The Real Republican Platform

Trump is a horse that various wealthy transnational oligarchic factions believe they are riding. They manipulate him to get their agenda enacted, much of that agenda being what Ian has posited. The question is, like Hitler, will Trump end up riding them instead just as Hitler turned the table on the Prussian nobles who supported him and enabled his ascension? There is overlap between Trump and Hitler, but there are also substantial differences. It’s an apples and oranges comparison. Both are fruits but they’re as different as they are alike.

In regard to QAnon, it does seem to have a David Dennison quality to it. For certain, it’s more sophisticated than that one man operation, but it is as equally crude and the cui bono is the same. What if it’s ultimately revealed it is a Trump operation? Barr’s FBI has labeled QAnon a domestic terrorist organization. Surely the intelligence services, if it’s not them, know who and what is behind it. If it is Trump and his creepy peeps, the intelligence services are complicit via their silence and their standing down just as they did on 9/11. I fully expect that if Biden/Harris win the election and Trump goes calmly and nicely, if this came to light, Biden/Harris would not hold Trump’s feet to the fire on it and instead move forward rather than looking back per Obama’s precedence.

As far as the latest shooting and protests in Wisconsin and the liberal faction of the media making a spectacle of it for political purposes? Cry me a river black folk. You had an opportunity to meaningfully address the issue with a Bernie Sanders presidency and instead, like the sheep you are, you faithfully obeyed Judenrat black so-called “leaders” like Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and came out in droves to support Biden and now Harris. Harris built her career on throwing shitloads of blacks in jail. That is her answer to the latest shooting and all shootings of blacks or shootings of anyone by the police. Throw the blacks, as many people whatever color, in jail. If they’re in jail, they can’t get shot and they can’t shoot anyone. And, private prison stock prices fly high like Donald Trump Jr. during his speech the other night.

both parties are being run by and for classes of people who are aware of themselves as predators / parasites — that they are predators or parasites in their economic relationship to the majority and that their economic interest is in sharpening and extending the predatory and / or parasitic feeding on the whole.

there are subtle differences, based on how clearly they feel and embrace their domination of the others and what they imagine redeems them as good or virtuous. seeing the vice in the other Party clearly plays a part in self-deception. look at them, we are not like that — even when to an almost comical extent “we” are very much like “them” in every respect except the detailed styling of our respective hypocrisies.

what is almost completely missing is realistic, enlightened self interest: some awareness that the greed and selfishness inherent in the parasitic feeding is weakening the whole: the whole country or the whole world. there are glimmers in Republican fear of China and Democratic concern for polite language, but investment in personal status and privilege win out against any thought of strengthening the whole community.

it is a deep sickness of the body politic and the political economy and one that does not seem amenable to measures of gradual reform.

the spectacle of the execrable Frum using his considerable rhetorical gifts at Mrs Steve Jobs’ Atlantic gives me no hope. where are you hiding your stinger this time scorpion?

Wild orchids and Trotsky

Can we begin
even unto beginnings?
The book of biographical route
1967 watershed Columbia comparative literature
Middle East

The war
any color that you like.
Everyone in the community
news which the war the war meant.

Since a vending situational thing
Universal artist material
ending was the most important
Daniel Defoe, and some Caruso Gary.and Foucault
center for advanced studies
Ne pas New York
though the ne is never spoken except in
English and hyper televised Francais.

Sabbatical leave a root American university of same
Orientalism near not far to go temperamental difference
humanistic tradition Arnold and chilling worldliness security for
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the popular front
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wild orchids Trotsky

Ian said ” what they [Democratic voters] say they want really isn’t relevant when they won’t vote for it in primaries.”

Right. Most voters, particular partisan voters, vote on identity politics whether they admit it or not. Both parties use identity politics to manipulate their voter base, to make voters believe that every election is the most important election in their lifetime when in fact not much changes no matter which corporate warmonger wins. I lecture my friends about the evils of identity politics but it falls on deaf ears.

So there is no light at the end of America’s tunnels. Things will continue to suck no matter which party is in power and in fact, things will probably get worse no matter which party is in power. As long as the 99% can be manipulated using identity issues, the 1% have nothing to fear.

Frum can go to hell, there isn’t anything new about any of this observations. My impression of Japan is they’re getting the most of what they can get from the US but know that China is their future.

“As long as the 99% can be manipulated using identity issues, the 1% have nothing to fear.”
– Dan Lynch

Identity politics is a substitute for morality which was defined by U.S. churches but we are in a post-church America now.

The desire/need underpinning both identity politics and morality will never go away, it’s just takes a different form. (One thing is for sure, you can’t love your neighbor under the current form.)

GH said

“Identity politics is a substitute for morality which was defined by U.S. churches but we are in a post-church America now.

The desire/need underpinning both identity politics and morality will never go away, it’s just takes a different form. (One thing is for sure, you can’t love your neighbor under the current form.)”

