Dreamhost wants us all to update to php 8.0. I put this off because my blog broke in early May and I didn’t have time. I’m now doing housekeeping. The blog works…. but the theme broke. So I will be hunting for a new theme. For now, the theme looks slightly different.
Someone sent a note saying the site was down…. Not sure why. This is probably going to be happening. Email me if it goes down for you.
Open thread.
Not down for me, but earlier the list of commenters and recent / last N comments on the side wasn’t visible. That list is visible to my browser now.
Ok. That might be what they meant. I reverted to 7.4 to get this theme back up.
I will need to go back to 8.0, and then work on the theme. Where the comments appear will require fiddling with the html of the template. I just figured it was better to revert and see what people say they saw.
What a pain. Thank you for taking the trouble. It’s much appreciated!
Mark,
It’s mostly going to be a process of going through the template and figuring out what features are not php 8.0 compliant. I mostly like the old template (showing right now.)
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But I also had to update my moodle site which I use to supply students with homework problems. That was a bigger priority. (It went fine. I’m adding some new questions for the summer students too.)
I saw the same thing as mark bofill (Comment #222803).
Some big booms in Crimea. My humble attempt at OSINT showing it…..
A Ukrainian attack on Saturday caused a massive explosion at an ammunition and fuel depot in Krasnohvardiiske, Crimea, forcing an evacuation of the area. Link 1 below shows a NASA FIRMS satellite fire satellite pic with 34 different hot spots totally surrounding a small airport. It also shows colocated coordinates on a Google map with an overlay of the site distance [121 miles] from Ukrainian-held territory. Link 2. Is a dramatic photo of the mushroom cloud and links to the AP story. Link 3 is a video with audio of secondary explosions as the ammo goes up.
1. NASA FIRMS satellite fire satellite pic and Google maps of the distance from Ukrainian territory:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1682995220802158593?s=20
2. Dramatic photo of the mushroom cloud and link to AP story:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1682994407916568577?s=20
3. Video with audio of secondary explosions:
https://twitter.com/KyivPost/status/1682698141785636865?s=20
Thank you for your efforts, Lucia. It seems to be working fine on my end.
Lucia,
It was weird…. When I opened the site I got a thread from a decade ago (“Bringing out the heavy Armour”), and couldn’t get the recent threads. Now it seems normal.
SteveF,
I changed the site back. That’s why it looks different now.
It must be something you clicked that doesn’t work. If I’d not changed it, other people probably would have experienced the problem, but it might have seemed like a “glitch”.
Hi Lucia,
As you might expect, I have no idea what the challenges are of hosting this very wonderful site.
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If it could be a part of this current convulsion, it would be so helpful to the few of us who never get anything right the first time to adjust the editing routine so that one can do progressive editing rather than being returned to one’s original comment.
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thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and enabling the rest of us to share ours. For my part, this is one of the places I come to discover that I didn’t really underrstand something or other.
john
The old thread went Hari Kari.
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Trump was already President and I do not recall him clamping down on speech at all. He did say some things about libel laws, but actually did nothing. To say the media was unrestrained in its speech in that time period is an understatement.
Yes, thanks for the work Lucia.
Tom,
Yeah. I think Trump hadn’t clamped down on free speech because nobody would go along with him and it wasn’t advantageous for him to try to do so. But since the end of his term in office I’ve pretty much concluded that Trump believes in Trump, and that that’s about the extent of his convictions. If it turns out he’s truly done nothing to impede free speech, in my view it’s probably mostly coincidental. Given time and power, he’d get there eventually.
mark bofill,
“Freedom of speech? Right to bear arms?”
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Yup. It is more like “Let’s pack the court and forget what that archaic Constitution actually says.” along with “Shut up and do as we say, deplorables!”
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Government in the USA (at Federal, State, and local levels) has never been more powerful nor more focused on controlling what individuals can do and say. Everything (and I mean everything) you want to do is now subject to government approvals. I find it both appalling and terrifying.
Tom Scharf,
“Trump was already President and I do not recall him clamping down on speech at all.”
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Of course not. Trump says lots of very offensive things, sometimes even demonstrably false offensive things. He is the last person in the world to want censorship of unpopular speech. Trump is no threat to free speech. He is still an a$$hole.
mark bofill (Comment #222894): “I think Trump hadn’t clamped down on free speech because nobody would go along with him and it wasn’t advantageous for him to try to do so.”
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Perhaps. But in general Trump was far more respectful of limits on presidential power than any other President this century. I am not saying that Trump always stayed within what should be regarded as constitutional limits, only that he was much closer to that than Bush, Obama, or Biden.
‘
That said, I would be worried that he might not continue to do so if returned to office.
Mike,
I know nobody gives a crap about this, but let us not forget that at Trump’s urging, his ATF illegally banned bump stocks. Bump stocks are not machine guns; there are clear definitions and even the Obama administration didn’t try to pretend otherwise. Bump stocks remained banned for quite some time by bureaucratic fiat.
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Nobody gives a crap, because bump stocks are junk in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t overstep. He overstepped in a way that probably made Obama green with envy.
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[Supporting links:
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/18/677788059/justice-department-bans-bump-stocks-devices-used-in-deadly-las-vegas-shooting
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/federal-court-strikes-down-trump-era-bump-stock-ban
]
On a related note, a similar product that is probably not junk is the forced reset trigger. I see that Rare Breed’s forced reset trigger seems to be available again, despite the attempts of the ATF to ban the device as a machinegun. I didn’t read anything in the news about any new court decisions. Hmm.
mark bofill,
I watched some videos. It is essentially a machine gun. If Congress wants to ban it, they will need to promulgate a new definition for what makes a machine gun a ‘machine gun’. The videos show 30 rounds disappearing in ~3 seconds. 600 rounds per minute is effectively a machine gun, no matter any arm waves about the legal definition. Whether or not individuals should have that kind of weapon is a different subject for discussion.
The guys in the videos are giggling… because they effectively have a machine gun without the federal licence.
Mike – “But in general Trump was far more respectful of limits on presidential power than any other President this century.”
Ok, I am curious. How would you measure that to ascertain that is true?
Steve,
Uhm, yeah. Definitions matter. I’m not OK with ‘I know it when I see it’ categorization of legal and illegal behavior, don’t know about the rest of you.
Trigger cranks aren’t machine guns either, even though they are ‘essentially’ machine guns.
Shrug.
One would think the rate of fire would be important in the definition of a machine gun, but I suppose the definition in this case was for an automatic weapon. The bump stock kind of made it a high rate semi-automatic weapon. This is the sound of a bump stock:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I82X-7pwWmQ
mark bofill (Comment #222898): “Nobody gives a crap, because bump stocks are junk in the first place. But that doesn’t mean that Trump didn’t overstep.”
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I said that Trump sometimes over reached. But trying to ban bump stops is trivial compared to the Deep State censorship regime, Biden refusing to defend our border, and Biden trying to give away a half trillion dollars or more with no Congressional appropriation.
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I’d be overjoyed if banning bump stocks was as bad as it got.
Tom,
Mike,
Fair enough.
Free speech is one of those terms that means something different to each person that hears and uses it.
The very concept, in practice, becomes an oxymoron.
Once you attach the adjective free with all its different meanings you must accept it’s antonyms.
Restricted, acceptable, undesirable, etc.
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As a general concept accepting it means allowing other people express their views freely which may be obnoxious or worse to us as listeners.
Just as our views may not always find a warm haven.
–
Phil,
The Constitution goes someway towards recognising freedom of speech and action for the individual. One measure would be to see how many attempts were made by Presidents to amend the constitution to restrict or restore these rights.
Prohibition and its repeal are a good example.
Defending the right to protect oneself is another in constant jeopardy.
Another would be to take a tally of I know it when I see it opinions as enquired.
People who want to watch a ballroom pro competition, there’s a live stream here right now
https://www.thedbdc.com/livestream-saturday.html
“Smooth” is scheduled for 10:29 eastern. That’s what my pro is competing. (One of the standard heats is playing now.)
(Schedules are sort of guidelines at these things…. But the livestream is free.
mark bofill,
The trigger crank seems to make the gun inaccurate, with one hand removed from the stock to turn the crank mechanism. The shooters in the videos literally placed the gun stock on their hip and held it with one hand only. The forced trigger reset does not appear to change accuracy at all…. the only added motion is the trigger being forced back a fraction of an inch against the shooter’s constant finger pressure. I expect at some point the forced trigger reset on a semi-automatic will be re-classified as a machine gun by change in the law.
MikeM
You might not like Biden’s not defending the border– but that’s not overstepping authority of his office.
lucia (Comment #222911): “You might not like Biden’s not defending the border– but that’s not overstepping authority of his office.”
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It most certainly is overstepping his authority.
The President does not have the authority to effectively change the law by ignoring it.
Unfortnately, discussions of individual rights these days revolve too often around political party preferences and not the more basic premise that government must not interfere with individuals speech or their capabilities to produce speech providing the speech does not coercivily affect other individuals’ basic rights.
A major point today on free speech is government encouraging private concerns to repress speech that constitutionally it cannot. It would appear that Biden administration judges that merely suggesting to private concerns is not a violation of free speech. Unfortunately with the power that government has over private concerns these days, a mere suggestion becomes much more threatening than it would be without the threat of arbitrary action over the concern.
Arbitrary becomes a real issue when we have ample evidence that governments enforce laws they like and not those they do not and further can prosecute individuals they do not like and ignore offenses of those they like.
Free speech is further complicated by the fact that, in order to disseminate speech, property rights have to be protected. This concept is readily recognized where the government owns all publication facilities or less obviously where it can regulate a private publisher or threaten to do so and thus abrogated its property rights indirectly.
Biden’s administration tended to use “friendly persuasion” to influence speech with friendly private entities whereas I recall that Trump was less friendly in his talked-about actions against Amazon. Both of these instances are not so much party related but rather what powerful governments do.
Mike M,
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court refused to hear the merits of the case brought by Texas about Biden refusing to enforce immigration laws. (They said Texas did not have standing). So I figure if Texas doesn’t have standing before the SC, then nobody does. It is up to Congress or the voters to hold Biden accountable for failure to enforce the law. Of course, Congress won’t. The voters could, but with Trump looking more and more like the Republican candidate, I suspect Biden will be re-elected and the non-enforcement policies will continue, even if Biden dies or resigns because of advancing dementia…. President ‘Wordsalad’ Kamala…. Yikes!!!
I wouldn’t be surprised that there all manner of laws on the books that the executive chooses not to enforce.
Lucia,
Could you give advance notice of the next live stream dance competition? I just saw this notice and would like to see it. I watch all sorts of competitions on ESPN+ (cricket!) and find new ones interesting. I assume the costumes are something my wife would be interested in also. Thanks
Steve,
Maybe. I guess the theory is that people can have guns that spray bullets inaccurately all over the place and that’s OK. As in, great for indiscriminate mass murder but not so hot for actual [para]military resistance. Pretty stupid theory, but you might be right; that might be the way it goes.
Russel–
Yes. I will. I found it late! The costumes were great. If she’d been on messenger at the same time we could also have discussed the new fangled feathered on. (Emilija and I don’t like it. She hates it more than I hate it. I mostly don’t like the way it moves. Or more specifically, drops rather than floats.)
MikeM
Scotus never decided if Trumps diversion of borderwall funds exceeded his authority– the clock ran out. (9th circut said it was illegal in Oct 2020.Scotus was going to hear the case. Then they canceled the hearin when Biden got rid of the program:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-cancels-arguments-trump-s-border-wall-remain-mexico-n1256593
) But that diversion of funds is similar use of executive authority to Biden’s trying to use his executive power to forgive student loans.
And yes, officials fail to enforce stuff all the time. Trump was all for not enforcing laws and, in fact, advocated that, as a method of dealing with excess regulation.
It was one of the things people who liked the regulations were upset about
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2019/06/18/forced-arbitration-trump-administration-000925/
SteveF (Comment #222914): “So I figure if Texas doesn’t have standing before the SC, then nobody does.”
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Indeed. But inane rulings as to standing do not change the fact that Biden’s actions are illegal.
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Prosecutorial discretion must not be used as a blanket right for not upholding the law. If it were, it would render meaningless the constitutional requirement that the President see that laws are faithfully executed.
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Biden’s actions are more than just prosecutorial discretion. They are actively collaborating with illegals entering the country and actively interfering with attempts by at least one state to defend the border.
lucia (Comment #222919): “But that diversion of funds is similar use of executive authority to Biden’s trying to use his executive power to forgive student loans.”
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Very little similarity. The law gives the President a certain amount of discretion to shift *appropriated* funds around. That discretion is greater in event of an emergency. Perhaps Trump exceeded the discretion allowed; perhaps not.
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But Biden sought to spend money that had NEVER BEEN APPROPRIATED for any purpose.That is a very different thing.
———
For the record: Congress needs to put much tighter constraints on presidential emergency powers. In particular, a clear definition of “emergency” and a clear time limit on an “emergency” are needed.
Steve,
So is a trigger crank with a laser sight ‘essentially’ a machine gun because it’d be accurate with that modification, or is that more arm waving in your view? I have to say, I’m a little astonished at the line of argument you appear to be championing.
lucia (Comment #222919): “Trump was all for not enforcing laws and, in fact, advocated that, as a method of dealing with excess regulation.”
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If you want me to believe that, you are going to have to provide evidence. There is none at either the link you provided or the link there referred to.
Mike… well… I guess you don’t see that as “evidence” Trump actually advocated setting aside regulations by executive order. But there was executive order 13771. But it was precisely an order to set just aside regulations without following the established legislative procedure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13771
Those who sued lacked standing because they couldn’t point to a specific harm. (And this was likely because the agencies pretty much just didn’t implement the order. But that doesn’t mean Trump didn’t order it.)
mark bofill,
I am not championing any particular argument, only that as a practical weapon, the trigger crank is not so good, while the auto trigger reset doesn’t appear much different in practice from a fully automatic gun (that is, essentially a machine gun). I am sure there are many ways that the awkward trigger crank could be made more accurate, but that is not really the issue.
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It is more like: is it in the public’s interest to have individuals effectively bypass laws against unlicensed machine guns? That is the policy issue I am trying to address. I am not certain, but I suspect a very large majority of voters would prefer that machine guns (either fully auto or only “effectively auto”) continue to be regulated. Where do you stand on that question?
Mike M,
“Prosecutorial discretion must not be used as a blanket right for not upholding the law. If it were, it would render meaningless the constitutional requirement that the President see that laws are faithfully executed.”
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Biden’s continuing failure to follow his constitutionally mandated obligations (which he has sworn to do) is a reason for impeachment and removal from office, just like the blatant bribery schemes that he appears to have been involved in.
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The SC seems to be saying clearly that only congress can force a president to enforce the laws. If Biden starts ignoring Federal court rulings (IMO a sad but very real possibility), it will be up to Congress to stop it or let it go on….. the courts have no armies and can’t prosecute anyone. It will not matter at all if Biden is impeached, because he will not be convicted in the Senate.
Steve,
I think machine guns ought to be regulated to the same extent that semiautomatics [I should have just said ‘firearms’] are regulated. A form 4473 has to be filled out and processed by NICS. I have no issue with this and in fact think this is a reasonable measure. However, I don’t think the data supports the idea that machine gun regulation has much impact on crime.
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It is well known that handguns are by far the most commonly used firearm for criminal purposes (see table 3 of this DOJ report). The FRT is an innovation for the AR-15 and eventually planned for other rifles, not for handguns. It is true that there is some overlap and perhaps the planned FRTs could be used in some Pistol Caliber Carbines, but again; I don’t think the data supports the idea that these will be used for criminal purposes.
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The interest to be balanced against criminal use is the ability of the citizenry to resist tyranny. It is already proclaimed glibly by various politicians that our citizens could not hope to resist the government, that citizens would need F-15’s and nuclear weapons. There is some truth to this. An argument can be made that we would be unwise as a people to allow this asymmetry to grow in an unbounded way; it might well be in the best interests of our nation to make sure that the government continues to have reason to fear the citizenry, rather than the reverse.
Binary triggers have been available for eight years now. They permit a rate of fire not that far below full auto. There is no special regulation, they are ‘effectively’ bypassing full auto regulation. If there has been any increase in crime or violence as a result, you’re welcome to make the case and show me the supporting evidence. I don’t think it exists.
lucia,
Previously you said “Trump was all for not enforcing laws and, in fact, advocated that, as a method of dealing with excess regulation.”
Am I to understand that you misspoke when you said “laws” and no longer make that claim?
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lucia (Comment #222924): “I guess you don’t see that as “evidence” Trump actually advocated setting aside regulations by executive order. But there was executive order 13771. But it was precisely an order to set just aside regulations without following the established legislative procedure.”
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That claim is false. Executive agencies have authority (excessive, IMO) to make rules. They can, of course, rescind those rules. The President has authority over those agencies, so he can set or change procedures for making and/or rescinding rules, within the bounds established by law.
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Trump’s order did not rescind any rules. It did not tell agencies to violate established rule making procedures. It repeatedly required that all actions taken be consistent with the law. It in no way amounted to advocating the non-enforcement of either laws or administrative rules.
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Text of Executive Order 13771 here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/02/03/2017-02451/reducing-regulation-and-controlling-regulatory-costs
mark bofill,
“However, I don’t think the data supports the idea that machine gun regulation has much impact on crime.”
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For sure true. Nearly all gun murders and other armed crimes are carried out with handguns, not rifles. The only potential impacts of regulating machine guns (or effective machine guns) are reducing the fatalities in case of a lunatic carrying out mass murder (like the Orlando concert shooter with a bump-stock), making things a bit more difficult for terrorists, and of course, reducing the potential for armed resistance against tyranny.
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I think it disingenuous to want to regulate semi-auto rifles and clip sizes to reduce crime; the statistics are clear: it won’t do much. But a mass shooting lunatic with with a rifle gets a lot more public attention than the constant stream of hand-gun murders and injuries which get almost no publicity.
Steve,
Yup, definitely. In my view, the whole ‘assault rifle’ spiel is all for show and satisfying constituents who largely have no idea what is actually involved in the problems of gun violence. I think much of the discussion around firearm regulation is like this [like the magazine capacity issue you mention].
Thanks.
Angtech – “One measure would be to see how many attempts were made by Presidents to amend the constitution to restrict or restore these rights.”
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My initial thought was look at number of presidential measures thrown out by courts as measure of President’s attempts at abuse of authority but I concluded the Mike M must mean something completely different. Hence my curiosity. His thoughts on a way to measure abuse of authority would clarify what he meant.
Hidden Bio lab in Reedley, Ca shut down
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This is worrying and next door. And I thought crack houses were bad neighbors.
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https://greatgameindia.com/chinese-biolab-california/
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“ Local code enforcement officers stumbled upon the clandestine lab when they noticed a garden hose protruding from the rear wall of the building. This observation led to a startling revelation. Upon further investigation, public health staff uncovered a shocking array of blood, tissue, bodily fluid samples, and unidentified serums. The facility contained thousands of vials of fluids suspected to be biological material, all unlabeled and potentially hazardous.”
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“Upon conducting tests, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes, among others, from the substances present in the lab.”
MikeM
They don’t have authority to make and rescind any old way they want. And the president doesn’t have authority to dictate the numerical number in some way that is not guided by the law granting authority.
lucia (Comment #222934): “They don’t have authority to make and rescind any old way they want.”
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Of course not. And nothing in the executive order violated that.
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lucia: “And the president doesn’t have authority to dictate the numerical number in some way that is not guided by the law granting authority.”
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I don’t see why not.
Phil/Angech,
A president calling for a constitutional amendment would not be an abuse of executive authority. Calling for an amendment– to be implemented under the normal methods (there is more than one) is just the normal thing to do. It’s the political process.
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The way presidents can use or abuse power are generally through use of executive orders.
For example:in executive order Executive Order 13769 Trump suspended entry by aliens from 7 countries for 90 days. There was much moaning and wailing, and the order kept being revised (the number of the order got changed in the process.) The third iteration of that ban was challenged and upheld.
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Now: The question is: how does Trump have the power to order any ban at all. Congress– the legislature– vested him with some power.
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And what SCOTUS did say when one of the cases got to the court is that the president can enact a ban, but he (or his agency) must provide evidence that entry of a particular group is detrimental to the US.
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It’s pretty likely (heck almost certain) that early iterations of the travel ban were executive overreach. That’s almost certainly why Trump rewrote them when they were challenged — he (or his people) knew he would lose.
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You can read more about that particular order here:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/upholding-travel-ban-supreme-court-endorses-presidential-authority-while-leaving-door-open
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The president could, hypothetically, write an executive order that would violate citizen’s constitutional rights. (Like, order the FBI to set aside the 4th amendment when searching and seizing….)
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The president is commander-in-chief. He could, in principle, order the army to invade West Virginia, seize the governor and throw him in a dungeon. The vast majority of the army would probably refuse. Unless we’d been invaded from outer space or Canada’s troops had attacked and were now occupying West Virginia the order would likely exceed his authority. The army would likely refuse to obey an order that was clearly not done to protect our nation, but only to overthrow the country or to enact his vengenance against the governor of W. VA.
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There are all sorts of things that at least hypothetically a president could do that would be an abuse of his power. It’s just that calling for a constitutional amendment would not be one of them.
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Governors of States have similar powers granted by legislatures. They sometimes over-reach and/or violate the US constitution.
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Generally speaking, people who want a president to “do X” tend to interpret executive order to “do X” as “not abuse” while those who don’t want him to “do X” interpret it otherwise.
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I’d guess that someone who “likes” Trumps travel ban, or Trump will point to the third iteration being upheld as somehow showing even the first two iterations as having not been “abuse”. But they almost certainly went beyond his authority because he didn’t have evidence those banned were a threat to the nation. (And his opinion alone is not enough.)
MikeM
Oh come on. That order, taken to its limit would mean the agency would eventually have zero regulations. An order that blocks an agency from having any regulations at all clearly violates legislation calling for it to regulate to achieve the goals stated in the legislature.
You can try to “cleverly disguise” an order to eliminate all rules, is an order to slowly eliminate all rules. Such a thing clearly is not authorized.
lucia (Comment #222937): “That order, taken to its limit would mean the agency would eventually have zero regulations.”
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That is a straw man argument.
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First, the order only requires that regs be *proposed* for discontinuation. There is no guarantee or requirement that the proposed changes would go into effect after the normal rule making process. The objective is not to eliminate all regulations, only to weed out bad, outdated, and ineffective regulations.
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Second, once the order largely achieves its purpose, there is nothing to prevent it from being rescinded or modified.
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Third, any reduction in regs had to be consistent with the law. Complete elimination of all regs would not be.
MikeM
Huh? I didn’t put words in your mouth.
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The distinction between “proposed” is meaningless. As for second: There is nothing to prevent it from being kept in place anyway.
Third: Yes. Reduction has to be consistent with law. Requireing the “2 for 1” is not. That’s the fundamental problem.
lucia (Comment #222939): “Reduction has to be consistent with law. Requireing the “2 for 1” is not.”
