An excellent movie that didn’t receive much acclaim that gives you an idea of what it’s like to live in post-Milošević Serbia is Klopka. It’s bleak, but then Serbia is bleak. Serbia, or the former Yugoslavia and what’s become of it, is America’s future, so in this sense this movie is instructional.
It’s tough to access this movie. No doubt the Serbian mafia, considering Serbia is a Mafia State, has a hand in making it tough to access. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of Serbia. Truth, like love, hurts.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for August came out yesterday. Total nonfarm jobs (public and private sectors combined) increased 312,000 not seasonally adjusted to 146.856 million. This was in range with previous Augusts, and that’s the problem. It needed to be substantially better to make a dent in the loss of jobs due to covid and covid lockdowns. That covid jobs deficit (from where we would expect to be if there had been no covid) actually increased 120,000 this month to 9.11 million.
In the private sector, jobs increased by 102,000 to 125.871 million. By this point in the summer, companies have usually hired everybody they were going to for this season and end of summer job losses have not shown up yet. Add to this the resurgence of covid and the covid jobs deficit in the private sector declined slightly to 8.09 million.
Looking at the employment number (seasonally unadjusted) from the household survey (which is smaller but tends to react faster to changes in the economy), it fell as it usually does (end of summer) a smaller than usual 369,000 down to 153.232 million. The covid employment shortfall improved somewhat more but still came in at 9.02 million.
Again even if the jobs and employment numbers were half million better every month than expected, it would take 18 months to clear the covid induced shortfalls. I don’t think people realize how big a hole we have to work out of. And as usual the BLS doesn’t really measure the quality of the jobs created.
People who “follow the science”, will surely jump on the obvious implications of this, in terms of vaccination mandates:
SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021,” the study read. “The increased risk was significant for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold increased risk for symptomatic disease.”
from “Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer COVID Shots” @ thefederalist.com
I have to admit, I don’t know what is meant by “naive vaccinees”, though I think everybody who trusted the CDC to do the right thing is, in a sense, a “naive vaccinee”.
Meanwhile, the dude in “‘Natural Immunity’ Lawsuit Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Ends in Surprising Result” @ youtube’s CBN News channel says,
02:16
there have now been 15 studies of
02:20
compare natural immunity uh with
02:22
vaccines and every and all 15 have shown
02:24
that
02:25
in the range of 90 to 95 protection
02:28
which is what the uh mrna vaccines are
02:32
at their peak and now as we know they
02:33
want very quickly another study from
02:36
israel found that vaccine protection
02:38
wanes 40 percent a month natural
02:41
immunity wanes 5
02:42
(percent) a month
02:44
um and then um and so and so and we know
02:48
that it’s much better than the more
02:49
mediocre vaccines like johnson johnson
02:52
which even in the clinical trials was
02:53
only about 66 percent uh protection
02:56
there is literally no doubt about this
02:58
anymore it’s also very clear that
03:00
natural immunity as we saw in the
03:02
israeli study is very resistant to um to
03:05
uh to variants such as the delta variant
03:08
because it recognizes the entire protein
03:10
whereas the vaccine is only used to
03:12
target this narrow spike protein and now
03:15
Built-in obsolescence has come to the vaccine world!
College Football starts today. So far the stadiums are packed in every venue and there are pretty much no masks. It’s balls to the wall and every man for himself with this pandemic. Let it Rip, indeed.
Unvaccinated people are 15.4 times more likely to die from COVID than vaccinated people. Unvaccianted people are also 4.4 times more likely to catch COVID than vaccinated people. For teens, the difference is even greater, with unvaccinated teens being 6.3 times more likely to catch COVID than vaccinated teens.
But I’m sure this is all just more evidence that vaccines don’t work, and they’re what’s killing people, not COVID.
The study meta is referring to is “Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections”. It is a pre-print, i.e. not peer reviewed study and can be found at Medrxiv. Its subject is waning immunity, specifically of the Pfizer vaccine. It was retrospective in nature with data drawn from Israel’s Ministry of Health.
Naive means without immunity or immunological memory of a pathogen, i.e. covid.
We have known about waning immunity for an age. However, as NR points out, even with waning immunity, the vaccinated are still much less likely to die from covid than the unvaccinated.
And by the way, as far as I’m concerned, any cop who is “demoralized” and quits because long overdue reforms are being made to police and they can’t just do whatever the hell they want anymore is exactly the kind of person we don’t want as a cop.
NR: ‘any cop who is “demoralized” … because long overdue reforms are being made to police and they can’t just do whatever the hell they want anymore is exactly the kind of person we don’t want as a cop.’
Wildes and teachers across the country face a vexing and evolving challenge as the new school year begins and students return to the classroom following a roughly 18-month hiatus from normal in-person learning. Since the last time full classrooms congregated, a whole industry of misinformation has exploded online, spreading conspiracy theories on everything from the alleged steal of the presidential election, which Joe Biden won, to the prevalence of microchips in Covid-19 vaccines.
It’s bad enough that kids are exposed to dangerous untruths across their favorite social media apps like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. An equally large problem is that, while stuck at home during the pandemic, many students had their days of virtual schooling interrupted by screaming parents, who themselves had fallen deep into the internet’s darkest rabbit holes.
Some 15 percent of Americans believe QAnon conspiracy theories, according to a May report from non-profit groups Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core. QAnon believers were largely responsible for spreading “stop the steal” content on social media, backing the lie that former president Donald Trump won the election.
Anti-Ivermectin Porn @ rollingstone.com, completely rejected by the hospital where the source used to work.
The article is Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” Dr. Jason McElyea said
However, the update says:
UPDATE: Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah issued a statement: Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months. NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose. All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care. We want to reassure our community that our staff is working hard to provide quality healthcare to all patients. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify this issue and as always, we value our community’s support.”
So, good on rolling stone to allow such a refutation of their porn. Can you imagine CNN doing the same?
I found this by way of @chrismartenson, who recently announced he would no longer even try to post most of his information on youtube. He is self-censoring, to avoid complete de-platforming, but seemed to consider it inevitable, anyway.
Martenson is probably the most astute and prescient of youtube folks that analyze covid related science (and pretend science), that I’m aware of.
