Weekend Open Thread
[guest post by Dana]
Let’s go!
First news item
Iranian protester executed as thousands of other prisoners wait their fate:
Iran said Thursday it executed a prisoner convicted for a crime allegedly committed during the country’s ongoing nationwide protests, the first such death penalty carried out by Tehran…Iran’s Mizan news agency reported the execution of the man, identified as Mohsen Shekari. It accused the man of blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the security forces with a machete. The member of the forces required stitches for his wounds, the agency said…Mizan said Shekari had been arrested on Sept. 25, then convicted on Nov. 20 on the charge of “moharebeh,” a Farsi word meaning “waging war against God.” That charge has been levied against others in the decades since 1979 and carries the death penalty.
Note:
Iran is one of the world’s top executioners. It typically executes prisoners by hanging. Already, Amnesty International said it obtained a document signed by one senior Iranian police commander asking an execution for one prisoner be “completed ‘in the shortest possible time’ and that his death sentence be carried out in public as ‘a heart-warming gesture towards the security forces.'”
The U.S. condemned the execution of the young protester:
We are appalled by the execution of #MohsenShekari. Our message to Iran’s leadership is clear: End this brutal crackdown. We will continue to hold the Iranian regime accountable.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) December 8, 2022
So true:
He was young, ambitious & talented.
23-year-old #MohsenShekari was executed by the Islamist regime.
Elsewhere in they world, he’d be celebrated for his talent and love of music. #The regime killed him for protesting, for asking for a better life. pic.twitter.com/ikHRGPhEFi
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 8, 2022
Time Magazine has honored the courageous women of Iran in their 2022 Heroes of the Year issue. It is definitely worth your time to read. I’ll add too that the photographs that accompany the report as exquisite.
And speaking of the courageous women protesting in Iran, they are being targeted, literally, by Iranian forces in the vilest way:
Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country…Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs…One physician from the central Isfahan province said he believed the authorities were targeting men and women in different ways “because they wanted to destroy the beauty of these women”…“I treated a woman in her early 20s, who was shot in her genitals by two pellets. Ten other pellets were lodged in her inner thigh. These 10 pellets were easily removed, but those two pellets were a challenge, because they were wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening,” the physician said. “There was a serious risk of vaginal infection, so I asked her to go to a trusted gynaecologist. She said she was protesting when a group of about 10 security agents circled around and shot her in her genitals and thighs.”
Second news item
Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an Independent…considering possibe motivations for the decision:
Outright switching parties didn’t make much sense. Sinema is still effectively a Democrat. She backed President Biden’s $1.9 trillion left-wing spending spree that helped fuel inflation, and his climate and Obamacare-expansion bill, and is radically pro-abortion. Overall, she has voted against her party just 3 percent of the time. She just hasn’t been willing to go whole hog in embracing radical actions to advance progressivism. Most notably, she has opposed ideas such as blowing up the filibuster and packing the courts, and her objections created roadblocks that contributed to the death of Biden’s $3.5 trillion progressive wish list branded as Build Back Better. That has made her a hate figure among the progressive activists who control the Democratic Party, who even took to following her into a bathroom to harass her.
Sinema’s action appears to be a preemptive strike. By acting now, she avoids having to go through a tough Democratic primary she could very well lose, and then face the decision of having to leave the party in a position of weakness. This way she gets ahead of the story and has more time to make her case to voters.
Third news item
Nothing is finalized yet, but…:
The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection is considering criminal referrals for at least four individuals in addition to former President Donald Trump, multiple sources told CNN.
The panel is weighing criminal referrals for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, right wing lawyer John Eastman, former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the sources said.
The committee has not officially decided whom to refer to the Justice Department for prosecution and for what offenses, sources said. The four individuals who are among those under consideration, and whose names have not been previously reported, provide a window into the panel’s deliberations.
Fourth news item
Sentenced to prison for opposing Putin:
A prominent Russian opposition figure was on Friday sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison after being convicted on charges stemming from his criticism of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine. The sentence handed to Ilya Yashin, one of the few Kremlin critics to have stayed in Russia, offered the latest indication of an intensified crackdown on dissent by Russian authorities.
“With that hysterical sentence, the authorities want to scare us all but it effectively shows their weakness,” Yashin said in a statement through his lawyers after the judge passed the sentence. “Only the weak want to shut everyone’s mouth and eradicate any dissent.”
Yashin was charged with spreading false information about the military — a new offense added to the country’s criminal law after Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine.
Speaking Monday just before sentencing, Yashin addressed Putin directly, urging him to “immediately stop this madness, recognize that the policy on Ukraine was wrong, pull back troops from its territory and switch to a diplomatic settlement of the conflict.”
Respect:
“When the hostilities began, I didn’t hesitate for a second,” Yashin said. “I felt I should remain in Russia, loudly tell the truth and try to do all what I could to end the bloodshed. It’s better to sit behind bars for a decade and remain an honest person than silently feel shame for the blood spilled by your government.”
Fifth news item
Oh:
The Justice Department has asked a judge to hold former President Trump’s legal team in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena demanding the return of all classified records stored at Mar-a-Lago…The appeal to a federal judge in sealed court documents comes after the Trump team has still failed to designate a custodian of records and is the latest sign of tension between the Justice Department and the Trump team just days after another two classified documents were found at a South Florida storage unit housing other Trump records.
Sixth news item
Respect for Marriage Act passes:
The House on Thursday passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which will require the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal but does not go as far as some Democrats wanted.
The bill won approval in a 258-169 vote, after the Senate passed it 61-36 last week. The legislation now heads to the White House for President Biden’s signature into law. Despite warnings from Republicans in both chambers that the bill doesn’t do enough to protect religious liberty, 39 House Republicans voted for the bill.
…
The Respect for Marriage Act says the federal government will recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where they are legal, and includes a similar protection for interracial couples should the Supreme Court overturn a decision on that issue, Loving v. Virginia, that bans states from outlawing these marriages.
Seventh news item
Post-midterm disappointment, Republicans take second look at voting by mail:
“Our voters need to vote early. There were many in 2020 saying, don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early, and we have to stop that, and understand that if Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we can’t expect to get it all done in one day,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel warned on Fox News.
McDaniel did not mention former president Donald Trump, who has railed against early, absentee, and mail-in voting for years and falsely claimed the methods led to widespread voter fraud that cost him the election. And a spokesperson said her comments were not targeted at the former president.
But, privately, Republican operatives concede that Trump has put their party in an electoral pinch and that the problems extend beyond voting methods.
Eighth news item
Ah:
President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing the infusion of nearly $36 billion to shore up a financially troubled union pension plan, preventing severe cuts to the retirement incomes of more than 350,000 Teamster workers and retirees across the United States.
The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal aid provided for a pension plan, the Biden administration said, and comes from the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he signed into law in 2021.
Many union retirement plans have been under financial pressure because of underfunding and other issues. Without the federal assistance, Teamster members could have seen their benefits reduced by an average of 60% starting within a couple of years.
Ninth news item
Faiz Shakir, the longtime adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, told CBS News on Thursday that he believes the Vermont lawmaker will seriously consider a bid for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination if President Joe Biden does not run.
“I assume that he would give it a hard look,” Shakir said. “I don’t want to make the judgment for him. Obviously, it would be his choice to make. But I assume that he would want to reevaluate it.”
Shakir added, that Sanders, age 81, is “very aware that he’s older now and he’d have to make a real judgment about his own vigor and his stamina and his desire and hunger and passion to do this a third time. But if it were an open field? Yeah, I’m confident he would take another look at it and say, ‘Do I want to do this or not?'”
That’s it for today. Have a great weekend!
–Dana
Hello.
Dana (1225fc) — 12/9/2022 @ 8:50 amDisrespect for Christianity Act.
NJRob (698a8d) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:03 amI see why Pelosi and Cheney were adamant for Jim Jordan to not be on the Jan 6th Committee
NJRob (698a8d) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:05 amHe vivisected the fraud who lied about Justice Alito to the Judiciary Committee and proved the guy a fabulust and a liar. Don’t want that type of person who focuses on discovering the truth about presenting false witness when engaging in a show trial.
Kyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an Independent…
Populism, on the march.
DCSCA (4a844b) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:05 amThank you, Progressive Wing, for untethering Ms. Sinema from the Donkey Party.
Regarding Iran, if it’s true that Mr. Shekari was “attacking a member of the security forces with a machete”, that is a serious crime, but death penalty?
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:14 amread the whole thing
or, ignore the whole thing and pretend it’s not news
JF (81c4bb) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:30 amHonored host:
Synema going independent seems like a good way to avoid a stupid primary and tangling with revenge mad progressive activists. Should the Trump madness continue, it’s a good model for Republican Senators being threatened with primary-ing.
#3 (NJRob)
What did I miss? I haven’t heard about that one.
#6 (JF)
Could you let us know when the entire thread is up? The whole shadowbanning and manipulation of results thing was far more disturbing than the Hunter Biden laptop stuff.
Appalled (03f53c) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:44 amDana, et. al.:
Not certain why my #8 comment is in moderation. Thanks.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 12/9/2022 @ 9:56 amIncels abound in Islamic culture for any number of reasons, starting with the inequities that polygamy brings. And when the state gives them such a fantastic way to “get even” with all those women who spurn them…
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:03 amWay to go, Ronna, shutting the barn door after the horse has eaten the orange.
No, seriously. I’m happy she waited until after Trump and his cohorts got their shellackings.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:06 am“Our voters need to vote early. There were many in 2020 saying, don’t vote by mail, don’t vote early, and we have to stop that, and understand that if Democrats are getting ballots in for a month, we can’t expect to get it all done in one day,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel warned on Fox News.
I’ve been saying this since November 2020. It’s good to see that the message had gotten to the dinosaur’s brain.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:08 am> Disrespect for Christianity Act.
What utter nonsense.
Which paragraph or clause of that disrepects Christianity, NJRob?
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:09 am$36 billion to the Teamsters pension plan? We now have federal subsidies to the Mafia.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:10 am@12: The problem is that the first amendment protects the rights of individuals, not churches or organizations (except through the individual rights of their members). By protecting organizations (and only non-profit ones), it neglects other activities that individuals may engage in. It’s also cynical, in that organizations, wich may be able to must a fight, are exempted but individuals, who often cannot, risk legal penalties for observing their faith’s moral instruction.
As I’ve pointed out in the past, the lsit provided is exclusionary, not inclusive, as all lists tend to be. As usual, this poor language will be left to the courts to muddle through.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:17 amKyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an Independent…
She will still caucus with the Democrats. The only interesting part of this is that Arizona is so completely polarized that this is probably her best move. Both legacy parties there have lost the plot.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:21 amKevin M: a rule requiring the feds to recognize marriages recognized by any state, and requiring all states to recognize marriages recognized by any state, is only disrespectful of Christianity if you think that Christian definitions should govern the behavior of the feds and of the states.
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:28 amI wonder if some Twitter execs lied to Congress at some point about their message-throttling. I also wonder if they engaged in this after being asked to by politicians, in or out or the administration, bringing first amendment concerns into play. There is also the issue of fraud, if they lied to users about what was going on.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:28 amThis move by Sinema, combined with the fact that angry Dems will still run a candidate in 2024, basically hands the 2025-2031 Senate seat to whichever Trumpist the Republican party selects. Neither Sinema nor Gallego will back down, and the anti-Trumpist vote will split.
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:29 amaphrael, I have no problem with the feds regulating the “full faith and credit” clause wrt states and other government entities. It’s actually necessary in this case.
What I have an issue with is the narrowness of the “participation/celebration” carve-out in 6(b) and its misapprehension of what the first amendment protects. And the stupidity of lists as inclusion attempts.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:33 ambasically hands the 2025-2031 Senate seat to whichever Trumpist the Republican
Disagree. You see lots of graduations of belief among Democrats, yet think the GOP is monolithic and ignore the center entirely. A VIABLE centrist choice in a nutjob polarized party system will likely win. See Alaska for the examples. Murkowski has run against both parties twice now and won.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:37 amNo, seriously. I’m happy she waited until after Trump and his cohorts got their shellackings.
Not why she did it, being a Trumpist.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:38 amAppalled,
https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1600921738425925632
Destroyed Mr Schenk’s credibility. Showed him to be an untrustworthy witness who lies to make himself the star.
NJRob (698a8d) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:42 amTo any extent that it can colorably be claimed that it falls short of, or exceeds, the protections of Loving, Windsor, and Obergefell, it becomes a vehicle for the Supreme Court to revisit those cases. Beware of gift horses, they can still bite.
And I’ll tell you right now, that Section 6(b) “non-profit religious organizations” thing raises my hackles. You shouldn’t need a certificate from the Secretary of State and a letter from the IRS to practice your religion.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:43 amIran is also deliberately maiming protesters.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:48 amKyrsten Sinema intends to stay on her committees, but not actually caucus with the Democrats. She has not been attending most caucus meetings anyway.
There is another question, but I would guess that if the Democrats did not include her in their number, she could join with the Republicans and it would again be 50-50 with equal membership on committees, and Republican Senators would have more members on committees than in the case of 51-49.
Unanswered are her plans for 2024. Does this mean she is not running for re-election, or will she try to run as a third party candidate?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/sinemas-decision-quit-democratic-party-jolts-arizona-2024-senate-race-rcna60947
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:56 am16.aphrael (4c4719) — 12/9/2022 @ 10:28 am
That was what the Defense of Marriage Act passed during the Clinton Administration, said the federal government would not do. It applies to peripheral issues, like taxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Marriage_Act
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:02 amAn example of how an independent might win in a polarized election: Suppose the major parties nominate Trump and AOC and Paul Ryan runs as an independent.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:03 amThat would seem to me to be required by the constitution
Article IV, Section 1:
But apparently not so, or at least DOMA attempted (maybe successfully) to alllow each state to determine what it meant.
Divorces done in any state are recognized in all states.
They passed the current bill or the grounds that maybe the Supreme Court could reverse n United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges – and threw in interracial marriage for good measure.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:09 amThe first two at least would be for contempt of Congress (refusing to testify)
Jeffrey Clark would be for his plan to issue a false statement.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:12 amI think this must mean the old lawyers Trump had before the search warrant.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:13 amIt looks as though the theocracy in Iran is in deep deep trouble. The hard-core Koran-thumpers refuse to budge even a little bit, and increasingly opt for the gun and the gallows. The Khomeini family refuses to speak on the side of the regime. The Rafsanjanis also refuse. The regime’s support is limited to the reflexively devout, the hired thugs, and those me who like beating on women.
There is increasingly no middle ground. The regime either wins, and rules, with the whip and the hangman, or it shatters completely. In the latter case they may not have enough lampposts.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:14 amDivorces done in any state are recognized in all states.
But not by all churches.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:15 amhttps://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gops-lost-vote-harvest-georgia-midterms-election-voter-turnout-gop-trump-candidates-mail-in-absentee-early-11670536141?mod=hp_opin_pos_2
The Republican Party had a different policy with respect to mail voting and early voting in Florida, even back in 2020 and that year Trump said it was OK in Florida.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:20 amKevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:14 am
And a sister and nephew of Ali Khamenei.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/sister-irans-supreme-leader-condemns-his-rule-urges-revolutionary-guards-disarm-2022-12-07
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:25 amRespect for Marriage…aka letting a gay couple seize your wealth if you decline to use your talents to endorse their marriage.
We’re all teamsters now, well at least we’re all now paying dues.
And finally some good news:
“We can now confirm that Diablo Canyon nuclear plant will be seeking a 20-year extension, not a 5-year extension of operation.
That was just a lil fig leaf to keep the political process moving nicely.
After this, work’ll likely start on the 80-year license.“
https://twitter.com/energybants/status/1601012058556100608?s=46&t=-BG7Bojmj4JOy59o0wrU0g
Approval looking favorable now that Dems have realized depending on EVs and renewables will shut the state down.
Obudman (6c7d77) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:30 amThere is a type of person who, upon entering a room with 100 people, 98 of which like him, will immediately head for the other two in order to bend them to his will.
This is pretty much how the cake baker thing works, too.
There is discrimination in the world. Everyone here has been discriminated against for one reason or the other. It’s tolerable since it isn’t organized or mandatory, like Jim Crow was, with only a few exceptions (e.g. smoking).
