367 thoughts on “Got the ‘Covs”

  4. Lucia,
    This happened because you failed to wear 3 masks on top of each other whenever you left the house. 😉
    .
    I am sure you will get well soon. And then you will have even more resistance.
    .
    I would almost be tempted to have an antibiody profile test to see if either of the sore throats with mild headache I had over the past two years were covid…. but not enough tempted to spend the money.

  6. angech,
    Yes. We can get antivirals now!

    SteveF,
    Oh. Jim, I, and a dance friend all got sick. We have a good idea where! Fairly crowded dance venue is our theory. It was bound to happen.

    Jim never gets colds so he took a test the minute his throat was sore. I get them all the time so I wouldn’t have taken it except he was positive.

    For me it’s just like a detectable cold so far. But since I detected it I’m going for the antivirals to reduce chance of progressing.

    Jim has a fever; I don’t. Our dance friend’s symptoms are worse. She got one of the other treatments.

  7. “I guess if Fauci got it we all will.”
    Are you suggesting that Dr. Fauci is a super-spreader? 😉

    Hope you both recover quickly.

  8. HaroldW,
    Well, he wasn’t at our dance party. But maybe one of the dancers got it from Fauci. Who knows? 🙂

  9. Lucia, here’s hoping you, Jim and your dance friends recover soon and without any long Covid-19 complications.

    Of all my relatives and friends both close and distant, I can account for only a single death. He was a brother of a brother-in-law who was 88 and had other medical issues. He is also the only one over 65 from this extended group who was Covid-19 infected. Those under 65 have nearly all been infected. Most were mild cases and with no long Covid-19 that I am aware.

  10. Me too, In Rome a couple of weeks ago. symptoms and positivity surfaced in London. Fever, and incredibly sore legs (??) also exhaustion. I didn’t medicate. It all went away after about 7 days.

    Spouse went positive a couple of weeks earlier on Viking Adriatic cruise. everyone on board had proof of vaccinations and negative pcr test within 72 hours to board, then pcr test every morning which is how Jan was discovered. they quarantined her in a section of one of the lower decks with the 6 other positives they discovered at same time. then quarantined in Mestre at conclusion of cruise for another 7 days. Italians wouldn’t turn her loose until 24 hours after negative test. we took train to Rome. FWIW, if you think you are going to enjoy seeing Tuscany on the train ride from Venice, forget it. Train runs mostly in Tunnels where its hilly.

    As to long covid, there could be brain fog, although Jan suggests that in my case it would be nothing new.

  11. John Ferguson,
    “FWIW, if you think you are going to enjoy seeing Tuscany on the train ride from Venice, forget it.”
    .
    By car it really is beautiful.

  12. John,
    The thought of having a positive test while on travel really puts me off on the idea of travel. OTOH: Now that I have it perhaps the chances of getting it again will be lower. The vaccine is for “original” strain. This is certainly not-original. So that’s two strains down. 🙂

  13. Poking the Bear to incite war between Russia and NATO.
    .
    As the war in Ukraine is going towards a full Russian win, the powers that be are looking to get NATO (USA) directly involved in the war with boots on the ground. A “wag the dog” event to stem the November election red wave?
    .
    June 17 (Reuters) – Lithuania has told the Russian region of Kaliningrad that it will block the import and export of a large number of goods by rail because of Western sanctions, the regional governor said on Friday.

    .
    Lithuania has said previously that they cannot unilaterally cut off the transit of trains from mainland Russia to the exclave of Kaliningrad
    .
    https://www.baltictimes.com/lithuania_can_t_cut_off_transit_of_russian_trains_to_kaliningrad___minister/
    .
    Only now they can
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/lithuania-says-sanctions-goods-kaliningrad-take-effect-saturday-2022-06-18/

  14. I booked a Viking ocean cruise in Australia in December, which is infinity in covid time. (Yes, I have grudgingly returned to normal life, dragged kicking and screaming by my wife) We shall see how the covid situation looks then. Viking told me a positive covid test would be isolation in your own cabin with your roommate regardless of whether they tested positive or not. These ships have on board PCR testers and everyone is tested every day currently, but the rules are changing pretty fast now. I asked them for ship covid statistics but they unsurprisingly weren’t willing to share. Not exactly a good demographic.
    .
    I don’t usually buy travel insurance, but I did this time, ha ha. You pretty much have to because of the real possibility of being stranded pre or post cruise.
    .
    Humorously some of the cheapest hotels you can book now are cruise ship rooms in the Caribbean. Gigantic ships in an ultra competitive market. $100 to $200 a night. The Caribbean ships have been banned from going into some ports if they exceed 1% total cases on board. That has happened a few times.
    .
    I would definitely feel more comfortable traveling post infection, especially for the following 4 months.

  15. I did see some data that natural immunity from omicron provides only minimal protection to delta as far as antibody testing goes, but it is irrelevant because delta has virtually been eliminated from existence. I still find that previous strains disappear completely non-intuitive, don’t really understand how that happens.

  16. I took a vacation to Florida 2 ys before covid in February.
    .
    We decided on a short cruise for part of the vacation as per day motel/hotel rates were MUCH more expensive than a cruise, and the cruise included meals, which were excellent.
    .
    We had time for a dive down the Key’s on Sunday, but were concerned about Sunday traffic, which we had been told was heavy, especially on Sundays. We were going to drive until we hit traffic slowdowns and then turn back.
    .
    It was 55mph the entire way to Key West ?? And 55mph the entire way back. No crowds anywhere.
    .
    On the way back, we saw a sign on a bar. “Watch the Supper Bowl here this Sunday “

  17. Tom Scharf (Comment #212773): “I still find that previous strains disappear completely non-intuitive, don’t really understand how that happens.”
    .
    Indeed. It seems that viruses actually compete with each other, not just between strains but between species. That might be why there has been so little flu. But it seems that is still a very controversial idea since it is not at all clear how the competition works.

  19. Negative test before coming out of quarantine, is not in line with CDC protocols. You are not considered contagious after a certain period of time despite testing positive.

  20. MikeN,
    I’m not waiting for a negative PCR test. I’m going to get a negative antigen test.
    I know it’s not CDC protocol to wait for that either.
    And on being contagenous vs. time: That’s more or less a guesstimate. No one has actually done the study to figure out exactly when relative to any particular time one is contagious.

  21. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html#no-symptoms

    f you test positive for COVID-19 and never develop symptoms, isolate for at least 5 days. Day 0 is the day of your positive viral test (based on the date you were tested) and day 1 is the first full day after the specimen was collected for your positive test. You can leave isolation after 5 full days.
    If you continue to have no symptoms, you can end isolation after at least 5 days.

    I have symptoms. So, the above does not

    You should continue to wear a well-fitting mask around others at home and in public until day 10 (day 6 through day 10). If you are unable to wear a mask when around others, you should continue to isolate for 10 days. Avoid people who have weakened immune systems or are more likely to get very sick from COVID-19, and nursing homes and other high-risk settings, until after at least 10 days.

    I will be avoiding my mom for at least 10 days. For the most part, I would rather isolate than wear a mask.

    I’m also going to run an antigen test before I visit my Mom. Others can say it’s not required. But I think I can perfectly well be more cautious than necessary.

  23. I did forget one case of of Covid-19 in the extended group of friends I previously mentioned. My daughter-in-law’s grandmother who is 97 had Covid-19 when she was 95. She was asymptomatic. I was informed that she recently had a second Covid-19 infection and again was asymptomatic.

  24. Interesting the comment on one virus infection seemingly preventing others.
    Anecdotally true in my experience.
    Suggests some of the response is heightened natural immunity.
    Perhaps the immune response alerts all target cells to shut down, a bit like a sea anemone drawing in its feelers or a snail going into its shell!
    Only exception not really an exception.
    Viral infections do stimulate shingles,
    Also a virus infection but not one caught from someone else.
    In Darwin at moment , my old high school mate is going dancing rock-and roll. They also have ballroom, tango and something else on other nights.
    I’m-staying in, too old, two left feet, other half would not be amused when I go back home.

  25. Tom Scharf,
    “I still find that previous strains disappear completely non-intuitive, don’t really understand how that happens.”
    .
    Seems perfectly intuitive to me.
    .
    Suppose the omicron strain had never arisen. What would have happened to the spread of the earlier less infectious strains? Nothing…. they were already dropping to near nothing, because they were not infectious enough to continue spreading in a population with an ever rising fraction of people with either natural resistance or acquired resistance (from infection of vaccines). The early strains certainly could have spread in places like New Zealand (pre-vaccine) because those people were just as immunologically naĂŻve as the populations in the USA and Europe. It is good to remember that lots of people did not become infected with the earliest strains, in spite of certain exposure, but with omicron, even people who caught an earlier strain seem susceptible to (usually mild) reinfection. Omicron is obviously many times more infective than the original strain.
    .
    Look at the history of cases and deaths in the USA and Europe: four distinct waves, each wave a new, more infectious strain. The only ‘competition’ is that exposure to any related strain raises the bar for other strains; they have to be enough different that they can infect, in spite of widespread resistance to closely related strains with closely related physical structure. Varicella exposure made smallpox “disappear” only because of cross resistance between the two; it would be way beyond strange if there were not cross resistance between covid virus strains. But a newer virus does not drive an earlier strain out of existence by displacing it… it is nothing like an invasive species driving a native species out of existence. It is a more infectious strain being able to spread in a population where an earlier strain would rapidly die out.

  26. It’s worth bearing in mind that flu is primarily a droplet spread infection. Masking should have been far more effective in preventing its spread than against covid. I believe the lower flu numbers were even presented as evidence of the effectiveness of masking, ignoring the fact that covid doesn’t spread like flu.

  28. SteveF (Comment #212784): “each wave a new, more infectious strain.”
    .
    “But a newer virus does not drive an earlier strain out of existence by displacing it”
    .
    That is a circular argument. The conclusion that each strain is more infectious is based on the assumption that the only competition is indirect, via herd immunity. That is a very common and very plausible assumption. But there is evidence that it is not true. I don’t think it can explain the global coordination of strains. And a particular flu strain often remains important for two or three successive seasons.
    .
    So far as I know, there is no good mechanism for direct competition. But science does not progress by ignoring what we don’t understand. The biggest advances are often start with “that should be impossible”.
    .
    For a half century, continental drift was considered loony because there was no mechanism.

  29. The alternative is that Delta and Omicron coexist side by side with Delta having a decreasing prevalence as the susceptible population decreases. There are still many people who never caught Delta but it is basically gone. Omicron is more successful and will outcompete Delta all thing equal. I suppose that it might be exponential and the reality is that over time Delta is driven to near zero and there is some kind of threshold where it does actually just disappear.
    .
    Alternately it may be that Delta is just 0.001% of infections now and if Omicron instantly disappeared Delta would flare up again.
    .
    It’s the reverse of looking at the proportions of infections and getting a reading of how much more infectious omicron is. A more equal competition just takes longer for the lesser variant be driven to a threshold mathematically . There might be other thresholds so that a 50.1% advantage is not enough to eliminate another variant over any period of time.

  30. Lucia wrote: “Flu is thought to be aerosol born too”
    .
    Yes, but they don’t sound all that certain about it, which suggests to me that droplet is the primary mechanism and it may have a side gig in airborne.

  31. It boggles my mind that at the level of funding for global health that they aren’t even sure how the flu spreads. They also seemed rather incapable of quickly determining whether covid was aerosols or not. They also were rather deficient in verifying the efficacy of masks.
    .
    My faith in public health wasn’t reinforced here. The vaccines were a major win of course, so there is that.
    .
    Social distancing and masks drove the flu numbers way down. This is almost scary in a way because the flu’s reaction to this might be to become much more infectious to survive. I imagine not every virus can just turn up the infection knob, so hopefully that won’t happen.

  32. My impression is that COVID is only (well mostly) spread by aerosol. Colds (non-coronavirus) and influenza do appear to also be spread by contact with contaminated fomites. So it’s not just masks that could be responsible for low influenza incidence. We had a lot of sterilization guidelines, with frequent wipe downs, hand washing and hand sanitizer use and lots of gowning as well as masking. That probably had little effect on COVID transmission.

  33. DaveJR,
    There is reason to suspect that in the past a lot of “it’s airborne” was pooh-poohed because it sounded too much like the “miasma” theory people had before they knew about viruses and germs. Aerosol isn’t that theory, but transmission would look consistent with that theory.
    (Some of the literature and history was dug up by Lindsey Marr, (https://cee.vt.edu/people/faculty/lmarr.html) and engineer who did research in particulate flow who recongized the whacked out nature of the medical literature on droplet transport during Covid. So she dug up some historical papers on arguments. Whooo boy. Medical science! Well, let’s just say particulate transport is not their thing.

    There aren’t really strong reasons to think influenza is “droplet” transported. It was just “the lore”.

  34. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9149

    Debates surrounding the relative importance of different transmission modes in spreading respiratory disease have spanned centuries. Before the 20th century, infectious respiratory diseases were thought to spread by “pestilential particles” released by infected individuals (11, 12). This view of airborne transmission was dismissed in the early 1900s by Charles Chapin, who claimed that contact was the chief route for respiratory disease transmission, with spray-borne (droplet) transmission being an extension of contact transmission (13). Chapin was concerned that mentioning transmission by air would scare people into inaction and displace hygiene practices. Chapin erroneously equated infections at close range with droplet transmission—neglecting the fact that aerosol transmission also occurs at short distances. This unsupported assumption became widespread in epidemiological studies (14), and mitigation strategies for controlling respiratory virus transmission have since focused on limiting droplet and fomite transmission (15). Some of these strategies are also partially effective for limiting aerosol transmission, leading to the erroneous conclusion that their efficacy proved droplet transmission.
    Despite the assumed dominance of droplet transmission, there is robust evidence supporting the airborne transmission of many respiratory viruses, including measles virus (16–18), influenza virus (19–24), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (25), human rhinovirus (hRV) (9, 26–28), adenovirus, enterovirus (29), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) (30, 31), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (32), and SARS-CoV-2 (33–36) (Table 1). Airborne transmission has been estimated to account for approximately half of the transmission of influenza A virus in one study of a household setting (20). A human challenge study on rhinovirus transmission concluded that aerosols were likely the dominant transmission mode (26). SARS-CoV-2 infection of hamsters and ferrets has been shown to transmit through air in experimental configurations designed to exclude contributions from direct contact and droplet transmission (33, 37, 38). Analysis of respiratory emissions during infection with influenza virus, parainfluenza virus, RSV, human metapneumovirus, and hRV has revealed the presence of viral genomes in a variety of aerosol sizes, with the highest amount detected in aerosols <5 ?m rather than in larger aerosols (39). SARS-CoV-2 RNA has been detected and infectious virus has been recovered in aerosols ranging from 0.25 to >4 ?m (34, 35, 40–44). Influenza virus RNA has also been detected in both fine (?5 ?m) and coarse (>5 ?m) aerosols exhaled from infected individuals, with more viral RNA contained in the fine aerosol particles (23). Laboratory studies have found that aerosolized SARS-CoV-2 has a half-life of ~1 to 3 hours (45–47). The World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially acknowledged inhalation of virus-laden aerosols as a main mode in spreading SARS-CoV-2 at both short and long ranges in April and May of 2021, respectively (48, 49).

  35. In a SERS model, the pathogen always goes extinct. A mutation that makes a virus significantly more infectious can delay that fate. But there is a limit to becoming more infectious. So all viruses should become more and more infectious until they go extinct. That is not what happens.
    .
    There is still a lot that we do not understand.

  36. Lucia, my comment about negative test and quarantine protocols was in response to the person quarantined in Italy until testing negative.

  37. Lucia, while I agree with the general sentiment about medical research, things like masking precautions are often based on best practice ie, many observations of what works vs what doesn’t. While not as rigorous as science, I think influenza regularly bypassing droplet precautions would have been spotted.

  38. Scott Ritter made a comment on Ukraine casualties I found interesting.
    .
    On the 100 to 200 dead Ukraine admits as losing per,day, they are not listing “missing” in these numbers. He is saying Russia has claimed captured documents from overrun positions are listing as much as 600 a day “missing “. Other than fog of war reasons to fudge the numbers, the fact that death benefits are not paid for “missing” and pay continues to flow forward to the units for the “missing”, graft is a reasonable explanation. Collecting pay for non existing personnel is a time tested graft for unit commanders.
    .
    Ukraine daily casualties of 200 dead, x4 wounded (800), and using 300 missing is 1300/day or currently about 40,000 / month . Dead may be less, but wounded could be higher. The 100-200 dead / day admitted to by Ukraine is ONLY for the far east pocket.
    .
    WWI artillery war at it’s finest, and Ukraine is not able to effectively respond. Ukraine is trading lives for time, but it’s not clear what Ukraine is buying time for. Cutting the above 40k/month in half to 20k/month is still disastrous for Ukraine.

  39. MikeN,

    as the spouse of the victim of quarantine in Italy, I can assure you that this is what the Italian health service required in late May of this year. And yes, it doesn’t conform to the CDC understanding du jour, but as a scheme to assure diminished contagion it is easy to administer and likely reliable.

    As I understand it, Italy had some really bad experience with the plague in the first 18 months and didn’t want to repeat it if it could be avoided.

  40. DaveJR

    While not as rigorous as science, I think influenza regularly bypassing droplet precautions would have been spotted.

    Influenza spread was observed to spread in situations where it could not have been droplet. Read the linked paper.

  41. MikeN,
    Fair enough. That’s the confusing thing about comment threads. I thought you were advising me against testing to confirm lowered contagiousness with a PCR test.

  43. Also, Lucia, were you still doing your nasal thing when you were Covid-19 infected.

  45. Lucia:wrote: “Influenza spread was observed to spread in situations where it could not have been droplet.”
    .
    Not disputing. What I am disputing is that this makes a big difference in general practice so that upgrading from droplet precautions to airborne makes sense.

  46. Is today the day the Supreme Court posts opinions on the contentious cases that remain? We’ll know in a couple of hours.

  47. Masks can hide and contain a boatload of snot. An occasional Kleenex wipe is all that is required.

  48. Since the topic concerning government restraint on a matter in the face of mob violence in reaction has been broached here, I have to ask if the Supreme Court should be sensitive to the threats of a “night of rage” in the face of striking down Roe v Wade? I have not heard these threats concerning a possible prosecution of Trump.

  49. Kenneth,

    For me the strange thing is that the Court striking Roe would actually have a very modest impact on abortion in the USA…. most abortions take place in states where they will not be in any way restricted if Roe is struck. In addition, there will for sure be efforts to provide travel assistance to women who want an abortion in states that restrict abortion, further reducing the impact.
    .
    Seems to me a lot of noise generated over a modest impact.

  50. DaveJR,

    What I am disputing is that this makes a big difference in general practice so that upgrading from droplet precautions to airborne makes sense.

    Of course it would make a huge difference. If aerosol transmission, where an aerosol is defined as particles less than 100 micrometers (read the linked article if that seems to large to you), then cloth and surgical masks are obviously nearly useless. The six foot rule is nonsense. Aerosols are capable of traveling much farther. An N95 mask is the minimum and HEPA air filtration and UV air sterilization should be standard practice. Hand washing and surface cleaning becomes much less important.

  51. First SC opinion of the day: an obscure case on insurance company coverage obligations for end-stage renal failure/dialysis treatment.
    .
    Yawn.

  52. Ed Forbes (Comment #212797)

    Ed, I listened to Scott Ritter’s comments in the linked podcast where in summation I got the idea that he is not anti war but rather does not like US foreign policy past and present and in an effort to bolster his case tends to make those nations who are and/or were disfavored by US a whole lot purer and more honest than they are in my view. He is too emotional and mocking for me to take seriously his spin on the historical events even though he does have a comprehensive view of the events connected to the Ukraine war.

    Being a libertarian, I am anti war and have problems with the US foreign affairs and policies, but, unlike some libertarians, I do not minimize the evil and dishonesty of nations who might be or had been considered enemies of the US or involved on the other side of the US’s missteps or attempt to purify their actions . The opposite of my approach to foreign affairs in the case of the 2nd amendment would be to minimize gun violence or somehow excuse it in defending that amendment.

    Rights are rights and principles are principles and not conditional on what some might want to show or see as bad outcomes.

  53. DeWitt,
    “An N95 mask is the minimum and HEPA air filtration and UV air sterilization should be standard practice.”
    .
    Yup, and here is the really weird thing: the investments needed for improved air filtration and especially installing ceiling mount UV lights seem modest compared to the economic costs (direct and indirect) for the covid pandemic. Will Congress spend even one penny to encourage the simple steps that would make a huge difference for influenza outbreaks and for the next pandemic? I very much doubt it. Will N95 masks be stockpiled? I very much doubt it. Will the CDC ever back-track on its crazy “wash everything” guidance? Hell no!

  54. Second opinion of the day: What constitutes a “crime of violence” under the Hobbs act. Yawn.

  55. First controversial opinion posted:
    Carson v Makin. 6/3 conservative/liberal split. Maine can’t withhold tuition assistance because an accredited private school teaches some religion.

  57. SteveF,

    IMO, you have to be actively hostile to religion to take the minority position in that decision. Free exercise of religion should not mean freedom from religion. The so-called ‘wall of separation’ is not actually in the Constitution.

  58. DaveJR

    Not disputing. What I am disputing is that this makes a big difference in general practice so that upgrading from droplet precautions to airborne makes sense.

    If you mean it doesn’t make sense to also protect against aerosol spread, I think you are quite mistaken. If you mean we should not drop protections against droplet spread, I agree.
    .
    Anyway, no one is suggesting that drops don’t also spread things. Also: things people do for droplet protection partly protects against some aerosol spread. Staying far from an infectious source is standard in droplet protection. But reduces the concentration of aerosols breathed in. It also means you might stay outside an exhaled jet or plume entirely. So it also helps a lot if the spread is aerosol.
    .
    Of coursed that advise is not entirely successful for aerosol protection because aersols linger, suspended and concentrations canh accumulate. And the observed failures of droplet protections is explained by there being a significant aerosol path for contagion.
    .
    Since influenza remains sufficiently widespread to advice vaccines, I think any suggestion that we ignore a significant path for contagion and just let that one rip is ill advised.

  59. So it looks like 12 opinions remain for the SC term, at least 5 of which are controversial subjects.
    .
    The one I am most anxious to see is West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, because that will have the largest and most lasting influence on how policy is set in the USA. Many laws have been used by bureaucracies like the EPA in ways that Congress never intended… will the Court require bureaucrats to act on laws consistent with Congress’s intent, or allow bureaucrats to stretch/contort laws in ways that Congress did not foresee and would NEVER have approved? It is IMO by far the most important case of the term. If bureaucrats have to make their regulations consistent with Congresses intent when a law was passed, it will fundamentally change the regulatory state. And for the better.

  60. This one is important

    Since Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), the Supreme Court has made clear that school choice programs, which financially support parents’ sending children to private schools, may include religious schools, without violating the Establishment Clause—just as university scholarship programs (such as the GI Bill and others) may be used at religious institutions alongside secular institutions without violating the Establishment Clause. But must they include religious schools on basically the same terms as secular schools, in order to comply with the Free Exercise Clause?