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There is no law against reducing regulations. It is surely possible to do it in a way that would be illegal, but Trump’s order prohibited that.
You can’t just reduce arbitrarily.
Thanks Phil and Ken.
I can understand how revolutions can build up with the increasing angst at suppression of viewpoints.
At present society is winning in a big way, the Republicans having subverted freedom of expression into freedom of trade and having become a party supporting rich business groups rather than the independence and freedom of all.
Backed up by Christian, country folks, old folks and conservatives which do not appeal to the larger voting constituency of young people wanting to do their own thing and a lot of people weighed down by authority.
The excesses of free rights for all opinions opposite to the freedom to have rights in a society is leading to a bit of a backlash, hopefully a tipping point but are enough people concerned to react and address the problem.
SteveF’s nightmare of Trump running but being unelectable is definitely in the race.
As is my view that the system will just find legal but immoral ways to stop him running.
Short of a Trump victory no one is going to be held responsible for putting a very dodgy President in and running a very dodgy FBI DOJ.
Yet a Trump win is something that could in its own way be equally bad?
Proof that sadly the end often does not justify the means.
Spooky encounter… I watched two adult coyotes at close [25 feet] range. I was in the pool in the dark and they were illuminated by our floodlights. They were quite large, about the size of two skinny German shepherds. They moved very quickly and very quietly. I never heard a sound, not even when they disappeared into the bush. I’ll check the game camera tomorrow, but it doesn’t cover this area.
angech
A Trump win at this point would be very, very, very bad.
lucia (Comment #222941): “You can’t just reduce arbitrarily.”
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Of course not. But that is not what Trump’s order required. It required that rules be proposed for elimination, after which they would go through the usual rule changing procedure. No arbitrary or random elimination of rules. Unwise elimination of rules? Possibly. But there are also a lot of unwise rules that should be eliminated.
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If you assume that the existing rules are well crafted, lean, and restrained; then Trump’s order would be unreasonable. But that is not the case. The federal rules are massive, in part because new rules are added but old rules are rarely trimmed. There is a great deal of garbage that at best gets in the way and at worst provides an invitation to arbitrary enforcement.
——-
Frankly, I find it more than a little strange that reducing executive power could be described as an abuse of executive power. If such were Trump’s worst abuses, then he was a hell of a lot more restrained than any other President this century.
Angech,
The nightmare is multifold: and election choice between Trump and Biden is pure nightmare. Having a demented criminal continuing to serve as President is a nightmare. The very real possibility of president Kamala Wordsalad (when Biden dies, resigns, or is removed under the 25th amendment) is a nightmare. The continuing political corruption of the DOJ and ‘intelligence community’ is a nightmare. The continuing expenditure of $120 billion per year, money we don’t have, supporting a war were we have zero strategic interest is a nightmare. The unending growth of the regulatory state is a nightmare. I could go on, but you get the idea…. I see no good electoral outcomes for 2024.
MikeM
An executing deciding to arbitrarily NOT carry out legislation passed by congress is not reducing executive power. You seem to understand this when Biden fails to enforce the border the way you like.
From USA Today:
“Saudi Arabia will host a peace summit organized by Ukraine in early August to pursue negotiations to end the war, officials said Sunday. Russia is not invited.”
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My bold. You can’t make up this sort of silliness. Mean time, Zelenskyy says he will not meet with Russia until all Russian troops leave Ukraine. It’s becoming a theater of the absurd. And it looks like the play will continue indefinitely.
lucia (Comment #222947): “An executing deciding to arbitrarily NOT carry out legislation passed by congress is not reducing executive power.”
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I agree 100%.
But Trump’s executive order reducing regulations was not that. It operated entirely within the legal bounds set by Congress and by means of established rule making procedures.
Recent stories about the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ from my news feed:
“Ashes to Ashes, Disney to Dust” and “Archaeologists will one day puzzle over the remains of this strange civilization.” {today”s WSJ]
“Disney’s theme parks are shockingly empty this summer amid sky-high ticket prices, ‘woke’ backlash — but here’s why the stock could be too cheap to pass up right now”
“Disney World Left Empty as Park Attendance Crumbles”
And it’s not just the parks:
“Disney+ Sheds 4 Million Subscribers in Second Straight Quarterly Drop, Streaming Losses Narrow by 26%”
“DISNEY FACES $900 MILLION IN LOSSES AFTER MAJOR BOX OFFICE DISAPPOINTMENTS”
Mabey getting to pissing matches with political animals is not a good business model.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ashes-to-ashes-disney-to-dust-florida-california-collapse-attendance-theme-park-525e3b4d
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/where-everyone-disney-theme-parks-200500589.html
https://insidethemagic.net/2023/07/disney-world-attendance-crumbles-parks-empty-ld1/
https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/disney-plus-subscribers-q2-earnings-1235607524/
https://www.movieguide.org/news-articles/disney-faces-900-million-in-losses-after-major-box-office-disappointments.html
Maybe Russia is not invited to peace talks in Saudi Arabia because yesterday Putin said “NYET”:
“No cease-fire while Ukraine is on the offensive, Putin declares”
“The Ukrainian army is on the offensive, they are attacking, they are implementing a large-scale strategic offensive operation,” Putin said, according to media reports. “We cannot cease fire when we are under attack,” he said.”
Biden has done executive actions (or allowed regulatory action) several times already that everyone reasonably knew was going to be rejected. Student loans, vaccine mandates, federal loans to only black farmers, etc. These are just political signaling moves IMO and barely fall under abuse of authority.
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We are never going to get rid of prosecutorial discretion, nor should we. What we need to constantly manage is equality before the law to prevent the abuse of that power.
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For example the current Trump indictment on documents and the one going on in GA, I’m not that concerned about Trump’s final outcome here, but I am very concerned that he is being persecuted for being Trump. What I want established is the * standard * under which prosecutorial discretion is being used here (as opposed to say Clinton and Biden) and ensuring that standard is used going forward when somebody from the left inevitably violates that standard next week.
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My perception is that they took the Trump case, subtracted the Biden case, and the difference is now the prosecution standard. One can argue whether this difference is justifiable, but one cannot argue that this standard should not apply to * everyone *. It is not whataboutism to argue that the standard has changed from previous cases, it is a vitally important concept of equality before the law.
Russel
I’m guessing he didn’t have the same view about Ukraine being unable to cease fire while Russia was attacking….
Tom Scharf (Comment #222952)
July 31st, 2023 at 9:08 am
The current intelligentsia were making cases and rationalizations for these “political signals” and thus to them it was more than signaling. Change the Supreme court make-up by two justices to the liberal side and those signals would stand.
And how is that currently managed and to be better managed in the future? The current problem today is that the intelligentsia and the public mostly ignore the arbitrariness of how the law is enacted, interpreted and applied. Shout out words like Rule of Law and Constitutional and all is well with these people.
With Trump the most likely Republican candidate for 2024 due to 1. His many followers infatuated with him and not any basic principles of government in mind and 2. Their lack of understanding the practicalities of winning in the general election and 3. Other Republican candidates too politically fearful of those hero worshippers to campaign hard against Trump as Trump does against them, I can see Biden winning the election handily and the Democrats winning the House and the Senate. Biden and/or his handlers would then have the opportunity to change the Supreme Court political bent such that political signals become the will of the people.
The system of government we have is not going to magically heal itself or even start that process without a change in the thinking of the current intelligentsia and the acceptance of that thinking by the people to whom it filters down.
Certainly any of Biden’s corrupt dealings that might finally be put forth to the public will be offset and more by Trump’s indictments damages from not so much any guilt but the sleazy character of Trump that is revealed in the process.
Lucia,
“ I’m guessing he didn’t have the same view about Ukraine being unable to cease fire while Russia was attacking….”
Yes, I think that is correct.
Russia sees no need for a cease fire. They have specific goals that the war is predicated on and that they have not yet achieved.
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Russia has moved to a tactical defensive strategy that is working for them. Russia has dug in hard and is willing to allow Ukraine to break their teeth on the Russian defensive lines as long as Ukraine is willing to attack these defensive lines.
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With overwhelming Russian armor, artillery, and air superiority, these Ukrainian assaults on Russian defensive line are suffering heavy losses and have yet to even breach the Russian security zone in front of the Russian main line of defense.
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One of the main stated Russian goals of the war is the reduction of the Ukraine army. The Ukraine offensive plays into the Russian goals perfectly and Russia sees no need to hinder this ongoing process.
The management of executive overreach is either the other two branches of government, or ultimately the voters.
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Congress could easily clarify immigration and environmental law. The SC has slapped down most overt power grabs. Had a vaccine mandate been approved there likely would have been a state and voter backlash. Biden had to veto a bill banning student loan forgiveness.
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One should expect the executive to use the limits of their power. One can expect them to attempt overreach, and we have to have these other systems to check that power. The legacy media simultaneously advocates for executive power at the same time they fear their opponents using the same. Useless and tiring.
Ed,
From the Russian Ministry of Defense:
“Russian troops retreat victoriously; Ukrainian army runs after them in panic”
Image: https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1686090129188741120?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
Tom Scharf,
“One should expect the executive to use the limits of their power.”
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In this most divisive of eras, yes, that is expected. One can still hope for a principled president who respects the law as written. No ignoring mandatory laws, no questionable diversion of funds, no unaythorized expenditures of $500 billion. That hope is probably naive, but I still have it.
Lucia,
It is clear that neither Ukraine nor Russia is currently seriously interested in negotiations. It is the political posturing that I find ridiculous. I don’t think that posturing is wise for either country. Many thousands of soldiers are going to die between now and the end of fighting…. along with maybe you, me, and most of the people we know. History will tell if those deaths made any sense; my guess: nope
A week or so ago Phil Scadden expressed skepticism that scientists were being pressured to only publish the right kind of results. Here is a report from Roger Pielke Jr. describing the suppression of a climate paper because it produced politically incorrect results:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/think-of-the-implications-of-publishing
Ed Forbes
Sure. And their reason for not wanting a cease fire has nothing to do with Ukraine being on the attack.
SteveF (Comment #222960): “It is clear that neither Ukraine nor Russia is currently seriously interested in negotiations.”
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Of course not. The two countries have highly divergent views on how the war might play out. Serious negotiations will not occur until the expectations of both sides begin to converge.
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SteveF: “History will tell if those deaths made any sense”.
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Indeed. But history always has the benefit of hindsight. At this point, we can not know the answer.
Ed Forbes,
“One of the main stated Russian goals of the war is the reduction of the Ukraine army.”
That certainly backfired. When Russia invaded, Ukraine’s army was poorly trained and equipped with rusting Soviet-era junk. Ukraine now has a highly trained, motivated, disciplined army equipped with top-notch NATO gear, and soon to have a fleet of F-16s. “Reduction of the Ukraine army” may be the biggest blunder Russia made. Ukraine will be a force to reckon with for a long time.
Russell, that is one version. Russia seems to disagree.
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Note that the calls for a cease fire are all coming from the west after the Ukraine summer offensive is being seen as a failure. Prior to the offensive failure, the west was pushing for a total Ukrainian victory over Russia. It seems as though many in the western alliance also now seem to disagree.
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Executive orders, emergency and administrative state actions substituting for Congressional action, are not really so much partisan issues than those actions being part of creating a more authoritative government. Partisanship is merely a distraction from what actually is transpiring.
Regulations are often the object of these actions.
Ed Forbes,
It is very likely going to be an indefinite standoff.
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One that kills a great number of young men.
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I do not see the value in this.
Ken Frisch,
Sure, but I think ‘authoritarian’ is more accurate than ‘authoritative’.
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In my experience, most regulations fail any reasonable cost/benefit test. That failure won’t keep them from growing in number and intrusiveness.
Michael Mann accuses others of: “… naively applying inappropriate methods to data they don’t understand”.
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That made me laugh.
Steve, Russia seems to see value in their objectives, and its their vote that matters.
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There have been a number of “unnecessary” wars over the years, and this is definitely one of them. The US pushing for Ukraine membership in NATO was the deciding factor in Russia going to war. Russia views this issue as an existential threat to Russia itself. One can disagree on this, but again, it’s the Russian vote that matters.
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I don’t think this can be an indefinite standoff. Ukraine is almost at the extreme limit of manpower that they can mobilize where Russia has had only 1 mobilization and that barely touches on the amount available.
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In my opinion, this will go like WWI. It ended after an extended attrition war that drove Germany to exhaustion and military collapse. I see the same in the future for Ukraine.
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And the results are 100’s of thousands dead and wounded with Ukraine becoming a landlocked failed state.
Ed Forbes,
Ukraine is not going to be landlocked… the principle ports are in Odessa, and not under Russian control. As for Ukraine being a “failed state”: that seems to me a very strange suggestion, with zero basis in fact.
Tom Scharf,
When/where did Micheal Mann say that?
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That said, “red noise” Mann of hockey stick fame should be a bit more introspective about math and its application.
SteveF,
That quote is from the link Mike M left from RPJ.
Tom Scharf,
Thanks. Ya, Mann is an a$$hole is every possible way, and does lots of harm.
I dont really get the support for Putin and Russia within the USA. Are these people that were upset when the USSR broke up and welcome a return to the good old days of the Cold war? Successfully taking over Ukraine and bringing Belarus into the fold would substantially rebuild the USSR as a major power. As it is, Ukrainian resistance is making further such forays less likely and enables Belarus to thumb their nose Putin’s “Greater Russia”.
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Is it just the cost of support? Given most military spending ends up in scrap yard, I would have thought seeing it do something useful would be a welcome change.
Phil Scadden,
Support for Putin or Russia? No. Putin is a murderous thug who’s enemies seem to suffer an alarming number of unusual accidents. Russia is a country with a high level of corruption (like much of the former Soviet Union); it would benefit from greater freedom, more democracy, and less oppressive government.
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That doesn’t mean the Russians don’t honestly believe NATO’s eastward expansion posed a serious threat to their country. Nor does it mean US (and NATO) policies toward Russia were prudent over the last 20+ years. On the contrary, I think those policies were reckless and dangerous, and contributed to the conflicts in the Ukraine, including the seizure of Crimea and effective takeover of the Donbas region. Western policy continues to be simplistic, while the history of the region is complex and demands a much more nuanced approach. It is useful to remember, for example, that Crimea was Russian territory for most of the last 300 years, and transferred to the Ukraine only recently, when the Ukraine was part of the USSR. Russia is about as likely to give up Crimea as the USA is likely to return Texas to Mexico. Yet US policy does not even acknowledge the Crimea being historically Russian.
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With regard to “making use” of military equipment: nonsense argument. That equipment will mostly be replaced at the expense of US taxpayers. The many $ billions we send to support the Ukrainian government…. essentially paying people’s salaries…. is a direct cost as well.
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I see no strategic interest for the USA in the region, nor any rational for not negotiating to end the war. Baring a nuclear holocaust, the war will almost certainly end via negotiation, not on the battlefield. How many people die, and how much of Ukrainian infrastructure is destroyed before those negotiations happen matters. We did not heed Russian warnings to stop expanding NATO eastward. We are now ignoring clear, repeated Russian warnings that they will use nuclear weapons if they need to to repel Ukrainian forces (who are wielding NATO supplied weapons). The Russians have something like 2,000 tactical (< 20 kiloton) weapons and about 1500 strategic (megaton range) weapons. If the Russians use tactical weapons against the Ukraine, what will NATO then do? Start lobbing nuclear missiles at Russia? That leads to the likely destruction of both Russia and NATO countries in a few hours time. It would be utter madness. Madness that our foolish, naive diplomacy is making ever more likely. Negotiations need to start; the sooner the better.
SteveF, never mind the history or rights and wrongs of policy, do you think it prudent for US now to let Putin or successors rebuild the USSR? I agree that a peace that keeps Crimea is Russia is likely, even desirable, but control of sea of Azov? (and effectively the Black sea). What peace condition swould stop Russia rebuilding and grabbing more territory? – so far its a tactic that has worked in sense of got the territory. Transnitra maybe all on Moldova – safe target are not part of Nato. I think the policy of eastward expansion of Nato has very much been part of ensuring Russia cant rebuild USSR.
Phil Scadden,
Putin is not going to rebuild the USSR. Heck, two former USSR countries are now NATO countries. Russia has clearly learned from what has happened in the Ukraine that any future invasion would be extremely costly. Further, the Ukraine is somewhat unique in that a majority of the population in the east and in Crimea is ethnic Russian. They speak Russian as their first language and are aligned with Russia. This is not the case in some other former USSR countries.
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BTW, I think not paying attention to history is not prudent for anyone.
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I think the greatest threat to freedom globally is China. The Chinese government is dedicated to taking over Taiwan…. where the West definitely has strategic interests. I believe the focus on Russia is not a good use of resources.
On the subject of resources, BRICS are supposed to be voting on creating a gold backed currency this month. The USSR may yet have the last laugh.
Phil Scadden (Comment #222975): “I dont really get the support for Putin and Russia within the USA.”
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They isn’t any such support, at least not among any public figures.
An update for those of you hungry for a topic of real substance….. Royal Family gossip. Harry and Meghan have been getting the cold shoulder from the entertainment elite. Just this week the Beckhams [David and Posh Spice] and George Clooney dumped them.
There is a new angle to explain this that I had never considered. It’s like something right out of Mean Girls:
“Tinseltown’s elite is staying away from the royals in fear that they will isolate them from the apparently more popular Prince William and Kate Middleton.”
“Everyone’s got a movie to sell and a Broadway play they want to debut on screen in London or [London’s] West End, and they know that Prince William and Kate — who are the biggest [celebrity] gets over there — won’t show if they think someone is friends with Harry and Meghan,”
They must be furious … eclipsed by big brother and Princess Kate again.
https://nypost.com/2023/07/31/meghan-markle-prince-harry-wont-stay-silent-after-feud-with-beckhams-report/amp/
I think alleged Russia support is mostly reactionism, if the other side is for it, then we are against it. There is also an almost decade long thing going on now that anything not explicitly anti-Russia is painted as communist Putin-luvin pro-Russian sympathies. It’s mostly cable news political hyperbole everybody ignores.
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For example not supporting the Ukraine war is pro-Russia, when it can be based on the typical anti-war ideology that used to be prevalent on the left here, and many have for different reasons.
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We were on the same side as Russia against ISIS. We had economic détente with Russia. Obama is infamous for painting Russia in a good light during his campaign: “the 1980’s called, they want their foreign policy back”.
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Then Putin invaded Ukraine and everything changed, prior to that it was 98% apathy.
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I guess I would summarize it as those who are “pro-Russia” today really just don’t care about Russia and don’t care about Ukraine.
“do you think it prudent for US now to let Putin or successors rebuild the USSR?”
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Ukraine and the US will accept volunteers and cash from New Zealand in the cause for global justice, ha ha. Being the World Police is a heavy burden, and I think we will all admit we aren’t that good at it.
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I think Russia needs to be deterred from further expansion, I think that has already happened. A negotiated settlement at this point is a win.
SteveF (Comment #222968)
July 31st, 2023 at 3:46 pm
Yeah, that should have been authoritarian. I am blaming spell check.
Phil Scadden (Comment #222978)
“I think the policy of eastward expansion of Nato has very much been part of ensuring Russia cant rebuild USSR.”
Yes, I agree, but I go further. I think the support of Ukraine in their disassembly of the Russian war machine ensures that Russia will not be capable of mounting a ground war against NATO for a decade or more. As long as the Ukrainians are successfully using our arms to kick Russian butt, I say we support them.
Tom Scharf,
“Being the World Police is a heavy burden, and I think we will all admit we aren’t that good at it.”
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Donno. Biden seems to have appointed a gaggle of “diplomats” who apparently think we are fabulous at being the world’s policeman. I think they are horribly mistaken, and it seems plenty of governments around the world agree with me. Some might even characterize the USA as ‘the world’s bully’, not its policeman. I think that is unfair, because intentions do matter, even if they often lead to demonstrably terrible outcomes.
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What exactly has the USA accomplished in Iraq? Afghanistan? Syria? IMO, noting but many trillions of public debt and untold pointless deaths and injuries. Stupidity and arrogance lead to destructive quagmires…. at that the USA seems very capable.
Eastern Ukraine, the true demographics:
Kherson Oblast
As of Ukrainian National Census in 2001, the ethnic groups living within Kherson included Ukrainians – 76.6%, Russians – 20.0%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kherson#Ethnicity
Zaporizhzhia Oblast
Some 70.8% considered themselves Ukrainians, while 24.7% were Russians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Oblast
Donetsk Oblast
Ukrainians, 56.9 percent; Russians, 38.2 percent;https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CD%5CO%5CDonetskoblast.htm
Luhansk Oblast
Ukrainian, 58.0 Russian, 39.0 https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CL%5CU%5CLuhanskoblast.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luhansk_Oblast
The war has solidified into a war of attrition across the entire active frontline.
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Ukraine has not been able to advance any significant distance anywhere along this line in the entire month of July after continual Ukrainian attacks. Russia is content to use it’s massive overmatch in artillery and air to pound Ukraine positions and attack columns and to support Russian mobile infantry in local counterattacks.
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Ukraine is continuously feeding in its limited NATO trained strategic reserves which are getting mauled, where Russia has yet to commit its much larger strategic reserves to the combat.
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A short overview of the existing tactical situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ05sq4IFvcThe
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Its the use of each parties respective strategic reserves which will determine the outcome of this war. Ukraine is using theirs up and Russia has yet to commit.
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This war will not end in stalemate on the above trajectory. Ukraine is facing the prospect of either NATO fully committing to the active defense of Ukraine ( and WWIII ) or Ukraine will be forced into unconditional surrender with Russia dictating terms after the eventual collapse of the Ukraine army.
The only thing worse than the US being the World Police, is China being the World Police.
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“What exactly has the USA accomplished in Iraq?”
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The actual answer here is Saddam is gone, Kuwait is still a country, ISIS is gone, and Iraq is no longer a threat to their neighbors. Clearly peace in the Middle East didn’t end up breaking out.
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The more difficult answer is what would have happened had we not intervened. It is not realistic to assume that all things would have resolved themselves better without a US intervention. This is a very meaningful question that can only be speculated on, and that is what the people who decide think about before an intervention.
Do you guys think, if Biden is impeached, impeachment will help, hurt, or make no difference to Biden’s re-election chances?
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Personally I suspect it’d make no difference, though I haven’t tried to explicitly articulate why to myself yet. Something like this perhaps: Biden’s flaws are so numerous and obvious that the people who support him must have an overriding justification. I think impeachment and the possibility of some degree of corruption won’t generally change that for people. In for a penny… But I haven’t seriously thought it through yet.
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What are y’alls thoughts?
A partisan impeachment won’t hurt Biden and might help him.
If Biden’s corruption becomes so obvious that there is a public outcry and that at least some Democrats decide to call for impeachment as a matter of political survival, then Biden will be done.
Thanks Mike. So you think there is a threshold that’ll determine it. Seems reasonable to me.
Russell Klier (Comment #222988): “Eastern Ukraine, the true demographics”.
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Those are not the true demographics. For one thing, they ignore the fact that many who identified ethnically as Ukrainian had Russian as their preferred language.
