403 thoughts on “The Most Openest Open Thread Evah”

  2. i’m about to go to my fourth tire shop to see if they can fix a slow leak in my 1300-mile-old tire, or if i have to buy a new one.

  4. Working on an epic based on Apuleius’ Amor and Psyche.
    In German. I am no good at writing Latin hexameters (and English is in my experience not a good language to write hexameters in).

  6. English is in my experience not a good language to write hexameters in.
    English is more of a pentameter language.

  7. Warranty?
    not for a puncture. dealer said they’d fix it for $342.
    this place handled it, for $30. i had to sit in the waiting room and listen to living fossil Pat Robertson tell his stupid audience that immigrants are to blame for C19 for 45 minutes, though.

  9. they refused to do a puncture repair.
    Sidewall, or tread? Almost no one will touch a sidewall puncture.

  10. dealer said they’d fix it for $342.
    and that, my friends, is how billionaires pay for their rides into space.

  11. also, in the interest of establishing my personal non-partisan street cred, let me be the first to say it’s time for Cuomo to go.
    it’s unethical to bug your subordinates for sex, no matter what letter comes after your name.
    say goodbye, Andrew.

  12. Bicycle ride with granddaughter #1 along the Poudre Trail this morning. We were 15 miles or so downstream from last week’s burn scar flash flood and the river is still running nasty black with the occasional chunk of debris floating by. (Note, different flash flood from the one that has I-70 closed indefinitely.) Thunderstorms up in the mountains again this afternoon.
    This was the first ride since I told my daughter to let me take the bicycle home, no one should be riding with that much stuff broken. So compared to last time, the front brake works, the rear brake works better, the broken twist-shifter is replaced, the derailleur is properly adjusted, and the chain is a whole lot cleaner and better lubed. We went faster today. When we hit the uphill stretch, she shifted down two gears and cackled as she took it without slowing (don’t know how else to describe the sound; I don’t recall our kids cackling when they were seven).

  13. I’m reading a book of old Italian folktales, collected by Italo Calvino.
    Last night I read a fable about a man who accidentally eats a viper (he thought he was eating an eel) and is granted the ability to understand the language of animals.
    First conversation he hears is between a cat and dog. They’re arguing about who should get the biggest portion of meat from the man they live with.
    It’s an entertaining book, perfect for bedtime reading.

  15. A solution to a non-problem:
    There are those who are hysterical on the subject of vaccine passports. OK, we can avoid that. After all, we’ve got huge supplies of vaccine. So just require that you get vaccinated every time you enter a restaurant or concert, etc. (Maybe, in time, any business open to the public.**) An extra vaccination may be useless, but it won’t hurt you. And if it’s trivial enough that a drug store can do it, a restaurant can.
    Of course, hysteria over vaccine passports is stupid. But hey, we can work around stupid.
    ** Note that we’re already discussing requiring vaccination to get on an airplane. Which, amusingly, may force certain members of Congress to admit that they’ve gotten the vaccine they are urging their followers not to get.

  16. Boy, that section of I-70 being out doesn’t leave many convenient alternatives for a route. Glad we made no plans to visit family this summer.

  17. Andrew Cuomo agrees with you…
    The horror of the Internet. Not only do dumb things you said remain around to haunt you. Intelligent things you said long ago can haunt you, too.

  18. Michael Cain – I was delighted by the image (and the imagined sound) of your cackling granddaughter. Also, if it was you who recommended Alex Verus (as I think it was) because you liked a) magic and b) London, I think you might possibly like the King’s Watch books by Mark Hayden.

  19. Sidewall, or tread? Almost no one will touch a sidewall puncture.
    first local place wouldn’t answer their on-line appointment form.
    second local place wouldn’t even look at it because they thought Tesla 3’s only came with run-flat tires. that’s not true: it’s not a run-flat, though it does have a stiff sidewall so it can hold up with low pressure for a while. but they were pretty certain about their info.
    dealer said it was in the tread but at a “questionable angle”. and they don’t do repairs there regardless (beats me?) they almost got the $342 out of me, too. i almost gave in just to end the nonsense. but i figured it was worth trying one more place.
    fourth place just fixed it.
    and that, my friends, is how billionaires pay for their rides into space.
    yep.
    but not this time, Elon. not. this. time.

