Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

To the surprise of no one, the border crisis created by Chairman Joe will be resolved by just letting everyone in. As if there was ever another outcome.

Teens in jail-like structures!

[lineygoblue]

That is only one of the methods that the Democrats assure themselves of total political power, and crush any opposition in the process.

a. Allow unfettered immigration, and let them vote for The Party..

b. Pack the Supreme Court to assure any disputes brought before them are decided in favor of The Party

c. Add more "states". Washington DC and Puerto Rico assure 4 additional Senate seats for The Party, and additional reps in the House.

d. Re-gerrymander voting districts to assure that candidates of The Party stay in those seats.

e. Take over local election boards to assure that any local voting disputes are decided in favor of The Party.

Putin and Xi look at what Chairman Joe is doing in the US and smile with approval. They couldn't do it any better themselves.

[Whitley]

Wait a second here----why should the residents of DC, who pay federal taxes, not have federal representation?

And you must hate the GA law that says the state legislature can take over the local election boards?

[Dr. Strangelove]

If the people of Puerto Rico vote strongly in favor of statehood (51% isn't good enough, IMO, it should be more like 60%+), then there's almost no good faith argument to deny it to them. It all boils down to pure partisanship in thinking that if the Republican Party doesn't personally benefit then it needs be fought. And I don't even think the conventional conservative "wisdom" that Puerto Rico would always be safe Dem seats is correct -- they've had Republican Governors in the recent past. Heck, the Governor who just left office endorsed Trump.

DC is a tougher decision to me and I lean more on the side of making it part of Maryland, to be honest. There are some constitutional arguments made against DC statehood but most of them rely on misinterpreting the Constitution or not knowing what it actually says. It's true that the seat of government cannot be located in a state but the size and location of the federal district is a decision the Constitution leaves entirely to Congress. It only states that it cannot be bigger than 10 miles square (10x10); it says nothing about how small it can be. 10x10 was the original size of DC before the Virginia side of the Potomac was granted back to Virginia in the 1840's. And it only took an act of Congress to do that, not an Amendment to the Constitution.

[lineygoblue]

And you must hate the GA law that says the state legislature can take over the local election boards?

I don't know enough about it to hate it or like it. What the citizens of Georgia do to determine their voting rules isn't really any of my business. And MLB, BLM, Antifa, et al need to stay out of it as well. If they decide that they want nothing but Democrats to represent them, then so be it. Large cities and states all over the country have very little or no significant opposition party. Why should JawJa be different?

[Jeff Buchanan]

Governor Desantis' cancelation of all EO's issued under his PHE powers to issue them is being dismissed as political theater by most S. FL county and city mayors. "It's not over" or, "we are deeply concerned" seems to be the positions being taken by Tri-County officials - all of them Ds. The net impact is that mitigation measures switch from mandates to voluntary. Two months ago, Desantis prohibited counties from enforcing mitigation measure compliance with fines anyway so, they were essentially voluntary after that move. Still, most businesses required masks and placed distance markers on floors. Mostly people complied.

Business owners interviewed by the local press mostly said they would continue with masking and distancing requirement's despite the Desantis move. School supers aren't changing plans that, IMO, remain overly cautious. What this demonstrates is the power of the fear-monkey messaging that has come from public health authorities at every level over the last 15 months. While the evidence that the level of vaccination that is typically occurring within the states (30-50% overall, up to of 95% of at risk populations) is anecdotal, it is nonetheless suggestive that most states are at a place where normal mobility and social interaction can be resumed. Just randomly reading about big-city re-openings (NYC and Broadway for example) suggests that there are a few places where officials are properly making risk benefit choices. Not nearly enough though and it's going to be hard to break out of a mentality that is driven by fear.

What's not getting a lot of coverage is that a safe resumption of pre-pandemic life will largely depend on a locality's ability to identify new cases and deal with them. That requires a robust testing architecture that is capable of identifying and measuring the impact of mutated strains of native SARS2. Details of the Biden administration's multi-million dollar plan to do that aren't clear to me so, I can't say definitively the needed architecture is in place. The UK appears to have identified the importance of testing and genomic sequencing and is doing 10X as much testing as the US and other countries are doing. A lot of interesting and very practical studies are being done over there as well - the 3000 people dance party with unmasked attendees with the intent of measuring infection outcomes after the fact is just one example.

The next two months leading into Biden's pronouncement that we can party by the 4th is going to interesting to watch. My concern is that the CDC, having become invested in a largely negative COVID narrative, some of it right, most of it wrong, will continue to influence the behavior of Americans in unnecessary ways

[THE_WIZARD_]

Chairman Joe says if we obey we can party like it's 1699...ala Weird Al!!

[iam416]

Puerto Rico has a legitimate claim. But let's not pretend the partisanship is one-way. That's brazenly fucking stupid.

DC is not legitimate. It's not a state. It's not a territory. It's run by CONGRESS. That's pretty much total bullshit.

But let's be very clear -- this is entirely about partisan politics.