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But more important is that those data are over 20 years old. I am pretty sure that those who identify as and/or speak Russian skew older. So the passage of time results in “Russian” parents or grandparents being replaced by their “Ukrainian” children and grandchildren.
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Another factor is that in a country like Ukraine, ethnicity is largely a matter of self-identification. The events of 2014 turned a lot of “Russians” into “Ukrainians”. And the events of the last 18 months are furthering that trend.
MikeM
I’m not sure what your point is. Is it that those numbers over state the number of Russians? (I think that’s what you mean, and if so I suspect you are right.)
I speak English. I don’t identify as English. Most of Latin America speaks Spanish. They don’t identify as Spaniards.
So the passage of time results in “Russian” parents or grandparents being replaced by their “Ukrainian” children and grandchildren.
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Yep. Just like Jim is American, not Swedish. (Heck, only his father was born in Sweden at that.)
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Ethnicity is largely a matter of self-identification everywhere.
Mike M,
“If Biden’s corruption becomes so obvious that there is a public outcry and that at least some Democrats decide to call for impeachment as a matter of political survival, then Biden will be done.”
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Yes, Republicans should only pursue impeachment if there is iron-clad evidence that he and/or his wife personally received money from Hunters many corrupt deals. That means following the money, and verifying through documents that is what happened.
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The chance is, IMO, very high (>90%) that Joe Biden was deeply involved, personally called the shots, and did receive millions of dollars in financial benefit from the many corrupt deals. Proving that with 100% certainty is the only circumstance where Republicans should proceed with impeachment. At which point Biden would likely be forced to resign anyway. But the net result could be even worse than a demented criminal president: an impossibly dumb and incompetent president Kamala!!!
Tom “ The actual answer here is Saddam is gone, Kuwait is still a country, ISIS is gone, and Iraq is no longer a threat to their neighbors. Clearly peace in the Middle East didn’t end up breaking out.”
Ok, lets talk about the 1st kuwait/US/Iraq war.
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1. Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraq territory and stealing Iraq oil.
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2. Iraq asked the US ambassador to Iraq “ Does the US have any strategic interests in Kuwait?” The ambassador said no. In other words, the US gave Iraq permission to address the ongoing theft of oil by Kuwait, including war if needed.
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All the US needed to do to stop a war between Iraq and Kuwait was for the ambassador to say “ Yes, the US has a strategic interest in Kuwait”. Iraq, as a good client state, would have then grudgingly stood down. Instead, after first giving Iraq permission to deal with Kuwait, the US used the war as a pretext for war against Iraq. Proving once again “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal”.
lucia (Comment #222995): “I’m not sure what your point is. Is it that those numbers over state the number of Russians?”
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Yes. The number of people in Ukraine identifying as Russian and/or preferring to speak Russian has almost certainly decreased considerably over the last 20+ years. I should have said that explicitly.
SteveF (Comment #222996): “Republicans should only pursue impeachment if there is iron-clad evidence that he and/or his wife personally received money from Hunters many corrupt deals.”
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That would certainly be a sufficient reason, but might not be necessary.
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I would say that there only needs to be sufficient evidence of Joe’s felonious involvement to convince a lot of people who would not be inclined to believe such charges. I don’t know if the public will require ironclad evidence.
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There are many ways in which Joe’s involvement could be felonious:
Actually receiving money.
Directing who should get money. I would bet that the distribution of funds to so many family members was not Hunter’s idea.
Altering policy to accommodate Hunter’s clients.
Feeding Hunter inside information that he could pass on to clients.
Helping Hunter create a fraudulent impression that Joe’s influence was for sale.
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Joe took dozens of meetings and phone calls with Hunter’s partners and clients. I think it certain that Joe knew, or ought to have known, what Hunter was doing. Even if Hunter was running a scam, if Joe gave credence to it then Joe was a co-conspirator. And I think it unlikely that Hunter was running a scam since all indications are that his clients were satisfied.
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But what matters is not what convinces you or me. It is what would convince a significant majority of the public that Joe did something beyond the pale. That is a tall order given tribalism and a biased news media.
“I think not paying attention to history is not prudent for anyone.”
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I agree, but policy for today has to accept that you cannot undo history and instead must decide what is best for the future.
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Putin’s talk of Russian “Mir” and the building of “Greater Russia” I think clearly envisages a unification of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (and apparently much of Moldova though that it is pretty insignificant and Georgia). That is big enough to represent a power similar to USSR. I think the outcome in Ukraine to end that dream must involve a peace where Russia at least makes significant concessions to retain Crimea; and where Ukraine gets security guarantees. I think it is in the West’s interest to help Ukraine get that. (And yes, NZ has provided some financial support and training to Ukraine and will likely continue to do so).
Mike M. (Comment #222994)
“Those are not the true demographics”
Yes, my numbers are 20 years old because that was the last census with hard numbers. The Eastern Ukraine Oblasts are the majority of people who identify as ethnic Ukrainian. The Russians are a minority. Your point is well taken. In the last 20 years that probably has shifted to being even more of the population being Ukrainian. It is Russian propaganda that these Oblasts are mostly Russian. With a population of around 10 million souls, a takeover by invading Russians would condemn probably 7 million Ukrainians to life under a brutal regime and condemn millions to death.
Phil Scadden,
Whatever final terms are settled on, they will only be figured out via negotiation. Refusal to negotiate won’t get it done.
The sooner negotiations start the better; many lives depend upon it.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, Sadam was killed. But so were thousands of US soldiers, and probably 20 times that number of Iraqis. That Iraqi is now dominated by ‘death to America’ Iran doesn’t seem to me a great outcome. Getting rid of Isis was not the objective, and I rather expect Sadam would not have tolerated Isis in Iraq for long.
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Add to that a $ trillion plus in expenditure, and it looks to me like the triumph of arrogant stupidity over rational thinking. Afghanistan was arguably even worse. The USA’s warmonger/nation-builder foreign policy experts should be a bit more humble I think.
Steve – and reality also is that neither side will negotiate while possibility of maximalist goals exist and population will tolerate it. Pulling support for Ukraine will force it into accepting Russia’s terms which is no solution for long term peace. I would say at present that populations in both Russia and Ukraine support continued military action in support of their respective goals. Mounting casualties with little gain will change that. But I would say that Ukrainians are much more convinced that this is a fight for existence as a state than Russians are whatever Putin’s rhetoric. Russian troops have easy way to end the conflict – run away.
There was a popular saying among Ukrainians a few months back…, “If the Russians stop fighting, there is no more war. If Ukrainians stop fighting there is no more Ukraine.”
I wouldn’t think a settlement in which Russia guarantees the security of whatever is left of Ukraine would be accepted or even trustworthy. More likely NATO would have to assure this security.
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Would we really want to do that?
John Ferguson,
No.
Pfizer stock is down from a high of over$60 per share to $36. There is a reason for this: https://academic.oup.com/ofid/article/10/6/ofad209/7131292?login=false
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Since the FDA approved the bivalent versions of Pfizer and Moderna with no clinical trials, the Cleveland Clinic did a study of cumulative incidence of covid infection among employees over 6 months versus type of vaccine (original vs bivalent) and total number of vaccinations. The 51,000 employees were from all job classifications, and were all “working age adults”. The results were surprising: the bivalent vaccines did not reduce rates of covid infection compared to the original vaccine, and the probability of infection appears to increase, not decrease, with total doses of vaccine received. The group with by far the lowest cumulative covid case rate over 6 months of study were those never vaccinated with either type of vaccine. (Were those people who had covid before the first vaccine became available? Were they bolstered in number by the lucky 20% of people who never get symptomatic covid? Both interesting questions.)
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But really: Yikes! There are lots of additional questions the study raises, and it seems to me the FDA failed to do its job by approving the bivalent vaccines with no clinical trials to verify efficacy.
john ferguson (Comment #223006): “I wouldn’t think a settlement in which Russia guarantees the security of whatever is left of Ukraine would be accepted or even trustworthy.”
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Both Russia and the US gave Ukraine security guarantees when Ukraine gave up their nukes. We ought to keep or word.
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SteveF seems to think that peace in Ukraine is somehow possible without meaningful security guarantees for Ukraine. Nonsense.
Phil Scadden,
“Pulling support for Ukraine will force it into accepting Russia’s terms which is no solution for long term peace.”
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You keep saying that, but it is based on your assumption Russia wants to swallow the now independent countries from the former USSR. I reject that assumption. Russia took control of Crimea and most of the Donbas in 2014, but didn’t invade the rest of the Ukraine until nearly 8 years later. So what changed in early 2022?
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What changed was our uber-idiot Secretary of State (Anthony Blinken) entered a formal security agreement with the Ukraine in late 2021, and made promises of eventual NATO membership. This in spite of multiple, explicit warnings from Russia over many years that NATO membership for Ukraine was absolutely unacceptable to Russia. I don’t see any other reason for Russia to wait 7+ years to invade. We in the West don’t see Ukraine being a NATO country as a threat to Russia, but Russia disagrees.
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Russia has issued multiple clear warnings that they will use nuclear weapons if needed to repel the Ukrainian army. I believe that threat is credible. A ceasefire and negotiation is IMHO a more sensible path forward.
Mike M,
I never said the Ukraine doesn’t need security guarantees; of course they do, as part of any negotiation.
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What guarantees, short of NATO membership, do you think they need? If only NATO membership is acceptable, then it seems to me that ensures there will be no negotiated peace deal.
” … the original vaccine, and the probability of infection appears to increase, not decrease, with total doses of vaccine received”
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This has been found repeatedly now, usually reported as vaccinated having higher infection rates after 4 months than the unvaccinated. I haven’t seen any reasonable explanation for this and the media basically buries it because it counters the vaccine evangelism narrative.
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As for the unvaccinated having lower infection rates, I speculate this is because a lot of the unvaccinated have been previously infected and natural immunity is giving them moderately lower re-infection rates. There is also a reporting rate thing probably going on where the unvaccinated don’t test themselves at the same rate the hyper-vaccinated do every time they get a runny nose.
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Other possibilities are the vaccine was “over-fitted” for the original strain and viral evolution worked to evade vaccines more than natural immunity.
SteveF,
What do you think would have happened if we had not intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan? World peace, rainbows and butterflies?
Tom,
Did world peace, rainbows and butterflies result from us intervening? I don’t think so. So maybe the way you framed the question could be improved.
Tom
Yes. I suspect natural immunity is the cause of lower re-infection rates. I suspect if you do a side by side comparison of natural vs. vaccine immunity, natural is more effective at preventing subsequent infection for a variety of reasons.
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Ordinarily, I think the medical field could admit this and simply point out that you only get natural infection by risking getting sick. For vulnerable people, vaccination is “better” because your first encounter with the illness is generally less severe and overall you are less likely to die if you get that first resistance to illness through vaccine. But they can’t bring themselves to admit even the possibility that the immunity you get from illness may be more durable, broader yada yada.
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And (possibly) those who get the natural immunity without having been vaccinated may also have broader immunity. We don’t know. But it might be. If it is, that doesn’t make it a mistake for an older person to have gotten vaccinated. That vaccine may have prevented death; that would be worth sacrificing some breadth of immunity. But… that’s no reason to not admit that natural immunity seems like it might give “better” immunity if you define that as breadth and duration of immunity to subsequent infection of Covid “in the wild” (which includes variants, of course.)
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I keep waiting for the “newer” vaccines that might use something other than just the spike.
I stated the question a bit further above. The way anti-interventionists usually frame the discussion is:
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“the intervention materially resulted in some bad outcomes, therefore the intervention was unwise”
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I would suggest that those deciding on an intervention know bad outcomes are going to occur, but believe that not intervening will result in even worse outcomes. Decision making under uncertainty. This doesn’t mean all interventions are wise, but it means the proper way to judge that decision is on speculative alternate outcomes. This is unsatisfactory of course because people can make up speculative outcomes out of thin air. Saddam went on to develop nuclear weapons and nuked Israel 10 years later.
Thank you Tom.
Ceteris paribus we spent several trillion on those wars and lost over seven thousand people, these costs are not speculative. In my view then, the burden is on those arguing the wars were worth it to demonstrate that we at least accomplished something worth thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
Just my view.
Tom, I judge the best way of evaluating government policies/actions is to compare the initial claims made to sell it to the public versus what actually occurred. Otherwise there is no accountability.
If the initators of the policies/actions are aware of less than favorable outcomes and do not reveal that information when presenting it initially to the public they are being dishonest and/ or of the mindset that the public cannot handle the truth.
Of course, speculating on outcomes is probably number one on the list of selling points to be used by governments and proponents of their proposed major actions. Mitigation of climate change is a prime current example as is the domino effect of Russian military actions despite the proposed Vietnam domino effect never occurring.
Steve, since from what I now anecdotally and from other studies the infection rate for Covid-19 in the US is nearly 100 percent, but with a very few not knowingly infected. That being the case and if that 20 percent had no symptoms how would it be known that they were infected. Some small percent of the population were probably tested sufficiently often to find infections without symptoms, but that would be a relatively small sample.
The only way to empirically determine if there was a lucky 20 % without any symptoms would be to test a large sample of individuals for previous Covid-19 infection and question them about previous Covid-19 like symptoms.
I have not been knowingly infected to date and was thinking of getting tested for evidence of previous infection. Anecdotally I know from friends and relatives the knowing infection rate is 98 to 99 %.
john ferguson (Comment #223006): “More likely NATO would have to assure this security. Would we really want to do that?”
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SteveF (Comment #223007): “No.”
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SteveF (Comment #223011): “I never said the Ukraine doesn’t need security guarantees; of course they do”.
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So who would provide those guarantees? And what would ensure that the guarantee means something? Real questions.
The invasion of Afghanistan was justified, successful and achieved its objective at minimal cost. But then we changed the mission. When the Afghanis wanted their country back, we said “no” and set about trying to change their society. A hopeless task on which we wasted much blood and treasure.
The Gulf War was arguably justifiable, depending on what you believe about what we told Saddam during the lead up to his invasion. It achieved its objective at a very low cost and G.H.W. Bush prudently refused to expand the war by invading Iraq.
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But to justify the war, our government demonized Saddam. So it was an embarrassment to have him remain in power. To ease the embarrassment, we subjected the Iraqi people to a decade of sanctions.
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The only good thing to come out of the invasion of Iraq was to end the sanctions. There was a much easier way to do that.
Mike M.
Do you remember that some ninny on our state department staff told Sadadam that we had no interests in the area whereupon he invaded Kuwait?
john ferguson (Comment #223024): “Do you remember that …”
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No, I don’t remember that. I wasn’t there.
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I am aware that such a claim has been made and seems plausible. But I am not aware that it has every been proven. Which is why I said “depending on what you believe about what we told Saddam”.
A counter example: Obama chose to not intervene in the Syrian situation which resulted in the global expansion of ISIS and half a million people dead. We ended up in there anyway. Could an early intervention have prevented, or at least lessened those costs? It’s not surprising Obama did not intervene given the Iraq and Afghanistan experiences. Inaction can have costs too, these decisions are hard in real time, and are muddy even when Monday morning quarterbacking.
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Should we have intervened with North Korea and their nukes? So far, so good. I would submit that decision will look less rosy if they choose to use them.
I will stipulate that interventions are always oversold to the public.
Tom,
It wasn’t half a million of our people who died in Syria. Just saying. You can count that as cost to the world, but that isn’t the same as cost to the United States.
Tom Scharf,
“What do you think would have happened if we had not intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan? World peace, rainbows and butterflies?”
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Putting aside the sarcasm, the intervention in Afghanistan was clearly justified: the Taliban were harboring Bin Ladin’s terrorists. It should have been something like: go in for a very short time, kill as many of the Taliban and Bin Laden’s troops as possible, destroy the maximum amount of government infrastructure possible, then loudly pronounce that if Afghanistan became a terrorist sanctuary again, the next time we came would be much, much worse. Then pull out 100%. No need to salt the Earth, but no need to clean up the mess either.
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Iraq was a powder keg, with long term suppression of a Shia majority by a Sunni minority. Once it was clear that there were no WMDs (which was quick), we should have pulled out 100%, and left with the same warning as in Afghanistan. There was zero need for us to do ‘nation building’ in Iran, nor any need to establish a government. Just do the minimum needed for US security, leave ASAP, and let the Iraqis and Allah figure out what happens next.
Mike M,
“So who would provide those guarantees? And what would ensure that the guarantee means something? Real questions.”
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Real answer: that is something to be negotiated. I can’t speculate what assurances the Russians and Ukrainians would settle for, but I do know that Ukraine entering NATO means no end to fighting.
Ken Fritsch,
“I have not been knowingly infected to date and was thinking of getting tested for evidence of previous infection. Anecdotally I know from friends and relatives the knowing infection rate is 98 to 99 %.”
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I don’t think that 98% to 99% is right. Here is NPR’s summary:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/20/1188914806/you-know-those-folks-who-had-covid-but-no-symptoms-a-new-study-offers-an-explana
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Here is the original study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06331-x
They show that ~20% of the people have a genetic variant of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) which gives them protection from covid 19 symptomatic illness if they have previously been infected with two of the common cold coronaviruses (OC43-CoV and HKU1-CoV).
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There are caveats, of course: the study was limited geographically and did not include a representative mix of different racial groups. Still, the conclusion seems pretty clear: lots of people never get symptomatic illness. The prevalence of antibodies to covid 19 could well be 98+%, but it looks like only about 80% of covid 19 infections are symptomatic.
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Further update on the material which is claimed to be superconducting at ambient conditions: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments
The theoretical calculations make me less skeptical than after the first report. Still, jury is out.
That would assume that intervention would make it less likely that North Korea used nukes. I find that an assumption difficult to swallow.
mark bofill,
“In my view then, the burden is on those arguing the wars were worth it to demonstrate that we at least accomplished something worth thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.
Just my view.”
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Exactly my view as well, and that demonstration does not exist. We wasted trillions and thousands of US soldiers (and untold thousands of civilians and combatants in those countries) for nothing of value.
And here is the worst part: we are on pace to spend $120 billion a year on Ukraine, for an indefinite number of years. If those vast expenditures also lead to every city in the USA being reduce to a radioactive ash heap, with 175 million dead, those responsible for the catastrophe still won’t admit error.
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IMHO, the cost and downside risk of our current policy is far greater than any possible benefit.
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I am reminded a bit of the darkly humorous end of “Dr. Strangelove”, where the entirety of humanity faces extinction from a Russian doomsday device, set to go off automatically in case of nuclear war. When the war starts and Dr. Strangelove learns of the doomsday device, he complains that the Russians didn’t publicized the fact they had set up the device. Nuclear war is madness, and policies which make it more likely are also mad.
Steve, I have read through the HLA study previously, but I do not believe they claimed that the genetic protection would be 100% affective.
I have a difficult time believing that if 20 percent of the population had no symptoms that they would have been motivated to be tested for Covid-19 through the normal testing process.
HaroldW,
Thanks for the link. The levitation remains unconvincing, but at least the theoretical calculations for the substitution of 10% copper for lead seem reasonably consistent with the measured properties.
Ken,
I think the very high incidence of antibodies (eg >95%) comes from testing blood samples drawn for other tests, not from people who never had symptoms getting themselves tested for antibodies.
Steve, you are correct about the high rates of discovered infections coming from seroprevalance tests that can distingiush between infection and vaccination. I have read of an analysis where nearly 50% of those testing seroprevalance positive claimed they never had Covid-19.
My point in a previous post was that the individuals I know who have had Covid-19 all had some level of symptoms for various periods of time. My niece and I are the only individuals of approximately 200 that I know who have not had any level of symptoms. I could have been misinformed on a few of the individuals who found infection by test and not symptoms but not a number approaching 20 %.
If jim hadn’t coughed, tested and come out positive last year, I would never have tested. I came up positive a few days later.
We both took paxlovid (because its only shown to work if taken pretty much immediately.) But based on the symptoms (or lack thereof) I had, I would never have tested.
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Maybe I would eventually have had symptoms. But maybe not.
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I did nap a lot, but that might have been the combination of hypothyroid and quarantining.
Lucia,
Maybe you are part of the lucky 20%.
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My symptoms were significant; fever of almost 102F, pounding headache, body aches….. until two doses of Paxlovid. I am most definitely not among the lucky 20%.
Hi Mike M.
This article appears to describe what I took to be the April Glaspe pass-taking on our opportunity to dissuade Saddam from invading Kuwait.
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The author and participants at State he reports on do not share my opinion that this was a blunder apparently relying on the fall-back that she was expressing historical US policy with regard to inter-Arab borders.
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Nuts. Weak Tea,
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https://adst.org/2016/02/a-bum-rap-for-april-glaspie-saddam-and-the-start-of-the-iraq-war/
john ferguson (Comment #223041),
That article is informative. So we definitely did not give Saddam the “green light” to invade Kuwait. Saddam made assumptions about what we would or would not do and we made assumptions about what Saddam would or would not do. Arguably, we could have been clearer but I don’t think that bossing other countries around is or should be the norm in diplomacy.
Mike M.
It might have been better to have told Saddam that we would invade Iraq if he invaded Kuwait. I suppose that might be construed as bossy, but we ultimatrely did it.
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So I see misinforming Saddam on our potential reaction was not a red light, at least.
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I concluded from the article that this was an example of State not wanting to be thought responsible for ill consequences of anything they do.
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But to honor your suggestion re:bossing, maybe they shouldn’t. And then maybe no-one would take them seriously, a position I have some sympathy with.
A time line I find interesting
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3/17 – Hunter admits laptop
3/18 – Trump indictment news
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6/8 – FBI doc alleges Biden bribe
6/9 – Trump indicted
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7/26 – Hunter plea deal collapses
7/27 – Trump indicted
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7/31 – Devon Archer testifies
8/1 – Trump indicted
“Ukraine’s Lack Of Success Makes Them Grow Desperate”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5dDWxF9To
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Frontline update
john ferguson (Comment #223043): “It might have been better to have told Saddam that we would invade Iraq if he invaded Kuwait.”
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Indeed it might have been. Hindsight is 20-20. But I think that diplomats do not normally make threats unless they have to and it seems that State did not anticipate an invasion. Maybe they should have, but that would be speculation.
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Even if State had insufficient foresight, that does not in any way excuse Saddam.
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This exchange started when I wrote (Comment #223023): “The Gulf War was arguably justifiable, depending on what you believe about what we told Saddam”. I think I will change that to: The Gulf War was justifiable.
lucia (Comment #223039)
August 3rd, 2023 at 5:58 am
From my circle of acquaintances, most times, a Covid infection by a member of a household lead to other members contacting it. The feedback I had was that all members had some level of symptoms, but maybe they would not have tested for it if the initial individual’s infection was not found positive.
I live alone and thus I have had that protection from infection. I was exposed early in the pandemic after having an unmasked face to face discussion for some time with an individual who tested positive for Covid the next day. My tests were negative after that exposure with no symptoms.
I have not had any symptoms for colds and flues for many years now. I have noticed that many of the apparent holdouts for Covid infections, that I know, have in recent months been infected and that is why I think I will eventually be infected.