Individuals discriminate without penalty in many cases. Some white men will not date black women. Ever. Things like that are common and we accept them.
I would have no problem with a business discriminating for any reason so long as they posted this rule on all signs and advertisements for that business. I suspect that it would limit their trade to like-minded haters.
The baker and his refusal to bake a cake? It’s a marketplace and no one has to use his services.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 11:46 amHere is a post to chew on:
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/is-the-country-getting-better
Appalled (83c0b6) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:05 pmNJRob — Appreciate the link. I really don’t like Jim Jordan, but I always enjoy seeing the political arts performed well. He did a good job at taking apart a witness’ unfortunate ghostwritten book exaggeration on a small but material point. The rest beongs into the “what politicians do” category, but he’s given himself the latitude to do this.
I was fantasizing this would have something to do with allegations that Alito leaked the that supreme court ruling. Alas, no.
Appalled (83c0b6) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:17 pmAppalled,
The fabulist is the one that made up the story. Both parties allegedly involved say it’s nonsense. His credibility is shot.
NJRob (ce220f) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:30 pmThe allegation being the one around the Hobby Lobby case — not the Roe v Wade reversal.
I think you have good reson to say his credibility is — if not completely gone — seriously damaged.
Appalled (83c0b6) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:39 pmKyrsten Sinema leaves the Democratic Party and becomes an Independent…
Give her credit for being young enough and wise enough at recognizing the swelling ranks of the populist reality around her. And for beginning to make the move at joining up with where most American voters are: independents.
Of course she’ll caucus w/t Ds for as much support and campaign cash as she can tap- and the Rs will court her as well. Manson should wise up as well. The indies will have the power w/a Senate this close. And the more indies, the better for a Populist America. The deconstruction and dissolution of both these two ancient, Royalist encrusted, now wholly minority political parties in America- which fewer and fewer voters associate with- and which have rigged a system for decades to place chiefly their R or D choices up and down ballots is the last best hope for the United States. Pelosi, McCarthy, Schumer and McConnell represent increasingly shrinking slivers of the electorate–far from any majority of where the electorate is at. They and their bloated, out of touch parties have got to go.
On December 17, 2020, Gallup polling found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrats, 25% identified as Republican, and 41% as Independent. – source, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_U.S._states
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nC65Udo2qQ&t=11s
DCSCA (080515) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:56 pm^ *Manchin. Typo.
DCSCA (080515) — 12/9/2022 @ 12:57 pm@23
But… isn’t that true for just about any case laws v. statutes that Congress may deem to pass?
Isn’t this section what Mike Lee warned about? In that, it opens doors for biased lawfare against the churches if they don’t toe the line?
whembly (e2380c) — 12/9/2022 @ 1:09 pmSo she doesn’t get primaryed by rueben gallego who might win. She is loved by republicans not democrats. Most of you don’t know her history. She started out running in the GREEN party as a lefty and realized she couldn’t win. So she became a democrat. She won primary as progressive democrat. Then won congress seat when libertarian siphoned off republican votes. The definition of a political opportunists.
asset (2d84ba) — 12/9/2022 @ 1:48 pm@44. With age comes wisdom- she’s going w/t predominant flow: American Populism– and will dip both oars in the D and R waters.
DCSCA (c4323a) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:03 pmSinema, Manchin, Romney, Ryan.
The Sane Folks Party.
With the added bonus that two of the four are alumni of my school (BYU).
norcal (862cdb) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:04 pmIn that, it opens doors for biased lawfare against the churches if they don’t toe the line?
I think that churches, per se, are excluded, and church-run charities have SC protection. But there is nothing there for the cake-maker. Nothing at all. It seems to ride roughshod over for-profit businesses that which to act morally as they see morality.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:06 pmThe Sane Folks Party.
Note that the “centrist” party hasn’t done very well in the UK. It’s been quite some time since the Liberals had power. But then they don’t have two polarized parties on the wings right now.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:09 pmSinema, Manchin: the Survivor Party
Romney, Ryan: the Stale Loaf Party
DCSCA (c4323a) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:11 pmWhat Ukraine should do:
Given that they have long-range drown capability, why don’t they try the McCain “chaff into the electric station” thing. It’s non-lethal but could bring the war home to Russians, which I think they need to do.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:11 pmIan Miles Cheong @stillgray
So here’s a question for @elonmusk and @bariweiss: were any political candidates— either in the US or elsewhere— subject to shadowbanning while they were running for office or seeking re-election?
@elonmusk
JF (404915) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:13 pmYes
@ggreenwald
Conservatives: The reach of our tweets is being limited by a progressive Twitter workforce.
Dems: That’s an insane conspiracy theory.
Bari Weiss: Here are the docs proving this.
Dems: Everyone knew this already. It’s an — all together now — nothing burger.
JF (404915) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:14 pmPension bail out history pbgc 1974 under republican president. Businesses who had been dipping into or taking most of their workers pension money were afraid they would get sued by their employes so republicans in congress along with mafia controlled democrats like cannon in nevada and later abscam convicted democrats in the house did the bidding of their corporate masters. Dubya in 2006 before democrats took over congress passed PPA to further shore up pension chicanery.
asset (2d84ba) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:17 pmWhen you stand in the middle of the road you get run over! Attributed to jebbie and the other 16 dwarfs.
asset (2d84ba) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:21 pmSinema, Manchin: the Survivor Party
Romney, Ryan: the Stale Loaf Party
DCSCA (c4323a) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:11 pm
By that metric, Trump is in the Stale Loaf Party.
norcal (862cdb) — 12/9/2022 @ 2:24 pmI shadow banned everybody on Twitter for 16 years, by not having Twitter. Mr. Elon, the Musk, overestimates his $44 billion white elephant’s significance to the world.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 3:04 pm@55. A Trump Party is deliciously fun, norcal:
the Chocolate Cake w/Two Ample, Well-Rounded Scoops of Dolly Madison Vanilla Ice Cream Party.
DCSCA (8763d6) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:11 pmWhat Ukraine should do:
Take the American tax dollars that’ keeping ’em afloat- launder it where the sun doesn’t shine; invite Disney to build a massive theme park across multiple regions in the land for free using those bogus bucks– have Z boast, ‘Why would I want to be president of Ukraine when I am the king of Disneyсвіт!.– then watch and see if Vlad bombs Mickey Mouse. 😉
DCSCA (8763d6) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:21 pmSince I’ve been told that Twitter is solely there to lure unsuspecting proles into viewing ads, and protecting advertisers from bad vibes is the only reason that Twitter bans users and takes down tweets, what do advertisers get when Twitter simply makes some users’ tweets propagate slowly? It would seem that the action is directed at the user and not to favor advertisers’ sensitive natures.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:33 pmI am shocked, shocked!
A Silicon Valley company has a lefty culture which results in business practices with a lefty bent.
norcal (862cdb) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:43 pmLooking forward to a Musk re-launch and sticking Twitter’s landing.
DCSCA (78d5c3) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:53 pmthe whole thing
JF (1a68f5) — 12/9/2022 @ 4:59 pmI shadow banned everybody on Twitter for 16 years, by not having Twitter. Mr. Elon, the Musk, overestimates his $44 billion white elephant’s significance to the world.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 3:04 pm
investors are waiting to here when you decide to get on Twitter, nk, but be wary of insider trading laws if you tell someone
but yeah, it’s really not that significant, but don’t tell the FBI and DHS that, not to mention the Biden campaign
JF (1a68f5) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:06 pm
JF (1a68f5) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:06 pmherehearSo, the counting is over. The new House is 222-213. Just like the old House.
They say that controlling his caucus will be hard for Speaker-to-be McCarthy with such a narrow margin (9 votes), but Pelosi managed it just fine with the same numbers, and a no less contentious caucus. The so-called Freedom Caucus threatens to elect someone other than McCarthy but that will work as well as the threats to replace Pelosi did last Congress.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:15 pmWe had people gaslighting and saying the “algorithm was unbiased.” But I guess they were right in that it wasn’t an algorithm, but actual leftists doing the shadowbanning and blocking of conservatives. No programs involved.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:15 pmBy that metric, Trump is in the Stale Loaf Party.
By that metric, Trump is in the Stale Oaf Party.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:16 pmA Silicon Valley company has a lefty culture which results in business practices with a lefty bent.
Despite all the denials.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:17 pmOJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
.
.
.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
OJ: I didn’t do it.
Much later: OK, so I did it. What’s the big deal, everyone knew that?!
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/9/2022 @ 5:21 pmWhy would Musk want to air this dirty linen? To save money on golden parachutes by showing that the firings of the former executives were for cause and not at will?
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 6:06 pm“Why would Musk want to air this dirty linen?”
Twitter has to start making a lot of money very soon. Musk has (correctly) identified Trump supporters as some of the biggest suckers in the world, so he’s rolling out the red carpet.
Davethulhu (02f479) — 12/9/2022 @ 6:18 pmDavethulhu (02f479) — 12/9/2022 @ 6:18 pm
oh no, poor Davethulhu, who will ban Andy Ngo now???
it’s too bad for Musk that Wall Street doesn’t seem to think Trumpers are bigger suckers than NeverTrumpers
JF (956f27) — 12/9/2022 @ 6:41 pmWall Street? Twitter was delisted a month ago.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 7:10 pmSometimes “Wall Street” is used in the vernacular to describe investment bankers. Musk is smart enough to spread the risk on twitter around. He also encouraged share holders to trade shares for equity stakes rather than cash and I’d assume that some/most of those people are “Wall Street”
steveg (cbe1ec) — 12/9/2022 @ 7:53 pmAh! Thanks, steveg.
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 8:01 pmThis all to keep the corporate state establishment in control. Right left conflict in the streets or otherwise is bad for business profits. The right is easy to control despite all their gun nuts. The left with all those pesky minorities is more difficult as they have delt with repression before.
asset (89af5e) — 12/10/2022 @ 12:40 amsteveg (cbe1ec) — 12/9/2022 @ 7:53 pm
nk (595fd2) — 12/9/2022 @ 8:01 pm
[file under: “No, I am not easily impressed.”]
A shout-out to these two commenters who demonstrate the highest standard of integrity and interaction. Would that we all follow their good example and be in their august company.
felipe (484255) — 12/10/2022 @ 7:17 amhttps://taibbi.substack.Com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-american
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:24 amThere were two cartoons in Politico’s weekly collection that I especially liked, Wuerker’s “So Much Winning!”, and Ramirez’s tribute to Ray Charles.
(The first isn’t subtle, but doesn’t need to be.)
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:40 amRobert Reich’s intellectual dishonesty exposed
Then: Twitter is a private company, the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply
Now: Terrible monopoly destroying free speech.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:49 amTo go just a little further: In the past, “Wall Street” was sometimes contrasted with “Main Street”, rich investors versus the middle class.
(And, in Britain, “high street” means the part of a town where the most important shops and businesses are. Sometimes it is used to mean the retail sector as a whole.)
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:49 amI see from that Politico cartoon page that the Left’s new theme is that Musk is a Nazi. Anything, I guess, to get people to ignore the collusion between the DNC and the former Twitter staff.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:55 amAnd, never mind the laptop itself, a Congressional investigation into COLLUSION between the Democratic Party and Social Media companies is probably necessary, with a view towards limitations on content-based censorship in social media.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:58 amNon-binary Biden nuclear official Sam Brinton accused in second luggage heist
fortunately, “they” is a Biden minion which means you won’t find the story in WaPo, NYT, Politico or LAT
JF (5fd6c6) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:09 amGretchen Reynolds has some advice for us:
Here’s the study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02100-x
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:12 amThis also shows that Biden’s supposed tilt towards nuclear energy is a sham. Unless and until there is a safe, operational spent fuel disposal site (instead of storing it in relatively unprotected sites near the plants themselves) there is no way forward on nuclear power. And appointing this nutjob as a senior official should tell anyone working on such to update their resumes.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:14 amYou would think that they had learned from the OPM disaster not to put Woke tokens in charge of something people care about.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:17 amHurry to the bus stop. Rush up the stairs. Play tag with your kids. Romp with the dog. Vacuum the living room with a little extra zing.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:19 amSpeed killsPep up your life with a little meth.
“The study finds that as few as three minutes a day of vigorous everyday activity is linked to a 40 percent lower risk of premature death in adults”
Does that include strenuously clutching pearls and hefting partisan grievances?
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:26 amAJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:26 am
I’ll bet you were asking for a friend.
JF (c5973b) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:36 am#89 Well, as far as I know there aren’t many pearl divers where the study was done, but it appears to me that diving for pearls would be excellent exercise.
Are you thinking of go8ing into that business?
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:34 amFifty years ago this weekend; when America truly was great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7y5feeMvEo
DCSCA (295c8f) — 12/10/2022 @ 12:42 pmRobert Reich’s intellectual dishonesty exposed
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 9:49 am
What a tool.
People who operate on pure emotion should stay away from the field of economics. That goes for Paul Krugman as well.
norcal (862cdb) — 12/10/2022 @ 12:56 pmfelipe,
steveg (4f470b) — 12/10/2022 @ 1:37 pmthanks but there have been numerous times here where I’ve made an ass of myself. I’ll keep trying to do better
>limitations on content-based censorship in social media.
those limitations are extremely dangerous and may make it impossible to moderate places like this comments section.
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/10/2022 @ 1:42 pm@86 I have had to hold my nose and support nuclear energy. Most will come around when the methane frozen at the bottom of the oceans begins to thaw out and bubble to the surface thanks to global warming. Looks like anti-lgbtq terrorists are attacking power stations in pro lgbtq areas in the west. (DU) The party is always right for the communist party or the corporate establishment democrats (DNC) Reich and krugman no what they have to say to be put on the media. Stalin hitler non-agression pact. aug. 22 1939 hitler bad communist partys.midnight pact is signed aug 23 1939 hitler good england france poland bad!
asset (8bbfab) — 12/10/2022 @ 1:42 pmTo flesh the twitter deal out for anyone who cares, out of the $44B, about $27B came from Musk. Major stakeholder former CEO Jack Dorsey rolled all his shares ($1B) into an equity stake as did a Saudi Prince of some stripe and the Qatari Investment Fund. Larry Ellison put together an investment group for $5B and Ellison is said to have contributed $1B cash to that group.
The rest, about $13B is loans guaranteed by Twitter, not Musk personally.
All according to Al Jazeera here
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/28/how-elon-musk-financed-his-twitter-takeover
steveg (4f470b) — 12/10/2022 @ 1:57 pmLarry Ellison has probably spent the past month clarifying “no I am not related to Caroline Ellison”.
urbanleftbehind (945ece) — 12/10/2022 @ 2:41 pmthose limitations are extremely dangerous and may make it impossible to moderate places like this comments section.
Well, like most federal laws, it can be for companies of a certain size. Our host may aspire to such success but I think he’s not yet achieved it.
Question: Do you find free speech more dangerous that controlled speech?
It would be terrible (and illegal) for government to impose mandatory censorship, but limiting the scope of (optional) private censorship is another matter. Saying “You may censor in these areas, but not in others” is different than saying “you must censor in certain areas, or else.”
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 4:32 pmI have had to hold my nose and support nuclear energy
It’s really the only non-fossil-fuel option that is available 24/7. Wind power is mostly a tax dodge, solar is great (my next house will have a >10KW solar setup and a powerwall) but not so much at night. It even works in the New England winter if you use some power keeping them warmish.
Most of the problems with nuclear are human-engineered — no disposal sites, excessive lawfare driving up costs. They claim that the newer designs are much safer than the 1960’s-era plants that are still running 20 years after their sell-by date because they cannot be replaced.
Germany, which is subject to neither tidal waves or earthquakes, took one look at the Fukuyama disaster and started shutting down their nuclear and replacing it with Russian natural gas and coal. And then they lecture us on global warming.
The future is nuclear and solar.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 4:41 pm“you must censor in certain areas, or else.”
What’s the predicate that requires this? Do you honestly believe that people can’t get their message out without the government sticking its nose in? Do you think the same holds true for the Fairness Doctrine? Maybe the government should nationalize Twitter….that will ensure it dies.