👍👍 Religion reflects an innate human cognitive yearning for meaning in order to reconcile the now with tomorrow. Choose your Church or one will choose you

It’s a mishmash based on different parts of the Republican base: most notably the rich, the wannabe rich, and white evangelicals.

So they want lower taxes because these disproportionately favor the rich, and increase the already extreme wealth inequality. They’re pissed about China now but weren’t when they were making buckets of money sending millions of jobs there. They’re racist, want to stay racist, but still don’t want to be called racist. Abortion is a great way to keep women in their place while acting like they are standing for something. But the interest in “life” only extends to birth. Once that happens it is go die in a ditch, loser, unless your parents can afford to keep you out of it.

The coronavirus, climate change, and I would add overpopulation are inconvenient realities that don’t fit into their Let’s Return to Jim Crow and the White 1950s. So they are ignored and will be ignored for as long as possible, and their effects will be dumped as much as possible on the undeserving many. Essential workers are mostly low wage and expendable while their betters can work from the greater safety of their homes.

What I missed was the absolute right of Americans to die in their ditch hugging their beloved AR 15s. And as always finish off by throwing in some BS reason for whatever Trump does is OK or no big deal because because.

“As much as Roe v Wade is used as a cudgel for liberals to shame & scare progressives into voting Democrat, it should be clear by now that Republicans have no intention of overturning it.” – Charles

There will always be a cudgel (a wedge issue) which acts like an unavoidable sorting mechanism.

But if there is going to be a cudgel it better be worth the neighbor vs. neighbor fighting and the lack of progress on any other issue.

Frankly we need smaller cudgels that you can bribe people to put down.
We are too fractured to even begin to deal with the big cudgels.

Hugh

My compliments on a very good summary.

And as always finish off by throwing in some BS reason for whatever Trump does is OK or no big deal because because.

Here, you are just so nailed the summaries of the commentariat here.

The next 30 years will be known as The Great Migrations. Before The Great Die-off. It’s already been happening for the past decade in other parts of the world, but now it’s coming home to roost in 1st world countries like America.

First up appears to be California. I wish we all could be California… Not. In 30 years it will be largely unlivable and during the next three decades, migrations from California will be massive and they will overwhelm the states to where Californians are migrating.

Soon up and not far behind will be Florida and Arizona and then Texas after that. Within 10 years, both states will experience substantial migrations as their locales become largely uninhabitable.

Environmental degradation to include climate chaos ensures there will no return to normal as if what once was was normal in any respect. Neither convention, for all the obvious reasons, touched on this existential crisis, or at least not the severity of it. In thirty years, maybe and probably sooner, all this bickering over politics and political parties will look like so much wasteful nonsense. Hell, it’s not even politics any more. It’s some kind of bizarre Kabuki-like ritual that serves to paralyze progress and evolution.

Plague Species

I still think the first will be one of the these:
1. Coastal cities where sea water gets into the aquifers.
2. Drought stricken areas with already depleted aquifers.
3. Cities with dilapidated water, sewer, and power systems.

GlassHammer;

I bought a fair amount of ammo about a 18 months ago with no problem, .223 SP & 6.8 HPBT, both are unattainable today. But there was a glut of ar’s on the market as recently as Dec 2019, decent lower kits going for under 100.00…them days are long gone. One former-friend, [who-exiled-me-for-laughing-at-Trump-Russia-spy-story], paid 3 times what I paid [and that’s with a lot of help on my part]. BTW, that former friend doesn’t want it being known that he’s purchased a gun, he realizes that the purchase makes him look like a hypocrite, it’s kinda irritating but my hope is once he learns how to use it safely he’ll be able to admit it and that his fear of firearms is based on ridiculous media images.

I buy parts/ammo when they/it are cheap but, with Kamala urging people to continue to stock-up it could be a long dry spell. I rearranged my sights/stocks recently and consequently need to re-zero my sights, normally, I have a little fun shooting afterwards, but not now, it’s all business ’till all the anti-gun-purchasers are stocked-up…

Yes to all you virtue signalers out there, firearms kill people, not as often as cars but they do kill, what’s not understood by “liberals” is that most firearm crimes, 98%, involve pistols, almost all, 93%, of those weapons are not legally registered. A legally obtained rifle is a great rarity at at murder crime scene, a big city homicide detective I know has never seen a rifle legal/illegal used in the hundreds of cases he’s been involved in. Another tidbit, most homicide victims are felons and close to 80% of gun homicides involve gangs. And just a reminder, cops know that criminals don’t use rifles. When I was stopped for failure to signal to change lanes and declared that there was a firearm in the vehicle, when the cop knew it was a rifle he visibly relaxed, as soon as he saw it was in a carry bag he didn’t even bother to look at it, he just ran my plates and let me go.