I will continue to attempt to make sense out of what my lying eyes and ears are telling me versus that coming from the experts.
There may be levels of what is considered asymptomatic.
“ U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – We have no opinion on your Arab – Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America. (Saddam smiles)”
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1 month later
“ U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.”
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https://www.globalresearch.ca/gulf-war-documents-meeting-between-saddam-hussein-and-ambassador-to-iraq-april-glaspie/31145
Ed Forbes:
“1 month later
“ U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.””
Ed, don’t you think it likely that there was someone in the US government who expected this and saw no reason to share this belief with this clearly inadequate “representative”
Obvioualy not subject to documentation, but still….
John, one can generally not subscribe an action to intelligence when stupidity and ignorance suffice. I have low confidence in the intelligence and logical thinking of the US State Department foreign office.
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Obviously the foreign office was content if Iraq invaded and only took a “piece” of Kuwait, so Iraq was given the green light to invade. I think that opinion changed due to outside pressure, so State had to change the narrative.
This makes the most sense of all the stuff I read about the stalled Ukrainian offensive:
“Ukrainian Troops Trained by the West Stumble in Battle. Ukraine’s army has for now set aside U.S. fighting methods and reverted to tactics it knows best. “
“Equipped with advanced American weapons and heralded as the vanguard of a major assault, the troops became bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships. Units got lost. One unit delayed a nighttime attack until dawn, losing its advantage.”
“Ukrainian military commanders have changed tactics, focusing on wearing down the Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire.”
From the NYT… Link to avoid paywall:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/us/politics/ukraine-troops-counteroffensive-training.html
Ed Forbes:
Agreed.
Since we are sharing Covid stories…
The first time I was sure I had it. [Close contact with someone who tested positive followed by symptoms a few days later] It was during one of the testing fiascos and it took ten days to get an appointment. I tested negative.
The second time my wife was mildly sick but refused to take the test. I got sick the next Saturday and tested positive on a home test. I am the poster child for who should die from it, I have three co-morbidities. I called my Dr. and got a return from the on-call guy. He was at a restaurant. He asked what medications I took and said that because I took Eliquis he would not prescribe Paxlovid. He prescribed a steroid because my Asthma was acting up. And said to call the office on Monday. I was a little better by Monday and my regular Dr. said it would be best to just tough it out. It took two weeks and another dose of steroids, but I got better… but not all the way. It took months to get back to normal.
Ken “ There may be levels of what is considered asymptomatic.”
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I agree.
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I made the informed choice not to take the shots as they were totally untested in any reasonable interpretation of “tested”. They are also not a “vaccine” as have been defined historically.
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I did not come down with COVID even living with my significant other who did take the shots and came down with, and tested positive, twice. I made the point of requesting antibody tests for myself several times, and both came up negative in addition to the many required tests for infection I had to put up with.
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I generally do not come down with colds or flu. Sometimes, but I go years between cases.
Russell “Ukrainian military commanders have changed tactics, focusing on wearing down the Russian forces with artillery and long-range missiles instead of plunging into minefields under fire.”
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Good luck with that. Russia outclasses Ukraine about 10:1 by all accounts in artillery and has complete air superiority on the frontline. A war of attrition is exactly what Russia wants.
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Russia has a very short supply line from Russia proper where Ukraines supply line stretches over 1000 km back to Poland with the entire of Ukraine under constant missile and drone attacks.
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Logistics wins attrition wars and Ukraine is losing the logistical battle.
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Ed Forbes (Comment #223050): “Obviously the foreign office was content if Iraq invaded”.
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You have ZERO evidence of that.
The White House and by implication the US Government were content about Russia invading Ukraine.
Biden as good as said go ahead.
The EU were equally obliging until people power rolled their views back.
Invading Kuwait was belligerent and stupid by Australian standards but macho in the Middle East.
Mike,
the ambassador expected Iraq to take part of Kuwait and did not seem to have any problem with the invasion as such. The ambassadors words speaks for itself. Her surprise was only that Iraq took it all, not just part.
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You are the one required to prove otherwise, which you have not done.
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“ U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – Obviously, I didn’t think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait.”
ED,
“Russia has a very short supply line from Russia proper where Ukraines supply line stretches over 1000 km back to Poland”
Wrong. Russias’s supply line stretches to North Korea, 7,000 kilometers away.
Yesterday’s WSJ:
“Russia Is Again Turning to North Korea to Replenish Ammunition Supplies”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-is-again-turning-to-north-korea-to-replenish-ammunition-supplies-d79a5318
Russians are reporting that a number of unidentified naval drones attacked the Novorossiysk port. Russian officials declared that all attacks were successfully repelled.
BUT, pictures and videos emerged of the large warship Olenegorsky Gornyk listing heavily and being towed in the port. It looks like it may soon join the Warship Moskva as an improvised submarine.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1687350645592817665?s=20
Update: Onboard video from the Ukrainian drone as it attacks the Russian BDK-91 Olenegorski Gornjak landing ship.
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1687358900079587329?s=20
In house spread with the original strain was ~25%. That went over 50% with omicron as I recall, and omicron had a lot of people with vaccinations or natural immunity. Omicron was very transmissive.
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There was a few months time around the initial omicron breakout that every virologist and scientist paying attention had to know with certainty that covid containment was impossible. Their public facing behavior after that to deny this reality I find inexcusable. The shaming continued, support for mandates, censoring of covid on social media, etc.
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I suggest that one root cause of this problem is the very human tendency to never reverse a publicly stated opinion. Their previous statements made with unjustifiable certainty in order to control public behavior became a big problem. Credibility has now been cratered and I don’t see how they do anything different next time, because next time it will also be “too important” to tell the public the truth.
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It would be interesting to take a retrospective review of when experts personally believe containment was futile once the political pressure is off.
I haven’t had a cold or flu for decades, and as far as I know I have never gotten covid, neither has my wife. I was pretty sick about 2 months ago for 3 days, one rough night, body aches, and sore throat which was very unusual. I did a home test after day 1 and it came up negative, but those are pretty spotty. Perhaps I got it, if not I will eventually for sure.
I have not followed the what was told to Kuwait/Saddam and when debate, but my guess is that the US was hesitant to publicly state we would militarily defend Kuwait. They weren’t our best friends, but closer to an ally than most. Anyway, I would not be surprised if it was all wishy-washy looking back. Our statements with Taiwan and Ukraine are also all over the place.
China will participate in the Saudi peace summit….
“Chinese Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui will participate in an international meeting on the implementation of Ukraine’s peace formula, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Aug. 4.
Saudi Arabia will host the meeting, set to take place on Aug. 5-6”
Everybody but the Russians will be there….
“On July 31, the Spanish news outlet Europa Press cited anonymous EU sources saying that around 40 countries were invited to the informal meeting to discuss Kyiv’s peace initiatives”
https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1687486940742856704?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
I wonder if we might have been better off leaving Saddam in place to give Iran a hard time. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thought had passed over the table at least before …
Tom Scharf,
“I suggest that one root cause of this problem is the very human tendency to never reverse a publicly stated opinion.”
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Sure, but I think there was also a strong political factor which added to the problem: all those (mostly Democrat) elites didn’t want the (mostly Republican) deplorables saying “I told you so”. That might even have career and electoral implications. Instead, they doubled down on clearly false narratives (like “previous infection may not protect you”) and buried all the contrary facts with obfuscation, misdirection, and outright lies.
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What I find utterly evil was the damage done to many innocent individuals (including job losses, dishonorable discharges, etc) as a result of the dishonestly of those elites; they willfully hurt innocent people with their dishonesty, and didn’t give a f*ck. Their behavior is a pretty good working definition of ‘sociopath’.
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Everyone involved (leadership of CDC, FDA, and all the virologists who chose CYA over honesty) should be held to account, starting with the evil elf himself, Anthony Fauci; they all work to this day to hide their many lies. But they won’t be held to account, except maybe in history a century from now. And maybe not even then.
john ferguson,
“I wonder if we might have been better off leaving Saddam in place to give Iran a hard time.”
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Almost certainly. Makes perfect sense to have a lesser evil fight on our behalf against a greater evil. Of course, Washington lacks perfect sense… hell, Washington lacks any sense at all!
We certainly learned Saddam had to rule with an iron fist in order to keep the Shia and Sunnis from killing each other.
Ed Forbes: “I made the informed choice not to take the [Covid-19] shots as they were totally untested in any reasonable interpretation of “tested”. They are also not a “vaccine” as have been defined historically.”
Although the EUA for the various vaccinations were approved with unusual speed, I will disagree with you about whether the testing was adequate. (I have a sister, on the other hand, who agrees with you.)
But I’m curious about your claim that they do not fit the definition of a vaccine — can you elaborate?
The vaccine certainly does not provide sterilizing immunity, but that is a very high standard. The vaccine’s performance against the original strain was very high (>90% protection against symptomatic infection). The virus evolved.
Shame and woe. My local library has pulled the plug on a Kirk Cameron event. Sad.
[Edit: Although Huntsville is chock full of conference centers, I’m sort of astonished they couldn’t secure an alternative venue..]
Harold,” But I’m curious about your claim that they do not fit the definition of a vaccine — can you elaborate?”
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My statement was “ They are also not a “vaccine” as have been defined historically.”
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A long way from my expertise, but my reading gives me no confidence in Recombinant COVID-19 vaccines. I REALLY don’t want changes to my DNA by a drug so minimally tested.
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Prior to recombinant DNA genetic engineering, a vaccine was made from either dead or reduced pathogens. Successful vaccination gave future immunity from the pathogen.
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recombinant DNA COVID “vaccine” does not give future immunity. In contrast, current studies seem to show that people treated with this DNA process is more likely to have additional bouts with COVID than do the untreated. My wife came down with COVID twice after being “vaccinated”.
Ed Forbes,
Well… it’s not made from cows. Nor from vaccinia. But words evolve.
Can you elaborate what your objections to calling it a vaccine is?
Ed Forbes,
The m-RNA vaccines do not provide complete immunity (like smallpox vaccination does). OTOH, they clearly reduced the rate of serious illness, especially among the population over 60 years age; saved a lot of lives.
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Yes, the m-RNA vaccines were oversold, and used to bludgeon people into submission for no good reason… and to punish those who would not submit. Those responsible for the excesses were, IMHO, either tantamount to idiots, or simply evil. Either way, it is a sad commentary on the ‘elites’ in the USA who pretend to be both uber-moral and smarter and than everyone else. They are in fact neither.
Lucia “ Can you elaborate what your objections to calling it a vaccine is?”
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My statement was “ They are also not a “vaccine” as have been defined historically.”
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the definition of a vaccine has changed to support a narrative, not medical science. recombinant DNA genetically engineered procedures have nothing in common with any previous definition of a vaccine.
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This is getting into the neighborhood of trying to define what the definition of a “woman” is. 🙂
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DeSantis finally said something else that makes sense:
“A really good DeSantis idea: DeSantis wants to make student loan debt dischargeable during bankruptcy—like any other loan—which would be an enormous relief for those drowning in student debt, which currently clings to you for life like a barnacle. The twist: he would put universities on the hook for it. “I think the universities should be responsible for the student debt. You produce somebody that can be successful, they pay off the loans, great. If you don’t, then you’re gonna be on the hook,””
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Nit likely, but it would be worth a good laugh making academia respond to this.
Ed Forbes
Nothing? Originally vaccines were from cow pox (vaccinia). Then the word changed to include polio which contains no vaccinia. Subunits have been around for a long time. I’m not seeing how you think an injection made from a subunit of the virus (spike) has nothing in common with other vaccines.
Saying “recombinant DNA” doesn’t magically make something that uses a subunit of the virus to stimulate immunity has “nothing” in common with other vaccines made from subunits of a virus.
Ed Forbes
No. You aren’t. And even if you were, you are failing to provide your “original definition of vaccine” so we can see if the Covid vaccines are the only ones that don’t make the cut, or if tons of other things we have been calling vaccines for a long time also don’t make the cut.
After all: only one vaccine was made from “vaccinia”. That was the original definition of “vaccine”. We need to know what year in time you think the ‘one true definition’ was used.
Lucia
Yes we are into the same neighborhood as other controversial definitions. The entire medical debate on the subject has been politicized.
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I explained my position. If you are not happy with it, o’well, I can live with that.
Ed Forbes,
According to the American Heritage dictionary (5th edition, published 2011) a vaccine is:
“A preparation of a weakened or killed pathogen, such as a bacterium or virus, or of a portion of the pathogen’s structure that upon administration to an individual stimulates antibody production or cellular immunity against the pathogen but is incapable of causing severe infection.”
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To claim the m-RNA vaccines are not vaccines is splitting hairs, not making A reasoned argument. Do the covid vaccines raise antibodies? Yes. Do they mostly eliminate severe infection? Yes. Why do you think people routively call them vaccines if they are not vaccines?
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I have not a clue why you think m-RNA vaccines have anything to do with recombinant DNA.
I remember reading controversy, something about the definition of vaccine changing. Let me google.
Is this what the hoopla is all about Ed?
…
I used to think of vaccines as 100% effective, as simply conveying immunity in all cases. I gather now that this was never really the case, and this makes sense when I think about it. It is also remotely possible that I am being gaslighted I suppose and the vaccines of yore really did have something closely approximating a 100% success / immunity rate. I guess in my spare time I will investigate. Maybe.
Shrug.
It seems to me that a “vaccine” should be something that provides durable protection. Maybe not lifetime, but certainly more than a few months.
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Maybe I am mistaken, but even the flu shot provides longer lasting protection against the strains included. But the strains are constantly changing.
Maybe the COVID vaccines sucked. I’m not sure that makes them not vaccines though.
Steve,
there is a difference between RNA and DNA vaccines, but I still lump both as procedures/products, not vaccines as such. There are a number of procedures and products that reduce the effect of pathogens, but are not considered vaccines.
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what I stated above on what I believe constitutes a vaccine.
“ a vaccine was made from either dead or reduced pathogens. Successful vaccination gave future immunity from the pathogen.”
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Neither RNA or DNA match this definition.
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One instance of DNA vaccine and how they differ from RNA based vaccines.
“ the COVID-19 DNA vaccine ZyCoV-D remains stable at room temperature for at least 3 months and even longer at 2–8°C (35.6–46.4°F), making it invaluable for settings with limited resources.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/dna-vs-mrna-vaccines-similarities-and-differences#DNA-vs.-mRNA-vaccines:-How-they-differ
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“ A recombinant vaccine is a vaccine produced through recombinant DNA technology. This involves inserting the DNA encoding an antigen (such as a bacterial surface protein) that stimulates an immune response into bacterial or mammalian cells, expressing the antigen in these cells and then purifying it from them.”
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https://www.nature.com/subjects/recombinant-vaccine
Last week, Moscow warned that all ships crossing the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports would be considered ‘potential carriers of military-purpose cargoes.’ Tonight the first ship was attacked under this policy… only it was an oil taker heading to a Russian port. Ukraine hit it in the Kerch Strait.
Here are pictures of the flooded engine room and damaged deckhouse of the oil tanker ‘Sig’ after taking a Ukrainian strike:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1687663831403675648?s=20
I believe this is called karma but it may also be called irony.
Its this type of information that drives me insane
.
Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine
“ With all viral vectors, one issue to consider is preexisting immunity. If a person encountered the virus that serves as the vector in the past, they may have antibodies to the virus. This means that their body will try to fight and destroy the viral vector, potentially making a vaccine less effective.”
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-how-do-viral-vector-vaccines-work#Safety-and-immunogenicity
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If one has “preexisting immunity”, what does “ potentially making a vaccine less effective.” even mean ! ?
Update: Last recorded position of the oil tanker ‘Sig’. It is apparent from this chart that it is in a crowded shipping lane surrounded by other vessels.
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1687671230541840384?s=20
Ed Forbes
Okie. Dokie. But differences existing doesn’t mean there are no similarities.
Okeie. Docie. Elaborite. Name the “number of procedures and products”. Pennicillin? Something else? This alone does not advance your claim.
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You need to provide your definition of vaccine if your claim is going to be testable. You have. not. done. so.
Ed Forbes (Comment #223044)
A time line I find interesting.
–
Most likely coincidental.
Charging Trump leads to more notice perhaps of Hunter anyway.
–
Lucia , I missed your comments about misuse of power by Trump in relation to those three attempts.
I would have called the actions use of rather than misuse of because the reasoning behind it was to reduce the risk of Covid and save American lives?
Well antivirals are “procedure or products” that reduce the effect of pathogens but they do that by inferring with binding mechanism (usually) or reproduction not by training the immune system to attack the pathogen. Things that train the immune system are called vaccines. I cannot see why you are trying to split hairs on this.
Phil Scadden,
“I cannot see why you are trying to split hairs on this.”
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Agree 100%. Ed is making a silly argument. He needs a very good microtome to continue that hair splitting, and it still won’t be convincing. I also see zero connection between m-RNA vaccine and DNA; just bizarre.
angech
Motivation doesn’t change presidential misuse or power into use or power. Certain powers are granted by the constitution. This includes executing laws passed by congress. If a power isn’t granted by the constitution or passed by congress, the president can’t legally execute that.
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Of course, opinions also differ on Trumps “true” motivation. And whatever his true motivation was, the court said he had to provide evidence his order would achieve the legal motive of saving lives. The president can’t just, for example, writing an executive order banning eating mushroom, chocolate or 16 ounce slurpies claiming his motive is to “save lives” . He would have to have the power to ban foods that kill granted by congress through some law, and then he would need evidence the foods he banned killed. He can’t just say his motives is “to say lives”. He needs to tailor the ban.
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If he doesn’t have evidence, and he doesn’t tailor, his ban would be a “misuse”.
Phil,
I also don’t know why the question of “was the definition changed” is important to him. I don’t think it was– and he has brought no evidence (because he won’t bring us the “previous” definitions from various dictionaries.) But even if it was changed….. so what?
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The questions about efficacy, evidence of efficacy, harm etc. matter. Whether someone tweaked a “definition” doesn’t matter to anything important as far as I can see.
mark bofill (Comment #223087): “Maybe the COVID vaccines sucked. I’m not sure that makes them not vaccines though.”
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I suppose that depends on how badly they suck. I do not regard blood letting (perhaps by applying leeches) as medical treatment.
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Last winter, there were TV ads (paid for by the government, I think) saying that if it was more than 5 months since your last COVID shot, it was time for another. Five months. That strikes me as being a closer to blood letting than it is to the smallpox vaccine. So I have no problem with people saying that the COVID shot is not really a vaccine. Or with people saying that it is a vaccine.
Russell Klier (Comment #223089): “I believe this is called karma but it may also be called irony.”
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I think that Ukraine hitting Russian shipping is called “payback”.
Ed Forbes (Comment #223088): “a vaccine was made from either dead or reduced pathogens. Successful vaccination gave future immunity from the pathogen.”
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The important part of that is the second sentence. The first sentence is merely a description of the usual way to make a vaccine.
Buildings used to be made of things like wood, stone, and bricks. Nevertheless, a glass and steel skyscraper is a building.
Ed Forbes (Comment #223090): “If one has “preexisting immunity”, what does “ potentially making a vaccine less effective.” even mean ! ?”
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I means exactly what is says. The vector and the target are different viruses. Immunity against the vector might prevent the development of immunity against the target.
It sounds to me like that is similar to immune system imprinting (aka original antigenic sin). Imprinting caused the first dengue vaccines to fail miserably and might account for why the flu shot has so little effectiveness.
Ed Forbes has a legitimate point re the CDC change in definition.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html
That is indeed a very major change.
That is disingenuous.
That is not a “misconception”. That is what people were told.
That is an outright lie. No testing of that was done before the vaccines were approved.
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So Ed has a legitimate point as to the CDC definitions being changed because of the failures of the COVID vaccine.
Lucia,
I care about definitions when they have legal implications, such as the legal definitions of assault rifles and machine guns. I agree here though that I’m not sure what difference all this makes in this case, regarding the definition of vaccines.
[Edit: I can imagine arguments that [might] be made regarding why this is important. Those arguments don’t appear to have been advanced, maybe I should add.]
So at what point did the problem crop up in calling these COVID treatments vaccines? I mean, Trump called them vaccines even after he left office:
But somehow it’s not Trump calling this stuff vaccines that is at issue here, it is the CDC. Seems downright odd, almost as if people care more about who is calling this stuff ‘vaccines’ than whether or not the term is actually merited.
Go figure.
The m-RNA vaccines were never truly 100% effective, even against the original covid-19 strain. The first published trial data showed close to 95% efficacy against infection vs a placebo. There was no deception on this.
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Where there was a lot of deception was in later claims the vaccines would stop the spread of covid-19, when more infective strains made it clear the virus caused many symptomatic cases, even after multiple vaccinations (>>>5% failure rate).
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Instead of recognizing and admitting that the vaccines were not going to stop the spread of covid-19, the Biden administration continued to insist everyone had to be vaccinated to “stop killing people”, and as a condition of being allowed to work or be in the military.
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As with all things Biden: this was dishonest, evil, and stupid. Lies, even if well intentioned, are still lies.
Taking covid boosters reduced your chance of symptomatic infection for a period of maybe 4 months. Maybe a peak of 40% effectiveness a couple weeks after the shot. As omicron became widespread that level of protection was reduced, and the outcome of an omicron infection was not as severe anyway.
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Even right-thinking liberals aren’t lining up for boosters anymore.
What really changed here to cause that? There was a poll about two years in where liberals thought the chances of hospitalization after infection was 50%. It was about 10x lower than that, especially for non-seniors. Omicron started infecting even right-thinking people, and right-thinking people were clearly infecting each other. Once the threat was viscerally shown to be smaller than feared, they lightened up. Belief in “science” wasn’t working anymore.
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One of the most striking biases in media coverage was the framing of covid deaths. One group was a victim of an unfortunate and uncontrollable viral illness, and another group deserved their fate because of their own immoral behavior and choices of elected representatives. New York vs. Florida.
It’s not really talked about anymore, but covid was insidious because it could spread before symptoms, and also potentially spread without any symptoms at all. We were just getting one very bad news update after another for a while.
Tom Scharf,
“Even right-thinking liberals aren’t lining up for boosters anymore.”
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Too bad.
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If they kept getting boosters then they would likely have many more cases of covid, not less. Which seems to me perfectly just, since they are a “group (that) deserves their fate because of their own immoral behavior and choices of elected representatives”. I can’t imagine a group more deserving of added covid cases.
Lucia,
Actually that was me explaining that I didn’t understand the point of the discussion about this particular definition either, notwithstanding my concern regarding other definitions.
[Edit: But I could elaborate briefly. I discussed Forced Reset Triggers earlier with Steve and he suggested I was arm waving about the legal definition when the FRT for all essential purposes converted an AR-15 from semi to full auto. Since I don’t support the ban on fully automatic weapons, the legal definition actually does matter to me, since the specifics of the definition can hamper the government’s ability to effectively deny citizens full auto. At any rate, I don’t see what difference the definition of ‘vaccine’ makes here.]
[Edit2: You can remove this comment as well if you’d like.]