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/10/2022 @ 4:45 pmThe internet is still one of those places where people can choose who succeeds and who fails with their feet. If there is too much moderation, people will leave. If there is not enough moderation, people will leave. At this point at least, there isn’t a need for too much regulation because if the private companies get the balance too wrong, the market will force them to course-correct or die.
Nic (896fdf) — 12/10/2022 @ 4:47 pmWhat’s the predicate that requires this?
Well, since that is the alternative that I said was illegal, I can’t answer that.
My suggestion was that government could limit private censorship, just as it can regulate other business activities. What it cannot do is mandate censorship, or use private companies as its censorship proxy.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:00 pmIf there is too much moderation, people will leave
Suppose they censor you, but make it look like they didn’t? Shadow-banning. They let everyone on your friends list see your messages, but no one else knows the messages (or perhaps you) are even there.
If one of government’s actual jobs is to prevent fraud, they might want to tell companies they cannot do this.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:03 pmAt this point at least, there isn’t a need for too much regulation because if the private companies get the balance too wrong, the market will force them to course-correct or die.
We are finding that Twitter did everything it could to hide what they were doing, pontificating about algorithmic decisions and even-handedness when their internal communications — happily displayed by the new owner — show this was a bald-faced lie. They intended to influence political opinion by what they refused to allow, while pretending to be just a messaging service.
The whole shadow-banning thing, telling people their messages had been sent, when in fact they were blocked, was part and parcel of this fraud.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:10 pmA Brief History of Kids Today Are Spoiled
Barely scratches the surface, but enough to make the point. And funny.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:19 pmChoosing what not to say is as much Constitutionally protected expression as choosing what to say. So “limit[ing] private censorship”, as you call it, is just another way of saying “limiting private expression.” And the only way government can do that Constitutionally is in accordance with one of the handful of narrow exceptions to the First Amendment’s prohibition on government censorship. If you think any of those apply, please say which.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:20 pmI saw this cartoon once. It was of a very emaciated king, obviously on the edge of starvation. He was telling his interlocutor: “I have to be wary about everything I eat. There is poison everywhere.” And the visitor asks: “Who told you that, Your Majesty?” And the king points to a shall we say “extremely over-nourished” man next to him who is gorging himself on the platters of food which surround him and says: “My food taster.”
Just thought I’d share.
nk (5784d5) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:29 pmSuppose they censor you, but make it look like they didn’t? Shadow-banning.
Shadowbanning isn’t new and it’s actually easier to get around on twitter than on many other websites. Presumably a person who worries about being shadowbanned on twitter is someone who expects to see retweets from non-followers, so they should be keeping an eye on their analytics. If they suspect shadowbanning, they log out and look at their own content. If they can see it, they are not shadow-banned, just paranoid. If they can’t see it, they log back in and ask their followers to put the message out and then screenshot and retweet their stuff if all they want is their message to get out. If they have some kind of money making endeavor hooked to their twitter, they ask their followers to retweet a screenshot and add the link to where-ever it is that they normally send you for monetary purposes (substack, etsy, twitch, their professional publication, where ever.) If they have good followers or outraged followers, they end up with outcry and either un-shadowbanned, or people who take note and, if it happens often, eventually vote with their feet. If that happens often enough, the company either course-corrects or dies.
Nic (896fdf) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:31 pmJapanese gettin’ it on. It’s business time, compared to the rest of east Asia, that is.
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:50 pmMeantime, in South Korea, they’re still sorting out a single way to tell someone’s age.
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:57 pmI think Kevin believes, as Justice Thomas impled, that Twitter may qualify as a Common Carrier….like the phone companies. And because of its near monopoly status as a rapid take provider, that it should be required to take all comers, except for speech that is illegal.
The problem is that it’s unclear whether Twitter stays viable when it gets over-run by conspiracy theories, blatant propaganda, and white supremacy garbage. How many advertisers will want their ad pieces side-by-side with anti-semitic tirades or the latest greatest vaccine machination. If people tire of the free for all and ad revenue goes away, who compensates the owners of Twitter? Was it in effect a taking?
Now you might say, Twitter is too big to fail…except it has been hemorrhaging. I’m with Nic. Let the market solve this one. Because of limited spectrum, the radio waves are probably closer to a limited resource, yet you have no interest in compelling equal time via the Fairness Doctrine. I wonder why……
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:04 pmInstead of an NCAA Division III squad, I’d like to see an NBA team try it.
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:09 pmI have to say this: So what. There is no legal case for fraud. Whether regular or social or mainstream media, they have the right as private companies under our 1st Amendment to disclose or not disclose what they please.
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:17 pmPaul
steveg (9c2875) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:31 pmThey were a publicly traded company and gave up some of those rights of non-disclosure
@112. Declaring the 13th largest (by # of users) social network a common carrier would be a significant contraction of First Amendment protections, the most significant such contraction in decades. Though it would surprise me, I’m not saying it can’t happen. (Trump retired me from the prediction business.) It’s just not the current state of the law.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:31 pmRe 113, I’m surprised there’s enough dudes there to field a team MBB. Grinell is one of the 4 CMOG schools that the Hyde Park based white kids from my high school would apply en masse to. (Carleton, Macalester, Oberlin were the other 3).
urbanleftbehind (306b75) — 12/10/2022 @ 6:54 pm@106 Maybe rich and middle class kids. I see poor kids living on the street or in a car. The police will stop you begging with your kids. They even put up signs on highways don’t give to beggers. Some can’t pass a drug test so the state wont help them. The homeless problem is getting worse as many seniors are being price out apartments as their rent is more then they get from social security.
asset (4bd31f) — 12/10/2022 @ 8:55 pm@118. I think you missed the point of the thread.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:15 pmSo “limit[ing] private censorship”, as you call it, is just another way of saying “limiting private expression.”
No, it is not. Twitter, Facebook, etc, are NOT expressing a damn thing. That is the whole point of their liability protection.
It is the users who are expressing themselves, and limiting the way that Twitter et al can screw with their posts is not harming the user’s expression, but protecting it.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:46 pmShadowbanning isn’t new and it’s actually easier to get around on twitter than on many other websites.
Phishing isn’t new and easy to avoid, but it is still criminal. I’m not sure what you are saying when you say that a harmful act is easy to get around.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:48 pmI think Kevin believes, as Justice Thomas impled, that Twitter may qualify as a Common Carrier
Not exactly. I believe that government may decide to regulated them as a common carrier, so long as they do not impose censorship themselves or mandate censorship by the carrier. If they allow the carrier to censor some things (e.g. inciting insurrection) they can place limits on what the common carrier may do.
With the phone companies it was pretty much none, in part due to technical and practical reasons. There is speech that is criminalized, or actionable in civil court. But these are very narrowly defined categories. This is more the model I have in mind.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 10:53 pmThe problem is that it’s unclear whether Twitter stays viable when it gets over-run by conspiracy theories, blatant propaganda, and white supremacy garbage
And again, why the parade of horrors? I DID NOT SAY “No Censorship.” I said that the private carrier has a limited power to censor.
As far as blatant propaganda is concerned that was allowed before, if it followed the preferred narrative. Like “it came from bats.”
As far as conspiracy theories, there are probably 100,000 Facebook pages about 9/11 Truth. Again, only stuff that attacked the wrong people was blocked. Like, say, the actual conspiracy to block information detrimental to the Biden campaign.
Yes, white supremacy is garbage, but there’s a lot of racial garbage from other directions, too, and that is not blocked and in some cases supported.
But here’s the thing: Most users don’t want to bottom-feed. Back in the AOL days, there were some pretty dodgy chat rooms, but hardly anyone wanted to go there. There are places on the Internet right now that I don’t care to go. Am I harmed that some toothless crackers want to complain to each other that [black people] get all the good jobs?
No.
Besides, a Twitter that can censor can also steer ads instead. That the garbage pages don’t have ads should not change anything one little bit.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:03 pmDeclaring the 13th largest (by # of users) social network a common carrier
It is still larger than the populations of the US, UK and France combined.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:09 pmThe real problem that these networks have is that few countries have rules against government censorship of speech. The EU intends to mandate censorship on ALL social networks. This is a problem if private corporations are forced to be government censors by proxy.
The 1st amendment becomes pretty dead when all you can do is go down to Speaker’s Corner in the park.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:12 pmThat’s simply incorrect, Kevin. The right not to have speech compelled is as protected by the First Amendment as the right to say what one wants. And I’m not sure you understand how that “liability protection” (I assume you mean Sec. 230?) works. The reason there’s a need for Sec. 230 is that third-party speech posted on a website becomes the website’s speech, so without Sec. 230 the website would be liable for it. It’s the same principle by which a newspaper can be liable for publishing a defamatory letter to the editor. And if posting third-party speech becomes the website’s speech, the decision by the website not to post it is also the website’s speech.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:37 pmSo? When there are 12 larger networks, the reasoning that applied to AT&T goes out the window.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:39 pm@Kevin@121 I’m saying that Twitter isn’t some new special use case and while it is causing inconvenience to some people, that isn’t sufficient for regulation. Also, if someone is using twitter to pass their message or to send people to their monetary endeavor, then they are using it as free ad space and we don’t force any companies to provide free ad space for anyone else.
Nic (896fdf) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:30 amIf organ grinders and their dancing monkeys can be geniuses, then Twitter can be a public carrier.
I don’t bemoan the “infringement on freedom of expression”. I bemoan the perversion of language. Finding a label that justifies what you want to do, and pinning it on whom you want to do it to.
Right, kulaks and right-wing extremists?
nk (5784d5) — 12/11/2022 @ 6:18 amI do love how the argument has switched from leftists running these platforms aren’t censoring conservatives to, of course they’re censoring and they have a right to prevent hate speech on their platform.
Of coirse, it isn’t hate speech they were blocking. It was political speech at the behest of leftist politicians and leftists in government agencies.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/11/2022 @ 6:28 amhttps://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2022/12/06/this-is-your-brain-on-crt-rutgers-professor-advocates-end-date-for-whiteness-n669751
This racism and hatred is being taught as legitimate at universities throughout the nation. And people still support this evil.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:01 amGeorge Will thinks this lame duck session could do three good things in one bill:
This obvious — and much-needed — compromise has been blocked by extremists on the left and right, and by two incompetent narcissists, Obama and Trump.
Perhaps with them out of the way, Congress can finally do some right things.
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:35 amThis racism and hatred is being taught as legitimate at universities throughout the nation. And people still support this evil.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:01 am
Not that I disagree with this statement (just walk into any liberal arts or social sciences class on any university campus as proof of this), but The Root is basically the black version of The Daily Stormer. It’s important to keep that in mind when their articles come up.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:37 amOf coirse, it isn’t hate speech they were blocking. It was political speech at the behest of leftist politicians and leftists in government agencies.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/11/2022 @ 6:28 am
Yeah, and that’s the overarching issue–that government agents (the FBI) and a social media company (Twitter) whose platform is the de facto communication tool for the vast majority of mass media figures, colluded to both suppress and manipulate the narrative surrounding a news story.
The rhetorical hand-waving is strictly motivated by the fact that Twitter was one of the left’s go-to propaganda tools, one that they directly controlled, and now it’s a little less so because their enemies aren’t having their speech suppressed on said platform.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:42 amJim Miller (f29931) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:35 am
What’s driving this is the forced expiration of Title 42 (covid—remember?) by a nut job judge, which Biden has wanted to scrap anyway despite doing the obligatory halfa$$ appeal. Even Thom Tillis acknowledges this:
So, what this “compromise” does is give us what we should expect from the government anyway (border security) and more money that will not actually be used for border security in any meaningful way by this administration, in exchange for giving the left what it has wanted all along. Essentially, Biden and the Dems want some goodies in exchange for doing their job, and the usuals think it’s a great idea.
JF (db1c0a) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:08 amlurker (cd7cd4) — 12/10/2022 @ 11:37
Without Section 230 you would have a choice between making a site a completely free forum or having the site basically not exist at all. (No un pre-approved user generated content)
Section 230 allows limited censorship without the site becoming a publisher responsible for whatever anybody puts on there..
Sammy Finkelman (96b037) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:15 amNO democratic country that respects human rightd ever had or ever will have “border control”
Sammy Finkelman (96b037) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:17 amKevin M (1ea396) — 12/10/2022 @ 5:10 pm
In some cases, they even made messages (or accounts) unsearchable
I say that doing this in secret amounts to fraud – except that they didn’t charge users money.
Sammy Finkelman (96b037) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:30 am#138
There is an actual problem if they violated their terms of service. (All that legal garbage you scroll through to sign up)
Appalled (36422e) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:52 am@126: Please explain what part of my posts on Twitter are Twitter’s speech.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:56 amThe reason there’s a need for Sec. 230 is that third-party speech posted on a website becomes the website’s speech, so without Sec. 230 the website would be liable for it.
No, it states that it is NOT the website’s speech.
What it does is say that, should the owners of a website remove something that they find offensive, this removal is not actionable. But they are not required to remove it.
Still, neither of those actions makes the statements of others the website’s speech.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:03 amThere is the other issue that Section 230, as written, is immaterial since it was part of a law about regulating sexual content (otherwise nullified by the SC) and it is being applied to things that were never within the scope of the Act.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:06 amThere is an actual problem if they violated their terms of service
I am sure that their lawyers piled all the rights up on their side, allowing them to be arbitrary, capricious and spiteful and it’s all OK.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:10 amSection 230 allows limited censorship without the site becoming a publisher responsible for whatever anybody puts on there..
Indeed. And having done that, the government could change what those limits are. Why is this so hard to understand?
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:11 amNO democratic country that respects human rightd ever had or ever will have “border control”
No country that does not have border control is an actual “country.” It’s just a place on a map.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:15 am@126: Please explain what part of my posts on Twitter are Twitter’s speech.
Every little bit of them if you ask them to repeat them to the world. Could you make Elon Musk recite the Pledge of Allegiance?
nk (bb1548) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:15 amSo that’s what you think about Israel?
NJRob (094db6) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:28 amLurker and Kevin,
I have enjoyed your conversation on free speech, it’s one of the better, more substantial exchanges in some time
EPWJ (650a62) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:33 amThe people who claim that Twitter was engaging in an egregious form of censorship — even though anything that Twitter blocked or deprioritized could be published in other forums and possibly still found on Twitter itself — were not at all offended when it was revealed that National Enquirer had used “catch-and-kill” to bury stories unfavorable to Trump leading up to the 2016 election. The parent company bought exclusive rights to stories about Trump’s sleaziness and then never published them, ensuring that no one else could publish them either. According to Ronan Farrow, there were as many as 60 such stories.
Radegunda (4b2605) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:36 amApparently nobody in MAGA-land has any critical thoughts about that particular instance of “election interference.”
Radegunda (4b2605) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:36 am
LOL, what the Enquirer did was irrelevant with the MSM more than making up the difference. But it’s nice to see you’re on board with public/private collusion when it hurts someone you don’t like. So don’t complain if and when it happens to your side, too.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:39 amAnother instance of leftists treating Twitter like a toy that had been stolen from them:
“I want to be diplomatic. I think Musk is an entitled jerk, and so participating in a platform of his just helps him out, and I generally don’t like helping out entitled jerks,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Hillary Clinton’s typically mild-mannered 2016 vice presidential running mate.
Musk was never a problem when he was parroting the WEF globalist line and acted like “one of them.” Indeed, Kaine’s fellow leftists were bragging this year that high gas prices were no big deal to them because they owned a Tesla, and they were more than happy to treat Musk’s cars like a status symbol.
Now that Musk is airing out their dirty laundry, suddenly he’s an “entitled jerk” and not one of them anymore, so he can’t be “helped out.”
If this hurts people like Kaine and his allies and makes them mad, it’s automatically good.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:58 amRelated:
Rip Murdock (270c0e) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:14 amRobert Hanssen, Harold James Nicholson, and Aldrich Ames are all available.
Rip Murdock (270c0e) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:21 am50 years ago today December 11, 1972– around the pinnacle of the American Century, when the U.S. was still truly great– and Joe Biden had been elected to the U.S. Senate a month earlier…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmq2KTX8e5k
________
Everything old is new again; congrats to NASA for getting the bells-and-whistles-loaded Orion down in the Pacific, repeating Apollo 4’s 25,000 mph., 1967 heatshield style testing– and Russia’s similar Zond 5-styled feat in 1968 of circling the moon and splashing down in the Indian Ocean.