    In today’s decision in Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court said yes, by a 6-3 vote (following two earlier cases, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer and Espinoza v. Montana Dep’t of Revenue, that had pointed in this direction, and distinguishing another earlier case, Locke v. Davey, that pointed in the opposite direction).

    https://reason.com/volokh/2022/06/21/exclusion-of-religious-schooling-from-generally-available-school-choice-programs-generally-unconstitutional/

  61. Lucia,
    “Of coursed that advise is not entirely successful for aerosol protection because aersols linger, suspended and concentrations canh accumulate.”
    .
    I read recently that tests show aerosolized covid virus remains viable with a half-life of 3 to 4 hours, which means that crowded bars are a no-no if you want to avoid exposure, and anything less than a well fitted N-95 mask is unlikely to help much.
    .
    But it also means that places like nursing homes, hospitals, business offices, stores, etc. would do well to install low intensity overhead UV lights, and/or intense UV lights in the ventilation system. Those steps could by themselves drop the concentration of viable virus manifold, and reduce spread of all kinds of airborne pathogens.

  62. DeWitt,
    Most “progressive” states are indeed openly hostile to religion; the left always is.

  63. Scott Ritter made about 5 over the top assertions in the first few minutes without any evidence so I stopped listening. Kill ratio’s etc. It’s impossible to know what casualty numbers are from either side now, so confidently asserting them is just propaganda.

  64. I would imagine both flu and covid can be spread by both aerosols and fomites, but what is the primary form of transmission? That there aren’t really any firm numbers here is what is a bit mysterious to me. It’s just not important, or it’s very complicated, or both.
    .
    I’ll beat my dead horse here again and state that medical testing “ethics” whereby they won’t take any risk with test volunteers to the detriment of * billions * of people during a global pandemic is just silly. Challenge testing is effectively banned, and that is one way to get much better data.

  65. Kenneth,
    I think the reaction to an abortion reversal will likely be muted because many people had a misperception that abortion would be banned federally, not sent back to the states. There are definitely zealots around though, on both sides. The media as usual is pouring gas on that fire. For the record, I’d prefer abortion to be legal and voter referendums in each state would be a fair way to iron it out. Having to travel to another state is inconvenient, but not the end of the world. I would expect NGO’s to provide those services for free (the abortion bus), and then the federal government will probably get involved and want to fund it.
    .
    Prosecuting people for getting abortions is a bridge too far, the activists need to back off here.

  66. I didn’t look at it very closely, but I think killing covid via UV was going to require some rather powerful lights with a longer exposure than was practically viable in an HVAC system. You could install these things and it would have some effect but it might take a lot of room clearing cycles etc.
    .
    A more viable method was simply removing the air to the outside and not recycling it. This of course is energy inefficient.
    .
    No easy answers from my short investigation.

  67. Tom/Steve,
    Filtering is also useful for keeping overall concentration down.
    .
    Obviously, exhaled air won’t go directly from the contagious persons breath to the filtration system for a room or building’s air, but it’s still a way to keep average concentration down. (This is similar to bringing in fresh air and exhausting some.)
    .
    I don’t know what has been decided on best practices. I’m sure there will be “best” for new construction, best for retrofitting and best under the circumstances.

  68. Tom Scharf,

    There are heat exchangers for exhausted air to intake air that, I believe, significantly reduce the inefficiency. I suspect that it’s a lot less expensive if they’re included in the original house build.

    lucia,

    I have a couple of Oransi stand-alone HEPA filter systems for rooms where we spend a lot of time. I also put a high efficiency filter in the HVAC air return. Looking at the color, the Oransi HEPA filters last at least a year. I clean the lint off the pre-filter every three months. Replacing the filters isn’t cheap, but I think they help. It also doubles as a white noise generator when run at constant fan speed. They now have two bigger models than mine but I don’t think I need that much additional capacity.

  69. Yet another ‘fact’ about the massacre in Uvalde has now been debunked. The classroom door was not locked, so the only thing barring police officers from entering the classroom while the shooter was still active and wounded children may have been bleeding out was the incident commander, Pete Arredondo. Even if the door had been locked, the officers had the tools to open it. The officers were armed and wearing body armor. This probably reaches the malfeasance level. Arredondo should do serious time in prison.

    link 1

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/uvalde-classroom-door-wasnt-locked-texas-chief-of-public-safety-says-11655828139?st=evh69ypyi4plcbr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

    link 2

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/uvalde-classroom-door-wasnt-locked-texas-chief-of-public-safety-says-11655828139?

    I would greatly appreciate it if someone who is not a WSJ subscriber would also try using link 2, which is truncated at the question mark and see if they can access the article. I have been told this should work, but I don’t believe it.

  70. I have been attempting find more current seroprevalence data based on my own general curiosity and for comparing the results of percentage of US population infected with my model for determining the true number of cases. Summaries were published for combined prevalence for infections and vaccinations in Dec 2021 and for infections in Feb 2022. I can find no later data than what is in those publications.

    My latest model estimate to early June is 82% actual cases to US population. I do not have confidence intervals adjusted for the smoothing I did to the data I used. That percentage is in line with the anecdotal infection rate I have estimated for my wide circle of relatives and friends.

    I do not understand why the seroprevalence data are kept so tight to the chest. It is averaged over a 4-week period but that was 4 periods ago for infection percentages. Most of the Covid-19 data in which I have had an interest has been readily available.

  71. Tom,
    Ritters history of US involvement in overthrowing the elected Ukraine president and US lying about their support for the Minsk agreements and limited NATO expansion is absolutely correct.
    .
    His presentation would be more effective if he was a bit less emotional, but his facts are correct.
    .
    As to casualties, Ukraine admits to between 100 & 200 per day in the eastern pocket alone. Expected wounded to dead runs 4x-6x deaths.
    .
    Russia has gone to a strategic stance of intense artillery duels with only probing reconnaissance to fix the Ukraine positions for the artillery. Not doing frontal assaults reduces Russian casualties considerably.
    .
    Russian casualties would be expected to be considerably less than Ukraine casualties with this stance with Ukraine admitting over 10x more Russian artillery than Ukraine artillery. With Ukraine admission that they are running out of artillery ammunition for their artillery, this imbalance will get worse.
    .
    Ukraine should have pulled out of the eastern pocket and moved to a more mobile defense. Instead, Ukraine has dug in and continues to move replacements into the pocket. With a gap of only 9 miles between the Russian lines at it’s narrowest point, the entire pocket is in range of overwhelming artillery fire from 2, and in some case 3, directions.
    .
    Fixed infantry defenses against overwhelming ranged in modern artillery is a death sentence.

  72. I recently had my air conditioning maintenance checked as I do every year. I needed a filter change and the maintenance guy said he had only a hospital grade Merv 16 in his truck. He wanted $175 for the Merv 16 and $54 for the Merv 11 that I use. I can get 2 Merv 11 filters from Amazon for $54. The Merv 16 is capable of filtering down to the particle size of a HEPA filter (0.3 micron) but at only 95% efficiency whereas I understand the HEPA is at something like 99.7%.

    I was in the market last winter for a portable filter that also had a carbon filter for removing odors from a room. As I recall I could not find a charcoal and HEPA combination, so I opted for a combination charcoal and non-HEPA filter. It was also my understanding that a charcoal filter is better than a HEPA at removing odors. I had a skunk die under my front porch and whatever animal that usually digs the skunk out for me to bury was not around. The charcoal filter took care of the skunk smell until it finally dissipated. Being a chemist in a former life, I had used charcoal filters in the laboratory, but had forgotten how efficient they can be.

  73. Kenneth,
    “I do not understand why the seroprevalence data are kept so tight to the chest.”
    Maybe the CDC doesn’t want to admit that 80+% of the population has been infected…. in spite of vaccinations and boosters. A weak excuse I know, but it is the only one I can come up with. Honesty would be better (eg. The vaccines are not effective at stopping infection of the newer virus stains, but they appear to remain effective in reducing serious illness and death.), but that is probably 1) too complicated a message, and 2) leads to the question, “Wait, does a previous infection mean I don’t need more boosters?” And that is the question they don’t want to answer.
    .
    BTW,
    You can get pleated MERV13 filters (eg 20 x 20) for a very reasonable price on line… four pack for ~$40. These are only ~75% efficient at 0.3 micron, but since the air in a (reasonably tight) house will be going through the filter multiple times before exchange with outside air, even 75% efficient is like wearing an N95 ask, but withotu the discomfort. 😉

  74. DeWitt, the links worked for me but I am a WSJ subscriber.

    I sometimes wonder if getting out news of malfeasance in case like the recent school room massacres has something to do with wanting to make the schools appear defenseless and not defendable against a shooter or that often following these incidents the local law enforcement and politicians immediately embark on an orgy of self congratulations that might be difficult to back away from. I find those latter reactions almost ghoulish.

  75. Kenneth,
    I was always impressed with the efficiency of activated carbon in removing higher boiling contaminants from a gas stream. One production plant where I worked had carbon beds that removed 99+% of a higher boiling material from a lower boiling stream, even though the contact time was not more than a second or so. The beds were large (2 metric tons of carbon) and stripped out about 25% of their own weight before the need for steam regeneration. You followed the advance of the absorption front in the beds with a series of temperature sensors; as the absorption front arrived the temperature would jump by 25C or more, then drop after the front passed. The beds were good for perhaps 1,000 regeneration cycles before they were compromised by absorption of even higher boiling contaminants.

  76. You can get pleated MERV13 filters (eg 20 x 20) for a very reasonable price on line… four pack for ~$40.

    Steve that appears to me to be a great bargain. I just got my two pack of pleated 20 X 25 X 4.5 Merv11 filters today for which I paid Amazon $54. I think I will go cry in my afternoon beer. I did get free delivery.

  77. Ed Forbes (Comment #212833)

    I do not mind criticism of the US policies. I do it all the time. What I did not like about Ritter is his purification of Russia and Putin. Plus there is no doubt he was spinning some of the evidence he presented. I do not know what his exact agenda is but he obviously has one.

    Ritter says that Russia now needs to completely demolish the Ukraine military and somehow relates that back to the West helping Ukraine. He said it will be an unconditional surrender and apparently a takeover of all of Ukraine because the Russians are tired of peace negotiations. The plan is to have all this done by the end of the year.

  78. More natural immunity data.
    .
    NEJM June 9, 2022, Israeli data:
    https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118946
    “Among persons who had been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 (regardless of whether they had received any dose of vaccine or whether they had received one dose before or after infection), protection against reinfection decreased as the time increased since the last immunity-conferring event; *** however, this protection was higher than that conferred after the same time had elapsed since receipt of a second dose of vaccine *** among previously uninfected persons. A single dose of vaccine after infection reinforced protection against reinfection.”
    .
    According to the Table 2, the risk of (re)infection from natural immunity (unvaccinated) compared to vaccinated (2 dose) was … ummmm … not close over the 4/6 and 6/8 month time period.
    .
    Natural immunity was 7X more protective against reinfection. See Figure 3.
    .
    Serious illness numbers were too small to be reliable, but natural immunity was 8x more protective for the small numbers. This is from Sept 2021, so the Delta period. YMMV on omicron, but there is no particular reason to think things will have changed.
    .
    Oddly, this hasn’t been covered by the media, ha ha. When they do cover this type of stuff, they promote it as “hybrid immunity” is superior where it appears natural immunity is doing the heavy lifting here.

  79. Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212839)
    .
    Ritter is making an analysis of what he believes Russia believes based on his long experience as a Russian analyst, not what he recommends as a Russian action.
    .
    Don’t shoot the messenger!
    .
    “Know your enemy “ is a requirement to making responsible policy. Ritter’s complaints focus mainly on stupid western Russian policy analysts who don’t pay sufficient attention to Russian statements and Russian viewpoints.

  80. Kenneth,

    One of Ritters main point is that Russia no longer trusts the west due to the number of outright lies western diplomats have made to Russia over the years.
    .
    Trust is the coin of diplomacy and the west has spent it all as far as Russia is concerned. The CIA can lie as its expected. Diplomats are not to lie. Shading the truth or misdirection is one thing, but outright lies ruins trust which is the only coin diplomats have to spend.
    .
    What value is a treaty if there is no trust?
    .
    If Russia believes a cease fire is just a delay to rearm Ukraine for future conflict with Russia, what incentive is there for Russia to stop the conflict prior to the complete destruction of Ukraine?

  81. Kenneth Fritsch,

    The Oransi filter I linked to above includes a woven prefilter, a HEPA filter and an activated carbon filter, which is fairly substantial as those things go. I don’t know how long it lasts.

  82. Ed Forbes,

    If Ukraine believes that Russia wants complete destruction of the entire country and a cease fire is just a delay to rearm Russia, what incentive is there for Ukraine to negotiate?

  83. I’m not exactly buying the premise that helping an independent Ukraine advance pro-western governments or become closer to the EU/NATO as some type of scandalous accusation of improper behavior. Ukraine is a sovereign country and I assume it has big boy pants somewhere.
    .
    The accusational tone is based on Ukraine being illegitimate and a farm state of Russia. I don’t accept that. Russia can declare anything it wants as “Russian” but that doesn’t make it legitimate.
    People running away from Russian influence toward the west is not the west’s fault, it is the fault of Russia’s historical and present demonstrated behavior.
    .
    I would agree that Ukraine needs to change tactics from dying under artillery all day to something more productive. Inaccurate artillery against dug in positions isn’t really that effective, but quantity has its own sort of quality.

  84. DeWitt Payne (Comment #212844)

    I agree….as such, the Ukraine conflict will go to the bitter end.

  85. Tom Scharf,
    “I would agree that Ukraine needs to change tactics from dying under artillery all day to something more productive.”
    .
    Sure, being ground up gradually by Russian artillery is not a very wise choice. Maybe they could get the Europeans, the USA, and the Russians to sit down and work out a land-for peace deal guaranteed by the West. Nah… that would be too obvious. Better to have the Russians continue shelling.
    .
    Joking of course.
    .
    Reality: the Ukraine is not going to be able to drive Russia out of the occupied territories. Reality: Russia doesn’t give a hoot about Western sanctions. Reality: most of the world has not signed on to sanctions; Russia has plenty of potential markets for its products. Reality: NATO is not going to get directly involved, and probably does not have the needed stocks of conventional weapons to supply the Ukraine for several more months in any case.
    .
    Fantasy: Russia is going to lose. Fantasy: Russia is going to return the Crimea and the Russian speaking regions (mostly the Donbas).
    .
    The Ukraine can suffer under the Russian assault for as long as they want, of course, but I hope they are realistic in their goals. Support from the West is already fracturing; that will get worse, not better in the coming months. I don’t know if the Ukrainian president can climb down from his demand of all territory returned. If not, IMO the Ukraine is going to be in large part destroyed.

  86. Ritter is making an analysis of what he believes Russia believes based on his long experience as a Russian analyst, not what he recommends as a Russian action.

    Ed, I did not see at any point in the podcast where Ritter disagreed with Russian current policy and action or future actions. He promoted the idea that whatever Russia did in reaction to the West was justified. His rah-rah veiw of Russia certainly did not include calling for Russia being ” the better man” despite what he and Russia see as missteps by the West.

    He did not mention or explain how a Russian victory in accomplishing all the noted goals by year end would avoid negatively affecting Russia going forward. Maybe he needs another podcast to conjure up that analysis.

  87. SteveF (Comment #212847): “work out a land-for peace deal guaranteed by the West.”
    .
    And what would that look like? I interpret “peace” to mean something sustainable. Anything else is just a cease fire until Russia decides to take another bite of the apple.
    .
    I am very skeptical as to whether peace is possible with Russia annexing the areas they now occupy. Remember that “land” includes PEOPLE. If the people don’t want to live under Russian rule, there will likely be an insurgency. That will be supported, at least surreptitiously, by Ukraine and possibly by countries in the West. To try to suppress it, Russia will resort to atrocities. That will not be peace.
    .
    A sustainable peace might well be possible with Russia controlling Crimea and the breakaway parts of the Donbas. So minimal actual gain for Russia after giving up most of what they have occupied. But Putin will have to make a big concession: Agreeing to a formal agreement by which NATO countries defend Ukraine. What are the chances that Putin will agree to that? Zero.
    .
    Not gonna happen with the way things are now.
    ——
    SteveF: “Reality: the Ukraine is not going to be able to drive Russia out of the occupied territories.”
    .
    Possibly true. Very likely true in the east. But I suspect that Russia is way overextended in the south. I have no idea if Ukraine has the capability to exploit that. But they have been full of surprises.
    .
    SteveF: “Reality: Russia doesn’t give a hoot about Western sanctions.”
    .
    I do not believe that. They are selling their oil for cheap. They are cut off from important tech and all sorts of consumer goods that people want. They can certainly withstand sanctions for a considerable time, but they do hurt.

  88. Mike M,
    “I am very skeptical as to whether peace is possible with Russia annexing the areas they now occupy. Remember that “land” includes PEOPLE. ”
    .
    Sure, but Pakistan was separated from India in 1947… with secular violence and huge concurrent population flows. Splitting the Ukraine seems to me less of a challenge, though there would no doubt be some migration of people to their “preferred” regions. Which is not to say some tradeoffs could not take place. Russia wants a permanent supply of water from the Dnipro river (the existing large canal to the Crimea is back in operation), and would like a guaranteed land passage between Russia and the Crimea. I suspect they would return some occupied much of the occupied land outside the Donbas in exchange for those things.
    .
    “They can certainly withstand sanctions for a considerable time, but they do hurt.”
    .
    It is a question of priorities for the Russians. Any negotiated ‘peace’ agreement would almost certainly have to involve the lifting of at least some sanctions.

  89. Kenneth Fritsch (Comment #212848)
    “Ed, I did not see at any point in the podcast where Ritter disagreed with Russian current policy and action or future actions.”
    .
    The Russian policy is the Russian policy. Ritters personal view is immaterial. Does Russian policy make sense from a Russian point of view? Ritter says yes.
    .
    “ He did not mention or explain how a Russian victory in accomplishing all the noted goals by year end would avoid negatively affecting Russia going forward.”
    .
    He has discussed this. Russia firmly believes the west is out for Russian blood regardless if Russia attacks Ukraine or not. It is just a matter of when, where, and who starts it. Russia has made the decision that now is the best time for Russia to force the issue.
    .
    Russia is in both a hot war and a economic war with NATO. The war with Ukraine is a proxy war directly against NATO. There is also a direct economic war between NATO (Europe/USA) and Russia.
    .
    Currently, Russia is winning both actions hands down.

  90. The Ukraine defense in the eastern pocket is starting to unravel
    Understand that the ISW is largely dependent on Ukraine General Staff for its information so it gives the best face possible for Ukraine.
    .
    https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-21
    .
    “ Russian forces are successfully advancing toward Lysychansk from the south rather than making an opposed river crossing from Severodonetsk, threatening Ukrainian defenses in the area.”
    .
    “ This Russian advance is a clear setback for Ukrainian defenses in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area”
    .
    Ukraine forces are being forced into a number of smaller pockets. Each of these individual pockets trap a relative small number of Ukraine troops, but the aggregate total is becoming a serious problem for Ukraine.

  91. Ed Forbes (Comment #212853): “The Ukraine defense in the eastern pocket is starting to unravel”.
    .
    Coming up on four months of Ed making that prediction.

  92. Yep..is true.
    I had not then realized that Russia had not done a full mobilization. Russia is fighting this war on a shoe string so is moving much slower than Russia is capable of moving.
    .
    But be that as it may, the Ukraine line is fraying under continuous artillery attack that they can’t effectively respond to.

  94. DeWitt Payne (way back):
    “I would greatly appreciate it if someone who is not a WSJ subscriber would also try using link 2”
    It’s a late response, I know, but that link worked for me, a non-subscriber.

  95. Scott Ritter has a spotted background that I remembered but for those unfamiliar with the details there is a good summary at the link below.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Ritter

    William Scott Ritter Jr. (born July 15, 1961) is a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served with the United Nations implementing arms control treaties, with General Norman Schwarzkopf in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq, overseeing the disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as a United Nations weapons inspector, from 1991 to 1998. He later became a critic of United States foreign policy in the Middle East. Following a 2011 law enforcement sting operation, he was convicted of unlawful contact with a minor and five other charges that resulted in two years of incarceration…

    ..Richard Butler, Ritter’s former UNSCOM boss, said that Ritter “wasn’t prescient” in his predictions about WMDs, saying, “When he was the ‘Alpha Dog’ inspector, then by God, there were more weapons there, and we had to go find them—a contention for which he had inadequate evidence. When he became a peacenik, then it was all complete B.S., start to finish, and there were no weapons of mass destruction. And that also was a contention for which he had inadequate evidence.”[16] Writing in The New York Times, Matt Bai said that Butler’s caveat notwithstanding, Ritter was in fact vindicated about Iraq’s lack of WMDs and that the aftermath of the war could be calamitous. Bai described Ritter as the “most determined dissenter and the one with the most on-the-ground intelligence” of the situation in Iraq prior to the war. However, Bai went on to compare Ritter’s insistence during his 2011 trial for sex offences that his conduct was of no consequence to the wider community—and his unwillingness to consider a plea agreement—to the stridency with which Ritter advocated for his views on Iraq: “If there is a connection between Ritter the activist and Ritter the accused, though, it probably lies in the uncompromising, even heedless way in which he insists on his version of reality, and how he sees himself always as the victim of a system that is self-evidently corrupt. … the very attribute that made Scott Ritter appear somehow clairvoyant on Iraq—his refusal to accede to everyone else’s sense of reality—is the same one that has led him, now, to ruin.”

  96. Ed Forbes,
    I caution: it is unwise to make detailed predictions about how things will unfold in the Ukraine….. most of the time it just makes you look bad. All of the available data about the war seems to be essentially garbage. US spy agencies know a lot more from satellite images, but they are never going to disclose that data. Better to examine the long term likely outcomes and forget the endless propaganda. Long term likely outcomes are clear; details ? Not so much.

  97. In my unsuccessful search for more current seropositive data estimating US Covid-19 infection rate, I came across the link below to an article that estimates the actual Covid-19 cases over time. For early May 2022 it estimates a case rate for the US at 77%. I have not found the details of the model, but it evidently uses metrics like mobility and vaccination rates. That 77% rate in early May 2022 is in line with my model estimate for early June 2022. The reported to estimated cases ratio from the plots in the article is also in line with what I found.

    https://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/Projects/COVID/2022/102_briefing_United_States_of_America_4.pdf

  98. Steve
    If ISW, a pro Ukraine site, says Russia has broken through Ukraine lines in the eastern pocket and a major redeployment of Ukraine forces is happening, then who am I to argue with them.

  99. Biden’s hob approval rating has fallen to just below 40%, while his disapproval rating is just under 56%. There are about 33% registered Democrats, which I guess defines a floor of approval for Biden.
    .
    The guy is electoral toast, and that situation is richly deserved. His policies are consistently stupid and destructive. I do hope Biden understands, in his Alzheimers addled state, how difficult 2022 and o2023 are going to be for him, with relentless investigation by Congressional Republicans into Biden family corruption. He and his family will be protected by Merrick (the corrupt) Garland, but that will end in January 2025. Better for him to resign early (how about tomorrow?) to avoid all the legal problems he will face over the next two years.

  100. Ed Forbes (Comment #212862): “If ISW, a pro Ukraine site, says Russia has broken through Ukraine lines in the eastern pocket and a major redeployment of Ukraine forces is happening, then who am I to argue with them.”
    .
    What are you talking about?