Miss me with your “both sides” bullshit. The fact of the matter is that the right is the side that’s pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today, and the consequences are being felt throughout the country. If you can’t find it in yourself to condemn that without weak-kneed, mealy-mouthed pablum about how “the other side is just as bad,” you are part of the problem.
I’m having a hard time finding videos of Russiagaters storming federal buildings, or hell, any buildings for that matter. It seems the angry videos are all about Qanons, stolen electioners, antivaxers, antimaskers, antiCRTers and racist Karens, with the occasional BLM or antifa trying to oppose them.
Didn’t we used to have one side favoring social responsibility and another side favoring personal responsibility, debating, with a whole lotta apathetics in between, oblivious?
If the videos I’m seeing are correct, one side appears to have gone so off the rails into personal irresponsibility, that their own media/enterainment complex can’t much control them anymore. So I’m not so sure if our original scheme to play Chip Diller, to tell folks to remain calm, is gonna work anymore.
And then I find videos of Chris Hedges telling the social responsibility types that they need to start putting some fear into our Powers That Be, if they want to hope for any results. I think we might need to deprogram the personal irresponsibility types first lest they decide to stand in the way.
To me, the problem is the political “tribalism” that pushes narratives that blame and disrespect the imagined “other side”. A problem you exemplify when you assert, “The fact of the matter is that the right is the side that’s pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today, and the consequences are being felt throughout the country.” The country is awash in disinformation and b.s. and it is not coming only from one partisan faction — it is coming from all directions, including from nominally non-partisan major Media. The flood of disinformation and the erosion of institutional integrity worthy of trust is overwhelming the ability of the citizenry to discern basic facts or parse and process the intentions and agenda of major actors and institutions.
Not everyone has the same capacity to assess and filter or otherwise cope this flood. The QAnon phenomenon is bizarre, but still a symptom of a disinformation pandemic that affects many more than the few who succumb to believing John Podesta, pizza and child-trafficking are linked in coded messages.
Trying to determine who is “pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today” so you can do what? Join the side pushing the slightly less harmful and destructive disinformation? According to you, I have to codemn those you judge as the worst and give a pass — as you do — to the others.
If you are concerned about and in principle opposed to the propagation of disinformation, I can concur. But, you indicate pretty clearly that you are not about that, you are all about taking sides and you are fine with your allies and fellow travellers pushing false narratives and disinformation.
I’m having a hard time finding videos of Russiagaters storming federal buildings, or hell, any buildings for that matter.
So we are back to subjective “lesser evil” arguments?
You really cannot see any connection at all between a sustained three-year campaign by partisans to undermine and remove from office a legally elected President, the rationales for which were rife with falsehoods and conspiratorial speculation, and the suspicions of that President’s supporters?
The trouble with having such conveniently selective memory is that you miss entirely the context, not to mention you incline yourself to trust some very untrustworthy folks.
Notice the Biden Administration’s COVID policy, which came up with the idea that the vaccinated are morally superior to the unvaccinated and can unmask and resume “normal” activities (party on!). And attacked ivermectin as “horse paste”.
Or the recent no holds-barred propaganda wave that followed on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Omigod, we abandoned our loyal service dogs!” was a particular favorite meme of mine.
Or the recent no holds-barred propaganda wave that followed on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Omigod, we abandoned our loyal service dogs!” was a particular favorite meme of mine.
You realize that you just gave another example of propaganda that comes from the right, don’t you?
As for your other two examples, there is still no evidence that Ivermectin is an effective COVID treatment, so there’s no reason for the administration to claim it is. And as for vaccinated people unmasking and resuming normal activities, perhaps that was premature and they drew the wrong conclusions based on the data available at the time, but there is simply no comparison to the right saying things like “COVID vaccines contain microchips” and “Trump actually won the election.”
Again: your weak-ass “both sides” bullshit is tired and only helps the right. Stop it.
There is some evidence that ivermectin may be an effective treatment or prophylactic, but there is also conflicting evidence and no definitive studies that meet formal standards. The FDA rates it as neutral: not likely harmful at reasonable dosage and it is theoretically available as a human pharmaceutical doctors can legally prescribe off-label. The prejudicial hysteria, exemplified by the falsehood Rolling Stone published and which was widely amplified in major media is an example of disinformation, disinformation that followed on a misleading narrative pushed by the Biden Administration.
I have a book by a WWII war correspondent about a Nazi war crimes trial in Frankfurt. She points out that local Germans took the Frankfurt trial seriously because it involved local people that everyone knew. She explained that by the end of the war regular Germans did not trust the big splashy news from the Nuremberg trials because they had learned to distrust any information they could not verify personally.
So now, the enduring western hemisphere strategy of the Big Lie comes around again, and we have this –
“The main reason for prolonged silence, and introspection, is that I am not sure I can find the truth. I do not know if it can be found anymore. Today I am unsure what represents a fact, and what has simply been made up.”
Good luck keeping your community out of the dustbin of history when everything is a lie and nobody trusts anybody else. Golly, you even wind up with the kind of pointless acrimony this thread is certain to devolve into.
The only good thing about the extravagant bad faith and universal corruption we are indulging with such gusto is that some people are watching us and learning all the right lessons –
And see now, Bruce has accomplished his goal: he has shifted the conversation to something else (in this case Ivermectin) instead of what it was originally about, which was the damage that right-wing Republican lies and conspiracy theories are doing to children and the country.
Aristotle noted 23 centuries ago that morality is about how people act in a society or “polis.” So a socially responsible act like getting a vaccination is morally superior to not getting one.
As for a ” legally elected President,” that is an interesting formulation. Legal does not mean legitimate. As I have often said, when criminals write the laws, they can make crime legal, but they can’t make it not crime. That judgment lies with society, not them. Since Clinton in 1992, the Republicans have won the popular vote for President exactly once (for Dubya’s second term). To say that Trump was legally elected distracts from the lack of legitimacy of that “win.” And it doesn’t address that even among dreadfully awful Presidents he was extravagantly bad.
“Trump actually won the election.” seems equivalent to the campaign by Hillary Clinton’s supporters to assert Trump had betrayed the country in a corrupt deal with the devil Russia to secure his 2016 election and to remove him from that office.