DCSCA (ef8851) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:50 amNobody with a brain and principles ever said it wasn’t censorship, broadly understood. If, as some do, one defines censorship as government imposed, then Twitter wasn’t censoring before, when right-wing accounts were being singled out for suspension, and it isn’t now that left-wing accounts are. Whether one calls it censorship or something else, people with brains and principles who opposed it before continue to oppose it now, and those who supported it before support it now. There are principled arguments for both positions. The hypocrites, and both sides have them, are the people who flipped their arguments when Twitter changed teams.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:31 pmTo be clear, when I say “support” or “oppose” I’m talking about Twitter’s right to do it, not that it’s necessarily a good thing in and of itself. It’s perfectly principled to support Twitter’s right, for example, to suspend Donald Trump and Kathy Griffin, and also believe as I do that both suspensions were craven and stupid.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:40 pmNo one on the right has flipped lurker. But nice attempt to pretend to be above the fray and claim both sides do it when only the left was censoring the right’s political arguments.
Only people on the left getting banned are those who are opening inciting violence who the left supports and let do so and those engaging in trafficking of illegal underage material. Which are you claiming is unfairly being banned by the right?
Third, plenty gaslighted in the past and claimed that twitter wasn’t discriminating against those om the right and they were just blocking those for bad behavior based on algorithms. When told that was nonsense, they persisted.
NJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:42 pmIt states only that it’s not the website’s speech for third party liability purposes. It doesn’t say that it’s not the website’s speech for First Amendment purposes. The courts that have considered this question have confirmed that for First Amendment purposes, it is and remains the website’s speech.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:43 pmThe government can remove Sec. 230’s special protection from third party liability, but it can’t remove the website’s First Amendment protection from government intrusion on the website’s choices about inclusion, moderation and deletion. If SCOTUS decides to curtail First Amendment rights by defining social networks as common carriers, then all bets will be off. But that will be a change to the current jurisprudence, pursuant to which website’s can’t be told whether and how to moderate their content, including the postings of third parties.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:44 pmThe problem is that leftists have no problem hiring racists that use the Root as a platform. There is zero chance anyone would hire a racist from the Daily Stormer to indoctrinate young minds.
Colleges will jump over each other to hire racists from a leftist perspective. Those are the right kind of bigots to them.
NJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:49 pmNJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:42 pm
Mea culpa for addressing your comment seriously, when obviously all your allies are virtuous and all your opponents are violent lying groomers.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:50 pmEvery little bit of them if you ask them to repeat them to the world
This is thew service they purport to offer. By your lights, if I mail a letter, it is the Post Office’s speech.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 12:57 pmalso believe as I do that both suspensions were craven and stupid.
Especially since they left Trump alone until the election was over and his power was minimal. Now, would Elon Musk suspend a re-elected Trump given cause? My guess is that he’d have the same careful calculus on how President Vindictive might respond.
Of course, we’re all in BttF II by then.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:02 pmThe courts that have considered this question have confirmed that for First Amendment purposes, it is and remains the website’s speech.
While Twitter is not liable for any speech it permits, the person who posted the message is liable. So it is the user’s speech. If it was “Twitter’s speech”, and Twitter could not be held liable, then all kinds of libel could be freely posted there without fear of legal liability.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:08 pmThat’s right. That’s exactly what Sec. 230 does. When Twitter creates and posts its own content, it’s liable for it to third parties. When it allows third-parties to post their content, Sec. 230 shields it from liability. And the First Amendment protects Twitter’s right to choose which of all that content, its own and third-parties’, it will and won’t post, moderate and/or delete.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:19 pmStill gaslighting and playing the victim. You aren’t the one who was victimized by the left’s censorship and manipulation of American Pravda. Nice try though.
NJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:27 pmhttps://www.theepochtimes.com/faucis-deposition-lies-and-the-stunning-allegations-of-li-feng-yan_4909814.html?utm_source=News&src_src=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-12-11-1&src_cmp=breaking-2022-12-11-1&utm_medium=email&est=k8AF7cGZjtiWmsUnB9rr7teyxPffAxZc%2FCe9ejmxG9xSXPEsjizwRUI%2BaWc4La8%3D
Some pretended to and some actually beleved that Fauci was honest.
NJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:29 pm“By your lights, if I mail a letter, it is the Post Office’s speech”
You admit the Twitter has some editorial responsibility for not allowing illegal postings, ones including obscenity or calls to violence, and you want them to manage other legal postings that diminish the experience of being on Twitter, like spam, certain scams, stalking, and other abuse, but you then won’t admit that this constitutes editorial discretion. You just want them to lay off political editorializing, but why should the 1A permit their ability to delete spam and ban spammers, but not weigh in on the trustworthiness of vaccine information or vote fraud that might make its users choose poor actions? It would seem like they would both come in together. Now you are likely opining on what Kevin thinks the law ought to be, but let’s not confuse that with what the law IS.
Phone companies and the post office are more analogous to the internet: communication portals. No one can go to the post office and see any of my correspondence. The same in terms of the phone company and my conversations. Twitter on the other hand is one site on the vastness that is the internet, where you can go and see all of the tweets it chooses to post — like you putting up a bunch of art work on the side of your house. You can claim it’s not your artwork, but your choice of displaying it does make it your speech (IMO of course).
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:53 pmNJRob (48b6da) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:27 pm
I replied to your comment substantively and respectfully. You responded by falsely accusing me of dishonesty — yes, claiming that I’m “pretending” is an accusation of dishonesty — which I didn’t even mention in my next reply, and which you now compound by further falsely accusing me of gaslighting. Under those circumstances, for you to also accuse me of playing the victim simply murders irony. If I or anyone else did something similar to you you’d be screaming bloody murder. Anyway, I’m going to follow Patterico’s lead and just be done with you. He’s right. Life’s too short to engage with people who gratuitously insult. Have fun screaming into the void. Bye!
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 1:59 pm@165: Then how come people subpoena websites to get a commenter’s name so they can sue the commenter? And the courts often make the website cough it up.
The commenter remains liable even though it passes through Twitter’s pipes. It’s his speech.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 2:05 pmYou admit the Twitter has some editorial responsibility for not allowing illegal postings, ones including obscenity or calls to violence
No, I do not. At least not legally. Section 230 says EXACTLY that. They may have some moral responsibility but they haven’t any legal duty. If they did Section 230 would offer almost no protection.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 2:08 pmKevin, let’s go through this one more time. The First Amendment and Sec. 230 provide different protections. For First Amendment purposes the comment is considered the speech of both the original commenter and Twitter, so both have First Amendment protection from government censorship. But the original commenter alone retains third-party liability for the comment, because Twitter is shielded from it by Sec. 230. All Sec. 230 does is add an additional layer of protection to the platform. It does not and could not diminish anyone’s protection from the government under the First Amendment, including for choices about what to post, what not to post, what and how to moderate, and what to delete.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/11/2022 @ 2:46 pmFact Checker Glenn Kessler went over the dispute between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci — and awarded the junior senator Two Pinocchios:
This is not surprising; Paul is not a virologist or an epidemiologist, so there is no reason to think he has any particular expertise in these difficult subjects.
Kessler came back to the problem in a later column, but did not change his conclusion.
(The hatred for Fauci reminds me of the way party leaders inspired hatred for Emmanuel_Goldstein, in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. He has received death threats, and his wife and children have been harrassed.)
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/11/2022 @ 3:16 pmJim Miller (f29931) — 12/11/2022 @ 3:16 pm
LOL This would be the same Glenn Kessler who earned Pants on Fire for dismissing the covid lab leak scenario as a ridiculous conspiracy theory, mocking its adherents, and arrogantly asserting “it is virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab…. We deal in facts.”
JF (799343) — 12/11/2022 @ 4:21 pmPaul nailed Fauci to the wall. I pray a court of law does so as well.
NJRob (6cf9ff) — 12/11/2022 @ 4:21 pm(The hatred for Fauci reminds me of the way party leaders inspired hatred for Emmanuel_Goldstein, in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. He has received death threats, and his wife and children have been harrassed.)
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/11/2022 @ 3:16 pm
LOL, it was the regime of unaccountable bureaucrats who made Goldstein a target, and its behavior perfectly mirrors the Branch Covidians during the 2020-21 period, who said that anyone who didn’t get the COVID shot should be denied medical treatment and health insurance, and deserved to die.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 4:40 pmWhat crime do you think Fauci has committed? Or do you just want the government to punish him for hurting your feelings?
Time123 (b5d8db) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:07 pmIt’s what Rand Paul does. Pander.
nk (fc479b) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:10 pmWhat crime do you think Fauci has committed? Or do you just want the government to punish him for hurting your feelings?
Time123 (b5d8db) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:07 pm
I don’t see a problem with punishing him for inciting social contagion, not to mention funding the virus’s creation through one of office’s backdoors to begin with that kicked all this off and then lying about it.
Fauci is representative of the disease of bureaucracy.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:26 pmIt’s what Rand Paul does. Pander.
nk (fc479b) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:10 pm
I’d hope so, if he wants to get re-elected.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:30 pmWhat’s “inciting social contagion” mean?
Time123 (b5d8db) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:51 pmNot a crime, but I think Fauci was a key player in the suppression of speech revolving around COVID lockdowns and lockdown effects on school age children.
In my opinion, Fauci catered to the teachers unions over the children. Early on, the data showed that 99% of school age children could attend school without risk of death or permanent damage and that data set held. Fauci was complicit in the shut down of speech on the subject and parents were unable to make their own informed decisions based on the data. In the long course of his inaction, Fauci sacrificed the development of millions of US schoolchildren in return for the lives of relatively few teachers and administrators.
We went from a women and children get saved first mentality, to trying to save everyone equally and the hell with the kids future development.
I’m fine with saying Fauci did the best he was capable of, but he made mistakes and his mistakes have real costs. But no one is allowed to criticize Fauci or his decisions
steveg (78080b) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:53 pmI’d guess inciting a social contagion in the context of COVID would be pushing only the elitists favored narrative by using fear based rhetoric
steveg (78080b) — 12/11/2022 @ 5:58 pmIf you wanted to torpedo your career in medicine 2020, 2021, even 2022 criticize Fauci on COVID.
You want to torpedo your career in Climate Science (or even statistical analysis) ask hard questions about Anthropologic Climate (warming, chaos etc).
Side note
In my opinion climate science is a good comparison and its AGW tenets are also parroted to the point of ignorance.
The Arctic regions are currently experiencing comparatively very balmy weather which is being widely attributed to global warming. If one were to say that the rare and unusual very high pressure ridges over the Yukon, above Hudson Bay, directly over Greenland are causing the warm weather over the pole and those are not forces that can be directly tied to AGW, they’d be met with howls of indignation be the very same crew of people.
The more they howl and shut down speech about Fauci/COVID, AGW the more I start to think that speech must be close to on target
steveg (78080b) — 12/11/2022 @ 6:15 pm“If one were to say that the rare and unusual very high pressure ridges over the Yukon, above Hudson Bay, directly over Greenland are causing the warm weather over the pole and those are not forces that can be directly tied to AGW, they’d be met with howls of indignation be the very same crew of people.”
It would sound like a theory that could be tested with science, with the forthcoming evidence supporting or refuting the claims. Good science is hard to silence.
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:32 pm“Fauci sacrificed the development of millions of US schoolchildren in return for the lives of relatively few teachers”
How many teachers should have been sacrificed? 5,000? 10,000? You must not know many.
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:36 pmGood news on the nuclear energy front.
Paul Montagu (8f0dc7) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:47 pmHow many teachers should have been sacrificed? 5,000? 10,000? You must not know many.
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:36 pm
Assuming the question-begging premise that they were being “sacrificed” to begin with. I’m extraordinarily grateful our kids went to school in a red state where they got to see their friends’ happy, smiling faces, and are thriving academically as a result.
And speaking as the husband of a school teacher, I’m extraordinarily proud of her for never taking the jab, all the way up until weekly testing was no longer required by the school district. A wonderful middle finger to the Branch Covidians.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:00 pmhow do Russia and China attack America? From within. Just one example: the Rooskies fund the NRA who in turn donate to congress critters. No doubt other monies get funneled in to finance the Royalists running both of America’s corrupt major political parties–
Is the NRA Funded by Russia? What We Know and What We Don’t
The power of the National Rifle Association (NRA) has once again come under scrutiny in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two adults dead. The pro-gun lobbyist group has been widely condemned following the massacre at Robb Elementary School for holding a conference in Houston just days after the tragedy, as well as for how the group’s influence on the Republican Party has held back any attempt at major gun reform in the U.S. for years.
In the days since the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, others have also noted how the NRA has received money and other donations from Russian nationals over the years. “NRA. Who took donations from our enemy, Russia. Russia funded the NRA. Russia helps enable the slaughter of American kids. And they do it on purpose. They are the enemy. Never forget that,” tweeted Louise Mensch, a former British politician and author…
https://www.newsweek.com/nra-fund-russia-uvalde-school-shooting-1712397
DCSCA (448f81) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:07 pmYoung rethugliKKKans were told by MJT that if she had planed and led the insurrection it would have taken control of the capital from the traitors! Total war! Demanded the young rethugliKKKans at their N.Y. meeting.
asset (4b09ab) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:31 pm@184 what is the conservative position on what to do when the warming oceans thaw out the methane gas trapped at the bottom of the ocean and stars bubbling up into the atmosphere.
asset (4b09ab) — 12/11/2022 @ 9:36 pmKevin, let’s go through this one more time. The First Amendment and Sec. 230 provide different protections. For First Amendment purposes the comment is considered the speech of both the original commenter and Twitter, so both have First Amendment protection from government censorship. But the original commenter alone retains third-party liability for the comment, because Twitter is shielded from it by Sec. 230.
And again you are trying to have this both ways.
You say it is Twitter’s speech, but the commenter is liable. Pick one.
I’m consistent; your position is a circular jumble.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 10:50 pmHow many teachers should have been sacrificed? 5,000? 10,000? You must not know many.
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/11/2022 @ 7:36 pm
Hard to say, but here’s some data for you:
Before boosters in 2021, the weekly death rate in the US for all ages for fully immunized people was 1.7 per 100,000 or 1.7 x 10^-5. This is roughly 1 per 1000 over a year. Almost all of whom were over 50.
After boosters in 2022, a fully immunized person with 2 boosters, and OVER the age of 50, face a weekly fatality rate (again, among 50+) of less than 1 chance in 100,000, or less than half the rate of the all-age population in 2021.
Most of that improvement has to do with more effective treatments for Covid patients, such as Paxlovid.
So, if there are 1 millions school teachers and they follow the all ages statistic (probably not as there are few 7%+ teachers) 1,000 school teachers would have died. That may sound like a lot, but even staying at home some did die.
In 2022, the chances were much much less. Maybe 100, maybe not. More were hit by cars.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status?country=~50%2B
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:07 pm* 75+
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:08 pmMore data:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34815280/
In England and Wales:
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:12 pmOf course, the data were 10 times worse for those refusing to be immunized.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:14 pmrethugliKKKans
Maybe this kind of name calling is fine over in your fever swamp, but it’s not OK here.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:28 pmGood news on the nuclear energy front.
(WaPo front-page lead)
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:35 pmOnce the vaccine was available we were almost all back in school. My district started back 2 weeks after the first shot was available to us. The point at which teachers were not in school was also the point at which there were no vaccines. So the number of teachers lost would’ve been the non-vaccinated numbers from the beginning of the epidemic.
(School staff was actually on-site from the beginning of the 20/21 school year with a limited number of students on site starting in Nov 2020. In case some people are interested in August 2020 we were running books out to the cars of to every single one of our students in 113 degree heat.)