@ S Brennan
“After the election, the DNC may stop blocking drugs that treat Covid-19 before hospitalization ”

I can easily believe in some DNC coordinated suppression and demonization of HCQ, but it goes against the grain of what I’ve been hearing of for 40 years to put most of the blame on the DNC. It would also contradict what I understood from 2 former military guys to assume that the Democrats could all of a sudden allow HCQ, under a Biden Presidency. If Trump can’t just authorize HCQ, or at least force it’s distribution via military bases (as I had mistakenly assumed was permissible), then neither can Biden.

The suppression of HCQ is multi-faceted, but would almost certainly have been occurring if Hilary Clinton was President, and somehow wanted HCQ. Recall that Obama was somewhat scared of Big Pharma, and cut a secret deal with Billy Tauzin early on, which involved Big Pharma not attacking the ACA. That was how the public option got tossed.

The suppression touches FDA, state governors, state regulatory agencies, state medical boards, and hospitals (who can easily threaten physicians with withdrawing their hospital privileges). There’s no monolithic control. A good illustration of non-monolithic control suppressing potential therapies is that of Burzynski, who had FDA approval for his clinical work, but was repeatedly attacked by the Texas State Medical Board – tearfully grateful parents, notwithstanding.

And yes, it also touches Democratic lawmakers. But what Republican lawmakers have so much as held hearings on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine? Googling, I saw only Fauci spending all of 2 1/2 minutes addressing the lack of “gold standard” evidence for HCQ, in a House hearing on coronavirus. Whether Fauci and his co-religionists had suppressed the gathering of such evidence, e.g., was not addressed.

It doesn’t make much sense to me to trust either Democrats or Republicans with a competent, ethical, and maximally cost-effective response to covid-19. I have ‘documented’ the complete failure of ALL states – Democrat and Republican dominated – in even getting Vitamin D sufficiency addressed, noted in my GovernmentIncompetence.org. When 80% of African Americans are deficient!

This is much bigger than the DNC. They just hopped on board so they could smear Trump some more. Note that it’s also being suppressed in other countries, like France. This was after Macron had spent something like 2 1/2 hours with Didier Raoult. No DNC in France….

If the Republicans sweep the next election, and win the Presidency, House and Senate, do you think they’ll start showing enough competency to OPEN THEIR MOUTHS and at least try to shame the FDA into advocating for Vitamin D sufficiency (even by the very low bar/Vit D blood level, that is currently ‘accepted’?) Will they fund free Vitamin D blood level tests? At least for poor people? At least for poor black and brown people? How about for poor, old black people, who are most at risk? Pay for massive advertising to promote their adoption?

ABSENT PUBLIC PRESSURE, I’d be shocked if they do any of these things. They are part of the problem. Same with HCQ.

Willy,

A lot of us hoped for those things. and Willy, some of us worked for those things, you know, going into the Service so we could put ourselves through school to get an engineering degree…stuff like that. Then some of us took lower paying jobs to work on national problems even though we knew we could make a lot more money going into management or, working in IP law or, working on stock algorithms or, going to DC and writing reports that justify the unjustifiable. Some of us did more than just daydream.

So yeah Willy, you say lot of things I agree with but, when comes to firearms no.

Unlike you, I know that the vast majority of the left tosses away the majority of rural support. Every time they open mouths on the subject of firearms. If lefty D’s wanted universal healthcare, a better social safety net, better regulation of Wall Street, fewer wars el al, [and they really don’t…they just like to virtue signal], they’d need to revert back to their previously held positions on having tightly controlled immigration and gun laws that differentiated honest citizens from criminals. Between those two issues lefty D’s gift R’s 20-30% at the polls every single year. That’s quite a gift that lefty D’s insist on giving.

It’s all about priorities…and for lefty D’s, having policies that:

1] Support massive immigration that suppresses wages, boast workers housing costs and prevents the construction of a better social safety net takes priority.

2] Disarm law abiding citizens in order to create safe environment for armed gangs takes priority…Mexico’s gun laws and the unequal society it engenders take priority.

To lefty D’s, these two policy points are more important than ALL the other issues on the table. We know this, because every year D’s get beaten because of these two issues and when they do win they have numbers that do not give the the power to address other issues.

@S Brennan
“Metamars; what the DNC did, what Kamala Harris is doing this week, politicizing Hydroxycloriquine, fully supported by most D’s, who see it as a “necessary evil” to gain the White House, is a criminally inflicted wound upon the body of this nation from which we may never heal. Vile and disgusting.”

Even if “vile and disgusting”, we can dispassionately ask ourselves, “who has more power, more potential, to move the needle on hydroxychloroquine? Kamala Harris, to suppress it’s use? Or Donald Trump, to increase it’s use?”

Of course, the answer is Donald Trump. He is President, she is not. In fact, just the fact that MSM, including Fox did Neil Cavuto, will likely go bonkers if Trump used his 1st Amendment right of free speech, coupled with the bully pulpit that’s a perk of his job, to STRONGLY advocate for hydroxychloroquine, and to STRONGLY emphasize the clinical science underpinning the justification for such advocacy, will guarantee a wider audience.

So, if we don’t look at Trump tribalistically, but instead pragmatically and dispassionately, who should we be more upset with, in this narrow regard?

