MTG’s quote regarding the suspension. You have linked both the WaPo and the NYT ( both of which are subscription based) so I cannot actually read their content.

    Do you have a link with MTG’s offensive tweet? Can you quote the tweet?

    It is extremely knucklehead to suggest that I “cited” Posobiec. Please be more serious.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  174. …knuckleheaded…

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  175. Now we can hindsight attempt to minimize the event….they weren’t organized….they didn’t have guns….the vote tallying would at best be delayed….no representatives were even confronted….but it misses that none of this was clearly known while Trump was enjoying the fruit of his misinformation campaign. He didn’t know who was armed or who wasn’t….and certainly didn’t know whether the Capitol Hill police would not open fire. His inaction was purposeful and malevolent.

    Guns are not a requirement to attempt an insurrection. See here for photographic evidence of guns, knives and axes, chemical sprays, flagpoles, electroshock devices, fire extinguishers, baseball bats, “Trump 2020″ signs, fencing, crutches, crow bars, hockey sticks, and whips wielded by the insurrectionists.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  176. BuDuh (4a7846) — 1/2/2022 @ 9:29 am

    No.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  177. “No” to being serious or to not having the offensive tweet?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  178. Never mind that the system gives Republicans a representative advantage out of proportion to the share of votes they get.

    Radegunda (219e30) — 1/2/2022 @ 9:24 am

    Is this the same old whine that Republicans get an overall lower vote nationwide, so they should have less representation in all of Congress by default?

    I’m sorry left-wingers tend to mass in urban bug-hives and millionaire resort areas, and thus water down their voting power, but that’s their fault, not the Constitution’s.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  179. You can find reports on MTG ban from Twitter here and here, if you’re actually really interested in why she was banned.

    Dana (5395f9)

  180. Radegunda, I agree that I should have instead stated that defenders will claim that the rioters weren’t actively using guns, either to compel access or discourage opposition. I’m not sure it’s a big concession given the number of police who were beaten by other means. Still, some will claim a true insurrection would have needed to be bloodier….with an attempt to hold the Capitol and take hostages. This was more mindless…with those who may have had guns, having enough sense to not provoke a reaction.

    “Clearly the intention was not simply to delay the tally”

    The intent was not well thought through. Pence’s unwillingness to conspire sealed the deal. I’m not saying that these arguments are my arguments….just that we’ve seen them made by those trying to protect Trump…and minimize the event. I can agree that it wasn’t an “invasion” while also believing that it was a horrible action…that strikes at the heart of our democracy. And though it’s disappointing to see a former governor like Perry scheming…..it all falls at the feet of the leader. This was different than Gore using every legal challenge during 2000. And it’s different than Stacey Abrams who continues to sell a false narrative about her governor election, though it’s closer in spirit. This has far greater implications and involved an actual scheme to cheat.

    “Because they had been ushered out to safety”

    The point being hindsight. Bad things could have likely happened…as you note….but seconds and circumstances closed them down. The fact that congressmen weren’t directly threatened doesn’t minimize that that was the point…the rioters just failed.

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  181. I am interested in the exact quote, Dana.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  182. The Salon link and the NYPost link didn’t have the full quote either Dana, but I did find this in the NYPost link:

    Twitter also blocked The Post from tweeting its bombshell report in October 2020 about Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, information that came from the laptop of President Biden’s son.

    Yep.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  183. Twitter shouldn’t have banned MTG. The first and obvious issue is it’s counter to our free speech values. I know they’re not universally shared any more but they’re still important. Second; She’s dishonest bordering on insane but I think letting more people see her dimwitted conspiracies is better. The GOP base is leaning into crazy as hard as they can and she gives their derangements voice in their own words. I think think that’s good for people to see. Thirdly it plays into the resentment / persecution narrative that’s become central to right wing politics and I’m sure this will help her raise more money from the fools to that donate to her.

    All that said; twitter has it’s own free speech rights and shouldn’t be made to carry a message they disagree with. I can disapprove of how they use their free speech rights without thinking the government should intervene take those rights away. People calling for the. Government to punish companies that engage in speech they disapprove of are as, if not worse, then twitter.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  184. Well, BuDuh, you should probably do your own homework and find it yourself.

    Dana (5395f9)

  185. AJ, great comment in 170. From what Peter Navarro has shared it looks like they wanted either pressure Pence to go along or. Delay proceedings via illegal means to give them more time to create a pretext to hold onto power. The end result being a second Trump term.

    The fact that the GOP continues to excuse this, and that the lies about the 2020 election being determined by fraud being a central part of being a republican is very alarming.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  186. Dana (5395f9) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:07 am

    It’s probably not a good thing to tell Trumpists to do their own research.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  187. Gosh, Dana, that’s a swell idea!

    I am sorry your attempt to cover for Rip has made you so upset.

    Either way the stalemate seems to be that you and Rip cannot prove MTG did anything wrong and I cannot prove she didn’t.

    But I remain faithfully on the side of non-censorship. Do you?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  188. Is this the same old whine that Republicans get an overall lower vote nationwide, so they should have less representation in all of Congress by default?

    I’m not whining. I’m responding to the far-right whining that everything is so rigged against them that they are justified in a “by any means necessary” approach to getting their way, and some are fantasizing about revolution.

    I have never actually objected to the federal system we have, and I recognize the merit in allowing different regional interests to have a voice. And I’m not a leftist. I’m just pointing out the fallacy in the right-wing claim that everything is rigged against them.

    Now that fallacy is tightly connected with Trump’s narcissistic belief that whatever doesn’t go his way is necessarily unfair and corrupt, because a large proportion of the right chose to anoint Trump as the paragon of patriotic virtue and the voice of unalloyed truth (except perhaps on vaccines). The result is a GOP so toxic that I left it, and a “conservative” media world that often embarrasses and appalls me.

    Radegunda (d7e952)

  189. Too much rage around here to me today.

    Time to do something else.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  190. Not “to me”. Should have been “…around here for me today.”

    Ever since blocking nk and Paul I don’t have to read personal attack stuff. I don’t think anyone has raged against me today. 🙂

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  191. AJ_Libery, I don’t think I have any serious disagreement with you on this, but I was viewing it from a different angle. We can be (more or less) definitive on what actually did happen, but there’s good reason to believe that things came very close to being worse. And the apologists’ claim that it was just well-intentioned people getting carried away in the heat of the moment is bunk. Now some apologists are basically embracing the violence and lamenting that its goal was not achieved.

    Radegunda (d7e952)

  192. The fact that the GOP continues to excuse this, and that the lies about the 2020 election being determined by fraud being a central part of being a republican is very alarming

    There may be multiple reasons why the GOP has gone this direction, but first and foremost is the narcissistic pathology and fundamental dishonesty of Donald Trump, and the decision by far too many voters to build a quasi-religious cult around him. People whose thinking I used to respect have become practically unrecognizable in their determination to defend Trump to the hilt.

    Radegunda (d7e952)

  193. I’m not whining. I’m responding to the far-right whining that everything is so rigged against them that they are justified in a “by any means necessary” approach to getting their way, and some are fantasizing about revolution.

    By quoting the same talking point that leftists use to justify their argument that because they have more overall votes nationwide, they should be the ones dictating the course of the country, and the right shouldn’t have any say in it at all?

    I’m just pointing out the fallacy in the right-wing claim that everything is rigged against them.

    Except the left does actually want to marginalize the right. That’s why they break out in sweats when the right shakes off their apathy and actually starts getting politically involved, especially at the local level, and why they complain about gerrymandering while indulging in it themselves.

    The result is a GOP so toxic that I left it, and a “conservative” media world that often embarrasses and appalls me.

    That GOP is a direct response to the failures of those who were in charge of the party before them. Instead of acknowledging their concerns and dealing with the fact that they began moving away from Bush Republicanism after TARP was passed. The party leaders could have accepted that there was nothing they could do to counter that trend, and figure out ways to craft a platform that cleaved to what their base was demanding. Instead, they got behind Jeb, and Trump yanked the party right out of their, and your, hands because he was the only one who at least acknowledged that they might actually have legitimate complaints worth fighting over.

    If you NeverTrumpers fought the left with even 10% of the energy that you do the current party base, you might still have control of it. But this is a lesson that’s never going to sink in.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  194. People whose thinking I used to respect have become practically unrecognizable in their determination to defend Trump to the hilt.

    Radegunda (d7e952) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:53 am

    Funny, I feel the same way about a lot of left-leaning people I used to count as my friends and acquaintances, who dropped their pretenses about tolerance, cleaved to the cult of credentialism, and became a bunch of smug, elitist, status-chasing scumbags.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  195. “We can be (more or less) definitive on what actually did happen”

    The problem is that we’ve gotten into a cycle where there are no longer agreed upon facts or agreed upon objective sources….EVERYTHING is spun, rationalized, and challenged by strained equivalences. I just wonder if….even at the margin…..anyone is being convinced or swayed.

    I think many of the Trump supporters here recognize that he is flawed and that he was not the optimal choice. But they are unwilling to give the other side any sort of win…and for many after 5 years of steady defense….they are just in too deep…too invested. They’ve excused too much and jettisoning Trump at this point would be too much of an admission that their judgment has been wrong. This has long become personal.

    There is also no clear GOP alternative…particularly because there’s not that many right-of-center media venues where there is enough oxygen for them to survive. Heck, FNC wasn’t pro-Trump enough….which gave rise to even less objective sources of coverage (Newsmax, OAN?). Talk radio was compromised early and their model is based on outrage….which invites Trump wannabees, not conventional conservatives who want to carefully discuss policy. This all comes back to the perceived existential struggle and its justification for Trump.

    People want a fighter but my impression is that they want to primarily have their views validated….about illegals, about transexuals, about CRT, about China, about BLM, etc. Politics is now about raging…..and Jeb ain’t gonna rage…..Kasich wasn’t gonna rage…..Ted had some good rage in him…but he couldn’t out-do the master-rager. We’re now conditioned into thinking that is what politics are about….who yells loudest and can get the best zinger — it’s really the foundation of Twitter and much of social media. The question becomes how to actually start moving Trump-supporters to consider someone new. Smashing them in the mouth with it may just be hardening that support. Maybe it’s too late…sadly maybe they have to go over the edge to appreciate that…yes….character matters….

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  196. Gosh, Dana, that’s a swell idea!

    I am sorry your attempt to cover for Rip has made you so upset.

    Either way the stalemate seems to be that you and Rip cannot prove MTG did anything wrong and I cannot prove she didn’t.

    But I remain faithfully on the side of non-censorship. Do you?

    BuDuh (4a7846) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:26 am

    BuDuh, you out yourself yet again with your disingenuously manipulative comments. You just can’t seem to argue/debate in good faith. Thus, I’ll be ignoring future comments from you.

    Dana (5395f9)

  197. we shouldn’t enact government mandates to get everyone to comply with taking a shot for it, or lose their livelihood or participate in society over it.

    That’s not the question I asked, or the argument some are making. 20% of the population is refusing the vaccine. That they are doing so in the face of dire consequences must have some reason other than obstinacy. After all, they pay taxes, under similar threat, which I have to assume they don’t much care for.

    We don’t even require that of real, actual anti-vaxxers who haven’t gotten vaccines for diseases with far worse outcomes.

    If they were pandemic, or even no longer rare, we would.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  198. Who here do you think is telling people not to get a vaccine?

    So, frosty, you are now pro-vaccine? My work here is done.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  199. Cheney: “The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to the Constitution or to Donald Trump. But we cannot be both”

    And come 2028 there will be no one who admits they supported the late Donald Trump.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  200. MTG quoted the VAERS reports, which vary in truthiness, as if they were fact. Some of them relate to deaths that are probably attributable to the vaccine, and some of them relate coincidental deaths. But it is closer to the “police tip line” for something with an offered reward, than to medical reports.

    WaPo:

    The suspension came hours after she published a tweet falsely suggesting “extremely high amounts of Covid vaccine deaths.” Included was a chart featuring data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which details self-reported post-vaccine health issues that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns do not imply causation.

    So, at least MTG is anti-vaccine, unlike her supporters here. /sarcasm

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  201. I invite MTG to sue Twitter. At some point the question of censored political speech needs to go to the courts. The “private business” argument is weak when a ban from this “private business” is national news. It suggests that there is some kind of monopoly on this kind of communication, and monopolies have far less independence than do other businesses.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  202. Never mind that the system gives Republicans a representative advantage out of proportion to the share of votes they get.

    There were over 19 million voters in California in 2020. Of those 6 million voted for Trump, or about 30% (pretty much an all-time low for the GOP in CA).

    In the newest CA gerrymander, only 8 of the 52 seats are winnable by the GOP, or 15% of the seats. This means that half of the CA GOP voters (or 3 million people (and their children)) are unrepresented under any “proportionality” scheme you have in mind.

    In my state, which when 5-4 for Biden, all three seats will be Dem, meaning that the 400,000 Trump voters will have no say in Congress. (Some call two seats “competitive” but they are both D+7 where one used to be R+3.)

    Your assertion that the Republicans have an undue representation in Congress isn’t so clear.

    I know the Dems complain about Texas, but that’s not clear either. Currently the split is 23-13. In the new map, the likely outcome is 23-12 with 3 tossups. There is no gain there for the GOP and 2/3rds of the districts are minority-white.

    Florida is constrained by an anti-gerrymander rule.

    N.C has GOP gains, but they are cancelled out by the Illinois gerrymander.

    See here for some more info: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2022/congressional-redistricting-maps-by-state-and-district/

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  203. At some point the question of censored political speech needs to go to the courts. The “private business” argument is weak when a ban from this “private business” is national news.

    Why should Twitter be “censored” by having the courts or government force them to keep on a dishonest demagogue who keeps breaching their terms of service?

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  204. “Total Congressional vote” numbers don’t actually mean much as many uncompetitive districts have no major party opposition, so the 20 or 30% of the opposition voters there are uncounted in any such measure.

    However, in 2020 the Democrats got 77 million votes for congressional candidates, or 50.8%, and the GOP got 72 million (47.7%).

    In seats, the Dems got 222 seats or 51% and the GOP got 213 or 49%. Given that 0.5% of the votes went to minor party candidates, is is pretty damn close. At most there are two seats variance from the popular vote.

    The entire “gerrymander” claim is nothing but a Democrat talking point, used to cover their gerrymanders in states they utterly control.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  205. Why should Twitter be “censored” by having the courts or government force them to keep on a dishonest demagogue who keeps breaching their terms of service?

    It is not Twitter’s speech that is EVER being censored. It is a private person’s speech. If the 1st Amendment only applies to speech at Speaker’s Corner in the park, it is a dead letter.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  206. People want a fighter but my impression is that they want to primarily have their views validated….about illegals, about transexuals, about CRT, about China, about BLM, etc. Politics is now about raging

    I can’t explain for sure WHY the GOP base has defined ‘fighting’ as ‘making noise in the media’. I think it’s about grievance and resentment, but I can’t prove that. Regardless they clearly have. It’s far more important than policy accomplishments or supporting historical conservative goals.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  207. I am comforted by the fact that Justice Thomas agrees with me.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  208. Time,

    I think that it’s due to GOP candidates soft-pedaling these issues and negotiating against themselves while the Democrats seem to have no problem with full-throated rants. See Romney’s campaign which was quite mild in public (and got bashed for the time they were not, in “private”).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  209. Hi Jim Miller at #116

    1,000,000 people out of 330,000,000 over the course of two years is not statistically significant.
    I’m crappy at math…. innumerate at times but your historical chances of catching COVID and dying from it were 0.0015151 and now we have much better therapeutics, treatment protocols.

    The vaccine is easily available and free, so prudence would be to vaccinate and booster given no known health issues for doing so issues. The risks are smaller than they are for COVID
    Some people are afraid of the vaccine. Others are afraid of the virus. Irrational statistically, but completely understandable on a human level. Some people are wired like that and make choices driven by their fears that they will be the unlucky one, the reverse lottery winner.

    This will annoy people because I’m about to compare humans to chickens, but if I had 330,000,000 chickens on the farm and you told me 500,000 of them were going to die every year if I did not give all 330,000,000 a vaccine, I’d pass. Even if the product was free, it would cost me too much labor to administer to all 330,000,000. 500,000 is an acceptable loss rate. But if Simplot or someone was able to layer the vaccine within feed at no increase in price I’d use it, even if 5,000 chickens reacted to the vaccine and died.

    Humans in the USA have decided to go for a zero risk goal because we believe all human life is precious, chicken lives not so much, but that causes us to focus on death rather than death rates.

    Some of the people that mock others for buying lottery tickets are suddenly concerned about their tiny tiny odds of dying of COVID.

    Some people who play the lottery every day and never win are now reluctant to get vaccinated because of some the lowest odds they’ve ever faced

    Fear is a good explanation, because none of this makes sense without fear being in the equation

    steveg (e81d76)

  210. @209, Kevin, play it out. You’re proposing to use the government to force people to allow speech on their property against their wishes. I assume you’re willing to let people ban ‘some’ speech; porn, depictions of animal cruelty, graphic explanations of assaults on public figures, advocacy for Nazism or explicit racial supremacy. What makes you think the government is going to be fair about that? Keep in mind that the left feels twitter is failing to properly keep ‘hate speech’ from it’s platform.

    Any rule the populist right puts in place to punish twitter will quickly be used by the left further control the public discourse.

    It will also make Twitter less popular among it’s users. Good or bad it seems like Twitter’s haphazard, poorly explained, and inconsistently enforced policies create an environment people prefer to GAB/Gettr/Parlor etc. So in addition to forcing them to cary speech they don’t want to you’re going to damage the thing they’ve built.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  211. I think that it’s due to GOP candidates soft-pedaling these issues and negotiating against themselves while the Democrats seem to have no problem with full-throated rants.

    If you got a left wing comments section you’ll see exactly the opposite complaint. Everyone thinks their side is milk toast, timid and would win if they only fought passionately for their values like the other side. Our side only loses because we hold back and let ourselves be constrained by rules the other side freely ignores.

    I don’t think this argument explains much.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  212. It is not Twitter’s speech that is EVER being censored.

    But it is. Twitter owns the platform. They can choose the speech they want to have on it. The First Amendment on speech relates to what the government can or cannot do. It doesn’t tell the media–and Twitter is media–what they can say or who can or cannot say it. I don’t see any court being on Greene’s side.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  213. @213, SteveG. One way to define ‘a lot’ or ‘too many’ is by it’s external impacts. I would say that Maryland has ‘too many’ Covid hospitalizations from the unvaccinated because they’ve had to implement emergency procedures to determine priority of care due to the number of people being admitted for Covid. Most of whom are unvaccinated.

    https://www.newsweek.com/hospital-emergency-declared-maryland-health-centers-implement-crisis-policies-1664793

    If we’re lucky the combination of increasing vaccination and less dangerous variants will soon get us to a point where the medical needs of the unvaccinated aren’t overwhelming our hospital capacities. But we’re not there yet.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  214. What did the government do for Twitter that allowed it to be one of two places people can realistically soapbox their political views in today’s world?

    It’s hard to say if it crosses the line into gov action. I know that’s unfashionable to say. Private company, not censorship, bla bla bla. But it’s wrong for the same ethical reason it would be wrong for the government to do this, and it accomplishes the same end (service to the right political view).

    Why should Twitter be “censored” by having the courts or government force them to keep on a dishonest demagogue who keeps breaching their terms of service?

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/2/2022 @ 1:09 pm

    Good point, though Kevin’s right that ‘censored’ is definitely not what it would be for Twitter to have to keep this speech. Being forced to answer MTG’s argument directly is the opposite of censorship, and would be more effective if she is truly and unambigously wrong.

    The problem is, MTG isn’t unambiguously wrong. She’s a nutcase, she’s stretching it, VAERS data is self reported and inherently flawed, but she’s not objectively wrong. There’s something to her concern that vaccines are unsafe. That is why this claim is stomped out.

    Big picture, COVID vaccines are necessary but do some bit of harm that we can’t understand with the de facto speech code that Twitter enforces for democrats. I don’t like saying that. I can’t stand MTG, trump, etc, and I am happy I am vaccinated. But I am getting pretty pissed off about the censorship, and the supposed defenders of free speech lining up once again to pedantically explain why this isn’t a first amend violation, and obnoxiously ignoring whether this is horrible behavior on twitter’s part (and yeah, it is).

    Dustin (0ee127)

  215. They can choose the speech they want to have on it.

    If I put a “Go Trump” sticker on your car, I censored you?

    Dustin (0ee127)

  216. Some people are afraid of the vaccine. Others are afraid of the virus. Irrational statistically, but completely understandable on a human level.

    There is no rational reason to be afraid of the vaccine. None. If you are, the threat of lightning, sharks, polar bears and airplanes should keep you locked up in your house. ANd still airplanes can fall out of the sky and kill you.

    The chance of dying from the vaccine are at least 1000 (and likely 100,000) times less thant the threat of dying from the virus. Comparing the two is bullsh1t.

    As far as the virus, some people have far better odds than others. There are some people who are likely to die from it (e.g. HIV+, chemotherapy patients, transplant patients) and some who are not (high school athletes). But some of the latter might have a parent or grandparent or neighbor who is at greater risk.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  217. People mention odds. I was on a Trustee board of NGO in 2020. We had 11 members and TWO of us died from Covid in 2020. One was a close friend who was in her 50s, the other in his 40s.