  20. p.s. With any luck, she might be a witch. Although I may be succumbing to stereotypes…

  21. Boy, that section of I-70 being out doesn’t leave many convenient alternatives for a route.
    Which says a great deal about why the first plans for the interstate highway system had I-70 stop at Denver. Going farther west was deemed too difficult and too expensive. Colorado called in every political favor they had, but it wasn’t enough until the US Army decided they really wanted an alternate central route to I-80 across the Rockies. I-70 west of Denver was the last of the original system finished to four lanes (in the early 1990s), and is still the most expensive per-mile non-urban section of the interstate system. Even more expensive if some of the cantilevered parts through that canyon now have to be rebuilt.
    Occasionally I speculate about how the history of the American West might have played out differently if the South/Bridger Pass in Wyoming didn’t exist.

  22. I was delighted by the image (and the imagined sound) of your cackling granddaughter.
    It took me a minute to mentally process the sound. I was in “hovering grandpa” pose* right behind her, and was listening to each click of the shifter and whether the chain moved quickly and smoothly to the next gear (it did**).
    * She’s a bit small for her age, and I do hang close enough that we can talk as either of us feels necessary. Behind her, so that I know where she is (and puts her in charge, so “Oh, look, a frog!” and abrupt stop works. (Cool enough today to not worry about snakes. At the right combination of time/season here, there will be the occasional big rattlesnake sunning.) We (I?) get a lot of grins from adult cyclists we meet, and compliments from people passing when they realize she’s there.
    ** My daughter would be unhappy if I simply spent money and had a bike shop do the work. It has been a long time since I adjusted a derailleur from scratch. I had forgotten what a slow picky process it can be to get it just right. (Note to self: would have been easier with an actual repair stand, which you know how to build for almost nothing from PVC pipe.)

  24. @wj
    As far as I understand, the main complication risk with a vaccination is an anaphylactic shock. You need to give an adrenadline injection if that happens.
    In Finland, vaccination requires a registered nurse to do it. In USA, the requirement is clearly laxer, but I suppose that the pharmacist, being academically educated member of medical profession, has received instruction in handling emergencies in vaccinations.

  26. In USA, the requirement is clearly laxer, but I suppose that the pharmacist, being academically educated member of medical profession, has received instruction in handling emergencies in vaccinations.
    I’m not absolutely certain. But my impression is that our “drug stores” (as opposed to actual pharmacies) do not routinely have a pharmacist on site.
    But it is also possible that I misinterpreted where shots were being given.

  27. “Drug stores” in my area have actual pharmacies inside them. So, for that matter, do the bigger grocery stores. I get my shots mostly from a pharmacist in a “drug store.” Now and then at the grocery store. It’s always a pharmacist giving them.
    wj, surely any place that fills prescriptions has a pharmacist attached to it…..?

  28. And if it’s trivial enough that a drug store can do it, a restaurant can.
    I had missed this the first time through, and without your 11:06, I might have thought you were just being snarky. It’s not trivial, and not just anyone can do it.
    Here are Maine rules. Doesn’t sound very “lax” to me. I would assume — maybe wrongly — that other states’ frameworks are similar.

  29. “she might be a witch”
    does she weigh the same as a duck?
    And now for something completely different:
    a significant number of drugstores seem to have “minute clinic” type sidelines, thanks to USian healthcare ‘system’ craziness. So they’d have a nurse on site.
    Of the various vaccines (Pfizer, AZ, Moderna) I’m tempted to ‘collect the whole set’.
    Except for the TrumpVAX bleach/lysol one; needz moar testing on MAGAts.

  30. wj, surely any place that fills prescriptions has a pharmacist attached to it…..?
    My possibly incorrect impression is that many drug stores around here only offer over-the-counter products. I may have made an u justified leap that, since you don’t need a prescription for the vaccine….

  31. I may have made an u justified leap that, since you don’t need a prescription for the vaccine….
    I didn’t keep the link, but there is a list of medical care provider types that can administer the vaccine. It’s longer than the usual list — eg includes veterinarians who have experience injecting animals — but the atypical people have to complete specific training first. My second Moderna shot, administered at a Kaiser facility, was given by one of those atypical people who stated her qualification and had a copy of the training certification available to view. An RN was also available if I was nervous about being stuck by an “amateur”.
    For enough money, I’m sure you could find qualified people willing to moonlight. The bigger problem, though, might be the requirements on record keeping and reporting.

  32. “An extra vaccination may be useless, but it won’t hurt you”
    There is no longitudinal data supporting this assertion. Or that your original vaccine won’t hurt you.
    Daily vaccination could be a bad idea.