Comparing the two, I would say that Republicans come off looking better, since relatively few Republican officials with actual authority in certifying election results succumbed to the pressure to “believe” the false narrative and act on it. The Arizona Senate’s charade is an exception, but without likely consequence. Lots of Democrats, even in Congress, never stopped “believing” even after the Great Mueller ultimately failed them. There may still be further consequences for policy in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, where antagonizing a nuclear power is being risked. It is convenient that Dems frequently forget the 2016 effort to find faithless electors and James Clapper’s 2017 “assessment” of Russian interference in the 2016 election, not to mention the falsities in the early FBI investigation that fueled so much suspicion.
Comparing the two, I would say that Republicans come off looking better, since relatively few Republican officials with actual authority in certifying election results succumbed to the pressure to “believe” the false narrative and act on it.
Are you serious with this shit? 147 Republicans in Congress voted not to certify electors from Biden states. That is not “relatively few,” that is over half the number of Republicans in the House and Senate. By contrast, in 2016, there wasn’t even a vote in Congress about whether or not to certify Trump electors because not one single Democratic Senator would sign on to the objections.
You are either shockingly ignorant or deliberately shilling for right-wing Republicans. Those are the only two possibilities that could explain your statements.
I guess “legitimate” means whatever Hugh approves, the law and Constitution be damned. In any democratic system in which popular elections actually matter and are not just for show, the losing factions are always going to feel disappointed and aggrieved, to the extent elections have consequences. It is important to the health of the polity that the law have legitimacy and institutions have integrity in conforming to law.
I think Gore actually won the Florida vote and erred in the legal struggle over the recount in not championing a state-wide recount. By focusing on a couple of counties where his operatives suspected (wrongly) that the odds favored him over Bush to the exclusion of places where a recount might turn up additional Bush votes, he conceded the moral high ground of affirming fair and accurate counting of all votes to determine the outcome. It turned out to be a loser’s strategy, and he compounded his moral error by ultimately conceding to keep the peace.
A lot of us have been losing the battle to secure systems of election that are transparently accurate and fair ever since. And we get no effective help from partisan Democrats, who are happy enough to tussle with Republicans over voter id laws and cast their opponents as evil, but are unwilling to actually do much of anything even in jurisdictions they dominate. In actual elections they control, like party primaries and caucuses, they infamously cheat and receive little criticism from their own.
So, yes, the idea that elections are insecure and unfairly administered is now endemic in American politics. Democratic partisans love to strawman with preachy lectures about how impractical the specific violation of election law “voter fraud” is. But elections remain vulnerable to errors, frauds of other kinds and administrative manipulations, often with little remedy when problems occur or are suspected. I think Biden was elected, but I also think no one could prove the official count in many jurisdictions and in some places elections to lesser offices were affected by questionable official conduct.
Democrats are foolish if they think Republicans (who thanks in large part to weak Democratic Party organization dominate many more states) won’t use their insistent rhetoric on the 2020 national count against them in the future.
147 Republicans in Congress voted not to certify electors from Biden states
knowing full well that their votes would have no effect and just be a signal of party loyalty.
attempts to get Democrats to dissent, when there was cause, in 2000 and 2004, fell flat. That performance just shows me that Democrats care less about the votes of their voters
Optimistic take about climate change: the methane releases are the primary factor in the recent extreme craziness with the earth’s climate but the planet’s atmospheric system will stabilize and heal from these methane releases, some of them which were large and instantaneous, and become more resilient to them in the future.
NR https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-119/comment-page-1/#comment-132268
was in moderation. There I explained “my game” and why I oppose your game, which I see as hiding in plain sight the reckless use of disinformation and “tribal” framing that invite contempt for contrary political opinions and attitudes that express the normal range of human ambivalence.
I do not see the propaganda on Afghanistan withdrawal as originating from “the right” per se. Some was from the Republicans, a crime of opportunity committed just to wound Biden because he is a Democrat. But, I think mostly it came from the foreign policy establishment and military industrial complex, which has bi-partisan or non-partisan support and complexion.
Withdrawal had support in some locales on the Right. Trump negotiated it!
The American Conservative magazine has published lots of isolationist opinion over many years, highly critical of the rampant corruption underlying American policy — that kind of conservative view gets drowned out, but comes from the right.
Hillary Clinton was always rabidly pro-war, pro-drone, anti-Iran, et cetera, so it is not like the Democratic Party has been reliable.
NR’s manichean storytelling obscures more than it reveals. And, imnsho, makes effective policymaking harder not easier, contributing to the paralysis that red v blue tribalist propaganda often seems designed to induce, on war and covid and other problems
I’ve been on record here for about two years, more or less, asserting that there is little difference between the two parties except their messaging. The chosen messages are designed to ensure re-election or party support so the messaging varies but are designed to target specific populations and garner support for donations, votes, whatever.
Personally, I think hard term limits might do more for us, such as one (or two) and then done, just like the prez. However, everything is going to shit at once, and we are definitely living through the decline of an empire. The cracks in the foundation are widening, and they aren’t just horizontal (economic classes, the hierarchy) they are vertical, too.
“…they drew the wrong conclusions based on the data available at the time, but there is simply no comparison to the right saying things like “COVID vaccines contain microchips” and “Trump actually won the election.”
This is BS. They knew the same things I knew and lied, it wasn’t “wrong conclusions”. Back in early June (seems a lifetime ago, but barely two months) my work team discussed getting back in the office. There was a lot of propaganda at that time about “getting back to normal”. Our Lead, natch, wanted the office opened sooner. I stated quite clearly that the info at that time (vaccinated can go without masks, etc.) was a lie and would turn out badly, and that the vaccinated can (and do) get and spread covid. And I of course turned out to be right. TPTB who make these decisions have access to information I can only dream of, so why did they lie? I guess because the economy matters more than people. They only walked it back when they couldn’t suppress reality on the ground. And now the US has the highest new cases rate in the world.
This is to illustrate again what Bruce is saying: both sides lie. And all lies are destructive to the populace. There is little difference between the two parties, it’s all designed to keep us off balance, afraid, and arguing with each other instead of holding them accountable.
It is possible to single out members of “the two parties”, to rank all elected officials with the degree to which they’ve demonstrated various beliefs, anomalies, and character flaws. Anybody got a spreadsheet? Or a link? And the time?
And now the US has the highest new cases rate in the world.
