Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Well, anyway, back to important stuff

Trump says the old man protestor in Buffalo who's still in the hospital after cracking his skull on the pavement was a "set up". He faked being pushed hard. Was trying to disrupt police communications. ANTIFA provocateur!

Then he shares something from Seb Gorka basically calling Mattis a disgrace to the Marines

Another busy day watching tv for the Bunker Boy, if his twitter feed is any judge.

[lineygoblue]

Hang in there, DSL. Uncle Joe's sweeping wave of justice and all things good is only five months away.

Stacey Abrams will be an excellent President, don't you think?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Better bet is Kamala Harris or Val Demings

[iam416]

Uggggh

[iam416]

Jim Geraghty has been my favorite read throughout this wild year (and Kevin Williamson is always great, too). Here, he's shooting fish in a barrell, but he's so damn right that it's worth linking: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/...-of-stupidity/

[Jeff Buchanan]

"A Civil War of Stupidity" ....... public officials and politicians speak vapid platitudes, the media augments it, journalists like Geraghty see the insanity and call it out.

Our president - America's spokesman-in-chief - then makes himself look stupid by his tweets, misrepresents the truth or foolishly shapes it to his own reality, such reality sensible people reject. But he and the media, in a constant battle, have a synergistic effect on the perception of public officials and law makers acting stupidly.

I wonder if, behind closed doors, out of the media glare, thoughtful discussions by sensible people of "the problems" aren't going on. Sure, "defund the police" sounds ridiculous as if it were actually to mean abolish them. I don't think it does and there have been plenty of local officials walk this one back. So, sound bites from various sources that are meaningless predominate for the sake of brevity or harnessing the public mood to one's benefit. Then the media makes whatever is going on look insane.

Are we getting an accurate picture of the COVID pandemic in the US and by state? Nope. Does the media paint governors and local officials as studpid? Yep, they try their best. Are public officials, OTH, doing things mostly right re COVID? I think so. I can name a few other examples of shit working out but you get the point.

I get what Geraghty is saying but I think thoughtful people are doing a better job than he gives them credit for.

[Jeff Buchanan]

The WHO announced today - asymptomatic people infected with SARS-CoV-2 "rarely" transmit the virus ...... whoa!

There's a bit more to it, context, on a careful read of the announcement. Its asymptomatic persons well before they develop symptoms. New class of the infected is born: "pre-symtomatic." these folks shed virus and may be the ones who shed the most of it. Back to square one - you can't know who has it and might pass it to you.

There's a sort of spill-over in pre-symtomatic persons between no symptoms at all, patient feels fine and, hmmmm, I've got a headache and feel tired persons - those are the spreaders according to the WHO's scientists.

Infected folks who apparently aren't spreading the virus are the ones who have very low viral loads - meaning, if they cough or sneeze, there aren't enough virions in the droplets expelled to infect someone else. Those folk's immune systems either eliminate the virus or it progresses to some level of symptoms/illness. There's been a line of thinking along the way that infected persons have the highest viral loads in the early days of a symptomatic infection and it declines precipitously in most cases in the 7-10d after that.

What does this mean to you. Nothing. Wear a mask, distance...... for now.

Something it might explain is what appears to be a significant global decline in serious illness and death those declines replicated regionally. This makes sense if among the 95% of the infected population that doesn't get seriously ill, there's possibly a much larger than initially thought group that are infected and NEVER spread the virus exists.

I'd give this thinking another month to bear it out. If we continue to see R(t) hold steady, drop regionally or we only see small increases from time to time, it's probably a good bet this thing is done. What will need to happen to get us back on a solid road to economic recovery though is for officials making re-opening decisions to buy into this, open their boarders before fucking 2021 or a vaccine is available and remove most restrictions to mobility.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Chesapeake Energy went up $45 yesterday (180%). It's already down almost $30 (43%) in the pre-market. Another company on the verge of bankruptcy.

Chesapeake is now below where it started yesterday. In 24 hours it rose from $25 to $70. Rumors spread it was about to declare bankruptcy after markets closed, and now it's below $23. That's despite halting trading of it for hours.

Crazy. No explanation for how it rose so far so fast except one article blaming day traders using Robin Hood.

[Hannibal]

Probably a rescue deal or something of that nature that was leaking out but then fell through.

[Jeff Buchanan]

What a surprise ...... a study that included several data sources including commercial satellite imagery of a Wuhan hospital with a few cars in a 2018 image and 267 in an August, 2019 image suggests some health event may have been on going. There are also medical reports of patient's in France who had traveled to Wuhan as early as August testing positive for coronavirus when they fell ill later and sought medical care in their home country. Authors of the research study, without a biased agenda, were working to track the most likely pathways of the spread of the virus.

The Chinese Health Minister when asked about the study dismissed it as absurd. The study does offer that it may be unfair to judge the Chinese on this finding there are too many confounding factors that were not controlled for but still..........fuck them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934

[iam416]

Don't worry, Buchanan, when Biden is President he'll just call up Xi and tell him to "knock it off." Done and done.

[Hannibal]

What does the WHO have to say about how deadly and contagious White Supremacy is? American health experts agree that it's more deadly than pancreatic cancer.

[Jeff Buchanan]

About 2 months ago, we had a very brief exchange of opinion here on where the money came from to fund CARES and PPP legislation. I took the position that the government wasn't "borrowing" in the traditional sense of that term but rather it was issuing bonds, a shit-ton of them, and lowering interest rates on commercial lending (bank rates) to historic lows. Other's chimed in and offered other opinions from just printing money that will cause problems going forward with inflation being just one of them or borrowing against future tax revenues. All of our positions made the assumption that the government has to pay back what it borrows at some point and that spending, generally, has to be balanced with tax revenues..... that's the standard view of main stream economists.

I might have mentioned at some point here, not related to that discussion, that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) flies in the face of most of the standard views of economists. I don't think I really understood how it works except the rudimentary understanding that you just print money but I thought you still had to pay it back as in the Gold Standard days that Nixon abolished in 1971. According to MMT you don't. I'm not sure I'm ready to buy into this as it is a favorite theory of the progressive wing of the D party as a means of paying for all the free shit they advocate for.

This guy is a proponent of MMT and did a good job of explaining how it works. It wasn't pay walled:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/o...ronavirus.html

[Tom W]

What does the WHO have to say about how deadly and contagious White Supremacy is? American health experts agree that it's more deadly than pancreatic cancer.

Trying really hard to NOT say that Alex Trebek has "White Privilege"...

[*JD*]

This is quite the read.


Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastard. We all were.

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.

More:
https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confess...p-bb14d17bc759