    That’s 22%. So, general statistics don’t matter a damn to me (and they really should not matter to anyone, actually)

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  218. @219, Dustin, if you put sticker on my car it’d be vandalism. If you forced me to put a message on my car I didn’t agree with it wouldn’t be censorship, but it would violate my rights by compelling me to send a message I disagree with.

    I agree with you that Twitter’s decision to ban her is a bad one. I said so in my first comment on the subject. The fact that twitter is using their speech rights in a way that I think is irresponsible, harmful to the public, and in conflict with our national values of free expression doesn’t mean we should use the government to take away that right. It might mean we should stop using twitter or look for alternatives that do a better job. GAB’s a lot better at free speech. But much much worse at other things. It would be great to see a better alternative develop.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  219. What did the government do for Twitter that allowed it to be one of two places people can realistically soapbox their political views in today’s world?

    They did not enforce anti-monopoly law?

    But it’s wrong for the same ethical reason it would be wrong for the government to do this, and it accomplishes the same end (service to the right political view).

    It amounts to censorship by proxy.

    Dustin is also right when he points out that it is not that MTG is obviously wrong, it’s that there is some truth in what she says, or at least it is arguable there is. It is also POLITICAL speech, which was what Speech Clause was intended to protect.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  220. There is no rational reason to be afraid of the vaccine.

    If that’s true, why are people in power trying so hard to prevent discussion of vaccine fears?

    BTW I think it’s very obvious the vaccine does far, far, far more good than bad and was first in line to get it. But there’s just too much desperation to prevent a clear conversation about this.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  221. If you forced me to put a message on my car I didn’t agree with it wouldn’t be censorship, but it would violate my rights by compelling me to send a message I disagree with.

    If you offered your bumper up for rental for such stickers, then you blocked some of them because you didn’t like them, you would be in a much greyer area. If your bumper comprised the most effective method of political speech in the country, then your position erodes even further.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  222. The government can force private businesses to serve PEOPLE they don’t like, despite no Constitutional requirement that they do so.

    How can you say they MUST refrain from similar enforcement in areas where there is a significant Constitutional right that is being thwarted by a distinction that they otherwise ignore.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  223. The problem is, MTG isn’t unambiguously wrong. She’s a nutcase, she’s stretching it, VAERS data is self reported and inherently flawed, but she’s not objectively wrong.

    I don’t believe it’s necessary to ascertain whether she’s right or wrong, Dustin. Greene isn’t entitled to be on Twitter, just like you and I are not entitled to comment here. Twitter is entitled to publish the content they see fit, and the government and courts should have no say in it.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  224. If that’s true, why are people in power trying so hard to prevent discussion of vaccine fears?

    For the same reasons they don’t like discussion of Trump’s election claims, which, despite their idiocy, are FAR more likely to be true than “thousands of people are dying from the vaccine.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  225. he government can force private businesses to serve PEOPLE they don’t like, despite no Constitutional requirement that they do so.

    Constitutionality aside, the government cannot force private businesses to serve only certain people. By way of example, the government can say that businesses must serve Latinos, but it cannot say that businesses must not serve anyone other than Latinos.

    Voice In The Desert (6fff93)

  226. Twitter is entitled to publish the content they see fit, and the government and courts should have no say in it.

    There is a right to freedom of speech and at the point a private business can block it as well (or better than) the government, a Constituional issue arises.

    Please tell me why a restaurant has to serve blacks or gays or redheads? What part of the constitution suggests the government can make law here, that does not make the same suggestion even stronger in the case of Twitter?

    If you answer “interstate commerce”, I have you.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  227. OK, Mr VitD, answer my question above. What power do they have in the case of private restaurants that they do NOT have in regards Twitter?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  228. I don’t see patron discrimination policies for restaurants as First Amendment issues. The courts have ruled that business entities have certain free speech rights.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  229. Kevin, We’ve chosen to prohibit discrimination for protected classes such as; race, religion, sexual orientation, & gender. Businesses are free to refuse service in specific cases; such as when a patron is loud and disruptive such that they ruin the experience for other patrons. Had Twitter banned MTG because she’s white, or a woman, or heterosexual they’d have violated the same laws you speak of.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  230. By quoting the same talking point that leftists use to justify their argument that because they have more overall votes nationwide, they should be the ones dictating the course of the country, and the right shouldn’t have any say in it at all?

    That is quite clearly NOT what I was arguing. I said clearly that I do not object to our federal constitutional system. It’s absurd to claim I was saying “the right shouldn’t have any say in it at all.”

    My point, as I said, was that the right already gets a political say disproportionate to its numbers nationwide, and yet the far right today whines that the system is so stacked against them that they may just have to resort to extreme measures, including violence, to get what they want.

    Except the left does actually want to marginalize the right. That’s why they break out in sweats when the right shakes off their apathy and actually starts getting politically involved

    People on the right can still vote and organize and speak out, like anyone else. No one is saying it’s unfair for them to do so, and they have many more ways to be heard than was the case 30 years ago. But people do not have a right to use the instruments of government along with the threats of the mob to overturn an election when they don’t get their way.

    The minority of voters who think the election was stolen (but can’t prove it) do not get to veto the considerably larger share of voters who do not believe it was stolen, yet people on the far right are suggesting exactly that.

    Far-right “thinkers” have come out with openly anti-democratic pronouncements, such as that the majority who did not vote for Trump are not really Americans “in any meaningful sense.” They really do believe that a minority holding the “correct” views has a sacred right to rule.

    That GOP is a direct response to the failures of those who were in charge of the party before them.

    Trump was relatively slow to seal up the primary in 2016. A substantial majority of the party at that time wanted someone else.
    Then, a chunk of those who weren’t already cultists swung over to the view that personal loyalty to Donald Trump was more important than any policy issues. A member of Congress who mostly voted with Trump on policy but took the position that he should not overturn an election he lost is now viewed as a traitor, while whose who voted with him on policy at a lower rate but cheered his efforts to steal an election are viewed as good Republicans. It’s not fundamentally about policy.

    I wouldn’t deny that there’s some shady hardball from the left. But the only systematic effort by an American president to remain in office after losing an election, and the only violent attack on the Capitol in an effort to halt certification and ultimately overturn the election, has come from the right and the GOP.

    The Democrats didn’t prevent Trump from taking office in 2016. The Obama administration promptly began assisting in the transition. In 2020, the Trump administration engaged in foot-dragging on the transition while various people in and around the administration tried to block the winner of the election from taking power.

    What the Trumpy GOP did was an unprecedented attack on our system, and it’s very unlikely to have happened if not for the deep narcissism and congenital dishonesty of Donald Trump.

    Radegunda (d7e952)

  231. Nothing in the Constitution (except for the commerce clause) gives the government the power to prohibit discrimination by private parties against ANYONE. And I really don’t see the “protected classes” thing at all.

    There are things like the 14th Amendment, but those apply to government, not private actors.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  232. I don’t believe it’s necessary to ascertain whether she’s right or wrong, Dustin

    Lucky for us, as we don’t really have the ability to do so on major social media platforms.

    Greene isn’t entitled to be on Twitter,

    What’s your point?

    Dustin (0ee127)

  233. I’m not saying that one should allow that kind of discrimination, but that the Commerce Clause acting in furtherance of the 1st Amendment is more in line with precedent than it isn’t.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  234. Kevin, you’re 100% correct that her dishonest speech was political and that the first amendment is intended to protect political speech.

    In this case Twittter has said they’re not going to allow dishonest statements about vaccines on their site. That’s a political speech decision they’ve made. Just like I might have a policy about my cars bumper not to rent space to messages saying “6MWE” because I think it’s vile, even it it’s also political speech.

    Again, I think Twitter’s decision was a bad one, but I think having the government force people to carry messages they don’t like is a worse one.

    Twitter is a popular site, but it’s far way from having a monopoly on political speech.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  235. If you answer “interstate commerce”, I have you.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 1:56 pm

    If some kind of wickardy bastardization of free speech becomes the law, that will be annoying.

    But apparently we can’t have nice things. The internet is the opposite of its initial promise of a decentralized information age. Instead of more ways to share information, there are fewer, in the hands of the incredibly powerful, who absolutely use it to curry favor with government power.

    Didn’t happen on accident. Isn’t a coincidence all of this is in service to a political party that happens to have all the elites, all the universities, all the celebrities.

    I personally don’t see why we even have public research libraries and expensive general education universities in 2022. Instead of thousands of mom and pop vendors, Amazon will give us permission to sell through them.

    The internet, itself the US Government, is broken.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  236. The courts have ruled that business entities have certain free speech rights.

    But this is not their speech. If it were, they could be sued for libel. But they cannot be, just like Patterico cannot be sued for my speech here. Because it is my speech.

    And, of course, Patterico’s actions with respect to who can or cannot speak on his site have little effect on political discourse, where Twitter’s have so much impact that what they decide is national news. Which brings it under the Commerce Clause at the very least.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  237. I invite MTG to sue Twitter. At some point the question of censored political speech needs to go to the courts. The “private business” argument is weak when a ban from this “private business” is national news. It suggests that there is some kind of monopoly on this kind of communication, and monopolies have far less independence than do other businesses.
    Twitter and Facebook are sued all the time by conservatives over suspensions and bans. and the plaintiffs always lose.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  238. But apparently we can’t have nice things. The internet is the opposite of its initial promise of a decentralized information age. Instead of more ways to share information, there are fewer, in the hands of the incredibly powerful, who absolutely use it to curry favor with government power.

    In 1990 you could get your message out through TV news, Cable News, Weekly mags, Newspapers, and talk radio.

    All of those are still options. But you also get all of the online ways to communicate. Twitter is one of them, not not even the most popular. MySpace exists as a constant reminder that social media sites can die as fast as they’re born.

    Didn’t happen on accident. Isn’t a coincidence all of this is in service to a political party that happens to have all the elites, all the universities, all the celebrities.

    I think culture is upstream of politics. Twitter isn’t banning MTG to curry favor. I think they legitimately believe it’s the right thing to do. Just like FB thinks what they do with their platform is the right thing to do.

    The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:

    1. Ben Shapiro
    2. Entertainment Weekly
    3. Today Show
    4. Breitbart
    5. Ben Shapiro
    6. Entertainment Weekly
    7. Dan Bongino
    8. Breitbart
    9. NPR
    10. Ben Shapiro

    https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/1477671070824120327?s=21

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  239. Dustin, We currently have a system where if you build a platform you can decide what is allowed there. I’m curious what you feel a better framework would look like?

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  240. Rip, looks like that suit was thrown out because of lack of evidence of antitrust violations, not on the merits of the claim.

    If Twitter is a monopoly (and it kinda is) that means the suit probably had more value than the courts gave it.

    And think of the conflict of interest this dynamic creates. Twitter, google, they can’t be seen as monopolies by democrat lawmakers because their censorship and control of speech are invaluable political contributions to their election campaigns.

    The internet really is broken.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  241. What’s your point?

    It seems self-explanatory to me, Dustin. It’s about who has rights and who’ve been afforded privileges.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  242. In the case involving Twitter members who sued Trump for blocking them from his feed, Justice Thomas writes:

    While the 2nd Circuit ruling that Trump’s account was a public forum was overturned, it was overturned for other reasons )which Thomas agereed with). His dissent touched upon matters the 2nd Circuit asserted, but the majority on the SC did not touch:

    I write separately to note that this petition highlights the principal legal difficulty that surrounds digital platforms—namely, that applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward. Respondents have a point, for example, that some aspects of Mr. Trump’s account resemble a constitutionally protected public forum. But it seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it.

    The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least. Mr. Trump blocked several people from interacting with his messages. Twitter barred Mr. Trump not only from interacting with a few users, but removed him from the entire platform, thus barring all Twitter users from interacting with his messages. Under its terms of service, Twitter can remove any person from the platform—including the President of the United States—“at any time for any or no reason.”

    This is not the first or only case to raise issues about digital platforms. While this case involves a suit against a public official, the Court properly rejects today a separate petition alleging that digital platforms, not individuals on those platforms, violated public accommodations laws, the First Amendment, and antitrust laws.

    The petitions highlight two important facts. Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties. We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms….

    The Second Circuit feared that then-President Trump cut off speech by using the features that Twitter made available to him. But if the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions. This petition, unfortunately, affords us no opportunity to confront them.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-197_5ie6.pdf

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  243. Cheney: “The Republican Party has to make a choice. We can either be loyal to the Constitution or to Donald Trump. But we cannot be both”

    “We?!?!?”

    Liz Cheney Kicked Out of Wyoming Republican Party

    Nov 17, 2021 – RINO Rep Liz Cheney is no longer recognized as a Republican following a vote by the Wyoming GOP on Monday

    https://www.shiftfrequency.com/rino-cheney-kicked-out-of-wyoming-republican-party/

    It has made a choice, Daughter Darth.

    “Alright, let’s try it out for size.” – Ed Sullivan [himself] ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ 1963

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  244. Dustin, We currently have a system where if you build a platform you can decide what is allowed there. I’m curious what you feel a better framework would look like?

    Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/2/2022 @ 2:48 pm

    sounds like something you and frosty the troll can talk about for a million years

    I dont care. burn it to the ground, elect Team R in 2022 to burn it all down. My nation’s enormous wealth was used to create this internet that made a small number of democrats bazillionarres and they are censoring wrongthink to help politicians inflate away the middle and lower class’s wealth into nothing.

    The problem isn’t a framework, it’s that we’re at war with elites over basic issues of freedom, so screw them, and screw twitter. Taliban has a twitter account. PRC has millions of them. Only enemies of the elite american political movements, who increased the number of US Dollars by 40% in the last few years, get twitter to hide ideas they don’t want discussed.

    This is intentional and I’m not taking this ‘how do we help them do this the right way’ seriously. We don’t. Vote Team R, even the baddies, because we gave Team D a chance and they, including Twitter (D) deserve to lose real bad.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  245. If it becomes impossible for an elected President, or Senator or Congressthing to make political statements on the dominant platform for political statements then what does the 1st Amendment protect.

    This is a matter that has been decided otherwise in the past, such as with AT&T and the phone system, cable companies and community access laws, television stations and “fairness”, “indecency”, licensing and “public service.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  246. I also think it is hysterically funny that Amazon and other Internet hosting companies are so touchy about political speech on their networks and yet seem unfazed by the amount of porn they host.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  247. It seems self-explanatory to me, Dustin. It’s about who has rights and who’ve been afforded privileges.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/2/2022 @ 2:50 pm

    Censorship of ideas is wrong. Chapter 2 of On Liberty

    ‘but it’s legal’ says Paul. Some piece of paper says who doesn’t have rights or something.

    thanks for sharing

    Dustin (0ee127)

  248. First, because no one knows the truth, censoring an idea may be censoring the truth.
    Second, free competition of ideas is the best way to find truth.
    Third, because no one idea is the sum of truth, even those ideas containing only a portion of the truth will help society acquire knowledge.

    This argument implies that even false ideas are valuable, because they both test the truth and prevent it from slipping into dogma, and because they too may contain a germ of truth worth preserving.
    In summary, the robust exchange of ideas will help preserve individuality, restrain the tyranny of social opinion, and guide the pursuit of truth.

    Something people on the internet could discuss, but popehat will reply with a .gif because this is soooo stupid, twitter isn’t the government and lawyers say that’s where the discussion of censorship must end, over and over again.

    Burn it to the ground then. Why is my government building twitter’s internet to censor me with? Salt the earth afterwards. You guys know about tik tok right? Download it and after ten minutes tell me you shouldn’t burn all this down? Google ‘stepsister’. The internet sucks.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  249. I also think it is hysterically funny that Amazon and other Internet hosting companies are so touchy about political speech on their networks and yet seem unfazed by the amount of porn they host.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:01 pm

    Yes

    Dustin (0ee127)

  250. In 1990 you could get your message out through TV news, Cable News, Weekly mags, Newspapers, and talk radio.

    Well, TV News might decide to ignore you, as might cable news. Most talk Radio isn’t national, and usually only people who agree with them listen, reducing the opportunity to speak to others. Newspapers and Weekly mags might choose not to run your ads.

    None of these offer even as much opportunity that Twitter (or Facebook) does — the gatekeepers in all these venues are up front, not after the fact.

    Now, you could argue then that Twitter offers more freedom of speech than before, but it remains imperfect and is dominant in a way that none of the others are, making what it does not allow generally unheard.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  251. Rip, looks like that suit was thrown out because of lack of evidence of antitrust violations, not on the merits of the claim…….
    Dustin (0ee127) — 1/2/2022 @ 2:50 pm

    If one looks further into the article, it discusses Charles C. Johnson v. Twitter; Jared Taylor v. Twitter; Craig Brittain v. Twitter; Prager University v. Google; and Tulsi Gabbard v. Google, all of which reached the merits.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  252. Kevin, I’d say it’s less about the Commerce Clause and more about property rights. I see a much larger problem if the government or courts force private companies against their will to give politicians social media accounts.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  253. I suspect that there are over a million posts on Twitter or Facebook asserting that 9/11 was an inside job, or that Hillary is a lesbian, or that Obama was born in Kenya. Every last news program of any kind repeated Reid’s lie about Romney’s taxes.

    The untruths they choose to ban are highly selective.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  254. property rights

    You are so funny.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  255. Sorry, Founding Fathers, Free Speech Doesn’t Apply Online

    “Both Meta social media platforms—Facebook and Instagram—blocked a quote this week from Founding Father Thomas Paine advocating free speech.

    Reclaim The Net reported that several Facebook and Instagram users tweeted about a common problem they were facing Monday and Tuesday. The “Meta” platforms had either removed posts or temporarily blocked accounts that had uploaded a picture and quote of American revolutionary Thomas Paine.

    “He who dares not offend cannot be honest,” read the quote, published in the Pennsylvania Journal in April 1776.

    Ironically (or perhaps not), the social media giants Facebook and Instagram continue to fuel the novel American censorship crisis by censoring one of the free-speech pioneers of this republic. Paine strongly refuted the divine right of kings and advanced the notion that God supported American commoners against a repressive monarchy.

    Facebook apparently told several posters on the platform that their messages were moved for violating the platform’s “guidelines on vaccines health misinfo,” according to screenshots posted in the story. Apparently, American tyrants are becoming so paranoid about controlling the vaccine narrative that even this country’s Founding Fathers aren’t immune from the current wave of oppression.'”

    https://www.charismanews.com/us/87930-sorry-founding-fathers-free-speech-doesn-t-apply-online

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  256. I see a much larger problem if the government or courts force private companies against their will to give politicians social media accounts.

    They forced AT&T to give the telephone lines to anyone who asked. Even Communists and Nazis.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  257. Censorship of ideas is wrong. Chapter 2 of On Liberty

    Generally, I’m in full agreement, Dustin, but Twitter isn’t the only place where ideas are shared, and I think it’s presumptuous that you would censor the owner of the platform by forcing her to stay there and continue violating their ToS.
    Her rights have not been abridged. I don’t like that RedState and Powerline permanently banned me, but I’m not going to whine that I’ve been “censored”. They were fully within their rights, despite their near-complete arbitrariness.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  258. If one looks further into the article, it discusses Charles C. Johnson v. Twitter; Jared Taylor v. Twitter; Craig Brittain v. Twitter; Prager University v. Google; and Tulsi Gabbard v. Google, all of which reached the merits.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:11 pm

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/technology/google-tulsi-gabbard-lawsuit.html

    motion to dismiss granted (not on the merits, but the insufficiency of the complaint) because the suit “failed to prove that the First Amendment clause that prohibits the government from curbing free speech applied to Google as a private company.”

    Of all the companies in the world, the least private of them is Google, which is the US government.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-infiltrates-links-to-yahoo-google-data-centers-worldwide-snowden-documents-say/2013/10/30/e51d661e-4166-11e3-8b74-d89d714ca4dd_story.html

    https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/

    https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/249521-cisa-the-dirty-deal-between-google-and-the-nsa-that-no-one-is

    Not that we get to bring that up in lawsuits, because they will be swatted away with an MTD before we really have discovery, depos, … merits.

    Clearly we can’t win. Burn it to the ground, elect Team R. Team D had a chance and they are censoring the crap out of people. Team R would too (just got banned for a nuanced criticizm of MTG on some nutcase trumpy site), but team R can’t do what team D can with things like twitter.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  259. I see a much larger problem if the government or courts force private companies against their will to give politicians social media accounts.

    I think you are limiting the demand, as it would also include people and groups like Alex Jones and Occupy Democrats. What does it harm Twitter if they speak, and how does this harm compare to the harm of a ban on their speech?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  260. If one looks further into the article, it discusses Charles C. Johnson v. Twitter; Jared Taylor v. Twitter; Craig Brittain v. Twitter; Prager University v. Google; and Tulsi Gabbard v. Google, all of which reached the merits.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:11 pm

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/technology/google-tulsi-gabbard-lawsuit.html

    motion to dismiss granted (not on the merits, but the insufficiency of the complaint) because the suit “failed to prove that the First Amendment clause that prohibits the government from curbing free speech applied to Google as a private company.”