In large part because of right-wing Republicans doing things like banning mask mandates to appease their insane base. Yet for some reason this is missing from your analysis.
Which leads me to a question–if you want us to “hold both parties accountable,” why is it that you focus your attacks only on ONE party? And why is it that the only time people like you show up and bring out the “both sides” rhetoric is when someone is criticizing right-wing Republicans? One could certainly be forgiven for believing that your intent is not really to “hold both parties accountable,” but rather to deflect and distract from any criticism of right-wing Republicans by changing the subject to whatever the Democrats are doing at the time.
Okay then Bruce, I have a question for you. Why is it that you only show up with your “both sides are equally bad” shtick when someone is criticizing Republicans? Democrats get criticized fairly frequently around here (often with good reason), yet I have never seen you show up to one of those discussions and say “Hey, but what about those Republicans? They’re bad too. Let’s talk about some of the bad things they’ve done.”
If I take you at your word about your intentions, this rather glaring omission from your behavior seems very difficult to explain.
Anyway, the original point of this discussion (which has been drowned out and distracted from by people who swear they just don’t like both sides, really!) is that right-wing Republican propaganda and disinformation has had a very real negative impact on children, and teachers are now having to deal with the fallout from that. Read the article I linked; the whole situation is really sad.
Our system of electing legislators and an executive is controlled by two private companies that we call parties. They get to make their own rules about what candidates they will list on the ballot, and evidence of fair voting laws in their primaries is irrelevant, because they’re not public organizations. If there are efforts to run candidates not selected by the two private companies, everyone agrees that the efforts show that American voters aren’t serious about governing. What a democracy!
We used to have the acronym IOKIYAR, It’s OK if you’re Republican. That’s Bruce. Bush v. Gore was a palace coup by the Supreme Court, the most reactionary, anti-democratic body in our government. Travesties stacked on travesties. Bush doesn’t get as many votes as Gore. Not to worry, there’s the anti-democratic electoral college. Oh, oh, looks like he could lose that. Again no worry, the Supreme Court will step in and choose our next President for us. And a reactionary Court chooses a reactionary President. Boy, I didn’t see that one coming.
And let’s be clear. Most of us have been indoctrinated all our lives about the sanctity of the US Constitution. But that Constitution was built on three core foundations: 1 divvying up power among the haves, 2 keeping power out of the hands of the mob, that is the rest of us, and 3 slavery. Somehow I can’t get real worked up the sacred nature of the text or the wisdom of the Founders and Framers. In other words, the Constitution with antecedents like these has got to prove its legitimacy every d*mned day. We cannot call ourselves a democracy and tolerate wildly anti-democratic institutions like the electoral college, the Senate, and the courts or gerrymandering and voter suppression. Or the duopoly. Or the power of money.
Most Americans would be outraged if some team lost even though it scored two more touchdowns, or three more runs, or a goal more than its opponents. But with elections, the idea that some votes count more than others or that the loser wins is taken as perfectly normal and logical and “legitimate.” Instead of pushing for more real democracy, we get these half-baked justifications why a carney like Trump winning an election he lost is perfectly legitimate, and, and it’s the Democrats fault no matter what.
If we could crush, destroy and abolish the Blue Mafia Police Unions, then we could get a whole lot of Officer Proud Boys to quit the forces in droves. The money no longer spend of legions of Officer Proud Boys could be spent on various sorts of community improvement and uplift, mental-health-crisis field-intervention, etc.
Police departments could be naturally allowed to right-size themselves and could be right-funded as they get right-sized.
And any jurisdiction which did have a persistent criminal-by-choice element which started driving crime back up if the numbers of police fell below a certain threshhold . . . could begin uspsizing its police department again just enough to reduce crime-by-choice activity again.
None of that can happen without abolishing the Blue Mafia Police Unions first.
How many believe in Russiagate? At the very least, millions or maybe tens of millions of Pink Pussy Hat Clintanons. Also at least a few couple million Rachel Maddowanons.
This doesn’t make the millions of Qanons and their millions of Qanon children into “not a problem”. It just means that we have an equal and opposite problem over on the West Wing Liberal side.
I wonder how many school systems will demand that their students believe in Russiagate?
Well . . . . methane in the air will oxidize down to carbon dioxide over a few decades. It always does if the air contains oxygen. Then of course we will be left with the excess final carbon dioxide end product which will still have to be either sucked back down or endured in place.
Teachers facing the problem of several million Qanon children back in the schools may have to fall back on this . . .
. . . the school cannot change the Qanon children’s private beliefs. The school can state what the school’s beliefs are and what answers will be considered factual on the test. If the Qanon children want good grades on the test, they will answer the questions the way the test wants them answered. And the school will not try to police or change what the Qanon children ( or the Foxanon children) continue to believe at home.
Dr. Robert Malone retweeted “The Drug That Cracked COVID (Part 1)” @ rescue.substack dot com.
In it, it claims Trump took ivermectin when he had covid, but that is was “unreported by the press”. If this is true, it underscores what a complete scumbag Trump was and is. We already knew he took hydroxychloroquine, at a time when pharmacies were refusing to fill prescription for it, to treat covid. He never said a word about ivermectin (that I know of), and went silent on hydroxychloroquine, after never really fighting for it.
“ivermectin for me, but not for thee”
AFAIK, de Santis has never put in a good word for ivermectin, either.
Why are these ‘leaders’ allowed to pretend ivermectin doesn’t exist?
Plague Species
An excellent movie that didn’t receive much acclaim that gives you an idea of what it’s like to live in post-Milošević Serbia is Klopka. It’s bleak, but then Serbia is bleak. Serbia, or the former Yugoslavia and what’s become of it, is America’s future, so in this sense this movie is instructional.
It’s tough to access this movie. No doubt the Serbian mafia, considering Serbia is a Mafia State, has a hand in making it tough to access. It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of Serbia. Truth, like love, hurts.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478813/
Hugh
The Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for August came out yesterday. Total nonfarm jobs (public and private sectors combined) increased 312,000 not seasonally adjusted to 146.856 million. This was in range with previous Augusts, and that’s the problem. It needed to be substantially better to make a dent in the loss of jobs due to covid and covid lockdowns. That covid jobs deficit (from where we would expect to be if there had been no covid) actually increased 120,000 this month to 9.11 million.