I caught some bits and snatches of the Republican convention, tonight, and Pence criticized Harris’ mocking about “miracle cures”, make the cheap rhetorical claim about “America is a country of miracles” I suppose it was God who miraculously guided NASA engineers and scientists, through the lunar landing. Why He didn’t miraculously move the spacecraft to the moon and back, thus saving fuel, is anybody’s guess.

Pence didn’t bother mustering credible scientific arguments to show how “vile and disgusting” Harris’ smear was. He mirrors Trump in his more or less COMPLETE FAILURE to make rational arguments, based on science, supporting HCQ. Not a word about Vitamin D sufficiency, either.

There are substantial differences between Republicans and Democrats, that should be dispassionately, thought through, and used to guide voting and other political behavior. You, however, appear to forgo a more rational and even-handed assessment.

I ask, again:
“If the Republicans sweep the next election, and win the Presidency, House and Senate, do you think they’ll start showing enough competency to OPEN THEIR MOUTHS and at least try to shame the FDA into advocating for Vitamin D sufficiency (even by the very low bar/Vit D blood level, that is currently ‘accepted’?) Will they fund free Vitamin D blood level tests? At least for poor people? At least for poor black and brown people? How about for poor, old black people, who are most at risk? Pay for massive advertising to promote their adoption?”

Those of us who can’t or won’t give an accurate answer to these questions are most unlikely to help us reform the government.

Metamars;

You are working mightily to justify a Biden/Harris victory and I, a DNC defeat. As I have often transparently stated here, I want to crush the Al From* D’s and restore FDRism to both parties.

Your rhetorical questioning is intended to support keeping things as they are, or worse, creating an opportunity for, as Ian says, a man on a horse…fine, go for it. I’ll agree with you when I think you are right, otherwise? No. Your attempts to use such flimsy rationalizations [see your remarks above] leave me quite unimpressed.

Gute nacht.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_From

@metamars

“Not a word about how prolonging lockdowns beyond the point of rationality is more a Democratic thing than a Republican thing.”

The stupefying fundamentally suicidal lunacy of the anti-lockdown crowd never ceases to amaze me. You have people who have fully swallowed the propaganda of the very oligarchy that has decided that their lives are entirely disposable while not realizing that even the superficial economic arguments do not apply at all.

The only possible “point of rationality” for the duration of the lockdowns was the point at which the virus is eliminated from the population.

Which, given how far it was allowed to spread, would have meant something like 6-9 months in the US.

That is what had to be done. And it had to be a hard China-style lockdown enforced with the full brutality of the repressive apparatus of the US state, which, even though the US is a failing state, does exist and is much more powerful than some people appreciate, though it is also true that is a lot less powerful that some other people imagine it is.

The problem? If you are to do a 6-9 month lockdown and if you are to properly deal with the virus, you have to do redistribution of wealth from the oligarchy towards the masses, you have to do cancellation of debts, you have to nationalize the whole healthcare system and run it on a not-for-profit basis for the duration of the epidemic.

None of that is allowed to be even contemplated, not so much because of what it would cost for the time these things are implemented as measures on its own (after all, many trillions were already printed to prop up the stock market, and it is not as if anyone will ever be able to collect on the US debt), but because of the precedent it would set.

Wealth is supposed to flow from the masses towards the oligarchy, debt, which is the key mechanism through which that wealth transfer is accomplished, is supposed to be forever sacrosanct and repaid in full no matter the circumstances, healthcare has to be a for-profit rent extraction mechanism that doesn’t give a damn about the health of the population. Any softening of these mandates that existed in the middle of the 20th century was completely done away with once neoliberalism conquered the world, and so it should remain for eternity.

And nobody should ever get the idea that it could be otherwise.

Millions dead and many trillions in economic damage is a small price to pay for that.

And speaking of economic damage, why the f*** are we only ever talking about how much GDP will go down and how the airline and tourism industries will go down the drain but not about the costs of not doing a lockdown?

Who is going to pay for the treatment of tens of millions? At a 15% hospitalization rate and, let’s say, 70% infection in the US, you are looking at 30 million hospitalizations, of them some 5-10 million will be in the ICU. This will cost many trillions in healthcare costs. Yeah, it may actually show up as a boost to GDP because it will be credited on the balance sheets of hospitals, but that only underlines the fundamental insanity of GDP as a metric for societal well-being, and it does not change the fact that it is all a very real drain on actual productive resources. You want to invest your resources in building productive assets, such as infrastructure and productive capacity, not to just burn them in hospital incinerators.

COVID will leave tens of millions permanently disabled in the US alone. How many trillions is that going to cost over the coming decades? Or we will resolve that problem by just cutting disability benefits and letting them die homeless on the street?

And all of this assumes that reinfection with serious symptoms is not going to happen and that vaccines will be very effective, none of which are warranted assumptions at all given what we know about coronaviruses.