    Of all the companies in the world, the least private of them is Google, which is the US government.

    [deleted some links to get this through the filter]

    https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/

    https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/technology/249521-cisa-the-dirty-deal-between-google-and-the-nsa-that-no-one-is

    Not that we get to bring that up in lawsuits, because they will be swatted away with an MTD before we really have discovery, depos, … merits.

    Clearly we can’t win. Burn it to the ground, elect Team R. Team D had a chance and they are censoring the crap out of people. Team R would too (just got banned for a nuanced criticizm of MTG on some nutcase trumpy site), but team R can’t do what team D can with things like twitter.

    Dustin (0ee127) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:20 pm Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  261. They forced AT&T to give the telephone lines to anyone who asked.

    These involve private conversations, Kevin. You would need a warrant to know what the parties are saying.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  262. BTW, I do not see Libertarian analysis to be particular useful in this timeline.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  263. These involve private conversations, Kevin.

    There were party lines at the time.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  264. Twitter isn’t the only place where ideas are shared,

    yeah there’s some conservative version. i don’t even know what it’s called.

    it doesn’t have democrat celebrities and democrat athletes, universities or democrat megabazllionarres, or, importantly, people who disagree. The whole point of the large grand discourse is the ability to reach people who disagree. It’s why people comment at patterico’s blog, which isn’t very prone to moderate.

    There’s a cultural monopoly, rigidly enforced.

    Her rights have not been abridged.

    they have

    Dustin (0ee127)

  265. Most talk Radio isn’t national, and usually only people who agree with them listen, reducing the opportunity to speak to others.

    Except it essentially is thanks to syndication deals and radio networks– and it echoes right-wing:

    https://swinginwest.com/commercial/shows/most-listened-to-radio-shows-in-us/

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  266. But you are making an argument not as to what they can require of a private comany, but why they require it. Why does it harm them to require they carry public speech, when it doesn’t with private speech? In neither case is it THEIR speech.

    Advertisers? Just write a “terms of advertising” “agreement” that allows Twitter to place ads anywhere Twitter chooses. They can always choose to advertise on those Talkradio shows instead.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  267. The funny thing about Trump’s tweets: I have never read one of them on Twitter, yet I have heard about most of the crazy ones, and I have heard about them on media that CHOSE to publish them, without regard to how it would affect their own advertisers.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  268. I think you are limiting the demand, as it would also include people and groups like Alex Jones and Occupy Democrats. What does it harm Twitter if they speak, and how does this harm compare to the harm of a ban on their speech?

    Let me clarify something, Kevin. Personally, I’m all for more speech, and that the best way to defeat detestable viewpoints is to confront them and beat them with better arguments, not ban them.
    If that’s how Twitter wants to do it, fine, I’m not going to object. If they want to keep groups of Maoists, Stalinists and Natseys on board, again their call. It’s their printing press, and laugh all you want about property rights, it’s still theirs, and they can make it as big or small as they choose.
    Joe Rogan just announced that he’s bailing on Twitter and moving to GETTR, and good for him. It’s the invisible hand (which isn’t all that invisible) at work. Twitter could use some competition.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  269. Here’s a clearer statement of the issue:

    Should Twitter (or Facebook) be able to block political organizing of views that it disagrees with, but does not block for ideas that it agrees with?

    If they are so dominant that there is no appreciable competition, and they maintain that position by government’s sufferance — and if members of said government threaten at times to revoke that due to something they allow — then how are they not the government’s proxy? It is no secret than much of the anti-anti-vaxx and pro-Jan-6th talk on Twitter and Facebook is being suppressed after government demands to do so.

    See for example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/01/20/biden-trump-censorship-section-230-google-facebook-scrutiny/4238357001/

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  270. Morning Consult: The Republican Party’s Image Has Recovered From the Fallout of Jan. 6
    ……….
    ………. There is no lasting stain on the Republican brand, and though most voters continue to blame Trump for the events as a congressional probe moves through his orbit and homes in on him, they do not appear ready to punish Republicans for the attack on American democracy.
    ……….
    According to the latest data, gathered Dec. 18-20 among 2,000 registered voters ahead of the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, 34 percent say the Republican Party is headed in the right direction, matching voter optimism toward the Democratic Party’s own tack. Though improvement was observed across the partisan aisle, it was most notable among Republicans, 65 percent of whom say their party is headed in the right direction — up 14 percentage points since January 2021.
    ………..
    According to the latest survey, 59 percent of voters said Trump is at least somewhat responsible for the events that led to a group of people attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, while 47 percent blamed Republicans in Congress. Both figures are down slightly from a year ago.
    ………..,
    Since the weekend after the Capitol attack, for example, Trump has seen his unfavorability rating drop from 63 percent to 51 percent in a Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted Dec. 18-20. That poll found 44 percent of voters hold favorable views of the former president, higher than earlier in the year and similar to Biden’s own standing.
    ……….
    Roughly 7 in 10 Democratic voters said the events of Jan. 6 had a “major impact” on their worldview, compared with about a quarter of Republicans and just over a third of independents.
    ………..
    Indeed, nearly half of voters (47 percent), including a similar share of independents, said they don’t expect the events of last January to have any impact on their votes in November, even though two-thirds of voters say it’s important for the federal government to investigate Jan. 6 and three-fifths support the idea of a congressional commission.
    ………,,.
    Poll cross tabs.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  271. One other thing. Ms. Greene still has access to Twitter through her “official” Congressional account so, even after all this foofaraw, she can still jump onto the platform and say stuff. Whether she abides by their ToS, her call.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  272. The funny thing about Trump’s tweets: I have never read one of them on Twitter, yet I have heard about most of the crazy ones, and I have heard about them on media that CHOSE to publish them, without regard to how it would affect their own advertisers.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:30 pm

    Read your heart out.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  273. Joe Rogan just announced that he’s bailing on Twitter and moving to GETTR, and good for him. It’s the invisible hand (which isn’t all that invisible) at work. Twitter could use some competition.

    The difference is that GETTR intends to be a bubble, where Twitter has the center which is what all political speakers want to reach.

    And I’m pretty sure there are Stalinists and Maoists on Twitter. Maybe not Nazis. And seaching for Maoist on Facebook gets one lots of groups, complete with hammer & sickle.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  274. Read your heart out.

    Hunh? Does defending speech require me to agree with it? Voltaire is spinning in his grave.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  275. Whether she abides by their ToS, her call.

    Whether she toes the line as to acceptable politics, is what you mean. But they don’t censor.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  276. @270. That’s really the heart of it. What passes for “journalism” today in the profit-driven, minute-to-minute, second-by-second race for ratings and ad revenue is the lazy-azzed method media platforms, run by 30-something news editors, use to simply tap a quick ‘click source’ like Twitter and move it into a mainstream news platform to keep the beast fed.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  277. Recognize wisdom:

    “I didn’t know what Facebook was. And now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a HUGE waste of time.” – Betty White, 1/17/1922 – 12/31/2021

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  278. Capitol rioters’ tears, remorse don’t spare them from jail
    Florida business owner Robert Palmer cheered on the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 before he joined the fray. Screaming obscenities, he hurled a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher at police officers trying to ward off the mob.

    Nearly a year later, Palmer fought back tears when he faced the federal judge who sentenced him to more than five years in prison. He said he was “horrified, absolutely devastated” by what he had done.

    “I’m just so ashamed that I was a part of that,” Palmer told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Dec. 17 before she gave him the longest prison term for any rioter so far.
    ………..
    The rioters’ refrains before the judges are often the same: They were caught up in the moment or just following the crowd into the Capitol. They didn’t see any violence or vandalism. They thought police were letting them enter the building. They insist they went there to peacefully protest.

    Their excuses often implode in the face of overwhelming evidence. Thousands of hours of videos from surveillance cameras, mobile phones and police body cameras captured them reveling in the mayhem. Many boasted about their crimes on social media in the days after the deadly attack.

    (Judge Amy Berman Jackson) told Russell James Peterson, a rioter from Pennsylvania, that he “walked there on his own two feet” and must bear responsibility for his own actions.

    “No one was swept away to the Capitol. No one was carried. The rioters were adults,” Jackson said before sentencing Peterson to 30 days’ imprisonment.
    ……….
    Anna Morgan-Lloyd, the first rioter to be sentenced, told Senior Judge Royce Lamberth in June that she was ashamed of the “savage display of violence” at the Capitol. A day later, however, the Indiana woman told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that people were “very polite” during the riot, that she saw “relaxed” police officers chatting with rioters and that she didn’t believe the Jan. 6 attack was an insurrection.

    Her inconsistency didn’t escape Lamberth’s notice. ……..
    ………
    The judge who sentenced Boyd Camper to 60 days’ imprisonment for a misdemeanor offense said the Montana man’s presence in the mob “helped create the momentum for violence” and provided safety for violent rioters even though he personally didn’t attack law enforcement officers.

    “Violence is an unacceptable way to resolve political differences,” Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly told Camper.
    ……….
    Anthony Mariotto, a Florida man who was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay a $5,000 fine, said he “got caught up in the moment” but knows he broke the law by entering the Capitol.

    “I was hoping that they would just pause the election,” Mariotto said during his December sentencing. “I wish Joe Biden, President Biden, would have won by billions of votes. None of this would have happened.”

    Judge Reggie Walton dryly replied, “He won by 7 million.”
    ##########
    Crocodile tears.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  279. Whether she toes the line as to acceptable politics, is what you mean.

    No, that’s not what I mean or said or inferred or insinuated. C’mon, Kevin.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  280. Who Participated in the Boston Tea Party?

    https://historyofmassachusetts.org/participants-of-the-boston-tea-party/

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  281. Dustin, Thank you for taking the time to answer my question. I wasn’t planning to debate what your preferred framework is, but I was curious. I’ve always thought you were pretty insightful and I have a lot of respect for your POV. The fact that we’re so far off here worried me. I’ll close with this.

    I think twitter is wrong in what they do here, but having the government control what they do with their property will be a worse solution.
    I don’t think Twitter is even close to a monopoly, it’s harder to measure then who sells how many cars the data isn’t even close. https://www.kantar.com/north-america/inspiration/advertising-media/revealed-the-top-ranking-media-channels-and-brands-in-2021
    I think it’s good that a private company can tell high ranking government officials to pound sand, and I hope senator warren never has the power to punish them for being uppity. Which she clearly wants to do. https://patterico.com/2021/03/27/constitutional-vanguard-elizabeth-warren-violates-the-first-amendment-with-a-tweet/

    For the rest I’m going to think about what you wrote and what it implies about my going in opinions.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  282. No, that’s not what I mean or said or inferred or insinuated. C’mon, Kevin.

    Well, the “terms of service” are “if we say so.” MTG was banned not for attacking a protected group or for bad language or for even attacking another user. It was for saying something that was “untrue” on a highly charged political issue, even though its truthiness was based on an interpretation of a government web site.

    So, why was her personal account banned if not for unacceptable politics?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  283. having the government control what they do with their property will be a worse solution.

    You’re right. But there is a middle way. We could burn them to the ground by electing crazy Team R idiots, because crazy Team D idiots are at war with working nuclear families.

    It’s not the government controlling twitter. It’s an oligarchy controlling society, and exploiting government. They banned the (idiot) president and left up a billion PRC trolls and the taliban.

    There is no solution, unless twitter does it fair on their own out of existential interest.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  284. Kevin Wrote

    Should Twitter (or Facebook) be able to block political organizing of views that it disagrees with, but does not block for ideas that it agrees with?

    Yes, it’s their property. If they don’t want to let Nambla, or a kitten adoption group, organize that’s their right.

    If they are so dominant that there is no appreciable competition,

    The premise here isn’t true, Getter, GAB, Parlor, Facebook, YouTube, TicTok, Vimeo, Discord, Reddit, as well as traditional media are all available.

    and they maintain that position by government’s sufferance — and if members of said government threaten at times to revoke that due to something they allow — then how are they not the government’s proxy?

    No one has come close to showing that moderation decisions are being made to curry favor. But right wing politicians have become ever more vocal about using the power of the government to punish media outlets they don’t like. Left wing politicians have done so as well, if at a lower volume.

    It is no secret than much of the anti-anti-vaxx and pro-Jan-6th talk on Twitter and Facebook is being suppressed after government demands to do so.

    I think you’re wrong here. I think their moderation decisions are what they genuinely want. But I’m open to evidence to the contrary. If lefties build a popular platform and moderate it in a lefty way that’s not giving in to government demand. That’s just crummy people being crummy.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  285. #221
    KevinM

    That isn’t fear, that sounds like anger.
    No offense meant to your personal losses, but policy makers have to think bigger. If they just think about everyones individual personal loss, death becomes the only thing that matters.

    What about life? Not just survival, but life. Life with family, friends, work, concerts etc etc. All are taking a back seat to death.

    I choose life. If I die with COVID I want people to carry on with life. I’m dead, go enjoy yourself

    steveg (e81d76)

  286. I think twitter is wrong in what they do here, but having the government control what they do with their property will be a worse solution.

    I admit that having the government in charge of what could be posted, at least on an individual bases, would be terrible and far worse that what happens now. But in the situations where the government does intervene, it tends to only allow very narrow restrictions.

    Organizing an insurrection or planning other crimes is usually not allowed. But saying the government was behind 9/11 or rigged an election or is sterilizing women in a secret experiment in Tuskegee would be. All you need to do is extend the 1st Amendment to these dominant platforms, perhaps with a age tier or other gateway for certain material, but not for the viewpoints expressed therein.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  287. Dustin, I guess I don’t understand what you really envision by ‘burn them all to the ground.’ The GOP isn’t going to put twitter out of business and toss the servers into the Sun. They’re going to create laws and precedent to force twitter to do what they want. Trump doesn’t want twitter to go away. He wants Twitter to glorify him. When power shifts (assuming that next GOP administration allows that to happen) the left will use those same tools in the ways they want.

    I agree with you that Twitter’s policies make very little sense in application. Looking at what they do i suspect part of their rubric is if a Twitter ban will have any impact on the speaker and others like them. That would explain some of their decisions. But so would Twitter just not giving a crap about what people outside of the US say.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  288. It was for saying something that was “untrue” on a highly charged political issue, even though its truthiness was based on an interpretation of a government web site.

    Far as we know, she was bam-sticked for making sh-t up about vaccine-related deaths. That sounds like a factual issue, not political.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  289. @289, Your proposal breaks down as soon as we create an inherently objectionable political message. Such as a user wants to express their political distaste via photo-realistic drawings of a politicians family being sexually assaulted. We should allow that to be viewpoint neutral? I think the answer is clearly ‘no’. Much milder stuff is why i gave up on GAB. But once we agree that some types of political messages are beyond the pale we either create a detailed list of rules that Trolls will try to game for the LOLZ or we create need for judgement.

    I’m saying we let the owner make the judgement call. You’re saying we should let the government.

    I think both groups will mess it all up, but the market has so far shown itself to be able to check owners.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  290. @291, Paul that’s absolutely a political issue. The right has made being anti-vax part of their tribal identity, part of that has been misleading / dishonest statements about the risk and efficacy of the vaccine.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  291. I don’t understand what you really envision by ‘burn them all to the ground.’

    Oh, that’s because I don’t understand it either. Could be repealing section 230, ruining a lot of the internet, could be something else. Won’t be a framework that twitter or some new alternative uses to be ethical, and won’t be a competitor run by a populist republican personality.

    But as Obama said, ‘you didn’t build that’. Twitter, amazon, google, they are beneficiaries of the people’s internet and circumstance, some of which was the result of government intervention or the help of politicians. If the dems will cheat at everything just as much as Trump tried to cheat on 1/6, and the dems are at war with my values or even my family, I guess my interest in opposing team R crazies approaches zero. Populism is not supposed to be thoughtful; just popular.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  292. No offense meant to your personal losses, but policy makers have to think bigger.

    But overall odds should not matter when the individual odds vary greatly. If only 10% of the people carry most of the risk, is it OK for the government to say “Oh, well, not that many, let them die”?

    My statement in 221 was pretty much “Don’t quote odds to me”, pointing out in a hyperbolic (yet actual) way that the odds in some groups can be wildly higher. In a perfect world, policy would be well tailored. In an emergent situation (e.g. 2020) or an altered situation (the vaccine) that is still critical, government often does not have the time for its usual multi-year processes to work.

    I disagree with some of the restrictions, particularly masks, and I think that the vaccine mandate is overbroad, but that does not mean that I think that medical personnel, or those caring for the aged, or similar, ought to be free to do what they want. People are dying.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  293. It’s not the government controlling twitter. It’s an oligarchy controlling society, and exploiting government. They banned the (idiot) president and left up a billion PRC trolls and the taliban.

    There we agree, Dustin. If there’s a way to introduce more social-media competition, I think that’s the best answer, and the “oligarchies” will put up roadblocks.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  294. Far as we know, she was bam-sticked for making sh-t up about vaccine-related deaths. That sounds like a factual issue, not political.

    The articles I read referred to VAERS. I think that such a reference is crazy talk, but it is not quite “making sh1t up.” And to deny that vaccine matters are political — when the two major parties disagree on the topic — seems hard to defend.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  295. The right has made being anti-vax part of their tribal identity, part of that has been misleading / dishonest statements about the risk and efficacy of the vaccine.

    Time, I agree that Greene and her cohorts have turned a medical/scientific issue into political football, and I don’t doubt that a majority of Twitter personnel lean a certain way politically. However, that doesn’t preclude her from being bounced for making sh-t up.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  296. There we agree, Dustin. If there’s a way to introduce more social-media competition, I think that’s the best answer, and the “oligarchies” will put up roadblocks.

    But there really isn’t. The network effect is too powerful. These are systems where everyone is on or no one is. Facebook is not competing with MySpace, it supplanted it. These Twitter alternatives are not even dwarfs; they are no more useful for communicating views to others that freerepublic or Democrat Underground.

    The answer is to treat them as common carriers, with no concentration of ownership (making Dorsey and Zuckerberg divest). We limit ownership of TV and radio platforms.

    We might also look at Zuckerberg’s continuing purchase of potential competitors, like Whatsapp, where the services CAN be broken, or Amazon’s “subsidiary” AWS.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  297. However, that doesn’t preclude her from being bounced for making sh-t up.

    When they have no problem with otehr people doing the same, like the 9/11 Truthers?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  298. @298 However, that doesn’t preclude her from being bounced for making sh-t up.

    less than a year ago, floating the covid lab leak theory was making sh-t up and would get you banned

    JF (e1156d)

  299. Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
    …………..

    Cases trajectory last two weeks:

    U.S. Virgin Islands +2,385%

    Puerto Rico +1,620%

    Florida +765%

    Louisiana +710%

    Georgia +704%

    Alabama +588%

    Maryland +563%

    Washington, D.C. +485%

    Hawaii +465%

    Mississippi +378%

    California +366%
    ……….
    New Mexico +5%

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  300. We can no more have multiple Twitters than we can have multiple telephone networks. If AT&T would not connect to Verizon or T-Mobile they would all be of little use.

    Basically we have the case of someone who runs “THE” phone network saying that certain thoughts cannot be uttered and if you don’t like it start your own phone network. The government breaking it into competing, separate, systems would not work. What would wok is the government correcting their terms of service.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  301. New Mexico +5%

    This is in part that New Mexico is not a transit hub. It only has 1 metro area and two other cities, surrounded by hundreds of miles of desert in every direction. Not to mention that a good half of the state is military reserve or native reservation land.

    They exploded an atomic bomb here. In secret.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  302. @303, Twitter is not a monopoly

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  303. Twitter is not a monopoly

    What competes with it as an open messaging platform?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  304. Kevin, Facebook & Reddit, discord, discus, and every major website with a comment section. Oh, parlor, GAB, Gettr as well.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  305. How great is a day that I get to spend with friends and Kevin and Dustin have the argument with time and Paul in my place.

    frosty (f27e97)

  306. Kevin, I forgot about YouTube, Ticktok, Vimeo, twitch & podcasts.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  307. @298, Paul, The thing is that she wasn’t bounced for saying the earth was flat, Pluto is a planet, or that 2+2=5. Those aren’t political issues. The safety of the vaccine is a political is a political issue.

    Twitter has determined that they don’t want their platform used to spread certain kinds of messages about the safety of the vaccine. They’re looking at what you say about it and if they feel you’re being misleading they will choose to take action up to & including banning you. The fact that she’s being misleading in this case doesn’t mean it’s not political.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  308. @294, well, that’s more clear. Nihilism is something I can understand, if not agree with.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  309. Kevin, Facebook & Reddit, discord, discus, and every major website with a comment section. Oh, parlor, GAB, Gettr as well.

    Kevin, I forgot about YouTube, Tiktok, Vimeo, twitch & podcasts.

    Of these, only reddit, discord and Facebook offer something similar. All the others are balkanized, which defeats the entire purpose, or token competition.

    Of THESE, Facebook has similar issues, reddit is micro-categorized, and discord is similarly categorized, but also has many many individual gatekeepers. You have to get permission to post in discord groups.

    None of them offer the same type of open, global messaging with audio, image, videos and other attachments. Facebook offers similar posting, but in a whole different setup.