  34. I got my COVID vaxes at a local hospital, but I have gotten plain old flu shots at a local pharmacy.
    The shots at the pharmacy are given by a pharmacist. To be a licensed pharmacist in the US, you have to complete a PhD in pharmacology and then do an internship, typically 1500 hours worth.
    It’s not something you should be getting at a restaurant.
    Or that your original vaccine won’t hurt you.
    People are free to get a vaccination or not. People who don’t want to be vaccinated should wear a mask anytime they are around other people, and should probably avoid being around other people to the degree that is possible.
    Freedom doesn’t mean you can do whatever the hell you want and nobody else has anything to say about it.
    My wife was speaking with a friend this AM whose daughter in law works as a doula. She doesn’t want to get vaccinated because she doesn’t think it’s natural. My wife’s friend has a number of co-morbidities, and her husband, the woman’s father, is in his 80’s.
    The daughter in law was not invited to a family thing up in NH. She is highly pissed off.
    What the hell did she think everyone’s response was going to be?
    I’m not even going to get into the risk factors for the daughter-in-law’s clients – pregnant women and their families – and am curious to know if she discloses here non-vaxed status to them. If she doesn’t, she by god ought to.
    Do what you want, but exercise a basic level of responsibility. If you can’t do that, you’re going to piss people off, and you’re going to deserve that.

  35. People who don’t want to be vaccinated should wear a mask anytime they are around other people, and should probably avoid being around other people to the degree that is possible.
    i would prefer it if they wore bright red jumpsuits and flashing light on their heads. i don’t want to be within 100 yards of any of them.
    if you have no regard for the health of others, the least you can do is advertise it – don’t be an incognito plague rat, own it.

  36. With 70% of people in the US fully or nearly vaccinated, why would the 30% need to wear masks or distance? I’m not being argumentative here. The people they are likely to infect are others who have decided to not get vaccinated.
    There are breakthrough infections though most have have shown muted symptoms.
    It seems unlikely the virus will be eradicated based on anything I have seen. so there is a diminishing return over time in making the non vaccinated pariahs. And every one of them that gets it brings us closer to whatever level of herd immunity that can be achieved.
    I’m just waiting for the annual covid/flu shot to be available at my pharmacy.

  38. Because 30% of people have not been vaccinated, so those 30% can infect each other.
    30% of the population is almost 100 million people. That is a great big pool of humanity in which the virus can continue to thrive and mutate. It’s enough people that COVID will continue to strain the resources of hospitals and health care providers in general. It’s enough people that a small-ish percentage of them still amounts to a hell of a lot of people getting sick and dying.
    Plus, I doubt that the folks who are not vaccinated have chosen not to be vaccinated in order to get COVID. So it would be a simple courtesy to anyone else around you – rhetorical ‘you’ – who is not vaccinated. Some of the folks who are not vaccinated have not failed to get vaccinated by choice. Children, for instance.
    Breakthrough infections mostly show muted symptoms, but you’re still communicable. And ‘symptoms are muted’ still means you can get pretty sick, sick enough to need care and sick enough to stay home from whatever your daily thing is. I know two people (that I know of) who were vaxed and got breakthrough infections, it kicked both of their @sses.
    This isn’t about ‘making people pariahs’, it’s about trying to get rid of this fucking virus. How many more people have to get sick and die before we get it under control?
    All of the people who refuse to get vaccinated make that goal that much further away. So hell yeah, a lot of people are going to be angry with them. They are putting people’s lives at risk. It seems childish, to me, for people to decide to not get vaccinated, and then expect everyone else to not respond to that in any negative way.
    Hey, I’m gonna go sneeze all over the salad bar, but nobody else better have anything to say about it! Right?
    If folks don’t want to get the shot, they are free to not get the shot. They should *take responsibility for their own behavior* and have the basic courtesy to not put other people at risk. I am at a loss to understand why that is in any way controversial or puzzling.
    I also look forward to the day when we can manage COVID with a simple annual flu shot.

  39. The people they are likely to infect are others who have decided to not get vaccinated.
    J&J doesn’t protect against lambda.
    it will infect them, too. and the unvaccinnated will spread it, happily, like rolling coal on the saps who weren’t manly enough to stand up for the freedom to kill others .