Only a complete fool would think that the economic cost of elimination would have been smaller than the economic cost of letting the virus rip through the population and then become endemic.

And then there is the minor problem that some 1-2% of the population was just sentenced to death. For what? So that 0.1% of the population can keep parasitizing on the rest of society unimpeded without any potential threats to its status.

These are monstrous crimes against humanity for which the responsible people should be tried and sentenced to death if established historic precedent is to be followed. Yes, that means the president, much of the leadership of both parties, a lot of the governors, as well as, and most importantly, the various billionaires that ordered them what to do.

And yet instead of calling for justice and proper punishments, so many regular people are instead supporting them by being against lockdowns…

The Greens can’t deliver. I think people understand that, fundamentally.

It’s post-politics, now.

Like it or not, 70% – 80% of you live in triage zones.

What are the Greens, the Justice Democrats or the progressive ngos offering that can *credibly* curtail the oligarchy’s unconcealed efforts to emiserate everyone not in their supply or support chains?

krake’s question is the most important question. The oligarchs and the entirety of their support system must be eliminated. Not just deposed and removed from power. Eliminated. Because if you don’t eliminate them, they keep coming back like weeds or cancer. Yes, the system needs to be replaced so that it can no longer produce fresh batches of them, but also, those in circulation need to be eliminated so that the system can be replaced and they are prevented from ever rehabilitating the old order of things.

I started by naming names in another thread. All of these creatures can, and must, be identified as criminals. They have their databases and files on us, in turn we should have our databases and files on them. When the zeitgeist manifests and not until, then will be the time to take appropriate, resolute, final action against those in the database. They have made it more than clear. It is them versus us. They believe they are superior to us to the point they practically believe we are different species, and who knows, maybe we are. It is a war and they’re winning it hands down because they’ve managed to convince the unwashed sheep there is no war and instead they have the unwashed sheep killing each other at their clever, manipulative behest.

I increasingly believe an evil intelligence created the universe and life within it. I say it is evil because it gave us them. It has rewarded them. And as if that isn’t cruel enough, it punishes us for their transgressions against its creation. I truly believe this intelligence behind all of this delights in it. The irony is, this intelligence behind it all is a sad, pathetic, bad joke. Donald Trump sits atop the pinnacle of power of this intelligence as its manifested in its creation. The orange douchebag is abominable in every conceivable way. Donald Trump is the culmination and reflection of this “intelligent” creation. Either the creator or creators is/are (a) malevolent, sadistic psychopath(s) who enjoy(s) torture, pain and suffering and murder, or, whilst intelligent, is/are (a) royal fuckup(s) and that’s an understatement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0-hgSjnomA

https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071483

One possible answer to the strange, but not-strange ineffectualness of massive or persistent street protest, I found in this article, which (despite its title) is about the effect of tidal waves of propaganda.

https://off-guardian.org/2020/08/26/the-fatal-attraction-of-techo-fascism/

That essay is quite good on what Ché Pasa is ruminating upon just above.

On other fronts, I see that the DNC snoozeZOOM managed to lift Trump over 50% approval ratings in polls for the very first time that I can recall. Biden/Harris are such truly awful candidates that they managed to create a post-convention bounce for the other guys! Comparison of Hillary’s lead over Trump on August 24, 2016 with Biden’s around August 24, 2020 puts Biden at half of Clinton’s margin back then. woocoodenode?

@GM

“The stupefying fundamentally suicidal lunacy of the anti-lockdown crowd never ceases to amaze me. You have people who have fully swallowed the propaganda of the very oligarchy that has decided that their lives are entirely disposable while not realizing that even the superficial economic arguments do not apply at all.

The only possible “point of rationality” for the duration of the lockdowns was the point at which the virus is eliminated from the population.”

Speaking of lunacy related to the lockdowns, I suggest you give a listen to Chris Martenson’s youtube video “Covid-19 Lockdowns Doing Much More Harm Than Good?” for more info. Also on youtube: “The Fact-Free Lockdown Hysteria | Thomas E. Woods, Jr.”

I’m not an expert, but your argument from incredulity is a logical fallacy that doesn’t exactly showcase your own expert bona fides in this area, now, does it?

Oh, and even the experts don’t agree. The real experts.

BTW, in your expert opinion, should society lock down every year when a new strain of influenza appears, and remain locked down, until the new strain “is eliminated from the population”? Do tell.

I would also recommend https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ for science references related to covid-19. As a general rule, I would distrust talking heads, on TV and elsewhere, who bluster about “science” but either don’t cite it, at all; or else just tidbits which somehow only reinforce their own ideological predispositions.

I tend to view the Medical Mafia as mostly about profit. Hence, you don’t want to kill off your marks; what you want to do is suck as much money out of them, as you can. The profit potential of a forced, yearly vaccine, as opposed to the problematic business model of standard drugs, has been laid out by Dr.Shiva Ayyadurai.