    But let’s say that YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook are all competing in some way. Their terms of service are remarkably consistent, and the platforms that host them (AWS, Google and Azure) have been known to enforce similar rules then the hosted platform declines to do so.

    So, oligarchy not monopoly, and becoming more concentrated as we go on. I note you left out WhatsApp, since it is now owned by Facebook (being unable to resit a $19 billion check).

    It is still, from the user’s point of view, a monolithic control of speech.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  310. Also, the existence of alternatives seems to make no difference. Supermarkets and other shopping areas cannot ban petition gatherers, even though (were they to have that choice) some would and some wouldn’t. The only question is whether they are the “public square.” Which Twitter and some of the others obviously are.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  311. However, that doesn’t preclude her from being bounced for making sh-t up.

    Then why not bounce every Twitterer or Facebook page that advocates Marxism-Leninism or Maoism, since it is obvious something that does not work and never has worked (unless the real purpose was mass murder)?

    Go search on your Facebook page for “Maoist”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  312. #206, #208 Kevin – In a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system like we use for almost all elections in the United States, you should not expect seats shares to be proportional to vote shares. There is an empirical relationship, the cube rule that — sometimes — fits quite well.

    Suppose we have two parties which receive A and B percent of the vote. According to the cube rule, the ratio of A seats-won to B seats-won should be proportional to A3/B3. So if A wins 60% and B wins 40%, the ratio of votes A/B = 60/40 = 1.5, but the ratio of seats is 603:403 = 3.375:1. That works out to a ratio of seats of 77:23. In a close election where the popular vote is A=52 and B=48, the seats break 56:44. In other words, the winner gets many extra seats. If there are three parties the ratio of seats will also be proportional to the cube of their votes.

    (Try it on California and see what result you get.)

    Now that doesn’t mean the California Democrats aren’t cheating, just you should not expect proportional seat shares, even when the district lines are drawn by a nonpartisan computer program.

    (Incidentally, the distribution of voters in the United States in general favors Republicans, since Democrats are more likely to be in parts of cities where their candidates win by overwhelming majorities, thus wasting votes.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  313. I don’t think there’s much more point to this. Some of you are OK with censorship of political opinions in the dominant national forums. Fine. I’m done.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  314. steveg – Thank you for your frank reply. I think I understand you, though I still disagree with you.

    But I am not sure you have taken all the COVID costs into account. Besides deaths, there are considerable costs from hospitalization, and from the damage done to the economy. Note, please, that there is damage to the economy regardless of the government rules, from people being unable to work, from people unwilling to work in what they believe is a hazardous environment, and so on.

    And we simply don’t know — and can’t know — what, if any, long-term effects COVID will have on people, though there are troubling signs.

    Finally, there are the costs of things that don’t happen because of the disease. A doctor, who uses “Foxy” for his name over at Political Betting, explained it this way months ago. The cost in life years lost from “matching” and “hatching” is greater than the cost in years of lives lost from “dispatching”. Translated, he meant that there will be more years of lives lost from the marriages (“matching”) and births (“hatching”) that don’t happen, than from the deaths (“dispatchings” that do.

    For example, a baby that doesn’t get born costs about 80 years, while a person dying from COVID costs somewhere around 10 years, on the average.

    (A technical point: “statistically significant” has a specific meaning for statisticians, especially those of the frequentist school. Very roughly, it means that something can be detected above the noise of random variation, at some level of “confidence”. Which COVID deaths certainly can be at any of the usual levels. So you might just want to say “significant”, and skip the “statistically”.

    And you would clarify your argument if you specified what totals of American, and worldwide, deaths you would consider “significant”.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  315. There is an empirical relationship, the cube rule that — sometimes — fits quite well.

    I said that they did not have to be, but also that this does not mean that the seats cannot be rigged.

    In the national case, with competing apportionments, the seat split nationally in 2020 (222-213) was almost spot on to the partisan vote break (51-48). This is the effect of 10 years and 50 states.

    But the Democrats continue to call the current situation “gerrymandered” which it is not, and using that false claim (which Twitter should ban) they proceed to openly gerrymander.

    As for the cube rule, I don’t agree with that. It assumes certain distributions of opinion that are generally not present. Unless, of course, someone makes damn sure to reduce as many districts as possible to 60/40 splits. As they have done in California.

    If this was true, then a 60/40 split in the electorate would “naturally” result in a 335-100 House of Representatives (77% to 23%). While a party has twice reached this percentage of House seats (once in the middle of the Civil War, and once in the middle of the Great Depression), it would have happened a LOT if this was a true statement.

    So, I gotta call BS on this, and view it as an apology for gerrymanders.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  316. https://twitter.com/omriceren/status/1477769316380594183

    Twitter happily permitted Iran’s Supreme Leader to spread disinformation last year, and their explanation was cutting off government officials during COVID was irresponsible. US law prohibits American companies from providing services to the Iranian government, but Twitter explained they are a “uniquely open service” and really went to bat for a government that has chants of “death to America.”

    That’s seemingly some serious support for free speech, right?

    That twitter account holder supports capitol punishment for homosexuality. In fact, Iran’s the world leader in public executions. Iranian children sometimes accidentally kill themselves playing public execution. Only nation that practices beheadings in modern times. In 2020 they executed two people for protesting, which isn’t really ironic but is interesting.

    These folks permit Iran, PRC, Taliban, their voice simply because it is fashionable to have a problem with the USA, much like many of the left in our government’s leadership have a problem with the USA. Straight up, these folks are Jane Fonda.

    COVID gave Twitter the right to ignore our laws on providing platform services to tyrants, and it gave twitter the opposite right, to greatly diminish open discussion about COVID to elected American representatives. COVID is all things.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  317. RIP Richard Leakey (77).

    RIP Dan Reeves (77).

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  318. Some of you are OK with censorship of political opinions in the dominant national forums.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 6:48 pm

    By those forums themselves? Yes I am. Just as I’m OK with the Times, Fox News and Kevin M’s family Christmas newsletter publishing exactly and only what they want and censoring the rest.

    lurker (59504c)

  319. None of those things have global reach. None of those things make national news when they ban someone. You are clearly in denial about how important they are in the current world of politics, or how much not having access to them makes one a non-person.

    What you are, is OK with MTG getting the axe as you think she is repulsive. But the ONLY time that it means anything to defend free speech is when you abhor it.

    Jack Dorsey should not control the bulk of political speech in this country. I don’t understand why this is even an issue.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  320. Something people on the internet could discuss, but popehat will reply with a .gif because this is soooo stupid, twitter isn’t the government and lawyers say that’s where the discussion of censorship must end, over and over again.

    Dustin (0ee127) — 1/2/2022 @ 3:06 pm

    I have my issues with popehat, but on the First Amendment he’s consistently principled. So help me out here, Dustin, because I’m having difficulty finding the principle behind your complaint. I want to be wrong, but from here it looks only like partisan grievance. Which is fine, if all you’re doing is venting. But if your “tear it all down” prescription (which I’m still unclear about beyond simply “Elect GOP ’22!”) involves government action, then .gif’s or not, popehat is right. Twitter isn’t the government, and for Constitutional purposes that can’t just be waved away.

    lurker (59504c)

  321. greatly diminish open discussion about COVID to elected American representatives. COVID is all things.

    And at a time when online services have much more impact since face-to-face venues are very limited.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  322. What you are, is OK with MTG getting the axe as you think she is repulsive. But the ONLY time that it means anything to defend free speech is when you abhor it.

    Don’t try to read my mind, Kevin. You’re terrible at it, and it’s obnoxious.

    Jack Dorsey should not control the bulk of political speech in this country. I don’t understand why this is even an issue.

    Pass a Constitutional amendment. Until then I don’t understand why you think I should ignore the Constitution we’ve got.

    lurker (59504c)

  323. Twitter isn’t the government

    Twitter has been a proxy for this administration. They were one for the last one, too, until it was clear Trump was done, then they kicked him to the curb as the new guys wanted.

    Many of Twitter’s actions (and particularly on Covid) have come after people in power threatened them if they didn’t crack down on it. Maybe some would say “suggested” but it was clear what was meant.

    Hell, they had multiple Congressional hearings on the subject of what was being allowed on Twitter and Facebook, and delved into the approval process and how it could be “improved.”

    Anyone who says that they are independent and unbent by what the government wants is not looking very hard.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  324. Well, statistically speaking, if the Earth is four billion years old and assuming a 100-year human lifespan, generously if I may say so, the probability of Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s existence is 2.5e-8, which is an unimaginably small number, so I really don’t see the big deal.

    nk (1d9030)

  325. Don’t try to read my mind, Kevin. You’re terrible at it, and it’s obnoxious.

    I read what you type. [The next sentence was deleted in favor of civility.]

    Pass a Constitutional amendment. Until then I don’t understand why you think I should ignore the Constitution we’ve got.

    I read it differently. None of this speech is Twitter’s or Dorsey’s.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  326. Well, nk, 93% of all humans that ever lived are now dead, so we are probably all dead.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  327. @325 Pass a Constitutional amendment. Until then I don’t understand why you think I should ignore the Constitution we’ve got.

    you aren’t going to believe this, but section 230 isn’t in the constitution

    JF (e1156d)

  328. Nor are the various Communications Acts in the Constitution, yet they dealt with this problem in times past. Telephone, radio, television, cable TV (and soon internet service) have been regulated, licensed and otherwise controlled by the State.

    It is quite ironic that some defend censorship with the 1st Amendment.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  329. I read what you type.

    That’s BS. What you said bears no relationship to what I typed. If your memory needs refreshing I’ll be happy to re-post my comment followed by your BS characterization.

    [The next sentence was deleted in favor of civility.]

    Lol! You already impugned my motive out of whole cloth. What did you think wouldn’t be civil?

    lurker (59504c)

  330. The safety of the vaccine is a political is a political issue.

    I would add that it’s also a public health issue, Time. This is speculation, but it seems like Twitter people have to be concerned that there are people out there like Greene and others who are disinforming their followers on their platform, scaring them away from a vaccine that will keep the most vulnerable of them out of hospitals and coffins. It’s a little more than about politics because the subject isn’t an argument about tax policy or infrastructure or the border.
    The Trump ban is actually illustrative here. He told tens of thousands of lies in office, an untold number of them through his tweets, but he wasn’t kicked out for good until he threatened the health of our democracy by his behavior on 1/6.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  331. you aren’t going to believe this, but section 230 isn’t in the constitution

    JF (e1156d) — 1/2/2022 @ 8:22 pm

    And you aren’t going to believe this, but section 230 has nothing to do with why Twitter, Facebook, and Patterico for that matter, have the right to publish what they want to and refuse what they don’t. That right comes from the First Amendment.

    lurker (59504c)

  332. I admire popehat, lurker, except on this specific issue, which crops up all the time. Twitter is a poor place for nuance, and he’s very good at twitter of course.

    Pass a Constitutional amendment. Until then I don’t understand why you think I should ignore the Constitution we’ve got.

    lurker (59504c) — 1/2/2022 @ 8:08 pm

    You don’t mean this, but let’s pretend you did. What’s a constitutional amendment, a limitation on government, accomplish when we are talking about a more powerful entity than the government, that has power all over the world to control what ideas are permissible?

    What’s the constitution have to do with this at all?

    Perhaps because it’s impossible to convey a compelling cause of action for this horrible behavior? I’m not suing Twitter. I’m asking for it to be burned to the ground.

    But if your “tear it all down” prescription (which I’m still unclear about beyond simply “Elect GOP ’22!”)

    I’m unclear on it too because I basically can’t stand the GOP, at least the ones who pretend they didn’t try to flip an election outcome. I recognize Stacey Abrams would do the same as Trump when it comes to getting power, but Team R did the terrible thing there. Team D happens to be at some kind of cold civil war with my ideas and way of life, and twitter is a democrat, waging that war. The damage is real, but doesn’t neatly fall in with partisan lines. Trump was no conservative, as DCSCA will be happy to explain (has something to do with glory I think).

    Twitter is making it harder for unpopular views about very important issues to be heard. The solution is for them to behave responsibly, and I don’t think they care about anything, so unfortunately they need to care about populist outrage as a pragmatic solution (or I should say, ideally those who come after twitter is burned to the ground by some idiotic policy, ideally written by Ted Cruz, the ultimate weasel).

    Dustin (0ee127)

  333. If you got a left wing comments section you’ll see exactly the opposite complaint. Everyone thinks their side is milk toast, timid and would win if they only fought passionately for their values like the other side. Our side only loses because we hold back and let ourselves be constrained by rules the other side freely ignores.

    Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/2/2022 @ 1:24 pm

    +1

    lurker (59504c)

  334. NY to ration healthcare for covid. Non whites first except latinx. If any treatments left whitey gets it!

    asset (d65242)

  335. That right comes from the First Amendment.

    lurker (59504c) — 1/2/2022 @ 8:34 pm

    They are an American company, with the right to not publish what they want, and aren’t an American company, when the US government tells them not to publish (providing services to Iran’s government for example), depending on whether they want to be.

    What happens when one’s right to publish what they want becomes control over the right of millions and millions of people, all over the world, with little realistic competition?

    It’s not like the fourth amendment gives me the right to infared scan through your house or to privately own a nuclear weapon or a battleship. Somehow, technology illustrated limitations on rights that were more absolute without that technology. It would be nice if someone could work that out, but mainly I’m just saying twitter is a very powerful force against freedom, all over the world, without constitutional analysis.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  336. @334 That right comes from the First Amendment.

    great, then section 230 isn’t needed

    sounds like we agree on a solution

    JF (e1156d)

  337. The high road seems congested. Was there a head on?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  338. Most of the people defending Twitter and Facebook on free speech grounds don’t themselves believe in free speech. They just think the people they’re arguing with do and they’re trying to gaslight them into shutting up for fear of being labeled a hypocrite.

    Twitter and Facebook routinely censor other people’s speech and this is cheered on because of who’s being censored. We’ve already seen tech oligarchs shutdown alternative platforms and the people defending free speech are in favor of that.

    The people trying the private property line are forgetting the last 100 years or so where we’ve been doing exactly what they claim the constitution prevents. Someone should tell the cigarette companies the government can’t limit where they advertise and that they can bring those vending machines back.

    frosty (f27e97)

  339. Dustin, this is what happens when people want the world to operate on libertarian principles, and pretend it does. The truth of the matter is that if Congress passed a law that said that large internet communications companies were regulated by the FCC, or had to allow any content that did not cross the established 1swt amendment lines, there is a giant pile of precedent that would say it was OK. At best, an overreach (e.g. the CDA) would be struck down “as applied.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  340. Most of the people defending Twitter and Facebook on free speech grounds don’t themselves believe in free speech

    There is no free speech argument FOR Twitter, Facebook, etc, censorship. NONE of the speech is theirs. Section 230 of the [otherwise unconstitutional] CDA says it isn’t. If it were their speech, they would be liable for it.

    People read the first amendment as if it conveys a right to censor to communications intermediaries.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  341. The power to regulate actual interstate commerce has not been abandoned by the government just because they use that claim too often on too many things.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  342. The high road seems congested. Was there a head on?

    At least we aren’t talking about vaccines, but rather defending someone else’s right to lie about them.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  343. I agree with Paul at #333….and want Dustin and Kevin to share whatever they’ve been drinking/smoking tonight…because it obviously eclipses my glass of E. There are pluses and minuses to tearing up section 230….and really smart people advocating both sides….which tends to tell me there’s a lot of uncertainty about how things would shake out. Some actually warn of less free speech and sites erring on the side of censorship.

    Can politicians look at this objectively and with the public’s interest at heart? I’m generally skeptical in this toxic political climate. Still, I can’t hate the notion that we need to do things much differently…and Twitter has created a massive perception problem for itself….though I suspect that there’s plenty of conservative thought that is surviving the Twitter purge….and that we’re looking at extreme examples and trying to draw too much from them.

    Twitter should at minimum articulate its editorial standard more clearly…so we understand why ISIS wins and MTG loses (and why haven’t I heard about all these Marxists tearing about!). It’s a fair point….but I default to hating Twitter so when someone loses their personal account and only can use their public account….curses, it’s difficult for me to build up the tears that Kevin is demanding. This isn’t telephones and the libertarians at reason…with actual law degrees….can articulate the issue better. Importantly, Somin addresses the inapt comparison with phone lines…but I don’t want to spoil the read for you…..
    https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/08/the-case-against-imposing-common-carrier-restrictions-on-social-media-sites/

    AJ_Liberty (3cb02f)

  344. I like people who don’t get censored.

    But if some comrades insist, I see no problem with a Central Social Media headed by Saule Omarova to distribute all social media equitably to everyone.

    Personally, I think that both Twitter and Marjorie Taylor-Greene are for chumps, and I see no reason for anyone to argue over them when they could be watching Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson.

    nk (1d9030)

  345. Twitter is obviously biased left. I nearly puked when I found out Jack Dorsey gave Ibram Kendi $10 million. But everyone’s biased. If bias were sufficient reason to abrogate the First Amendment, the First Amendment wouldn’t mean much. The safety of expression we value is only ensured by protecting the expression we abhor.

    I’m not a fan of Twitter’s bias. Neither, however, do I think it’s the nefarious global actor or monopolist of important expression you do, Dustin. I’d have rejected Twitter’s bans on Trump and MTG, but neither of them seems to be having much difficulty reaching me with their deranged announcements. I assume their thirsty audiences get all they could hope for.

    Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m beginning to suspect your Twitter-hate rant may indeed be just venting, not proposing. Is that right? If so, I don’t agree with much of it, but neither do I object. Go at it.

    lurker (59504c)

  346. neither of them seems to be having much difficulty reaching me

    Just the topics here alone, not to mention the NeverTrump fixation in the comments, will keep you inundated with all things Trump. The people who hate him love to keep up to date on him.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  347. defending someone else’s right to lie about them.

    Everyone else gave up or got snippy. Did you find the exact quote that got MTG banned? I have been looking, but all I find are pretend quotes.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  348. great, then section 230 isn’t needed

    sounds like we agree on a solution

    JF (e1156d) — 1/2/2022 @ 9:07 pm

    Sure, you just go ahead and believe we agree on that.

    BTW, if 230 is repealed, see you never, because that’s when Patterico and every other blogger with a brain and anything to lose will open up their sites to commenters again.

    lurker (59504c)

  349. Neither, however, do I think it’s the nefarious global actor or monopolist of important expression you do, Dustin.

    Well, then our positions won’t be very compatible, but no worries.

    neither of them seems to be having much difficulty reaching me with their deranged announcements. I assume their thirsty audiences get all they could hope for.

    I think keeping republican leaders of a particular populist bent off twitter actually does cause difficulty reaching the masses, and competing in the marketplace of ideas, concerns, solutions.

    And let’s be clear, it does so in a way that I should like a lot. My politics are very specifically aided by MTG and Trump being banned.

    I’m beginning to suspect your Twitter-hate rant may indeed be just venting, not proposing.

    I think repealing 230 would be horrible, if you’re specific. I have no specific proposal and am sure whatever happens, if anything ever does, will be bad. Obviously I love bloviating in comment sections. Section 230 would get rid of all that.

    We’re in a recursive cycle. A huge portion of both sides don’t trust anything. 71% of GOP don’t buy the last election, but it’s not like that’s just a GOP issue in the long term. Twitter, Google, Amazon, Ford, Cocacola, you name it, they all need to consider that populism is obviously coming, big time, and probably soon. And it’s going to be stupid. The only way to prevent that is for these powerful companies to recognize how stupid it can be, and choose to be responsible, transparent, fair.

    There is a long term advantage in cultivating credibility, but a short term detriment. Nancy Grace flipping out gets more attention in the next quarter, but Walter Cronkite got more attention over the decades. Twitter is just one example of an organization whose credibility on speech is horrible, and they are ushering in distrust and instability.

    Letting MTG lie about vaccines, and responding clearly, even angrily, to show the lie, would be a lot better than showing they have this power to just hide these arguments.

    I do appreciate the effort to save me some face, that I’m just kidding around. I really do hope that Twitter is destroyed by some lame policy that their fueling division ushers in. Better them.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  350. People read the first amendment as if it conveys a right to censor to communications intermediaries.

    The First Amendment only applies to government action, not actions by private companies. Section 230 allows private companies to enforce their terms of service. No court has ruled that Twitter et. al. are publishers. If they were, they could be sued for third party libelous statements. This is already happening to media companies in Australia:

    The High Court of Australia determined that media companies, by creating a public Facebook page and posting content on that page, facilitated and encouraged comments from other users on those posts. That means the media companies should be considered publishers of the comments and are therefore responsible for any defamatory content that appears in them, according to a summary of the judgment from the court.

    This is only one step away from allowing libel suits against the social media platforms and between individual posters for statements made on Twitter et. al.

    Rip Murdock (9ff85d)

  351. What you are, is OK with MTG getting the axe as you think she is repulsive.

    I do think she is repulsive. And I am perfectly okay with her Twitter ban, provided it is supported by Twitter’s rules.

    But the ONLY time that it means anything to defend free speech is when you abhor it.

    Agreed. But Greene hasn’t lost her right to free speech. She’s lost access to her Twitter account. Even in this day and age, it should be obvious that the one does not equal the other.