  40. There’s also a heavy cost to the health care system, and health care workers, both now and due to the long term cost of COVID, about which we have very little idea so far. But hey, I’m sure it’s all these idiots’ right to make themselves and other people sick, and then turn around and say it’s also their right to be taken care of.
    This needs to be stressed. COVID can set off a spiral. It can be long COVID. It can be hospitalization and after hospitalization in the elderly. There can be side effects from inappropriate antibiotics. Deaths can follow from that initial spark was a case of COVID.
    From here.

  42. It’s worth noting that the various COVID vaccines have been available for 8+ months at this point. Over 4 BILLION shots have been given, almost 350 million of them in the US.
    There are no guarantees, but it appears to be a pretty safe vaccine.
    I’m not interested in forcing people to get it. I think the reasons many people have for not getting it are ill-founded, but so be it.
    But if you don’t get vaccinated, you are personally at much greater risk of getting COVID, and you are at much greater risk of passing it along.
    Everyone who doesn’t get vaccinated delays the point at which COVID turns into something like influenza – a health risk, especially for vulnerable people, but a manageable one. We have the means in hand to make that happen, at least in countries like the US. The only thing that delays that is all of the people who refuse to get vaccinated.
    People make choices, and they are responsible for the choices they make. If you do things that put other people at risk of harm, those other people are likely to object.
    You can’t have it both ways.

  43. So. Now I am argumentative. Here is a favorite line: I am at a loss to understand why that is in any way controversial or puzzling.
    Of course you are. You believe it is my responsibility to make sure you and everyone else are safe. If they can’t take a vaccine and want to be safe they can take steps to be distanced. If kids aren’t vaccinated the question is what should their parents do. But no I should be vaccinated.
    It’s never the individuals responsibility to do what is necessary. Everyone should get vaccinated or be refused access to society, so other unvaccinated people can be safe?
    The circular logic in all that is dizzying. I(the general I) should have to take an inadequaty tested injection that could cause long term ill effects, not because I decided the short term risk of not taking it is greater, but so I can maintain the freedom too participate in society in the semester of ways.
    I am at a loss to understand why objecting to that is in any way controversial or puzzling.

  45. Everyone should get vaccinated or be refused access to society, so other unvaccinated people can be safe?
    That seems reasonable to me, except that I want vaccinated people to be safe too. Everyone who can be vaccinated should get vaccinated, or else stay at home. I just can’t see what’s wrong with this, any more than requiring people to be sober when driving.

  47. It doesn’t help that the messaging coming from politicians, bureaucrats, government agencies, experts, news media, etc. gives the impression that much of what people are being told is contradictory and being driven more by politics and agendas rather than by facts. A lot of people don’t know who to trust. And a lot of people who think they know who to trust are wrong.

  48. A lot of people don’t know who to trust.
    yes they do. they trust what their preferred politicians tell them.

  49. Hi Marty, Don’t want to make you a punching bag, but I think your attitude is why you get grouped with two others here. This isn’t to set you on each other, I just think that this is a line between you three and the rest of us. (I’d also note that I find it quite interesting when you three don’t agree, but that just may be me)
    There are a lot of things we do in order to make things work. Drive on the right side of the street. Agree that the price marked on a package is the price we pay. Agreeing that ‘Hi there’ is an appropriate greeting and ‘F you’ isn’t. Pro Bono’s example of sober while driving is good except that it wasn’t always a requirement. (folks interested in how this might be different here, check out
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/drunk-japan-9780190070847?cc=jp&lang=en& )
    Now, you argue that the risk involved with the vaccine makes it something that we should cut more slack than usual. The vaccine is inadequately tested (Russell suggests 4 billion doses, I don’t know the state, but if you had 4 billion doses of something totally inert, you’d probably still get reactions), the vaccine is being pushed on people because the government in order to promulgate some goverment plot (https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-784231435856), yada yada yada
    https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines-myth-versus-fact
    (I don’t know if you accept that, but it is from Johns Hopkins, employer of Hilzoy, so seems to be an ok source)
    I’m often on you to ask you for links. What are you basing your statements on? I realize that it may seen like I’m just picking a fight, but if it is something external, we can talk about that rather than talk about it as something in your head. Which then leads to feelings that people are talking down to you, or are picking on you.
    Your last comment is a good example. Rather than a factual discussion trying to identify the risks, you move to suggesting that Russell is engaging in circular logic. But the logic is only circular if the questions of vaccine remain undiscussed. If those were settled, or at least addressed, it might go some way to resolving the contradictions. But leaping to why objecting to objecting is a problem, it is basically making things insoluble.
    So I don’t want to turn this into a full blown discussion of COVID risks and details, but if you could _link_ to things that explain why you think that the vaccine is inadequately tested and could cause long term ill effects, it might be better. I can’t guarantee that people here won’t take that as an opportunity to take a swipe at you, but absent that, you are sort of guaranteeing that someone will