In the private sector, jobs increased by 102,000 to 125.871 million. By this point in the summer, companies have usually hired everybody they were going to for this season and end of summer job losses have not shown up yet. Add to this the resurgence of covid and the covid jobs deficit in the private sector declined slightly to 8.09 million.
Looking at the employment number (seasonally unadjusted) from the household survey (which is smaller but tends to react faster to changes in the economy), it fell as it usually does (end of summer) a smaller than usual 369,000 down to 153.232 million. The covid employment shortfall improved somewhat more but still came in at 9.02 million.
Again even if the jobs and employment numbers were half million better every month than expected, it would take 18 months to clear the covid induced shortfalls. I don’t think people realize how big a hole we have to work out of. And as usual the BLS doesn’t really measure the quality of the jobs created.
metamars
People who “follow the science”, will surely jump on the obvious implications of this, in terms of vaccination mandates:
SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021,” the study read. “The increased risk was significant for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold increased risk for symptomatic disease.”
from “Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer COVID Shots” @ thefederalist.com
I have to admit, I don’t know what is meant by “naive vaccinees”, though I think everybody who trusted the CDC to do the right thing is, in a sense, a “naive vaccinee”.
Meanwhile, the dude in “‘Natural Immunity’ Lawsuit Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Ends in Surprising Result” @ youtube’s CBN News channel says,
02:16
there have now been 15 studies of
02:20
compare natural immunity uh with
02:22
vaccines and every and all 15 have shown
02:24
that
02:25
in the range of 90 to 95 protection
02:28
which is what the uh mrna vaccines are
02:32
at their peak and now as we know they
02:33
want very quickly another study from
02:36
israel found that vaccine protection
02:38
wanes 40 percent a month natural
02:41
immunity wanes 5
02:42
(percent) a month
02:44
um and then um and so and so and we know
02:48
that it’s much better than the more
02:49
mediocre vaccines like johnson johnson
02:52
which even in the clinical trials was
02:53
only about 66 percent uh protection
02:56
there is literally no doubt about this
02:58
anymore it’s also very clear that
03:00
natural immunity as we saw in the
03:02
israeli study is very resistant to um to
03:05
uh to variants such as the delta variant
03:08
because it recognizes the entire protein
03:10
whereas the vaccine is only used to
03:12
target this narrow spike protein and now
03:15
Built-in obsolescence has come to the vaccine world!
Plague Species
College Football starts today. So far the stadiums are packed in every venue and there are pretty much no masks. It’s balls to the wall and every man for himself with this pandemic. Let it Rip, indeed.
Joan
Thanks for the labor post, Hugh.
NR
North Carolina has released data about COVID cases from the four-week period ending in August 21st.
https://www.ncdhhs.gov/news/press-releases/2021/08/27/adult-icu-patients-hit-record-highs-pandemic-new-report-shows-unvaccinated-people-are-more-15-times
Unvaccinated people are 15.4 times more likely to die from COVID than vaccinated people. Unvaccianted people are also 4.4 times more likely to catch COVID than vaccinated people. For teens, the difference is even greater, with unvaccinated teens being 6.3 times more likely to catch COVID than vaccinated teens.
But I’m sure this is all just more evidence that vaccines don’t work, and they’re what’s killing people, not COVID.
Hugh
The study meta is referring to is “Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections”. It is a pre-print, i.e. not peer reviewed study and can be found at Medrxiv. Its subject is waning immunity, specifically of the Pfizer vaccine. It was retrospective in nature with data drawn from Israel’s Ministry of Health.
Naive means without immunity or immunological memory of a pathogen, i.e. covid.
We have known about waning immunity for an age. However, as NR points out, even with waning immunity, the vaccinated are still much less likely to die from covid than the unvaccinated.
a7i3n
RE: “The Trap” referred by Plague Species, can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiYuYSIOaiU
Thanks for the referral Plague.
a7i3n
Synoptocon
Naive vaccinees means those who have been vaccinated and have not previously contracted the disease being immunized against,
NR
Interesting article: Police say demoralized officers are quitting in droves, but the labor data says no:
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/09/01/police-say-demoralized-officers-are-quitting-in-droves-labor-data-says-no
2019 to 2020 numbers showed a loss of 1% of police officers, which is far below the average for all industries.
NR
And by the way, as far as I’m concerned, any cop who is “demoralized” and quits because long overdue reforms are being made to police and they can’t just do whatever the hell they want anymore is exactly the kind of person we don’t want as a cop.
Plague Species
👍
Mark Pontin
NR: ‘any cop who is “demoralized” … because long overdue reforms are being made to police and they can’t just do whatever the hell they want anymore is exactly the kind of person we don’t want as a cop.’
Seconded.
NR
QAnon and anti-vaxxers brainwashed kids stuck at home–now teachers have to deprogram them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/04/qanon-and-anti-vaxxers-brainwashed-kids-stuck-at-home-during-pandemic.html
bruce wilder
How many believe in Russiagate?
metamars
Anti-Ivermectin Porn @ rollingstone.com, completely rejected by the hospital where the source used to work.
The article is Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says
“The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated,” Dr. Jason McElyea said
However, the update says:
UPDATE: Northeastern Hospital System Sequoyah issued a statement: Although Dr. Jason McElyea is not an employee of NHS Sequoyah, he is affiliated with a medical staffing group that provides coverage for our emergency room. With that said, Dr. McElyea has not worked at our Sallisaw location in over 2 months. NHS Sequoyah has not treated any patients due to complications related to taking ivermectin. This includes not treating any patients for ivermectin overdose. All patients who have visited our emergency room have received medical attention as appropriate. Our hospital has not had to turn away any patients seeking emergency care. We want to reassure our community that our staff is working hard to provide quality healthcare to all patients. We appreciate the opportunity to clarify this issue and as always, we value our community’s support.”
So, good on rolling stone to allow such a refutation of their porn. Can you imagine CNN doing the same?
I found this by way of @chrismartenson, who recently announced he would no longer even try to post most of his information on youtube. He is self-censoring, to avoid complete de-platforming, but seemed to consider it inevitable, anyway.
Martenson is probably the most astute and prescient of youtube folks that analyze covid related science (and pretend science), that I’m aware of.