Nic (896fdf) — 12/11/2022 @ 11:44 pmNo, Kevin, I said it’s Twitter’s speech and the commenter’s speech. I must not be making myself clear, because frankly I’m bewildered you’re having difficulty grasping it. Do you not get that if you write an article and it’s published by, say, the NY Times, it’s both your speech and The Times’ speech? That if it’s defamatory, you’ll both be liable? And that the same principles apply to the commenter and Twitter except that Sec. 230 gets Twitter, but not the commenter, off the hook for the defamation? This is neither difficult nor debatable. Except for the somewhat recent wrinkle of Sec. 230, it’s longstanding bedrock principles of publishing and First Amendment law.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/12/2022 @ 12:50 am@197 What do you call these young people demanding total war and cheering on MTG saying she would have done the insurrection right and got rid of the traitors!
asset (4b09ab) — 12/12/2022 @ 2:18 amhttps://nypost.com/2022/12/11/pa-school-board-member-refuses-to-vote-for-cis-white-male-for-president/
Bigotry continues to rear its ugly head on the left.
NJRob (6cf9ff) — 12/12/2022 @ 3:16 am“because frankly I’m bewildered you’re having difficulty grasping it. Do you not get that if you write an article and it’s published by, say, the NY Times, it’s both your speech and The Times’ speech?”
It appears to be a lost cause….like Sammy wed to the idea that raising interest rates causes inflation….at some point it’s arguing for the sake of arguing
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/12/2022 @ 4:08 amLurker,
I wanted to follow up on the conversation about the restaurant that refused service to a sect of Christian’s that are strongly opposed to SSM. You’d asked why I thought it was such a clear cut case of religious discrimination.
In the US we have a right to practice our faith as we please. We also have laws that if you operate a business generally open to the public you cannot discriminate based on Religion (among other things). The intent is that people will be free to worship and express their religious faith without fear of persecution.
In this case it seems clear that the group who was refused service was denied service because of working / speaking against SSM, which was motivated by their faith.
I see no reason to suspect that they were motivated by anything other then their religious faith. Similar views are found in many Christian denominations and it’s not uncommon to find leaders of Christian Churches preaching against SSM from the pulpit.
So it seem clear to me that they’re being denied service for expressing a sincerely held religious belief.
Hope that clears up how I view it.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:23 am@184, Steve, I think you’re right about the impact of pushing back against Fauci during covid. There were a lot of people with data driven, nuanced positions who were ignored / attacked for reasonable takes.
The dialog on the covid was in many cases toxic and dishonest often to the point of absurdity.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:27 amIt is surprising how many people still don’t understand that COVID is infectious. Or at least have not thought about all the implications of that fact.
It is true that children are at less risk of dying from COVID than their grandparents. But they can transmit the disease to those who are more at risk. This is especially likely in multi-generational households, or anywhere grandparents provide a large part of the child care.
And, as any grade school teacher can tell you, it is not easy to get children to consistently follow the best practices for avoiding infections.
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:43 amhttps://twitter.com/avidhalaby/status/1602127460677844993?s=46&t=NkDXrrsP_qgfsBT62rDekw
The Twitter whistleblower report is insane. There’s no left/right culture war angle yet. It’s just a lot of very poor (bordering on fraudulent) management.
Elon Musk really should have done some due diligence before he signed the offer to buy Twitter.
Time123 (eb9243) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:53 amAnyone know if the indemnity clause in the purchase agreement makes musks Twitter liable for this or if the previous managers are still on the hook.
Jim, your concerns are reasonable and a lot of policy was based on them when we didn’t have very good data on transmission. But now that we have that data it appears the risk of that isn’t too large.
Time123 (eb9243) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:55 amhttps://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Excess deaths seem to be running slightly higher then historical average over the last year. It’s s new source of death and that’s sad, but it’s not the emergency it used to be. You can also see if this you look at hospital capacity.
But it’s harder to read https://public-data-hub-dhhs.hub.arcgis.com/
Time123 (265b62) — 12/12/2022 @ 7:00 amJim,
Respiratory viruses are highly transmissible. Ones that are modified to make them even more transmissible to humans especially so. You can thank Fauci funding gain of function research in China for this.
That doesn’t change the fact that risks exist and life moves on. Sacrificing the young for the old isn’t the way civilization survives.
NJRob (588813) — 12/12/2022 @ 7:53 amThat doesn’t change the fact that risks exist and life moves on. Sacrificing the young for the old isn’t the way civilization survives.
NJRob (588813) — 12/12/2022 @ 7:53 am
While Jim likes to exercise emotional manipulation here in the form of hiding behind the Golden Rule, his preferred policies empirically caused learning loss and poor social development in children of all ages, along with increases in depression and mental illness afflictions in school-age children. He also argued that vitamin c was medicine (not even the NIH supports this claim, and we all know how much Jim loves his appeals to authority) and compared it to taking vaccinations.
People like him are an actual threat to my kids’ well-being and that of others, and anything he promotes in this regard should be rejected out of hand at this point.
Factory Working Orphan (00624c) — 12/12/2022 @ 8:40 amWhere is Dustin?
DRJ (86ba9b) — 12/12/2022 @ 8:50 amAJ if we take away the emotional attachment people put on the title teacher and go back to the science, the numbers are in favor of the children.
1. Children overwhelmingly performed better with COVID than any other age group
2. Females performed better than men with COVID and nearly 3/4 of teachers in US are female*
3. People in their 40’s or younger performed better than older people and median age of teachers in USA is 41, average is 42*
4. People over 55 performed progressively poorly as they aged. The over 55 group of teachers made up only 17% of the total*
5. As of July 14, 2022, at least 1,306 US active and retired K-12 educators and personnel have died of COVID-19. Of those, 449 were active teachers.+
6. From England where schools stayed open in 2020. “The absolute mortality rates for deaths with COVID-19 were low among those working in schools (from 10 per 100 000 in female primary school teachers to 39 per 100 000 male secondary school teachers) relative to many other occupations (range: 9-50 per 100 000 in women; 10-143 per 100 000 in men)” %
* https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/ntps/tables/ntps1718_fltable02_t1s.asp
steveg (62a24e) — 12/12/2022 @ 10:52 am+ Education Week July 14 2022
% https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34815280/
lurker, i think we’re done. You ARE trying to have things both ways and I see no point in trying to convince you, or you me.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 10:59 am5. As of July 14, 2022, at least 1,306 US active and retired K-12 educators and personnel have died of COVID-19. Of those, 449 were active teachers.+
“Active teacher” means they were not retired. It does not mean they were in a classroom during Covid, or that they normally were IN a classroom before Covid — some worked in an administrative capacity. It could include bus drivers and maintenance staff.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:02 amDo you not get that if you write an article and it’s published by, say, the NY Times, it’s both your speech and The Times’ speech? That if it’s defamatory, you’ll both be liable?
And again you conflate. If I write an article for the NYT and they choose to publish it (as their news/opinion content) in their printed newspaper, it is indeed their speech. But Section 230 changes that for online content, and whether they check it’s content or don’t, they are not liable, I AM.
That makes it solely my speech.
Currently, they can choose to block my speech for any reason (e.g. being critical of the NYT, supporting a Republican, or calling for a race war) all are equally permissible reasons for them to block MY speech. Failure to do any of that doesn’t make it their speech.
Your whole argument is a strained and intellectually dubious attempt to prevent government regulation of censorship in an area where the government has ALREADY regulated.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:12 amShorter: if they pay me for it, it’s their speech. If they edit it (ass the NYT always does for Letters in the printed version), it’s their speech.
If they are simply a conduit for users to post thoughts, it’s the user’s speech. That they may refuse some content is immaterial as long as they don’t edit it, since they have no duty to even look and have no liability whether or not they look.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:17 amBut, as I said, since you don’t want to accept this simple rule, and want to make everything one big mess where the Free Press trumps Free Speech, I see no point in continuing.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:18 amIN any event, it is clear that the knives are out for Elon Musk, and his dumping of Old Twitter’s dirty laundry seems to have particularly intensified the Left’s anger.
Musk moved their cheese.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:35 am“Musk moved their cheese.”
Yeah it’s definitely that and not his hardcore swing to the right.
Davethulhu (02f479) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:38 amForgot to add this:
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/6/6/23157103/child-care-workers-teachers-covid-fatality-death-rates
“1 million child care workers, 405 died from COVID in 2020, the study found, using data from nearly every state. That translates to 38 deaths for every 100,000 child care workers — a higher rate than workers overall, and one similar to others in “essential” industries where in-person work was common.
Pre-kindergarten through 12th grade teachers, on the other hand, had somewhat lower mortality rates than the typical worker. Eight hundred and eight teachers at public and private schools died from COVID in the first year of the pandemic, for a rate of 15 deaths of every 100,000 teachers.”
This was thought to be because schools were closed but child care workers kept working.
Yale Professor chimes in:
“There’s no way to know from this particular research whether or not it’s the child care work itself that caused the increased morbidity,” said Walter Gilliam, a Yale professor who studies child care. It doesn’t change the fact that this is a workforce that we don’t adequately support.”
But Gilliam’s research found that child care workers who returned to work in person in the spring of 2020 had similar COVID infection rates as those who did not return to in-person work, suggesting other factors were at play.
steveg (62a24e) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:46 amKevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:17 am
In the 1964 case of New York Times vs Sullivan, it was an ad, which they could have refused, and the New York Times did not use, or could not use, that kind of defense.
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/186/new-york-times-co-v-sullivan
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:46 amsteveg (62a24e) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:46 am
Children, with mostly mild infections, if any, were not the cause of serious infections in adults.
I’ve been saying that if we graded Covid infections in degree of severity as, say, A, B C and D, a person with an A infection (that is it never reached beyond an A level before being beaten back) could transmit to another person a B infection and a B infection a C infection — not that it worked like that exactly, but along a similar idea [the dose is the poison] and that that is the reason why Covid could circulate for a period underground, so to speak, and got worse with time in any particular location, because people kept getting exposed to more and more viral particles as time went on.
I should also say that one person might have multiple sources of infection and that one of the most stupid things ever done with Covid – criminal i f anyone ever understood this – was to quarantine people who tested positive together with eac other.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:54 amIn New York they found, in 2020, that people who used the subway and people who did not use the subway in the same neighborhood had exactly the same rate of infection/hospitalization or whatever they measured.
This result surprised Governor Cuomo or his Department of Health, but they didn’t alter any rules.
Air was exchanged pretty often in subway cars.
Now buses might be a different story.
But a really stupid thing was to close the parks where children played in. Outdoors! Air circulation! Wind!
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 11:58 amNJRob (588813) — 12/12/2022 @ 7:53 am
No. First of all gain-of-function research was defined by Fauci as an attempt to make a virus infect an organism that it didn’t otherwise infect, and he never sponsored, or paid for research of that kind.
And anything the U.S. paid for was probably also paid for by the government/military of China.
You can say people in the United States maybe interested the Chinese lab in that kind of research. Particularly, a mad scientist at the University of North Carolina by the name of Dr. Ralph Baric.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/11/07/361219361/how-a-tilt-toward-safety-stopped-a-scientists-virus-research
He was worried about mutations, so he strove to see if you could mutate a coronavirus to make it more dangerous.
When Fauci initially stopped that, Baric collaborated with Zhengli Shi, the “bat lady” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/29/1027290/gain-of-function-risky-bat-virus-engineering-links-america-to-wuhan
Baric pleads not guilty:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/26/1030043/gain-of-function-research-coronavirus-ralph-baric-vaccines
Yes. China did some independent research.
But it was his dumb idea!
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 12:14 pmThe Chinese lab didn’t have the kind of biohazard security that he did in North Carolina.
And there were probably two Chinese leaks, the first from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in late August 2019 (up to September 12) of a somewhat less serious virus, which they tried to keep under wraps, and mostly succeeded, and the second on or about December 2, 2019 when the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention moved to within 300 yards of the the Huanan (means ‘South China’) Wholesale Seafood Market.
One thing the government of China wants to keep secret is which variant really came first – so no early samples.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 12:19 pmI received some spam about a lawsuit against Zantac. The spam is a little bit out of date. It takes a while for a judge’s ruling to make its way through the spam ecosystem.
This is what the Wall Street Journal editorial had to say about that lawsuit:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-zantac-scare-and-junk-science-federal-judge-valisure-lawsuit-ranitidine-cancer-11670537783
The test that was made by Valisure was rigged.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 12:33 pmAJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/12/2022 @ 4:08 am
It does that, and immediately. But theory holds that nothing can act that fast (but a rise in the price of oil does)
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 1:10 pmFauci lost me when he was caught on TV at that baseball game no one else was allowed to attend, chatting, no mask, with his friends. When challenged, despite video evidence to the contrary, he lied and said he only lowered his mask while drinking from his cup. Fauci is a wily fellow and was very hard to pin down, not above lying, not above begging for clear context to be seen as a shade of grey.
steveg (365288) — 12/12/2022 @ 1:25 pmSo I don’t mind seeing him roasted and in fact it can be entertaining. Fauci vs. Louie Gohmert in the battle of the garden gnomes would make me laugh
How institution deteriorate.
The U.S. Navy used to have a system for selecting SEALS. Maybe it was bad, but it was not bad for the careers of those who failed.
Up to 2006, “sailors were required to train for a regular Navy profession, known as a rate, before they could attempt the SEAL course. Dropouts from the course could return to the rate they had trained for.”
But then they started taking them directly to that upon enlistment. If they failed, they were not given a second chance nor a chance to train for something else, and could only choose among the most menial jobs — and had to stay in the Navy for 4 years.
After 2016, they allowed some to train for jobs such a divers, rescue swimmers or explosives experts. But it primarily helped those who dropped out first.
Then for a period of time the trainers got really malicious.
One person who gave up on becoming a SEAL got out by refusing to take the vaccine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/us/navy-seals-recruits.html
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/12/2022 @ 1:27 pmBut then they started taking them directly to that upon enlistment. If they failed, they were not given a second chance nor a chance to train for something else, and could only choose among the most menial jobs — and had to stay in the Navy for 4 years.
Note that this is not unusual, however. The Air Force has been taking first-term Airmen in their special warfare jobs like pararescue for decades. Their washout rate is typically in the 90s, although the vast majority of those are in the first phases–typically, if you got through indoctrination/ assessment and selection, your chances of finishing went up to about 80 percent or so.
They also tend to get put in low-stress AFSCs if they washed out, and they typically don’t get to leave the Air Force unless they were just complete dirtbags. You sign that contract, you’re giving up four-six years. It’s just that simple, and the service doesn’t care of you’re breaking skulls or handing out uniforms.
So what the SEALS are doing here isn’t that unusual.
Factory Working Orphan (00624c) — 12/12/2022 @ 2:08 pm“Shorter: if they pay me for it, it’s their speech. If they edit it (ass the NYT always does for Letters in the printed version), it’s their speech. If they are simply a conduit for users to post thoughts, it’s the user’s speech. That they may refuse some content is immaterial as long as they don’t edit it”
Don’t they edit it for illegal content and for things such as spam, abuse, or scams? Don’t they add warning labels which is adding to a post. The phone company does not do this…..all calls go through. The post office does not restrict a package based on its expressive content. A shipping company does not prohibit a shipment because it contains white supremacy content.
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 2:13 pmThe post office does not restrict a package based on its expressive content.
The USPS can and does block mail found to contain child porn. It will also refuse to transport illegal items, such as pot.
A shipping company does not prohibit a shipment because it contains white supremacy content.
Put a note on the outside that it contains that, even if it doesn’t, and see what happens. But yes, after the Courts stopped USPS from confiscating mail from the Communist Party, this would be OK< too.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 2:50 pmDon’t they edit it for illegal content and for things such as spam, abuse, or scams?
No, they just delete it. It was the user’s speech. Now it’s not speech at all.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/12/2022 @ 2:52 pm“We’re not going to convince each other so let’s drop it.”
[Fine by me.]
“But I’m just gonna add these three more comments that will explain why you’re wrong.”
Kevin. Seriously?
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/12/2022 @ 3:02 pmSammy,
it was gain of function research. They modified the definition to manipulate people. It made a virus more dangerous to people. Period.
You never answered my question about walls.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 5:29 pmhttps://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/12/12/virginia-tech-soccer-player-refused-to-kneel-for-blm-now-her-case-against-the-coach-will-go-forward-n517308
More leftist bigotry in action where if you don’t submit to their religion, you will be punished and ostracized.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 5:58 pmhttps://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/12/loudoun-county-school-officials-indicted.php
Remember when the father of a girl who was raped by a male pretending to be a girl was arrested and portrayed by the leftist media as proof that the right deserved to be targeted by the FBI for going after school administrators… well at least now the right person has been indicted. It’s a start. Stop covering up rape to protect those higher on the “victimization hierarchy.”