  51. With 70% of people in the US fully or nearly vaccinated, why would the 30% need to wear masks or distance?
    Have you not seen the data one the exploding case rates, and hospitalizations, in Florida? (And Texas and Missouri and…) Almost entirely among the unvaccinated.
    I might be OK with them killing off each other in pursuit of “free choice.” But thete are some people who, for legitimate medical reasons, cannot be vaccinated. Endangering them is simply massively selfish.

  52. Pfizer is likely to be officially approved in the US next month. a new excuse will instantly take over. i’m betting on a mix of “it’s not effective! you can still get COVID if you’re vaccinated! side effects!”

  53. You believe it is my responsibility to make sure you and everyone else are safe.
    not quite.
    In general I believe that people are responsible for minimizing the harm that their actions cause to others.
    In the context of a pandemic, specifically, I believe that people who don’t want to get vaccinated are responsible for minimizing the chance that they will be a vector for the disease.
    In practical terms, that means avoid being around other people, and wear a mask when that’s not possible.
    Nobody is asking you or anyone else to make everybody else on the planet ‘safe’.
    I am saying that if you make a choice that has the potential to harm other people, it is your responsibility to minimize the chance of causing that harm.
    Basically, the ask here is don’t be a dick. Don’t sneeze on the salad bar.

  54. You believe it is my responsibility to make sure you and everyone else are safe
    it’s not, like, my problem if my fire burns your house down, man. don’t harsh my inferno.

  55. I might be OK with them killing off each other in pursuit of “free choice.”
    I have reached the point (okay, it wasn’t so very big a step) at which just shooting the deliberately unvaxxed & unmasked is OK.
    You want to be a species-traitor? Fine, accept the consequences.
    Shot in the arm, or two in the noggin. Your choice. Decide fast.

  56. Marty stated that 70% of Americans were vaccinated in a tone that implied God said so on a stone tablet. I gave a source that said 58%, offering him an opening to at least back up the most basic of his facts.
    Instead we get the usual condescending scorn because we don’t follow Marty-logic.
    Whistle for your supper, lj.

  58. an inadequaty tested injection
    Sez who, anyway? Not anyone who knows anything much about it, it seems to me.
    For enough money, I’m sure you could find qualified people willing to moonlight.
    FWIW, and for those who are interested in the NHS, all the vaccination centers that I know about in the UK (obviously including the local one where I got my two Pfizer shots) were staffed by volunteer doctors from the NHS on their days off. I saw one or two army types around, but as far as I could tell they were just organising entrances and exits. And I have just checked: as of yesterday, according to:
    https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=GBR
    Percentage of the UK population who are partly vaccinated (i.e. just one dose) is 12.07% and fully vaccinated is 57.06%.

  59. FWIW, the headline I saw was that 70% of USian *adults* have had *at least one dose of one of the vaccines.* That’s well short of 70% of all USians. And even if it were 70%, that’s still 10% below what researchers suggest is the threshold for herd immunity from COVID-19.
    Meanwhile, the virus continues to mutate and the longer it takes to get to 80%, the greater the chances that we’ll get a vaccine resistant mutation, which would then render my choice to get vaccinated moot.

  60. Also the vaccination rate is quite different in different locations. Some are reaching herd immunity levels (at least for the earlier, less virulent strands) others are low enough that the vaccine could as well not exist. And those are the potential incubators for the next strain that will get around the protection of the current vaccine generation. And we can’t simply wall off Abbott-and-deSantis land (however tempting that would be)and treat it as a leper colony or a plague ship.
    I was not happy to be a beta tester for a new type of vaccine but it clearly seemed better than the alternative (and at least I had a choice of product and went for the one with the least amount of reported side effects that was also estimated to have a high effectiveness).
    It had some side effects I hadn’t had with any other vaccine in my lifetime (although they are on the list of about any other vaccine too) but it didn’t render me hors de combat for days as some other people I know of.
    As for longterm effects, one cannot ever exclude those unless one is willing to wait for a decade before seeking final approval which is not an option in a pandemic. As for now I am not aware of any other medication that got ‘tested’ on billions of subjects in such a short time ever and I am actually quite surprised that there were not significantly more problems, so the ‘untested’ argument goes out the window. If that’s your (generic you) main reason then you should not take anything that got on the market after the turn of the century.
    Taking the vaccine early was something of a gamble. In my estimate it no longer is.
    As for risk: people have died from a single aspirine too. In medicine there is no zero risk.
    Btw, although I would not encourage actually shooting the reckless I would have applauded some congresscritters, if the had beaten up certain colleagues (that came to work while knowing to be infected and refusing to even wear masks) hard enough to sent them to the emergency room. Not to forget the vaccinated bullhorn wielders that actively discourage others from taking the shot and start to foam at the mouth if someone so much as asks them, if they had taken the vaccine.