NR
bruce wilder:
Miss me with your “both sides” bullshit. The fact of the matter is that the right is the side that’s pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today, and the consequences are being felt throughout the country. If you can’t find it in yourself to condemn that without weak-kneed, mealy-mouthed pablum about how “the other side is just as bad,” you are part of the problem.
Willy
I’m having a hard time finding videos of Russiagaters storming federal buildings, or hell, any buildings for that matter. It seems the angry videos are all about Qanons, stolen electioners, antivaxers, antimaskers, antiCRTers and racist Karens, with the occasional BLM or antifa trying to oppose them.
Didn’t we used to have one side favoring social responsibility and another side favoring personal responsibility, debating, with a whole lotta apathetics in between, oblivious?
If the videos I’m seeing are correct, one side appears to have gone so off the rails into personal irresponsibility, that their own media/enterainment complex can’t much control them anymore. So I’m not so sure if our original scheme to play Chip Diller, to tell folks to remain calm, is gonna work anymore.
And then I find videos of Chris Hedges telling the social responsibility types that they need to start putting some fear into our Powers That Be, if they want to hope for any results. I think we might need to deprogram the personal irresponsibility types first lest they decide to stand in the way.
bruce wilder
NR
To me, the problem is the political “tribalism” that pushes narratives that blame and disrespect the imagined “other side”. A problem you exemplify when you assert, “The fact of the matter is that the right is the side that’s pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today, and the consequences are being felt throughout the country.” The country is awash in disinformation and b.s. and it is not coming only from one partisan faction — it is coming from all directions, including from nominally non-partisan major Media. The flood of disinformation and the erosion of institutional integrity worthy of trust is overwhelming the ability of the citizenry to discern basic facts or parse and process the intentions and agenda of major actors and institutions.
Not everyone has the same capacity to assess and filter or otherwise cope this flood. The QAnon phenomenon is bizarre, but still a symptom of a disinformation pandemic that affects many more than the few who succumb to believing John Podesta, pizza and child-trafficking are linked in coded messages.
Trying to determine who is “pushing the most harmful and destructive disinformation today” so you can do what? Join the side pushing the slightly less harmful and destructive disinformation? According to you, I have to codemn those you judge as the worst and give a pass — as you do — to the others.
If you are concerned about and in principle opposed to the propagation of disinformation, I can concur. But, you indicate pretty clearly that you are not about that, you are all about taking sides and you are fine with your allies and fellow travellers pushing false narratives and disinformation.
bruce wilder
I’m having a hard time finding videos of Russiagaters storming federal buildings, or hell, any buildings for that matter.
So we are back to subjective “lesser evil” arguments?
You really cannot see any connection at all between a sustained three-year campaign by partisans to undermine and remove from office a legally elected President, the rationales for which were rife with falsehoods and conspiratorial speculation, and the suspicions of that President’s supporters?
The trouble with having such conveniently selective memory is that you miss entirely the context, not to mention you incline yourself to trust some very untrustworthy folks.
bruce wilder
Notice the Biden Administration’s COVID policy, which came up with the idea that the vaccinated are morally superior to the unvaccinated and can unmask and resume “normal” activities (party on!). And attacked ivermectin as “horse paste”.
Or the recent no holds-barred propaganda wave that followed on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. “Omigod, we abandoned our loyal service dogs!” was a particular favorite meme of mine.
This stuff comes from everywhere all the time.
NR
You realize that you just gave another example of propaganda that comes from the right, don’t you?
As for your other two examples, there is still no evidence that Ivermectin is an effective COVID treatment, so there’s no reason for the administration to claim it is. And as for vaccinated people unmasking and resuming normal activities, perhaps that was premature and they drew the wrong conclusions based on the data available at the time, but there is simply no comparison to the right saying things like “COVID vaccines contain microchips” and “Trump actually won the election.”
Again: your weak-ass “both sides” bullshit is tired and only helps the right. Stop it.
bruce wilder
There is some evidence that ivermectin may be an effective treatment or prophylactic, but there is also conflicting evidence and no definitive studies that meet formal standards. The FDA rates it as neutral: not likely harmful at reasonable dosage and it is theoretically available as a human pharmaceutical doctors can legally prescribe off-label. The prejudicial hysteria, exemplified by the falsehood Rolling Stone published and which was widely amplified in major media is an example of disinformation, disinformation that followed on a misleading narrative pushed by the Biden Administration.
someofparts
I have a book by a WWII war correspondent about a Nazi war crimes trial in Frankfurt. She points out that local Germans took the Frankfurt trial seriously because it involved local people that everyone knew. She explained that by the end of the war regular Germans did not trust the big splashy news from the Nuremberg trials because they had learned to distrust any information they could not verify personally.
So now, the enduring western hemisphere strategy of the Big Lie comes around again, and we have this –
https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2021/09/03/i-have-not-been-silenced/
“The main reason for prolonged silence, and introspection, is that I am not sure I can find the truth. I do not know if it can be found anymore. Today I am unsure what represents a fact, and what has simply been made up.”
Good luck keeping your community out of the dustbin of history when everything is a lie and nobody trusts anybody else. Golly, you even wind up with the kind of pointless acrimony this thread is certain to devolve into.
The only good thing about the extravagant bad faith and universal corruption we are indulging with such gusto is that some people are watching us and learning all the right lessons –
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chinas-marxist-profound-revolution-here-and-nobody-west-ready
NR
And see now, Bruce has accomplished his goal: he has shifted the conversation to something else (in this case Ivermectin) instead of what it was originally about, which was the damage that right-wing Republican lies and conspiracy theories are doing to children and the country.
Your game is pathetically obvious, Bruce.
Hugh
Aristotle noted 23 centuries ago that morality is about how people act in a society or “polis.” So a socially responsible act like getting a vaccination is morally superior to not getting one.