    Jack Dorsey should not control the bulk of political speech in this country. I don’t understand why this is even an issue.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 8:01 pm

    If Dorsey bans you from Twitter, your political speech is not controlled. The easy access of others to your political speech has been controlled. But again, that’s not the same thing. You can still start a blog. You can still write letters to editors around this country. You can still stand on a corner with a street sign, yelling yourself hoarse about your cause du jour.

    There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to the use of Twitter. Being banned from Twitter is NOT an infringement on free speech. I don’t understand the repeated and persistent failures of seemingly intelligent people to understand that.

    Demosthenes (3fd56e)

  352. …if Congress passed a law that said that large internet communications companies were regulated by the FCC, or had to allow any content that did not cross the established 1swt amendment lines, there is a giant pile of precedent that would say it was OK.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 9:28 pm

    Probably. Call me when it happens.

    Demosthenes (3fd56e)

  353. There is no free speech argument FOR Twitter, Facebook, etc, censorship. NONE of the speech is theirs.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/2/2022 @ 9:32 pm

    Except for the speech about what speech they will allow on their platforms.

    Demosthenes (3fd56e)

  354. Kevin @316 I said in my first comment on this that I thought Twitter’s actions were wrong for a number of reasons, one of which how their actions are in conflict with free expression. I’m not OK with what they did. But what you seem to be proposing would be worse and move the decisions from people we can chose not to interact with to someone we can’t. I hope you can see the difference between that and supporting what they did.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  355. Switching back to Covid; the most recent data shows that the delta between case rates for highly vaccinated counties and less vaccinated counties is falling.

    Case rates since June are now just 1.4x higher in the least-vaccinated tenth of the country than in the most-vaccinated tenth, down from twice as high two weeks ago and 1.7x higher just a week ago.

    This would be consistent with the vaccine offering less protection against infection of the Omicron variant.

    Contrast in death rates (and by implication hospitalization rates) remains high. Based on typing data I’m too lazy too look back up and link to I think this is because the delta variant is still prevalent in the population. I hope Omicron pushes delta out of the environment. Once the correlation between covid and negative health outcomes is gone i expect we’ll be able to put most of this nonsense behind us. At one point I expected that to happen by vaccination. It doesn’t look like that will be the mechanism. But I’ll take whatever works.

    while when you look at the death rates, however, the contrast remains far more stark: Death rates in the least-vaxxed tenth since June are still 4.6x higher than in the most-vaxxed tenth, up slightly from 4.5x higher two weeks ago:

    Data at the link
    https://acasignups.net/22/01/03/weekly-update-covid19-casedeath-rates-county-partisan-lean-vaccination-rate

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  356. What about life? Not just survival, but life. Life with family, friends, work, concerts etc etc. All are taking a back seat to death.

    I choose life. If I die with COVID I want people to carry on with life. I’m dead, go enjoy yourself

    steveg (e81d76) — 1/2/2022 @ 4:47 pm

    It’s only logical that some people prefer temporary safety ( limited vaccine effectiveness) over essential liberty ( body autonomy and right to travel/work.)

    That doesn’t make it right.

    The virus is rampaging through the North East. I know dozens of people out with it including myself as of today. This virus seems uniquely adapted to the human body and isn’t going away. Just need to hope it follows the path of most viruses to reduce lethality while increasing infections.

    We stillness to properly thank China for this “gift.”

    NJRob (0e3eba)

  357. Get well soon, NJRob!

    nk (1d9030)

  358. Hope your symptoms are mild and you’re well soon, NJRob.

    Dana (5395f9)

  359. lurker (59504c) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:09 pm

    none of that has anything to do with the first amendment, but keep wrapping yourself in it

    JF (e1156d)

  360. BTW, if 230 is repealed, see you never, because that’s when Patterico and every other blogger with a brain and anything to lose will open up their sites to commenters again.

    lurker (59504c) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:09 pm

    This is often claimed but it’s not really true. At most places like Twitter would have to consistently apply their AUP and nothing would really change for sites like this.

    This claim about 230 is a bit like the claim the legalizing weed will have all the white women getting knocked up by jazz musicians.

    frosty (f27e97)

  361. There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to the use of Twitter. Being banned from Twitter is NOT an infringement on free speech. I don’t understand the repeated and persistent failures of seemingly intelligent people to understand that.
    Demosthenes (3fd56e) — 1/3/2022 @ 4:08 am

    there is no constitutional right to section 230 protection, without which twitter wouldn’t exist in its present form and nobody likely would care about getting banned from it

    JF (e1156d)

  362. NJRob, I hope you and yours get well soon. Sorry to hear you’re sick.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  363. Twitter’s shareholders have a First Amendment right peacefully to assemble and maintain a forum on which they may exercise their First Amendment right to say what they want said and to hear what they want heard. Margaret Taylor-Greene has no more right to a Twitter account than the Pope has to a rabbinate in the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem.

    nk (1d9030)

  364. And you guys do not strengthen your case by talking about Twitter’s influence/power/dominance on political speech. You strengthen Twitter’s case. Unless, of course, you think that Liz Cheney can force the Wyoming Republican Party to readmit her given its influence, power, and dominance in Wyoming politics.

    nk (1d9030)

  365. From Patterico:

    I will again refer you to my previous post and the links therein if you have questions about this, but the bottom line is this: Twitter is not liable for every tweet that appears on Twitter. They are liable only for the content they themselves create. And this is no different from the principles by which newspapers operate. Moderating content does not make you a “publisher” whether you are a social media company or a newspaper or anyone else.

    Moreover, it is quite simply insane to claim that Twitter ought to be subject to lawsuits for any tweet that defames someone. Have you ever considered the sheer number of tweets that appear on Twitter? Take a moment to do so. According to one estimate, there are 6,000 tweets per second on Twitter — a number that corresponds to over 500 million tweets per day and something like 200 billion (about 189 billion according to my math) tweets per year. Twitter has about 4600 employees, which by my calculations means that if every employee did nothing but read tweets to see if they were defamatory, each would have to read about 41 million tweets a year (over one a second per employee, with no sleep).

    Put simply, without Section 230, Twitter would not exist. It could not exist.

    Dana (5395f9)

  366. As for Section 230, I would think that after seeing Texas’s abortion unlaw, you would appreciate how it keeps Patterico from being sued for $10,000 in any court in Texas because I commented here that Ted Cruz is a sissy-boy whose wife dresses him.

    nk (1d9030)

  367. Moreover, it is quite simply insane to claim that Twitter ought to be subject to lawsuits for any tweet that defames someone. Have you ever considered the sheer number of tweets that appear on Twitter? Take a moment to do so. According to one estimate, there are 6,000 tweets per second on Twitter — a number that corresponds to over 500 million tweets per day and something like 200 billion (about 189 billion according to my math) tweets per year. Twitter has about 4600 employees,

    Yet it isn’t curious where those 4600 employees focus their ire.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  368. Twitter has a left wing bias. You should try GAB or Parlor. Maybe you’ll like them better.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  369. Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/3/2022 @ 5:33 am

    For good news about delta vs omicron; Campbell gives a good update. I’m confident you can ignore all of the talk about infection there and pull out good news that omicron displaces delta.

    frosty (f27e97)

  370. @370 exactly

    and??

    was there a free speech dark age before twitter came along?

    JF (e1156d)

  371. They are liable only for the content they themselves create.

    Yep. Not sure why anyone keeps claiming otherwise. They themselves create almost no content.

    Moreover, it is quite simply insane to claim that Twitter ought to be subject to lawsuits for any tweet that defames someone.

    The hyperbole should give this one away. I don’t see many people claiming this either.

    Put simply, without Section 230, Twitter would not exist. It could not exist.

    Put simply the government created a law that was largely struck down with a small fraction being left that people firmly believe allows twitter/facebook/youtube to censor the views they don’t like that also just happen to line up with a certain political party but other than that the government is completely unable to do anything else including repeal that law. Because it’s actually the constitution and private property rights that protect twitter. Yea, all of that checks out.

    Somehow these twitter discussions keep starting with censorship (which twitter is doing) and shifting to defamation (which no one is alleging).

    frosty (f27e97)

  372. From Dana’s Salon link:

    She was also suspended from the platform less than a month earlier for another post that claimed COVID-19 was not dangerous to anyone unless they are obese or elderly.

    From CNN today:

    CNN
    @CNN
    People who are overweight or obese are at a much higher risk of much more severe disease and even death from Covid-19 — and one new study suggests that losing weight can reduce that risk.

    https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1477976802178088966

    I’m sure it is my responsibility to find the exact wording of what MTG said months ago.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  373. “none of that has anything to do with the first amendment”

    If all internet web sites are liable for material posted by others…is there any thought that this may effect their willingness to host that material…or err on the side of removing any questionable material? Now more directly to the 1A: do the owners of Twitter have the 1A right to only post material that they want to post? In contrast, must the NYT post an op-ed from any candidate? Now Twitter’s business model is certainly unique (access is free and money is made by advertising and clicks)….and I have no great passion to sustain it….but what is the government purpose in breaking the model…other than partisan spite? Hey, I’m with Betty White….Twitter is an immense waste of time…..and it runs on outrage….rather than careful consideration. It’s the reality TV version of political discourse. So part of me would like it to go away….but I hesitate to act out of spite without fully understanding what fills the void….

    AJ_Liberty (ec7f74)

  374. was there a free speech dark age before twitter came along?</em

    "If Margaret Taylor-Greene cannot have Twitter, nobody should have Twitter!"

    nk (1d9030)

  375. Thanks all.

    Seems to be mild symptoms so far. Combination of chest cold and mild flu symptoms.

    Took 2 rapid tests. One before bed and one in the morning. Both positive. Just got done with my PCR test. Based on how I feel I think it’ll be mild. Just need to get some sleep..

    NJRob (eb56c3)

  376. JF, Section 230 was intended to solve 2 problems.

    1. Platform providers were being sued based on content from 3rd parties.
    2. Content providers were refusing to take down objectionable material because not moderating and acting as a common carrier provided them liability protection from issue 1.

    Reasonable to assume that repealing section 230 would bring these problems back. I guess if you want more insults, porn, and spam that might be appealing.

    Also, speech has gotten progressively freer over time in the US. Which is good. I know a lot of lefties want to see more constraint on ‘hate speech’ and righties want to punish any company they feel has shown them disrespect but so far both groups have been unsuccessful in using the government for their ends.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  377. NJRob that’s what mine was like. 1 night of chills and aches followed by a cough. My biggest complaint was fatigue that tool a while to go away.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  378. Glad to hear the symptoms are mild, Rob.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  379. On the bright side both NJ and his girl friend will now have natural immunity.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  380. Be kinder Rip.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  381. Get well, NJRob.

    While you are resting you may enjoy reading the press releases/tweets of the previously infected congress critters:

    https://www.govtrack.us/covid-19

    It is an interesting set of records. Most of the people infected prior to the vaccine being issued declared that their symptoms were mild. Quite a few said the symptoms were non existent. After the vaccine came out there was a lull until the vaccine wore off. Then a whole bunch got infected. They too had mild symptoms.

    It is an interesting data set.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  382. I must have said “interesting” twice because it is.

    🙂

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  383. Be kinder Rip.

    Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/3/2022 @ 9:04 am

    I greatly sympathize with NJ’s plight, I have had several friends who have had mild Covid. As others here have pointed out, natural immunity is preferable to vaccinations.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  384. was there a free speech dark age before twitter came along?

    JF (e1156d) — 1/3/2022 @ 8:27 am

    This is what’s so unfortunate. Twitter is a cancer on society. It’s part of what’s driving the increased polarization and it’s doing that on purpose. It is driving an increase in anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues and it’s doing that on purpose. It is a tool for propaganda and social control and it’s doing that on purpose.

    It is, on balance, a huge negative. We would all be better off if Twitter were destroyed. It does not create value for society.

    But there is a faction that devoutly defends it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  385. Facebook ‘permanently’ locks account of conservative children’s book publisher

    Facebook has “permanently disabled” the ads account of a conservative children’s book publisher, claiming that Heroes of Liberty – which has published books about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former President Ronald Reagan and author Thomas Sowell – violated the company’s rules against “Low Quality or Disruptive Content.” Facebook originally locked the ads account on Dec. 23, and after Heroes of Liberty appealed the ruling, the company permanently disabled the account.
    ………
    “This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled because it didn’t comply with our policy on Low Quality or Disruptive Content,” Facebook said in a message disabling the account on Dec. 23.

    After Heroes of Liberty appealed, Facebook sent another message. “After a final review of this ad account, we confirmed it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards,” the message reads. “You can no longer advertise with this ad account and its ads and assets will remain disabled. This is our final decision.”
    ………
    (Editor and board member Bethany Mandel) suggested that Facebook caved to a vocal minority of users who claimed that Heroes of Liberty was disruptive.

    “There was a small but noisy group of responders to our ads who didn’t like the fact we published books about Ronald Reagan, Thomas Sowell and Amy Coney Barret; people we called Heroes of Liberty,” she told FOX Business. “They made nasty comments, especially about Reagan, and about us for publishing these books and even shared their desire to burn them.”
    ………..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  386. Except for the speech about what speech they will allow on their platforms.

    They can talk about it all they want, but censorship is not speech.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  387. Refusing to say something is absolutely part of speech. Here are some examples

    https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-latest-controversy-about-under-god-in-the-pledge-of-allegiance

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  388. Rip, from what I can see at the link facebook’s decision is awful. If they could feel shame they should.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  389. I fully agree with what Patterico has said about Section 230 as it is currently applied, and if it were repealed today, this comment section would not be accessible shortly thereafter.

    There is some issue with Section 230 however. It states:

    Title 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(2) states:

    No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of … any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

    The question is whether its definition of “otherwise objectionable” relates to items similar to the matters that the mostly defunct CDA addressed, or is it, in the absence of the rest of the CDA, now a catch-all phrase. If the former, then blocking speech due to viewpoint would not be protected by the act. If the later, fine, but laws don’t usually have such wide operative clauses, and there is significant doubt that this is what Congress intended.

    IANAL, but I think that the phrase needs to be read in the context of the entire CDA to determine the intent.

    Volokh (link above) suggests that, in the absence of any state or local laws to the contrary, that providers can block what they want, but the Section above does not overrule any state law that bans viewpoint discrimination.

    Section 230(c)(2) is thus best read as immunizing Internet companies’ private enforcement of rules analogous to restrictions on “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, [or] harassing” communications—not to enforcement of completely different restrictions that the companies might make up. Using this understanding, “otherwise objectionable” might thus cover other materials discussed elsewhere in the CDA, for instance anonymous threats (sec. 502), unwanted repeated communications (sec. 502), nonlewd nudity (sec. 506), or speech aimed at “persuad[ing], induc[ing], entic[ing], or coerc[ing]” minors into criminal sexual acts (sec. 508).

    But “otherwise objectionable” would not cover speech that is objectionable based on its political content, which Congress did not view in 1996 as more subject to telecommunications regulation, and didn’t try to regulate elsewhere in the CDA.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  390. Refusing to say something is absolutely part of speech.

    And this is our point of departure. Refusing to LET SOMEONE ELSE say something is NOT part of speech.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  391. NJRobb – Hope the oximeter readings for you and your girlfriend are still in the normal range, 95-100.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  392. Rip, from what I can see at the link facebook’s decision is awful. If they could feel shame they should.

    Hopefully any bad publicity will cause them to reverse their decision.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  393. Rip, from what I can see at the link Facebook’s decision is awful. If they could feel shame they should.

    I invite anyone with a Facebook account to search for “Maoist” and then contemplate that books about Ronald Reagan are beyond the pale there.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  394. NJ Robb: I hope this goes OK for you. Thankfully we have better treatment options than we did in 2020. Are you able to get hold of your doctor?

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  395. I should also point out that — as far as a I know — Patterico has never axed someone for their viewpoint; only for behavior issues.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  396. They’re not stopping her from saying anything. She just can’t use their property to do so.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  397. Since Jan. 6, the pro-Trump Internet has descended into infighting over money and followers
    The far-right firebrands and conspiracy theorists of the pro-Trump Internet have a new enemy: each other.
    ……….
    The result is a chaotic melodrama, playing out via secretly recorded phone calls, personal attacks in podcasts, and a seemingly endless stream of posts on Twitter, Gab and Telegram calling their rivals Satanists, communists, pedophiles or “pay-triots” — money-grubbing grifters exploiting the cause.
    ………
    The cage match kicked off late in November when Kyle Rittenhouse, acquitted of all charges after fatally shooting two men at a protest last year in Kenosha, Wis., told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that his former attorneys, including Wood, had exploited his jail time to boost their fundraising “for their own benefit, not trying to set me free.”

    Wood has since snapped back at his 18-year-old former client, wondering aloud in recent messages on the chat service Telegram: Could his life be “literally under the supervision and control of a ‘director?’ Whoever ‘Kyle’ is, pray for him.”

    The feud carved a major rift between Wood and his former compatriots in the pro-Trump “stop the steal” campaign, with an embattled Wood attacking Rittenhouse supporters including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.); Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump; Sidney Powell, Flynn’s attorney; and Patrick Byrne, the Overstock founder who became a major “stop the steal” financier.
    ………
    …….[T]he factions have set up online merchandise shops targeting their most loyal followers. Fans of Powell’s bogus conspiracy theory can, for instance, buy a four-pack set of “Release the Kraken: Defending the Republic” drink tumblers from her website for $80. On Flynn’s newly launched website, fans can buy “General Flynn: #FightLikeAFlynn” women’s racerback tank tops for $30. And Wood’s online store sells $64.99 “#FightBack” unisex hoodies; the fleece, a listing says, feels like “wearing a soft, fluffy cloud.”
    ……..
    QAnon is “the easiest money that you could possibly make if you don’t have a conscience, but there’s only a certain number of people you can fleece. It’s not a renewable resource,” said (Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher and author of a book on QAnon (and) who has no relation to the famous banking family targeted in antisemitic conspiracy theories).
    ……..
    Fans of Flynn have argued that, in his caught-on-tape conversation, he was merely disavowing the QAnon media creation, not them, leaving the sanctity of Q intact. On Telegram last month, Wood said that while “Q speaks truth” in the fight against “pedophilia and satanic rituals,” the broader QAnon movement is “likely a Deep State operation.”
    …….
    In an anonymous poll posted to QAnon-boosting Telegram channels asking whether Trump’s receipt of a booster shot made them comfortable getting vaccinated, 97 percent of the more than 19,000 votes said no. Andrew Torba, the head of Gab, a social network popular with the far right, posted that Trump’s promotion of “his biggest ‘accomplishment,’ the death jab,” was “so cringe.”
    …….
    In posts to his 3 million Gab followers, (Andrew Torba, the head of Gab) has criticized Gettr, launched by Trump’s longtime aide Jason Miller, and Rumble, which Torba said was run by “Canadian blockheads” pushing “the establishment right’s second subversion attempt of the true alternative tech movement.”
    …….
    The cage match, coupled with months of pro-Trump prophecies falling apart, appears to have worn down some QAnon promoters. One influencer who recently voiced some exasperation with the “annoying” Wood-vs.-Flynn drama, “SQvage DQwg,” said he was considering leaving Telegram and his roughly 50,000 followers “if nothing happens publicly before the end of this year. The time is now. We are tired. Exhausted. Hold the Line doesn’t have the same meaning anymore.”
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  398. They’re not stopping her from saying anything. She just can’t use their property to do so.

    Woolworth defender, 1960: They’re not stopping her from eating, she just can’t use their lunch counter to do so.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  399. Have you ever considered the sheer number of tweets that appear on Twitter? Take a moment to do so. According to one estimate, there are 6,000 tweets per second on Twitter — a number that corresponds to over 500 million tweets per day and something like 200 billion (about 189 billion according to my math) tweets per year. Twitter has about 4600 employees, which by my calculations means that if every employee did nothing but read tweets to see if they were defamatory, each would have to read about 41 million tweets a year (over one a second per employee, with no sleep)

    And yet the need to be in compliance with US copyright law doesn’t seem to be putting twitter/facebook/youtube out of business. I wonder how those 4600 employees are reading every tweet to make sure they aren’t violating a copyright (hint, they aren’t required to and neither would they be required to read everyone of them for defamation).

    For those unaware, the DMCA does everything we’ve heard here can’t be done. It both infringes a corporations property and free-speech rights.

    BTW; for those of you worried about p r 0 n I can give you some search strings that would show you that youtube really doesn’t care about that. Twitter has already tried to argue that child p r 0 n on it’s site is ok and it doesn’t have to remove it. Same for sex trafficking. Same for violence and threats of violence.

    frosty (f27e97)

  400. The far-right firebrands and conspiracy theorists of the pro-Trump Internet have a new enemy: each other

    The Robespierre Effect.

    the death jab

    Jesus wept.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  401. Kevin, Again your analogy to Jim Crow breaks down because Twitter isn’t banning her for being a woman, white, or even a conservative. They banned her for specific actions they say they told her not to do. I think twitter made a mistake in doing so, but I don’t think we need to have the government make decisions about speech for them.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  402. For those unaware, the DMCA does everything we’ve heard here can’t be done. It both infringes a corporations property and free-speech rights.