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:08 pmWith the most recent Twitter drops by Elon Musk, the curtain has been peeled back and we clearly see that Twitter broke their own rules to ban Trump who hadn’t violated their rules and did so because it was a cesspool of leftist hatred that wanted to eliminate their perceived competition.
Those who supported the ban and claim to be for the rule of law did so at their eternal shame. They need to look in the mirror and pretend every time they claim to support free speech or uphold the rule of law.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:20 pmTwitter was important to Trump only because Trump made it important to himself. Trump himself has now moved on, and when Musk invited him back he declined.
What is going, and why are people falling for it? Musk accused one of his former executives of being a “groomer”, and now that executive and his family and friends have an internet mob harassing them.
How petty, dilettantish, and decadent — yes, decadent — has this country become that we get so obsessed over an electronic age pastime that did not exist until sixteen years ago?
nk (bb1548) — 12/12/2022 @ 7:53 pmYeah, repeating the caveat that this isn’t my area of expertise, that’s what I understood you to be saying, and I agree that it could describe religious discrimination. I’m just skeptical that it necessarily does. IIRC you said it “absolutely” was religious discrimination, or words to that effect.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of the group’s religious beliefs about SSM, but that hardly seems determinative. My question was whether the person doing the alleged discriminating did so in while or part based on the group’s religion, or was it based only on their beliefs about SSM, irrespective of their religion? If the former, then sure, that’s unlawful discrimination. Easy case. But if it was the latter, and considering that such beliefs about SSM are widely held by people who don’t subscribe to the religion in question, I don’t see how the refusal to serve was necessarily religious discrimination. Would it be religious discrimination to refuse service to a secular group that held the same beliefs? Would it matter if the restaurateur knew the group in question was a religious one? That the views he objected to were prescribed by the group’s religion? As far as I’m aware, those questions are all unknowns, and they seem relevant, at least to me.
Take another hypothetical along similar lines. It’s a popular antisemitic trope that Ashkenazic Jews aren’t part of the diaspora created by the Babylonian exile, but are recent converts fraudulently posing as blood descendants of ancient Middle Eastern Jews. That also happens to be a belief of the Black Israelites, a religious group that claims they are the only authentic descendants of ancient Jewry. If I make it a policy of my business to refuse service to anyone who publicly espouses the fraudulent Ashkenazim trope, am I committing unlawful religious discrimination against Black Israelites? Does it depend on whether the only customers I exclude are Black Israelites? How about if none of them are? Some yes, some no? Does it matter whether I know if and when I’m excluding a Black Israelite?
Those questions, and more that I’ll skip for now, are probative of my intent, and call me old fashioned, but I still believe invidious intent is an essential component of invidious discrimination. So I can postulate answers to those questions that would lend me to say at one extreme that I suspect unlawful religious discrimination, and at the other that I doubt it. And I’d say the same for the restaurant case in question.
On the other hand, as I suggested at the outset, my decades of inattention to religion clause jurisprudence far surpass my scant memories of what I learned about it in law school. So as sensible as everything I said above seems to me, maybe I’m simply wrong on the law. If you know of case law which says that’s so, I’d welcome a cite.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/12/2022 @ 10:58 pm“it was gain of function research. They modified the definition to manipulate people. It made a virus more dangerous to people. Period.”
Yes, now Rob is a careful, objective, detail-oriented science commentator. Better sense is simply to ignore his hyperbolic baboon screeching, but the GOP is on the precipice of character assassination in order to feed the memes of Rob and other disturbed partisan individuals. A lot of this follows the deliberate hooting and poop-slinging of Tucker Carlson who should be smart enough to more candidly analyze events surrounding Fauci. But he’s just not honest enough. I’m sure a lot of this is about stirring the pot for the perpetually aggrieved…..and some of it is just confirmation bias and a desperate attempt to change the subject from Russia and impending indictments. This is the agenda of the New Right: get Fauci and maximally distribute pics of Hunter Biden’s penis. As another commentator would exclaim, Glorious! I think this article captures much of the facts about Fauci that Rob avoids in his partisan rants.
https://www.science.org/content/article/almost-everything-tucker-carlson-said-about-anthony-fauci-week-was-misleading-or-false
AJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:43 amThis is the agenda of the New Right: get Fauci and maximally distribute pics of Hunter Biden’s penis.
This is the agenda of the New Moderates–spout the left’s talking points and minimize their social harms.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/13/2022 @ 5:19 amAJ_Liberty (6a18fd) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:43 am
The lesson of Fauci is how politics and conflict of interest trump actual science. But certainly, trust “experts” who have simultaneously wrapped themselves in a cloak of Science while attacking those who actually conduct scientific inquiry about COVID’s origins.
And, nice personal attack on Rob, which only buttresses the point.
JF (f72ac6) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:28 am@241 Lurker. If i said ‘absolutely’ I spoke to strongly. But based on the evidence that’s available it seems pretty clear cut. Additional information may change that. But absent that, this seems clear cut.
As I said before, opposition to SSM is a legitimate part of some religious s sects and I’d don’t see how you separate that in this case.
You’re right that there are some edge cases and complications, but i’m not sure those apply here.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:41 amTo steal a quote from a Cold War movie, “The government is not always right, but it is always the government”.
Maybe Fauci was too positive in saying more than he knew, but he still knew more than the orange-worshipping baboons who are now his detractors.
People needed to be reassured that everything possible was being done; that there were things that they could do to protect themselves (and that it was not by inserting ultraviolet lights
updown their throats).This Trump, this Rand, this Carlson, what did they know more than Fauci? What did they do about Covid better than Fauci?
They’re just scapegoating to entertain their audiences. And that’s all it is. Entertainment. There is no constructive goal.
nk (bb1548) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:43 am@243, What social harms? Most measurable aspects of social health (employment, educational attainment, teen pregnancy, infant mortality, homelessness, abortion, life expectancy etc) have been improving over time.
Some of that blipped during covid, but the trend on life getting better is pretty clear.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:49 amNJRob, What law are you asserting that Twitter broke? I read the info dump and it looked to me like many people inside twitter were trying to figure out the best way for their company to handle the unprecedented act of a US president using their services to encourage his supporters in their efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power via force.
What they should have done with their property is debatable, but it’s their service and they have a legal right to use it as they see fit.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:54 am243, What social harms?
Everything the left promotes.
This Trump, this Rand, this Carlson, what did they know more than Fauci? What did they do about Covid better than Fauci?
They’re just scapegoating to entertain their audiences. And that’s all it is. Entertainment. There is no constructive goal.
nk (bb1548) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:43 am
More minimization of the empirical harms that were caused.
Factory Working Orphan (344c55) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:57 am“This Trump, this Rand, this Carlson, what did they know more than Fauci? What did they do about Covid better than Fauci? They’re just scapegoating to entertain their audiences. And that’s all it is. Entertainment. There is no constructive goal.”
Great comment nk. This is the reality. It’s a lot of post hoc rationalization. Sad.
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/13/2022 @ 7:07 amGreat comment nk. This is the reality. It’s a lot of post hoc rationalization. Sad.
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/13/2022 @ 7:07 am
Not nearly as sad as parroting the press releases of unaccountable commissars.
Factory Working Orphan (344c55) — 12/13/2022 @ 7:14 amThis Trump, this Rand, this Carlson, what did they know more than Fauci? What did they do about Covid better than Fauci?
unlike Fauci, we know they had nothing to do with COVID’s origins
the “what does he have to hide???” mantra only seems to apply to Trump post hoc rationalizations
JF (f72ac6) — 12/13/2022 @ 7:29 amHow is Fauci unaccountable? Trump could have fired him at any time he wanted. If he broke US law he can be charged for that.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/13/2022 @ 7:46 am“Not nearly as sad as parroting the press releases of unaccountable commissars.”
FWO, yes, “commissars” that are far more educated and experienced than you are in infectious diseases, public health, epidemiology, and pandemics. This is the conceit that is revealed by the internet: everyone thinks that they just know better….without any responsibility, accountability, or knowledge. If you want to drive public health policy, get some credential where we have some trust in your understanding of the science and data. Fauci is/was accountable. He could have been fired for cause, but few in his chain of command would make that ridiculous accusation. He was in a no-win situation of dealing with an evolving complex situation where the conservative response was in fact caution. And now we have data to analyze what could have been done differently and better…and that will still be controversial.
I’m not quite sure the wisdom of engaging you. It generally just escalates to unpleasantness. The brigade of you, JF, and Rob seem committed to making the rest of us as angry and aggrieved as you are. I came to this site because of Patt’s writing at RedState and because of his courage to call-out the Trumpification of the GOP. I miss that he does not post more, but appreciate Dana’s efforts to produce content. I’m curious what brings you all here. Yes, JVW is a bit more obliging, but overall it seems like it’s a need to be argumentative. It rarely seems like you are here to persuade or win converts. It’s more slash and burn with little consequence for what remains. You want us to follow you, but when we ask for details you launch into a preemptive tirade or spout some sociological mumbo jumbo. I wish you were more normal….
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/13/2022 @ 8:03 amAJ, I don’t think FWO is looking to persuade. I think he’s given up on that. He has (in my experience) been willing to explain why he feels the way he does in a clear and articulate way. I think there’s a lot of value in that and I enjoy his participation because it helps me better understand his POV and the POV of other’s like him.
NJRob & JF aren’t nearly as good as explaining where they’re coming from. I think Rob is just too angry and I don’t think JF has the capability.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 8:12 amTime123 and AJ, I’m sorry that your personal attacks don’t serve to persuade like you think they should, but am thankful most commenters here don’t follow your example.
JF (92d20f) — 12/13/2022 @ 8:35 amAnd as I said before, I separate discrimination based on the religious group’s religious identity (presumtively invidious religious discrimination) from discrimination based only on beliefs that are also commonly held by non-religious persons (doubtfully religious discrimination if the discriminator applied it equally to non-religious persons). And I don’t know into which category this example falls because I’m unaware of the key evidence of the proprietor’s mental state and his past and general practices apart from this incident.
Lacking the key evidence, I can’t say whether they do or don’t apply here, which is I believe the point.
lurker (cd7cd4) — 12/13/2022 @ 8:41 amI’ve had some experience with group dinners. We held them at restaurants we knew and liked, where we knew we would be welcomed, and to whom we wanted to give our money. This whole drama with the wing-nuts and the wokes seems as phony as a breast enhancement operation. Which is to say, on both sides.
nk (c5fa34) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:07 am@Time123 re: the Twitter files.
The issue here isn’t that a bunch of progressive-aligned mods at twitter have engaged in content moderation/suppression that was slanted against righties.
The issue, is that the company solid itself as one thing, but acted in a completely different manner in blatant hypocrisy.
Now legally? I doubt there’s any legal danger here unless it’s related to Terms of Service contractual stuff.
It’d be TOTALLY defensible had Twitter just out-right said “we don’t like what Trump said/did nor do we like Trump supporters and will ban them from this site”. Rather than trying to to subvert existing rules to justify it.
To me, the bigger story is two-fold:
1) Government involvement in content moderation. That’s a serious concern and government shouldn’t be able to use private companies as a proxy to subvert 1st Amendment protection.
2) We now know it happened under Twitter 1.0… is it reasonable to assume it’s also happening to other social media/internet companies? Scary thought…
whembly (d116f3) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:09 am“solid” = sold.
headdesk…
whembly (d116f3) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:17 amInteresting poll:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/shocking-poll-desantis-up-23-on-trump-up-4-on-biden/
tl/dr: DeSantis comes up big head-to-head against Trump.
whembly (d116f3) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:28 amWhembly, Regarding the issue of the government forcing twitter to censor speech; I’ve seen it asserted, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it. I see plenty of evidence that twitter was talking with with the government about potential foreign misinformation. But it looks like Twitter was legitimately concerned about that and welcomed the input. There’s also evidence that twitter debated internally about the right course of action and potential repercussion from the government never came up as a factor.
I agree this is a concerning area and I’d personally prefer media companies tell the government to pound sand. But I don’t have 44billion to buy one so my preferences don’t really matter here.
Either way, the evidence to support your larger concern hasn’t been presented yet.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:03 amSo, DeSantis, in what appears to be a mistake, has lept onto the anti-vax bandwagon.
https://apnews.com/article/ron-desantis-health-florida-covid-government-and-politics-378f02d9e085917de5276a11511e9445
No good deed goes unpunished.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:38 amDeSantis will, of course, make inroads against Trump with this by appealing to the “death-jab” continent of knuckle-draggers, but it also something that will turn off a lot of folks who viewed (and still view) the vaccines as having been literal life-savers.
To me it’s a terrible move and will cause me to look elsewhere for a candidate. It’s a deal-breaker.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:42 am*contingent
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:42 am258…is it as phony as the black male study group that of all places chose a Starbucks in South Philly (the land of Rocky Balboa and Frank Rizzo) to conduct a curiously caffeine free study session a few years back?
urbanleftbehind (66afd4) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:46 am“I think there’s a lot of value in that and I enjoy his participation because it helps me better understand his POV”
Time, I agree that the site benefits from a diversity of perspectives and that it shouldn’t be an echo chamber….which is what RedState devolved to in my opinion. I also agree that some put forth their position better than others. I too want to better understand the desperation and intensity of hate that exists, and why the prime outlet seems to be largely Republicans here who don’t like Trump. To his credit, FWO recognizes that it’s time to move on.
I also get the hyper-focus on culture issues though I tend to be cynical about what tactics are emerging with the GOP. I don’t want the GOP to look like the Democrat party or worse. And we need to find ways to turn down the rhetorical heat because my fear is that eventually something will break because Congress is paralyzed and the Presidency keeps getting pulled into over-reaching. To me, that is much more important than arguing about a few dozen (?) transsexuals wanting to play women’s sports (which it baffles me why the answer isn’t just “no”). That’s why I get frustrated with the view that this is OCD about Trump…because it’s bigger than that, though Trump is creating the biggest issues at the moment. You have to talk and find common ground to hope to move forward. JF, FWO, and Rob have given up on that. I see that as a dead end with more violence inevitable. I fear that they know that….
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:47 amDeSantis’ problem is quite basic– and similar to that of Lil’Marco and Texas Tedtoo; not particular likable w/antics decidely not entertaining. Both key ingredients to major party pols courting the indy audiences spawned in the swamp of the modern media era lit by the likes of Reagan. Exhibit A:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYeNuISN4Dc
DeSantis ain’t in this league.
DCSCA (62d0a8) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:55 amRIP Mike Leach (61).
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:22 am@268: I’d argue that DeSantis has the chance to be in Reagan’s league.
His +19 win can’t be all just new Republican voters. He had to have a sizable indies and dems voters too.
whembly (d116f3) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:36 amWhembly, yes, but outside of the Trump fringe, the vax thing cuts across politics.
The vast majority thinks the vaccines were a good thing. Trying to punish the companies that created them will not go down well. They are not tobacco companies or opioid pushers. Most everyone got the shots, for free, and did not die from a disease that took at least one person they knew.
This is the mistake of preaching to the choir and/or confusing Florida Man for the US in general.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:46 amIt’s like suing Ford for seat belts or airbags that bruise people during high-speed head-on collisions.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:48 amNot angry. I just don’t take the Kristol’s of the world seriously anymore. He and his ilk are grifters and frauds like those who push his talking points.
AJ,
Which of Fauci’s hundreds of “I don’t recalls” under oath were you particularly impressed by. I’ll see your appeals to authority and raise you actual doctors and scientists that treated patients and dealt with the man made virus that Fauci funded and covered up.
NJRob (11b035) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:49 am#263
Most voters want to leave Trump and COVID behind us. It’s probably a political mistake to engage either.
Appalled (0ca292) — 12/13/2022 @ 11:55 am@273, you’re free to dismiss everyone that disagrees with your as ‘pushing talking points”. But that doesn’t make it an accurate characterization.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 12:07 pmThe weaker Trump gets the easier it will be for the GOP to push back on him Hopefully this quickly brings us to a place where the the GOP nominee isn’t an Authoritarian Populist.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 12:08 pmRIP Agreed, the vaccine has save many thousands of lives in the US. I doubt that will matter to the MAGA base. Once a thing is coded in culture war terms it seems like their mind is made up.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 12:13 pmRemember when the father of a girl who was raped by a male pretending to be a girl was arrested and portrayed by the leftist media as proof that the right deserved to be targeted by the FBI for going after school administrators… well at least now the right person has been indicted. It’s a start. Stop covering up rape to protect those higher on the “victimization hierarchy.”