  62. Right, hsh. Because if someone decides to swing his fist, or shoot his AR-15, or drive drunk out in a public place, it’s up to you to get your kid out of the way, because heaven forbid we should expect to be safe in public spaces when FREEDOM is at stake.
    I could spell it differently, but that would be casting aspersions. So I’ll just think it instead.

  63. If you think it’s NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to NOT ENDANGER OTHER PEOPLE, you’re a [posting rule violation deleted] and you can go [incredibly offensive verb deleted] yourself.
    “You” need not equate to “Marty”, but if the shoe fits, I don’t give a [name of a gross bodily function deleted].
    This is WRS, only without the civility sauce.
    –TP

  64. But the logic is only circular if the questions of vaccine remain undiscussed
    the logic is not circular in any case or circumstance.
    there are all kinds of reasons people might not want to get vaccinated. kids under 12, people with various medical conditions. some people just don’t trust it.
    I am not judging any of those people, or demanding that any of them get vaccinated. I find that some of the reasons folks choose to not get vaccinated are ill-founded, which is to say not based on good information. But whatever, I’m not interested in requiring anyone to get a vaccination against their will. I would oppose a public policy that required anyone to get vaccinated against their will.
    What I’m saying is that not getting vaccinated makes you orders-of-magnitude more likely to get COVID and transfer it to someone else.
    So if that’s your choice, you should take it upon yourself to minimize the risk that your choice presents to others.
    Minimize your contact with other people.
    Wear a mask when that is not possible.
    That’s it.
    If I read Marty right, his position is that, if you feel you are at risk and want to avoid COVID, it’s on you to stay away from other people. If on the other hand you don’t want to get vaccinated but are willing to accept the risk of getting COVID, that’s your choice, people should respect that, and you should be free to come and go as you wish.
    I disagree with that, because *the risk you incur is not just to yourself*.
    If you want to do stuff that presents a high level of risk to yourself, but doesn’t create a heightened risk to others, do your thing. Live your life, knock yourself out, go nuts.
    The point at which that changes is when the risk is not just to yourself, but to others.
    If you don’t want to get vaccinated, minimize your contact with other people and wear a mask when that’s not possible.
    If there is a simpler, less intrusive thing that could be asked of people, I’m hard pressed to imagine it.
    What we are dealing with here is a profoundly different set of basic values. It’s ‘I should be able to do what I want, and if that creates a problem for you, you need to figure out how to solve it’, versus ‘I am obliged to consider how my actions affect others’.
    Marty appears to hold the first position, I hold the second.

  66. But that’s GQP Conservatism in a nutshell, isn’t it?
    Free will for me, but not for thee.
    Conservatives demand freedom to be in society without vaccination, to shoot dozens of civilians/schoolchildren/churchgoers so the Tree of Liberty gets watered, to be bigots, to be ignorant of basic scientific facts… to be, in short, colossal in-your-face assholes.
    The rest of us need to scurry out of their way.

  67. When a politician promotes and enforces policies that lead to the death of thousands, people just shrug their shoulders. After all, that’s what politicians do. But if a politician plays non-consensual grabass with less than a dozen of his subordinates, people run around with their hair on fire.
    The second is reprehensible. The first is far more consequential.

  68. But if a politician plays non-consensual grabass with less than a dozen of his subordinates, people run around with their hair on fire.
    Who’s running around with their hair on fire?
    Cuomo engaged in sexual harassment of subordinates. It’s not ethical. He should be removed from office.
    This isn’t complicated.

  69. Cuomo engaged in sexual harassment of subordinates. It’s not ethical. He should be removed from office.
    He’s done worse things that he should be removed from office for.