Tom,
Obviously, once a right thinking person got it, their whole family got it, none died and in fact, for most, it was less of a problem than flu, they sort of know it’s not the threat first described.
That said: part of the drop in threat is that omicron appears to be milder. Part is treatment is now available. yada, yada…. But it’s obviously not a death sentence. Nearly everyone got it and we did not lose 1/3 the human population from the epidemic.
Mark,
Yeah! I realized that and deleted. But you must have seen it already!
Tom Scharf,
“There was a poll about two years in where liberals thought the chances of hospitalization after infection was 50%. It was about 10x lower than that, especially for non-seniors.”
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That same survey showed that ‘deplorables’ had a much more accurate understanding of the risk of hospitalization. IIRC, for those 35 to 45, the risk of hospitalization was well under 1%, not 5%. And under 35? One in 400 or 500. Kids? Teens? Forgetaboutit.
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The nutty thing about the whole covid panic was the complete refusal of those “right thinking” folks, the ones who insist they “trust the science”, to actually learn anything about the risk profile associated with covid.
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What they actually trust are people like themselves: “trained experts” who balance costs and benefits based 100% on the views of the left. Most of those “right thinking” people wouldn’t recognize science if it jumped up and bit their hind quarters. That is not going to change.
SteveF,
Was that poll pre or post vaccine introduction? I had thought the pre-vaccine hospitalization and mortality rate for old people especially with co-morbidities was not trace.
john ferguson,
I don’t recall when the poll was released, but I am pretty sure it was well after the vaccines were introduced.
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The risk pre-vaccine increased exponentially with age. I examined the first 55,000 confirmed cases in Florida (they reported every confirmed case early on). The fatality rate for my age at the time (70) was about 3-4% of confirmed cases. Of course, not all cases were reported, so the actual rate was likely smaller.
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If you want, I can send you a couple of graphics from those 55,000 cases showing relative risk vs age. Risk of death reached ~35% for the oldest cohort (>90 IIRC). For young people the risk was minuscule.
It’s ok Steve,
I had numbers at the time which were similar to your suggestion in your last paragraph.
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thanks.
mark bofill (Comment #223104): “So at what point did the problem crop up in calling these COVID treatments vaccines?”
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I am not sure it ever did. I never heard anything like that until Ed Forbes made a comment about it. And it seems that most here had not heard of it either. But maybe it should be a problem.
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The entire public health establishment, with the CDC front and center, undermined their own credibility with their bad behavior during the pandemic. The largely failed vaccine did even more damage. And now they make it even worse by changing the definition of vaccine so as to pretend that the COVID shot is OK.
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They have likely done untold damage to support for actually effective vaccines. Saying that the COVID shot is not a vaccine is arguably a statement in support of vaccination.
Do you really believe that?
Hi Lucia,
Is Chicago done? Or, is there any hope. I just saw where the mayor, Brandon Johnson said youths rioting were not a “mob” but were a “gathering.” Crime is awful in Chicago and it looks like the mayor is putting gasoline on the fire. https://nypost.com/2023/08/04/chicago-mayor-slams-reporter-for-calling-riots-mob-actions/
““We’re not talking about mob actions. I didn’t say that,” Johnson barked back. “These large gatherings … it’s important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way.”
Roger Pielke Jr hammers the virologists:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-proximal-origins-must-be-retracted
Wow. He calls the authors, Fauci, and others dishonest producers of misinformation, and he calls on Nature to retract the paper. He could not have said it better.
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Maybe there is hope insane gain of function research will be stopped.
If your definition of a vaccine is “something that must be 100% effective” then some “traditional” vaccines sure fail that test (eg shingles, measles). More on numbers for this in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117437/
Note date of publications is 2000. Long before COVID. Vaccines without 100% efficiency very much depend on large proportion of population getting vaccinated. Especially measles.
Mike M – “No testing of that was done before the vaccines were approved.” Um then what do you make of all the published tests before approval? I can only assume you are working with a different definition of “test”.
mark bofill (Comment #223119): “Do you really believe that?”
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Yes, I believe it likely that they have done damage. There have been news reports of dropping vaccination rates. The question is whether rates will recover, level off a little lower than they were, or continue to drop.
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I suspect that a small drop in the number getting vaccinated would be accompanied by a much larger increase in the number getting vaccinated unwillingly. If so, I think the consequences will be hard to predict.
Phil Scadden (Comment #223122): “If your definition of a vaccine is ‘something that must be 100% effective’ “.
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That is a straw man since that is nobody’s definition.
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Phil Scadden: “what do you make of all the published tests before approval?”
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I don’t think they were any published tests before approval, if you mean published in the peer reviewed literature.
Preventing severe disease was a secondary objective of the clinical protocols. I am pretty sure that prior to approval statistical power was insufficient for that objective to be met. And of course there was zero testing of the durability of any such protection since the trials were terminated so early.
jd ohio,
I’m glad I’m in DuPage County– not Cook County and of course, not Chicago.
MikeM
What is your definition. You can hardly complain that people are guessing when you won’t give one. (Or I guess that’s Ed?)
Lucia: “I’m glad I’m in DuPage County– not Cook County and of course, not Chicago.”
I am wondering whether Chicago’s problems are bleeding out to the surrounding areas and whether there is any sense of emergency that Chicago needs to head in a different direction.
MikeM
Except that wasn’t his claim. He didn’t mention the CDC. His claim is much broader
“Historically” the word “vaccine” has evolved. The dictionary on the shelf in my library is presumably “historical” and says it’s something made with vaccinnia– which would rule out Polio vaccines, measel vaccines, flu vaccines and so on. And generally, at any given time you can find all sorts of definitions of words.
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Updating to change “immunity” to “protection” doesn’t strike me as particularly motivated by covid alone. I get that people are more likely to update a definition when the topic is “hot”. But other things we call vaccines really only give “protection”. Shingrix, flu come to mind.
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If the poor wording only struck them when Covid happened… ok. But protection better matches a number of existing vaccines.
jd ohio
Not so much yet. The attitude of district attorneys and law enforcement in DuPage is rather different from Chicago. Criminals from Chicago know if they come here to riot, they’ll get thrown in jail.
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I am annoyed by beggers lately though. I wish it was illegal walk between cars waiting at red lights while carrying signs asking for money. And, for what it’s worth, I think we should not allow betters and also not allow charities that ask for donations. Drivers need to be attentive to lots of things happening at large intersections and pedestrians walking between cars and asking for money distracts from paying attention to other cars motor cycles, bikes, lights etc.
lucia (Comment #223126): “What is your definition.”
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Nothing wrong with the old CDC definition.
MikeM
But then Shingrix and flu vaccines are not vaccines because they only give “protection” not “immunity”. But the word vaccine was used for them before Covid. Posted definitions are supposed to match use– and the former CDC definition did not match use. That’s a flaw in the definition and so “something wrong”.
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Heck, according to Smallpox Vaccine: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2003), the efficacy of the small pox vaccine hasn’t been evaluated in controlled studies. And that 2003 paper describing what the small pox vaccine does is give “protection”– which you word you object to in the CDC definition. But we see it’s used back in 2003 long before Covid.
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Almost no one is going to call the small pox vaccine “not a vaccine” because those being careful with their language and cautious about what is actually known only claim “good protection” or “partial immunity”.
lucia (Comment #223131) :
I literally don’t know what you are talking about. Maybe there is some technical medical definition of “protection” that I don’t know about? I went looking, but with no success.
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/protection
That would seem to be entirely irrelevant to vaccines.
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And aside from the meaning of “protection”, how are the Shingrix and flu vaccines different from other vaccines? Shingrix has similar efficacy as other vaccines (over 90%). The flu shot is not so effective, but that has to do with the wide range of strains, so far as I am aware.
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The COVID shots seem to be in a class by themselves when it comes to ineffectiveness.
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And I never said the COVID shots weren’t vaccines. I said that Ed had a point (not that he was right in all he said) as to changing the definition of “vaccine”, apparently in response to how crummy the COVID shot is.
lucia (Comment #223131):
That is ludicrous. The smallpox vaccine is a candidate for the most successful medical intervention of all time. The list of competitors is probably very short. It eradicated an exceptionally contagious disease. That is a pretty spectacular level of protection.
Lucia,
I realized I was wasting my breath. Your mileage may vary, but I doubt it.
Son and daughter-in-law enjoyed a shoot-out in front of their house in Adams-Morgan (DC) night before last. Two of the participants are no longer among us. The street and their front lawn were covered with shell casings.
I continue to think that the public good would be better served if marksmanship training were freely available.
Not a peep about it in the news yesterday or today; too busy reporting another shoot-out in a a neighborhood where it might more have been expected.
OOPs, The Adams-Morgan shoot-out was well described in this morning’s WaPo.
“Blah blah blah, whine, whine, whine. America is nothing to be proud of. Look at us! Let’s talk about anything but soccer!”
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I’m paraphrasing of course. That’s the US Women’s Soccer Team over the last 4 years. Knocked out in the round of 16 this morning, their worst showing (ever?) in a very long time. They didn’t score a goal in 3/4 games.
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They missed the frickin’ goal in 3 of their penalty shots today.
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A pathetic and embarrassing showing. For those who have watched sports a long time, this story is familiar. A good team or athlete starts to get too cocky, reads too many praising articles, gets distracted by out of the locker room events, and then stinks it up on the field as if they are entitled to winning.
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I wouldn’t call this schadenfreude for me, I wanted them to be successful, but I can’t say I have a lot of empathy for that performance.
“Preventing severe disease was a secondary objective of the clinical protocols. I am pretty sure that prior to approval statistical power was insufficient for that objective to be met.”
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That makes zero sense. If you prevent symptomatic disease then you also prevent serious illness. The vaccine was >90% effective against symptomatic disease for the original strain, and nearly 100% against serious illness. It was a large scale trial. You need to review the data. In fact the FDA was heavily criticized for waiting so long to approve the vaccine, but that was mostly waiting for safety issues, they knew the vaccine was effective before that.
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I can’t say this often enough, the vaccine performance is relatively poor now because the virus changed, not because the original vaccine was poor. You also have to assess past statements of “misinformation” as to what they knew when they made those statements. That being said, there were many people and organizations making statements well past their sell by dates.
“And of course there was zero testing of the durability of any such protection since the trials were terminated so early.”
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The trials continued after the approval but it was deemed unethical to not tell participants whether they had gotten the vaccine once it was available, so the data was unblinded upon request as I recall.
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Ultimately it didn’t matter because there were vast numbers of people getting the vaccine after approval so durability wasn’t going to be an unknown. I don’t think there were any official claims about durability and it was always an unknown.
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The rate of covid mutation was originally deemed as “slow”, but that seems to be incorrect looking back. Of course when you have a bazillion people infected then a slow rate of mutation looks pretty fast for the whole group.
john ferguson,
Maybe they should consider living somewhere else.
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Were the ‘combatants’ using semi-auto rifles or hand guns? My guess: hand guns. But we have to eliminate semi-auto rifles, well, just because we have to.
Steve,
I have always suspected, darkly, that politicians don’t want the populace armed with semi-auto rifles because they don’t want the people to be able to resist the government.
I ‘get’ that that probably sounds crazy. Maybe it is misplaced in this country. Maybe not.
Well my “straw man” was interpolated from this statement of Ed.
“Prior to recombinant DNA genetic engineering, a vaccine was made from either dead or reduced pathogens. Successful vaccination gave future immunity from the pathogen”
Sorry if I misinterpreted but then the “recombinant DNA”????? is really puzzling as well.
I fully support the decision to release vaccine that was shown to be effective in clinical trials (which is what the approval agencies look at) without waiting for durability testing. A longer wait time would have cost lives.
MikeM
Of course. And if it can’t meet your stated criteria for “vaccine”, clearly there is a problem with your criteria.
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Yes. It eradicated the disease. By getting everyone innoculated. And it took time.
Sure, Ed did.
But Ed didn’t say that.
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Look: decide what claims you want to make. Or what arguments you want to advance. Then you can complain about strawmen. Or complain someone isn’t addressing what you claimed. But meanwhile: just decide what you want to claim.
Tom,
Jim was rooting for Sweden. Cheered when they won.
Pfizer$Pfauci lied to me. They conspired to make me believe this jab was a silver bullet. When I finally got my shot they had me believing that I was invincible. It was all a ruse. Pfizer$Pfauci conspired to rob the US Treasury of billions of dollars… and, so far, no one has gone to jail.
Here we are 18 months later quibbling over semantics and definitions. We should be analyzing how these guys can be arrested.
Russell, Pfizer would lying to you if it knew, on the basis of their testing at the time, that immunity would fade. Frankly, I think Pfizer and like saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives.
I felt “forced” to take the “vaccine”.
Fear, family and the government.
I worry about potential short and longterm consequences.
Nonetheless I am sure the vaccines helped me cope with the virus, along with the antivirals, and so far only other people have had worries with side effects.
Summing up it was worth developing them and distributing them quickly as it saved a lot of lives with an acceptable level of side effects
Phil,
“Pfizer would lying to you if it knew, on the basis of their testing at the time, that immunity would fade.”
Yes, their sin was one of omission. They failed to inform me that they had no clue for how long I would be safe. I am a layman. They [Pfizer$Pfauci] told me, repeatedly that this was a panacea. They didn’t tell me they had no idea how long it would work.
But that is not their only lie. I thought when I got the jab that I was 95% assured that I wouldn’t get the virus. That wasn’t the truth. They only knew 95% assurance that I wouldn’t die, not that I wouldn’t catch it. I remember the 1950s when the Polio vaccine came out… you got the shot, and you didn’t get the virus. They intentionally misled me. I think they should be prosecuted.
[I have no medical background, so pardon the clumsy wording]
It’s morning in Ukraine and there are a lot of spy birds over and near the Black Sea:
NATO Boeing E-3A Sentry with the big AWACS frisbee above the fuselage.
Italian Air Force has the sleek Gulfstream G550
US Navy Boeing P-8A Poseidon
With all the goings on in that area recently, I am suspicious something may be happening.
Russell,
Of course they didn’t know. Layman or not, it was rather obvious that we each had to act under uncertainty. No one could go back a decade in time, run tests in 2010 and find out whether immunity lasted more than 3 months, 6 months, 10 years etc.
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As for what Pfizer said, I don’t think “they” reported test results. Obviously, they only knew what had been tested.
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Steve,
This isn’t the shooting you were asking about, but another recent shooting in that neighborhood involved a handgun:
If he pulled out the gun and then calmly walked away afterwards, that was almost certainly a handgun of some sort. I haven’t been able to find what specific guns were used in the other shooting.
[Edit: People do get murdered with rifles occasionally. Just something like 10-20 times less often than they do with handguns.]
Lucia,
“Layman or not, it was rather obvious that we each had to act under uncertainty.”
Now it is obvious. Back then no one questioned the longevity. The smart people, like Pfauci and Trump, were telling me at daily TV hype events that it was the answer to our prayers. There was not a hint of uncertainty.
And:
“Obviously, they only knew what had been tested.”
I bet they knew a lot more than they told us. I bet they actually tested at some level as to whether the vaccine blocked transmission.
Guys, stopping making stuff up. Here is the original emergency use authorization from the FDA for Pfizer’s vaccine. Nov 20, 2020.
https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download
“6.2. Unknown Benefits/Data Gaps
Duration of protection
As the interim and final analyses have a limited length of follow-up, it is not possible to assess sustained efficacy over a period longer than 2 months.”
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94% efficacy against confirmed covid infection in the >55 year old group. 40,000 participants in a double blind study over 4 months. Severe illness in this trial was 9 for the placebo group and 1 for the vaccine group. About that same ratio would be shown for the public against the original strain.
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If you don’t think the vaccine was working back then, first look and understand Figure 2 and explain your theory again.
Tom,
No normal people had a clue that ‘emergency use authorization, 6.2. Unknown Benefits/Data Gaps’ even existed. We relied on our public health officials who never mentioned any uncertainties.
Russel,
It’s impossible to know the long term consequences of a brand new disease. Covid started around Nov. 2019 or so. No doctor, researcher, scientist or anyone could know effects for any period that is longer than the time between Nov. 2019 and “now”. Because to know consequences of something, you have to have observed those consequences.
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Likewise, no scientist could know consequences over a term longer than the observational period. The observational period for vaccines is shorter than for Covid.
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You can “suspect” whatever you want. But all they could do was suspect long term consequences of the disease and the vaccine. We still don’t know the effect of either after 10 years because we haven’t observed it. Researchers can have educated guesses, but that’s it.
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Honestly, laymen or not, this should be obvious to anyone of modest intelligence who has had some modicum of education.
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We know there were really bad short term consequences of Covid for lots of people — especially older ones. We knew that by observing deaths. The vaccine did help lots of people with those short term consequences, and I think the trade off for older people was definitely in favor of getting the vaccine.
Russel,
Mentioning it in the authorization is mentioning it. I don’t know your definition of “normal people”. We all discussed the authorization here. You were here in comments. I think you are forgetting that you probably read it.
I agree with Tom that the US women’s soccer team got caught-up on their press clippings and were not sufficiently focused on soccer. Part of that has to do with the fawning and patronizing behavior of sportcasters towards the women. Men sportcasters appear to be afraid to say anything negative against the women athletes. Part of this has to do with the woke culture of the female and male sports world which makes a lot of the sportcasters castings appear as phony.
Russell,
Yes, multiply the stated facts by zero and add in your own opinion. The durability of the vaccine was always in question and covered extensively if you were paying attention. The durability was actually pretty good, at least a year, especially against severe disease, for the original strain. Breakthrough infections were rare then, now they are common. Things changed with the variants.
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CNN, Dec 20,2020
“Moderna and Pfizer vaccine candidates have shown high effectiveness in preventing people from getting Covid-19. But the data has not shown yet if the vaccines prevent people from getting infected or from transmitting the disease. ”
Fauci, Dec 10, 2020
“The vaccine is not 100% effective, and we don’t know what the durability of the protection is … wearing a mask, social distancing avoiding crowds, that should all stay as we get into the vaccine program, because there’s still a lot of virus out there”
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If you want to claim that some people and media went overboard with vaccine evangelism, I agree, but your claims are stretching that a bit too far.
Steve,
I know this horse is dead and the glue produced from the body has been processed and sold. Still, a mention because I was unaware of this until today – forget forced reset triggers. Rare Breed Triggers (the manufacturer of FRTs) didn’t play the game nicely and obtain ATF approval before proceeding to market, so they lost. On the other hand, these guys at TAC-CON have obtained ATF approval and are fully ATF compliant, and achieve the same results using slightly different mechanics (‘positive reset’ as opposed to forced trigger reset). They are pricey, but not nearly as pricey as antique full autos and they don’t require jumping through the legal hoops. This trigger is not a machine gun, so it’s perfectly legal to use as a replacement trigger for any legal AR-15.
I’ll let old Secretariat rest in peace now.
[Edit: I know they didn’t make glue from Secretariat. In fact I read that the horse was buried whole, apparently that’s generally not done.]
marc,
They claim 500 rounds per minute (versus 600 for the FRT), so a 10 shot clip is gone in just over a second.
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How fast can someone pull the trigger of a standard semi? I would guess about 3 or 4 times per second, so 180 to 240 rounds per minute; tell me if I am wrong.
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Shame Secretariat wasn’t cloned multiple times; he was arguably the greatest horse in history. His offspring: not-so-much. But he sure had a good life…. for a horse.
Tom Scharf,
Fauci: “…wearing a mask, social distancing avoiding crowds, that should all stay as we get into the vaccine program, because there’s still a lot of virus out there”
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Even vaccinated, double-masked, and very careful Fauci caught covid. He was making claims about non-vaccine measures which were not proven, clearly dubious at the time he made them, and which turned out to be just wrong. The guy is a sorry political hack.
Lucia and Tom are correct that the things that could not have been known were not officially claimed to be known and that, if you dug into the literature and thought about the details you would have known that.
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Russell is correct that the vaccine was way over hyped. If you got it you would not catch the Wuhan virus, you would not spread it, and you would definitely not get very sick. The authorities told us that they were so sure that the vaccine was of enormous value for ALL age groups that they imposed vaccine mandates. Those who refused the shot lost their jobs and in some cases their careers. Those who questioned the hype were ridiculed and, to a large degree, silenced.
I believe there are professional competition shooters who can fire at an insane rate, but for mere mortals like us, yeah. Three times a second, maybe four. I actually almost never shoot as fast as I can anyway, since I sort of like for some of my shots to occasionally hit what I’m aiming at. 😉
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Your observation about emptying magazines quickly is apt – dumping bullets rapidly isn’t necessarily a useful thing to do. I read that the situations where this is desirable are pretty specific and limited.
Anyway, thanks for humoring me by discussing this. I’m reasonably confident this topic is primarily of interest mostly just to me. Although I have to wonder. If they jail Trump before the next election or if he loses to Biden by means considered questionable to large swaths of the population, topics like this might become a lot more mainstream.
[Edit: I think it takes humans at least a tenth of a second to do most anything. This guy was legendary but he apparently wasn’t much faster than that.]
There was an argument to be made that until the vaccination program was complete the social distancing should remain for the yet to be vaccinated.
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It didn’t make a lot of sense that they proclaimed the vaccine as the Holy Grail and then said the vaccinated should also continue masking and social distancing with the original strain. That was the beginning of hard to decode dogma we would see for years after that.
I have a huge amount of experience in first person shooters and we all know a three shot burst is the best general purpose setting for an assault weapon. That is until the monsters close in Doom style and full auto is your only hope.
SteveF,
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“Even vaccinated, double-masked, and very careful Fauci caught covid.”
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How can you know this?
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The most relentless promoter of masking,in our group has now had Covid thrice. She’s an MD too. Two times let down her guard in family gatherings and the third on a Viking cruise commencing in Sydney. Each time she wasn’t masked.
The Washington Post says a recent poll shows over 60% of Americans believe the Trump case(s) is about preventing him from running in 2024, including 2/3 of independents. That’s a tough credibility hill to climb for the justice department, especially considering the media messaging around this has been completely one sided. I don’t think the Trump Russia Collusion debacle was helpful to this cause.
Tom,
Yes. I imagine another 20% believe that the Trump cases are intended to insure that he gets the nomination and loses the general election. I’m in this group in fact.
john ferguson,
“How can you know this?”
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That Fauci caught covid? (https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/15/health/fauci-covid-positive/index.html)
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That Fauci followed all the recommendations he made to the public? Impossible to know; either he didn’t and is a hypocrite, or he did, and his protective measures didn’t work.
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That what he recommended wouldn’t work? Many published studies have shown masks don’t significantly alter the spread of respiratory viruses, unless properly fitted N95. Rarely do people who use N95 masks have them properly fitted. I have actually used them properly fitted. They are miserable.
Tom Scharf,
“That’s a tough credibility hill to climb for the justice department, especially considering the media messaging around this has been completely one sided.”
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I don’t think Garland gives a hoot about credibility. The problem for the DOJ is a practical one: the trial in Florida will likely lead to either a not-guilty verdict or a hung jury, even though it is legally the far stronger of the cases. The charges were filed in Washington DC to ensure Trump is convicted of something that makes him a felon. I think Trump has zero chance for acquittal in DC. I expect the DOJ and the judge assigned to the case will do their best to rush the DC case to trial and take their time with the case in Florida.
john ferguson,
BTW, I had covid once when omicron became the dominant strain.