[iam416]

Buchanan:

You'll like this short article from the esteemed Charles Cooke (who lives in Florida): https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/...covid-zealots/

Essentially, he's a "I was fine to go along with Covid precautions but enough is enough" guy. His conclusion:

I do not believe that the initial panic over the coronavirus was driven primarily by cynicism or by expedience. But I do think that there is something both cynical and expedient about the glacial pace at which this country is being permitted to return to normal. For a certain sort of political progressive, our COVID-led status quo — with its rampant safetyism, its reliance upon experts, and its outsized role for government — is just not that big a deal, especially now that it can be used as an all-encompassing pretext for the Biden administration’s attempt to “remake” the United States. Add in that progressives seem to wildly misjudge how dangerous the virus really is — the chance that somebody with COVID must be hospitalized is between 1 and 5 percent, and yet 69 percent of Democrats believe that the number is more than 20 percent, and 41 percent believe that it is more than 50 percent — and you have a recipe for disaster. In the press, in the blue states, and in the federal government, that recipe is still being followed . . . well, well past the point of being overdone

[Tom W]

I don't know enough about it to hate it or like it. What the citizens of Georgia do to determine their voting rules isn't really any of my business. And MLB, BLM, Antifa, et al need to stay out of it as well. If they decide that they want nothing but Democrats to represent them, then so be it. Large cities and states all over the country have very little or no significant opposition party. Why should JawJa be different?

Maybe because the "Party" doesn't really have as good of a hand as they think they do, and they are constantly escalating the risk of overplaying it. It's pretty easy for them to lecture us about racism, gender politics and climate change all day long. But when it comes time to actually do something about them, they really have some stupid ideas. Pushback will be inevitable, especially after these ideas are allowed to ferment for a while. It might be in our best interest, as a society, to give them all of the stage time that they want.

[iam416]

To emphasize something --

the chance that somebody with COVID must be hospitalized is between 1 and 5 percent, and yet 69 percent of Democrats believe that the number is more than 20 percent, and 41 percent believe that it is more than 50 percent

I wonder where on earth how Ds would end up so wildly wrong? Can anyone think of any mechanism that would cause our sage coastal overlords to be so wildly detached from reality?

If you think of an answer, let me know. I'm also wondering why Ds think a black man is more likely to die in a police shooting that a car accident. Perhaps the mechanisms are connected?

Just trying to make sense of it all. The Ds are generally so knowledgeable and all-knowing that I must figure out what's caused them to visit fantasyland on these two issues.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Puerto Rico has a legitimate claim. But let's not pretend the partisanship is one-way. That's brazenly fucking stupid.

DC is not legitimate. It's not a state. It's not a territory. It's run by CONGRESS. That's pretty much total bullshit.

But let's be very clear -- this is entirely about partisan politics.

The Dems pushing for Puerto Rico statehood may be doing do for entirely partisan reasons but that doesn't change the fact, which you acknowledge, that Puerto Rico has a legitimate claim.

What legitimate principled argument do opponents of Puerto Rican statehood have? It's almost entirely partisan. "I think granting them statehood will hurt my party politically therefore I'm against it and to hell with any legitimate claims they may have."

The flip side occurs with DC because there's really no reason, if it's a question of representation, to object to DC becoming part of Maryland. They'd have representation then. To insist it's statehood or nothing is where the Dems push it too far for purely partisan advantage. (Granted, I know Maryland has stated they aren't on board with the DC-Annexation plan).

[Mike]

To emphasize something --



I wonder where on earth how Ds would end up so wildly wrong? Can anyone think of any mechanism that would cause our sage coastal overlords to be so wildly detached from reality?

If you think of an answer, let me know. I'm also wondering why Ds think a black man is more likely to die in a police shooting that a car accident. Perhaps the mechanisms are connected?

Just trying to make sense of it all. The Ds are generally so knowledgeable and all-knowing that I must figure out what's caused them to visit fantasyland on these two issues.

I chalk it up as mysteries of the universe. Some things we'll just never know: how the earth was made, who shot JFK, and the rules of cricket.

[Jeff Buchanan]

And as if right on cue, "COVID Zealots" among the various research institutes in FL chime in to announce:

REPORTED COVID VARIANTS DOUBLED IN FL IN TWO WEEKS ......

After this headline with the intention of promoting fear and anxiety among FL residents, the article goes on to reveal what is already known that the predominant variant is the UK type which, BTW, and not even mentioned in the "breaking news" story is controlled by current vaccines.

The body of the article also states the variants are "67% more deadly" - utterly false - and goes on to present some dubious math about rising deaths and hospitalizations. This BS after reporting yesterday that the 7d rolling averages for deaths and hospitalizations is trending down sharply.

I'm not much of a conspiracist but I think it is obvious that we are seeing an organized and purposeful campaign to silence or dismiss voices like Ron Desantis' and Charles Cook's. Meanwhile sowing fear = control = expanded political power for progressives and diminishing that of conservatives. It's happening across all levels of government.

[iam416]

The Dems pushing for Puerto Rico statehood may be doing do for entirely partisan reasons but that doesn't change the fact, which you acknowledge, that Puerto Rico has a legitimate claim.

What legitimate principled argument do opponents of Puerto Rican statehood have? It's almost entirely partisan. "I think granting them statehood will hurt my party politically therefore I'm against it and to hell with any legitimate claims they may have."

The flip side occurs with DC because there's really no reason, if it's a question of representation, to object to DC becoming part of Maryland. They'd have representation then. To insist it's statehood or nothing is where the Dems push it too far for purely partisan advantage. (Granted, I know Maryland has stated they aren't on board with the DC-Annexation plan).

Well, being legitimate doesn't make it right. There's a legitimate reason to oppose it. It's been a territory for eons. It has almost no connection to the US -- it's a quintessential territory, including speaking a foreign language. It hasn't been an issue until, apparently, now.

That said, opposition is entirely partisan. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But that's my point -- cut the fucking crap and just say you want 4 more senate seats.