As for a ” legally elected President,” that is an interesting formulation. Legal does not mean legitimate. As I have often said, when criminals write the laws, they can make crime legal, but they can’t make it not crime. That judgment lies with society, not them. Since Clinton in 1992, the Republicans have won the popular vote for President exactly once (for Dubya’s second term). To say that Trump was legally elected distracts from the lack of legitimacy of that “win.” And it doesn’t address that even among dreadfully awful Presidents he was extravagantly bad.
bruce wilder
“Trump actually won the election.” seems equivalent to the campaign by Hillary Clinton’s supporters to assert Trump had betrayed the country in a corrupt deal with
the devilRussia to secure his 2016 election and to remove him from that office.Comparing the two, I would say that Republicans come off looking better, since relatively few Republican officials with actual authority in certifying election results succumbed to the pressure to “believe” the false narrative and act on it. The Arizona Senate’s charade is an exception, but without likely consequence. Lots of Democrats, even in Congress, never stopped “believing” even after the Great Mueller ultimately failed them. There may still be further consequences for policy in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, where antagonizing a nuclear power is being risked. It is convenient that Dems frequently forget the 2016 effort to find faithless electors and James Clapper’s 2017 “assessment” of Russian interference in the 2016 election, not to mention the falsities in the early FBI investigation that fueled so much suspicion.
NR
Are you serious with this shit? 147 Republicans in Congress voted not to certify electors from Biden states. That is not “relatively few,” that is over half the number of Republicans in the House and Senate. By contrast, in 2016, there wasn’t even a vote in Congress about whether or not to certify Trump electors because not one single Democratic Senator would sign on to the objections.
You are either shockingly ignorant or deliberately shilling for right-wing Republicans. Those are the only two possibilities that could explain your statements.
bruce wilder
I guess “legitimate” means whatever Hugh approves, the law and Constitution be damned. In any democratic system in which popular elections actually matter and are not just for show, the losing factions are always going to feel disappointed and aggrieved, to the extent elections have consequences. It is important to the health of the polity that the law have legitimacy and institutions have integrity in conforming to law.
I think Gore actually won the Florida vote and erred in the legal struggle over the recount in not championing a state-wide recount. By focusing on a couple of counties where his operatives suspected (wrongly) that the odds favored him over Bush to the exclusion of places where a recount might turn up additional Bush votes, he conceded the moral high ground of affirming fair and accurate counting of all votes to determine the outcome. It turned out to be a loser’s strategy, and he compounded his moral error by ultimately conceding to keep the peace.
A lot of us have been losing the battle to secure systems of election that are transparently accurate and fair ever since. And we get no effective help from partisan Democrats, who are happy enough to tussle with Republicans over voter id laws and cast their opponents as evil, but are unwilling to actually do much of anything even in jurisdictions they dominate. In actual elections they control, like party primaries and caucuses, they infamously cheat and receive little criticism from their own.
So, yes, the idea that elections are insecure and unfairly administered is now endemic in American politics. Democratic partisans love to strawman with preachy lectures about how impractical the specific violation of election law “voter fraud” is. But elections remain vulnerable to errors, frauds of other kinds and administrative manipulations, often with little remedy when problems occur or are suspected. I think Biden was elected, but I also think no one could prove the official count in many jurisdictions and in some places elections to lesser offices were affected by questionable official conduct.
Democrats are foolish if they think Republicans (who thanks in large part to weak Democratic Party organization dominate many more states) won’t use their insistent rhetoric on the 2020 national count against them in the future.
bruce wilder
147 Republicans in Congress voted not to certify electors from Biden states
knowing full well that their votes would have no effect and just be a signal of party loyalty.
attempts to get Democrats to dissent, when there was cause, in 2000 and 2004, fell flat. That performance just shows me that Democrats care less about the votes of their voters
Z
Optimistic take about climate change: the methane releases are the primary factor in the recent extreme craziness with the earth’s climate but the planet’s atmospheric system will stabilize and heal from these methane releases, some of them which were large and instantaneous, and become more resilient to them in the future.
My proof that this will indeed happen:
Z
bruce wilder
NR
https://www.ianwelsh.net/open-thread-119/comment-page-1/#comment-132268
was in moderation. There I explained “my game” and why I oppose your game, which I see as hiding in plain sight the reckless use of disinformation and “tribal” framing that invite contempt for contrary political opinions and attitudes that express the normal range of human ambivalence.
I do not see the propaganda on Afghanistan withdrawal as originating from “the right” per se. Some was from the Republicans, a crime of opportunity committed just to wound Biden because he is a Democrat. But, I think mostly it came from the foreign policy establishment and military industrial complex, which has bi-partisan or non-partisan support and complexion.
Withdrawal had support in some locales on the Right. Trump negotiated it!
The American Conservative magazine has published lots of isolationist opinion over many years, highly critical of the rampant corruption underlying American policy — that kind of conservative view gets drowned out, but comes from the right.
Hillary Clinton was always rabidly pro-war, pro-drone, anti-Iran, et cetera, so it is not like the Democratic Party has been reliable.
NR’s manichean storytelling obscures more than it reveals. And, imnsho, makes effective policymaking harder not easier, contributing to the paralysis that red v blue tribalist propaganda often seems designed to induce, on war and covid and other problems
bruce wilder
Z
Omission or wit?
bruce wilder
I am done for the day or the week. No more from me, too much already.
Willy
So many accusations, so many problems, yet never an answer.
Score Hedges 1, wilder 0.
Trinity
I’ve been on record here for about two years, more or less, asserting that there is little difference between the two parties except their messaging. The chosen messages are designed to ensure re-election or party support so the messaging varies but are designed to target specific populations and garner support for donations, votes, whatever.
Personally, I think hard term limits might do more for us, such as one (or two) and then done, just like the prez. However, everything is going to shit at once, and we are definitely living through the decline of an empire. The cracks in the foundation are widening, and they aren’t just horizontal (economic classes, the hierarchy) they are vertical, too.
“…they drew the wrong conclusions based on the data available at the time, but there is simply no comparison to the right saying things like “COVID vaccines contain microchips” and “Trump actually won the election.”
This is BS. They knew the same things I knew and lied, it wasn’t “wrong conclusions”. Back in early June (seems a lifetime ago, but barely two months) my work team discussed getting back in the office. There was a lot of propaganda at that time about “getting back to normal”. Our Lead, natch, wanted the office opened sooner. I stated quite clearly that the info at that time (vaccinated can go without masks, etc.) was a lie and would turn out badly, and that the vaccinated can (and do) get and spread covid. And I of course turned out to be right. TPTB who make these decisions have access to information I can only dream of, so why did they lie? I guess because the economy matters more than people. They only walked it back when they couldn’t suppress reality on the ground. And now the US has the highest new cases rate in the world.