I was vaccinated, but only ever used a mask when I was forced to. I did that because I knew they were very unlikely to stop infection.
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I took notice the other day at a crowed supermarket how many people used masks: zero. I have taken notice as well how many people use masks on airplanes… very close to zero. covid deaths remain low (50 to 75 per day nationwide, vs ~7,800 deaths from all causes).
I just overheard two dudes at the deli complaining that the water in the Gulf of Mexico was too hot for…. surfing!
John Hinderaker at Powerline gives highlights of a report to the Scottish Inquiry on COVID-19:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/08/no-science-then-no-science-now.php
Two key quotes from the report:
Mike M, a fair bit of missing context there. Firstly, that is quote from Dr Ashley Croft speaking to the inquiry. Known as something of a vaccine-skeptic and in 2019 report linked vaccines to autism though he admitted to inquiry that it had been debunked.
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Rather at odds with numerous actual studies eg https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/new-study-shows-fewer-people-die-from-covid-19-in-better-vaccinated-communities/
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I think your source is trying to represent the view of one person reporting to the inquiry as the conclusion to the inquiry.
Vaccinations clearly reduced deaths, you only had to visit critical care wards during the height of the pandemic and do a simple survey to back that up.
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It is very disappointing how little actual data they have on mask efficacy, how the virus gets transmitted (aerosol vs fomites), why some people are apparently less susceptible, the effect of improved ventilation, why the virus is cyclical, etc. Trillions of dollars spent.
Reading the Croft report in more detail, I find the comment about the vaccine effectiveness in reducing deaths is based solely on the Cochrane review of vaccines. ““there is insufficient evidence to determine whether there was a difference between the vaccine and placebo in terms of death because the numbers of deaths were low in the trials”
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The Cochrane report was only reviewing the effectiveness of vaccines in the RCT trials conducted in vaccine development, and yes, the evidence is insufficient because of trial size. No evidence based on epidemiological studies post-vaccine release seem to have been covered by the report. This seems a very odd omission and the quoted conclusion in the report does not seem to proceed from the assessment of evidence immediately proceeding it.
MikeM
Dug? You didn’t need to dig.
Well… you changed his claim to make him right. It would be fine if he’d merely said it was over hyped by various parties. But he made very specific claims that went far beyond that.
Masks may very well be effective, but masking mandates not. Some of the studies which dismiss the effectiveness of masks base their findings on infection rates in populations under masking mandates not being better than those not so mandated.
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The reason this could be true is that no masking mandate is reliably complied with by the entire population it covers.
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SteveF,
We both were Covid infected last year, she on a cruise in the Adriatic and me in London. Her case seemed to be limited to testing positive and being a bit soggy for a couple of days.
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I was very tired for 10 days. We think a run-on effect a couple of months later was worst Shingles attack I’d ever had. I’d contracted Shingles in 1994 and although it was never worse than a bad sunburn, it hung around all those years with pain off and on week here, week there..
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I also seem to be having allergy problems this year here in St. Pete which I’ve never had before, but this could just be an aging effect.
Phil Scadden (Comment #223176): “a fair bit of missing context there. Firstly, that is quote from Dr Ashley Croft speaking to the inquiry.”
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As I said, the quotes are from a written report submitted to the Inquiry. And the report was commissioned by the Inquiry. See:
https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/hearings/epidemiology-presentation
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Phil Scadden: “Known as something of a vaccine-skeptic”.
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Ad hominem.
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Phil Scadden: “Rather at odds with numerous actual studies”.
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There are observation studies arriving at all sorts of conclusions, including ones that found higher deaths rates among the vaccinated. What they all mean remains unclear.
Phil Scadden (Comment #223178): “Reading the Croft report in more detail, I find the comment about the vaccine effectiveness in reducing deaths is based solely on the Cochrane review of vaccines. … The Cochrane report was only reviewing the effectiveness of vaccines in the RCT trials”.
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You are correct. I was disappointed to see that observational studies were ignored. I had assumed otherwise base on the bullet point in the summary.
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I find it interesting that observational studies on, say, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine are to be ignored and that RCTs with inconclusive stats are taken as proof of ineffectiveness. But with officially approved interventions, the opposite stance is taken.
It’s not unclear at all. The rates of death in the vaccinated were much lower, and still are. This has been true in every study I have seen and it isn’t a close call.
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Here is a recent one from the CDC studying 115K deaths:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7206a3.htm
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See figure 1. It’s 5 to 1 death rate for the unvaccinated now.
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What is not reported, and there is a case to be made about blatant vaccine evangelism, is figure 2. Figure 2 shows the relative death rates over time. The protection from the vaccine has diminished * by variant * and * by time since vaccination *.
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Delta protection against death was >20X, against omicron is about 5X.
Conservative lawyers are filing lawsuits left and right against corporate DEI initiatives in the hope one of the companies will fight them in order to get the case in front of the Supreme Court.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/diversity-equity-dei-companies-blum-2040b173?st=f3wow5i96etm9ee&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“They are arguing that companies are violating rules against race- and sex-discrimination, including those drawn from legislation designed to secure the rights of Black Americans.”
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Interesting and incoherent framing there. The real attack vector is here:
“In lawsuits, shareholder letters and petitions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission …”
“Employment lawyers say it is likely a matter of time before one of these cases reaches the Supreme Court.”
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“Under the policies, Starbucks says it wants at least 30% of its U.S. workforce at all levels to be Black, indigenous or people of color by 2025. It plans to implement an analytics tool that lets managers see their progress and uses workforce diversity measures to help set executive pay.”
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It’s the same story, explicit racial discrimination turns out to be racial discrimination regardless of stated good intentions. The only difference here is whether the private sector gets more leeway than government funded institutions. I very much doubt Equal Opportunity laws are unclear on this point.
Tom,
I guess I’m just a simpleton, but I have never understood how the courts reconcile the ‘disparate impact’ crap with actual justice in the first place. How disparate impact considerations can coexist with the end of affirmative action, for example, remains a mystery to me from a conceptual perspective.
Tom Scharf (Comment #223183): “It’s not unclear at all.”
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It is clear that there is short term protection. But that does not mean there is a long term benefit.
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Person A gets vaccinated and avoids an infection. Person B does not get vaccinated but gets infected. If immunity from infection is better and longer lasting (which seems to be the case) then there will be an interval in which B is better protected than A. That could well cancel out the short term benefit.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, it is likely to reach the supreme court eventually, where companies will be found to be violating Federal law by setting % hiring/promotion values for specific races.
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But I expect it will be a few years before that happens. Right thinking companies will go hog-wild discriminating based on race until then. Discrimination against white people by corporations has been pretty standard for at least the last 3-4 decades, and by competitive colleges for at least 5 decades. With that history, moving away from discrimination will come only slowly.
Mike M,
Sure, but before being better protected post infection (which is clear), B may well be dead. Which makes the better protection irrelevant.
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The real question is: What is the overall death rate with/without vaccination. There, I think the answer is pretty clear, as Australia and New Zealand data show. With almost everyone vaccinated before the virus became widespread, the death rates are much lower.
The National Hurrican Center website has been stuck on this nearly all season:
“For the North Atlantic…Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: Tropical cyclone formation is not expected during the next 7 days.”
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
And yet, sea surface temperatures are very high:
My Comment #223174 Yesterday:
“I just overheard two dudes at the deli complaining that the water in the Gulf of Mexico was too hot for…. surfing!”
The local official reports agree:
St Petersburg. sea temperature: 86°F.
Clearwater. sea temperature: 85°F.
Caladesi Island. sea temperature: 85°F.
Egmont Key. sea temperature: 86°F.
Anna Maria Island. sea temperature: 86°F.
Hernando Beach. sea temperature: 88°F.
Sarasota. sea temperature: 86°F.
Lido Key. sea temperature: 86°F.
The SSTs are in dangerous territory across the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean [favoring major hurricane development]
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/tafb/sst_loop/14_atl.png
Our local weather patterns remain screwed up. Our rainy season usually starts in early June, but it hasn’t started yet and we are still in an extreme drought:
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?FL
Perhaps the developing El Nino and continuing Saharan dust storms are influencing all this.
“Forecasters favor continued growth of El Niño through the fall, peaking this winter with moderate-to-strong intensity”
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.shtml
“Saharan dust still keeping tropics quiet”
https://www.fox13news.com/video/1260099
When the weather patterns change, I expect all hell to break loose.
Starbucks setting actual quotas with monetary rewards is never, ever, going to pass muster IMO. Replace “black” with “white” in those sentences. Pure political signaling there, they have to know they will lose the case, but make a calculation that the marketing benefit for their target clientele is worth it. Ultimately the worst that will really happen is they will be told to stop that policy.
Last year was a very weak hurricane season as well until Ian showed up which brought it all the way up to a near normal season in one step. There’s not much to see in hurricane trends and their ability to predict seasons is still poor.
https://climatlas.com/tropical/
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Aug 15 to Oct-15, that’s where all the action is normally. Anything can happen.
Tom Scharf,
The good news (for we Floridians) is that hurricanes tend to be (statistically) less likely during Los Niños… which is the current state of the Pacific. But nobody knows.
Tom, I would be wary of trusting the CDC data. In England and Sweden their medical data is quite good because of national health systems. In the US, there were and are tens of thousands of places you can go to get a vaccine. Most of those probably don’t have the time and resources to send in hundreds of thousands of individual’s data to the CDC. This would inflate perhaps dramatically those counted as unvaccinated.
Also, the CDC just placed the covid vaccine on the recommended list of childhood immunizations. Makary and a host of co-authors from Oxford published a study in January showing that this is unethical for either children or young adults.
The data for England in fact shows that the percentage of covid deaths in vaccinated people has risen dramatically over the last year with the vast majority of deaths in the last few months being in vaccinated people. It’s a staggering 94% in the latest month. Beware the corrupt media. Reuters has a “fact check” of this reporting that absolutely cites nothing that is wrong with the reporting or the data. They just argue that you can’t conclude much about vaccine effectiveness from this data. Fair enough even though I strongly doubt that 94% of everyone in England is vaccinated.
Last December there was a nation wide analysis of covid data in Sweden. Effectiveness against covid infection was 86% the first month declining to -15% after 9 months. Effectiveness against hospitalization was 86& initially declining to 25% after 9 months albeit with a broad confidence interval.
My default position is that the CDC is not telling the full truth about anything. Their record on covid is terrible. Their track record on dietary saturated fat is terrible relying on Keyes’ specious analysis from 60 years ago. Their position actually damaged public health in the US. Obesity is our most serious public health issue by far. Something like 45% of all adults in the US are obese. Not overweight but obese with a BMI of 30 or greater.
“the percentage of covid deaths in vaccinated people has risen dramatically over the last year”
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This is true for several reasons:
* As more people get vaccinated the absolute number of people who die vaccinated obviously also increases, more opportunity.
* Relatively, more vaccinated people die from omicron since the vaccine is less protective than for delta and other variants by about 4X.
* Many of the “unvaccinated” have natural immunity now. The real number of uninfected AND unvaccinated is small now. A lot of the self identifying people in this small group may have been asymptomatically infected by this time.
* Most people aren’t getting boosters now, so the slow fading of protection against death will increase the vaccinated death numbers.
* AFAICT natural immunity is more protective than a vaccine.
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Given that, what continues to also be true is that the unvaccinated / uninfected still die at significantly higher rates than the vaccinated. You do have to process the number right.
There are literally a hundred studies showing this, the ones from the UK and Israel being the better ones as noted due to their national health system database.
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The CDC reports are OK IMO, but as I noted the media and the CDC don’t amplify data (that is in the reports) that doesn’t fit the preferred narrative.
Here is a recent study from Qatar July 2023, showing more of the same we have seen before. Natural immunity once again proving superior.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00279-1/fulltext
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Figure 1A: Natural immunity provided moderate to low effectiveness against omicron (re)infection.
Figure 1B: The vaccine provided zero to * negative * effectiveness against omicron infection after a few months.
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Figure 4A: Natural immunity providing good protection against severe illness and death.
Figure 4B: The vaccine also provides good protection against severe illness and death, but lower than natural immunity. Data has some overlap.
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“Some of the vaccine effectiveness measures post Omicron introduction, particularly for booster vaccination, were negative in value, perhaps suggesting negative immune imprinting. This effect was pronounced during the BA.4/BA.5 wave. This finding supports similar recent findings in this same population. Such imprinting effects have been observed for other infections such as influenza. It remains to be seen whether these effects will be of consequence in the future epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection”
“Third, although population immunity against infection waned rapidly, population immunity against severe COVID-19 was durable over the study duration and showed slow waning even with introduction of Omicron. *** This slow waning appeared also to affect only vaccine immunity. ***”
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There continues to be effectively no coverage of these repeated findings in the legacy media.
If the pool of unvaccinated and uninfected people is small, it means that there is no reason to get additional vaccinations or boosters. That’s because it has been shown conclusively that prior infection was and is more effective against re-infection than vaccination. In any case it was over last year. A few stray poor sheep still wear masks or get additional boosters, but they are not thinking clearly.
Why would anyone get an additional vaccination given the historically higher incidence of serious side effects? It’s not just an order of magnitude but 3 orders of magnitude.
There is a British academic Norman Fenton who has some very interesting presentations on how vaccine effectiveness can be manipulated by changing the definition of “vaccinated.” One thing many studies did was to classify anyone who got vaccinated as “unvaccinated” until 14 days after vaccination. Or other studies simply threw out any data until 14 days or even 28 days after the vaccination. There is a well known period after any vaccination during which the immune system is suppressed. Another effect is healthy vaccinee bias. Basically, those in good health are a lot more likely to get vaccinated as those who are ill or disabled. Another point raised by Fenton is survivor bias. I don’t agree with everything Fenton says but he does show how it can be dial an answer, just like climate models.
One very interesting thing I found during the pandemic was a paper on influenza. One mystery they point out is while vaccination for flu has increased dramatically in many European countries, deaths are essentially flat over time. I think the claim is that the flu vaccine is only 50% effective. Perhaps healthy vaccinee bias explains this.
When was the Israeli study done?
Tom, Thanks for finding these studies.
Once again we are dealing with a sophisticated medical imaging report [MRI W/WO Contrast] The report as written is useless to a layman. My son fed the report into ChatGPT, then Bard, then Bing Chat, and asked for an analysis first and then to put that response in layman’s terms.
For the layman’s report:
ChatGHP was very useful
Bard was helpful, but less so
Bing Chat was worthless
Last time the ChatGPT was more useful than the two physician office visits that followed the tests. We haven’t had the office visits for this test yet. I’m betting that ChatGPT will be more useful than the office visits.
Russell,
I had a lot of interaction with radiologists for 40 years as a GP.
Being in a smaller town 30,000 servicing a large rural area we had a hospital radiology department, private hospital a smaller department and a totally private large external clinic.
I made sure I met all of the radiologists and would often go to review X-rays with them as well as looking at them myself where possible.
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Different people have different ways of describing the same MRI or XRay and some deliberately prevaricate over descriptions particularly if medic legal.
It can be a case of a couple if words (a chat) means more thsn a thousand pictures, particularly to other medicos.
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Please seek actual office follow up with proper physicians and try not to have any chips on the shoulders.
Get a second opinion if you are not happy with the information or not happy with the doctor.
All the ChatGPs in the world cannot offer a candle to a human conversation with a caring and competent professional both in diagnosis and more importantly management
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There isn’t a particularly strong case to get new boosters now, so most people don’t.
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It was standard practice to throw out data within two weeks of vaccination because data showed that’s how long it takes for the vaccine to become fully effective. Any infection in that time period is questionable whether it should be counted as vaccinated or unvaccinated. It just wasn’t counted either way. I’m not aware that there was an increased incidence of infections in that time period.
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There’s is just way too much data from global sources all showing the same thing, that the vaccines worked pretty well. All these other issues are real but they only work at the margins, they cannot numerically overcome overwhelming evidence that shows vaccines reducing chances of death 4X(now) to 20X(circa 2021), but vaccinated people still die regularly.
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If you don’t want a vaccine, don’t take one. If you survive your initial infection then it’s as good (better) as a vaccine. If you are young and/or healthy the chances of surviving the initial infection are very good.
I am shocked (shocked!!) that his might be true: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/western-allies-receive-increasingly-sobering-updates-on-ukraine-s-counteroffensive-this-is-the-most-difficult-time-of-the-war/ar-AA1eWQy2
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The Ukrainians are not going to dislodge the Russians. Been obvious to me for a long time. They need to stop throwing away young lives and negotiate a peace agreement, the sooner the better. The alternative is a similar agreement a year or two from now with another 30,000 on each side dead. And the US taxpayer on the hook for another $100 billion. There is no plausible objective to be gained. It is utter madness.
Tom Scharf,
“There continues to be effectively no coverage of these repeated findings in the legacy media.”
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What can I say except I am shocked (shocked!!) that the MSM wouldn’t report on a study showing they (the MSM) have been idiotic buttholes for most of the last three years.
Tom
Yes. I don’t want a new booster until (a) they include new, relevant spikes or (b) they have a type they believe triggers immunity based on a portion that is not the spike.
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I should at this point have some durable immunity from vaccines and some from actual infection (which was very, very, very mild.)
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I don’t see a reason to keep being re-vaccinated with the same-ole’ spike over and over and over.
Russell Klier (Comment #223198): “Last time the ChatGPT was more useful than the two physician office visits that followed the tests. We haven’t had the office visits for this test yet. I’m betting that ChatGPT will be more useful than the office visits.”
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ChatGPT is definitely not reliable. I can see where it could be very useful for getting an initial idea of what the report says and forming questions. But I can’t imagine trusting ChatGPT more than a physician.
Angech, Mike M.
Thank you for your advice. I didn’t make it clear, but the physician visits are coming. We need to do a CT scan first. The last go-round we left the office visits with a lot of unknowns and subsequent ChatGPT readouts helped a lot. This time we are going to do the ChatGPT first and, we hope, be smarter when we have the office visits.
I can’t be specific because I am not the patient. There are two surgeons, two specialists, and a PCP giving us advice. It’s complicated.
I’m trying to read the tea leaves here [pun intended].
China attended the Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia. 40 other nations attended. Russia was not invited.
No definitive statements were issued, but there are some indications that China may be distancing itself from Russia. Lets hope.
“Ukraine allies buoyed by ‘constructive’ China signals at Jeddah talks
Moscow not invited to forum but Beijing positive on engaging in future negotiations on finding a resolution to war”
https://www.ft.com/content/b82b533d-ae06-404b-8b6c-73e0ecd9e067
“China says Jeddah talks on Ukraine helped to ‘consolidate international consensus’
https://www.reuters.com/world/china-says-jeddah-talks-ukraine-helped-consolidate-international-consensus-2023-08-07/
“China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in a phone conversation on Monday that China would uphold an independent and impartial position on Ukraine as it strives to find a political settlement to the issue.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/china-tells-russia-it-will-uphold-impartial-position-ukraine-2023-08-07/
Sometimes the tests are more of a worry than they should have been.
Sometimes they cannot clarify a problem completely.
Sometimes they show unexpected findings of uncertain significance.-
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An MRI is usually better than a CT but not for all conditions. Both are non invasive in themselves.
Other procedures like endoscopy can reveal problems not possible on scans alone.
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This is where specialists come in to analyse, treat, watch or reassure.
Hopefully the terminology on the reports while sounding important just means standard wear and tear consistent with age and occupation.
Hope all goes well.
An “independent and impartial position” from China is essentially a declaration of neutrality. They aren’t interested in distancing themselves from anyone, and I suspect that goes double for Russia. If you consider that WWIII could be fought primarily on an economic and ideological stage, I think we are losing.
One heck of a mushroom cloud:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1689331327219159040?s=20
The fog of war … Russian reports:
A huge explosion occurred near the Zagorsk optical-mechanical plant in Sergiev Posad, Russia. Russian authorities claim that it was an “accident”, involving professional pyrotechnics and fireworks next door.
The fog of war … Ukrainian reports:
Drone hit a facility manufacturing/storing artillery ammunition. The optical-mechanical plant nearby manufactures sights for tanks and was destroyed.
Dramatic videos of the big bang:
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1689317950732324864?s=20
https://twitter.com/Heroiam_Slava/status/1689221612820639744?s=20
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1689191882184654848?s=20
We watched the final episode of ‘White Collar’ season five last night. It was the best season in the series so far. We started season six, with a whole new mystery theme. https://www.hulu.com/hub/tv/collection/2608
If you watch two or three shows at a time, you can watch the entire six seasons in one month [$14.99]: A basic ad-supported Hulu subscription costs $7.99 per month, while ad-free costs $14.99 per month. I recommend the ad-free version. [I do NOT recommend Hulu + Live TV about $70.00/ month]
Also season three of ‘Only Murders in the Building’ started last night. It will run in serial form for 13 weeks. If you wait till the end of the run you can binge-watch all 13 episodes over a weekend. Caution: crude language
RottenTomatoes score 99%
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/only-murders-in-the-building-season-3-first-reviews/
I see that statistics using COVID deaths still abound. Considering deaths to gunshots and vehicle accidents listed COVID as the cause of death in many instances, I have little to no reliance on these statistics.
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I am also sure that as hospitals were able to get a much higher reimbursement for COVID than for other illnesses, money bad no bearing on cause of death reports. 🙂
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One interesting statistic is that COVID was a very effective cure for Pneumonia. 🙂
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“ Pneumonia Deaths have fallen off a cliff this year, I wonder what could have caused this to happen..” (2019-20)
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/fuy72i/pneumonia_deaths_have_fallen_off_a_cliff_this/
I see that statistics using COVID deaths still abound. Considering deaths to gunshots and vehicle accidents listed COVID as the cause of death in many instances, I have little to no reliance on these statistics.
.
I am also sure that as hospitals were able to get a much higher reimbursement for COVID than for other illnesses, money had no bearing on cause of death reports. 😉
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One interesting statistic is that COVID was a very effective cure for Pneumonia. 🙂
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“ Pneumonia Deaths have fallen off a cliff this year, I wonder what could have caused this to happen..” (2019-20)
https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/fuy72i/pneumonia_deaths_have_fallen_off_a_cliff_this/
Ed Forbes,
Looks to me like pneumonia deaths are not very far from the pre-covid rates: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html Pneumonia plus covid are responsible for ~6% of all deaths, with pneumonia dominating covid.
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The interesting thing is that the overall rate of death for pneumonia plus covid is right on the pre-covid historical seasonal rate, even though covid continues to add ~500 deaths per week to the total. Maybe covid deaths (~1.2 million total) have reduced the population of elderly who are most likely to die from pneumonia by ~20%, reducing pneumonia deaths enough to compensate for the continuing covid deaths.