  101. Looks like the major players are getting a handle on countering drones that are being used to great effect spotting for artillery.
    .
    Tide on using drones as artillery spotters now in favor of Russia…until the next new defense comes along.
    .
    The Ukraine war is, in many respects, becoming the Spanish Civil War of the last century. Have to have someplace to test the new gizmos under real world conditions.
    .
    https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-22

    “.. Reinforced Russian air-defense systems in eastern Ukraine are increasingly limiting the effectiveness of Ukrainian drones, undermining a key Ukrainian capability in the war. Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch quoted several anonymous Ukrainian officials and military personnel that Ukrainian forces have largely halted the use of Turkish Bayraktar drones, which were used to great effect earlier in the war, due to improvements in Russian air-defense capabilities.
    .
    [1] Ukrainian officials are reportedly increasingly concerned that US-provided Gray Eagle strike drones will also be shot down by reinforced Russian air defense over the Donbas.“

  102. Mike M. (Comment #212864) “ What are you talking about?”
    .
    The June 22 ISW daily report referred to above has little good news, and quite a bit bad, for Ukraine in the eastern pockets..
    .
    “ Russian forces continued to make gains to the south of Lysychansk and will likely reach the city in the coming days, although they are unlikely to quickly capture the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area.”
    .
    If Ukraine does not immediately run their forces out of the pocket, the fight then becomes a siege, which will take time to reduce with artillery, but will be reduced.

  103. SteveF
    A nice thought but I think people like accountants fiddling books never stop til they are well and truly caught.
    Biden and co will roll on forever.
    No Paul Ryan this time but lots of Rino’s there for a very long time paying lip service only to Trump and MAGA.
    A red tsunami might help?
    A little.

  106. Steve, Lucia,

    I don’t know. Republican In Trump Only? If so, I’m with Lucia on that.

  107. No I didn’t say that well. Here’s what I meant.
    I don’t want to elect feudal lords who swear featly to Trump above all. I don’t want to elect people who support Democrat policies and ideas and vote with Democrats on issues I care about where those people happen to belong to the Republican party. So, neither.
    I want to elect conservatives who:
    1) have the brains to take what Trump was right about and dump what Trump was wrong about and move on,
    2) will provide leadership without cementing some cult of personality around a Trump.
    There.

  108. Ed,
    The history of warfare just doesn’t support your assertions that Russia has a breakthrough, then Ukraine collapses, and it’s all over. Wishful thinking.
    .
    You keep referring to WWII artillery wars and that isn’t what happened at all. It seems to primarily be about the will to fight, and as long as Ukraine has that, it will just be a long slow slog with heavy losses on both sides. A motivated fighting force can endure a huge amount of losses even though the larger campaign may not be successful. All Russia is likely to find after a “breakthrough” in Donbas is another trench line.
    .
    That is what has been happening so far. A war of attrition in which Russia has the advantage but will pay a very heavy price to win. Anything’s possible, maybe the west refuses to provide more weapons, Ukraine morale collapses, etc., but so far what we have seen is a surprisingly sturdy Ukraine defense. Russia continues to not announce casualties which likely means they are heavy.
    .
    The fan boys have all been proven wrong so far.

  110. DeSantis and Trump were effectively tied at around 37% in New Hampshire in a recent poll. That’s good news because if other Republicans drop out the voters will likely go for DeSantis.
    .
    Ultimately though the concern is Trump will declare the primary election “stolen” and then run as an independent. Even if this only represented 10% of votes then that would be enough to give the left the national election.
    .
    As for Biden, the angry old mentally confused man look is not endearing. They do need to replace him, but obviously not with Harris.

  111. lucia (Comment #212874): “Republican in Trump Only. That’s the worst kind.”
    .
    What does that even mean? A Republican who pretends to support Trump’s policies but once in office votes like Romney? If so, they I too have no use for such.
    ———–

    mark bofill (Comment #212872): “I want to elect conservatives who:
    1) have the brains to take what Trump was right about and dump what Trump was wrong about and move on,
    2) will provide leadership without cementing some cult of personality around a Trump.”
    .
    Well said. I want the same.

  112. Ukraine has repeatedly proven the naysayers wrong. That does not mean that they will always do so. But it does mean that they might continue to do so.

  113. MikeM
    Republican who pretends to support Trump’s policies but once in office votes like Romney?
    It’s someone who pretends to be a Republican but really only supports Trump, the person. They don’t care about policies; they are just crushing on Trump.

  114. MikeM

    cementing some cult of personality around a Trump.”

    People cementing on the cult of personality around Trump are RITOs.

  115. The primaries have shown that although the Republican Party is now a firmly Trump party in terms of policy, it is not remotely a party controlled by Trump. Almost all candidates want Trump’s endorsement, but that moves the needle by maybe 5-10 points.
    .
    What worries me is establishment Republican sheep in Trumpist wolves’ clothing. Like that McCormick guy who nearly got the nomination in PA. Sadly, Oz might be another one.

  116. lucia (Comment #212878): “It’s someone who pretends to be a Republican but really only supports Trump, the person. They don’t care about policies; they are just crushing on Trump.”
    .
    Are there any such? I am not aware of any.

    Oz might not care about policy. But the only person he has a crush for is Oz.

  117. Lucia,
    I don’t doubt RITOs exist, I just don’t know any. All the conservatives I have ever spoken with support many of Trump’s policies while at the same time wishing Trump would either grow up or disappear (unfortunately, neither is likely). Trump has huge, permanent negatives because he is an irredeemable a$$hole, and he remains IMO the least electable nationally known Republican. I put his chance for re-election below 50% if he gains the nomination; the longer he carries on about the 2020 election, the lower his chance for re-election. If he could shut up about 2020 and talk only about policies and about the future, he would easily win in 2024. But he can’t do that. He reminds me of a spoiled 6 year old who can’t accept “no”, no matter what. I think Tom Scharf is right about a third party run if someone like DeSantis gets the nomination….. Trump is far too small a person to support anybody but himself. What an a$$hole!

  118. Politicians will be politicians which means they grab any immediate stance that might be to an advantage with the current political leaning of its voting constituents. What should be of concern to the voting public that dislikes what the Democrats have to offer is the RITO voters and not so much RITO politicians.

  119. SteveF,
    Oh, I know some RITOs. Im friends with one in dance class. You should see her facebook. She’s Christian and you’d think the holy Trinity was God the Father, God the Son and Trump.

    And TBH, angech seems rather enamored of Trump qua Trump. (He can perhaps explain that it’s not Trump qua Trump he supports but rather the policies. But I rarely hear discussion of the policies in those support statements.)

    Trump is far too small a person to support anybody but himself. What an a$$hole!

    Trump himself is a RITO. I think if you reflect on the news you’ll recognize the existence of RITO voters. They just don’t travel in your social circles.

    MikeM

    Republican sheep in Trumpist wolves’ clothing. Like that McCormick guy who nearly got the nomination in PA. Sadly, Oz might be another one.

    Sure. The RITOs politicians aren’t really interested in Repubican policy. They just want to take a ride on the personality cult and get votes from people who are in the Trump personality cult.
    Don’t count on these politicians implementing Repubican policies because they don’t really hold them. And the RITO voters will support them as long as they claim to support Trump the man.

  121. I think that many, probably most, voters don’t really much care about “policy”. They really only have one big question for politicians: “Are you on my side?”
    .
    That has many corollaries. “Will you make my life better?” “Will you make the country better?” “Do you share my values?” “Will you give my children a better future?” Etc.
    .
    They are not inclined to tell the pilot how to fly the plane. They care about the destination and getting there safely.
    .
    This is a very different point of view than held by most people who comment here.
    .
    For a big chunk of the American electorate, Trump was the first politician in a long time who was clearly on their side. So support for Trump while seeming indifferent to policy is not the same as belonging to a cult of personality.

  122. MikeM

    They really only have one big question for politicians: “Are you on my side?”

    Trump is not on anyone elses side. But he’s duped some into thinking he is.

    For a big chunk of the American electorate, Trump was the first politician in a long time who was clearly on their side.

    But he’s not really. Some think it, but he’s not.

    So support for Trump while seeming indifferent to policy is not the same as belonging to a cult of personality.

    I disagree.

  123. Lucia,
    Not an unexpected result from the SC, with the 6/3 split also expected… the same split as we will likely see multiple times in the remaining pending cases.
    .
    Decisions like this may demotivate state legislatures and Congress from enacting more restrictive gun laws. The obvious negative effect is more hysteria on the left. The potential good effect is that it will force some re-thinking of ways to actually reduce gun related murders. As many have pointed out on this blog and elsewhere, the publicized cases (like the recent mass shootings) that lead to more restrictive gun laws are just a tiny fraction of gun-related murders. The very large majority of murders are by hand guns… most of which are perpetrated by people who are *ALREADY* prohibited from owning guns of any kind. If there is any real desire in Congress to significantly reduce gun-related murders (and it seems to me there is actually very little evidence of that), only very different approaches are going to make much difference.
    .
    Where there *is* a consensus for in Congress is stopping school/church/store/hospital/etc shootings perpetrated mainly by mentally disturbed young men. But that is not going to make much of a dent in gun-related murders. I guess some lives are a lot more valuable than others.

  124. Lucia,
    “But he’s not really. Some think it, but he’s not.”
    .
    Yes, Trump is 100% for Trump… everyone else be damned.
    .
    But Trump’s policies did improve the lives of many people, especially those who believed themselves to be ignored by policy makers. For the first time in decades, the income of the lowest 20% grew more quickly (on a percentage basis) than the top 10%. There were real and significant income gains across the board. There were real and significant reductions in regulatory overreach. There were real and significant increases in petroleum and natural gas production, with dramatically lower retail prices. There were real and significant reductions in unlawful immigration.
    .
    I think it unfair to simply dismiss these because Trump is an a$$hole. Lots of people know he is an a$$hole, but support him for the results of his policies.

  125. In expanding on my previous post, I believe there is a voter counting issue with the Republican party in that the number of RITOs is uncertain, but that they exist in not insignificant numbers is to me obvious. An added uncertainty is how many of the RITOs dislike Democrat policies sufficiently, or at all, to vote for a non-Trump candidate.

    I disagree with MikeM that the Republican party is a Trump party. He was a useful idiot much like Biden is for the Democrat party. Trump was an opportunist for anything he thought benefited Trump. He certainly is not a man of principles where a political party could equate the man with an array of principles. Trump’s conversations never delve into principles but usually are mostly about himself with a brief handwave to a cliched reference to a principle.

    I personally did not like a number of Trump’s initiatives as President. He was more of a RINO than the hardcore less-government Republican.

    There is trade-off that the Republican party have with spurning Trump and RITOs and that is the number of independent voters who would never vote for Trump or a Trump backed candidate. Most voters, and more so for independent voters, vote more against a candidate than for one. Trump is very easy to vote against and that is much easier than voting while holding ones nose.

  126. SteveF,
    I don’t dismiss that the economy improved under Trump and that it specifically improved for those near the bottom of the economy. I do think his pushing aside a lot of the Dem. policies is what helped.
    .
    I also think that, to some extent, it took an a&&hole to push back aggressive policies advanced from the Dem side.
    .
    Nevertheless, RITOs who will follow him down a garden path to the inner circle of Hades exist.

  127. People vote for a lot of reasons. I think it is more fair to call the RITO vote the anti-establishment vote. A lot of these voters see a governing class that has not delivered, is self serving, and actively works against their local interests, all the while self proclaiming their own virtue in a rather overt and condescending way.
    .
    Many of these voters come from the lower classes and they see little risk in rolling the dice and electing someone like Trump who will be a bull in a China shop. The professional class clearly sees a risk in Trump, but that can easily be interpreted as self interest. They show little interest in dealing with immigration or off shoring, but show a lot of interest in declaring those who disagree with them as immoral. It’s not particularly wise.
    .
    Is the governing and professional class actually wise? One thing for sure is they have completely fallen in love with themselves. One could be forgiven for comparing how things were with Trump and how things are now with Biden and declaring all the smug lecturing to be complete utter BS.
    .
    But it’s not a binary decision, we can choose a sane Trump, or the left could take a spoonful of humility based on actual results and tone down the morality lectures.

  128. SteveF (Comment #212889): “But Trump’s policies did improve the lives of many people, especially those who believed themselves to be ignored by policy makers.”
    .
    Which would put Trump on their side.

  129. Speaking of unwise, the SC declares NY gun law unconstitutional. NY was rather dim witted in passing this law in the first place. Subsequently reversing it once it was legally challenged was effectively an admission of guilt. These are our best and brightest scholars, at least according to them.

  130. Tom

    we can choose a sane Trump, or the left could take a spoonful of humility based on actual results and tone down the morality lectures.

    I want someone sane and principled. I do want back bone. I want something other than utterly self serving.

    Which would put Trump on their side.

    No. He took certain positions as much to be in your face as anything else. Somethings are just side effects.
    He’s not on anyone’s side but his own.

  131. I love this in the ruling

    3Cite as: 597 U. S. ____ (2022)

    To be clear, even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for
    historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass consti-
    tutional muster. For example, courts can use analogies to “longstand-
    ing” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such
    as schools and government buildings” to determine whether modern
    regulations are constitutionally permissible. Id., at 626. That said,
    respondents’ attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause require-
    ment as a “sensitive-place” law lacks merit because there is no histor-
    ical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan
    a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded and protected gener-
    ally by the New York City Police Department.     Pp. 17–22.

    Yeah…I guess they wanted to argue the entire island of Manhattan is a “sensitive-place”.

  132. Tom Scharf,
    “But’s it’s not a binary decision, we can choose a sane Trump, or the left could take a spoonful of humility based on actual results and tone down the morality lectures.”
    .
    Well, the first part is certainly true (consider DeSantis).
    .
    The second part has, IMO, zero chance of happening. The history of the left is replete with doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and quintupling down on utterly destructive public policies when those policies are consistent with the teachings of their very odd secular religion. The only thing that stops the left is if the whole insane system of social control of the individual collapses under its own weight. The left NEVER relents, NEVER compromises on substance, and NEVER learns from terrible outcomes, guaranteeing bad policies remain in place indefinitely. This is why I so adamantly oppose the left. Everywhere the left gains power people are poorer. Cuba is poor, as is Venezuela, as is Zimbabwe. So long as those countries are ruled according to leftist principles, they will remain forever poor.

  133. Maybe I remember things wrong, but up until recently it was basically verboten to question the integrity or morality of the voters, but completely OK to attack a politician or a policy. Even if this was not coming from principle, it was counterproductive to do otherwise. Attacking the voters gave us Trump in my view and the governing class just can’t stop themselves from doing it still. Why? Because they are self absorbed in their own peer struggles and he who punches down the hardest on Trump voters acquire social capital.

  134. Tom Scharf,
    “NY was rather dim witted in passing this law in the first place.”
    .
    Well, ya, but the dimness runs a lot deeper than that. Gun crimes are not perpetrated by licensed concealed-carry pistol owners. They are perpetrated by criminals who carry without a permit, and who would never qualify for a permit, even if they tried…. after a few misdemeanors, a felony or two, and some time in prison, you won’t get a concealed carry permit. It is not just that the NY law is inconsistent with the second amendment, it is that the law is profoundly stupid, because it does not address the real problem: criminals perpetrate gun violence. Withholding carry permits from non-criminals accomplishes nothing.

  135. Back when cop shows used to be allowed on TV, at least 90% of traffic stops where a gun was found ended up with that gun being unlicensed. Cops really, really don’t like finding guns after somebody tells them no weapons are in the car. That was pretty much an automatic trip to jail.

  136. “…at least 90% of traffic stops where a gun was found ended up with that gun being unlicensed.”
    .
    It is possible there is some correlation between being a criminal in general and driving recklessly.

  137. NYT takes an unusual step for them and actually gives an intellectually honest defense of the law, even if it is just quoting:
    .
    Justice Thomas wrote that citizens may not be required to explain to the government why they sought to exercise a constitutional right.

    “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need,” he wrote.

    “That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion,” he wrote. “It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”
    .
    I’m not a big gun rights advocate, but given the laws we have I think this is correct, the burden of proof needs to be on the government to restrict the right, not on the citizen to prove the need for the right. It’s not a right that way, it is a privilege.

  138. The quote was in a WSJ article a few days back but it quoted somebody saying that Trump told him that he (Trump) was all show and could not believe that people could not see it. If I were to write a play that needed the caricature of a con artist I would have Trump play the part and ask him to just be himself.

    For those voters who voted for Trump for being Trump, I feel bad because of their failure to realize what he is. For those who voted for Trump for being Trump and realized what he was, I have no respect. For those who voted for him knowing full well who he was and thought he might be a useful idiot, I can readily see their point.

    Being conned is not related to social or economic class. I could refer to any number of investing con jobs on members of the higher social and economic classes. In his own way Biden is a con man and lots of highly educated and wealthy people voted for him – of course, against Trump it might have been a matter of the lesser con.

  139. Tom,
    The 2nd amendment is not a big motivator for my vote.

    But it says what it says. It’s not a “penumbra” or interpretation based on the combined effect of several other amendments.

    It does seem to me the problem gun control advocates have is that it’s rather obvious they need an amendment.That requires them to propose one that has some hope of passing. But in most cases the regulation they would really want goes well beyond what the electorate would stand for. It’s wouldn’t even pass legislative hurdles.

    So they try to come up with creative theories around the 2nd amendment which just aren’t working for them.

    They really need to get together and draft an amendment. Then they need congress critters to talk it up and campaign for it. That’s not going to happen.

  140. Kenneth

    In his own way Biden is a con man and lots of highly educated and wealthy people voted for him – of course, against Trump it might have been a matter of the lesser con.

    The choice of Biden v. Trump last time around was bad enough. Having it repeated in 2024 would be a nightmare.

  141. Lucia,
    “They really need to get together and draft an amendment.”
    .
    That would require a measure of honesty and courage the left does not possess.
    .
    Here is the thing: the left knows that weakening or eliminating the second amendment would never even get past Congress, never mind get ratified by the states. So, being as dishonest as they are, they work to subvert the Constitution with judicial appointments, constitutional ‘penumbras’ long hidden from view, the ‘living constitution’, and all manner of similar dishonest nonsense, rather than try to amend the Constitution.
    .
    The bigger question is why the left is so adamant about getting rid of the right to bear arms? The question nearly answers itself: if the left controls government, and if only government can have guns, then armed resistance to the left is impossible. Chairman Mao was very clear: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” There is no doubt people of the left understand this, and as far as I know, every country taken over by the left has been disarmed, usually before the final take-over.

  142. Tom Scharf (Comment #212873)
    June 23rd, 2022 at 7:33 am
    “Ed,
    The history of warfare just doesn’t support your assertions that Russia has a breakthrough, then Ukraine collapses, and it’s all over. Wishful thinking.“
    .
    My comment was strictly talking about the eastern pocket, not the war in general. I wrote nothing such as you have stated in your comment. If you are going to quote me, or summarize me, do so accurately.

  143. The other problem with progressives and guns is they only appear to want to take action against law abiding citizens, which supports the conclusion that it’s all about disarming citizens, not crime. We can’t have stop and frisk in NYC because it will have a disparate impact on Blacks. For the same reason, we can’t have stricter penalties for crimes committed with guns. We know both of these policies decrease crimes committed with guns, as opposed to violations of overenthusiastic bans on gun ownership or their use for self-protection.

  144. Ed Forbes (Comment #212908): “]If you are going to quote me, or summarize me, do so accurately.”
    .
    A very good rule. You should follow it when you use a source like ISW.

  145. DeWitt Payne (Comment #212909): “The other problem with progressives and guns is they only appear to want to take action against law abiding citizens, which supports the conclusion that it’s all about disarming citizens, not crime.”
    .
    Indeed. The L.A. cops caught a repeat felon with an illegal gun. The far left D.A. let him walk. Now twp cops are dead.
    .
    Policing reforms in the 90’s dramatically reduced violent crime; murders in particular. A big part of those reforms was locking up bad guys with guns. Now the Left is rolling back those reforms, with predictable results.

  146. I read Breyer’s dissent; I admit to fighting nausea the entire time. He simply does not care a bit about what the Constitution actually says or what it meant when written and adopted.
    .
    He is very clear: he wants government have the ability to take all guns away from people so that they can’t possibly shoot themselves (suicide) or shoot other people (criminal murder). He can’t (or won’t) address the actual Constitutional question, never mind address the multiple reasons why such a Constitutional right would have been included in the first place. He is, IMHO, a delusional idiot. But I already knew that from listening to an interview 15 years ago where he said the Constitution must be a “living document”…. one which means whatever the hell progressives like him declare it means. Idiot. Pure idiot.

  147. Mike M. (Comment #212910)
    June 23rd, 2022 at 2:29 pm
    “…Ed Forbes (Comment #212908): “]If you are going to quote me, or summarize me, do so accurately.”
    “A very good rule. You should follow it when you use a source like ISW….”
    .
    Mike, much waving of hands and no substance.
    If you think I misquote ISW, show where I misquote them.
    .
    Another link on the Ukraine problems in the eastern pockets, also a pro Ukraine site. Yes, the Ukraine positions in the eastern pockets are fraying under intense artillery fire. Fraying I said, not collapsing.
    .
    https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-22-23-june-2022-5cbd84929b2e
    .
    “.. Lysychansk…this is where there remains a crisis: it seems the rearguard of the 57th Mech and the 118th TD Brigade was cut off while trying to withdraw from Zolote and Hirske towards north. Reason: after taking Pidlisne, the Separatists pushed west, and then the RFA pushed east from Vrubivka, closing the pocket. Ukrainians lost lots of troops trying to keep the route open, but it was in vain…”

  148. Biden seems destined to have nothing but die-hard Democrat support: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html. Where will he fall to? The floor looks like ~34% job approval.
    .
    Unfortunately, Alzheimer’s patients tend to become dependent on those around them for making every decision, Biden is no different, and is surrounded by 100% by extreme-left ideologues. He can’t change the trajectory of his dumpster-fire administration, because his enfeebled mind can’t appreciate what is happening.

  149. “if the left controls government, and if only government can have guns, then armed resistance to the left is impossible.”

    .

    Like the poor enslaved populations of Australia, UK, Japan, Germany and Japan who passed strong gun laws.

    To me, this argument is a fantasy and something of a strawman too as legitimate use of arms is permitted.

  150. Phil,
    Maybe your views are informed by no history of armed revolution against the king of England. Maybe they are mostly leftist tripe. Hard for me to know which it is. But maybe an existing constitution ought to be amended rather than just subverted to advance certain (lefty) political views. Please define ‘legitimate use of arms’. Does that include revolution against a government which ignores the constitution it has sworn to uphold?

  151. Phil,
    Here is what the colonists in North America said to the King of England, at real peril to their lives:
    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
    .
    It is the right of the people to alter or abolish unjust government, which in the USA, means government that operates outside the confines of the Constitution. “No guns” pretty much takes that right away. Which is, I think, pretty much the entire point of ‘gun control’.

  152. Hush Steve. A leftist from that little island next to Australia disapproves of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Obviously we all need to shut up and listen carefully.
    [ SARC ]

  153. lucia June 23rd, 2022 at 5:39 am
    angech, I’ll take a RINO over a RITO anytime.
    Meaning
    angech,
    I’ll take a Democrat over a RITO anytime.

    Fair enough,
    Most Americans did.
    They are now paying the gas price for choosing to get rid of a politician with policies that worked when implemented and were good for the country.
    Now the party in charge elected with only one promise, to get rid of Trump , and no plans, only fairy floss dreams and aspirations,
    Is seeing the result of letting little children have their own way.

    Was it Churchill who said the have sown the wind now they are reaping the world-wind?

    Given a choice between sensible policies and a disgusting President who did sensible things
    Or ridiculous and dangerous policies,
    that everyone knew would happen,
    With a non disgusting President (once one closed one’s eyes and ears).
    What should one do?

    Sensible people should have taken the sensible choice for 4 years, but did not.
    One only hopes they are able to live long enough to learn

    Re the right to bear arms.
    You either have it or abolish it.
    Imagine passing a law to ban the concealed carry of muskets!
    What a hoot.

  154. I guess what I am trying to say is that in a democracy anyone, no matter how much one does not like them, is entitled to be elected.
    Biden or Trump.