I’m an unashamed “conspiracy theorist”, and highly recommend Michael Parenti’s writings on the subject. However, while the “standard of evidence” for a reasonable conspiracy theory is generally/almost always lower than that of a criminal trial, it’s only too easy to be fooled by mere associations and a good imagination.

Here’s a break from despair –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tziyYhJKwPI

On youtube, so some ads to skip, but worth it.

Keith Richards & the boys with Ry Cooder – Jammin’ with Edward

Think of Bernie as a disision tree.

The next question is “Will my vote matter?” If it does, then hand the bugalar what he wants e.g. Vote Bidden what ever the consequence. You know it will be exquisite awful. If it does not, which is the majority because only a few states will it truly matter, go the the next stage.

The next question is “Am I being bribed?” For example, you are on SSI. Vote for your interest. “You do not want to, but you must.” Otherwise, go to the next question.

“Is there any one whose bribe will work in my faver?” This includes descendants. Vote for your potential bribe.

It is the population pyramid than keeps the duopoly in place – many get SSI. They are bleeding but ever so slowly. Others will vote AOC or Green or Working Families to show that that attention is about the future.

S. Brennan,
There are reasons for guns and immigrants.

Guns laws cannot be honestly debated as long as DC is in the back pocket of the NRA, or other powerfully influential firearms sales organizations. Some of the staunchest conservatives I know routinely employ illegals. This doesn’t mean they all do, but every staunch conservative that I know can rationalize their own hypocrisies with a great lack of self-awareness. The part of their brain where honest and thoughtful debate resides, has atrophied, while other, less honest parts have grown strong from years of exercise.

Of course, this isn’t a black and white thing but a spectrum of disorders, like autism. There’s plenty of hypocritical liberal praetorian guards out there too.

Conservatives rationalize hypocrisy because of a continuously cultivated greed culture. It’s a Bernays brainwashing / Madison Avenue / K Street thing. A mindless consumer mammonist cultism so powerful that it’s overcome even the Christian teachings which say that this life is but a speck in the eternal life. Think about how satanic much of evangelism has become, without their even knowing it. We now get to have a mindless total consumerist culture just so that a few thousand pathological elites can feed their insatiable pathologies. I mean seriously, how many mansions does one need to not live in just to be happy? How many underage girls do they need to ‘own’?

We supplicate the town drunks so they can stay drunk. We keep them powerful because we believe their lies. They rationalize it all by telling us that we’re bad people if we don’t ourselves drink.

Today, you’re nothing, you’re a socialist, a stupid Venezuelan Marxist, a rioting loser, a low IQ minority, if you don’t have the wealth to show off that you’ve been buying the status products which makes them rich.

So now our politics is a highly persuasive “science” which serves the few, which rationalizes all the negatives, and isn’t much of a functional civil service anymore. Elite democrats included.

“I don’t understand why all of Bernie’s disappointed supporters haven’t joined the Green party in droves. What am I missing?”

Bernie’s effectiveness and yes, he was very effective at herding the naive into the abattoir’s pen. Twenty years from now Bernie will be seen as one of this nation’s most brilliant con men…he was brilliant. The same con, the same crowd…twice and most are still enamored by his “courage”…brilliant.

Twice inside of four years Sanders spellbound innocent gullible souls. Bernie conned them into spending their time, spending their money and spending their reputations into cheering him, adoring him, worshiping him and, this is important, to the exclusion of all others, then, like a real showman.. >>>>poof<<<< he was gone and the gate was locked, all options were gone. TINA!!!

No, the Wizard of Oz had nothing on Sanders, nothing. No little Toto could make the faithful see him behind the curtain, pulling the levers to the delight of the DNCers. Nope, Bernie's no fool, for the second time, he grabbed his thirty pieces of silver and he was gone.

Who will take Bernie's place at the Emerald City, who will run the next con with all the flair of that Wizard? Ian says Alexia Cortez [AOC] has that in her but, I don't know. Maybe Cortez can run the con but, let's face it, pulling off Bernie's con at the end of his life made sense, I mean he'll be dead before the marks truly understand that they have been had. But Cortez is young, she'll live the majority of her life as a known quisling…I can't see it. I think Cortez is just being used by Sanders as smoke and mirrors to obscure his exit.

Metamars:
“By the time a general election rolls around, one’s agency, as a voter, is to vote for a sold-out Republican, or sold-out Democrat.”

OR A THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE. Or, write in, for example, Tulsi Gabbard. “Oh, you want to waste your vote, they always answer.”
My response: “WTH? WT -everloving- H are you talking about?”

Anybody dumb enough to take medical advice from Donald Trump is in for a world of hurt:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-azithromycin-trump-bolsonaro-deaths-study-a9690521.html

Anybody stupid enough to ignore worldwide experience, by medical professionals, using HCQ better have a decent plan B, or else suffer the consequences.

Once again, an aggregation website of HCQ vs. covid-19 studies is c19study.com. Therein, I count:
22 Negative studies + negative meta-studies
64 Positive studies + positive meta-studies

What do you count?