    The DMCA does nothing at all by itself. No provider is required to police copyrights or trademarks. All it says is, should a copyright or trademark owner notify a site of specific instances of a purported violation, the site must investigate and remove the material if warranted.

    In general (and I have done DMCA take-down requests for both copyrights and trademarks), this means that one must

    1) Demonstrate that one IS a representative of the rights holder;
    2) Demonstrate that the material is copyrighted or trademarked (preferably by a link to a webpage where that right is asserted by the owner, and/or the trademark ID at the USPTO);
    3) Provide links to the provider-hosted page(s) that contain the offending material.

    There is no requirement that anyone at the provider be proactive in this regard, even if it is bloody obvious (e.g. posting an entire Disney film).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  403. Time, the analogy is to something that was, at the time, not covered by US law and now is. There were no “protected groups” in 1960. So, at the time, the argument was identical.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  404. I will point out that “political viewpoint” is protected in CA and NY, at least as far as employment is concerned.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  405. So you’re saying the fact that we don’t currently allow the government to generally compel / constrain speech doesn’t mean we can’t change our mind and start letting Trump/AOC/Warren tell us what can and can’t say?

    Also, thank you for the info on DMCA.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  406. The point being that “property rights” are no barrier to anti-discrimination laws. You are correct that, currently, there are no federal protections for political viewpoints, not even in employment law. You are not correct if you assert there could not be such.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  407. They’re not an absolute barrier, but my understanding (IANAL) is that the impact on property rights was part of what was balanced in these laws and court decisions.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  408. start letting Trump/AOC/Warren tell us what can and can’t say?

    Well, they can have whatever rules they want on whackjobtrumpies.com but I don’t think a federal law that controlled political speech (as opposed to one that was position-neutral) would be constitutional.

    The lunch-counter now has to serve anyone, but there is no requirement they serve black-eyed peas.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  409. the impact on property rights was part of what was balanced in these laws and court decisions.

    I have no doubt. And maybe “allowing freer speech thereon” would not be sufficient to overcome the provider’s objections. But to tell you the truth, I doubt that Twitter would mind much.

    They could point to the law as an excuse for the cancel-mobs, the advertisers would be off the hook too, and it would save them a ton of money and a lot of grief to limit their take-downs to obscenity, terrorist planning and the like.

    “Our hands are tied! So sorry.”

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  410. This is an issue that needs addressing by Congress. If they don’t act, the courts will have to. That was the gist of Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion I linked yesterday. There is no doubt that it is a problem that a small group of rich corporations can control the main forms of political dialogue.

    Yes, they created these forms, and are now somewhat attacked for how they manage them. But they are also selling a service to the public (even if user payments are made by viewing advertisements), are clearly engaged in interstate (if not international) commerce, and are subject to any marketplace rules that might be developed.

    I would also point out that, should the US not act to require content neutrality, these companies will be regulated by rules developed elsewhere. Like China. They are, after all, wh0res.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  411. The DMCA does nothing at all by itself. No provider is required to police copyrights or trademarks.

    Yep. And yet we’re told ad nauseam that any unspecified changes to 230 would, because of a fundamental law of nature and man, be completely different and that it would be the end of all open discussion on the interwebs.

    frosty (f27e97)

  412. “Come da revolution, everybody will have Twitter!”
    “Personally, I don’t like Twitter.”
    “Come da revolution, you will have Twitter and like it!”

    nk (1d9030)

  413. And this is our point of departure. Refusing to LET SOMEONE ELSE say something is NOT part of speech.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 10:09 am

    In the public square, no. On my property? Yes. I am not Congress. And anyone who doesn’t like that I have the right to determine what speech I will and will not tolerate on my property…is free not to be on my property. The same goes for Twitter. That their property is much bigger and more important than mine is irrelevant.

    Woolworth defender, 1960: They’re not stopping her from eating, she just can’t use their lunch counter to do so.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 10:27 am

    This is absolutely beneath you. Stopping someone from patronizing your establishment because of inalterable personal characteristics is miles away from stopping someone from patronizing your establishment because of what they said.

    Demosthenes (fdc41a)

  414. …the analogy is to something that was, at the time, not covered by US law and now is. There were no “protected groups” in 1960. So, at the time, the argument was identical.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 10:38 am

    Saw this after I had already posted the previous. Apparently I misinterpreted what you were trying to do. Apologies.

    Having said that…you’re still wrong. The argument is not identical. The historical right of private businesses to refuse to serve customers based on their behavior is well-established, and not in serious dispute. The lunch counter, to borrow from a later comment of yours, absolutely does NOT have to serve anyone. They cannot refuse to serve someone because she is black, true. But they may still refuse to serve her, white or black or whatever else, if she proves herself an @$$.

    Demosthenes (fdc41a)

  415. I would hope that Time and you would understand that I did not use that historical reference to suggest that he (or anyone here) supported Jim Crow or anything like it. It was simply the clearest example I could think of where property rights came in a distant second to freedom of access.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  416. But they may still refuse to serve her, white or black or whatever else, if she proves herself an @$$.

    Indeed, and I considered mentioning that in the second comment you quote, but felt it too parenthetical. After all “bad behavior” is an exception to all inclusionary laws. Didn’t see the need for the footnote.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  417. See also 401, where I do allude to that exception.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  418. Apple Becomes First U.S. Company to Reach $3 Trillion Market Value
    ……..
    Apple shares crossed the milestone when they topped $182.856 Monday. The share price has more than tripled since the pandemic lows of March 2020, adding around $2 trillion in market capitalization.

    Apple is a staple in retail and institutional investors’ portfolios. The milestone marked a 38% rise for Apple’s shares since the beginning of 2021, among the biggest gains in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  419. There is no doubt that it is a problem that a small group of rich corporations can control the main forms of political dialogue.

    It would be less of a problem if everyone who thinks it’s a problem decided to stop using the services.

    But they are also selling a service to the public (even if user payments are made by viewing advertisements)…

    They are selling the public, not selling TO the public.

    I would also point out that, should the US not act to require content neutrality, these companies will be regulated by rules developed elsewhere. Like China. They are, after all, wh0res.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 11:05 am

    “If we don’t break them, China will,” eh? Well, gosh, I would hate to give them more opportunities to be totalitarian sh!tbirds. It’s time we started taking a few of those ourselves.

    Demosthenes (fdc41a)

  420. @421,never crossed my mind that you were trying to imply (or express) racial animus with your example. To end Jim Crow we chose to limit the right to free association in limited circumstances. We might similarly choose to limit free speech rights today. I think that would be a huge mistake for reasons i’ve previously lai out, but it’s a choice we could make.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  421. This is absolutely beneath you. Stopping someone from patronizing your establishment because of inalterable personal characteristics is miles away from stopping someone from patronizing your establishment because of what they said.

    Demosthenes (fdc41a) — 1/3/2022 @ 11:20 am

    Only because you think this argues in your favor. Free-speech was a thing long before we invented the legal fiction of protected groups. Ironically, free-speech was essential to creating those protected groups. At the time that speech was not mainstream and it needed protecting. The view-point discrimination that’s so popular now was popular then to and was used to try to suppress the very thing you’re now trying to use for the classic “how dare you”.

    It used to be that gender was an inalterable personal characteristic and now it’s a social construct that can be chosen. We’ve done that generally with identity across the board. This unalterable personal characteristic argument isn’t as effective as it used to be.

    The entire purpose of free-speech is that you aren’t supposed to discriminate against people for what they say. The unpopular speech is the point.

    frosty (f27e97)

  422. We might similarly choose to limit free speech rights today. I think that would be a huge mistake for reasons i’ve previously lai out, but it’s a choice we could make.

    Limiting some, enhancing others (and I disagree that Twitter speaks what other people type; the law treats them as a publisher).

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  423. Kevin, I think people should be free to create platforms and online communities to their liking. That has to mean some moderation of content. I don’t think public discourse will be better if the government steps in and takes that right away. There’s no one in power, on the left or the right, that’s pushing for the government to come in and increase free speech rights. Both parties want to limit speech rights in different ways. I’m open to new systems and frameworks, but I don’t see anybody offering one looks like it will yield better results. Dustin is just pissed and what’s see it all break. I don’t agree that would be preferable but so far he’s the only person that’s offered a change that I think would get what he wants. What you want it is clear, but I don’t think your suggested changes would get us there.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  424. The entire purpose of free-speech is that you aren’t supposed to discriminate against people for what they say. The unpopular speech is the point.

    Discriminate by the government? Yes this is correct. The government still has to provide equal protection to the a person who openly advocates child rape/white supremacy/a communist revolution. The rest of us are free to think that person is vile, avoid their company, not do business with them, or not let them use our property to broadcast their horrid ideas as we see fit. Others are free to judge us based on if / how we do that.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  425. @420 and @426. The other thing we forget about the Jim Crowe laws were that they were laws. Businesses weren’t free to discriminate and the government stopped it. Businesses discriminated because it was the law, i.e. the government was violating businesses 1st and private property rights, and then there was a change in the law, i.e. the government changed the rules also violating businesses 1st and private property right.

    To end Jim Crow we chose to limit the right to free association in limited circumstances

    Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/3/2022 @ 11:59 am

    This is not true. We chose to change the limits on the right of free association.

    We might similarly choose to limit free speech rights today.

    And we wouldn’t be doing this either. We’d be changing the existing limits.

    frosty (f27e97)

  426. Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/3/2022 @ 12:19 pm

    This always gets to some over-simplified version of a discussion of an individual’s personal property and the bogus conflation of the 1st amendment and free-speech. As if it’s being suggested that you be forced to have a NAMBLA meeting in your basement.

    Do you think that’s actually the legal framework we live in? One where businesses are exactly like private individuals? Why do you think that level of over-simplification is helpful?

    frosty (f27e97)

  427. Congressman Troy Nehls
    @RepTroyNehls

    Today, I submitted the transcript from the @joerogan experience podcast episode #1757 with Dr. Robert Malone to the Congressional Record.

    Big tech wants to restrict your access to this information- but they cannot censor the Congressional Record.

    Congressman Troy Nehls
    @RepTroyNehls
    ·Replying to @RepTroyNehls and @joerogan
    You can also read the full transcript on my website HERE

    https://nehls.house.gov/posts/joe-rogan-experience-1757-dr-robert-malone-md-full-transcript

    https://twitter.com/RepTroyNehls/status/1478038517771128835

    Eat it, Big Censorship!

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  428. Kevin, Facebook & Reddit, discord, discus, and every major website with a comment section. Oh, parlor, GAB, Gettr as well.

    Time123 (9f42ee) — 1/2/2022 @ 6:04 pm

    Ironically, or maybe not, this is the pro-segregation anti-diversity separate but equal argument. It turns out that some diversity isn’t really our strength after all.

    frosty (f27e97)

  429. 433, is Spotify big tech? Because they keep recommending I listen to the Joe Rogan Experience

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  430. BuDuh (4a7846) — 1/3/2022 @ 12:47 pm

    Nehls might not know this but big tech can censor that online. They just choose not. At least for now.

    frosty (f27e97)

  431. Time,

    If was assured that moderation would be even-handed and limited to assh0les and the incredibly noxious , I would have much less of a problem with what Twitter et al profess to do. But it does not even get close to that when you can post your Maoist political action group, complete with symbology that is quite hurtful to millions, yet you cannot advertise a book about Ronald flipping Reagan, something needs to change.

    I agree that the worst of all possible worlds is a government censor. The opposite of that — unfettered speech — is less of a problem even if it allows true Nazis to speak, or Presidents to organize a self-coup. There are better middle grounds, but what we have now is just political bias and exclusion of speakers that Millennials have been taught not to like.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  432. Kevin, I read that Joe Rogan is leaving Twittter for Gettr and Gettr has seen a spike in new users. Sounds like market forces are starting to move. I’d like to see what develops there before we let teh government set moderation policy for private companies.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  433. All the first amendment does is prevent government from criminalizing or obstructing speech, or publications, or assembly or religious belief or practice.

    Some of these have been incorporated against individuals, and others have not. The religion clause, in particular, forms the basis for a “protected class” just as the 14th Amendment does for race. Some of the other protected classes seem less well rooted in the Constitution, at least as far as individual discrimination is concerned. Gays, for example. One would be hard pressed to find an originalist or textualist claiming that the Constitution inteded protection there (others would of course go to the 14th Amendment or the crypto-ERA they seem to find somewhere).

    In any event, it would actually easy to assert that political belief was protected under the 1st and 14th Amendments, even on an individual basis. Some states do that now in employment law.

    I admit that, as things stand, Twitter is not doing anything unlawful, even if they refused to let anything favorable to Trump (or Biden) be posted. They are limited only in what is tolerable by their customers and the public they hope to attract. Sadly, this l9imitation does not seem to prevent them from taking sides.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  434. Rogan

    What they are creating though is unattractive to most people. They will be allowed to preach to the choir, but no one else. The utility of a communication service is proportional to its network (and probably to the square of the network).

    It’s like the Ma Bell of 1954 refused phone service to Communists and other unAmerican folk. Saying to them “well we have this other People’s Phone Network” doesn’t satisfy, as it won’t reach the deli.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  435. Why can’t they take ‘sides’ if they want to? Why do they have to treat all views as equally valid?

    The owners of Twitter clearly have a POV and don’t want their property used counter to that POV. Certain slurs, lies about the vaccine, trying to organize a coup are all out of bounds.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  436. @440, Kevin, it seems like you want a service that values free speech above other concerns. I used to think I wanted that also. Then I spent time on GAB and it was impossible to have any sort of constructive conversation. The conversation you and I are having would have degenerated into insults and accusation of sexual deviancy way back.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  437. Actually, ‘moderating content’ is akin to editing which is a facet of professional publishing.

    editor

    NOUN
    -a person who is in charge of and determines the final content of a text, particularly a newspaper or magazine.

    – a person who works for a publishing company, commissioning or preparing material for publication.

    DCSCA (f4c5e5)

  438. Jason Miller’s ‘Free Speech’ Site Gettr Site Bans Users From Posting Racist Term ‘Groyper’
    …….
    On Thursday night, Gettr started to block users from posting the word “groyper,” which originates from a variation of the Pepe the Frog meme with extremely racist undertones.

    “Oops! There was an error submitting your post,” a notice read when The Daily Beast attempted to post the word “groyper” on the site Thursday night. “Whoops! You already said that” another note read when The Daily Beast tried to post the term again on Friday morning.
    ……..
    Related:

    Jason Miller’s ‘Free Speech’ Social Media Platform Gettr Boots White Nationalist

    ……. “My official Gettr account has been permanently suspended,” Fuentes wrote on Telegram, a messaging platform beloved by the far-right. “Nice free speech platform.” ……. The booting of Fuentes didn’t go unnoticed, as far-right Arizona state Rep. Wendy Rogers asked on Telegram: “Why did Gettr ban Nick Fuentes?” The white nationalist replied, “What is the point of a free-speech alternative to Twitter…that doesn’t even honor free speech?” A Gettr spokesperson told The Daily Beast that Fuentes violated their “terms of use.” ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  439. Manhattan DA won’t charge Cuomo in nursing home probe, lawyer says
    Prosecutors in Manhattan have concluded former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo did not break the law when his administration misled the public about the number of Covid-19 deaths tied to nursing homes, the Democrat’s former attorney said on Monday.
    ………

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  440. Yeah, I get it Rip, and even Kevin’s Perfect Site would have rules and might even have a bias. Although I think I’d treat Nazis and Stalinists pretty much alike.

    I wonder what issues people from the former Warsaw Pact countries have with Facebook’s openness to full-on Communist groups.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  441. > 1,000,000 people out of 330,000,000 over the course of two years is not statistically significant.
    I’m crappy at math…. innumerate at times but your historical chances of catching COVID and dying from it were 0.0015151

    1000000/33000000=.003

    so yes, you are crappy at math.

    even if we tamp it down to 825000, the current number:

    825000/331000000 = .0024

    *during the adoption of the most stringent transmission control measures in modern history*, this disease has killed a minimum of 2.4 out of every thousand people in the united states, and it’s not near done. it has killed more people than the total US wartime casualty county of every war excluding the civil war.

    it is *not* a trivial or minor illness.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  442. Kevin M — it is very, very difficult to craft an internally coherent rule which allows Patterico, et al, to moderate *here* to keep the trolls and spammers and crapflooders out without also allowing twitter to moderate to do the same.

    I’m close to 100% certain that this, and and almost every other comment section online, would have to close if moderation were disallowed.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  443. I’m speaking here from the experience of someone who moderated a popular website that was *destroyed* because (a) our moderation policies were too free-speech leaning and (b) as a result we found ourselves unable to keep from being overrun by trolls and crapflooders, meaning (c ) the quality of conversation collapsed and (d) the people who were interested in conversation left because they couldn’t have any.

    meaningful online conversation is only possible if (a) the group of participants is closed or (b) the people running the conversation have the ability to moderate.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  444. Facebook suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account for 24 hours.

    The general problem with the “go use another site” argument.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  445. I’m close to 100% certain that this, and and almost every other comment section online, would have to close if moderation were disallowed.

    Patterico, from what I’ve seen, moderates people for being jerks. It is possible that he has kicked someone for merely vile comments. There are things that are not subject to “free speech” like trying to get people to storm the Capitol and overturn an election by force.

    Behavioral issues are generally not subject to anti-discrimination law. Restaurants cannot refuse to service blacks, but they can refuse service to a black person who’s creating a nuisance.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  446. aphrael, back in the day, I operated a mail list for about 20 years, for an organization that had a flat rule that anyone who claims to be a member is welcome. The flip side was that they had to make such a claim, so all mail was filtered by a whitelist.

    But, yeah, we had a guy who broke all the other rules (e.g. was finding the most vulnerable women and emailing on the side with sexual messages) and was destroying the utility of the mail list to others. After a short discussion we agreed to block him.

    The whitelist helped a lot.

    Kevin M (ab1c11)

  447. so yes, you are crappy at math.

    Same result over two years?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  448. it has killed more people than the total US wartime casualty county of every war excluding the civil war.

    Any guesses at what the denominator is on this? IOW, how many US personal were at risk of becoming a wartime casualty?

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  449. > Behavioral issues are generally not subject to anti-discrimination law. Restaurants cannot refuse to service blacks, but they can refuse service to a black person who’s creating a nuisance.

    the argument that twitter is making is fundamentally that MTG is creating a nuisance. if they have to demonstrate that to a court’s agreement, then nothing stops (J random troll) from forcing Patterico to do so.

    i currently moderate several subreddits in fantasy fandom where we moderate for *civility*. i don’t know how we continue to do that with some of the anti-moderation policies people are pushing for political reasons — and i don’t know how the conversations can survive without it.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  450. Digital platforms that don’t moderate content become the equivalent of gas station restrooms real fast.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  451. There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to the use of Twitter. Being banned from Twitter is NOT an infringement on free speech. I don’t understand the repeated and persistent failures of seemingly intelligent people to understand that.
    Demosthenes (3fd56e) — 1/3/2022 @ 4:08 am

    The intellectual failure is yours. It doesn’t matter whether there’s a constitutional right.

    Dustin (0ee127)

  452. NJRob, hope you get better soon, man!

    Dustin (0ee127)

  453. Breaking-

    Elizabeth Holmes found guilty on four counts of wire fraud, not guilty on four counts, and deadlocked on three counts of wire fraud.

    The decision cements what multiple media investigations, podcasts and documentaries have highlighted over the past six years: that Holmes knowingly misled investors into thinking that her company’s blood-testing technology worked better than it really did.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  454. @460 I’m interested in what the lawyers here estimate her sentence will be.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  455. Here are the Wikipedia Wikipedia tables for those who want to compare US war deaths to US COVID deaths.

    Briefly, COVID deaths now surpass combat deaths for all of our wars, combined (about 674,000), but are still lower than total war deaths (about 1,355,000), a number that includes deaths from sickness.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  456. @460 I’m interested in what the lawyers here estimate her sentence will be.

    Each of the wire fraud convictions carry a sentence up to 20 years each, but she would probably serve the sentences concurrently. My prediction is 10-20 years.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  457. Thanks, Rip.

    Perhaps she can invent a quick and easy prison escape. 😛

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  458. Here are a couple of comments where I helped Jim Miller with the math way back when:

    Combat survivability (out of 1,000): 8.6 were killed in action, 3 died from other causes, and 17.7 received non-fatal combat wounds

    https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers

    8.6 / 1000 = 0.0086

    According to google the US population is 331,449,281.

    331,449,281 X 0.0086 = 2,850,464.

    You would have to multiply the aprox 600,000 covid deaths by about 4.75 to catch up to the same rate as WW2 deaths.

    I guess it took longer for WW2 to kill the total amount of soldiers, but since Covid deaths are on the steep decline, I don’t see that ever making a difference in the lethality of war, per capita, vs this virus.

    BuDuh (7bca93) — 6/12/2021 @ 3:47 pm

    And:

    Approximately 2,594,000 US Servicemen served in country during the Vietnam War.
    1,736,000 were US Army
    391,000 were US Marines
    293,000 were US Airmen
    174,000 were US Sailors (this figure includes the US Coast Guard)

    Casualties:
    Hostile deaths: 47,359
    Non-hostile deaths: 10,797

    Total: 58,156 (including men formerly classified as MIA and Mayaguez casualties).

    https://lzsally.com/archives/namfacts.html

    47,359 / 2,594,000 = 0.0183

    331,449,281 X 0.0183 = 6,051,313

    Essentially Covid times ten.