    The current battle between the forces of good and evil in America today is actually a good thing.
    Ideas are being thrown around.
    Battle lines being joined.
    The morality and views of the America to come is being forged out of the forces of fear, pain and financial and emotional hardship, as they always have been through history.

    The Great Depression, the two world wars, Vietnam and now Ukraine. Covid, Black Lives Matter, the Wall, recreational drugs, State rights. Only in times of upheavals,misery and distress do enough people get serious enough to get the group dynamics working to change things.
    Perhaps we should celebrate the changes misery brings.
    This could and should be a pivotal 3 years if it achieves the reforms that are needed.

  155. mark bofill,
    “Obviously we all need to shut up and listen carefully.”
    .
    Oh, I listen carefully, I just dismiss all that seems to me to be rubbish.
    .
    But yes, the residents of a little island of 5 million people of mostly British descent ought not be too presumptuous about the correctness of their views on the best government policies in the USA. NZ is a very beautiful little country, and the people seem very nice, but it is as far removed as I can imagine from the reality of a large, diverse country with hugely divergent views on the proper role and scope of government.

  156. Russian attacks on the eastern pocket is grinding down the better trained and experienced part of the Ukraine army.
    .
    A Ukraine retreat from the area will shorten the front line to the benefit of Russia and clear Ukraine river blocking forces, allowing Russia to attack on a broad front unhindered by a major river.
    .
    If this war continues to be an artillery war, Ukraine is in trouble.

    ISW June 23
    .
    “… Russian forces have made substantial gains in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area over the last several days and Ukrainian troops continue to suffer high casualties, but Ukrainian forces have fundamentally accomplished their objective in the battle by slowing down and degrading Russian forces. Head of the Luhansk Oblast Administration Serhiy Haidai stated on June 23 that Ukrainian troops may have to retreat to avoid encirclement in Lysychansk, which indicates that Ukrainian authorities are setting conditions to prepare for the ultimate loss of both Severodonetsk and Lysychansk…”
    .

    https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-23

    .

  157. Steve,
    The thing that really amuses me no end is that in one breath progressives will tell me it’s silly to fear the government; silly conspiracy theorist, nothing like your fears would ever ever happen! ooohhh-hahahahaha!
    The next breath, democracy is in danger and Trump and the Republicans are fascists who almost took over the government! And lookout, they’re gonna try again!
    Shrug.

  158. I believe that gun control on the left comes from their adoration of government and the power of government to get things done or at least try to get things done. They feel it is better for you to depend on the government for many things and particularly for defending against crime. With that thinking those on the left would not see a reason to revolt against the government or even have some minimal means to threaten to revolt – unless a government was threatening to greatly reduce its size and power. They would also tell you that the government is too powerful to overthrow and so why even think about it.

    For a libertarian it is a matter of the government not having the authority to tell individuals what private property they can own. Without private property there is no freedom.

    Crying for gun control in the US takes attention away from the abject failure of government to control crime. We have had incidents with school shootings where government law enforcement failed to act for fear of their own lives even though they were being paid to act. In the latest incident the class room door was unlocked and the door to the outside was left open. Law enforcement did not want to act other than preventing private citizens from attempting to rescue their loved ones. Is anybody talking about how this crime could have been prevented given the current gun laws?

    Inner big cities were much current crime occurs have been under the control nearly completely of Democrat governments and the party wins election after election by convincing the voters that they depend on the government to control crime and only government can get the job done. Calling for more gun control is a natural for these politicians.

  159. angech (Comment #212921)

    angech, I notice that your writing style is very different here than when you post at Climate Etc. What gives?

  160. “I notice that your writing style is very different here than when you post at Climate Etc. What gives?”

    Interesting observation I was not aware of.
    I think different sites have different moderation and different audiences and like most people I adapt to those situations.
    I am sure we both have groups of friends where we feel comfortable discussing some issues and remember not to say anything about other issues.

    Lucia and Judith both have warm, open, scientific sites which encourage people to raise topics in a non hostile environment.
    Lucia talks to her visitors, about life, cats, dancing and current affairs as well as politics and science.
    Most of the contributors are like pen pals, I guess.
    I feel comfortable, trusting and at home even when taking on subjects in a contrarian fashion.

    Judith has a more science only approach with a hint of skepticism that attracts global warming skeptics and and proponents with a more confrontational style.
    When I feel riled up, I tend to be a bit too confrontational there though I can regret that afterwards. I also feel able to raise views there that I would feel uncomfortable doing so here because I like the views of the people here.

    Doveryay, no proveryay [phonetic spelling]
    Suzanne Massie, an American scholar, taught it to Ronald Reagan,
    The Problem with a Trust-But-Verify Approach Nan S Russell
    said this
    “when the outcome is essential and matters more than the relationship, use “trust, but verify.” When the relationship matters more than any single outcome, don’t use it”
    Which probably explains my style changes perfectly

  161. Steve, it is not 18th century any more. All of those countries with those oppressive arms control are democracies who voted for those measures and frankly don’t fear the government that they elected in.

    .

    Please define ‘legitimate use of arms’

    Sport and pest control.

    To me, it smells of rhetoric to equate “gun control” with “no guns”. Likewise, attacking the my argument on basis of my nationalist. I was offering counter-argument to idea that gun control leads to oppressive government of left. Our gun control is probably draconian by US standards but nothing on Australia.

    .

    I readily agree that I don’t understand USA.The fears, media stirring and paranoia dumbfound me. Friends that live there struggle to understand it. 2nd Amendment looks very 18th century and – it would totally make sense to update it. The arms and nature of militia and security needs of a free state being somewhat different.

  162. Kenneth.
    For a libertarian it is a matter of the government not having the authority to tell individuals what private property they can own.

    Now I am curious. Can private individuals own tanks and bazookas? Should they if not? Can anyone buy and use say cyanide, gelignite without evidence of competence?

    .

    I am not sure I believe in any absolute rights – conflicts of rights/values arise and those rights have balanced against other rights.

  163. Steve, another interesting question.

    “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness”

    .

    This needs a whole lot of context. “abolishing and instituting a new government” seems to be what every election is about, but are you interpreting this as the right of people to stage an armed insurrection to replace a government? Was that the intent of writer? (the big context being the revolution I assume). That then seriously begs a definition of what constitutes “the people”. History would suggest that small groups of dissidents were NOT endowed with that right. What about a simple majority? How would that be determined? Do people assume that armed insurrection is only way to bring down a unconstitutional government?

  164. Phil,
    The USA is NOT a democracy, it is a republic. That is what is confusing you and your friends. The majority does not get to decide everything. The Constitution was written specifically to protect the interests of the individual against the wishes of the majority (read the “bill of rights” amendments, passed immediately after the passage of the original constitution, for a laundry list of protections the majority can’t change). The Constitution was also written to protect the interests of low population states against the will of large population states. The Constitution allows amendment, of course, but once again, to protect the interests of the minority, supermajorities are required at each step in the amendment process.
    .
    Most of the political conflict in the states is due to people (mainly progressives) who reject the idea that a simple majority doesn’t get to decide everything. Irrational shouts of “Protect our democracy!” explain the basic conflict as much as anything does: ‘majoratorians’, either through ignorance or dishonesty, consider the country to be a democracy. It is not. They would immediately change the Constitution to be strict majority control if they could, but the Constitution does not allow it. So they work to subvert the plain meaning of the Constitution, mainly via Orwellian “judicial interpretations”. The howling you hear today about the Supreme Court is due to there presently being a majority on the Court that says the Constitution means what it says. This has not happened in about 90 years, and reversal of past Orwellian interpretations (interpreted to mean the opposite of the pain words) are causing the howling. Once more it is the democracy/republic conflict.
    .
    The conflict also shows in all the hand ringing about how the Senate is elected and how the President is elected. Once again, it is not strict majority rule… we have had many presidents who were elected with less than the majority of individual votes. That is the structure of the Republic.
    .
    In Germany, Japan, Australia, and NZ, the majority can (if they choose) toss someone who criticizes global warming hysteria into jail…. there is no free speech protection. Say something nice about Adolf Hitler in Germany, and see how it goes from there. I am very very glad I do not live in a democracy. I am sure I would find it oppressive.

  165. Phil,
    “Do people assume that armed insurrection is only way to bring down a unconstitutional government?”
    .
    Would depend on the specifics of the situation, but with no arms in the hands of individuals, armed insurrection is taken off the table… like in Venezuela… and NZ. I know lots of people who own high power rifles and who are skilled enough to hit a 20 cm target from 200 meters away… most every time. That is a measure of insurance against unconstitutional government; you may think it very 18th century, but I do not.

  166. Phil,
    “I am not sure I believe in any absolute rights – conflicts of rights/values arise and those rights have balanced against other rights.”
    .
    OK, but the US Constitution is quite full of such absolute rights. Do you think the constitution should then simply be ignored? That has been the “progressive” view in the States during most of my lifetime.

  167. Phil,

    Another thing about guns in the US is that there is evidence that guns are used for self defense mostly without discharging the weapon, far, far more often than they are used for crime. The problem is that the news almost never reports this. The classic example is when an armed citizen stopped a potential mass shooting at a college in Virginia some years back. There were about 200 press reports in various papers. Precisely two of them reported that a gun was used to stop the shooter.

    Where do we see the huge increase in shoplifting and smash and grab robberies in the US? It’s mostly in cities that have strong gun control laws and now also have prosecutors who refuse to prosecute. The argument that the legal system will protect you so you don’t need to have your own weapons for defense has failed utterly. Also, if a store owner shoots someone trying to rob his store in a city with a soft on crime prosecutor, I’m pretty sure that they would throw the book at the store owner.

  168. Phil Scadden (Comment #212928): “All of those countries with those oppressive arms control are democracies who voted for those measures and frankly don’t fear the government that they elected in.”
    .
    In don’t know what countries you mean, but Canadians did not vote for draconian gun control measures. Those have been and are being imposed by governments elected by minorities of the voters. And more and more Canadians are coming to fear their government. Australians too.
    ———–

    Phil Scadden: “Sport and pest control.”
    .
    In the USA, self-defense and defense of freedom are also legitimate uses of firearms.
    ———–

    Phil Scadden: “To me, it smells of rhetoric to equate “gun control” with “no guns”. Likewise, attacking the my argument on basis of my nationalist. I was offering counter-argument to idea that gun control leads to oppressive government of left. Our gun control is probably draconian by US standards but nothing on Australia.”
    .
    Gun control sets the table for no guns since it puts gun ownership at the discretion of the government. I have never heard it claimed that gun control automatically leads to oppressive government. It is an enabler of oppressive government, whether of the right or left. These days, that threat comes from the left.
    .
    Gun control is a necessary but not sufficient condition for gun confiscation and gun confiscation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for tyranny.
    ———–

    Phil Scadden: “2nd Amendment looks very 18th century and – it would totally make sense to update it. The arms and nature of militia and security needs of a free state being somewhat different.”
    .
    IMO, the Second Amendment is about States being able to defend themselves, including defense against the federal government. Individual gun rights are protected by the 9th, 10th, and 14th Amendments. That said, I’d say that SCOTUS has the jurisprudence about right except for using the wrong basis.

  169. Phil,

    To me, it smells of rhetoric to equate “gun control” with “no guns”. Likewise, attacking the my argument on basis of my nationalist. I was offering counter-argument to idea that gun control leads to oppressive government of left. Our gun control is probably draconian by US standards but nothing on Australia.

    Since I was the guy who put forward the idea that you nationality had anything to do with anything, I will explain.
    You ‘readily agree’ that you do not understand the US, yet you feel free to opine on how ’18th century’ and out of date our central political and legal tenets are. I consider that rude behavior. It would be the same if I came to tell you NZ’s central political and legal tenets are rubbish without knowing what I was talking about. Further, you have no ‘skin in the game’, not being a citizen.
    I don’t think you started a good faith conversation anyway. I think you came here to run a Snopes script.
    Here in comment 212915 you went fishing for a little gun history. Nobody obliged you, so you had to put forward the punchline without the joke in comment 212928 saying To me, it smells of rhetoric to equate “gun control” with “no guns”.
    This is a poor start to an honest inquiry. Bad faith, even.
    Shrug.

  170. I don’t know if it helps, but sometimes getting language right makes a difference (sometimes it doesn’t matter).
    I don’t think ‘absolute’ [is] exactly the right term. We have unalienable rights as noted in our Declaration of Independence:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
    –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
    –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

    This is the concept our government is based on. I don’t think there is anything out of date about it. Both the First and Second Amendments are instrumental in ensuring the People have a fighting chance to alter or abolish any Form of Government that becomes destructive to these ends. It’s not about pest control or sport shooting, it never was.
    Beer is really really old too. I mean, really ancient. Just saying.

  172. lease define ‘legitimate use of arms’

    Sport and pest control.

    I would add self defense to that list. A small business person handling valuable goods and money or carrying money back and forth to the bank could hypothetically need to protect themselves. So could a young woman walking to the bar or night-school taking her vagina with her. I consider this a legitimate use.
    .
    I’m not especially worried about government control or take over. However, I don’t find the worry outrageously unrealistic. We did once have a civil war on our soil. It was a long time ago. But arms matter when things go truly haywire.
    .
    Anyway, guns for sport and pest control open the door to AR-15s. I think that’s what you need for coyotes attacking sheep or pets. So I’m not seeing how those “legitimate” uses are potentially more controlling of big guns. The might take guns aways from women who want a small gun in their purse.

  173. The left: people don’t need guns for protection, you have the police and benevolent government for that.
    .
    Also the left: defund the police. Release dangerous criminals for “equity”. Riots are peaceful protest. We’ll only enforce laws against our opponents. A small rabble with no guns is sufficient to stage an insurrection, but it’s ridiculous to think you can do it armed. Trump is a tyrant turning the US into a fascist state.

  174. Dave,
    And the police don’t even have a duty to protect you unless you’re in their custody.
    They’ll likely show up way too late, and when they do finally arrive it is not their duty to protect you. Perfect!

  175. Phil Scadden (Comment #212929)
    June 23rd, 2022 at 10:07 pm

    Phil, I am glad you brought up this time-honored argument against guns as a private property right by upping the ante to larger weapons. The missing part of these arguments is the private property rights of those non owners of large weapons. A good account of this counter argument is spelled out in the link below.
    That article also brings to the fore the supposed limitation on free speech by yelling fire in a theater when private property rights of all concerned are ignored.

    https://mises.org/wire/how-property-rights-properly-understood-limit-spread-wmds

    A proposition used by the hardcore libertarian about self defense is that it needs to be aimed at the perpetrator and not involve collateral damage to innocent people. That makes the hardcore anti war since wars involve lots of collateral damage. Guns can be used in self defense without causing collateral damage while most larger weapons cannot.

    That brings me to ask you, Phil, where you stand on governments use of weapons that can indiscriminately kill innocent people -like we are currently witnessing in Ukraine.

    I do not see any nation-centric content in your arguments. They appear much the same as those of the left in the US. It is good that you post them here.

  176. mark bofill,

    I don’t think that Phil Scadden is arguing in bad faith. He just has the usual left-of-center blind spots and false assumptions.

  178. SteveF

    I know lots of people who own high power rifles and who are skilled enough to hit a 20 cm target from 200 meters away… most every time. That is a measure of insurance against unconstitutional government; you may think it very 18th century, but I do not.

    I strongly suspect my ~55 yo neighbor and his ~25-30 yo son are. They are definitely pro-gun. I know they’ve had target training.
    I don’t know if they own high powered rifles though.

  179. mark bofill

    And in other news, I see Roe vs. Wade has been overturned.

    Yep. It will be interesting to see what happens to the abortion landscape in 5 years. Votes at the state level now matter.

  180. I don’t really find the likelihood of a made for TV coup occurring in the US where a secret cabal takes over the government and armed forces to be very high. Those who think the Viking King was about to take over the US government on Jan 6th are pretty delusional.
    .
    Now there are some scenarios where an armed populace is going to give some authoritarians pause in their plans. This is more a “tyranny of the majority” type of action. Things like packing the Supreme Court using clever legal trickery, subverting the existing system by states banding together and combining electoral votes, ahem, parties preventing opposing candidates from running for election, actual large scale voting fraud, etc. Basically fevered dreams of activists where they convince themselves the greater good is served by their clever legal trickery.
    .
    It’s just another problem for the wannabe dictator. There are plenty of those in the US just like everywhere, but the US system is pretty robust against such actions. You would need to get the allegiance of the military and police forces and additionally concern yourselves with a well armed populace. If you have support of all those people, you can just win power through an election anyway.
    .
    In my view guns are basically toys to most people who aren’t hunters. Especially those “scary black guns”. I’ve considered buying one just for the toy and technical investigation aspects but I think it would get boring pretty fast. Shoot it at the range a few times and put it away until the apocalypse. So yes. we have a strange gun culture in the US and if a bunch of rural people sleep better knowing they have an arsenal in the basement I don’t really care.
    .
    There are some real needs in some scenarios of Defensive Gun Use. Ex-boyfriend threating to kill you, being approached by a mod intent on beating you and robbing you, home invasions, but I find those needs disproportionate to the actual numbers of guns in the US. What gun owners have in spades is a passion for their right to own guns. They have it, so trying to take that away might ironically be the leading potential cause of an armed populace response.

  181. FYI: The Supreme Court case on Harvard Asian discrimination will be heard next term. An interesting sidenote is the new SC Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has already said she will recuse herself from that case because she sat on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. So that will stack the leanings on that case 6-2 (probably more like 5-3).

  182. Tom,

    I’ve considered buying one just for the toy and technical investigation aspects but I think it would get boring pretty fast.

    It does, if you just get one. If you have a wide variety of firearms it makes range time more interesting. 😉

  183. Self defense against other people with guns mostly, ha ha. A lot of people in the US die by handguns for some really stupid reasons, this is very clear. The argument for banning handguns is a greater good argument. The number of people with approx. 11 working neurons killing each other because they were disrespected or such greatly exceeds the number of legitimate heroic gun defenses. They both exist. I’m making this assertion but haven’t seen any good data on this.
    .
    It’s a questions of whether you sacrifice a smaller number of law abiding people who won’t be allowed to arm themselves to save a larger number of idiots who will shoot each other at the drop of a hat. The idiots are generally targeting each other.
    .
    I believe a handgun ban and confiscation of handguns will lead to less dead idiots. That’s the argument. I’m not really emotionally entangled on this argument, I’d probably vote for it but find implementing it to be rather arduous, perhaps unrealistic, and not sure saving the idiots is really worth restricting my right to defend myself.

  184. Australia was(is?) herding people into quarantine camps, and sending military after people who manage to escape these camps.
    I don’t think getting control of the military and police in the US is impossible.

  185. Mark bofill,
    I grew up in WV so of course I know how to shoot firearms, it’s the law! The summer camp I attended many years had a riflery range and it was pretty fun really. They gave out patches for attaining certain accuracies. There was never any feeling whatsoever this was controversial in any sense, training 13 year old’s to shoot rifles. The safety precautions were very, very strict. I’ve carried that built in respect for firearms my whole life.

  186. Tom,
    I grew up without such benefit, having lived in New England as a child. I’m recovering though. Of my two boys, only one is interested in shooting; I regularly take him to the range. I’m pretty proud of the kid actually, safe handling of firearms is essentially automatic to him now as far as I can tell.
    [Edit: As opposed to me, who every once in a blue moon gets distracted and ends up with the barrel of a shotgun pointed in an inappropriate direction. It’s happened…]

  187. Tom Scharf (Comment #212952): “A lot of people in the US die by handguns for some really stupid reasons, this is very clear.”
    .
    Not really a lot. But when it happens, it makes the news.
    .
    Tom Scharf: “The number of people with approx. 11 working neurons killing each other because they were disrespected or such greatly exceeds the number of legitimate heroic gun defenses.”
    .
    That is not at all the case. Studies of the use of defensive gun use give huge numbers of successes. Overwhelmingly those result in no firearms discharged and no crime committed, so they don’t make the news or get counted in crime stats.
    .
    From what I have seen, it is clear that guns for self-defense are a net benefit.
    .
    In the UK, burglars often break into occupied homes. In the US, they are very careful to make sure nobody is home. So even people who don’t own guns get some benefit from legal gun ownership.

  188. I shot some sort of small rifle at defenseless empty beer cans. They survived. I didn’t have ear protection. It was noisy and cold. I went in to make hot chocolate.
    Never had any inclination to kill more defenseless empty beer cans.

  189. I think the real point of an armed citizenry is not the hypothetical “we might have to overthrow the government”. It is simply to reinforce the principle that the people rule. The government disarming the populace quite clearly says the opposite.

  191. Lucia,
    Yeah, I don’t have any inclination to kill anything really. I’m not a hunter. Merciful god, if I shot an animal I’d have to skin and clean it, what sort of mess would that be. Ick. Besides, I’d feel bad for the animal.
    I am absolutely without compassion and a ruthless destroyer of paper targets however. Not just the bulls-eye in the center, oh no. The entire target, every bit of it, has good reason to fear me! No square millimeter is safe…

  192. 20K gun murders in 2020, mostly handguns, and guns are 80% of all murders. Some portion of those people probably deserved to be shot. Most stats like these imply those murders are all irrational. However, a leading cause of death for young idiots. Suicides are a different debate but some portion of those might be reduced, hard to say. Not sure what the surviving gunshot victim count is but 5X to 10X higher? It’s just a lot of violence. The stats debate is well worn.
    .
    The net benefit argument has to counter other countries with lower death rates and implies the US is just an irredeemably very violent society, which is a possibility.
    .
    I don’t think there is any trustable data on Defensive Gun Use. It’s like counting homeless people, most of these are not reported. I’ve seen some survey data from biased sources which implies those numbers are high. It gets even more complicated because some crimes never occur because the assailant knows the potential victims are armed, and some people will not commit robbery without being armed themselves because they fear the victim being armed. The outlook for getting good data looks pretty dim because the NRA is against it, and academia is unlikely to be unbiased in their counting’s.

  193. Mike M,
    That is an informative list; helps to put things in perspective.
    .
    I would add to that: ~50 deaths per year (on average) from mass shootings of strangers by mentally disturbed young men.

    That does not count the many gang-related “mass shootings”….. where 4 or more people are shot… but where the selected targets are known by and carefully selected by the shooter(s).

  194. Tom Scharf,
    “Some portion of those people probably deserved to be shot.”
    .
    Very, VERY, non-PC. I suggest that all murders are bad.

  195. Mike M,
    “I think the real point of an armed citizenry is not the hypothetical “we might have to overthrow the government”.”
    .
    Depends on how badly the government is acting. But yes, armed revolution is a very extreme last resort. I rather expect the armed forces (at least the enlistees, if not the officers) would balk at shooting civilians if the government is acting unconstitutionally. An order to shoot civilians could end up being suddenly fatal to the officer who issues that order. I note that the efforts to purge the armed forces of anyone who agrees with Trump, and the institution of mandatory “woke” training in all the armed forces, are not at all surprising with the current administration and their many hacks in charge of the military.

  197. The problem I have with the argument that we don’t need guns because our government would never misbehave that badly is that I think one of the reasons out government would never misbehave that badly is that they know good and darn well that gun ownership is reasonably widespread. Over time, without that knowledge in the back of their minds, who knows what would happen. It might be much different.

  198. Steve,
    Yeah, although it’s been awhile. When I’d catch one I’d throw it back though. The further the animal is on the evolutionary chain from me (roughly speaking) the less compassion I feel for it. I could kill fish without all that much trouble probably. Of course, I don’t really like to eat fish in the first place, so the issue doesn’t generally come up.
    [Edit: Even so. I go out of my way not to kill spiders when I can avoid it, as well as most insect that don’t bite or sting. I’m just weird that way. Not that I think this is virtuous, it’s more that I’m something of a pussy when it comes to killing things without cause.]