Metamars;

Let’s talk about something useful, is quercetin a reasonable substitute ionophore for Hydroxycloriquine?

Working class folks who lack the power/wealth to circumvent the DNC/Deep-State embargo need the best defense they are allowed. Can quercetin do some of the lifting of Hydroxycloriquine?

Yeah, not nearly as good but, let’s talk about what we CAN – DO instead bemoaning our powerlessness.

Thomas B Golladay; is Ivermectin OTC?

GM: If you are to do a 6-9 month lockdown . . .

It bothered me that I let this go. I do not think it reasonable at all to imagine that it is possible to do a lockdown for more than a very few days. It isn’t just that people need to go to work to earn income; a lot of people have to go to work just to keep basic services and goods available.

Being unable to think the mechanics of policy through is a big problem in American political discourse.

People latch on to what they feel is a moral point and accuse an imaginary other of simply ignoring the morally “obvious” and stop listening and stop thinking. It seems to me anti-lockdown others served that purpose for you. But, regardless of whether any one made it a partisan issue, a real lockdown extending 6 months or more is not possible, whether anyone opposed it or not.

I think conservatives often feel libruls are abusing reason when they scorn opposing conservatives while failing to be realistic about policy details: defund the police, open borders, prohibit private gun ownership. And, people on the left are often aggrieved when reactionary centrists question how much more (!) expensive M4all must be, or worry nonsensically about the burden of the national debt on our grandchildren.

It is a problem of polarizing styles of argument — over-use of moral declarations in particular, but also a problem of a political media that promotes teh stupid as a badge of honor.

bruce wilder PERMALINK

I do not think it reasonable at all to imagine that it is possible to do a lockdown for more than a very few days. It isn’t just that people need to go to work to earn income; a lot of people have to go to work just to keep basic services and goods available.

I am afraid you are very confused about the real value of “income”.

Money has no intrinsic value at all aside from the fact that we have agreed to provide real physical goods and services in exchange for it.

There is no law of nature that mandates that people “earn income” or drop dead. Human beings have in fact existed perfectly fine without “income” for most of human history, and they can in principle be provided with the physical necessities for survival without it today too, if only we collectively met a certain minimal threshold of rationality and enlightenment.

And of course nobody is stupid enough to suggest that everyone gets locked down without anyone left to run the life support systems. There are plenty of ways to organize such activities in ways that would minimize the spread and help resolve the problem. But they all require a functioning state and an intact production base, neither of which requirements appears to be met in the US and most of Europe.

As an example, during the cold war a number of countries had stockpiles of gas masks ready for everyone in case of a chemical or biological attack.

I am watching the fiasco that is the push to reopen schools (which can really only be rationally explained if the powers that be are trying to get everyone infected as soon as possible so that there is no point in ever even invoking the idea of another lockdown) and I am thinking about:

1. What happened to that sort of preparedness?

2. Why, if we are really so desperate to reopen schools, have we not manufactured sufficiently many P100 full or half face respirators (the reusable ones that do a proper job of blocking viral particles) to give a couple to every kid and a teacher and solve the problem with the spread in classrooms? It’s been more than six months since it was abundantly clear that something like this would be needed, and it’s not like it is impossible — during WWII the US was producing hundreds of airplanes every day, while here we’re talking about a piece of plastic and rubber, and we have had 75 years of perfecting and automating manufacturing processes since then.

Nobody is even talking about doing such a thing. Why? I think we all know the answers.

But that indeed does invalidate the idea of a doing a lockdown to eliminate the virus, which can and will work if executed properly.

BTW, note that this is not just an internal US affair — several small nations, especially some tourist destinations, had the virus either eliminated or at least brought under controls, but they are now having large outbreaks very clearly linked to travelers from the US. Expect to see many more such situations in the future (assuming that there are countries left that have it under control, of course) because the US still has the power to bully smaller countries into submission.

Charlie Parker

groundbreaking saxophonist
swing saxophone the bird
complexity tommy-gun velocity
improvisations jazz’s
Now’s the Time
thrilling scarifying polyrhythms
You will never learn
epochal consequence appetites

Yardbird revolutionary passing chords woodshedding
Ornithology Bird Gets the Worm
You will never learn
hipster subculture Beat Generation
opiates microphone Max Making Wax
A high clear note above.

@NR

Not having examined all, or even most, of the studies, in detail, I cannot comment as to their specifics. I haven’t even heard most of the recent covid presentations by Dr. Chris Martenson, who is a 1 man wrecking crew of bad science, related to covid-19.

At this point, I’m sort of tired looking at studies claimed to show HCQ doesn’t work, then seeing they’re garbage, or else deeply flawed. The study retracted by Lancet with the fudged Surgisphere data was the worst, but we can’t forget ‘classics’ like the Brazilian one that used chloroquine in toxic doses, and killed some people; or the craptastic VA study that was heavily weighted with “Hail Mary” application of HCQ, though even that can’t be nailed down precisely, as dosing timetable data wasn’t given. Even though it was strongly believed, from the start, that HCQ is more effective as an early treatment.