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/12/2022 @ 6:08 pm
Time123 and AJ_Liberty hardest hit.
JF (92d20f) — 12/13/2022 @ 12:43 pmHi JF, Nothing I’ve written about that case supports your characterization. But beyond your reading comprehension failures, you and Rob seem to be mischaracterizing events.
https://reason.com/2021/11/01/conservatives-wrongly-portrayed-the-loudoun-county-sexual-assault-as-a-transgender-bathroom-issue/
It seems that school officials mishandled the situation. But there’s no evidence it was done to ‘protect those higher on the victimization heirarchy’ As You and Rob are asserting.
I’m glad that the rapist was convicted. Interested in seeing more details about how the school mishandled the situation.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/13/2022 @ 1:03 pm@271
Except, there are real problems with how our government has communicated regarding the efficacy of the vaccine.
I for one, don’t think there’s any “there there” regarding criminal conduct here. But, I don’t think its necessarily a bad idea for the State of Florida to demand some mea culpa and accountability.
Here’s the thing about vaccines guys, and this is true for ALL MEDICINES.
There are tradeoffs.
And they’re usually known.
We didn’t with this covid19 vaccine, and we’re still getting more and more long term downsides to mRNA type vaccines.
I mean, there’s a real disconnect between what Pfizer says in their study, vs what the national public health policy makers were advocating.
That’s not an anti-vaxxer thing… that’s a “what the eff is going on here” thing.
whembly (d116f3) — 12/13/2022 @ 1:47 pmWhembly, I think you’re raising a good point in a clear honest and nuanced way. I hope Desantis takes a similar approach and doesn’t ape some of the anti-vax arguments and unsupported innuendo.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:14 pmI just don’t take the Kristol’s of the world seriously anymore.
Kristol is someone who just does not accept that the world has changed. It’s not just Trump he objects to, but to the way the GOP has been forced to change due to the influx of new voters who previously had no party that served them. That they insist that the GOP do so is anathema to Kristol, who wants his 2004 party back.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:38 pmI doubt that will matter to the MAGA base. Once a thing is coded in culture war terms it seems like their mind is made up.
There are many in the MAGA base even who gladly got the vaccines. They’ve just learned to be quiet about it. But even if MAGA was totally anti-vax, for a politician who needs a broader base, playing to that GOP faction is a mistake if it alienates the public at large.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:42 pmThat’s not an anti-vaxxer thing… that’s a “what the eff is going on here” thing.
When DeSantis compares the situation to the Oxycontin pushers, it’s more than “what’s going on here.” And the truth is NOTHING IS GOING ON. This is more of the public incident report thing where post hoc reports are assumed to be direct linkage. “My 94 yo mom dies after getting the shot” kind of thing. 99% of those reports are bogus or confused.
Sure, there are side-effects to all drugs, and there were some bad side effect to this one. But if it saved 2 million in the US, and killed 7 (or 700) due to weird and unpredictable conditions, I really don’t think a lawsuit will go anywhere. Especially since the families were paid off generously from a fund just for that kind of thing.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:50 pmArticle in today’s WSJ:
Moderna’s mRNA Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise in Preliminary Study
Threats to sue vaccine developers will slow this kind of research considerably. Big Pharma will go looking for products somewhere else. I doubt that there is any recourse anyway, given the emergency directives the companies got for the Trump administration.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:55 pmExcept, there are real problems with how our government has communicated regarding the efficacy of the vaccine.
How is that?
I mean, there’s a real disconnect between what Pfizer says in their study, vs what the national public health policy makers were advocating.
So, government was stupid, lying of confused? News at 11! How does this come back on Pfizer.
We didn’t with this covid19 vaccine, and we’re still getting more and more long term downsides to mRNA type vaccines.
That is because we were in a fracking screaming hurry. People were dying. You may think that people over 50 are already at death’s door, but they didn’t think so and wanted a vaccine fast. And government obliged and gave those companies all kinds of money to get it done.
Sure, we could have run the normal 7 year process, but we’d have another 2-3 million dead now. Even WITH the vaccine, once this was unavoidable we lost a lot of people. The fact that the unvaccinated were 5 times more likely to die from the virus shows just how bad it could have gotten.
There is more than one way to measure “safe.”
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 3:07 pmI’d argue that DeSantis has the chance to be in Reagan’s league.
Not a chance. He’s not particularly telegenic; comes across scowling; hardly congenial in presentation; often caustic in rhetoric and picked a frigging fight w/Mickey Mouse. Hell, Reagan helped emcee the opening of Disneyland! He has more in common w/t Cuomo persona than the effervescent Reagan. Spit on a skillet that’ll evaporate fast and won’t play nationally. A governor who thinks he deserves kudos for doing the job he is paid to do in the first place ain’t no prize– and been listening to echoes in his own bubble way too much. Backed by Trump when he edged out a win in a squeaker, revisit the 2018 numbers over Gillum: ‘the margin of victory was under two percent.’ [wiki.gov] Reagan defeated Brown in ’66 by 15%; and destroyed Carter in ’80. I’m certainly not a Reagan fan but respect his attitude and perseverance. And this DeSantis fella is one Ron that ain’t no Ronald Reagan.
DCSCA (016d14) — 12/13/2022 @ 3:57 pmKevin, thank you for your comments on this topic. I am tired of debating virology and immunology with people who (i) know very little about it, (ii) refuse to admit that they are uninformed directly, (iii) have extremely flexible and politicalled motivated views about risk, and (iv) cannot help but infuse politics in this and all messes.
You are spot on about typical vaccine development. There is always a cost to every approach.
I had a poster on my wall in college. It showed a woman holding a sign reading “NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS CAUSE CANCER.” And she was smoking a cigarette.
To be sure, Fauci is a political animal, and always has been from the HIV days. But this driving need to find conspiracies drives me mad.
Again, thank you for posting about this. I just can’t handle all the noise these days here.
Simon Jester (e87920) — 12/13/2022 @ 3:59 pmBy the way, Kevin, there is a reason that pharmaceutical companies are not developing new antibiotics against bacterial pathogens, even with the rising threat of multiply resistant pathogens. It’s not money grubbing capitalism.
It’s fear of litigation costs because every single freaking medical treatment can have negative impacts some percentage of the time. One needs to do benefits versus costs.
But that doesn’t make for great screaming headlines in the media.
Simon Jester (e87920) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:04 pm@276. You’re dreaming; clinging to a hollow hope. The vast majority of voters in America are independents and do not associate nor relate to the any of the old style Royalist R or D POVs. They represent such a small sliver of the population now- the donor vlass mostly. Neither connect nor represent the priorities of the majority of the electorate any longer. American Populism is rooting deeper and deeper thanks to them. And the quicker minded ones – like Sinema- read the tea leaves and joined the ranks of where the electorate is to survive. Seriously, w/billions wasted in Afghanistan and Ukraine, inflation and debt soaring, breached border with llegal literally flooding into the nation; supply chain issues and looming conflict w/China– what are the Royalist swamp weenies celebrating today?!?! Signing gay marriage legislation– that does nothing to address the current issues facing the U.S. for the vast majority of the citizenry. This is why the castles get stormed.
DCSCA (016d14) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:12 pmWhembly, I think you’re raising a good point in a clear honest and nuanced way. I hope Desantis takes a similar approach and doesn’t ape some of the anti-vax arguments and unsupported innuendo.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/13/2022 @ 2:14 pm
I agree with Time123, and would like to recall how close we had come to “vax passports,” “vax work documentation,” and who knows what other novelties our elected betters had in mind. No. Thank. You.
felipe (484255) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:13 pmWhich is to say, on both sides.
nk (c5fa34) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:07 am
Heh. I take that two ways!
felipe (484255) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:21 pm#289 and #290 Simon Jester – Thanks for saying some things that very much need to be said.
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:30 pmFWO, yes, “commissars” that are far more educated and experienced than you are in infectious diseases, public health, epidemiology, and pandemics. This is the conceit that is revealed by the internet: everyone thinks that they just know better….without any responsibility, accountability, or knowledge. If you want to drive public health policy, get some credential where we have some trust in your understanding of the science and data.
I don’t take appeals to authority seriously. Especially not from a smug, fatuous little gnome like Fauci who says criticizing him is criticizing science.
The brigade of you, JF, and Rob seem committed to making the rest of us as angry and aggrieved as you are.
You want politics that are amiable and applaudable, like Mr. By-Ends does with religion in Pilgrim’s Progress. Actually standing up for conservative principles means going against wind and tide, and owning it in rags as well as in its silver slippers
It rarely seems like you are here to persuade or win converts. It’s more slash and burn with little consequence for what remains. You want us to follow you, but when we ask for details you launch into a preemptive tirade or spout some sociological mumbo jumbo. I wish you were more normal….
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/13/2022 @ 8:03 am
I’m perfectly normal, you just don’t like it when people use strong words against you. I’m certainly not interested in “winning converts” because I’m representing myself, not starting a church. As for persuasion, as Time pointed out, I’ve long given up on that because your political faction is far too blinkered and self-justifying to ever take responsibility, or show an ounce of humility or self-awareness, for how it effectively allowed the left to overtake the nation’s cultural institutions, because that faction believed that economics was all that mattered in the social health and identity of a country, and that bleeding the nation’s blood and treasure in overseas conflicts was okay as long as the intentions were good. And for someone who so loves bowing to the cult of credentialism, you sure do have an aversion for people who understand how the radical left thinks and cites their own words and their actual history as an indictment against them, characterizing such citations as “sociological mumbo jumbo,” simply because reading anything that criticizes these malicious leftists makes you uncomfortable.
This guy, at least, understands the harms he caused in the last 2 years and is actually contrite over it. Meanwhile, the people who said that people who didn’t take a COVID shot should be denied healthcare, lose their livelihoods, and grave-danced over those who actually did die, are doing a bunch of post hoc rationalizations that “we just didn’t know!” and are asking for amnesty instead of admitting they acted like spiteful, rejection-obsessed a-holes:
Kevin Bass
@kevinnbass
I was wrong about lockdowns and mandates. I was wrong and the reason I was wrong was my tribalism, my emotions, and my distorted understanding of human nature and of the virus. It doesn’t matter much, but I wanted to apologize for being wrong.
8:15 PM · Dec 12, 2022
@kevinnbass
My motivation for doing this is simple.
It’s clear to me that for public trust to be restored in science, scientists should publicly discuss what went right and what went wrong during COVID, and where we could have done better.
Nobody is doing that. Instead, many are doubling down and admitting no error. That’s very bad. It’s neither historically nor scientifically accurate. And it alienates people who can see that the sky is blue.
OTOH, we have people like “Julie/Julia” author Julie Powell, who reveled in people who didn’t take the COVID shot dying, and unironically stated that white people deserved to be slaughtered. A year later, my unvaccinated wife and kids are walking around healthy and happy, while Powell dropped dead from a heart attack at the age of 49.
If you don’t like reading things that make you uncomfortable, scroll past the post. No one’s forcing you to read it.
Factory Working Orphan (bce27d) — 12/13/2022 @ 6:09 pmBut that doesn’t make for great screaming headlines in the media.
Simon Jester (e87920) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:04 pm
1000% agree!
EPWJ (650a62) — 12/13/2022 @ 9:54 pmIt’s fear of litigation costs because every single freaking medical treatment can have negative impacts some percentage of the time. One needs to do benefits versus costs.
But then you need numerate juries. But just try and insist on that.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/13/2022 @ 10:54 pmTo those of you who supported Biden as he continues to attack the legitimacy of the Supreme Court because they finally returned laws to the states, I hope you can live with yourselves. Who am I kidding. It doesn’t matter to you.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/14/2022 @ 5:01 am1. It’s rare for you to agree with one of my comments. 🙂
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/14/2022 @ 6:37 am2. Many of us don’t think the government should be deciding who controls cultural institutions. I don’t think that’s a legitimate purpose of government and I won’t vote for a candidate that wants to do that.
3. As I asserted previously I think that during the time the left has been taking over cultural institutions life has mostly been getting better for people in the ways we can measure. Not to say improvement over or that everything is peachy, but I haven’t seen much widespread harm from what you describe.
https://twitter.com/donie/status/1603014049041629185?s=46&t=1Md8eZdUrbhN9oyDoToAKw
Musk has banned the Twitter account of the troll that tracks his jet.
Just when Twitter was starting to get sort of stale he goes and does another thing to get everyone talking
(Obviously he owns Twitter, Has a legal right to do this, and that can be true at the same time I’m mocking him for his about face / thin commitment to the principles he espoused a few weeks ago)
Time123 (2d54df) — 12/14/2022 @ 6:53 am@287
Are you bloody kidding me Kevin?
Look. We can hold the following positions simultaneously:
1) The vaccine did reduce morbidity, especially those whom are older or compromised from other co-morbidity.
2) We knew that young and healthy were not at risk for this disease such that it’s questionable for the need of this vaccine.
3) Government policy makers eff’ed up big with the lockdowns, masking requirements, vaccine requirements and general public communications.
4) More specifically, Kevin, is that this belief that government policy makers must treat us as children or widgets, that we MUST conform to their dictates.
whembly (d116f3) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:09 amStalking is illegal.
Elon Musk is playing us.
nk (c5fa34) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:09 am@300
LOL. This is pretty funny.
To be fair, Musk has pled with this user to stop doing this, so this isn’t “out of the blue”.
whembly (d116f3) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:10 am@303, If I’d bought twitter for 44B I’d have banned this guy and put “If you annoy me enough I’ll ban your account” in my TOS. If asked about this account I’d just laugh at the questioner as the reasons I banned the guy tracking my jet is pretty obvious.
But Musk made a thing about not banning this guy and how letting his keep is account was a symbol of his commitment to free speech.
If you crash your bicycle into a tree it’s sad.
If you should “Hey everyone watch this!” And try to do a trick right before you crash into a tree it’s funny.
😀
Agree with a lot of wheat your said in 301 btw
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:18 amThe Respect for marriage act has been signed.
12 republicans voted for it in the senate. Good for them, and good for the GOP as a party in not pressuring it’s members to kill this bill. It’s an OK law that helps protect about half a million families in the US.
I think we’re getting closer and close to the conflict around SSM being a thing of the past.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:22 amIt’s a repulsive bill that codifies anti-religious bigotry into the law. It’s also unconstitutional. Carry on.
NJRob (8d8522) — 12/14/2022 @ 7:55 amWhat’s unconstitutional about it?
Time123 (2d54df) — 12/14/2022 @ 8:05 amI’ve posted the text of the bill before, NJRob, and it does no such thing.
It requires that the federal government recognize marriages recognized by any state government. That is plainly constitutional.
It requires that state governments recognize marriages performed by any other state government. That is also plainly constitutional — Article IV, Section 1 very clearly allows Congress to do this.
The issue here is that you find gay relationships repulsive, and that fact is clouding your judgment about the constitution.
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/14/2022 @ 8:05 amIt’s fear of litigation costs because every single freaking medical treatment can have negative impacts some percentage of the time. One needs to do benefits versus costs.
Example: Anything in the penicillin family will put me into serious anaphylaxis, and if I don’t get epinephrine or a few alternatives pretty quickly, I will die. This nearly happened to me as a child and I recently confirmed that the allergy persists, in a controlled test.
But that does not mean that YOU can’t have penicillin. Because to most people it’s useful, even a life-saver.
So, if I seem cavalier about the 0.0001% percent chance of a bad reaction to a vaccine, I’m not. But it pisses me off completely when someone — who is not themselves allergic — uses the remote possibility as a political tool to deny the vaccine to others or to scare people into not getting it themselves.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 8:44 am@301:
I really only dispute #2. A large part of fighting a pandemic is reducing the number of active carriers of the disease. That means that even people (no, ESPECIALLY people) who will only get mild disease be immunized. Otherwise they will get their mild disease and attempt to function normally, exposing countless others.