  199. SteveF,
    I just don’t like watching animals die. I’m not vegetarian, so obviously, I don’t have anything fundamentally against it.
    .
    I know I have a similar reaction to my cats killing things. I don’t mind them killing mice; I don’t want to watch it.

  200. Ants. I’ve murdered ants by the thousands. Tens of thousands probably. What can I say? They were in my yard.
    Shrug.

  201. I drove buy a flock of about 20 vultures the other day having at it with an armadillo. Not pretty. Of course I bought my antiseptically packaged meat yesterday without thinking twice about it. Animals are going to animal, and we are in that group.
    .
    Fire ants deserve their deaths, ha ha. Getting nailed by a group of those guys when you aren’t paying attention is an experience you won’t forget.

  202. With Roe reversed the meltdown is well underway. I am wondering if there is any danger the sun will explode, extinguishing all life on Earth. OTOH, many (most?) states, where the large majority of abortions actually happen, will not be influenced by Dobbs in any way.
    .
    But the melt-down hysteria is pretty impressive, with Alzheimer’s Joe leading the way, of course.

  203. mark bofill,
    I cook up clams by boiling them. I don’t feel bad about it at all. Same thing with lobsters and mussels. They don’t have much of a nervous system… and they are all quite tasty. I let fish die by asphyxiation, which unfortunately takes some time. Some people cut their gills, which makes them die pretty quickly from blood loss.
    .
    All those seagoing animals often (usually!) suffer far worse ends in the sea than they get from me. Animals that are “processed” commercially like chickens, pigs and cattle are killed pretty quickly, so there isn’t a lot of suffering. Even giant blue-fin tuna (which seem to me pretty smart, at least for fish) are generally killed instantly with an electric shock before they are hauled into the boat by commercial fishermen.
    .
    I don’t go out of my way to ever make an animal suffer. Rifle hunting can be worse, of course, especially if the shot is not quickly fatal.

  204. Steve,
    I’ve got no issue. I eat commercially processed animal meat just about every meal. As I said, it’s not a virtue thing, it’s just squeamishness on my part.
    I’m fairly sure that if the only way I got to eat meat was by killing, skinning, and cleaning animals myself, I’d get over it pretty quick. 🙂

  205. Steve,
    Regarding the other thing (meltdown), yeah. The Bee warns that tonight’s protests may escalate from ‘mostly peaceful’ to ‘somewhat peaceful’.
    It’s absolutely amazing to me that all of these people who believe so strongly in Democracy with a capitol D who constantly tell us that our Democracy is in danger, are not applauding the fact that SC has returned the power to decide what to do about this issue to Democracy, instead of continuing to pre-empt voters deciding about this for themselves.
    Go figure.

  208. Alyssa Milano has nailed it.

    “Today’s Supreme Court ruling overturning #RoeVsWade will have deadly consequences, with the harm falling hardest on people of color who already face disproportionate discrimination in our country and grapple with a severe maternal mortality crisis,” Milano wrote.

    She added: “Banning abortion will disproportionately impact people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, people struggling to make ends meet, young people, and those living in rural areas.”

    (Emphasis added)
    I ‘get’ that the LGBTQ+ community struggles with unwanted pregnancies and all, owing to the fact that lesbian couples, no wait, gay couples, hang on, Bi or Trans, uhhh, ….
    What?!?

  209. mark bofill,
    I’ll bet Alyssa Milano can’t say what a woman is either. The woke are in fact nothing but idiots.

  210. Banning X thing I approve of impacts people of X, Y & Z
    Not banning X that I don’t approve of impacts people of X, Y, & Z.
    .
    Always treating groups as singular entities they feel entitled to speak on behalf of. Yawn.
    .
    Apparently, abortion is required to put women on an equal footing with men. Let’s completely ignore that men can neither choose to have offspring, nor legally absolve themselves of parental responsibilities even if “mistakes happen”.

  211. “I am very very glad I do not live in a democracy. I am sure I would find it oppressive.”

    Steve, you misread my question. I will try to clearer. I understand that you believe that the quote you gave from the Revolution is about people having arms so they could overthrow an oppressive government. I am asking how you interpret “the People” in that quote. How do you determine that it has become legitimate, as per your quote, for an armed uprising. If it isnt a simple majority (how that would be determined I dont know), then what constitutes “the people”?

    The only reason I come here is to get another point of view. Originally, Lucia and Judith seemed like sane voices where you could hear alternative views on global warming. I really appreciate people who are ready to explain what seems downright bizarre to me.

    Since NZ has about 26 guns per head of population, I dont think you rule out armed insurrection. We have stronger gun laws than US (especially since Christchurch massacre), but hardly in top 10. The mosque attack was carried out by an Australian – arms being harder to obtain there.

  212. Phil

    Since NZ has about 26 guns per head of population, I dont think you rule out armed insurrection.

    Wow! Admittedly I know the number in the US.

    I’m not sure what stronger anti-gun laws means if you can obviously get one easily. Registration?

  213. markB
    I think Alyssa is right that abortion will disproportionately affect younger people. Younger women are more fertile. Post menopausal women don’t generally get pregnant.

    DaveJR

    Let’s completely ignore that men can neither choose to have offspring, nor legally absolve themselves of parental responsibilities even if “mistakes happen”.

    It is different from the 70s. We can easily run DNA tests and courts do hold men responsible. Still, women (dare I say it) are the ones that are pregnant for 9 months. So abortion will affect women more.

  214. Lucia,

    I think Alyssa is right that abortion will disproportionately affect younger people.

    I agree.

  215. Phil Scadden (Comment #212980): “Since NZ has about 26 guns per head of population”.
    .
    From what I can find, that is off by about two orders of magnitude.
    .
    In the process, I am finding claims that gun control has been followed by significantly increased gun deaths in New Zealand.

  216. I am asking how you interpret “the People” in that quote. How do you determine that it has become legitimate, as per your quote, for an armed uprising. If it isnt a simple majority (how that would be determined I dont know), then what constitutes “the people”?

    I wasn’t asked, but I think this is an interesting question that I will volunteer my answer to anyway.
    The answer is in my view that not only is there no formulaic way to determine this, but there is also no great obvious heuristic for determining this. The devil is in the details, and there is a whole nine hells of detail to consider. It’s quite a risk to take, over throwing one’s government, not to be undertaken lightly, not just because one might hang, but because it’s extremely difficult to know if one is actually right in doing so.
    Maybe this is why revolution should be a tool of last resort, or near to it.

  217. The DOJ and Garland says:
    “The Justice Department will work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom,” Garland said in a lengthy statement after the Supreme Court ruling.

    He said the agency is “ready to work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care. In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”
    “In a separate statement Friday, the White House said it’s working to make the drug, which can be used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, widely available.”
    .
    Curiously worded. Basically they want to have the Feds mail abortion pills to states with restrictions. The people advocating this would be the same people whose job it is to uphold our laws. I think abortion should be legal but this is not well thought out and will likely get slapped down pretty quick. Perhaps it’s even a “danger to our democracy”, ha ha. This is just another example by the left of taking what should be a political advantage and squandering it by overreaching.
    .
    States rights can get quite controversial. One thing for sure is that the Feds always, always, always want more power. I’m guessing the SC won’t look kindly on the Feds overreaching into the states once they read that Constitution again they keep talking about.
    .
    But the right is just as likely to overreach. Prosecuting people for abortions, etc. Pence said he favors a total federal abortion ban, I guess we can count him out now.

  218. Mark – whoops! You are quite correct. Missed the per 100 bit.

    Gun crime is heavily related to gang issues which are complex. The only recent change to gun laws is ban on military style automatics and large magazines. Pistols were effectively outlawed in 1920 and gun licences have been required since forever. What we dont have is gun registration which Australia brought after Port Arthur massacre and which UK has which would appear pretty effective.

    In interests of discussion in good faith, I will try to write my contentions more clearly, but my time is limited this weekend so it will be monday.

  219. Phil,
    The Declaration of Independence formally announced armed revolution against the UK. If you read it in its entirety, you will see that the document lays out the reasons for revolution in detail, and further cautions that revolution ought not be undertaken except in extreme circumstances. That is, when government has become intolerable.
    .
    With regard to what fraction of people are needed to revolt against an unconstitutional government: It is a complicated question. If the USA is at risk, that risk comes mainly from the insistence of those who want pure democracy to control everything. Succession (and armed revolt) were it to happen, would likely be state by state, and would be prompted by subversion of the constitution to the extent it no longer provides protections from pure majority rule.
    .
    I hope that you have noted where the names of the political parties in the USA come from: Democrats mostly support pure democracy, while Republicans most certainly do not…. they want the strong protections AGAINST pure democracy that a constitutional republic provides. Californians generally want to control what Texans and Oklahomans can do, but the opposite is NOT the case. Therein lies the political conflict you see play out almost non-stop.

  220. Tom Scharf,
    “In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”
    “In a separate statement Friday, the White House said it’s working to make the drug, which can be used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, widely available.”
    .
    Not an unexpected result. Whether or not the Federal courts will let that happen is not clear, but if I had to guess, I’d guess it will ultimately be blocked by the courts. Of course, administrative actions can be reversed with each change in administration, so Republicans taking control in 2025 would likely end those Biden policies.
    .
    If Congress were to pass legislation requiring allowed distribution of FDA approved drugs everywhere, that would pass muster with the courts, but I suspect the chance of that happening is very small.

  221. Interesting piece in today’s WSJ:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-far-do-putins-imperial-ambitions-go-11656085978?

    How Far Do Putin’s Imperial Ambitions Go?
    The Russian president and his inner circle speak openly about retaking the vast lands that Moscow once controlled. As the war continues in Ukraine, Russia’s neighbors are taking the threats seriously.

    *******************

    Earlier this month, Mr. Putin said that he views Ukraine as just the first step, with many other territories potential targets. On June 9, he held court in front of a sign proclaiming “Peter the Great, the Birth of the Empire” at an exhibition honoring the 350th anniversary of Russia’s first emperor. With a smile, Mr. Putin explained that when Peter conquered from Sweden the area of today’s St. Petersburg and the city of Narva, currently in Estonia, “he was merely returning what is ours, and strengthening it,” even though nobody else at the time recognized the legality of Russia’s land grab.

    ******************

    The conclusion is that Russia’s goal is still the annexation of all of Ukraine. So any intermediate cease fire and weakening of sanctions would only be temporary and allow Russia to regroup.

  222. Russia will take whatever it thinks it can get away with. Sadly this is why we have to have strong militaries and alliances. The world would be better off without Putin.

  223. Phil,

    In interests of discussion in good faith, I will try to write my contentions more clearly, but my time is limited this weekend so it will be monday.

    Don’t worry about it. I retract what I said about bad faith. I get irritable sometimes as I progress down the path to my destiny as a grumpy old man.
    Excuse me, I gotta go yell at those darn kids on my lawn!

  224. A true laugh out loud moment for me, CNN this morning:
    “While protests on Friday and overnight against the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade were largely peaceful, law enforcement used tear gas on a crowd in Arizona and there were some arrests in New York.”
    .
    Is largely peaceful more violent than mostly peaceful? Is largely peaceful the same as smally violent? It’s all so confusing to me now.
    .
    Also Senator Warren has declared
    “We can’t undo in five months the damage it took Republicans five decades to accomplish, but we can immediately start repairing our democracy”
    .
    Inquiring minds want to know how she wants to repair our democracy, thankfully she tells us:
    “We urge the president to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans, unlocking critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services”
    .
    Letting people vote on abortion is clearly undemocratic, and the way we fix that is by having the executive branch just overrule the courts and legislatures. Sure this sounds more like authoritarian rule, but it’s democracy. You are welcome for this lecture on the new civics of America.
    .
    Also, nobody would ever have predicted that bureaucrats would want to declare just about anything a public health emergency for political gain after covid. Never saw that coming.
    .
    This is all so fundamentally unserious.

  225. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/24/us/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-protests/index.html

    “Troopers deployed tear gas after a crowd of protesters repeatedly pounded on the glass doors of the State Senate Building,” Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bart Graves told CNN.

    Maybe they should have let them break the doors down and enter.

    The crowd then moved across the street to the Wesley Bolin Plaza, where police used the tear gas after a monument was vandalized, Graves said.

  226. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/at-least-25-arrested-at-new-york-city-pro-abortion-protests-report/

    A protester allegedly broke a window and poured an unknown liquid on the floor of the Women’s National Republican Club on 51st street, according to photos viewed by the New York Post.

    Don’t know if this person got arrested.

    Police made several arrests around 11 p.m. as protesters sat down cross-legged in the middle of a crosswalk, blocking traffic on 42nd Street and The Avenue of the Americas.

    Blocking traffic is kinda sort of peaceful, but generally illegal.
    It’s a big problem in NYC.

    A police officer warned the protesters they would be arrested and charged with disorderly conduct if they didn’t leave. Three women then took their shirts off, the outlet reported.

    Still mostly peaceful. I guess illegal?

    Other protesters blocked an M7 bus, according to the report. One climbed atop the windshield and twerked while another pretended to fall in front of the bus. […]
    A small group of protesters jumped onto the flatbed of an 18-wheeler driving on 6th Avenue, after which police arrested more protesters.

    Blocking bus and jumping on it is probably illegal.
    .
    Plenty of things to get arrested for but mostly peaceful would probably be a correct description of NY. AZ…. property destruction is definitely illegal. Peaceful? Dunno.
    .
    We aren’t seeing fire bombing or widespread destruction of property. I’d guess these are probably mostly women demonstrating.

  227. Warren

    “We urge the president to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans, unlocking critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services”

    Men and the elderly need access too. I guess it’s unfashionable to say “for all women”.
    .
    Yeah, obviously, the president can’t do this without triggering a constitutional crisis. So it ain’t going to happen.
    .
    There is going to be a lot of jockeying to figure out what each side can do. That’s fair enough.
    .
    But Pro-Choice side is in a dangerous situation. There is a non-negligible risk of a veto-proof GOP majority in House after 2022 election. If they pass a federal law that attempts to bind states, the subsequent legislature could pass too, but in the opposite direction. (It’s not clear either would pass muster at SCOTUS, but when something isn’t clear and people care a lot, they often pass a law.)
    .
    It will be interesting to watch the jockeying.
    I’m for abortion being legal, and it will likely be so in the long run. Short run? Who knows.
    .
    Miss law permits it up to 15 weeks which is one more week than France. But we’ll see if Miss reduces window as they now can.

  229. Tom Scharf (Comment #212995): “Also Senator Warren has declared …:’we can immediately start repairing our democracy … We urge the president to declare a public health emergency to protect abortion access for all Americans …’.”
    .
    Indeed. To repair democracy, we need dictatorship. Maybe she just used one wrong word and meant to say that we need a dictatorship to cure our democracy. That would be logically consistent.

  230. Seems to be a lot of flat out “pro-abortion”, rather than “pro-choice”. The situation may have remained on slow boil if dems could have resisted celebrating abortion, rubbing noses in the fact, and stuck with “safe, legal, and rare” rather than suggesting a few days post birth could be ok.

  231. DaveJR,
    This issue could never have stayed as a slow boil. The people who are vehemently against abortion from conception would be so whether or not the pro-choice people went to extremes wanting to legalize abortion on demand up until birth. They truly believe it’s murder from day 0 and want laws to reflect that.
    .
    I think the views of “the middle” are now going to matter more because the “pro choice” side now has more to lose by pushing on-demand up-until-birth and losing “the middle”. If the pro-choice pulls back enough to form a coalition, most states have laws similar to or more lenient than those in France– 14 weeks. Mifepristone will continue to be available in most or all states with few states arguing the pills can’t come in.
    .
    It the extreme pro-choice don’t pull back at least some “the middle” might end preferring no abortion to abortion on demand up until birth. In that case, a few states will ban abortion altogether– at least for a while. (Then, over time, that will get chipped away to have exceptions. But it will take time.)
    .
    Before this ruling the pro-choice side knew legislatures couldn’t ban altogether. So the down-side of pushing too hard didn’t exist. It now does.
    Very short term the two sides aren’t going to compromise. We are going to see suits. Things will shake out. We’ll see where we land.

  232. https://www.foxnews.com/health/mifepristone-abortion-medication-supreme-court-roe-v-wade-decision
    .
    Key realities as current things stand:
    1) Mifepristone can be prescribed by an MD who treats using telemedicine. So a doctor in Illinois could prescribe to a patient in some other states.
    2) Mifepristone can be sent by USPS mail service. So a patient in Texas could have an out of state pharmacy ship the prescription.
    .
    I’m sure we are going to see some jockeying where some states try to make it illegal for pharmacies to ship Mifepristone to their residents. (I bet Texas will.) I’m sure Planned Parenthood will ship anyway. Lawsuits will ensue. We area all going to learn more about why states can prohibit drop shipment of liquor. (Liquor laws are special; 21st amendment, Webb-Canyon Act.)
    .
    Strategies and counter strategies are being debated.

  233. I think we will see a lot of voter referendums on this, it will be easy to get enough support for it. It’s really the best way to settle it. It’s not obvious if a voter referendum can give more than choice though.
    .
    I wouldn’t be surprised if two years from now things look remarkably similar to what they did a week ago.

  234. DeWitt,
    “Earlier this month, Mr. Putin said that he views Ukraine as just the first step, with many other territories potential targets.”
    .
    Pure unsourced speculation, and not credible at all. Putin is a murderous thug. But he is not crazy. All those countries are not going to be taken over by Russia… many of them are NATO members.

  235. Lucia,
    There are many laws that prohibit the practice of medicine without a state issued license; I expect immediate lawsuits against telemedicine by physicians prescribing for patients who are not in the state where the physician is licensed.
    .
    The situation is messy, of course, but at least there now exists the possibility of a consensus emerging. After all, about 2/3 of voters basically agree that early abortion should be legal and later abortion limited to special circumstances like serious maternal health risk and serious fetal abnormality. If/how a consensus emerges as law will be interesting to see. Laws along the lines of other economically advanced countries (typically 12 to 15 weeks maximum) would be most consistent with the voter’s wishes, but unfortunately, both extremes are going to fight like hell to keep the consensus from being enacted as law.

  236. SteveF,
    I know. But I suspect we’ll hear of people skirting those law if they can. Lots of states modified their laws for COVID (but those Covid authorizations to allow telemedicine are time restricted). Or doctors and lawyers will read carefully and get themselves licensed in the appropriate state. It looks like a doctor can hold a license in more than one state.

    We’ll see lawsuits when licenses get yanks. (Suits being filed doesn’t tell you who will win. I’m just saying we are going to see manouvering and lawsuits.)

    https://www.fsmb.org/siteassets/advocacy/pdf/states-waiving-licensure-requirements-for-telehealth-in-response-to-covid-19.pdf

  237. While I hear a lot about the recent Supreme Court decision turning abortion back to the voters, the stage appears set for state courts to get involved in these matters and particularly where extreme positions become law..

    Technology is much advanced from 1973 and there are peripheral issues such as delivery of drugs and related laws and regulation that would be ripe for adjudication. There is also nothing keeping federal courts from acting on issues peripheral but related to abortion.

    I would also guess that state politicians that legislate severe restriction on abortion will eventually face some detrimental voter reaction. Unfortunately I do not think that politicians at the other extreme who are OK with very late term abortion for any reason will face similar voter consequences.

  238. Kenneth

    I would also guess that state politicians that legislate severe restriction on abortion will eventually face some detrimental voter reaction. Unfortunately I do not think that politicians at the other extreme who are OK with very late term abortion for any reason will face similar voter consequences.

    Oh, I think both will.
    .
    The rational compromise given what most voters really want is to have abortion be limited to first 14 weeks or so, but make it easy and cheap to get so there is no financial or procedural hurdle to getting the abortion once the woman knows she wants it.
    .
    We’ll see if we can get there.

  239. The states and District of Columbia currently have widely varying restrictions on abortions.

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/abortion-laws-by-state

    States that allow for late-term abortions with no state-imposed thresholds are Alaska, Colorado, District of Columbia, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.

    https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states-allow-late-term-abortion

    The recent Supreme Court ruling on abortion goes both ways for restrictions by the states. I believe the allowing of late term abortions without limits has already been settled in some states and do not see why that would change any time soon.

  240. I don’t understand the Ukraine command. They are risking a major part of their most experienced troops to hold an area they have no hope of holding.
    .
    Ukraine withdrew from Severodonetsk across the river into its twin city of Lysychansk due to the intensity of artillery attacks. Now Lysychansk is being subjected to an even higher intensity of artillery attacks as the Russians no longer have to split their fire between these two areas.
    .
    Russia is advancing steadily from the south to cutoff the ability to either supply Lysychansk or allow Ukraine to retreat in good order from Lysychansk.
    .
    If Ukraine had pulled out of Lysychansk at the same time as they retreated from Severodonetsk, they could have escaped from being encircled. As it is, there’s now only 1 minor road open for Lysychansk ,it is under heavy artillery fire, and is also in danger of being physically cut in the next several days.
    .
    Ukraine seems to have gone to a strategic stance of “Not One Step Back”. As current Russian strategic stance is the destruction of the Ukraine army first, then take land, this fits Russian aims perfectly.
    .
    A couple of pro Ukraine sites on the situation
    .
    Have to translate this one
    https://deepstatemap.live/en#12.75/48.9046/38.4051
    .
    https://medium.com/@x_TomCooper_x/ukraine-war-25-26-june-2022-bc847bff2798

  241. Lucia,
    “But I suspect we’ll hear of people skirting those laws if they can.”
    .
    For sure.
    .
    I think the widespread availability of Mifepristone actually helps limit the scope of the argument a bit. If a pill (or three) can almost always end a pregnancy before 10 weeks, that would be 1) consistent with the views of a large majority of voters, 2) would be by far the least expensive way to end unwanted pregnancies, and 3) would avoid the visceral negative reaction many voters have to late term abortions.
    .
    More complicated cases (fetal abnormality, serious maternal health issues) would remain, of course, but I suspect a large majority of unwanted pregnancies can be (and probably are presently) terminated before 10 weeks. Could Congress make Mifepristone always available by mail (and video-conference medicine) over the objections of individual states? Donno, but I suspect it could. Will it happen? Hard to say.

  242. Ed Forbes,
    “They are risking a major part of their most experienced troops to hold an area they have no hope of holding.”
    .
    Since our (idiot) president encouraged them to insist on return of all Ukrainian lands (that is, everything pre-2014), of course they are going to try their best to avoid retreat from the western portions of the Donbas. IMO, the principle issue is foolish diplomacy by the USA and Europe, but mostly the problem is delusional zealots at the State Department who are dooming the Ukrainian people to a level of destruction they should not have to endure. ‘Fight Russia to the last Ukrainian’ seems their preferred course.
    .
    I have never understood the diplomatic posture of the EC and the USA. IMO, way beyond stoooopid.

  243. DeWitt,
    “https://thedebrief.org/gravity-mystery-could-soon-be-solved-with-help-from-this-mind-bending-new-theoretical-model/”
    .
    Is this a reasonable explanation for the Hubble constant? Seems to an absolute innocent like me a more sensible model than the almost infinitely high ‘recession speeds’ projected for near the limit of the observable universe.

  244. Ed Forbes (Comment #213012): “I don’t understand the Ukraine command. They are risking a major part of their most experienced troops to hold an area they have no hope of holding.”
    .
    They are fighting to keep their country. Running away is not an option. Do you have a better strategy than making the Russians pay dearly for every inch?