    BuDuh (7bca93) — 6/12/2021 @ 4:20 pm

    https://patterico.com/2021/06/11/weekend-open-thread-88/

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  459. ’We’re Being Persecuted’: ASU Students Alleged Racism, Sexism After School Found Them ’Guilty’ Of Harassing Peers

    Two students at Arizona State University were found “guilty” of “interfering with university activities” after video footage showed them harassing two white, male students for studying in the university’s multicultural center, according to an Instagram post of the duo complaining about their punishment.

    Undergraduate student Mastaani Qureshi and graduate student Sarra Tekola posted a video on Instagram alleging that Arizona State University (ASU) investigated their actions and called on them to write a three-page paper “on how, next time, when [they] talk with white people about race and society [they] will be civil.”

    The students were charged with “interfering with or disrupting university or university-sponsored activities,” according to emails obtained by Campus Reform.

    JF (e1156d)

  460. BuDuh,

    How about just conceding Jim Miller’s point about raw numbers, while pointing out that the rate of death for the wars was higher?

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  461. @467 I don’t need the WaPo to know that January 6th was much more than the shills on Fox would have us believe.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  462. @468, that awesome. Glad to see some common sense in college administration.

    Time123 (d499a8)

  463. As anyone who can read a simple graph can see, Covid cases are rising spectacularly in the United States, and COVID deaths have been rising since the beginning of December. (Both would have been even worse without vaccinations, and, probably, to a lesser extent, without mask wearing and social distancing.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  464. Fox News is news in only the most perfunctory way. I just clicked its story about a New Hampshire 5-year old girl who has been missing, without it being reported, for two years, and a commenter there provided ten times the information the story did. All Fox did was rewrite the initial police news release.

    nk (1d9030)

  465. aphrael

    I clearly said over 2 years.

    Never meant deaths were trivial. They are tiny. To people who have lost a loved one, its big.
    Grief will never be assuaged by numbers. Policy should not be made due to levels grief, fear, anger.
    The math says this is a weak virus:
    https://www.visualcapitalist.com/history-of-pandemics-deadliest/
    Scroll down to death toll by population
    COVID number there is from 12/28/2021

    Omicron is the viruses gift to the unvaccinated

    steveg (e81d76)

  466. Omicron is the viruses gift to the unvaccinated.

    So all the mRNA and viral vector mish mosh is going to come down to herd immunity will be provided by a (self-)attenuated live virus? Cool.

    nk (1d9030)

  467. Steve, It depends on age group but for ppl over 15 it’s a a top 5 cause of death. Top 3 for the elderly. Below that age it’s still top 10.

    Time123 (d499a8)

  468. Jim Miller (edcec1) — 1/3/2022 @ 5:32 pm

    The death rates aren’t really rising. As Dec winds down the numbers are going down. Delta is slowly being pushed out by omicron. There’s every reason to expect the US to follow the UK numbers. From the data coming out of the UK the lower death numbers are driven a lot by omicron being less lethal.

    I don’t think omicron is going to give you the death numbers you’re hoping for.

    frosty (f27e97)

  469. As most of you know, war casualties include those who are wounded, however severely or lightly, as well as deaths. Many of those wounded in wars are patched up and go back into combat. So, does that make COVID cases the equivalent of war casualties?

    Not in my opinion, but there are analogous elements. (For instance, a soldier may be wounded in more than one battle and, as we now know, a person can catch COVID more than once.)

    With that caveat clearly in mind, note that there have been, by a roughly official count, almost 57 million COVID cases in the United States — so far.

    (Those who want to make comparisons between casualties and cases, including per capita comparisons, are free to do so, though I would urge you not to take them too seriously.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  470. I don’t think omicron is going to give you the death numbers you’re hoping for.

    Despicable.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  471. While I’m cribbing other peoples numbers, I noticed here:
    https://heyjackass.com/

    The best month to get shot in the butt in Chicago is July; shot in the junk June; August being the month where you shoot yourself by accident.

    On this issue I have to admit an enormous bias on behalf of the grieving

    steveg (e81d76)

  472. 60% plus cases now are still the Delta variant.

    and to nk, by that I meant that an unvaccinated person who gets the Omicron variant got a gift from mother nature. Its the least deadly widely spread variant. The unvaccintated who rolled the dice on not vaccinating and then pulled the weakest variant got a gift

    steveg (e81d76)

  473. It is tricky to compare deaths around holidays, not because there are fewer deaths then, but because those who record them are not working, or are not working as long. That said, it is still possible to compare deaths on a sequence of Tuesdays, beginning on 11/16 and going to 12/19: 1437, 1461, 1650, 1947, 1802, 2051. (Why Tuesday? It tends to be a day when the hospitals and doctors catch up with the paper work. Wednesday and Thursday show similar increases for the same period.)

    Those familiar with graphs will be able to see that fairly easily. Mouse along the graph to see how the three-day moving average has been increasing. (Remember to allow for Christmas.)

    I have hoped from the beginning that COVID would be less deadly than it has been. And have said so repeatedly. To claim that I am “hoping for” higher death numbers is false, and should be retracted and apologized for.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  474. Jim Miller
    Please explain why numbers by population or per capita are not to be taken seriously?

    Moving on.
    Some people are clearing rooting for more deaths in FLA to punish DeSantis for opening FLA and others are openly rooting for more people to die in NYC because it is seen as the liberal Mecca toward which liberals orient their daily worship.
    Some people wanted redstate swampbillies, oilfield roughnecks to get COVID. Others wished it on smug celebrities

    steveg (e81d76)

  475. #483 steveg – If you read that last paragraph carefully, I was discouraging per capita comparisons “between casualties and cases”, not in general. Otherwise you end up saying things like, for instance, that, per capita, something like 17 per cent of Americans have already been “casualties” of COVID.

    That’s why I explicitly rejected equating casualties and cases.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  476. (Those who want to make comparisons between casualties and cases, including per capita comparisons, are free to do so, though I would urge you not to take them too seriously.)

    I would urge you to read what I wrote, but that always falls on deaf ears.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  477. If you use the find features (usually control-f) and search for “casualt” so you can see all the time “casualty” or “casualties” are mentioned, and by whom, you will see that the first conflating of the dead with the wounded was by the same guy complaining about conflation of the dead and the wounded.

    Everyone else was specifically talking about the dead.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  478. #483 “Some people wanted redstate swampbillies, oilfield roughnecks to get COVID. Others wished it on smug celebrities”

    No doubt, but I am not in either group, and I hope you aren’t either. In fact, almost everything I have said on COVID has been part of my humble effort to reduce COVID deaths, wherever they occur.

    That’s why, for instance, that I have been urging every household to get an oximeter, and use it regularly.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  479. “But it does not even get close to that when you can post your Maoist political action group, complete with symbology that is quite hurtful to millions, yet you cannot advertise a book about Ronald flipping Reagan, something needs to change.”

    I did some investigation and it looks like they broke the policy here: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/one-sheeters/ads-with-political-content-us

    Specifically, political ads require a disclaimer.

    Here’s an example of one of their ads: https://i.imgur.com/SwhkiL8.png

    It’s clearly political and also clearly missing a disclaimer.

    The company certainly knows this, but they’re lying about their reasons for having their ads disabled so that they can compete in the right wing oppression olympics.

    Davethulhu (17e89a)

  480. That makes sense, Davethulhu. It’s about spinning and garnering oppression points.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  481. Facebook’s mainstay is the same as the mainstay of dippy books: Women, mostly middle-aged or older, mostly stay-at-home, mostly middle-class. This is hitting the publisher right in the pocketbook.

    nk (1d9030)

  482. That’s my sister, nk! Middle-aged, stay-at-home, and middle-class. She’s a Facebook junkie.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  483. If you want to see what the left really thinks about free speech and the marketplace of ideas, just pull up their spicy takes about Substack.

    Factory Working Orphan (2775f0)

  484. I don’t think omicron is going to give you the death numbers you’re hoping for.

    Cheap shot. I’d like to know where you can support the notion that Miller is “hoping” for high death numbers.

    Omicron is the viruses gift to the unvaccinated.

    That could be true. Right now, the 7-day moving average is 1,171 deaths in the US. I can’t tell what part of that is from Delta or Omicron. I expect/hope that number will start to go down soon and go the way of the Spanish Flu, but it’s still damn high.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  485. Cheap shot. I’d like to know where you can support the notion that Miller is “hoping” for high death numbers.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/3/2022 @ 7:18 pm

    It is a cheap shot, and I wonder if frosty can humble himself enough to apologize for it.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  486. > They are tiny

    this is one of the things i don’t understand — by what metric is an infection that kills 2.5 out of every thousand Americans in less than two years *tiny*?

    For comparison, i cited earlier the total wartime casualty count. But I might also note that this is equivalent to the entire city of san francisco. Or that, currently, covid deaths are more than twice the fatalities from 9-11 *every three days*.

    This isn’t a tiny death count.

    aphrael (4c4719)

  487. 🔊 “Paging Mr Frosty to the High Road. Mr Frosty to the High Road please..”

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  488. Page yourself while you’re at it, BuDuh.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  489. 😫

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  490. I think Dana said it best.

    BuDuh, you out yourself yet again with your disingenuously manipulative comments. You just can’t seem to argue/debate in good faith. Thus, I’ll be ignoring future comments from you.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  491. Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/3/2022 @ 7:58 pm

    👍

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  492. NJRob, get well soon.

    lurker (59504c)

  493. And this is our point of departure. Refusing to LET SOMEONE ELSE say something is NOT part of speech.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 10:09 am

    That’s false. The right, free of government coercion, to decide what will and what will not be published on one’s privately owned website is protected by the First Amendment.

    lurker (59504c)

  494. I should also point out that — as far as a I know — Patterico has never axed someone for their viewpoint; only for behavior issues.

    Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/3/2022 @ 10:21 am

    IIRC, Patterico suspended (banned?) commenter(s) for posting Covid misinformation.

    lurker (59504c)

  495. BTW, if 230 is repealed, see you never, because that’s when Patterico and every other blogger with a brain and anything to lose will open up their sites to commenters again.

    lurker (59504c) — 1/2/2022 @ 10:09 pm

    This is often claimed but it’s not really true. At most places like Twitter would have to consistently apply their AUP and nothing would really change for sites like this.

    This claim about 230 is a bit like the claim the legalizing weed will have all the white women getting knocked up by jazz musicians.

    frosty (f27e97) — 1/3/2022 @ 7:30 am

    Ask Patterico if he’ll keep the comment section going without Section 230 protection. I’ve yet to see any blogger of significance say they will.

    lurker (59504c)

  496. lurker (59504c) — 1/3/2022 @ 8:26 pm

    This.

    I’m not versed on all the twists and turns of Section 230, but if commenting is removed from Patterico as a result of doing away with Section 230, then I’m in favor of Section 230.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  497. Ask Patterico if he’ll keep the comment section going without Section 230 protection. I’ve yet to see any blogger of significance say they will.

    lurker (59504c) — 1/3/2022 @ 8:26 pm

    What he’ll choose to do is up to him and the reasons for that are his own. But you can look back through this thread and see people argue the 230 has nothing to do with Twitter and everything to do with Twitter from people with varying POV’s.

    When the law that originally included 230 was created this plague of online forums being sued out of existence wasn’t a thing. 230 was included in that law because of a concern that that law would open the door to that but the bulk of that law has been thrown out. 230 was invented to deal with a problem that never really existed. Now it’s taken on mythical status and the claim is we wouldn’t have conversations on the Internet without it.

    frosty (f27e97)

  498. And all because that mean Dorsey boy won’t share with Margie. I blame the parents.

    nk (1d9030)

  499. 11. Kevin M (ab1c11) — 12/31/2021 @ 1:57 pm

    Fauci is a mouthpiece for the bureaucracy… That does not make him necessarily wrong.

    He is constantly justifying what other people do, or might do. Never goes off and gives any thinking of his own.

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fauci-testing-negative-end-covid-isolation-now-consideration/story?id=82032243

    “You’re right there has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration. The CDC is very well aware that there has been some pushback about that,” Fauci told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.

    He continued, “Looking at it again, there may be an option in that, that testing could be a part of that. And I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.”

    Of course there are not enough tests for that.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  500. It is a cheap shot, and I wonder if frosty can humble himself enough to apologize for it.

    norcal (d4ed1d) — 1/3/2022 @ 7:28 pm

    I don’t see a need to apologize for something I think is true. To Paul’s point, I think it’s true because it’s the subtext of almost all of Jim’s comments.

    I don’t say it to troll him. Personally I’m disturbed by the constant fascination with how people who didn’t “do the right thing got what they deserved”.

    Of course he’s offended by it in those terms, and people like him doing the same thing. It’s important that they’ve made the right decisions and done the right things and that they’re good people. I think some of them honestly don’t realize they’re tracking the death stats like someone tracking their stock portfolio.

    The point isn’t to be offensive. It just is what it is.

    frosty (f27e97)

  501. frosty (f27e97) — 1/3/2022 @ 9:26 pm

    I guess I don’t need to wonder any longer.

    Apparently, you truly believe Jim is hoping for more deaths.

    norcal (d4ed1d)

  502. #506

    The unfortunate reality that many people, including some here, are confused about sec. 230 should surprise no one. There’s been a discouragingly effective disinformation campaign to accomplish that very result. So, for purposes of this discussion, here’s what sec. 230 has nothing to do with, followed by what it has something to do with.

    Starting with the nothing:

    Twitter and every other pvt site’s right to ban anyone has nothing to do with 230. That right comes from the 1st Amendment.

    Now the something:

    If I were to defame MTG (difficult though that would be) on Twitter, thanks to sec. 230 she could sue me and only me. If I were to defame Brett Kimberlin (difficult though that would be) in these threads, thanks to sec. 230 he could sue me and only me. Without sec 230, Twitter and Patterico, respectively, would be as vulnerable to those suits as I am.

    The cost of that liability would be ruinous to many bloggers. Why risk it? Sure, Patterico could meticulously flyspeck every comment until he was sure they posed no more threat to his financial well-being than his own commentary does. Or he could, you know, have a life. Which would you choose? It’s not as if comment threads are generally a big profit center to begin with.

    Twitter, Facebook, and the other giants have a much bigger stake in continuing to host user content, so I’m guessing they’d try real hard to come up with a fix. But apart from my assumption that any such fix would mean severely edited and censored user content, and less of it, I have no idea how it would work or what it would look like. What I can say with reasonably high confidence is that the days of the little guy blogger comment threads would be over.

    lurker (59504c)

  503. Stay loaded with Emergen-c, NJRob. It is a good vitamin C immune support.
    I forced myself to sit in my steam sauna to sweat the chink flu out.

    mg (8cbc69)

  504. To Paul’s point, I think it’s true because it’s the subtext of almost all of Jim’s comments.

    Where did Jim say that he hoped there were higher death numbers? This is the second time I asked.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  505. Lurker, I agree with your comment and wanted to add that pre-203 there was an actual problem with companies not moderating because it exposed them to liability. That isn’t to say that the only the current framework is viable. Just that the issues section 203 was intended to solve weren’t theoretical. Given the increase in performative lawsuits in our current political climate it seems reasonable to assume there would be plenty of legal action.

    But I don’t think that matters. I think a lot of the anti-203 rhetoric is more about anger at groups & organizations the speakers dislike.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  506. And this.

    I don’t say it to troll him. Personally I’m disturbed by the constant fascination with how people who didn’t “do the right thing got what they deserved”.

    Where did Jim say what you quoted? Because he did say upthread that “I am not in either group”, which is a real quote, not like the one you made up. He also noted that your cheap shot was false, and that you should retract and apologize. I agree with Jim on that.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  507. Paul, I’ve never seen Jim say that. He has regularly pushed back on false and misleading claims about impact of covid and it’s associated death rate but that’s not even remotely the same thing.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  508. When you engage trolls, and I mean frosty, nine out of ten of your comments to them will be a variant of “I/he/she never said that”. It’s best to just ignore their spit bubbles.

    nk (1d9030)

  509. Or, as in this particular instance of a troll accusing a respected commenter of wishing more Covid deaths, to tell them to blow it out their ear (perfect enunciation optional).

    nk (1d9030)

  510. A big reason why Omicron (and before that, Delta) is more contagious:

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

    This apppeared in one story and appears to have fallen into the memory hole, as do regularly other important stories

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

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

    “What we think is that it’s actually covering itself in these mucins, and that’s acting like a protective coating for it during flight,” Dr. Amaro said.

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

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

    Once a coronavirus enters someone’s nose or lungs, the Delta spike’s wide opening may make it better at infecting a cell. But Dr. Amaro suspects that it’s bad for a coronavirus to open a spike protein when it’s still inside an aerosol, perhaps hours away from infecting a new host. “If it opens too soon, it could just fall apart,” Dr. Amaro said.

    Some of the molecules that are abundant inside aerosols may be able to lock the spike shut for the journey, she said. Certain lung surfactants can fit into a pocket on the surface of the spike protein, preventing it from swinging open….

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

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  511. To summarize the latest CDC findings: The 272 children (12-17 years old) who were hospitalized because of Covid were unvaccinated (99.6%) and fat (approximately two-thirds).

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  512. Kevin, Here’s a good illustration of how the left would like to control speech on the internet. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211229/17174248199/ny-senator-proposes-ridiculously-unconstitutional-social-media-law-that-is-mirror-opposite-equally-unconstitutional-laws.shtml

    Once we create tools for the government to punish people that don’t allow speech we like on their site we also create tools to punish people for allowing speech we don’t like.

    …California has been toying with unconstitutional content moderation bills, and now NY has one as well. Senator Brad Hoylman — who got his law degree from Harvard, where presumably they teach about the 1st Amendment — has proudly introduced a hellishly unconstitutional social media bill. Hoylman announces in his press release that the bill will “hold tech companies accountable for promoting vaccine misinformation and hate speech.”
    Have you noticed the problem with the bill already? I knew you could. Whether we like it or not, the 1st Amendment protects both vaccine misinformation and hate speech. It is unconstitutional to punish anyone for that speech, and it’s even more ridiculous to punish websites that host that content, but had nothing to do with the creation of it.
    Believe it or not, the actual details of the bill are even worse than Hoylman’s description of it. The operative clauses are outlandishly bad.
    Prohibited activities. No person, by conduct either unlawful In itself or unreasonable under all the circumstances, shall knowingly or recklessly create, maintain or contribute to a condition in New York State that endangers the safety or health of the public through the promotion of content, including through the use of algorithms or other automated systems that prioritize content by a method other than solely by time and date such content was created, the person knows or reasonably should know:
    1. Advocates for the use of force, is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action;
    2. Advocates for self-harm, is directed to inciting or producing imminent self-harm, and is likely to incite or produce such action; or
    3. Includes a false statement of fact or fraudulent medical theory that is likely to endanger the safety or health of the public.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  513. Where did Jim say what you quoted? Because he did say upthread that “I am not in either group”, which is a real quote, not like the one you made up. He also noted that your cheap shot was false, and that you should retract and apologize. I agree with Jim on that.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/4/2022 @ 5:00 am

    This is a paraphrase. I thought it was obvious from the context. The choices are limited in how to denote various things. As nk pointed out, I didn’t say Jim said that. Of course, nk, would say the same thing in my place and he also wants to say start labeling trolls. And of course, this is what Jim is saying. Sounds like nk doesn’t really like that high-road we keep hearing about.

    Where did Jim say that he hoped there were higher death numbers? This is the second time I asked.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/4/2022 @ 4:48 am

    In @472 Jim makes a comment about the death rates rising in Dec (as in the entire month). But they aren’t. You can go look at the graph. The better description is that it’s relatively flat. After

    COVID deaths have been rising since the beginning of December

    (that’s a direct quote) he doubles down on this in @482. He does several things there. First he extends back into Nov (but ignores any issues with the holidays there that might push late Nov numbers into early Dec even after reminding you to account for the end of Dec). Then he stops in mid Dec to avoid any issue with the rest of Dec going down. He picks the 3 day (although it doesn’t seem like he really does) instead of the 7 day but even so I don’t get his numbers when I try using the 3-day on the “Daily New Deaths in the United States” graph. Maybe I’m making a mistake but I get 1167 on 12/19 for the 3-day moving average of new deaths. For someone to look at that graph and say they are rising they have to want to see it. I’m thinking that if you ran a linear regression across Dec you wouldn’t get much of a positive slope if you got one at all.

    In general a version of “don’t tell me what I’m thinking” (paraphrase) and “I’ve said X so you have to believe it” (paraphrase) are common. But these comments are true in direct proportion to the self-awareness of the person making them. It’s not hard to look at a body of comments and determine that even though a person says one thing about themselves their comments don’t agree. And on this Jim’s comments don’t agree. This is only one example. In a earlier comment to NJRob he couldn’t go with a simple “get better” (paraphrase) and some advice. He needed to review how women “on average” (paraphrase) don’t get as sick as men. And we’re back to him playing the fear game because this is just a way to say he expects NJRob to get sicker than his girlfriend (even though the averages don’t say much about NJRob and his girlfriend specifically). Of course he says he’s not doing any of that. What else would anyone actually say out loud?

