Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

My family wasn’t in the US until 1910. I have no engrained, learned love of any of the dozens of confederate flags. It’s not the flag of this country and various hate groups have co-opted its use. That said, I am a little L libertarian and hate the banning of just about anything of that nature. But it’s not a thing with me. A business has a right to forbid things. So, the flag people can acquiesce or stop attending. Couldn’t care less either way.

The thing I dislike the most is the obvious pandering to the prevailing winds of the day. But, still, whatever.

[Jeff Buchanan]

.......maybe the best thing about this pandering is that it has forced COVID coverage to the back seat..... no, the trunk. I'm fine with that although fodder for my posts is diminishing.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Fuckin' Confederate flag wavin', slave ownin', white priveleged mutha fuckas

STFU

[AlabamAlum]

Covid cases up in Alabama, but so is testing. Hey, who thinks that virtually no one in the media will blame the millions of people without masks and shoulder-to-shoulder protesting, but will have no problem blaming beach goers?

[Dr. Strangelove]

Covid cases up in Alabama, but so is testing. Hey, who thinks that virtually no one in the media will blame the millions of people without masks and shoulder-to-shoulder protesting, but will have no problem blaming beach goers?

What's the positive test rate and are hospitalization rates increasing?

If people spending more time indoors in the South is helping drive increases across the Sun Belt that does make me nervous about Vegas in a couple of weeks.

[Hannibal]

If Gone With the Wind is now haram then anything that separates the Confederacy from the evils of slavery should be banned. That includes Ken Burns's Civil War documentary series, which paints General Lee and the soldiers of the Confederacy in the best possible light. I'm sure that there are other heretical works produced throughout the 20th Century that need to be purged as well. That includes basically any series of children's cartoons made before the 1980s.

We're just starting on the fun. And here you guys were, thinking all along that it was the brown-shirted Nazis who were the anti-intellectual book burners.

[Hannibal]

Amy Acton has resigned as pubic health director in Ohio. It comes across as being voluntary.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Probably heard that Pelosi trying to get all the Johnny Reb statues thrown out of the Capital building. Quite a few states are already in the process. Here's a list of what's already been promised to be swapped out. Every state has spots for two statues. When you look at the list of who's currently there, the remarkable thing is how utterly forgotten and irrelevant the majority are.

(The two people representing Ohio are Thomas Edison and James Garfield (lol), incidentally)

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Other than Kirby Smith and the name Thomas Benton ringing a bell, I could not tell you who any of these people are or what they did.

The name Charles Aycock was mildly familiar. I looked him up and he gave a speech called "The Negro Problem" (1903) in which he boasts about how North Carolina 'solved' the problem by disenfranchising blacks. He promised blacks too that they would be shown no pity and know no happiness until they admit the white race was superior in every way. Great guy.

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

At least his statue is being replaced. In looking over the list, and it's sort of crazy he's still there, but one of Georgia's two statues is Alexander Stephens, who gave the infamous "Cornerstone Speech" which laid out the reasons the South seceded (in his view) and was Vice President of the Confederacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_H._Stephens

[Tom W]

I've always been pretty ambivalent about "statues" and monuments. Thye've pretty much seemed like litter boxes for pigeons to me. But, hey, if they rile up the woken into doing something that makes them look like idiots, and they seem to be doing just that, then pass the popcorn.

[lineygoblue]

Next they'll demand that everyone that has a last name of a slave owner renounce their name and take another.

[iam416]

I’m not sure what comes next in the great virtue signaling purge, but I’m certain it’s not stopping with treasonists.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Good WSJ article on how covid spread so extensively in NYC. The Mayor, the Governors, and hospital leaders all fucked up to varying degrees.The relationship between the Governor of New York and the Mayor of NYC has been dysfunctional since I moved to NY in the late 90's and it was Pataki and Giuliani bitching at each other. Nothing's improved now that it's Dems.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-new-yorks-coronavirus-response-made-the-pandemic-worse-11591908426

[iam416]

Is Covid still a thing?

Anyway, yeah. It’s all the more important when you consider that NYC was (and is) such a huge portion of the US outbreak. It was, IMO, THE US outbreak for the first several weeks.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I think that's it - COVID still is a thing. An increase in new cases should be anticipated as more socialization associated with reopenings occur.

Of course headlines this morning warn of a CATASTOPHE in the coming 2nd wave. The numbers nationwide don't support that. They support regional increases in new cases as a result of (1) more testing, (2) more social contacts in reopenings. Only the state of AZ has expressed concern about rising new cases, increased GR and hospital capacity. The Governor of Oregon expressed a view that he might consider slowing the pace of reopening the state. 48 other states, only 12 of these experiencing an increase in R(t), are doing fine.

I think the 6% market drop yesterday is fueling doom and gloom scenarios about COVID. You should not associate a decline in markets with a surge in new cases of COVID when such surge is, to me, clearly being caused by an increase in both social contact and testing. Moreover, the market rise of the last month, was overdone and bound to settle lower as actual economic data fed investor perceptions of growth. They are separate circumstances, one health related the other economic. I won't dispute there is a relationship but we should be careful to not assign a complete casual effect by one on the other.

For the last week now, sensibility replaced idiocy in reporting COVID numbers. One of the important shifts that occurred was that R(t) and % +s became things with accompanying recognition that when cases increased, such increases were regional, often down to the city level, and did not imply a national crisis. This morning we returned to idiocy with new cases rising along with increased testing positivity and GR rates, not necessarily unexpected or stressing HC capacity, in a handful of cities/states being generalized to a national public health crisis and a 2nd COVID wave. Folks, that's not happening.

Here's the message: wear your fucking mask when you are inside and/or can't distance.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Probably won't change a single mind but John Bolton and his publisher are vowing to release his book June 23 and say its already been shipped to distributors. The White House has been delaying and delaying its publication since the start of the year, saying it contains "classified information".

Apparently the book will allege Trump misconduct involving 'multiple countries'

https://www.axios.com/john-bolton-book-trump-misconduct-794e8e01-18a3-44ae-ae35-1ee2c4fddad4.html