  245. Ok, did a little more googling and reading and I think I am better informed. I am sure people will correct me. Aiming for a crux, I would say that I believe these to be true:

    1/ The US Supreme court can strike down any law that it deems to be unconstitutional which would make gun law reform from Congress rather pointless. Any serious change to gun law has to come from amendment to constitution.

    2/ The 1934 NFA however placed strong (and to my mind pretty sensible) restrictions around certain kinds of arms (ie machine guns, grenades etc).
    .
    If the NFA doesnt violate constitution, then why could it not also extend to large-magazine semi-automatics which seem to be major issue? I find it difficult to believe that Republicans are comfortable with idea of schools being turned into fortresses with locked doors, armed teachers and perhaps armed security guards.
    .
    Even you accept the idea that an armed population is necessary to keep stop the government getting ideas (clearly I dont), I dont see that this aim would be materially endangered by licensing of individuals in same way that access to explosives are licenced. Especially when you have a pretty strong profile for mass killers.
    .
    And finally, I struggle with even the concept that you embed an armed population as protection against your government without some kind of framework on what defines “oppressive government”. Surely this tacitally permits a militia to overthrow a government if it believes it is oppressive. But “oppressive” has been highly subjective if not defined – oppressive to some people is mask mandates but do you really think that is legitimate reason for overthrowing a government by private means?

  246. Mike M,

    ‘”Do you have a better strategy than making the Russians pay dearly for every inch?”
    .
    OK, but at what cost to the Ukrainians? Really, seems to me at least not well connected to reality on the ground/

  247. Kenneth, that article on property rights was very interesting. I must find more of Rothbard to read. Translating these concepts into law (and constitution) would be a long project though. (But on first read, one well worth starting). I have been fascinated by ideas around use of property rights in areas of conservation and pollution control.
    .

    That brings me to ask you, Phil, where you stand on governments use of weapons that can indiscriminately kill innocent people -like we are currently witnessing in Ukraine.

    .
    I would love to live in a world where any weapon capable of collateral damage was banned and all honoured such a ban. However, I am not going to judge use of such weapons in defense when a aggressor is using them against you.

  248. Phil,

    If the NFA doesnt violate constitution, then why could it not also extend to large-magazine semi-automatics which seem to be major issue? I find it difficult to believe that Republicans are comfortable with idea of schools being turned into fortresses with locked doors, armed teachers and perhaps armed security guards.

    Fun fact – I can shoot my pump action shotgun pretty darn fast, although admittedly I can empty a semi auto faster. Another fun fact – I can fire my revolver absolutely every bit as fast as my semi autos. Reloading the shotgun takes a minute, sure. For revolvers, there are these fun circular bullet clips called moon clips that keep the bullets all ready to go, just open the gun up, eject the spent cartridges, and stick the new ones in there with the moon clip.
    As far as ‘large capacity’ magazines go – meh. I don’t practice it, but I am pretty darn sure that with practice I could become proficient at ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a new one in within about 1.5 seconds.
    What am I getting at?
    None of these proposal fix anything. Limiting magazine size further makes no effective difference. Getting rid of semi automatics would make no effective difference.
    Hope this helps!
    [Edit: My brother has a lever action Henry .22LR. I can jam with that too – my son fires that thing at a rate of over a bullet a second. It’s not that hard when you practice.]

  249. School shootings are a distraction, statistically speaking schools are one of the safest places you can possibly be. It’s like concentrating on airline crashes to make travel safer.
    .
    The 2nd amendment is not absolute and that is not a revelation, it is a question of where the limits are. Extending “no machine guns” to “almost no guns” is a legal fantasy. As it sits you cannot ban the category of semi-automatic weapons and anything that restricts the private ownership of firearms in a significant way is going to get struck down.
    .
    They have banned the vaguely defined category “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines before but left in place the ability to buy at least as powerful semi-automatic hunting rifles that weren’t “scary looking” and “military looking”. This had approx. zero effect on the gun problem, which is primarily about * semi-automatic handguns *. Any serious look at gun violence gets to this conclusion in the first 5 minutes, but they can’t ban these, so they make up some fantasies about how other changes might help.
    .
    An entire clip can be shot from a handgun rather quickly, and that clip can be switched out pretty fast by a skilled shooter. During an actual mass shooting people are running away or frozen solid and aren’t waiting for a clip change to rush the shooter. This just never really happens. So all these “common sense” restrictions I could care less about because they aren’t effective and only appeal to the “we must do something” crowd. Pass them, don’t pass them, whatever.
    .
    There is no effective profile for mass killers. What are you going to do with “young males who are having occasional mental health issues”? Lock them up? Prohibit gun ownership based on a literal less than one in a million chance they might become a mass shooter because they yelled at their mom or teacher?
    .
    You can struggle all you want, but the time to have that struggle was 1791, not 2022. Taking rights away is much harder than creating them (see very recent US news). The 2nd amendment must be overtured and that takes:
    .
    1. 2/3 vote of both houses.
    2. Ratification by 75% of states.
    .
    Another way is to pretend the 2nd amendment doesn’t say what it does, and have the court’s overrule it. Then you will probably find out why an armed population is necessary to protect oneself against an oppressive gun confiscating government.
    .
    The biggest problem by far is immature gang bangers killing each other with handguns (beyond suicides). This is closely linked to violent crime of other types and the same places that have crime problems have handgun murder problems.
    .
    If you want to get rid of handguns, you have to change the constitution.

  250. Phil,
    “Any serious change to gun law has to come from amendment to constitution.”
    .
    Yup. That is why the SC just struck the New York law on lawful carry of a weapon. If there were a broad concensus, it would long ago had led to an amendment. There is nothing like that consensus.
    .
    “If the NFA doesnt violate constitution, then why could it not also extend to large-magazine semi-automatics which seem to be major issue? I find it difficult to believe that Republicans are comfortable with idea of schools being turned into fortresses with locked doors, armed teachers and perhaps armed security guards.”
    .
    Citizens don’t need nuclear weapons. They would most certainly need large magazines to resist an unconstitutional government.
    .
    “Even you accept the idea that an armed population is necessary to keep stop the government getting ideas (clearly I don’t), I don’t see that this aim would be materially endangered by licensing of individuals in same way that access to explosives are licensed.”
    .
    If everyone is licensed, and the government has all the names and addresses, then disarming the population is infinitely easier. Fortunately for the USA, there are so many existing guns in public hands (about 330 million, without registration) that efforts to register all arms is a bridge beyond. And IMO, that is a feature, not a bug.
    .
    “And finally, I struggle with even the concept that you embed an armed population as protection against your government without some kind of framework on what defines “oppressive government”.”
    .
    OK, expressive government is government which clearly and wildly oversteps the bounds set for it by the Constitution. It is very clear you don’t get it. “Don’t tread on me” is the operational issue here. When some idiot bureaucrat (who knows basically nothing of the world) can dictate the kind of gasoline container I am allowed to use to fill my lawn mower (essentially making said gasoline can un-usable and dangerous, since it inevitably spills large quantities of gasoline), then things have gotten way out of control. That is long since the situation in the USA. Maybe things are not so crazy in NZ. I can’t comment on that.
    .
    “But “oppressive” has been highly subjective if not defined – oppressive to some people is mask mandates but do you really think that is legitimate reason for overthrowing a government by private means?”
    .
    “Oppressive” means outside the constitutional restrictions on the Federal government. It can also (and sadly often does) mean government which absolutely refuses to enforce laws. The USA does not permit unlawful people to enter and reside in the USA, except for the 20 million people here unlawfully. The Federal government is not just unlawful, it is willfully so. That is unconstitutional.

  251. As for the other two things:

    I dont see that this aim would be materially endangered by licensing of individuals in same way that access to explosives are licenced.

    I’m not sure how much you know about the current process for buying firearms. A background check gets performed. There is this thing called the NICS that your info gets run through. Part of it is a criminal background check. They can hold up your purchase for three days or outright reject it. So – my point is, there is already such a system in place.
    ..
    Finally,

    Surely this tacitally permits a militia to overthrow a government if it believes it is oppressive. But “oppressive” has been highly subjective if not defined – oppressive to some people is mask mandates but do you really think that is legitimate reason for overthrowing a government by private means?

    …
    Generally speaking, we don’t have a problem with militia’s running around trying to overthrow the government, even though things like mask mandates occur that irritate people. Overthrowing the government is obviously an extremely dangerous and difficult undertaking that is highly likely to end in death or life imprisonment and ruin for all involved. IF things ever get bad enough, people have the means to resist the government. People don’t take up arms against the government lightly or often here, it just doesn’t happen.

  252. When some idiot bureaucrat (who knows basically nothing of the world) can dictate the kind of gasoline container I am allowed to use to fill my lawn mower (essentially making said gasoline can un-usable and dangerous, since it inevitably spills large quantities of gasoline),

    Thank you for reminding me of that Steve. That used to irritate the holy hell out of me. I would always end up with gasoline all over the place.
    …
    I almost took up arms against the government over it, but thought better in the end.
    [Okay, last part is a joke. Mostly..]

  253. Phi,
    I think the spamfilter got you and I didn’t fish that out. I’ve put your email in the “allow list” now but that message got trashed.

  254. SteveF,

    The expansion speed at the limit of the observable universe isn’t infinite, it’s the speed of light. Think of it as the event horizon as viewed from the inside of an extremely large black hole. If the universe isn’t expanding and the red shift is just due to photons losing energy, then there’s no reason for the observable universe to be as large as it is. It would have collapsed long ago.

    Maybe I’m missing something (I probably am) but the article you linked makes no sense at all. We don’t need a new theory of why the center of the earth is hot, much less the word salad in the article you linked. Radioactive decay, particularly of 40K, is a completely adequate explanation. There’s still lots of it because the half life is 1.25 billion years.

    The author doesn’t believe in the Big Bang. How, then, does this theory explain the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation spectrum and spatial distribution? It doesn’t. It also doesn’t explain galaxy rotation speed curves or the galactic orbits in galactic clusters.

    I find it hard to believe that you reject dark matter and dark energy but think that this theory might be rational.

  255. Phil,
    “Any serious change to gun law has to come from amendment to constitution.”
    .
    Yup. That is why the SC just struck the New York law on lawful carry of a weapon. If there were a broad concensus, it would long ago had led to an amendment. There is nothing like that consensus.
    .
    “If the NFA doesn’t violate constitution, then why could it not also extend to large-magazine semi-automatics which seem to be major issue? I find it difficult to believe that Republicans are comfortable with idea of schools being turned into fortresses with locked doors, armed teachers and perhaps armed security guards.”
    .
    Citizens don’t need nuclear weapons. They would most certainly need large magazines to resist an unconstitutional government.
    .
    “Even you accept the idea that an armed population is necessary to keep stop the government getting ideas (clearly I don’t), I don’t see that this aim would be materially endangered by licensing of individuals in same way that access to explosives are licensed.”
    .
    If everyone is licensed, and the government has all the names and addresses, then disarming the population is infinitely easier. Fortunately for the USA, there are so many existing guns in public hands (about 330 million, without registration) that efforts to register all arms is a bridge beyond. And IMO, that is a feature, not a bug.
    .
    “And finally, I struggle with even the concept that you embed an armed population as protection against your government without some kind of framework on what defines “oppressive government”.”
    .
    OK, expressive government is government which clearly and wildly oversteps the bounds set for it by the Constitution. It is very clear you don’t get it. “Don’t tread on me” is the operational issue here. When some idiot bureaucrat (who knows basically nothing of the world) can dictate the kind of gasoline container I am allowed to use to fill my lawn mower (essentially making said gasoline can un-usable and dangerous, since it inevitably spills large quantities of gasoline), then things have gotten way out of control. That is long since the situation in the USA. Maybe things are not so crazy in NZ. I can’t comment on that.
    .
    “But “oppressive” has been highly subjective if not defined – oppressive to some people is mask mandates but do you really think that is legitimate reason for overthrowing a government by private means?”
    .
    “Oppressive” means outside the constitutional restrictions on the Federal government. It can also (and sadly often does) mean government which absolutely refuses to enforce existing laws. The USA does not permit foreign nationals to enter and reside in the USA without a residency visa…… except for the ~20 million people already here unlawfully, which the Federal government refuses to deport, and which grows daily in volume. The Biden administration does absolutely nothing to stop this unlawful immigration… and willfully encourages ever more unlawful immigration. The Federal government is not just unlawful, it is willfully so. The entire Biden administration is dishonest and unlawful. And that is unconstitutional.

  257. An aside, on the issue of militias and gun owners and so on. I’m not a member of a militia and AFAIK I don’t know anyone who is. But the guys I know who own guns and who I see at the range seem to me to be patriots. These aren’t guys who want to overthrow the government, quite the contrary. Some ex-military, some law enforcement, but plenty of civilians, but they generally seem to me to be patriots who love this country.
    Maybe it’s regional, who knows.

  258. DeWitt,
    “I find it hard to believe that you reject dark matter and dark energy but think that this theory might be rational.”
    .
    I do not claim that the linked theory is correct.
    .
    But I reject dark matter and dark energy because they are the most blatant, nonsensical fudges (along with the Hubble constant) I have ever encountered in science…. absolutely pure rubbish, without foundation, without the tiniest shred of supporting observational evidence, and without any rational theoretical foundation. They are the WORST form of science-by-arm-wave I have encountered. They are “let’s just make shit-up” garbage.
    .
    YMMV.

  259. Phil,
    I don’t know this is true, but I’m going to throw it out there for your consideration anyway, regarding your consternation regarding the idea of protecting ourselves against an oppressive government.
    See – I strongly suspect that you (like me) have lived your entire life in a country where you are free, where you really aren’t oppressed by a tyrannical government in a meaningful way. This is why it doesn’t come naturally to us to visual[ize] it.
    ————————————-
    My parents fled Cuba after Castro took power. It took time to get those members of my extended family out that made it out. And what strikes me is that they would have no patience with this hedging about what constitutes a tyrannical government that needs to be overthrown. What I’m getting at is — we’d know. If the government was an oppressive tyranny that needed overthrowing, the People would know it. [We] wouldn’t be concerned at that point with justifications and rationalization and all of these high minded concerns.
    It’s something to think about anyway.


  260. In Germany, Japan, Australia, and NZ, the majority can (if they choose) toss someone who criticizes global warming hysteria into jail…. there is no free speech protection.

    I don’t believe that is true. Constitutional arrangements are different from US, but that does not mean a simple majority can do anything. German Basic law for example needs a 2/3 majority to change, and the “fundamental” rights cannot revoked nor materially altered. I believe Article 5 translates as:
    “Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.”

    Australia and NZ are rather more complex in constitution, but likewise explicit protect freedom of expression. However both limit that with prohibitions of inciting violence or threatening because of member of particular groups. The groups vary by country (NZ is considering widening groups) and state, but I think all have race and religion.

  261. Mike M. (Comment #213016)
    June 26th, 2022 at 3:06 pm
    Ed Forbes (Comment #213012): “I don’t understand the Ukraine command. They are risking a major part of their most experienced troops to hold an area they have no hope of holding.”
    .
    Mike:”They are fighting to keep their country. Running away is not an option. Do you have a better strategy than making the Russians pay dearly for every inch?”
    .
    Mike, couple of points here
    1. You do not win wars by dying for your county. You win by making some other poor son of a bitch die for his country.
    2. You win by playing to your strength, not your weaknesses.
    3. Russian main goals are to destroy the Ukraine army. Ukraine wins by keeping an effective force in the field. No effective Ukraine army, no Ukraine.
    4. Digging in and becoming stationary is letting the massive Russian artillery superiority pound you without reply. Your casualties are heavy, Russian casualties are low.
    5. Current Ukraine replacements are mainly coming from Territorial Defense units that are only being given about 5-7 days of training before being sent to the front. 16 weeks (or more !) is standard. The more casualties the main Ukraine army takes, the less effective it becomes due to being diluted with untrained replacements. There becomes a point where the army becomes totally ineffective by this process.
    .
    So to your question: yes, there are better strategies. One is going mobile and not intentionally putting your forces into pockets to be surrounded and crushed.
    .
    Running away is most definitely an effective option. George Washington was a master at “running away” and allowed him to keep an effective army in the field against a massively superior enemy.
    .

  262. Try denying the Holocaust in Germany and see how your freedom of speech holds up, or disseminating “Nazi propaganda”, whatever that is.

  263. In the past 250 years since the American revolution there have been hundreds of governments overthrown either internally or externally and not always for the better, but the point is that a complete regime change is not that rare. Some drastic regime changes have been made democratically (at least at first) like Nazi Germany.

  264. Biden’s approval has dipped under 40%.
    Almost abysmally low I thought.
    Then I looked at Trump’s at the same time and it was almost the same.
    How did I not understand that at the time?
    Bias is a funny thing.

    Took a lot longer to drop than I thought some months back and will be interesting to see any Supreme Court effects.
    With the prevalence of contraception today compared to 40 years ago there might be an element of responsibility now.
    Pence’s attitude is very disturbing.

  265. Ed Forbes (Comment #213033): “Your casualties are heavy, Russian casualties are low.”
    .
    That would indeed seem unwise. But two problems. One is that we don’t actually know the relative casualties. The other is that you have not actually given an alternative.

  266. Germans also appear to have hate speech limits, (remarkably similar to ours.). In effect, these countries are recognizing a right to freedom from threats and harassment on basis of group membership, and where that conflicts with freedom of speech, then freedom of speech takes back seat. What I meant about absolutes leading to conflicts.

    Translation of their section 130.
    (1) Whoever, in a manner which is suitable for causing a disturbance of the public peace,

    1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or

    2. violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population

  267. I’m not a member of a militia and AFAIK I don’t know anyone who is.

    You are a member of a militia. In the main case from which liberals derive their militia reasoning of the 2nd Amendment, US v Miller, Miller was not a member of an organized militia. However, that was not the end of the case. Instead the Supreme Court went to the type of weapon used and said that it was not a weapon useful for a militia.

  268. “The other is that you have not actually given an alternative.”
    Mike, I did give an alternative
    .
    “.. .So to your question: yes, there are better strategies. One is going mobile and not intentionally putting your forces into pockets to be surrounded and crushed..”
    .

  269. Phil,
    Germany has freedom of speech in theory, not in practice. From Wikipedia:
    “Publications violating laws (e.g., promoting Volksverhetzung ….hateful statements.. or slander and libel) can be censored in today’s Germany, with authors and publishers potentially subject to penalties. Strafgesetzbuch section 86a forms a relatively strict prohibition on the public display of “symbols of unconstitutional organizations” outside the context of “art or science, research or teaching”.[48] Such symbols include the swastika,[49] the black flag of ISIL,[50] and the Communist hammer and sickle,[51] although the legality of some symbols is dependent on the context in which they are displayed — a swastika may be displayed in a Buddhist temple, for example. Materials written or printed by organizations ruled to be anti-constitutional, like the NSDAP or the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang), have also been placed on the index. Public Holocaust denial is also prohibited and may be severely punished with up to five years in prison.[52].”
    .
    IOW, freedom of speech except speech the government doesn’t approve of. It seems to me something of a joke.

  270. angech,
    “Biden’s approval has dipped under 40%.
    Almost abysmally low I thought.
    Then I looked at Trump’s at the same time and it was almost the same. How did I not understand that at the time?”
    .
    Donno. Trump had horribly low approval numbers because he did not, as some had hoped, “grow into the job”…. he remained just as much a childish a$$hole as he was before the election. Biden has horribly low approval numbers because he is incompetent and has adopted policies that are damaging the country. The problem for voters in 2024? Trump could very well lose to a democrat who could never otherwise win election, damning the country to 4 additional years of unlawful, destructive administration of our laws. Voters loath both, but for very different reasons.

  273. Ed Forbes (Comment #213041): ““.. .So to your question: yes, there are better strategies. One is going mobile and not intentionally putting your forces into pockets to be surrounded and crushed..”
    .
    That is not a strategy. It is a tactic that might be suited to some strategies but not others. It might be well suited to a fighting retreat. How does that not lead to defeat?

  274. Trump was subject to constant slagging by a biased press while Biden has been largely protected by the press, at least until recently. Polls are somewhat biased against Republicans, even more so against Trump. And *still* Biden polls worse than Trump. Impressive.

    At this point in Trump’s term, he was running 43-44% approval and 8-9 points underwater.
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html#!
    Biden has been below 40% and 15-17 points underwater.

  275. DaveJR (Comment #213045).

    Wow. Some conservatives like to refer to the Left as a death cult. Turns out that is not an exaggeration.

  276. DaveJR,
    I’ve heard that view about abortion before, in grad school from an otherwise conservative leaning office mate.
    .
    Similarly, I heard some people whose bias against abortion was that women deserve the burden of pregnancy if they have sex. That was pretty much it– burdening those hussies. (These people generally go for exceptions like proven violent rape by a stranger, since that woman would not be a hussy. Their position didn’t align with the issue of “life” or “human-life”.)
    .
    Every view someone claims is “out there”, no matter how strawmanish it sounds is held by someone. They may not write opinion columns on it, but they hold it.

  278. Here’s where the district went wrong:

    The District explained that it could not allow an on-duty employee to engage in religious conduct even though it allowed other on-duty employees to engage in personal secular conduct. The District’s performance evaluation after the 2015 football season also advised against rehiring Mr. Kennedy on the ground that he failed to supervise student-athletes after games, but any sort of postgame su-pervisory requirement was not applied in an evenhanded way. Pp. 12–14. The District thus conceded that its policies were neither
    neutral nor generally applicable.

    I didn’t know the facts, but I thought to ban his behavior they would have had to hae a religiously neutral rule. (Equally banning unfurling a rainbow flag, yada, yada.)
    .
    Similar rational as allowing parents to use Maine’s school vouchers at private religious schools that otherwise meet the same qualifications as secular private schools.

  279. Phil,
    Here’s my translation: You have freedom of speech except for unacceptable views from unacceptable groups as determined by … well that is the problem isn’t it? I suspect you are in the acceptable group with acceptable views category, ha ha. People have the right to be wrong, stupid, and crazy in the US. They exercise that right constantly.
    .
    China and Russia technically also have “freedom of speech”, Russia has it in their constitution, freedom of the press as well. Very serious people say this. How’s that working out? It’s OK to wish death upon Russian soldiers on Facebook this year, but not last year. Maybe something changed at Facebook. The same thing happens with government if these things aren’t ironclad.
    .
    When the government starts to babble on about cohesion of society and so forth then you likely have a dynamic loophole that can be expanded as necessary based on the whims of culture and the government. That kind of thing isn’t really a right IMO.

  280. Also: My impression is the might have been allowed to fire him for things he did initially but which he stopped doing. (Inviting students to pray. In the end, they actually fired him for quietly praying in three specific instances without inviting anyone. (They said they fired him for those three specific acts.)
    .
    They were probably wanting to be nice about the initial “mistake”– proselytizing. Which is nice. But they probably could have but chose to discipline.
    .
    Then he did what lots of people: carried on with his interpretation of what was still allowed. (Which behavior they disprefered. And also, under the circumstances of past proselytizing, they interpreted the “quite prayer” as somewhat proselytizing — which I would too. But “letter of the law” it was not so.)
    .
    My guess is they could have stopped this if they had gotten together and said “All staff will remain off the field for anything unrelated to football until the at least halve team has walked off the field or 20 minutes after the game has ended.” (That might not be the perfect rule, but basically think of what similar secular behaviors could be and ban them too.)
    .
    That would be neutral– and would also prevent staff from, say, unfurling a pride flag, putting up their pro-life or pro-choice exhibits or whatever. (As far as I’m aware, no one was trying to do that. But you need a religiously neutral ban.)