    Here’s a test; without looking through and searching for comments can you say you remember Jim ever mentioning covid deaths going down? Of course they have and they have to for them to keep spiking. How much searching do you think you’d have to do to support Jim’s claim that he’s actually looking for good news? My guess is those would turn out to just be cases of him saying a positive as a lead in to a negative. Or they’d be in a, also common, passive agressive tone.

    And obviously, this is an opinion. If you’re reading Jim’s comments and think he’s a well-spring of sunshine and positivity on covid then good for you.

    frosty (f27e97)

  514. “When the law that originally included 230 was created this plague of online forums being sued out of existence wasn’t a thing.”

    The impetus for section 230 was this case.

    Davethulhu (17e89a)

  515. As nk pointed out, I didn’t say Jim said that. Of course, nk, would say the same thing in my place and he also wants to say start labeling trolls. And of course, this is what Jim is saying. Sounds like nk doesn’t really like that high-road we keep hearing about.

    Ha, ha, ha! Nice try, frosty! Now, blow it out your ear!

    nk (1d9030)

  516. The top of The 81 Million food chain declares:

    Jonah Goldberg
    @JonahDispatch
    If I was Glenn Youngkin I’d be flooding the zone to get this I-95 crap fixed. DC suburbs are vengeful about this kind of thing

    The miserable deplorables let the genius know that Youngkin hasn’t been sworn in yet.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  517. Jim’s constant comparison of Covid deaths to dead soldiers should be convincing enough. The erroneous metric isn’t by accident, it is to promote fear.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  518. Or, as in this particular instance of a troll accusing a respected commenter of wishing more Covid deaths, to tell them to blow it out their ear (perfect enunciation optional).

    nk (1d9030) — 1/4/2022 @ 5:34 am

    This is always good advice. Some of the responses could be mistaken for a Freudian slip.

    Didn’t you say you gave money as a wedding present to a groom that had purchased the bride? I’m certainly not saying that money offset the cost or that it sounds anything like human trafficking. But that seems like a person who needs to blow a few things out of a few places.

    frosty (f27e97)

  519. Davethulhu (17e89a) — 1/4/2022 @ 8:12 am

    The interesting thing there is

    This case conflicted with the 1991 federal district court decision in Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe Inc., which had suggested that the courts would not consider online service providers to be publishers.

    If this would have unfolded in the courts there’s every reason to think it would have been resolved by a return to something more like Cubby. It doesn’t look like this was appealed and there’s no reason to think a decision in the state of NY would have held up against the direction the federal courts were going. It’s not that hard to argue that the ruling of the NY state court is wrong. This one case in NY wouldn’t have ended the internet as we know it and if 230 is dumped it won’t return as one of the four horsemen. This case didn’t even seem to impact Prodigy since it went on for several more years after this before market forces took their toll.

    Instead, this one (1) case, and not a plague of online services winking out of existence, is what drove a number of companies to lobby congress for 230 as part of the CDA (which has otherwise largely not survived).

    Since then it has achieved mythical status not unlike the logic in something like Roe. In my time on this forum I’ve never seen anything that would trigger this defamation apocalypse here.

    If you junked 230 the most likely outcome would be a federal case against someone like twitter or youtube that affirmed Cubby or said more clearly that speech online isn’t the speech of the forum host. Worst case twitter might have to consistently apply it’s own standards and guidelines but I doubt even that.

    frosty (f27e97)

  520. There are all sorts of therapuetics for Covid – and tis is true for other diseases as well – that work, that may be based on simple principles – that are going nowhere.

    One idea is to make the area around the cells more acidic. (this can have bad side effects and.or be unnecessary in some people, of course.)

    One kind is Amorphous Calcium Carbonate (ACC) (plus something else of little or no significance, probably added to make it patentable. If this ever gets approved, people may not be able to use the ACC alone because it did not go through clinical trials

    Amorphous means simple that it is not a crystal, I think.

    One article about it:

    https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/article-689543

    …All 18 COVID-19 patients hospitalized with moderate or severe symptoms who received the drug Amor-18 developed by Israeli biotech company Amorphical recovered and were discharged in a few days, the company announced on Wednesday. Of the 19 individuals who were given a placebo, six had to be transferred to intensive care, and two died.

    As part of compassionate care, two other patients in a very serious condition were given the drug. Both recovered and were discharged….

    Amor-18, which uses Amorphous Calcium Carbonate (ACC) as the main ingredient, was administered orally or by inhalation. As explained by the company, ACC has the ability to modulate acidic pH changes around each cell. These changes affect the capability of COVID-19 to penetrate the cells and replicate. This allows the drug to prevent the virus from spreading and thus the patients from deteriorating.

    If this is not true, whoever said this could be in trouble, similar to Elizabeth Holmes, een though it’s a different country.

    Do I expect the FDA or the CDC or President Biden or even the Florida Surgeon General to notice this?

    Of course not!

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  521. This drug, or something close to it, is on the market, and is available even without a prescription since at least 2013:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_calcium_carbonate

    https://amorphous-calcium.com/collections/frontpage/products/copy-of-density-amorphous-calcium-carbonate

    https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a601032.html

    It s ususally used as a calcium supplement or for hypoparathyroidism. It can interact with other medications and food. It is generally considered safe to take for two weeks (at least this form) without consulting a doctor. I don’t know the dose. And this may not be the exact form that defeats Covid. The amorphous form is absorbed to a greater degree, and maybe that’s the only real difference from other forms of calcium carbonate because in the bloodstream it’s obviously dissolved. ACC can be used to deliver other drugs.

    It is crystalized but converts easily into other forms, but is stabilized with the addition of some other things like for example aspartic acid or glycine, and is produced commercially that way.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  522. The trial was already done before May. See how slow these things go? It was tried in the most severe cases (where they no longer recommended monoclonal antibodies)

    This should work against all variants, except you don’t get pnemonia with Omicron.

    It might be this was something already produced.

    The trial was reported by the World Health Organization:

    https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/en/ictrp-
    NCT04900337

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  523. The CDC now recommends Pfizer boosters after 5 months, down from 6

    https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2022/01/04/1070178324/cdc-pfizer-booster-covid-vaccine

    GET. THE. DAMN. SHOT.

    BuDuh (4a7846)

  524. BuDuh (4a7846) — 1/4/2022 @ 10:46 am

    You forgot

    “This CDC recommendation brought to you by funding from Pfizer”

    That sort of carelessness might get you booted from facebook.

    frosty (f27e97)

  525. That’s the problem with impressions, frosty, because it’s so easy to make the wrong ones.
    When Jim was comparing Covid deaths to war deaths, my impression was that he was trying to provide some context about the seriousness of the pandemic. Jim can tell me I’m wrong, but it remains that he already said your comment was false, so I’m going to leave it at that.
    Last thing. Patterico used to have commenting rules (and it looks like they’re not around anymore), and one of those rules was to quote the other person accurately and comment on that actual statement. There’s a good reason for that, and it’s way better (and more honest) than making wild-ass guesses about what you feel the other person is intending to convey. I advise you adopt that practice, but that’s me.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  526. Today, January 4, was the start of the year. Perihelion. Closest approach of Earth to the sun.

    Year Date Time (UT)

    2019 January 3 05:20
    2020 January 5 07:48
    2021 January 2 13:51

    2022: January 4 1:52 a.m. EST

    The exact moment of perihelion this year occurred at 1:52 a.m. EST (0652 GMT), according to EarthSky. Earth was about 3 million miles (5 million kilometers) closer to the sun than it is at aphelion, when it is farthest from the sun, which takes place in early July.

    https://www.latestly.com/technology/science/perihelion-day-2022-from-date-to-meaning-everything-to-know-about-the-day-when-earth-is-closest-to-the-sun-every-year-3216917.html

    During this time, the planet’s close approach to the sun causes it to travel slightly faster which means that the faster trip will lead to short duration for winter in the northern hemisphere and summer in the southern hemisphere. Accordingly, winters in the North are about five days shorter than the summer while summers in the South are five days shorter than winter.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  527. Patterico used to have commenting rules (and it looks like they’re not around anymore), and one of those rules was to quote the other person accurately and comment on that actual statement. There’s a good reason for that, and it’s way better (and more honest) than making wild-ass guesses about what you feel the other person is intending to convey. I advise you adopt that practice, but that’s me.

    Paul Montagu (5de684) — 1/4/2022 @ 12:40 pm

    I’d love to see that. I’ve been mocked in the past for expressing exactly this sentiment. But you might have trouble with the drive by accusation of dishonesty under those rules. You might also have trouble with misrepresenting my comment while accusing me of the same.

    frosty (f27e97)

  528. Last thing. Patterico used to have commenting rules (and it looks like they’re not around anymore), and one of those rules was to quote the other person accurately and comment on that actual statement.

    I could be wrong, but I seem to recall him saying not very long ago that the rule against mischaracterizing what other commenters say is still in effect.

    lurker (59504c)

  529. New York redictricting commission fails in spite of cote against constitutional amendment which would have guaranteed it would fail

    https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-redistricting-albany-20220102-6svhiztdtvfptkc36zmeu7b3ni-story.html

    They agreed to the amendment in 2014. The problem is, Democrats never anticipated they’d have a 2/3 majority in both houses.

    This is the situation:

    The Constitution requires at least seven commissioners agree to submit a single plan to the Legislature. A tie on the panel sends two plans to lawmakers with a two-thirds vote of members to adopt one of them. Guess which plan the Assembly Democratic supermajority and the Senate Democratic supermajority will back and hand to the Democratic governor for a signature?

    Who cares that the same constitutional amendment, approved 58% to 42% by 3 million New Yorkers at the polls, states that “districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties

    Elsewhere I read, that the commission gets a second chance.

    Even the plan endorsed by the Dem apointed members of the commission is not enough of agerrymander for them. It permits 9 Rep Congressional districts Dems want to reduce them to 3 (from 8)

    Sammy Finkelman (02a146)

  530. Trump canceled his 1/6 press conference, blaming the 1/6 Committee and “Fake News Media”.
    It’s an excuse that’s as phony as his claim that the election was “stolen”. IMO, his lawyers advised him to not say anything out of concern that he would incriminate himself.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  531. For those interested in the covid numbers; since the first week of Dec the number of deaths provisionally reported by the CDC is relatively flat with a slight downward trend. These numbers are subject to change since there is a reporting lag with the CDC data. The current increase in the number of cases exceeds the previous waves. We are past the 10-day period from the start of the spike when we would expect to see an increase in deaths.

    The US generally lags the UK and the experience there has been an increase in cases, deaths did not increase, hospital admissions increased but the number of patients needing mechanical ventilation has remained relatively flat.

    This current wave originated in South Africa around the middle of Nov and they are currently reporting a decrease in overall cases, ie they consider the wave to have passed around the end of Dec. The average experience in SA was that omicron was a milder variant and they attribute the lower incident of serious illness to natural immunity from previous waves. SA has a relatively low vaccination rate.

    I’m hopefully optimistic that this wave will not result in an increase in serious illness or death in the US.

    frosty (f27e97)

  532. Every public school teacher that walked off the job needs to be fired today.

    NJRob (28e0bb)

  533. That’s nk’s Chicago for ya. First in the nation in murders, last in giving a darn about education.

    NJRob (28e0bb)

  534. Aren’t you glad you don’t live here, NJRob?

    How are you?

    nk (1d9030)

  535. And I just read a short story, a Western by Merle Constiner, in a collection edited by Julie Nixon Eisenhower. America! What a country!

    nk (1d9030)

  536. I’m mending nicely.

    Fever left today. Just a hacking cough and some congestion left. Feeling pretty good overall.

    NJRob (28e0bb)

  537. A speedy 100% recovery!

    nk (1d9030)

  538. #535 Paul – Your impression is right. I wish our response to COVID had been better, because it would have saved lives; I wish that it were better now, because that would save lives. We should learn from our mistakes. And we have made some huge ones.

    Two current examples: By now, there should be no shortage of COVID tests. By now, we should have better masks for everyone.

    And we should learn from successes, as well as failures. I am impressed by how well Norway and Finland have done, compared to their neighbor, Sweden. In Norway, for example, it looks as if COVID has not yet caused a net increase in deaths. (There have been COVID deaths there (238 per million), but other causes of deaths have decreased during the pandemic.)

    (Bearers of bad news are not popular, but they are essential if we are to respond intelligently to disasters. If we condemn them, we fail both morally and intellectually.)

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  539. NJRob – It is good to hear that you are recovering. I hope that your recovery is prompt, and complete.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  540. Reading a COVID graph — and accounting for holidays. This Washington Post graph (New deaths reported each day) shows the effects of holidays on death counts clearly. If you look at the November 2020 through January 2021 section, you will see two distinct notches, one for Thanksgiving, and then one for Christmas and New Years. We can see similar, though smaller, notches for the November 2021 through the present section, again showing the effects of holidays.

    The notches are the result of record keepers falling behind, not fewer deaths.

    So, to see the real trend during these holiday times, we need to use longer averaging periods than 3, or even 7, days.

    Jim Miller (edcec1)

  541. Nice perspective by Applebaum on Putin and Ukraine.

    The alarm bells are also ringing because of the public behavior of Russian diplomats and officials, including President Vladimir Putin, who have spent the past couple of weeks accusing the United States and its allies of nonexistent aggression, such as imaginary plans to use chemical weapons against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. In fact, the sole aggressor in the region is Russia. Russian troops occupy not only parts of Ukraine but also parts of Georgia and Moldova; Russian “advisers”—latter-day Soviet commissars—now prop up a violent dictator in Belarus and may be about to annex that country too. Russian propaganda organs regularly issue violent threats. On New Year’s Eve, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti tweeted a prediction: “Russia will destroy Ukraine within 10 minutes.”

    Yet Russia insists on declaring that it fears NATO, a defensive alliance that mostly still exists, in 2022, because so many Europeans fear Russia. Putin has kept up this victim act for so many years that it has become banal; even many Russian experts now accept this performance as normal. But even if he believes it himself—even if he thinks that a handful of American soldiers rotating in and out of Poland pose some kind of physical threat to Moscow—that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has to accommodate his paranoia. It’s as if an American president repeatedly demanded that Canadian troops withdraw to the Arctic Circle on the grounds that their presence near Detroit constituted an unacceptable threat, and the rest of the world murmured agreement. In truth, the only logical explanation for this nonsensical posturing is that it is designed to justify a totally unprovoked invasion of Ukraine—or the Baltic states, or who knows where else—sometime in the future, and that’s why it has people worried.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  542. Thanks, Jim. Maybe it’s just that us northwest conservatives understand each other through the shared cultural experience of living behind the Big Blue Seattle Wall, and that probably goes for Radegunda as well.

    I’ll just note that the 7-moving average on 1/4 was 1,208 deaths (source) and the 7-day average 30 days earlier (12/5, my cursor can’t get to 12/4) was 1,253, despite the massive increase in cases (548,330 v. 119,663). I’ll take this as favorable news, that despite it being way more contagious, the strain is notably less lethal and, IMO, will burn itself out in a month or two, barring some new nasty variant that may come down the pike.
    However, 1,208 deaths/day is still serious. Annualized, that works out to 441k deaths, which isn’t much less than the 474k who passed in 2021, but my guess is that 2022 deaths will be way lower.
    There’s really nothing else to say about prescriptions, just get the vax, get boosted, keep a distance from the vulnerable, and live life.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  543. So, to see the real trend during these holiday times, we need to use longer averaging periods than 3, or even 7, days.

    Jim Miller (edcec1) — 1/5/2022 @ 9:26 am

    We’re switching graphs and altering the claim as we go but I’m not sure that helps. The CDC data at the weekly level is relatively flat with a slight downward trend. I’m not sure how you’re going to expand to larger intervals than weekly and support the original claim. I’m not sure why you mentioned 3-day and then used what I’m guessing were daily numbers that I couldn’t find in the graph you referenced and your now saying 3-day is no good.

    The Post data above says we’ve got a drop in deaths now which would presumably include whatever was delayed from the end of Dec.

    The odd thing is we’re still avoiding the real question of why you want to make this claim. Why try to pick and choose the worse possible framing and claim the deaths are increasing?

    frosty (f27e97)

  544. Russian “advisers”—latter-day Soviet commissars—now prop up a violent dictator in Belarus and may be about to annex that country too.

    Vicious is a better word than violent. Russian advisers are nott just propping up – they instructed his people in all their tactics. I don’t know whether they should be called commissars. They are KGB people, that;s all that’s left of the of Soviet apparatus, and Putin is really now more on the far right.

    https://neweasterneurope.eu/2022/01/05/europes-far-right-unites-around-russia-and-armenia

    Vladimir Putin’s Russia has become a focal point for mobilising the extreme right in the West. At the same time, Moscow has castigated the Euromaidan revolution as a “putsch” that brought “fascists” to power in Ukraine. The Kremlin effectively subcontracts contacts with fascists, Nazis and populists to satellite political forces, such as the National Bolshevik Rodina (Motherland) Party or Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

    Although some old time leftists are still closely entwined or supportive of him.

    Armenia and the Donbas have attracted a mix of fascist and Stalinist mercenaries who share common ground regarding their pro-Russian and anti-­Western platforms. Greeks, Hungarians, over 100 Serbs, French, over 100 Germans, Spaniards, Finns and Armenians have all fought alongside Russian proxies in the Donbas. It appears that 20 mercenaries from the French fascist organisation Continental Unity, formed in support of Syrian President Bashar al-­Assad by suspected Serbian war criminal Vojislav Šešelj, have also been active in the Donbas.

    The French extreme right have travelled to the Donbas and formerly occupied Azerbaijan to fight for Russia and Armenia respectively…

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  545. 554. frosty (f27e97) — 1/5/2022 @ 11:45 am

    Why try to pick and choose the worse possible framing and claim the deaths are increasing?

    Probably to give the benefit of the doubt to the WHO etc.

    This wrong epistemologiczl uncertainty always has biases in certain directions – mostly not to change anything after the initial recommendations.

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  546. Jonah ticks off the characteristics of fascism.

    But there is something we can call “generic fascism.” It’s undemocratic. It elevates struggle, strength, and fighting over argument and ideas. It glorifies martial rhetoric as the language of a deeper truth and a greater source of meaning. It splits the world into us and them, and claims a kind of gnostic insight into the true spirit of the authentic people. This is why it glorifies in mass protests (much like many other revolutionary movements) and the spectacle of intimidating throngs. It has contempt for bourgeois morality and constitutional and democratic norms – particularly when they are obstacles to the pursuit of power. Sometimes it takes traditional religion and reframes it as political ratification of its goals. It glorifies will, specifically the will to do what the weak and unmasculine defenders of democracy are unwilling to do. It’s conspiratorial, believing that powerful forces are driven by sinister ambitions to keep the authentic and deserving people down and divided.

    And then he makes a correction to his book Liberal Fascism, that conservatives can fascist, too, although to me, not the traditional conservatives who rejected Trump’s bandwagon.

    Like so much that defined the Trump years, January 6 represented the abandonment of the dogma that I believe immunized conservatism from the fascist temptation and rendered glib accusations of fascism at small-government conservatives so idiotic and slanderous. I believed that conservatism was too committed to the Constitution, to classical liberalism, to the rule of law, to tolerate the use of extralegal violence and mob intimidation. I still believe that those dogmas are a bulwark against fascism, or a tyranny that goes by any other name. What I no longer have faith in is the right’s commitment to those dogmas.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  547. Maga has not commitment to those Dogma’s. When they were brought up in references to Trump the Maga response was “muh principles”. The more articulate of the Tribe would explain that those principles / dogmas needed to be abandoned to defect the democrats because we’re an existential fight for western civilization. Just not the parts of western civilization that included those dogma’s.

    Tim Carney said it well on a podcast. The right would prefer limited government (to pick one such dogma). But the left doesn’t care about limiting government and so the right wasn’t getting the other policy outcomes they wanted.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  548. @558. That’s one view of things. Another is that a cohort of people noticed that the establishment on the right didn’t actually believe that dogma’s either. In response there’s been a lot of effort to get that cohort back in line or get control of it.

    The most vocal of these groups trying to wrangle this cohort back into the establishment on the right seems to be on the left. The un-wrangled cohort has noticed this too and it’s made them harder to wrangle.

    frosty (f27e97)

  549. that’s not in conflict with what I said. Just another attempt to change the subject from MAGA to something else.

    Time123 (9f42ee)

  550. Another is that a cohort of people noticed that the establishment on the right didn’t actually believe that dogma’s either.

    What sounds like dogma to me is this “establishment on the right” business, which sounds like an excuse to excuse Trump.
    The irony is that Trump is the top 1% of the top 1%. He’s establishment by default.

    Paul Montagu (5de684)

  551. Fascism is autocracy without the principle of legitimacy (rightful ruler, as in a heriditary monarchy)

    Sammy Finkelman (c49738)

  552. Nice turn of phrase Sammy.

    Time123 (9f42ee)


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