I figured that Lukashenko and Wagner were not going to play well together. From ISW:
“A Russian insider source claimed on August 8 that Wagner forces are conducting their first stage of withdrawal from Belarus by bussing groups of 500 to 600 personnel from Belarus to Krasnodar Krai and Voronezh and Rostov oblasts.”
“The insider source and a Wagner-affiliated source speculated that Wagner forces may be leaving Belarus because Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko refused to finance Wagner when he discovered that Russia would not be paying for Wagner as he had evidently expected”
Note:
“The validity of these claims and the future of the Wagner Group remain unclear at the time of publication”
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-9-2023
Now this is a powerful combination: Judith Curry, John Stossel, and the NY Post. Let’s hope they do more together.
“Scientist admits the ‘overwhelming consensus’ on the climate change crisis is ‘manufactured’
https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-overwhelming-consensus-is-manufactured/
If anybody bakes their own bread, I have been using a handy table… It lists dough portion weight [grams] vs use [eg small loaf pan, hamburger bun, cinnamon roll].
It has withstood the test of time in our kitchen. Download PDF link:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1689685597676347415?s=20
The best explanation ever written about what happened to climate science, and is generally applicable in spirit, was by one of the big names, Stephen Schneider, all the way back around 1988 :-
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“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
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Just as the first casualty of war is truth, the first casualty of politics is honesty.
Russell, thanks for the bread table
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Just starting to play with my bread machine to use the dough instead to just having it make loafs
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Ed
Ed, I do the same. The dough cycle on the bread machine makes better bread than I can make with a Kitchenaid stand mixer.
NOAA today:
“The likelihood of greater activity rises due to record-warm sea surface temperatures
NOAA forecasters increase Atlantic hurricane season prediction to ‘above normal”
Me, two days ago (Comment #223189):
“sea surface temperatures are very high”
And “I expect all hell to break loose”
So, did I hack into their system and steal their report, or am I two days smarter than NOAA?
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-forecasters-increase-atlantic-hurricane-season-prediction-to-above-normal
Ed,
Have a look at this morning’s little beauties … I used the small loaf pan dough weight, the pans are in the background.
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1689994874236313600?s=20
Russell, looking good !
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I have put my bread making on hold for a bit as I am looking to lose about 15 lbs off my existing 200. 10 down and 5 to go.
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I REALLY miss fresh baked bread.
Russel, They look good.
Another episode of “The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind”
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Judge Sends FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried to Jail Ahead of Fraud Trial
https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-sends-ftxs-sam-bankman-fried-to-jail-ahead-of-fraud-trial-79740119?st=l9c3n5n2qymu6cj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said at a hearing in New York that Bankman-Fried pushed the limits of his bail conditions repeatedly and possibly committed a federal crime.
“There is probable cause to believe that the defendant has attempted to tamper with witnesses at least twice,” Kaplan said.”
Justice, sure. What is justice.
https://babylonbee.com/news/garland-appoints-special-counsel-to-cover-up-bidens-crimes
WSJ: Harvard’s new required essay question:
“Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?”
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John Hopkins:
“Tell us about an aspect of your identity (eg. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc. . . .) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual and how that influenced what you’d like to pursue in college at Hopkins.”
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Justice Roberts:
“Despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
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The good news is that the legal burden has shifted somewhat. Overly clever lawyering and elite arrogance will only get you so far, ask Oberlin. They can be sued again, the essay responses can be retrieved through discovery and analyzed statistically, and their Federal funding can be cutoff. Ongoing in your face racial preferences may not market as well as they think.
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A Republican DOJ may just cutoff their funding and force them to sue to get it back.
Lucia,
“They look good”
They are. Those loaves had a cold-proofing in the fridge overnight. It really develops the flavor.
From Cooks Illustrated:
“At cool temperatures, yeast produces carbon dioxide more slowly, so refrigerating the batter allows yeast to leaven at a slow and steady pace, providing more time for a more complex-tasting combination of flavor compounds to develop. The net result? A more flavorful dough.”
I think it enhances the appearance also, but I’m the only one who says that.
https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/how_tos/9169-cold-fermentation-and-flavor-in-yeasted-breads
We watched ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ last night. It was thrilling, just like the last ‘Top Gun’. Also like the last one, the storyline is weak…Just [mostly] Flyboys [and a Flygirl] doing a lot of flying [F/A-18F Super Hornets]. It’s streaming free for members on Amazon Prime Video.
One poignant moment was a reunion scene with ‘Maverick’ and ‘Iceman’:
“One of the most emotional moments of the film was Val Kilmer’s cameo as Iceman. The appearance was Kilmer’s highest-profile acting appearance in years, as complications from throat cancer made him lose his voice and have largely prevented him from acting.”
Trailer:
https://youtu.be/giXco2jaZ_4
Many papers have now been published on the “room temperature superconductor” based on copper doped lead apatite: Looks like no superconductivity at all; one group finds evidence of superconductivity at 110K (-173C). The original work is being described in general as “sloppy” and “amateurish”, and the material is usually described as an insulator with high electrical resistance.
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The refutations are clear enough that research fraud may be involved.
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At least it is not yet as bad as cold fusion, which still has lunatics who believe it and scammers dedicated to fleecing the gullible.
See for example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.05001.pdf
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They report substantial resistance (ohms over a fraction of a mm) from near absolute zero to 400K. They call the behavior of the copper doped lead apatite “typical for a semiconductor”. Seems pretty clear the whole claim of zero resistance was caused by gross incompetence, dishonesty, or both.
Deliberate dishonesty is not believable for the high T superconductor work. Even people with PhDs are not dumb enough to try to fake something so easily checked and so certain to be checked. Wishful thinking and confirmation bias are far more likely.
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The other, less likely, possibility is that something subtle and unnoticed is required for the synthesis.
Mike M,
Sure, incompetency coupled with wishful thinking might do it. But I don’t rule out dishonesty. Something as simple as a lab tech falsifying data (to please the boss) could explain the glaring discrepancies in resistivity data.
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If the researchers who claim superconductivity are on the up-and-up, they will hand a sample that they measured at zero resistance to another lab. My bet: they will come up with some excuse to not do that.
I have several times posted a link to Maria Drutska. She is an official with the Ukrainian MOD and a reliable source of information. If you are following her posts, things are about to change:
“After 3 years, I’m moving from the Ministry of Defence to foreign affairs & diplomacy (need to check if I can still tweet my thoughts, will keep you posted). “
For a military honcho, she really is quite attractive:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1690777853153918976?s=20
Caution, her posts, while accurate, are full of sarcasm and comedy:
e.g. latest video:
https://youtu.be/Lpyui4mH9IE
Russell Klier (Comment #223237)
Russell, are you saying that the blonde on the left of those stoic looking gentlemen in the X photo is the same person as the cute and funny gal in the You tube video. I do not know the veracity of her comments but I like her presentations.
Ken Fritsch,
“are you saying that the blonde on the left of those stoic looking gentlemen in the X photo is the same person as the cute and funny gal in the You tube video.”
Yes, that’s Maria Drutska in both cases. You also asked about the “veracity of her comments”. I have followed her closely for some months now and have never found her wrong. She often is a few hours later than some of my other sources, she exaggerates, uses sarcasm, and mocks the Russians, [which enhances her presentation in my view] but I have never found her to be wrong.
She also has several fundraising schemes going… “bomb-shelter for children in Mykolaiv. We need to raise $9100”…. for example.
Note, it helps me if I turn on subtitles when I watch her YouTube videos.
Tokyo Rose
Two drone videos of Russian foot soldiers fleeing the town of Urozhaine. The first video shows them scattered by conventional artillery and then shredded by cluster rounds.
“It is absolute carnage because those Russians have no armored vehicles, no vehicles at all and flee in broad daylight on an open road and fields. The 2nd video is even worse for them because it shows the usage of cluster ammunition, blasting those troops into absolute bits.”
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1690647124202172416?s=20
“Tokyo Rose”
Funny Tom. Yes, there are similarities. Call her Kyiv Maria.
But Tokyo Rose was an American citizen and was later convicted of treason. Kyiv Maria is a true Ukrainian patriot. Also, Tokyo Rose was targeting American soldiers with her rhetoric while Kyiv Maria is broadcasting to everyone in the Western world.
More info from a political stunt that actually worked, here’s what a sanctuary city is saying today:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66259075
“New York City plans to distribute fliers at the southern border warning migrants there is “no guarantee” they will receive help if they come there.”
“Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the US.”
“Critics of Mr Adams’ new plan argue it violates the city’s right-to-shelter rules, which guarantee temporary housing for those in need. Mr Adams has attempted to weaken those rules amid the influx of migrants.”
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WSJ:
“…the city is paying $256 a night on average to shelter migrant families.”
“This doesn’t include the cost of food, medical care and social services, which adds another $127 a day per migrant family.”
“Apparently, paying the nation’s highest taxes isn’t enough. Mr. Adams recently floated the idea of sheltering migrants in private homes. How rich considering that city regulations set to take effect next month will effectively prohibit New Yorkers from renting out their apartments on Airbnb. The home-sharing site estimates the new “de facto ban” will eliminate 95% of its revenue in the city.”
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NYC is sheltering 54,000 people seeking asylum. There were 1.6M “migrant encounters” at the Mexican border in 2021. What is really happening here is the self-adoring sanctuary cities want federal money, they have the right intentions and values of course, they just want others to pay the bill for these services.
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland lead all countries in their contributions to the Ukrainian war effort. Not in absolute terms, but as a share of gross domestic product (GDP);
Complete graphic:
https://twitter.com/rklier21/status/1691105616348278784?s=20
It is unsurprising for countries that have lived under Moskow’s brutality in the past to be the most generous. They also are in harm’s way should Russia keep up its expansionist tendency.
Complete article:
[US isn’t in the top half]
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
Tom Scharf (Comment #223243): “More info from a political stunt that actually worked”.
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Indeed. I very much doubt that the “stunt” is responsible for NYC’s problems. There are a reported 90K illegals dealt with by NYC authorities; It does not seem likely that Abbott has sent more than a small fraction of those. And many of those have moved on.
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Tom Scharf: “NYC is sheltering 54,000 people seeking asylum”.
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So well less than 1% of the illegals Biden has let in whereas NYC has more than 2% of the total population. They are getting off easy.
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So far, there have been perhaps 5.5-6.0 M “encounters” at the border. Something like 10-15% were sent back. So ballpark 5 million released into the US. As of January, there were 1.2 M known gotaways. That has surely increased, plus there are the unknown gotaways. So easily 7 million illegals let in by Biden.
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Most of the illegals causing such a headache for NYC were flown there by the Biden administration.
The Biden administration absolutely will not attempt to stop the flow of unlawful immigration.
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Only a change in administration, along with changes in law by Congress, (that is, only if controlled by Republicans) will reduce the flow permanently. I’m not holding my breath.
So Biden was asked about the fire in Maui. His response was “no comment”.
That is the sort of thing that for any halfway competent politician, answering would be a figurative no-brainer.
Biden’s response was s literal no-brainer.
Well this turned out pretty:
https://x.com/rklier21/status/1691235115374915586?s=46&t=ZvqHpxBnQGny72gLoGhKXw
Cast iron skillet pizza. This is the recipe, but I doctored it quite a bit:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/crispy-cheesy-pan-pizza-recipe
Re: Mike M. (Comment #223234)
It doesn’t look like fraud. But the most likely explanation appears to be that Fe impurity accounts for apparent ferromagnetism producing the half-levitation in a few samples. Cu2S impurity appears to be responsible for the resistance drop.
RB,
Yes, impurities could cause odd magnetic behavior, but did you read the original papers, which both show graphs of zero resistance over a huge temperature range? There is no simple explanation for why that hasn’t been duplicated…. except for incompetence or fraud.
SteveF (Comment #223251): “There is no simple explanation for why that hasn’t been duplicated”.
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But there *might* be a non-simple explanation via a subtle crystallographic or electronic effect of an impurity. Not likely, but possible.
Mike M,
If it walks like a duck…..
The original group needs to hand over a sample they say has zero resistance. My guess is they can’t do that, because no such thing exists.
Looks like the Democratic cities are in a big game of topper to see who can charge Trump and associates with the most crimes. Bad legal arguments and a search for alleged fraud are now criminal. I’m guessing that new standard of prosecution will be quite selective in the future.
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Not to be repetitive, I want Trump to go away, but this path is destructive and is ineffective according to the polls I read. The glowing puff pieces of prosecutors coupled with completely credulous reporting absent any thoughts of possible prosecutorial overreach are about all I can take. Trump Russia Collusion 2.0, America is already tuning it out.
I haven’t really been following this closely, but it seems to me that if they can’t prove Trump knew his claims were false then most of the charges are going to be unprovable. The media’s reporting seems to be “a lawyer told him once there was no fraud” which is pretty weak tea, other lawyers and people no doubt told him differently.
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Given a bunch of voters still think there was fraud * today * then it will be high bar for prosecutors to claim Trump was unreasonable to make those claims in 2020 and convince a jury unanimously. I think Trump could be convicted of some lesser process crimes.
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Any conviction that doesn’t have at least 4 Trump voters on the jury will no doubt be seen as illegitimate to the electorate. They need to be careful here.
“America” may be tuning it out, but it’s increasing radicalism nevertheless, any result of which will be used to promote further escalation. Both sides see this as a “threat to democracy” and the result can only prove them right.
Tom Scharf,
“They need to be careful here.”
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Sure, but they won’t be. The prosecution in Washington DC for what amount to “thought crimes” is a slam dunk for the prosecution (they couldn’t find a Trump supporter in DC if they tried, and they won’t try). What the prosecution wants is a jury pool guaranteed to convict, which is the whole point of the crazy “fraud” charges in DC. The district judge in DC is already threatening to throw Trump in jail before the trial for normal political speech, and is pushing hard to have the jury trial (and near-certain conviction) take place before the 2024 election. As best I can tell from past rulings, that judge is boarder-line unhinged, and is as likely to give Trump fair bench rulings as Merrick Garland would be, were he still a judge.
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My guess is Trump will appeal the refusal to move the case to a more politically neutral jurisdiction, and that at some point the SC will reverse that refusal with a “shadow docket” ruling.
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What the DC Court of Appeals should do is throw out the case as absurd on its face, but the DC Court of Appeals is never going to do that. The SC might.
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The prosecutorial over-reach is absurd on its face, but the self-righteous are blind to such absurdity.
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BTW, only one judge on the DC Court of Appeals was appointed to the Federal bench by a Republican (Trump) the remaining 7 were appointed by Democrats. One might venture a guess on how they will rule on Trump’s appeals.
This piece makes a lot of sense. It goes into a good synopsis of the strategic focus of the two sides but found the analogy in “fairy tales” the most interesting. Well worth the short read.
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“Stormtrooper Syndrome has seduced the West. We have turned the Ukraine War into a fairy tale”
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“It doesn’t matter how much stronger and smarter and better armed the Bad People are; they have to lose because they’re the Bad People. Nor does it matter how idiotic the plan the Good People decide on, the Bad People are required to make the mistakes that will enable it to succeed. When the chips are down, you know that Harry Potter will always manage to drop the One Ring from his X-wing into the cooling port of Mount Doom.”
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https://unherd.com/2023/08/stormtrooper-syndrome-has-seduced-the-west/
Random weird theory of the day: Men have higher variability in many traits because they have X and Y chromosomes, where women have two X chromosomes which tend to average out extremes. Not settled of course, but apparently this line of thinking is still allowed to be spoken out loud in genetics. Probably not for long, ha ha.
Tom Scharf,
“Not settled of course, but apparently this line of thinking is still allowed to be spoken out loud in genetics.”
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Each person is not 100% a blank slate, including their ‘gender’? Be careful, lest you be driven from right-thinking society.
Ed Forbes,
I read that too. I don’t think anybody on the Biden administration’s foreign policy team is going to agree…. they are true believers in their absolute rightness about all things. There are no shades of gray for the Biden administration foreign policy hacks.
Tom Scharf,
The higher variability hypothesis is more than a century old, dating from the earliest IQ studies that showed differences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variability_hypothesis
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The controversy remains hot, with (surprise!) those on the left insisting there can’t be any difference except due to ‘cultural influences and prejudices’. So all just another manifestation of left (smart, honest, sincere, just) vs right (stupid, dishonest, deplorable, racist) thinking in all things. I grow tired of the left’s obnoxious arrogance.
I just tested positive for Covid -19 -and have an order in for Paxlovid. I guess my niece is the lone hold out for Covid in my extended family and circle of friends. My symptoms all pointed to Covid. The worst symptom is the chills which makes my handshake such that it makes it difficult to use my stylus. 102 temp but other than the chills nothing that seems critical. I think I got infected from my grandson. I have not had flu or cold symptoms for ages and so far Covid is not as bad as flu back in the day.
I was curious about how I would react to Covid. So far so good with the later milder variant of Covid, but I would not have missed the symptoms.
Ken,
Good luck. Let us know how the Paxlovid does for you. For the four people I know well who took it (all were infected post omicron), the effect on symptoms was described as “miraculous”. Expect a funny metallic taste in your mouth.
Get well soon, Ken. Paxlovid is supposed to be very effective.
Ken, Godspeed.
Right now you can purchase a Russian ruble for a penny.
The ruble has lost about a quarter of its value against the dollar since the invasion of Ukraine. The ruble hit a 17-month low the day before the central bank raised interest rates to 12%.
I remember reading on this blog how the sanctions would have no effect. Russia would shift markets for oil and gas sales. They would be able to buy anything they needed on the black market. I am just as ignorant about international finances today as I was back then, but it seems things are not going well for the Russian economy.
Russell: Cast iron skillet pizza
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Ok, this looks like a keeper.
Thanks for the link !
Russia is doing fine economically:
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp
The Biden suppression of speech on social media case was before the 5th Circuit Court a few days ago. It didn’t go well for the federal government from my listen. This will likely be before the Supreme Court eventually. The government needs to change lawyers or arguments before then.
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Here is an interesting summary of the FBI’s behavior which highlights my issue with the hypocrisy of their “no comment on pending investigation” public stance. Intentional deception by omission.
https://youtu.be/OaOtD5LPe1Q?t=3754
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Here is the judge asking about a point I have been screaming about all along:
https://youtu.be/OaOtD5LPe1Q?t=880
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The non-answer is noted. I don’t think private meetings on speech suppression with the government is acceptable, period. Ultimately this case is about where the coercion line is crossed by government speech. I don’t think the SC is going to be very receptive to a high threshold of proving coercion to allow suppression of speech.
Of course, I don’t believe the point of the exercise is whether or not Trump’s criminal convictions ultimately stand, but rather to interfere with his chances of winning in 2024. The arguments don’t need to be good enough to past muster in front of SCOTUS to accomplish that.
If he loses in Georgia, Trump couldn’t pardon himself even if he wins the election — those charges are not Federal. It’s a mess.
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I suspect that the leftists driving these actions would prefer that Biden win, but breaking our system and eroding the US to something closer to a banana republic is also acceptable. After all, who on the left ever thought the US was great to begin with? Darn few. No loss if it is destroyed, racist colonial patriarchal and capitalistic bastion of evil that it has always been.
The party’s over, from the WSJ:
“Streamflation Is Here and Media Companies Are Betting You’ll Pay Up”
The sweetheart deal we cord-cutters have had for the last several years is coming to a screeching halt. The streaming services have been bleeding red ink as they compete for market share. No more, my services have all gone up, by about 30%.
We never saved a lot of money over our old cable service because we were paying for multiple services [3 or 4 usually]. We did it because the quality of our TV entertainment went up dramatically, not to save money.
Further reading:
“Almost every big streaming service is getting more expensive”
https://www.axios.com/2023/07/25/streaming-prices-2023-comparison-raise
The “danger to democracy” crowd is once again advocating for our democratic rights. Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/15/trump-ineligible-14th-amendment-unconstitutional-presidency/
“Consequently, the safest course is for a state legislature to clarify, by enacting a new statute as soon as possible, that its election officials have the power to remove insurrectionists from the presidential ballot.
…
A swing state controlled by Democrats, such as Michigan, could — and should — do this, but any single blue state would suffice.
…
Before it’s too late, a patriotic state legislature should take the step needed to avert the constitutional crisis, far greater than the Jan. 6 insurrection, that looms if voters elect a candidate whom the Constitution has made ineligible.”
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Hilarious.
The streaming services are pushing people to their ad-support tier so we will end up right back where we started.
Tom Scharf,
The government’s oral argument seemed little more that the old joke that ends: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”
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The documented evidence (many dozens of emails and other documents) show willful government dishonesty in their dealings with the social media companies, and relentless pressure (with multiple veiled threats) to restrict access or to completely remove private speech they disagreed with. It was blatant, 100% hidden from the public, and an organized effort at censorship of private speech at the behest of government.
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I expect the restraining order to be reinstated within a few weeks, followed by appeal to the SC with request for a stay of the restraining order… which the SC will laugh at. This isn’t even a close case. Whether the SC even agrees to hear the case is not obvious.
Get well soon, Ken.
Best of luck.
Ed,
I make the dough for that pizza in the bread machine.
Tom,
“The streaming services are pushing people to their ad-support tier”
Yes, and the irony is watching without ads is the main reason we cut the cord. The other reason is we are in command of when we watch things.
I’m still paying the extra to not have commercials. Well worth it.
SteveF (Comment #223251)
The Cu2S explains the resistivity drop as detailed in the paper. Without sulfur impurities, LK-99 is an insulator.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02585-7
RB,
OK. There are reasons people delude themselves.
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But it seems like you didn’t read the original papers… or maybe that you are neither a chemist nor engineer, and didn’t understand the very clear resistance data presented in those papers… which screamed “superconductivity” from the mountaintops, with a large megaphone.
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In any case, it is now almost certain that the claims of superconductivity were completely wrong. Why they were wrong (incompetence, dishonesty, wishful thinking) remains to be determined, but is actually of little import.
Thanks to RB (Comment #223281) for the link. So now we know what happened: Impurities led to odd properties that the scientists were too quick to interpret as what they hoped to see. And they rushed to publish, probably because they gave in to the warped incentives influencing science.
RB,
From your link:
“The only further confirmation would come from the Korean team sharing their samples, says Michael Fuhrer, a physicist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “The burden’s on them to convince everybody else,” he says.”
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Which I completely agree with. Giving samples to other researchers is what they should have done before they published anything. This episode is not cold fusion… yet…. but it is still utter crap.
Mike M,
“So now we know what happened: Impurities led to odd properties that the scientists were too quick to interpret as what they hoped to see. And they rushed to publish, probably because they gave in to the warped incentives influencing science.”
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The resistance data says they were either incompetent or liars. Yes there are warped incentives in science. That does not excuse an error of this scale; the resistance data was either outright faked or due to stupidity.
Mike M, you are welcome.
SteveF: engaging with you is always a mistake.
RB,
“SteveF: engaging with you is always a mistake.”
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Sure, especially when you don’t understand the subject.
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I don’t have any problem engaging with people who don’t know what they are talking about.
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Just for fun, I ask again: did you read the original papers? Did you understand the implications of the resistance vs temperature data?
Thanks to all for your best wishes for Covid recovery. Currently my symptoms are being very tired and decreased appetite.