Now, you can accomplish this with lockdowns, or intrusive access controls or testing. None of these are really acceptable but without vaccines the alternatives are 1) heavy-handed government or 2) wildfire disease.
Think of vaccines as the liberty-oriented approach.
Now, I do understand the “well I’m not at risk, so to hell with everyone else” attitude. I just think it’s a bit sociopathic.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:00 amThere are federal authorizations for the vaccines. Statutory, regulatory, and by executive order. And the Supremacy Clause.
DeSantis is tweaking Trump’s nose, that’s all he’s doing. Trump won’t know which way to turn with his lower strata.
nk (bb1548) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:07 amTo be fair, Musk has pled with this user to stop doing this, so this isn’t “out of the blue”.
Further this is part of an orchestrated and crowd-sourced campaign of harassment and RFing Musk’s attempt to rebuild Twitter. The folks who LIKED Twitter’s censorship of the Right are really unhappy that Musk won’t play their game and are throwing a tantrum. If they can’t have Twitter, no one can.
Now, I hope that Musk can actually create a service where bad speech is fought with better speech. Blocking badthink with censorship doesn’t stop it, it just drives it somewhere else.
The best thing that Musk could do with Twitter is insist that the real name of every user is accessible to all. Removing the veneer of anonymity is the best way to moderate asshattery on the Internet.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:08 amTrump won’t know which way to turn with his lower strata.
“Thinking on his feet” is not Trump’s strongest quality.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:09 am#308:
I think that Rob is concerned about how the Act may criminalize personal religiously-based decisions. That some consider religion to be a fantasy does not mean that those beliefs are suppressible by the State in the service of progressive policy.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:15 am@310
I’m really trying to be nice and extend some grace here…
But, no, it’s NOT sociopathic to refuse to take a vaccine “for the good of the community” for a disease that has a near-zero impact for certain age groups (namely the young and healthy).
You seem to instinctively hand-wave vaccine concerns (namely increased risk for myocarditis) amongst the younger age groups.
If the concerns regarding being “active carriers of the disease” while being healthy personally, then its incumbent on those at risks to take whatever mitigating strategy for themselves, not the “active carriers of the disease”. Especially when we’re talking about respirator viruses.
Don’t demand this on otherwise healthy or young individuals.
You’re literally trending into the morally of shady medical ethics.
whembly (905885) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:28 amThe number of businesses sued into bankruptcy by leftist activists because their owners follow the Christian faith has been documented time and time again. Leftist politicans have endorsed that bigotry. This further codifies it into law and violates religious freedom.
NJRob (de3c8a) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:28 amTime: “cultural institutions life has mostly been getting better for people in the ways we can measure”
Yeah, this is one that it’s difficult to have a rational discussion about. The Left has goofy ideas, some more goofy than others. Let’s take teaching elements of Critical Race Theory to elementary school kids and, in the extreme, making them feel bad about their race. Most would agree that this is ridiculous and shouldn’t be allowed. So, this is a new concern that parent’s with K-12 children must monitor. Is it endemic? Does it require federal intervention and state laws? That’s the debating part of this.
People are concerned that the Left not just pushes for acceptance of homosexuals but celebration….and that that theme is getting extended to transsexuals — with massive confusion about pronouns. Some children are exploring transitioning in their early teens. The culture warriors would say that this is making it more challenging to raise kids.
Hollywood consistently promotes the values of the Left. Yes, it’s always been progressive-leaning, but its reach via new media is more pernicious. There is little to balance this and the trend is a more and more coarse culture.
The higher education academia create the intellectual cloaks to not just promote these Leftist ideas but extreme notions of income redistribution, socialism, environmental regulation, and multiculturalism. God is pushed out and progressive values have been substituted. Again, people feel there is no way to effectively push back and they fear not just becoming minority view holders, but being made extinct. Social media and shock news just builds the frustration and apprehension.
They want politics to give them a voice and say NO. Some want the Right to try to use the same tactics as the Left has used to gain traction. They love Trump, or any politician, that will call out the insanity, even if it’s counter-productive or leads to losing elections. Because otherwise, you’re correct…most of the usual metrics in society are pretty good. Though crime is up, we had decades of it falling. Illegal immigration concerns are even hitting the liberal news. Suicide is up. I think part of the issue is that we get persistent cries about things where in past generations we didn’t have a 24/7 stoking of drama from both sides. I have relatives who you would think have illegal Mexicans camped out in their backyard. There is no escaping that political parties must take positions on this stuff and advocate where it makes sense. But in my opinion, this is where the rubber hits the road: what is the correct actions to take? What are big problems and what is manufactured outrage?
AJ_Liberty (5f05c3) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:39 amKevin, Whembly seems to be clearly saying that we need to look at how we did the risk / benefit balance for the covid vaccine with special focus on low risk populations.
I don’t read him saying vaccines are bad in general, this vaccine is bad specifically, or even that this vaccine was badly rolled out.
I agree with him and hope such an analysis looks closely at what was known at the time and what the active risks at the time were. I think we could have handled covid mitigation much better.
My fear is that this will end up being nothing more then demagoguery and anti-vax conspiracy theories, but I’m willing to wait and see what they actually do.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:39 amAJ, Violent crime is not up in the US. It’s been flat for the last 5 years at about 375 reports per 100,000 people.
We need to continue improving the situation but the general trend has been positive.
Suicide has gone up. But seeing as the states with the highest rates of suicide are fairly conservative (Wyoming, Alaska, Montana) I don’t think that wokeness is to blame.
I agree with you that these are things to work on and I’m interested in polices and plans to do so. But what we mostly get is culture war nonsense that won’t have much (if any) impact.
Time123 (0b1a90) — 12/14/2022 @ 9:51 amYou seem to instinctively hand-wave vaccine concerns (namely increased risk for myocarditis) amongst the younger age groups.
It is a minuscule chance, and you seem to handwave the risk of Covid, even in the young, or the risk that they transmit their supposedly benign infection to someone who is at far greater risk. This thinking is what led to countless nursing home deaths.
Even if those more at risk are immunized, repeated interactions with infected persons, presenting variations of the virus, will increase the chance that the at-risk person contracts the disease. You have the right to swing your fist, but you do not have the right to hit my nose when you do it.
And those chances are greater than the vanishingly small risk of myocarditis, or the small subset of that group that gets a serious disease. I do not “handwave” but simply state that everything has a side-effect and you have to balance them.
I get the Libertarian attitude, but in a pandemic I don’t effing care. The person who refuses to participate in society’s response is sociopathic.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:01 amNJRob, To repeat what’s been shown in the past; The bill explicitly protects the rights of religious institutions. The wesborro baptist church isn’t required to host a SSM but if one of their congregation owns a banquet hall or a restaurant they can’t refuse to serve same sex couples.
As usual your characterization is (at best) wildly overblown.
Time123 (265b62) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:04 am> I think that Rob is concerned about how the Act may criminalize personal religiously-based decisions.
On its face, an act which requires that the federal government recognize acts of state governments, and that state governments recognize acts of other governments, doesn’t criminalize personal religiously-based decisions. At *worst* it adds requirements for state employment that prevent people who would make certain personal religiously-based decisions from doing so *in their capacity as officers of the state*.
It’s a false fear that isn’t actually rooted in the text of the bill in any way, and at this point it makes his claims about the bill *conscious lies*.
aphrael (4c4719) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:08 amSO what is this risk I handwave?
With Pfizer, the risk is 0.0012%. You are 20 times more likely to be a pedestrian hit by a car, this year. It’s not a large chance.
And even if you are one of the few who get myocarditis, it’s treatable and most people quickly recover. Lastly, the chance of myocarditis as a complication from Covid itself is 11 times higher than the risk after the vaccine. This risk is halved among the previously vaccinated.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:16 amSorry. Link for the quotes above:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/risk-rare-heart-inflammation-may-be-higher-after-moderna-pfizer-covid-vaccine
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:18 amIt requires that state governments recognize marriages performed by any other state government. That is also plainly constitutional — Article IV, Section 1 very clearly allows Congress to do this.
If that interpretation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause holds up, not only the Second Amendment crowd but every corporation or other limited liability entity in the United States will be lobbying Congress for a law to have their Florida gun permits recognized in California, and their Delaware corporations recognized in New York without the need of an interstate compact, registration, or certificate to do business.
nk (3cb6e7) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:34 amAccording to the CDC, 605 American children ages 0-4 have died from COVID and another 970, ages 5-18. So, though children are at much lower risk from COVID, they are not at zero risk.
More than a quarter of million Americans have died who were between 19 and 64, that is, the most common working years.
Jim Miller (f29931) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:38 amWhat is the risk of a Covid-carrier accidentally transmitting the virus to someone who cannot easily tolerate it? Is 1 in 100 an acceptable risk? 1 in 1000? Suppose it was 1 in 10.
It certainly is not the same tiny risk of contracting myocarditis.
Lastly, the chance of death from Covid-19 for persons 15-24 years of age is 0.0068%, which is noticeably more than the chance of contracting myocarditis at any age from an mRNA vaccine (5 times the chance with Pfizer).
I handwave nothing.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:44 amThose businesses are being sued under existing state laws (for example, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act), not federal statutes. There is nothing in the Respect of Marriage Act that creates a tort against private businesses. The only private right of action in the Act allows suit against a “person acting under color of State law”, meaning a state or local government official, not a private business.
Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:56 amGrab the Vaseline; Fed ‘transients’ America w/another rate hike.
DCSCA (e2b879) — 12/14/2022 @ 11:29 amKevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 10:44 am
It depends on how serious a case of Covid it is.
This is not a binary choice – a person is not either YES positive or NO negative, although through much of the epidemic, all sorts of people acted this way. So it depends ad it is nowhere near as high as 1/10. Worse, for the first ews after an injection, the effect of a vaccine is probably to increase the severity of an infection, should it occur, because the body is now dealing with false alarms.
By the way, a low enough dose of virus acts much like a vaccine. Masks can probably reduce exposure.
One thing that’s going on is the claim that the vaccine booster is updated It is not against what is now becoming the common version, and even against BA.5 it has limited effectiveness because half of it is against the Wuhan variant — which is probably now extinct or almost extinct.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/health/updated-boosters-omicron-imprint/index.html
Actually, probably not due to chance, but also not thta significant. And then – antibodies against what??
Worse, it is not even against the current version.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/5-things-to-know-omicron
The advertisements are so false that Florida Governor DeSantis ants to prosecute the people who advertise it on the grounds the boosters are updated to be against the current version (of course he is posturing, but he tries to be on safe ground. He’s able to do this because the approval process lags so much behind reality. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel as the saing goes.)
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/desantis-vaccine-prosecute_n_6398d332e4b09e0de49751ac
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 12:28 pmThe advertisements are so false that Florida Governor DeSantis says he wants to prosecute the people who advertise the latest boosters on the grounds the boosters are targeted against the current variants
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3742510-bq-1-bq-1-1-push-ba-5-out-as-the-dominant-omicron-subvariant-in-u-s/
https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2022-12-09/cdc-new-omicron-subvariants-xbb-bq-1-1-bq-1-increasing-in-the-u-s
Not unless something changes. Now you could do a vaccine that isn’t so variant dependent, but that would require somebody to change their standard operating procedure and make a vaccine that casts a wider net — of course the problem then is that the risk of an autoimmune response gets worse.
The monoclonal antibodies, which are really the best treatment when the version of the virus is the one it is aimed against, easily become useless – but that is because there are only 1 or 2 antibodies in each. The antivirals are a general all purpose treatment and continue to work.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 12:43 pmhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/1-eu-watchdog-warns-waning-161037051.html
The monoclonal antibody formulations (extremely effective – they probably saved Dooald Trump’s life and nothing is as good) probably have a half life of two to thre months worth of effectiveness before the virus changes.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 12:48 pmThe latest from DeSantis:
https://news.yahoo.com/ron-desantis-lashes-authoritarians-demanding-053550015.html
Now if DeSantis was honest, he’d explain why he is right about the new boosters lack of effectiveness (at least compared with the old booster or maybe even compared against a flu shot) and recommend something to cure the problem.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 12:52 pmInflation might have gone down slightly due to lower oil prices – and that ould be alittle attributed to the Fed, althoh it is worldwide roce.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:09 pmThey don’t all, but some do – because we are dealing with organized groupthink.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:11 pm333.
Instead of just attacking and assigning the most cynical motives to the official statements.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:13 pmTexas attorney general office ask DMV to report all license holders who have changed their gender to report this to AG! It begins. Now trying to clear evidence of request. (DU)
asset (f44a44) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:17 pmSimon Jester (e87920) — 12/13/2022 @ 4:04 pm
The benefits are the lack of profit, especially since the medical community wants to save ne antibiotics for when other antibiotics don’t work
But the point is, government policy should take account of this, and offer a prize for new antibiotics and buy some.
.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:17 pmNo, they modified the definition to avoid the moratorium on research.
And nothing what Fauci funded led to Covid, But the Chinese lab may have been made interested in a line of research that a virus more dangerous to people.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:23 pmWhat about those who proselytize oon that point, at every opportunity,, meanwhile also attacking the motives of people who don’t say that.
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:26 pmNJRob: What question about walls?
Sammy FInkelman (1d215a) — 12/14/2022 @ 1:26 pmThe problem with vaccines being able to target emerging strains of a virus is that the FDA won’t let Pfizer just wing it. There needs to be at least some testing and that testing slows a rapid response.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 3:01 pmDeSantis will turn off more of the center with this than he will attract from Trump’s minions. And he shows what some have said is true: he will demagogue anything if he things it helps him.
Now, he may be right that winning the nomination means he has to win over the Trumpists,but he creates some strong opposition by this utter fukwit nonsense.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 3:04 pmBut the point is, government policy should take account of this, and offer a prize for new antibiotics and buy some.
As long as companies can be held liable for the side-effects of drugs that have been honestly submitted to the government’s own approval process and passed all tests then you will see far fewer and less effective drugs come to market.
Kevin M (1ea396) — 12/14/2022 @ 3:08 pmSammy,
you said
I responded:
Because after all, without walls and strict border control they wouldn’t exist.
So are you absolutist or selective?
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/14/2022 @ 6:53 pmYoung, athletic people are dropping death at rates well beyond normal.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/14/2022 @ 6:55 pmThat said, NJ – sadly, I don’t think those premature deaths will be of import with the new head of the NCAA (former poster mg would be snarling frothy mouth style!)
urbanleftbehind (1c5c9a) — 12/15/2022 @ 8:51 amThis reminds me of some joke about Emes (truth) and Sheker (falsehood) something like the emes ate with sheker and he must be silent.
Now what I said was that no democratic had strict border control and Israel is no exception. There are illegal immigrants in Israel from African countries and there’s a whole controversy about them with the Israeli Supreme court. (this concerns old cases) Plus guest workers who overstay. Plus Arabs from the West Bank who work and stay in Israel. (their employers, who illegally help them, vet them)
Israel does not in fact, have strict border control of the type you imagine is possible.
The migrants from Africa who were going there a few years ago after being frustrated in attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea mostly stopped coming but not because a wall was built on the border with Egypt. The fact is that region was occupied by Hamas or other terrorists and they endangered the life of people passing through.
Israel indeed is a special case. The illegal immigrants from Africa have no special reason to be in Israel. They only go there because there is no other good place. In the case of the United States there is no good reason for excluding many people, especially from the Americas and surely that everything not permitted is forbidden is not the right idea that
Israel is a good counterargument for the economic argument against immigration. The only truthful arguments are sociological and demographic.
Sammy Finkelman (1d215a) — 12/15/2022 @ 4:43 pmThey have extremely strict border control that puts ours to shame. How about we control our border on the same level as they do, okay?
NJRob (7d5c65) — 12/15/2022 @ 5:25 pmhttps://thepostmillennial.com/andy-ngo-reports-domestic-terrorism-charges-for-five-arrested-at-violent-antifa-autonomous-zone-near-atlanta
Young antifa terrorists doing what young antifa terrorists do.
NJRob (7d5c65) — 12/15/2022 @ 5:26 pmhttps://www.foxnews.com/politics/cdc-removed-stats-defensive-gun-use-pressure-gun-control-activists-report
Leftwing politics take precedence over actual science and the statistics that support it.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/15/2022 @ 9:04 pm