This is to illustrate again what Bruce is saying: both sides lie. And all lies are destructive to the populace. There is little difference between the two parties, it’s all designed to keep us off balance, afraid, and arguing with each other instead of holding them accountable.
Willy
It is possible to single out members of “the two parties”, to rank all elected officials with the degree to which they’ve demonstrated various beliefs, anomalies, and character flaws. Anybody got a spreadsheet? Or a link? And the time?
NR
In large part because of right-wing Republicans doing things like banning mask mandates to appease their insane base. Yet for some reason this is missing from your analysis.
Which leads me to a question–if you want us to “hold both parties accountable,” why is it that you focus your attacks only on ONE party? And why is it that the only time people like you show up and bring out the “both sides” rhetoric is when someone is criticizing right-wing Republicans? One could certainly be forgiven for believing that your intent is not really to “hold both parties accountable,” but rather to deflect and distract from any criticism of right-wing Republicans by changing the subject to whatever the Democrats are doing at the time.
NR
Okay then Bruce, I have a question for you. Why is it that you only show up with your “both sides are equally bad” shtick when someone is criticizing Republicans? Democrats get criticized fairly frequently around here (often with good reason), yet I have never seen you show up to one of those discussions and say “Hey, but what about those Republicans? They’re bad too. Let’s talk about some of the bad things they’ve done.”
If I take you at your word about your intentions, this rather glaring omission from your behavior seems very difficult to explain.
NR
Anyway, the original point of this discussion (which has been drowned out and distracted from by people who swear they just don’t like both sides, really!) is that right-wing Republican propaganda and disinformation has had a very real negative impact on children, and teachers are now having to deal with the fallout from that. Read the article I linked; the whole situation is really sad.
NR
Or, to put it shorter and more simply: if you say you dislike both sides, but you only ever attack one side, you don’t actually dislike both sides.
nihil obstet
Our system of electing legislators and an executive is controlled by two private companies that we call parties. They get to make their own rules about what candidates they will list on the ballot, and evidence of fair voting laws in their primaries is irrelevant, because they’re not public organizations. If there are efforts to run candidates not selected by the two private companies, everyone agrees that the efforts show that American voters aren’t serious about governing. What a democracy!
Hugh
We used to have the acronym IOKIYAR, It’s OK if you’re Republican. That’s Bruce. Bush v. Gore was a palace coup by the Supreme Court, the most reactionary, anti-democratic body in our government. Travesties stacked on travesties. Bush doesn’t get as many votes as Gore. Not to worry, there’s the anti-democratic electoral college. Oh, oh, looks like he could lose that. Again no worry, the Supreme Court will step in and choose our next President for us. And a reactionary Court chooses a reactionary President. Boy, I didn’t see that one coming.
And let’s be clear. Most of us have been indoctrinated all our lives about the sanctity of the US Constitution. But that Constitution was built on three core foundations: 1 divvying up power among the haves, 2 keeping power out of the hands of the mob, that is the rest of us, and 3 slavery. Somehow I can’t get real worked up the sacred nature of the text or the wisdom of the Founders and Framers. In other words, the Constitution with antecedents like these has got to prove its legitimacy every d*mned day. We cannot call ourselves a democracy and tolerate wildly anti-democratic institutions like the electoral college, the Senate, and the courts or gerrymandering and voter suppression. Or the duopoly. Or the power of money.
Most Americans would be outraged if some team lost even though it scored two more touchdowns, or three more runs, or a goal more than its opponents. But with elections, the idea that some votes count more than others or that the loser wins is taken as perfectly normal and logical and “legitimate.” Instead of pushing for more real democracy, we get these half-baked justifications why a carney like Trump winning an election he lost is perfectly legitimate, and, and it’s the Democrats fault no matter what.
NR
Well said Hugh.
Plague Species
Stop, you’re giving “b” and “The Saker” boners.
different clue
If we could crush, destroy and abolish the Blue Mafia Police Unions, then we could get a whole lot of Officer Proud Boys to quit the forces in droves. The money no longer spend of legions of Officer Proud Boys could be spent on various sorts of community improvement and uplift, mental-health-crisis field-intervention, etc.
Police departments could be naturally allowed to right-size themselves and could be right-funded as they get right-sized.
And any jurisdiction which did have a persistent criminal-by-choice element which started driving crime back up if the numbers of police fell below a certain threshhold . . . could begin uspsizing its police department again just enough to reduce crime-by-choice activity again.
None of that can happen without abolishing the Blue Mafia Police Unions first.
different clue
@ Bruce Wilder,
How many believe in Russiagate? At the very least, millions or maybe tens of millions of Pink Pussy Hat Clintanons. Also at least a few couple million Rachel Maddowanons.
This doesn’t make the millions of Qanons and their millions of Qanon children into “not a problem”. It just means that we have an equal and opposite problem over on the West Wing Liberal side.
I wonder how many school systems will demand that their students believe in Russiagate?
different clue
@Z,
Well . . . . methane in the air will oxidize down to carbon dioxide over a few decades. It always does if the air contains oxygen. Then of course we will be left with the excess final carbon dioxide end product which will still have to be either sucked back down or endured in place.
different clue
Teachers facing the problem of several million Qanon children back in the schools may have to fall back on this . . .
. . . the school cannot change the Qanon children’s private beliefs. The school can state what the school’s beliefs are and what answers will be considered factual on the test. If the Qanon children want good grades on the test, they will answer the questions the way the test wants them answered. And the school will not try to police or change what the Qanon children ( or the Foxanon children) continue to believe at home.
someofparts
https://twitter.com/iseeuliars/status/1424420552039669771/photo/1
metamars
Dr. Robert Malone retweeted “The Drug That Cracked COVID (Part 1)” @ rescue.substack dot com.
In it, it claims Trump took ivermectin when he had covid, but that is was “unreported by the press”. If this is true, it underscores what a complete scumbag Trump was and is. We already knew he took hydroxychloroquine, at a time when pharmacies were refusing to fill prescription for it, to treat covid. He never said a word about ivermectin (that I know of), and went silent on hydroxychloroquine, after never really fighting for it.
“ivermectin for me, but not for thee”
AFAIK, de Santis has never put in a good word for ivermectin, either.
Why are these ‘leaders’ allowed to pretend ivermectin doesn’t exist?