Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

I have drank a Billy Beer. It tasted like a stale Lowenbrau, which was silly. All they needed was some 5% alcohol nondescript lager like Bud or Coors.

[Hannibal]

In all this doom and gloom and society is collapsing talk, keep this in mind: this ain't shit compared to the 60's.

In some ways, you are right. There was civil unrest in the '60s that added up to more than what we have seen in the past few weeks, but in some ways, we are worse off. Namely, our collective immune systems and our collective response. Rather than cracking down on the lunacy, America's mayors are shrugging their shoulders and saying "well shit, I guess that this is what we deserve because of slavery". Minneapolis's mayor would sooner put you in prison for saying that there are only two genders than for looting Target or burning down the police station

[Dr. Strangelove]

The DC Archbishop of the Catholic Church puts out a statement saying he finds it baffling and reprehensible that any Catholic facility would allow itself to be used for Trump's photo ops the day after teargassing protesters just to stage another photo op, an act which John Paul II would have been appalled by.

[Dr. Strangelove]

"I'm against clearing out a peaceful protest for a photo op that treats the Word of God as a political prop" -- Senator Ben Sasse

Tim Scott criticized what Trump did too. Lindsey Graham called it pointless. Only Republican Senators I've seen so far that are critical.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Since COVID news is largely being ignored nationally - I'm still getting decent local print news on COVID - there are a few things going on, none of them particularly noteworthy but none-the-less interesting to me.

Most nations are in various stages of re-opening. With the exception of India which is basically going for it by cancelling mitigation measures across the board, others are maintaining some level of all the standard stuff. My sense is that most epidemiologist and virologists by country are realizing that SARS-COV-2 isn't going away, may be less infectious/lethal than initially thought to be and are advising policy makers that dealing with it, if that can be done responsibly, is the new normal. Go ahead and get economies back up and operating and get as many folks as possible back to work. We'll have some increased case numbers and deaths but those are tolerable given that it may be more dangerous keeping businesses shuttered and people holed up in their homes. All of that makes sense to me.

Looking at the data and charts, world wide, you can see this plateauing of new cases and deaths across all countries with a few exceptions where the splines are either upward or downward pointing. The only uniformity is the plateauing, which, yeah, fits the pattern of recognition that his thing ain't going away, lets figure out how to best deal with it while we get back to work.

There's no question, and I mentioned this a few days ago, that states are experiencing an increase in R(t) while easing mitigation measures. GA, for example, is way up there and climbing above 1 (1.16). New case #'s and deaths are declining - I'd like to see more data than what's on their PH web site, e.g., % + would be nice, to understand the apparent anomaly. One of things I noticed is that their graphic depictions for new cases show 7d averages and before the current week, there was a sharp rise in new cases - just goes to show how hard it is to sort this stuff out for people like us. I wouldn't be lighting my hair on fire over GA's numbers.

There are therapeutics in the works that stimulate the production of SARS-COV-2 antibodies. It's not a vaccine and how it works is apparently not completely understood but it does. One of them is fairly far along. That drug, referred to as LY-CoV555, will be studied in non-hospitalized coronavirus patients later this summer. Elly Lily is the principal company and is collaborating with a smaller Canadian operation. The way it works in infected patients is like a booster shot that hastens the body's ability to eradicate replicating virus and then provide a months or more worth of immunity. One of the benefits is that it's easy to manufacture and if it turns out it doesn't "kill the patient" with the risk of this cytokine storm thing, it can be produced at scale rapidly.

[Ghengis Jon]

George Will calls for the expulsion of Republicans in November.


This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron. Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.

Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.

What Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down” now defines American politics. In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly unpalatable choice: Never had both major parties offered nominees with higher disapproval than approval numbers. Voters chose what they wagered would be the lesser blight. Now, however, they have watched him govern for 40 months and more than 40 percent — slightly less than the percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.

Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.

The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House, will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.

In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.

A political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on candidates, thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, and who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies

Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.

[Hannibal]

Cuckservatives can always be relied upon to attack their own instead of addressing the country's real problems, confronting their actual enemies on the left (who want to destroy them), or legitimately advancing the ideology that they claim to stand for. Worthless turds like George Will punch right because their real concern is whether or not their limousine Liberal friends invite them to the best cocktail parties. It might be a conspiracy theory to say that they are "controlled opposition", but that is precisely how they function at this point.

It has been described as Conservatism, Inc but I think that in spinelessness and stupidity are as much to blame as the almighty dollar. There will be no legitimate swinging of the political pendulum back to sanity until the Jared Kushners, Bushes, Mitt Romneys and Bill Kristols have been purged from the movement or at least pushed to the margins.

[iam416]

Yeah, he makes no sense. He’d rather see single payer, the green new deal and reparations. That makes him a Progressive.

[lineygoblue]

With all the looting going on, it seems like maybe the tab for 'reparations' has already been paid. And then some.

[iam416]

Correct

[AlabamAlum]

I get Will. I don’t agree with his answer, but I get the disgust. Trump is repugnant.

[Cody_Russell]

Rip this guy's career.

[Dr. Strangelove]

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[Dr. Strangelove]

lol...reporter in Hoover, AL counted at least 50 cops who came and arrested every member of this protest for violating 7 PM curfew.

Gentlemen, the Revolution has been postponed


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[AlabamAlum]

lol...reporter in Hoover, AL counted at least 50 cops who came and arrested every member of this protest for violating 7 PM curfew.

Gentlemen, the Revolution has been postponed


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Good.