Unlike political arguments, scientific ones should be settled on the basis of the strongest evidence.

If YOU want to deconstruct the strongest evidence for HCQ efficacy, after going through all of them listed at c19study.com, feel free. Maybe I’ll respond. You’d be better off getting a response from Chris Martenson, or somebody else equally qualified, who has as much integrity as I judge him to have. Also, I’ll echo Chris Martenson and say that the most reliable studies would look at HCQ + ZINC, administered early, versus other testing models.

One thing that’s not going to happen is me just taking your word about this. You claim “no meta analysis”, even though many of the reports ARE meta analyses. In fact, I count 9 of them, or roughly 10%.

How many meta-analyses type studies do your lying eyes count? And why do you say the studies are “cherry picked”? Once again, I count 22 negative studies + negative meta analysis studies. If c19study was “cherry picking”, why did they include these 22 negatives?

You sound like you’re reading from a “debunking” script…..

If you want to amuse me, why don’t you give your very best comment about what the Lancet / Surgisphere POS getting through peer review at this ‘prestigious’ journal tells about the level of integrity in the whole medical research field AS A WHOLE? This a ‘meta’ type question, where the meta has to do with human psychology, corruption, and institutional pressures.

My experience is that “debunkers” ignore the rottenness of the eco-system surrounding the scientists and researchers of the people they (apparently) trust, as authorities. This is as dumb as ignoring the rottenness at the top and inside of the Democratic and Republican parties, if you’re trying to achieve anything socially useful, that requires interacting with Democrats and/or Republicans that are in power.

My answer to that particular bit of irrationality and/or dumbness and/or shilling is http://www.reddit.com/r/bad_science_culture/

again, another comment in limbo

@someofparts,

What a jam! Thanks, I needed that.

@Plague Species,

To put too fine a point on it, one might rephrase your advice upthread in the following way . . .

We need a Final Solution to the Oligarch Question in America today.

Anyone who is interested and has some free time, look through Google Scholar at the recent meta or systematic studies published on HCQ. Most state that there is no benefit and/or more research is needed since most of the studies have major flaws, while a much smaller number assert there is some benefit.

@NR

My apologies. I didn’t know what PrEP and PEP were, nor did I notice that those tabs were clickable. They apparently stand for “pre exposure prophylaxis” and “post exposure prophylaxis”. They appear to not be precisely defined, on this website, but if they follow the AIDS example I see a aidsinfo.nih.gov, PEP mean taken within 72 hours.

So, yes, the studies are weighted “equally” in generating these aggregate numbers. Or, more precisely (probably) WERE weighted “equally”, because currently, there are 34 positive “Late” studies, and 66 total “Late” studies, giving 51.5% Positive “Late” studies. (Subtracting 7 Inconclusive or retracted from the denominator gives 57.6% Positive “Late”, so either they are rounding up incorrectly, or they aren’t computing it dynamically, as they add data).

In light of their paragraph on the bottom, that is still mostly irrelevant, UNLESS they are giving a biased subset of actual studies, as you claim. Even then, the problem would be in the biased subset, more than the aggregate calculation method. It’s kind of obvious to me that the aggregate shouldn’t be taken super seriously as a precise metric. Trying to weight the papers in terms of quality, while welcome (if done honestly), would entail a lot of work. (I’m glossing over a lot, in that last sentence). Furthermore, to make a more precise aggregate even more solid, I’d also prefer looking into the financial ties, retraction history, history of ethics violations, etc., of the authors, and figuring all that in. But who is going to do all this work? The US government easily has enough money to report out aggregate results based on a fabulously thorough investigation of each report. Ah, but they can’t be bothered even constructing an “equally weighted” c19study.com of their own. No mystery, there….

Having said all that, I’m not going to do your work for you. You’re the one making the claim about c19study reporting misleading results. You apparently didn’t even bother checking out the first hit on the search that you, yourself, posted.

Did you actually look into ANY of the others?

Finally, on the bottom of their site, they say “Please send us corrections, updates, comments.” . So, if you find notable omissions, you could do the civically useful thing and actually pass on that information to them. If they fail to incorporate legitimate omissions, then you’d have something to crow about.

My bad S Brennan.

I obviously touched a raw nerve. To be honest I don’t know the actual numbers associated with any HCQ risks. But I do know that our once great “science and reason” institutions have lost much respect and hence all the “political/cyber bullying”.

If you’re as confident in your “science and reason” as you appear to be, then would it be possible for you to intentionally contract the virus, give your “controversial” treatments a go, and then after your successful recovery tell your story here? Of course if you’re not up to the challenge I have no doubts that you’ll find a great many willing “science and reason” takers from amongst the Townhall or American Spectator crowd.

Maybe from those humble beginnings you could start your own private version of the FDA or WHO which out-competes those once respected organizations because of the superior “science and reason”?