  281. Opp!! Now reading the longer part including more facts of what the school did

    Yet
    instead of accommodating Mr. Kennedy’s request to offer a
    brief prayer on the field while students were busy with
    other activities—whether heading to the locker room,
    boarding the bus, or perhaps singing the school fight song—
    the District issued an ultimatum. It forbade Mr. Kennedy
    from engaging in “any overt actions” that could “appea[r] to
    a reasonable observer to endorse . . . prayer . . . while he is
    on duty as a District-paid coach.” Id., at 81. The District
    did so because it judged that anything less would lead it to
    violate the Establishment Clause. Ibid.

    Maybe might have flow if they’d said “or political or commercial speech”.

  282. The football coach ruling was a close call I think. It was a typical balancing of rights case. The coaches right to free exercise of religion vs the separation of church and state.
    .
    The school claimed he was endorsing religious views on school time, but the school contradicted itself by making it very clear that the school (government) did not endorse the personal views of the coach.
    .
    The coach praying after the game on the 50 yard was a gray area. Players might have felt pressured to join these sessions which sometimes had overt religious lectures. The coach also previously did this in the locker room but ended this practice. So he was pressing the boundaries intentionally.
    .
    It is common to see players of both teams in college football have a silent prayer on the field after the game. I haven’t looked closely but I don’t think coaches ever join these, definitely not head coaches, and they appear to be silent prayers. So this is OK.
    .
    Ultimately I think this was setting a specific boundary type of case and not a big precedent.

  283. Lucia,
    Seems there remains only one important case: West Virginia v EPA. If W. Va. wins, then use of the clean air act (first enacted in 1963) by the EPA to force reductions in emissions of CO2 will immediately end unless Congress chooses to act. The CAA was obviously never intended to limit CO2 emissions, and Congress has on multiple occasions in the past explicitly refused to enact laws to regulate CO2 emissions. So I think the Court *ought* to stop the EPA from mis-applying the CAA… but it is by no means certain it will. Either Barrett or Kavanaugh might vote with mealy-mouth Roberts and the three progressives to allow the EPA to continue forcing reductions in fossil fuel use, no matter the lack of a law which demonstrates Congressional support for such a major regulation.

  284. lucia (Comment #213050): “Every view someone claims is “out there”, no matter how strawmanish it sounds is held by someone. They may not write opinion columns on it, but they hold it.”
    .
    The important thing is not that some nut job holds that opinion. It is that a major left wing outlet chose to *publish* it. That is a big step on the way to becoming mainstream on the left. Just like any number of other leftist opinions that, until recently, appeared to be the province of nut jobs.

  285. Tom,
    Yes. Mind you, in the past the coach had been doing stuff that seemed to be endorsing. Moreover it had been a tradition to have speech in the locker room that included religious elements. The school was right to stop that.
    .
    And it is hard to suddenly make his behavior private and non-advocating of religion when he had, in the past been advocating and everyone knew it.
    .
    I think schools that don’t want this to happen can draft rules to prevent it. But they are just going to have to craft them to also ban other potentially political or even commercial speech. Their lawyers will have to think about how to word it, but some will figure it out.

  286. Tom Scharf (Comment #213056): “The football coach ruling was a close call I think. It was a typical balancing of rights case. The coaches right to free exercise of religion vs the separation of church and state.”
    .
    Not according to Gorsuch:

    Kennedy’s private religious exercise did not come close to crossing any line one might imagine separating protected private expression from impermissible government coercion

  287. Mike M,
    “Just like any number of other leftist opinions that, until recently, appeared to be the province of nut jobs.”
    .
    My favorite nut-job opinion is that we must include all people as being able to become pregnant… not just women, and certainly not just women of child-bearing age. Second place goes to insisting that men who want to be considered women should compete against actual women in sports….. giving the actual women not a chance. Third place goes to the woke fools who refuse to say what a woman is. These sorts of nut-job opinions are going to cause big problems for ‘progressives’ in elections until they come to their senses and disown the crazies. I hope it takes them several election cycles to come to their senses.

  288. If the SC says the EPA can’t regulate CO2 emissions in the WV case then this would be by far the biggest impact case of the year. So far the SC has been leaning heavily toward not inventing legal requirements that aren’t explicitly stated in laws for big ticket items. I imagine the global warming lobby is quite nervous today.
    .
    The court may be a bit worn out to take this one on and might just do a tight ruling one way or the other.

  289. It wasn’t a secret what the coach’s “private” exercise of religion in the middle of the field was about. He was joined by others and his previous behavior made that clear. The SC might have said you aren’t allowed to read his mind for intent and can only view his actions impartially, similar to not allowing previous criminal history into trials. But he was pretty much guilty of praying publicly here I think, he could also choose to do this in actual privacy. He wanted to challenge the boundaries and he successfully did. It’s good for everyone to know where the boundaries are and I don’t think much really changed here.

  290. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf

    Opinion of the Court
    B
    When it comes to Mr. Kennedy’s free speech claim, our precedents remind us that the First Amendment’s protec- tions extend to “teachers and students,” neither of whom “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or ex- pression at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines In-dependent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 506 (1969); see also Lane v. Franks, 573 U. S. 228, 231 (2014). Of course, none of this means the speech rights of public
    school employees are so boundless that they may deliver any message to anyone anytime they wish. In addition to being private citizens, teachers and coaches are also gov-ernment employees paid in part to speak on the govern-ment’s behalf and convey its intended messages.
    .
    To account for the complexity associated with the inter-play between free speech rights and government employ-ment, this Court’s decisions in Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563(1968), Garcetti, 547 U. S. 410, and related cases suggest proceeding in two steps. The first step involves a threshold inquiry into the nature of the speech at issue. If a public employee speaks “pursuant to [his or her] official duties,” this Court has said the Free Speech Clause generally will not shield the individual from an employer’s control and discipline because that kind of speech is—for constitutional purposes at least—the government’s own speech. Id., at
    421.
    .
    At the same time and at the other end of the spectrum, when an employee “speaks as a citizen addressing a matter of public concern,” our cases indicate that the First Amend-ment may be implicated and courts should proceed to a sec-ond step. Id., at 423. At this second step, our cases suggest that courts should attempt to engage in “a delicate balanc-ing of the competing interests surrounding the speech and its consequences.” Ibid. Among other things, courts at this second step have sometimes considered whether an em-ployee’s speech interests are outweighed by “ ‘the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.’ ” Id., at 417 (quoting Pickering, 391 U. S., at 568).

  291. My theory they might have gotten around this by banning secular speech looks busted.

    Applying these lessons here, it seems clear to us that Mr. Kennedy has demonstrated that his speech was private speech, not government speech. When Mr. Kennedy ut- tered the three prayers that resulted in his suspension, he was not engaged in speech “ordinarily within the scope” of his duties as a coach. Lane, 573 U. S., at 240. He did not speak pursuant to government policy. He was not seeking to convey a government-created message. He was not in-structing players, discussing strategy, encouraging better on-field performance, or engaged in any other speech the District paid him to produce as a coach. See Part I–B, su-pra. Simply put: Mr. Kennedy’s prayers did not “ow[e their] existence” to Mr. Kennedy’s responsibilities as a pub-lic employee. Garcetti, 547 U. S., at 421

    .
    So they deem this private speech. Those conditions might equally apply to unfurling a rainbow flag.
    .
    But maybe my theory is alive! Schools might have an opening at forbidding that if they insist coaches only do school business while coaching. (Schools aren’t going to want to do this… but still here goes.) The problem is they allowed private speech (as long as it’s not religious.)

    The timing and circumstances of Mr. Kennedy’s prayers confirm the point. During the postgame period when these prayers occurred, coaches were free to attend briefly to per-
    sonal matters—everything from checking sports scores on their phones to greeting friends and family in the stands.

    So: say coaches can’t greet friends and family, and maybe you can now ban speech!

    Likewise, this argument ignores the District Court’s conclusion (and the District’s concession) that Mr. Kennedy’s actual job description left time for a pri-
    vate moment after the game to call home, check a text, so-cialize, or engage in any manner of secular activities. Oth-ers working for the District were free to engage briefly in personal speech and activity. App. 205; see Part I–B, supra

    Of course, acknowledging that Mr. Kennedy’s prayers
    represented his own private speech does not end the mat-
    ter. So far, we have recognized only that Mr. Kennedy has
    carried his threshold burden.

    So on to the next plank!

  294. MikeN,
    Yes, you are correct, I’m not implying that. I think ultimately the question was whether after the game at midfield was considered still a school activity and whether the religious demonstration was overt “enough”. You can’t have the band march around with crosses singing religious hymns on the field at halftime and you can go to church after a game. Somewhere in between lies a boundary.
    .
    The same activity at halftime would likely be banned is my guess.

  295. Tom,
    Whatever “speech type” activities banned immediately after the game should likewise be banned before and during the game, including halftime.
    .
    The difficulty is that if you want to ban religious speech, you need to identify some other general category it falls in and ban all of that.
    .
    It looks like they allowed “private speech” by coaches and staff during the game–with no exception other than religion. This was then a form of “private speech” with an additional distinguishing feature of “religious”. But you can’t allow all private speech except religious.
    .
    They may need to look carefully at limits on coaches behavior at games and figure out someway to ban the “religious” stuff. But it’s clear they are going to have to sweep in other speech into the “banned” category. And they’ll need an argument why they don’t want that other speech– and that the limit is permissible. The ban on the non-religious speech probably has to pass Tinker!

  296. In Mass v EPA, the Supreme Court said EPA had to make CO2 rules for autos. There were issues of standing and how much uncertainty there was and whether the remedy actually works.
    On top of that, there was the issue of whether CO2 counts as something to be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
    “The term “air pollutant” means any air pollution agent or combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive (including source material, special nuclear material, and byproduct material) substance or matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air. Such term includes any precursors to the formation of any air pollutant, to the extent the Administrator has identified such precursor or precursors for the particular purpose for which the term “air pollutant” is used.”
    The argument made by EPA was that ‘A including B’ does not include every member of group B, giving the example ‘American autos, including minivans and trucks’ does not include foreign trucks.

  297. Dissent

    The Court also ignores the severe disruption to school events caused by Kennedy’s conduct, viewing it as
    irrelevant because the Bremerton School District (District) stated that it was suspending Kennedy to avoid it being
    viewed as endorsing religion. Under the Court’s analysis, presumably this would be a different case if the District had
    cited Kennedy’s repeated disruptions of school program-ming and violations of school policy regarding public access
    to the field as grounds for suspending him. As the District did not articulate those grounds, the Court assesses only
    the District’s Establishment Clause concerns. It errs by as-sessing them divorced from the context and history of Ken- nedy’s prayer practice

    I’m somewhat receptive of this argument. BUT f there was “severe disruption” and that’s what the school objected to they dang well should have articulated this. Otherwise, they leave themselves in a position of allowing similar disruption had the reason not been religious. (Perhaps they want to allow taking a knee the way Kapernick does. That would seem to be just as disruptive if it occurred. But if they want to allow that, they need to allow other similar disruptions that take a different view point! And they need to allow religious ‘disruptions”. )
    .
    I think the reason the district gives for the firing dang well should matter in court.

  298. Tom Scharf (Comment #213063): “he was pretty much guilty of praying publicly”.
    .
    A poor choice of words, I hope. One can not be “guilty” of praying publicly.

  299. MikeM,
    But the coach did do more that just pray publiclly either (a) earlier in time and (b) even at the time.
    Earlier, he clearly did
    * give motivational speeches to the player in the locker room
    * invite others on staff to join him in prayer.
    This doesn’t “count” to the majority because the district handled it, he agree to stop that and he did stop those activities.
    After he was asked to stop that and he had some back and forth communications with the board he:
    * Made multiple media appearances publicizing his plans to pray at the 50 yard line. (Seattle news ran an article.)
    Because he did pray while his own team was signing the fight song, members of the opposing team– who likely watched the news and knew what was going in– joined him in prayer.
    .
    So I think there is a degree of proselytizing at the football game going on. This isn’t merely a bunch of totally anti-religion people imagining this isn’t quite like silently bowing your head over lunch.

    On October 16, after playing of the game had concluded,
    Kennedy shook hands with the opposing team, and as ad-
    vertised, knelt to pray while most BHS players were sing-
    ing the school’s fight song. He quickly was joined by
    coaches and players from the opposing team. Television
    news cameras surrounded the group.2 Members of the pub-
    lic rushed the field to join Kennedy, jumping fences to
    access the field and knocking over student band members.
    After the game, the District received calls from Satanists
    who “ ‘intended to conduct ceremonies on the field after foot-
    ball games if others were allowed to.’ ” Id., at 181. To secure
    the field and enable subsequent games to continue safely,
    the District was forced to make security arrangements with
    the local police and to post signs near the field and place
    robocalls to parents reiterating that the field was not open
    to the public.

    But I think the school district screwed up in not saying the banned any and all speech that leads to a similar commotion!!

  300. Tom Scharf,
    “I imagine the global warming lobby is quite nervous today.”
    .
    As well they should be. As with many other ‘progressive’ actions, the EPA classifying CO2 as a pollutant, even while it is normally present in the atmosphere and in your exhaled breath at many times the atmospheric concentration, was a straight-out improper use of the Clean Air Act. Rather than do the hard job of convincing voters (and Congress) to regulate CO2 emissions, they took the easy route of EPA regulation with very dubious legality, and what is certainly a grotesque distortion of the intent of the law. As with all ‘progressive’ actions (including Roe at the SC), it is only the end result that they seem to care about, not whether that end is reached in a honest/legal/constitutional way; if they can get away with it, then they will do it. The use of legal overreach is something the SC ought to automatically slap down. But I am not certain the Court will in this specific case.
    .
    Working with Congress to actually pass appropriate laws regulating CO2 emissions means taking into account the views of those they utterly disagree with…. like those who want broader use of nuclear power and those who view economic development as more important than keeping the Earth from warming 2C. This kind of compromise/accommodation is something progressives absolutely reject. The arrogance, it burns.

  301. SteveF

    ather than do the hard job of convincing voters (and Congress) to regulate CO2 emissions, they took the easy route of EPA regulation with very dubious legality, and what is certainly a grotesque distortion of the intent of the law.

    It’s risky to take the easy way and then not continue to pursue the hard way. But of course, once they think they’ve accomplished their goal the easy way (by having the EPA stretch interpretation of an act), they no longer have the motivation to actually change legislation. (Also: They don’t want to admit the stretch might be an overreach.)
    .
    We’ll see what SCOTUS rules though. Maybe their stretch will pan out. (But the way this SCOTUS ruled on another administration interpretation case– American Health Association v. Becerra,–I suspect EPA is going down.)

  303. Civil war? Uhmmm…
    I almost hate to ask this, but do the pro-choice activists own guns?
    .
    Correlation says mostly no, and mostly they claim think gun ownership should not be allowed and certainly they are not to be used in armed insurrections.
    .
    Nevermind that Janes Revenge is firebombing stuff. I guess that’s ok since it doesn’t involve guns.

  304. Yeah. Firebombing falls under the ‘mostly peaceful’ category these days. Unless somebody is wearing a buffalo hat, in which case all bets are off. Buffalo hat constitutes an immediate escalation to insurrection.

  305. Oh yeah! You and what army? Ha ha.
    .
    I pretty much stopped reading “Experts fear …” articles a while back. You do have to love the “making the people vote on it” being interpreted as fascist and authoritarian take though.
    .
    I also saw an “Adoption is actually bad for the kid article” apparently trying to refute adoption as an alternative to abortion.
    .
    The move to anonymize period tracking apps in case the guv-ment spies on them to arrest potential aborters I also find hilarious.

  306. If it’s safe to say most pro-choice activists are Democrats, (and I think that’s reasonable), then they are less likely to have guns than their opposition, according to Pew Research:

    Clear partisan divides emerge when it comes to gun ownership. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more than twice as likely as Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to say they own a gun (44% vs. 20%). This partisan gap remains even after controlling for demographic differences.

  307. I haven’t seen a lot of Toyota Priuses with gun racks now that I think about it. Perhaps they use regenerative braking to power a hidden laser weapon.

  308. Clearly a civil war unlike those in the past, but when the DOJ speaks in defiance of the SC then shots have been fired.
    .
    Tom wrote: “Oh yeah! You and what army? Ha ha.”
    .
    Well to be fair, they have been working on purging the ranks of the actual army and inserting generals who think “white supremacy” is the nation’s biggest threat.

  309. SCOTUS: “Let the people decide.”

    Leftist: “That’s authoritarian”.

    Another case of the Left accusing their opponents of doing what the Left is doing.

  310. “You have freedom of speech except for unacceptable views from unacceptable groups”
    .
    No, I think you can say that. The “unacceptable” view is threats and inciting violence is infringement of other people rights. The law is about who is protected, not who is unacceptable.
    .
    Section 86a is different, and I didnt know it existed. I see that it was created in cold war and directed at German Communist party but the law has been used to outlaw other extremist symbols. Since the interpretation of law appears to be in the hands of regulators rather than courts, I agree that this looks problematic.

  311. Phil,
    Their laws extend to the proscription of swastikas on anything including models of period airplanes which displayed them.

  312. Suppose your political opponents in power were legitimately guilty of election fraud, weren’t interested in an investigation, and found all the protests and disagreement against this “threatening”? Suppose they had those speech trials in a district heavily biased towards them? There is just a lot of interpretation here in an uncertain world.
    .
    Infringing people’s rights happens all the time because rights come in conflict with each other. The right to gay marriage and the right to religious freedom, etc. Who’s infringed upon, the Christian baker? The gay wedding couple? Both? Neither?
    .
    If you have been following US politics for a few years you have seen endless statements directed at the left’s policies deemed threatening, violent, and harmful. In fact, silence is violence, look it up! Every political discussion is now met with boilerplate recitations about how it is hateful and harmful to minorities. Bans on abortion violate the rights of LGBTQ communities. It’s all so silly, and if you gave their lawyers the power to silence critics with speech laws they will use it in a heartbeat here.
    .
    Your imaginary world is filled with responsible bureaucrats upholding the law, my imaginary world is full of people I see on CNN, MSNBC, and the NYT screeching all day long on Twitter who want to fight a scorched earth campaign against their perceived opposition. That is sadly the current governing class in the US.
    .
    Speech laws are not a defensive weapon in my view, they are an offensive weapon of censorship. People don’t change their views because they are forced into silence.
    .
    They will start with obvious violators and progressively politicize the targets. It only took a few years to go from banning Alex Jones to Donald Trump for social media. There is a very slippery slope here. I don’t want to see this model given to the government.

  313. A civil war between right and left in the US would not depend on which side had the most guns, but rather which side could get the most foreign nation aid. The left in the US is much closer to the political leanings of foreign nations and so the right would have to go it alone.

    The right should work harder on presenting its ideas and philosophy at the intelligentsia level and refuting the ideas of the current intelligentsia. That will never happen by way of war.

  314. John Ferguson,
    Nice to see you back commenting. “Their laws extend to the proscription of swastikas on anything including models of period airplanes which displayed them.”
    .
    Of course. Germany has freedom of speech that clearly exceeds that of Venezuela, China, and Cuba. Europe, NZ, and Australia are closer to those countries than to the USA. Freedom of speech is rare…it is the protection of speech which a large majority of people utterly disagrees with that defines free speech. Seems limited on Earth to the middle of the ocean and the USA. AFAICT, that is about it. It’s obvious Phil doesn’t really doesn’t want free speech. In my experience, ‘liberals’ pretty much never do. That is OK, NZ can be as oppressive on speech as the voters there can tolerate. But Phil ought not be lecturing about free speech in NZ.

  315. Infringing people’s rights happens all the time because rights come in conflict with each other. The right to gay marriage and the right to religious freedom, etc. Who’s infringed upon, the Christian baker? The gay wedding couple? Both? Neither?

    Tom, I believe you are referencing a political system which has rather vague principles (maybe from some democratic preference) or you are using the word “rights” defined differently than I would.

    There are political philosophies were the answer to this question would be clear cut. One has to do with individual rights and properly defining those rights and the other where you do what the government tells you to do.

  317. “Their laws extend to the proscription of swastikas on anything including models of period airplanes which displayed them.”

    My reading of 86a is that the law doesnt even mention swastikas. (or any other symbols) However the application of the law seems to be in hands of state regulators rather than defined by case law which I agree is highly suspect.

    .

    Steve, the value of freedom of speech that highly value is that of being able to criticize the government and their agents without fear or censorship. I massively prefer to live in a jurisdiction which restricts people from threatening or advocating violence against me because of my race. YMMV. I don’t pretend to lecture US on their free speech but I do think overestimate restrictions on other countries free speech.,

  318. DeWitt Payne (Comment #213026)
    The expansion speed at the limit of the observable universe isn’t infinite, it’s the speed of light. If the universe isn’t expanding and the red shift is just due to photons losing energy, then there’s no reason for the observable universe to be as large as it is. It would have collapsed long ago.
    –
    DeWitt,
    If we can see 14 billion light years in all directions,
    And there is an event horizon.
    Then surely the guys at the two spots on any straight line drawn through the earth right now would be seeing light from 14 billion years away in our direction and light from another 14 billion years away at both spots.
    Potentially a 56 billion year extent universe from end to end with just 2 limits.
    I realise the analogy is turtles all the way down.
    –
    Steve F has a point.
    You cannot have dark matter having a gravitational force, needed to hold the spirals in but then not be able to detect the gravity.
    It is double dipping which means theories aren’t not yet right.
    Which in turn makes universe aging problematical.

  319. Phil,

    I massively prefer to live in a jurisdiction which restricts people from threatening or advocating violence against me because of my race.

    True threats of violence are not protected by the first amendment (i.e. freedom of speech.) They are illegal whether or not they are because of your race.
    .
    ‘Advocating violence’ is a touchy thing because it depends on context. Inciting a crowd to immediate violence is illegal and not protected speech. Some other ‘advocacy’ of violence is protected speech.

  320. Cheerleaders, mascots and head coaches surely all have a place on the field.
    Most coaches do a lot of praying during close games, as do a lot of supporters.
    If it is all right during the game it should be OK after it.
    The big fellow has a 100% record of getting it right according to the winners.

  321. Phil,
    “…criticize the government and their agents without fear or censorship.”
    .
    The point is that all freedom of speech becomes provisional if some speech is prohibited for political reasons. In your country, the government can easily ban speech they don’t like… for example saying that the Maori people or Pacificas are mostly dumber than people of European descent could easily be prohibited. In the USA, a direct threat of violence against someone is assault and can be prosecuted. Deception to steal money is fraud and prohibited. But that is about it. As has been said many times: It is not popular speech which needs protection, it is unpopular speech, and the more unpopular, the greater the need for protection.

  322. angech,

    As you say, turtles all the way down and the extent of the universe could be infinite. Our view is limited.

    You cannot have dark matter having a gravitational force, needed to hold the spirals in but then not be able to detect the gravity.

    I don’t know what you mean by this. AFAICT, the way you detect gravity is by its effect on matter we can see. I don’t see how you can separate gravitational force and gravity. Then there’s cosmology. The universe pretty much has to be gravitationally flat, probably exactly. There has to be enough mass-energy to do this. But the amount of baryonic matter we can detect is about 5% or so of the required amount. Nucleosynthesis hypotheses support this conclusion.

    Neutrinos having mass might fill some of the gap. Neutrinos are what’s called hot dark matter. The structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background limits the total mass of neutrinos to a tiny fraction of the total mass density of the universe.

    Speaking of neutrinos, their existence was postulated by conservation of momentum in beta decay. They weren’t detected until 25 years after their existence was postulated. We now have neutrino astronomy, which is how we detected that neutrinos must have mass because of the apparent deficit of solar neutrinos. Another bit of physics based on something we didn’t see.