My doctor substituted molnupiravir for paxlovid because of other medications I take. He put me on famotidine and recommended taking vitamin C and D and multivitamins for 4 weeks. Does that sound like overkill?
Best wishes Ken. I don’t think taking a multi-vitamin is every over kill. On the other things I’m afraid I don’t know.
Ken, I would include the vitamins. I would also add Zinc. (I have taken all those daily since the Covid scare started.) Note, I have no medical credentials. These are a layman’s recommendations.
When I had Covid, I too couldn’t take Paxlovid because of drug interactions but my doctor didn’t offer me a substitute.
Godspeed.
Ukraine has committed the last of its strategic reserves and has yet to reach the Russian first main defense line. Ukraine is still trying to penetrate the Russian security belt in front of the main line of defense in the south.
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Without a strategic reserve, Ukraine is being forced to pull units off the line in order to plug holes elsewhere. This is a path to complete collapse if Ukraine continues in its current direction.
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https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/ukraine-commits-last-remaining-elite?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=136124304&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
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“Ukraine Commits Last Remaining Elite Brigade For Final Attempt”
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“Yesterday we had the first full confirmation that the last and most serious Ukrainian brigade, meant for the big offensive, has finally been committed to battle. As you know, from the Pentagon leaks we’ve had the full ORBATS of the 9 brigades of the so-called 9th Corps. All but the 82nd had already been committed and most were decimated. “
Ed Forbes (Comment #223291)
“Ukraine has committed the last of its strategic reserves”
This is old news, but it is partly true. On August 12th 82nd Air Assault Brigade engaged at Robotyne. There is video confirmation of An FPV drone of the 82nd Air Assault Brigade hit a Russian video surveillance camera.
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1690281111539023872?s=20
And it is also true that elements of all 13 of the prepared brigades have been in combat at this point: 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 32nd, 33rd, 37th, 38th, 42nd, 46th, 47th, 116th, 117th, 118th brigade.
https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1690299316072587264?s=20
But, seeing these brigades on the frontlines does not mean they have been fully committed.
You may want to find a more reliable source for your information. You cite ‘Simplicius’s Garden of Knowledge’ which has the appearance of a Kremlin fake news site.
Oh dear, now Putin’s worried.
“Vladimir Putin plans meeting on Russian currency controls after rouble’s slide
Session called after central bank rate rise fails to halt currency’s decline”
https://www.ft.com/content/52e2cfc3-1157-424d-bf08-1b9544c99803
“The proposal, which would be the first time Russia has increased currency controls since the early weeks of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year, indicates growing concern in the Kremlin about the effect the war is having on the country’s economy.”
This is a fierce video. Inside camera of a Ukrainian Humvee in battle as it strikes a mine. All the soldiers appear to make it out under their own power. Tribute to the ability of the Humvee to protect its charges.
https://x.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1691896457102549078?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
Ken, the vitamins should not hurt.
The only ones that ever seemed helpful to me medically were Vit B12 ( best as an injection ) , Folic acid and perhaps Vit D.
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Anyway enjoy them and stop when you want to.
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Make sure you take the antivirals though!
The superconductivity study that has been discussed here has been retracted by Physical Review Letters after review and reports from four experts. They say the findings point to “fabrication/falsification convincingly”. This was reported in today’s WSJ.
Angech, I have been taking B12 for many years.
Ken,
I believe that is a different superconductor paper (by a US based group). The lead author of that study already had an earlier paper retracted, and appears now in a lot of hot water due to claims of fabrication.
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The Korean university where the room temperature/ambient pressure paper came from has apparently opened an investigation because of claims one of the authors posted the first paper without the knowledge/consent of all the authors. It will be interesting to see how the Korean mess plays out, but I have not yet seen any formal claims of fabrication, only incompetence.
Ken Fritsch,
Molnupiravir, is the drug that causes so many viral RNA replication errors that the next generation of virons are not viable.
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The concern is that at low levels (very start of doses?), the frequency of mutations could be low enough to still generate viable virons but with a much higher frequency of of mutations, and could, at least theoretically, enhance generation of new, more contagious or more lethal strains. The concern is apparently large enough that the FDA is requiring the producer to monitor for generation of new strains.
The original Humvee wasn’t particularly good at mine protection. Shaped charges from Iran were a big problem in Iraq, but simply burying a large artillery shell in the ground with a remote detonator is pretty hard to defend against with an insurgency. The next generation vehicles had mine protection as a higher priority, but I think these type of vehicles will always be vulnerable.
Steve, you are correct that the study I referenced is not the Korean paper, but it does show that a paper on superconductivity can be very seriously considered to be fabricated.
Thanks for the info on molnupiravir. I’ll have to do some research.
Just got this notice from my health insurer AETNA:
“COVID-19 vaccine, or COVID-19 booster
Who needs it
Everyone 6 months or older. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a second dose for adults aged 65 and older.
When to consider it
As soon as you’re due. Already vaccinated? Talk to your doctor to see if you’re eligible for a booster shot.”
I thought the smart play was to stop getting the boosters. Six months ago my physician said to stop. Now I’m confused.
I’ve been kicking the tires of the new Google search engine with AI enhancements. I’ve only loaded it on my Windows desktop. So far it’s been a net positive. I am leaving it turned on for now.
“Google is beefing up AI-powered search on Google Chrome for iOS and Android”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-is-beefing-up-ai-powered-search-on-google-chrome-for-ios-and-android/
Ken,
I had covid a month ago, for the first time also. There are reports of the new BA.(..) variants making the rounds. My body temperature went up to 103F for one day and returned to baseline after 3-4 days. FWIW, I took Tylenol only on two separate occasions.
Politics are heating up in Georgia.
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With 3/5 of the members signing, impeachment is definitely on the table. The 3/5 threshold requires an emergency session be called per the articles I have read.
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We, the undersigned, being duly elected members of the Georgia House of Representatives and Georgia Senate, and comprising 3/5 of each respective house, pursuant to Article IV, Section II, Paragraph VII(b), hereby certify to you, in writing, with a copy to the Secretary of State, that in our opinion an emergency exists in the affairs of the state, requiring a special session to be convened under that section, for all purposes, to include, without limitation, the review and response to the actions of Fani Willis.”
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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/08/17/exclusive-georgia-state-senator-takes-first-step-impeach-trumps-fulton-county-prosecutor/
RB (Comment #223304)
I have taken Tylenol 3X. Knock on wood, but my only symptom today is a diminished appetite that is slowly returning to normal. I originally had all the Covid-19 expected symptoms. I gave myself a test by mowing the lawn this afternoon. It went well. I have continued all my household and yard work and exercise routines. Those activities made me feel better than sitting around.
Anecdotally, of all my relatives and friends that were long time holdouts for Covid infection, like myself, all but one have become infected, and in an order of one by one. Apparently being a holdout does not mean you will be asymptomatic as the holdouts I know were all symptomatic with some getting sicker than other holdouts. Most of the holdouts were infected in recent time and probably by the newest variant.
Russell Klier (Comment #223302)
Russell, I have told this story before but my doctor advised me on an office visit to get a booster and when I told him I was going to wait for a newer booster he nodded his head yes. I get notices all the time about being due for a booster from my medical group, but I’ll go with the nodding of my doctor.
I do not know if the medical group listens to doctor patient conversations or the doctors think that is the case, but when I would ask a since retired doctor to recommend a specialist from the group he would write down a name or names on piece of paper and hand it to me. Since he retired the answer I get from doctors is: “their all very good”.
Ed Forbes,
Republicans have 58% in the Georgia Senate and 56% in the Georgia House. They are not going to do anything to the Atlanta prosecutor who charged Trump and many of his associates.
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Since the Georgia Supreme Court will ultimately review the case if there are convictions (very likely considering Atlanta’s jury pool), and is strongly Republican, it is likely any convictions will be overturned. But that is not the point; saying Trump is a convicted felon before the 2024 election is the point. Ending the case before the 2024 election could happen. For example, a request for a change of venue will be denied, of course, and an appeal could ultimately reach the Georgia SC, which would likely insist on a change of venue….. making conviction just about impossible. Or the defense could move to dismiss the charges, which might get to the Georgia SC before a trial even starts.
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It is an absurd, politically motivated ‘thought-crime’ prosecution, but that doesn’t mean it won’t go forward.
Ken Fritsch,
Before abdominal surgery at the end of February, the whole OR cast met briefly with me in the prep room: surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurses, assistants, scrub people, etc. As I was about to be wheeled into the OR, I joked with them: “I sure hope you have all done this before!”
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They didn’t find it funny at all. Questioning competence doesn’t go down well, even in jest. I also only got ‘They are all excellent’ when requesting advice on doctors.
Steve, all true, but they look to be able to force a special session. Will make for great theater.
There is a real problem that a doctor officially telling somebody NOT to get a booster could get them fired. A few anti-vax doctors have lost their license. It’s nuts.
Tom
I think the difficulty is some things are “recommended”. Dr’s rarely work truly for themselves these days. They have to “recommend” what the company recommends, which is what boards of doctors recommend. The policy is identical for controversial and non-controversial things like mammograms, colonoscopies, vaccinations, yada, yada. I suspect my doctor actually does think most these screenings are good. But they wouldn’t say otherwise if they thought colonoscopies were not as useful as “they” say. (Europeans do something less invasive and don’t have tons of people dying of colon cancer.)
Lucia,
This paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6791134/
Has some very interesting data on colorectal cancer around the world. The age standardized incidence varies widely (figure 2 in the paper), with much lower rates in most of the less developed countries, and much higher rates in Europe and north America. (Genetic? Diet? Too much alcohol? Nobody knows for sure.)
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But the death rate relative to incidence varies much as we might expect. In developed countries, with better health care, fewer people with CRC die (about 1/3 on average), while in less developed countries, the death rate is up to 75% of those diagnosed.
Certainly board recommendations from competent people are useful, the system isn’t insane. It’s only a problem when people with questionable agendas misuse the trust of that system to accomplish political goals. The direction of this type of control tends to always go towards more authoritarian, a wider net, and more political. When has an important society ever said “We are going to make less recommendations”?
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Medical journals taking political stances on irrelevant subjects reduces my trust in their system, I don’t care what those stances are. I then question their views when a society wide emotional dogpile is going on (pandemic of the unvaccinated!). In this case I probably agree with the recommendation for vaccinations but I feel like I have to do some homework myself to see if there is political taint involved. Usually there isn’t, but high profile failures by institutions need to be avoided and I think they get swept up by a vocal minority far too often lately. Example: FDA advisory board recommended vaccine priority by race. Not helpful.
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If a doctor says “The board/society recommends this but I have different thoughts” that is entirely OK with me. People can judge their doctors accordingly.
Tom Scharf,
Yes. I did not suggest my youngest daughter (15) get the vaccine; she is in good health and her risk of complications from contracting covid is miniscule. My grandchildren (1, 3, 4) were not vaccinated. They contracted covid, and it was nothing but a mild cold (fever<100 F) that lasted 2 or 3 days. For healthy kids, any doubt about potential side effects from the vaccine (which are real and not insignificant) overwhelms any potential benefit.
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BTW, my 15 YO daughter either never contracted covid or was asymptomatic if she did.
Shocking! Shocking I say!
https://www.techspot.com/news/99838-openai-chatgpt-has-left-wing-bias-times.html
“A study led by academics from the University of East Anglia sought to discover if ChatGPT was showing political leanings in its answers, rather than being unbiased in its responses.
The test involved asking OpenAI’s tool to impersonate individuals covering the entire political spectrum while asking it a series of more than 60 ideological questions. These were taken from the Political Compass test that shows whether someone is more right- or left-leaning.
The next step was to ask ChatGPT the same questions but without impersonating anyone. The responses were then compared and researchers noted which impersonated answers were closest to the AI’s default voice.
It was discovered that the default responses were more closely aligned with the Democratic Party than the Republicans. It was the same result when the researchers told ChatGPT to impersonate UK Labour and Conservative voters: there was a strong correlation between the chatbot’s answers and those it gave while impersonating the more left-wing Labour supporter.”
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This is bit of a clever test, maybe overly clever. It shows that the AI engine knows the different positions, but then chooses a certain side when asked directly. Of course the usual suspects will just say their preferred narrative is “right”.
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Another one here:
https://twitter.com/AiBreakfast/status/1688939983468453888
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There is something called RLHF (Reinforcement learning from human feedback) which is theorized to be the problem here. A simplified version of that is known as cheating. The same old story, only certain things will be queued up for a lot of required RLHF.
Well even I didn’t expect the tropical Atlantic to wake up this suddenly. NHC is following four systems. Florida is probably not in harms way, for now.
Map:
https://x.com/rklier21/status/1692592362973765876?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
It is good when a patient recognizes that their doctor is merely parroting the medical group’s line. If you do not get a head nod that contradicts it, asking questions about the reasoning behind their recommendations will often reveal how strong their belief is in what they are saying.
I thought older doctors might be more likely to go against the company line, but my experience with my very young, very knowledgable, very personable eye doctor who just happens to be very cute has changed my mind. It was refreshing to see after all the unquestioning acceptance of whatever authorities said during the Covid pandemic by many individuals from whom I heard.
AI, as it is currently constructed, is almost always going to deal with political questions according to the beliefs of the current intelligentsia. That after all is where it gets its data for its replies. AI’s great memory can be useful where that strength applies, but original thought or even thinking a little out of the box is not going to happen.
Hurricane Hilary is bearing down on California. The state medical examiner has declared all deaths will be by suicide.
Got a chuckle! However, I wouldn’t be surprised if California actually made that announcement because climate change.
Stupid headline of the week:
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-vs-trump-rematch-what-voters-want-opinion-1819624
I did not bother the read the article.
Mike M,
I passed on reading that one as well….. reading it could only make you stupider.
‘Our Daily Bread’ today is French baguettes. Our granddaughters are coming for lunch.
https://x.com/rklier21/status/1692882838448648696?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
The last few days have seen a lot of NATO surveillance aircraft over and near the Black SEA. It’s late Saturday afternoon over there and currently I see aircraft from USAF, US Navy, US Army, NATO, and Polish Air Force.
Live tracks:
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=48d854
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=48d8e4
https://www.flightradar24.com/31a83832
https://www.flightradar24.com/NATO11/31a81177
https://www.flightradar24.com/CL60/31a7b146
or voters dread. Doofus vs Goofus
With regard to both colonoscopies and doctor’s recommendations –
at my last annual checkup my doctor suggested a colonoscopy. After some discussion, he said that as I am not in an elevated-risk group, that the non-invasive Cologuard test would be about as effective a screen. I opted for that, and was very pleased that the doctor provided the facts — e.g., why take a test at all, the effectiveness of the various procedures — enabling me to make an informed choice.
On the other hand, my wife opted for the colonoscopy, and endured the procedure and — equally unpleasant — the prep for same.
All the usual suspects are on the Trump is banned from running for office bandwagon due to the 14th amendment provision on insurrection. The Atlantic, CNN, MSNBC, Vox, The Hill, The Nation, NYT, LA Times all joining the Washington Post in this argument. It seems they all agree. Example:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/19/politics/donald-trump-fourteenth-amendment-2024-race/index.html
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Of all the liberal fantasies, this is the craziest plan of all. This one might truly get Trump elected. I only read a couple of these, but neither of them even contemplated what the reaction to executing that plan might be. Perhaps those Very Serious People might contemplate that a partisan ban by one party of another party’s candidate based on clever legal maneuvering would result in serious political violence.
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UPDATE: At least Vox addresses the elephant in the room:
“As a matter of law, I find their arguments quite compelling. If you look at Section 3 in light of the historical evidence and how restrictions on eligibility for office work elsewhere in the Constitution, it’s hard to disagree with Baude and Paulen’s application of its text to Trump.
But as a matter of politics, encouraging state election officials to go rogue and kick Trump off the ballot is a recipe for disaster. And that disconnect, between what the law says and the practical barriers to implementing it, speaks to some deep problems in American democracy that led to Trump’s insurrection in the first place.”
HaroldW (Comment #223328)
August 19th, 2023 at 10:27 am
In my medical group when a patient passes 80 they do not do colonoscopies unless a Cologuard test is positive.
I would be concerned with the Cologuard test detecting precancerous polyps that can be snipped out and tested.
https://www.jackson.org/partners/issues/partners-magazine-fall-2022/the-truth-about-cologuard-tests
Tom Scharf (Comment #223329)
August 19th, 2023 at 11:10 am
I did not believe that anything would get Trump elected a second time around. The first time around a lot of his character flaws were written off sufficiently as a new and refreshing approach and a put down of the “elites”. This time he is going to come off as near psychotic if not truly there.
It is rather obvious that the Democrats and MSM want Trump to be Biden’s opponent. It would be more logical for the saner Republicans to hope for him being ineligible to run. For that to happen would require a speedy justice process that is not very likely to occur.
If there are sufficient numbers of Republicans in the name of Trump only, they could continue to nominate him until death ends the painful process. I wonder who those Republicans and Trump will blame for a second loss. It certainly will not be themselves and Trump. Probably something even more delusional that the first time around.
My recollection is in the UK you get exactly one colonoscopy around 60 YO, unless there is reason to believe the patient is at high risk. If the single colonoscopy reveals problems, then another is allowed. The rational (going from memory) is that it is economically unjustifiable to have colonoscopies after age 60 absent reason to suspect a problem.
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Of course, the older the patient, the less likely CRC is going to kill them; more likely to die from something else. The 80 YO cutoff that Ken Fritsch describes seems to me a bit older than makes sense, but it is at least reasonable. What is not reasonable is colonoscopies every 2 years after age 70, which is what my poor parents suffered, until my dad’s large intestine (at age 79) was perforated during the procedure, followed by emergency repair surgery. I put a stop to the madness with a threat of a malpractice suit; the colonoscopy-happy doctor never contacted them again.
Ken Fritsch, the false-positive rate didn’t bother me much, as a false positive would just result in having to undergo a colonoscopy. Not too much of a downside.
(Edit: that is, the downside is that the Cologuard step, which isn’t time-consuming or difficult, would turn out to be wasted effort.)
A non-invasive test (Cologuard) that is actually taken is sure to be more effective than an invasive test (colonoscopy) that is avoided.
Tom Scharf (Comment #223329): “All the usual suspects are on the Trump is banned from running for office bandwagon due to the 14th amendment provision on insurrection.”
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That is an Establishment fantasy. It is not simply that attempting it would likely cause an actual insurrection. It is that it would require convicting Trump of insurrection. That is something that he is not even accused of in any of the wildly overstated indictments.
We had back to back colonoscopies at age 68 when we were still living on the boat. It turned out to be prescient not to schedule them simultaneously, the single head would never have sufficed.
We both passed.
I asked the doc how many of these things he’d done and IIRC it was about 17,000. I asked if he’d seen may cancers.
“Not one.”
Maybe this observation has been hashed out here before along with plausible reasons for how this could be, but impression I got was that the folks who are being colonoscopied are not the same ones geting this variety of cancer, the the prevalence was far more among male blacks, and they as a group were not getting this type of exam.
Doctor said polyps not infrequently but cancers, not yet.
SteveF (Comment #223332)
August 19th, 2023 at 12:21 pm
For my medical group a colonoscopy was every 10 years unless a precancerous polyp was found and then it was every 5 years. The reason for stopping at 80 years was that the wall of the colon thins with age and the risk of perforation outweighs any benefits of finding cancer.
ken,
“The reason for stopping at 80 years was that the wall of the colon thins with age and the risk of perforation outweighs any benefits of finding cancer.”
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Sure. But as I always advise my offspring, there are divergent interests at play here, so you need to be aware of those. The doctor who does the colonoscopy pockets about $1,800 for under an hour of their time. Hence, there is a temptation to overprescribe the procedure, which I think in the USA is, unfortunately, the norm. I say this as someone who as recently survived CRC (“100% cured”), BTW.
I do hope the lunatics contemplating removing Trump from state ballots understand what they are doing. They risk actual violent revolt if they succeed. The stupid, it burns.
Steve,
I continue to fear that at least some on the left do indeed understand and would like nothing better than violent revolt against them; actual armed conflict to justify the revolution they’ve been dreaming about all their lives. I’ve personally known some like that in fact. I hope it’s only a small minority of them.
SteveF (Comment #223338): “The doctor who does the colonoscopy pockets about $1,800 for under an hour of their time.”
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If that were so, then they would all be as rich as Bidens (15 hours a week for a 7 figure income). More likely, that is what the hospital bill. I doubt the doc gets more than 20% of that.
The media is signaling to state election officials and legislatures that they will have their back if they choose to proceed with taking Trump off the ballot. Democracy is simply too important to be left to the will of the voters.
A bunch of states keeping the Republican nominee off the ballot would not be unprecedented. Last time it happened, the Republican won in spite of getting zero votes in 10 states. It was not long before the shooting started.
Mike M,
It is very difficult to find exactly what Medicare and private insurance pay for colonoscopies, and removal of one or more polyps increases costs, but with little information about added cost publicly available. The total fees nationwide average near $2,600 as of a couple years ago. That said, gastroenterologists and colorectal surgeons in the USA average about $400K per year, so they are doing OK I guess.
MikeM,
It is a lot of money and the MD spends a brief amount of time. There are other medical technicians involved and the equipment is likely expensive. When I had one done it wasn’t at a hospital. I was also put under, so maybe an anethesiologist? I don’t know. The money paid is not going straight into one md’s pocket.
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I do know that the “medical poobahs” recommend them. Any md who advises against one or even fails to recommend one puts themselves at risk for losing a costly lawsuit if the patient subsequently gets cancer. So your general practitioner or personal care physician is going to recommend it.
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It is extremely time consuming for an individual practicing physician really, truly pour over “the literature” to try to determine whether each and every recommended individual procedure is “really” advisable and how. And if you go against the poohbahs, and do not recommend a screening, you will eventually have a patient who would have their ailment caught if they were screened. Then you are in big trouble because good luck explaining your theory about alpha and beta error, and what the correct assessment of risk/reward in being screened. And lets face it: if you don’t get “all” the data and analyze it right, your conclusion could be wrong. The poohbas could be right.
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Discussing the risk associated with false positives is an academic exercise for mathematicians. For md’s not so much.
(And, btw, I’m agnostic on the balance. I have zero reason to believe the poobahs are wrong on colonoscopies. Among other things, I haven’t looked into “the literature” and I don’t intend to. )
Lucia,
My discussions with MDs (and my wife’s discussions with MDs… much more frequent than mine) suggest that everything must go ‘by the book’, with zero deviation.
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I once picked up a penicillin resistant throat infection, and after both penicillin and amoxicillin didn’t touch it, I was prescribed 5 days of a cephalosporin, which instantly knocked down the infection…. but it came roaring back 2 days after I stopped the antibiotic. I literally had to shout at the MD (with a very sore throat!) to give me a prescription for more than 5 days…. because “5 days is the standard prescription”. 9 days killed it for good. The MD didn’t want to see me again, and the feeling was mutual.
Note: comments will auto-close soon. I’ll be moving some to the new thread.
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2023/fell-like-and-am-got-up-like-a-pro/