    The postulation of the existence of dark matter and dark energy is based on observations that don’t match calculations based on visible matter like galaxy rotation curves, galactic orbits in galactic clusters, gravitational lensing and the structure of the Cosmic Microwave Background (see here, this reference is about ten years old so some details may have changed). That’s not hand waving. It’s one of the ways physics has always progressed, detection of new planets, e.g.. That doesn’t mean the current hypotheses are correct, but saying they’re not correct because you don’t like them and therefore they must be wrong isn’t particularly persuasive.

  323. Maybe our instruments are not reading correctly because of intervening stuff between the instrument and the object. They don’t think that is the case but the first thing you always question is errors from the sensors or interference. They never really talk about this or how this possibility has been eliminated.
    .
    Dark matter/energy is just a stand in term for “we have no clue what is going on”, it isn’t actually a thing AFAICT. The models are wrong or the measurements are wrong (not calibrated correctly, not compensated correctly, etc.).

  325. Without a comprehensive view of these branches of science I am yet fascinated by cosmology and astrophysics. I read any article aimed at the lay person I can get my hands on and some technical articles. What I have neglected to do is to attempt to understand the uncertainty of the measurements made of various features of the universe. I am surprised at the claimed narrowness of the confidence intervals of some of these measurements.

    Dark matter appears to me to proceed from attempting to force a match between observation and theory by proposing an unknown entity like dark matter and then giving it properties such that it consistently fits other models of the universe. This appears as a back door approach to understanding what it is, but since if dark matter is a whole different domain of physics there are probably not good alternative approaches. It also appears to me that without dark matter (or some unknown physics) the inconsistencies between observations and theory would have to be resolved between measurement and application of theory since otherwise known physics cannot explain it.

    In articles I read I do not see much discussion of measurement error, but when the talk is about measuring the mass of galaxies I think I can see in principle how it could be done but am not aware of the practicalities of doing it precisely.

  326. “saying that the Maori people or Pacificas are mostly dumber than people of European descent could easily be prohibited”

    Not as easily as you might think. For starters, it would breach bill of rights. Proposals to expand groups protected by incitement laws look to be foundering in review over that little difficulty.

  327. You can’t make this stuff up.
    .
    Ernst & Young Fined $100 Million in Ethics Exam-Cheating Probe
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ey-paying-100-million-to-settle-probe-of-auditors-cheating-on-ethics-exams-11656410401?st=1exo2wllgl2mh9p&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    “Ernst & Young agreed to pay a record $100 million fine and to admit that some of its auditors cheated on required ethics exams in recent years, according to a settlement order released on Tuesday.”
    “EY said that “nothing [at the firm] is more important than our integrity and our ethics.””
    .
    Always nice to know that there is large scale cheating going on with * ethics exams * in financial auditing firms. I’m getting kind of tired of financial firms being fined, this repeated behavior by this sector needs to be individually criminally accountable. Otherwise a few bonuses get trimmed, yawn.
    .

  328. Kenneth,
    See the two links I provided above. No new physics, but application of some existing (but not widely known) physics to the problem. It is the right explanation? Donno; above my pay grade. But it seems to me more plausible than invisible, non-interacting matter that does not have any influence except by gravity…. and which happens to always arrange itself around a galaxy in a “halo” such that it gives almost flat speed versus radius profiles. The arm waves almost hurt to watch.

  329. Looks like Turkey has been bought off and Sweden and Finland have the green light for NATO. In response Russia conducts missile attacks on a consumer mall to demonstrate that nobody needs to worry about their intentions, ha ha.

  330. How they get some astrophysics measurements (how far away is that galaxy? How much mass does that star have?) is pretty interesting and sometimes ingenious, and sometimes seems a bit shaky from an intuitive viewpoint. Black holes went from being kind of a crazy theory to pretty much verified in a few decades.
    .
    I don’t remember exactly but one method of galaxy distance is certain rare stars that oscillate their brightness are (allegedly) known to have a very specific brightness and then they can use the amount they have dimmed before they reach earth to determine distance.
    .
    Closer stars can use triangulation as the earth rotates around the sun.
    .
    The first of the billion dollar images from the James Webb telescope should be released in a couple weeks. A similar shot of the Ultra-Deep field the Hubble did will be pretty interesting from the Webb if they do that.
    .
    I should add that a rogue black hole traveling toward our solar system would be hard to detect and might do a bit of damage as it wondered by. Just something else to worry about …

  331. SteveF,

    Not impressed. Gravity probe B doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the total energy density of the universe. It was designed to confirm certain aspects of General Relativity. Dark (or better transparent) matter is not inconsistent with General Relativity.

    I noticed that the other article you linked has been out for a year and has only been cited seven times. Not impressed. There have been several hypotheses that have been proposed to explain galactic rotation curves without extra matter. They fail when applied to the mechanics of galactic clusters. They also don’t explain gravitational lensing observations.

    In my link above, there is an example of gravitational lensing near two colliding galactic clusters (Figure 1.3). A lot of the lensing occurs in a region beyond the actual galaxies.

    Dynamical systems. The Bullet Cluster (1E 0657-558) is a paradigmatic example of the effect of dark matter in dynamical systems. It consists of two galaxy clusters which underwent a collision. The visible components of the cluster, observed by the Chandra Xray satellite, display a characteristic shock wave (which gives name to the whole system). On the other hand, weak-lensing analyses, which make use of data from the Hubble Space Telescope, have revealed that most of the mass of the system is displaced from the visible components. The accepted interpretation is that the dark matter components of the clusters have crossed without interacting significantly (see e.g., Ref. [11, 12]).
    The Bullet Cluster is considered one of the best arguments against MOND theories (since the gravitational effects occur where there is no visible matter). It also sets an upper bound on the self interaction strength of dark matter particles. [my emphasis]

    MOND stands for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics.

    IMO, there are a lot of different measurements by independent techniques that point to there being a more than visible matter in the universe that makes the probability that measurement error is the explanation vanishingly small.

    It is indeed new physics. Currently dark matter and dark energy explains more of the unusual observations than any other hypothesis. It may still be something else, but it’s not some variation on what we already think we understand.

  332. SteveF,

    and which happens to always arrange itself around a galaxy in a “halo” such that it gives almost flat speed versus radius profiles.

    You appear to have the false impression that halo in connection with dark matter refers to a circular disk surrounding a galaxy like the rings of Saturn. Not true. The original calculations assume a spherical distribution. But the actual distribution may be more disk like.

  333. Yes, if we multiply the problematic measurements by zero and add in the variable amount of dark energy parameters necessary then the models verify. This method solves a lot of problems in models, ha ha. At least we will be able to finally create an infinite motion machine once we harness the energy in the aether. It might be the best theory around, but it does need some firming up to say the least.

  334. DeWitt,
    “You appear to have the false impression that halo in connection with dark matter refers to a circular disk surrounding a galaxy like the rings of Saturn. “.
    .
    No, it always assumes just the exact distribution/shape needed to explain the rotational speed profile…. in every galaxy. Very convenient. BTW, I know what MOND stand for.
    .
    I will be convinced when dark matter is identified and is found to be consistent with everything else we know. ‘Till then, not so much. Considering the search has been active for decades and so far futile, I won’t hold my breath.
    .
    One of the things Gravity Probe B was supposed to do was confirm the existence of “frame dragging”… a prediction of gravitomagnetism (see: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/19apr_gravitomagnetism.html) which talks specifically about Gravity Probe B.
    .
    The linked paper attempts to extend the predictions of gravitomagnetism to include relativistic effects.

  336. SteveF, I read those papers you linked, but since I was not asked to review them I did not check all the theoretical considerations.

    I believe I have learned that gravitational lensing is the most clear cut method of estimating the mass of a galaxy, but there is some luck involved in getting the alignment necessary for lensing.

    Some methods, I think, require some assumptions about galaxy shapes and mass distribution in the galaxy. I would suppose that independent methods that arrive at the near same result would be conclusive even if not always required.

  337. “.. Ukrainian forces are likely conducting a fighting withdrawal that may include pulling back from Lysychansk and Luhansk Oblast in the near future and which probably aims to force the Russian offensive to culminate premature..”
    .
    “.. Miroshnik claimed that Russian forces have already crossed the Siverskyi Donets River from Kreminna and are building bridgeheads for further attacks on Lysychansk from the north..”
    .

    https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-28
    .
    A fighting withdrawal under close enemy fire from 3 sides is one of the hardest and dangerous operations a force can do. And totally unnecessary if they had pulled back 2 days ago when it was obvious what was going to happen. Absolutely stupid operational orders by the Ukraine general staff.
    .
    Russia continues to pound Ukraine positions with artillery fire Ukraine is unable to respond to, and then follow up with infantry backed by close supporting armor on these weakened positions.
    .
    If Ukraine does not find a counter this Russian strategy, they will lose their army and then the war.

  339. DeWitt Payne (Comment #213098)
    angech,
    You cannot have dark matter having a gravitational force, needed to hold the spirals in but then not be able to detect the gravity.
    “I don’t know what you mean by this.”
    –
    A little like this.
    We live in a solar system with known observable and provable observations and rules for gravity and EM radiation.
    Everything works perfectly here.
    Yet there are galaxies that spin too quickly [far away from us] to obey the laws of physics for their computed size and mass.Hence the need to postulate an invisible [no EM] yet mass containing [gravity producing] substance , dark matter acting locally.

    The problem is evident.
    The same physical laws do not seem to apply in some areas of the galaxy but work well [ie gravity still works] but just at a different intensity, the spirals still spiral.

    The big questions are why do we live in an area of space with no apparent Dark matter [else our observations would be different] and if dark matter did exist elsewhere why doesn’t it affect us or at least have a consistent variability in the observed effects on the star systems closer to those areas.

    On a slightly different note, Feynman believes in the conservation of
    energy and matter which in itself rules out a true expansion or contraction of the universe itself, whatever that may be , while allowing motion of either the energy or mass or both.
    Since the laws apply equally anywhere in the known universe this rules out an initial big bang theory as the matter and energy to do so could not exist in only one particular spot.

  340. President Trump orders that he be driven to the Capital.
    No one obeys the President’s order?

    President Trump extends his 8 foot long arm to grab the steering wheel through the bullet proof glass shield separating the commodious back seat from the front driver’s seat.
    Yes, I guess shape shifting outer space lizards could do this.

    PT has his appendage grabbed by his chief security officer who orders, orders! the President to leave the wheel alone.
    Security Officer Almanac rule 1. Under no circumstances touch a President, rule 2 Obey all orders from the President.

    PT agrees to being directed and ordered about by his staff and loves being grabbed by his arm?
    What alternate universe are we living in?

    I guess the worst thing with all this and the Kavanaugh debacle is the fact that third degree hearsay evidence that Smollett would be ashamed of is admitted into and promulgated by the House and Senate with impunity and using DOJ and FBI backup.

    Tin hats and all needed as when things like this are able to happen
    America is in a very bad way.

  341. angech,
    Ya, third person hearsay stories about Trump are now the rage with the Jan 6 show trial… and best of all, not a single person on the committee who would ever raise a doubt about such an outlandish story. No thinking person would believe such rubbish. That fact that it is now part of the ‘official Congressional record’ confirms how foolish the Jan 6 committee really is. I look forward to the day in early January 2023 when the execrable Nancy Pelosi is forced into retirement. Her’s is a level of dishonesty and amorality that is almost unmatched in US history.

  342. angech,
    Seems to me dark matter is like ‘the force’ in Starwars… it is invisible, but is everywhere, permeating all things, and above all, it is both powerful and able to be conjured by astronomers. Who are in fact clutching desperately for an easy explanation for something they for sure do not understand.
    .
    Better they simply admit they don’t understand.

  343. Trump is also alleged to have thrown a plate of food in anger and, (wait for it) The committee now has evidence that Trump got ketchup on the wall.
    The walls are closing in on the Orange Man, clearly the committee is all over him. Wont be long now.
    SARC

  344. angech and Kenneth

    Our galaxy’s rotation curve also shows evidence of dark matter or whatever. By looking at vertical motion of stars relative to the plane of the galaxy, it was found that the local density of dark matter is not zero. It isn’t something that just happens somewhere else.

    MOND theories are pure hand waving. The author even admits it:

    He admits that—unlike dark matter models that are often based on fundamental symmetry principles—the new model was not conceived with an underlying theory in mind. However, such a theoretical basis might be uncovered using the new MOND model.[my emphasis]

    Dark matter/energy is actually the simpler model. MOND theories are also not falsifiable, AFAICT. At least there’s a possibility of finding dark matter.

    Cosmologist Katherine Freese from the University of Texas congratulates the researchers for their accomplishment. “It is a big deal to construct a relativistic version of MOND that is able to match all existing data, especially fitting CMB data along with the MOND phenomenology in galaxies,” she says. “However, the model has a lot of ingredients,” she says. “I myself would still vote for dark matter as a simpler explanation.”

  345. SteveF,

    Better they simply admit they don’t understand.

    That’s not the way science advances.

  346. Indeed. The hearsay testimony of a lying aide, grasping for her 5 minutes of fame, is front page news. The limo story is obviously false, even if it were not being denied by multiple Secret Service sources, as reported by right wing outfits like CNN and ABC.
    .
    It is not just that hearsay is unreliable. It is obviously *false* for the simple reason that the kangaroo court has testimony from people who were actually there, but instead chose to go with the hearsay. I suppose that does not rise to the legal definition of suborning perjury, but Cheney and company are getting awful close.

  348. At least with Kavanaugh there was cross examination of the witness and knowledge of prior testimony. The entire “emergency witness testimony” was obviously staged like a 1970’s divorce court daytime drama.
    .
    I have little doubt Trump acted like a fool, that would be par for the course. As I have said before it is the years of hyperventilating and credulous reporting on Trump that drags down any actual fact finding here for the small percentage of people who aren’t convinced one way or the other. A predictable stage managed show trial full of partisans isn’t a great messenger. It’s just not very interesting.
    .
    If it helps Trump fail to get elected I suppose the ends are OK, but the means are just a political clown show that makes US politics look embarrassing, as if we needed even more help for that. This is just not serious.
    .
    What are the odds this committee will refer charges to the DOJ on Trump? It’s a hard job saving democracy.

  349. “it was found that the local density of dark matter is not zero”
    .
    It was found that the measurements do not match existing theories and evidence and they don’t know why, and if there was some invisible stuff creating measurable forces it would explain this. Conjuring up * local * densities of dark matter to explain away things is definitely a bit hand wavy. Ultimately one would expect they would find something “real” that is responsible for creating this dark energy, not finding dark energy.
    .
    The feather falls slower to the ground than a ball because of local densities of dark energy that only interact with feathers! I joke of course, I’m sure the physics people are working hard on this.

  350. DeWitt,
    “That’s not the way science advances.”
    .
    It is the first step for advancing when you really don’t understand. Burrowing down rabbit holes is not productive.

  351. The Supreme Court has another opinion release day for tomorrow. Will they post WV v EPA and tell the EPA they have to get authorization from Congress to stop all burning of fossil fuels? That would be a fitting end to a contentious term at the Court.

  352. Mike M,

    Cheney knows this is the end of her political career; I doubt she much cares about anything except damaging Trump as much as possible before she is gone. She is as small, selfish and dishonest a person as Pelosi and Trump are. I wonder: why do most elected officials never seem to have gotten past the maturity level of the the sandbox? It is a real puzzle.

  353. DeWitt,
    “…unlike dark matter models that are often based on fundamental symmetry principles.”
    .
    I rather suspect Newton and Einstein were not looking for fundamental symmetry principles when thinking about gravity…. they just described how measurable things like the mass of objects cause attraction between said objects. AFAIK, nobody ever measured the quantity of dark matter (or dark energy for that matter), because nobody has a clue what it is! The beauty of MOND is that it is no different than gravity in how it is described…. you describe it with measurable things like mass, distance, and speed.

  354. SteveF (Comment #213129): “I wonder: why do most elected officials never seem to have gotten past the maturity level of the the sandbox? It is a real puzzle.”
    .
    I suspect that is partly because you assume they are petty and immature, then readily spot evidence to confirm the assumption. Of course, it is not hard to to find such evidence.
    .
    It is hard to attain high public office. A major perk of doing so is getting to wield power. So high office attracts people who care a lot about wielding power. Such tend to not be particularly nice people.
    .
    That is made worse by the fact that most of the powerful people in Washington hold the public in disrespect. So they talk as if they think we are idiots. Life inside the Beltway Bubble constantly reinforces that attitude.
    .
    FWIW, I think that Trump is genuinely different. A lot of his “crudity” comes from the fact that he refuses to wear the mask that almost all politicians put on as routinely as they put on their clothes. That is also a big part of his appeal.

  355. Source: Trump Cried Out ‘Witness Me!’ While
    Jumping From Car To Blow Up Democrats
    War Rig
    .
    Cassidy Hutchinson, a former assistant to
    Trump-era Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,
    testified Tuesday at the Jan 6 committee
    hearing that Trump cried out ‘Witness me!’
    while jumping from the presidential limo to
    sacrifice himself in a fiery explosion that
    destroyed the Democrats’ war rig.
    Hutchinson testified to having overheard an
    unnamed Secret Service agent talking to
    White House janitor Odor Malone about
    another agent who claimed to have seen the
    whole thing happen in a vision. – The Bee

  356. The approach to explaining the discrepancies between theory and observations using models like dark matter could, I suppose, get science closer to discovering the truth of the matter if it turns out that the truth involves a breakthrough in science. In the meantime, these approaches appear to me to suffer some of the same statistical deficiencies that climate science does when for example it does not spell out criteria for selecting temperature proxies prior and then use those proxies to estimate past (and present) temperatures. Instead, the proxies are selected ex post facto.

    I have not followed the evolution of the dark matter model, but if the model were described before being tested against observations of the universe and then on being tested was found compatible, I would say it is a good and valid model. If, on the other hand, it evolved to fit the observations and other models have been devised to fit ex post facto these same observations, I would have a problem with the models. The more independent models that can be devised to fit the data the more likely to entire exercise is one of model fitting and not so much discovering scientific truths.

    I do not know how large the assumptions are in making precise measurements of the universe’s features or the assurances of making the correct application of existing theory but constructing models with unproven or understood physics is going to detract from looking at measurement and theory application.

  357. Sorry…
    .
    Ghislaine Maxwell To Be Killed Early On
    Good Behavior
    .
    Ghislaine Maxwell, former c0-conspirator of
    sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced
    to 20 years in prison for her crimes, but the
    judge did express it was likely she would be
    killed early on good behavior.
    “Ms. Maxwell, I hereby sentence you to
    devastating 20 years for your crimes,’ said
    U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan. “But if you
    maintain good behavior you’l be suicided in
    a week.”

  358. FWIW, I think that Trump is genuinely different. A lot of his “crudity” comes from the fact that he refuses to wear the mask that almost all politicians put on as routinely as they put on their clothes. That is also a big part of his appeal.

    I agree that Trump is in some ways different but mostly in a bad way. He is a caricature of a politician that should be a lesson to the media folks and to the voting public to see in most politicians what the Trump caricature plainly shows. Trump before deciding to run for President definitely belonged to what some of you like to call the elites. He knew his way around governments and used his contacts to further his real estate transactions and the financing of those transactions. He was on speaking terms with Bill and Hillary Clinton and probably voted for Bill.

    That most all politicians wear a mask should be very apparent to the media and voting public. What gets in the way, at least to admitting it, is for the media an agenda bias and for the voting public of both Democrats and Republicans the rah rah of partisanship that comes from being in love with their party’s politician or in greatly disliking the other party’s politicians.

    There is also a great difference in the person who will speak out about issues and principles that are minority views and do it in an unemotional and articulate way and a person who speaks out to merely to call attention to themselves. The latter is the politician’s and Trump way.

  359. Kenneth,
    “If, on the other hand, it evolved to fit the observations and other models have been devised to fit ex post facto these same observations, I would have a problem with the models.”
    .
    Of course everything is ex post facto! They look at the galaxy spiral data, then fit the dark matter distribution to match the data. It is the purest of crap. They have not a clue what is causing the unexpected behavior of galaxies, and are just making sh!t up. The issue, I suspect, is the refusal to consider that simple Newtonian gravity might not be a reasonably approximation to reality on cosmological scales. I am reminded of ‘celestial circles within circles’ when the Earth centric model did not seem consistent with observation. Humanity has its weaknesses.

  360. DeWitt Payne (Comment #213121)
    “angech and Kenneth
    Our galaxy’s rotation curve also shows evidence of dark matter or whatever. By looking at vertical motion of stars relative to the plane of the galaxy, it was found that the local density of dark matter is not zero. It isn’t something that just happens somewhere else.”
    –
    If the local density of dark matter is not zero.
    Then the equations and theories we use for physics on earth are wrong.
    –
    You cannot have two competing theories that contradict each other.
    –
    For many years the spiral galaxy curve has been computed and explained using conventional physics and we have been told that it all fits this model.
    Red shifts, the age of the universe, the amount of matter in the big bang, black holes dwarf stars and supernovae.
    All held together by physics that works on earth and nearby.
    –
    Now some people say “evidence of dark matter or whatever.”
    If it exists then it causes a gravity of 9.8m.s 2.
    So now we have to change gravity to some other figure to account for the known effect of dark matter?
    Like Gravity equals matter plus dark matter but only adds up to matter?
    –
    SteveF, ” Better they simply admit they don’t understand.”

  361. Where is Merrick Garland?
    Being a Democrat he is busy putting together the third Trump grand jury and trial.
    At the same time he is considering racketeering charged against his boss and Hunter which would also usually require a grand jury and exposure of more dirty laundry than Ghislaine and her friend could ever have offered up.
    If he was an honest AG this would be a simple matter of proceeding with both.
    As it is Trump is being framed for the third time with hearsay with no ability to cross examine the accusers.
    The Swamp, for want of a better word do seem to have an enormous amount of levers to pull from influencers, rabid democrat supporters who see no wrong in their actions and fabrications and a leadership of Democrats, Republicans , Press and Secret Service who all want to keep their cosy little system going.
    I think Trump gets taken down as it is City Hall he is fighting.
    But would it not be fantastic if Merrick Garlands subordinates were to say act on Hunter, not Trump.
    Expose the swamp instead.
    Dream on.

  362. Ed, Ukraine general staff is taking orders from NATO and the US. Having Ukraine do well is not in their interest. They need Ukraine to no lose immediately, but do poorly enough that US involvement can be sold to the general public. Hey we have to do it to stop the famines and lack of baby formula.

  363. Mike
    Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

  364. angech,
    “If he was an honest AG this would be a simple matter of proceeding with both.”
    .
    If he were honest, he would ignore all the hearsay and forget about Trump. But he is very far from honest. Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court for life, not Garland. He won’t forget that.
    .
    He will never allow Hunter Biden to be prosecuted in the way any normal person would be. Trump’s advisors were hammered, with televised early morning door breakdown raids and perp-walks…. for tax fraud; Hunter suffers no consequences for the same crime. Maybe he will enter a guilty plea or nolo conendre plea to a minor charge and pay a fine, but jail? No. Investigate Joe’s blatant corruption and tax fraud? No. Garland is as much a political hack as has ever held the job… he is as principled as pond scum, IMHO.

  365. SteveF (Comment #213142): ” Garland is as much a political hack as has ever held the job… he is as principled as pond scum, IMHO.”
    .
    That is not fair. Pond scum never lies or schemes or abuses power.

  366. Nope. Biden vs Texas instead. 5-4 for Biden. Barrett, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting. Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the liberal three.

  367. Roberts supports open borders. Had no problem disallowing Trump’s withdrawing of Obama’s executive discretion memo on DACA, but Biden can remove Trump’s executive discretion on Remain in Mexico.

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