  70. … I’m not interested in forcing people to get it. I think the reasons many people have for not getting it are ill-founded, but so be it…
    I am quite interested in the idea, even if I’m not 100% sold on it. Notable, for instance, that the NFL which has mandated it, has a vaccination rate of around 90%. There’s clearly a number who will refuse vaccination with great determination, but most people will just go ahead and get vaccinated if their employer requires it.
    It should be an absolute requirement for healthcare, IMO. They are dealing with the most vulnerable on a daily basis, and this thing can kill those folk even if they’ve been vaccinated. As an example, asymptomatic Covid increases the mortality risk from a general anaesthetic by around 20x.
    One wrinkle is that the infectious ness of the Delta variant means that most unvaccinated folk are going to get it.

  72. For example…?
    Stuffing COVID patients in nursing homes. Facilities with the greatest at-risk populations and limited abilities to isolate patients from each other.

  73. As for longterm effects, one cannot ever exclude those unless one is willing to wait for a decade before seeking final approval which is not an option in a pandemic.
    Very likely nil (if you exclude the training of the immune system to respond to the virus, which will persist in some form for decades).
    The vaccine itself (and this goes for all of them) is completely eliminated from the body in a very short time. In very rare cases, there can be severe and even fatal side effects, but we’ve a pretty good idea of the mechanisms behind those.
    In contrast, the long term effects of Covid are poorly understood, but it’s clear that they are fairly common, affecting a significant number of those infected.
    And if you haven’t been vaccinated, you’ll probably get it, so the balance of risk for anyone older than a teen is very strongly in favour of vaccination.

  75. “Sez who, anyway? Not anyone who knows anything much about it, it seems to me”
    Well, the CDC. It has issued an emergency authorization. If it was adequately tested, for even short term safety, they would have approved it. And when they do, they are talking about Pfizer in 2022, it will still be without long term effects being tested.

  76. What ‘long term effects’ do they test the annual flu jan for, Marty ?
    And what long term effects have emerged for any vaccine, which were not already apparent within six months ?
    And it’s the FDA, not the CDC, who authorise cavvines ( and are likely to do so for the Pfizer one next month).
    I think your under several misapprehensions here.

  78. One largely unappreciated side effect of the AZN vaccine is the inability consistently to type the word ‘vaccine’.

  79. The Japanese is ワクチン (wakuchin), which took me quite a bit to figure out. Apparently from German rather than English.

  80. As an example for risk assessment: Germany dicontinued polio vaccinations for several years because the risk to get infected had gone down so far that the tiny risk of the (life) vaccine began to outweigh it. When polio made a comeback (via former Soviet bloc countries iirc) vaccinations started again (this time with a vaccine without ‘life’ viruses that carried an even lesser risk than the previous).

  83. … it will still be without long term effects being tested.
    What long-term effects could there conceivably be, by what mechanism?
    It’s like talking about the long-term effects of a ride on a Ferris wheel. I bet the FDA hasn’t reported on those either.

  84. all these conservative viral epidemiologists should realize their Trump U-issued degrees aren’t worth the photons their email is printed on.

  85. the side effects of the APPROVED shingles vaccine were several times worse for me than the COVID vaccine, which were more like the side-effects of the APPROVED novel flu vaccine i get every year.

  86. If it was adequately tested, for even short term safety, they would have approved it.
    Unless I’m mistaken (which is possible):
    The Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines have all successfully completed Phase III trials. The next step to approval is normally monitoring for some period of time, at least several months if not longer. That period of observation and monitoring is underway now, and may be complete for at least the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as soon as this fall.
    Approval for emergency use was granted after clinical trials were complete, but before the full period of monitoring was done, because we’re in a pandemic. Emergency use for J&J was granted in February, and earlier for the other two. So the vaccines have been in widespread use for at least 6 months.
    It’s inaccurate and harmful to claim that the vaccines were ‘in sufficiently tested’. The reality is that they have all been through all required clinical trials, and at this point have demonstrated their basic short-term safety via being administered to hundreds of millions of people over a period of at least half a year. Moderna and Pfizer are probably a couple of months from full approval, if that. J&J maybe longer, not sure about that.
    If you don’t want the shot, don’t get the shot. But own responsibility for your choice and don’t put other people at risk for your personal decisions.
    The problem is not people who don’t want the shot. The problem – the reason COVID numbers are trending back up and the variants are getting a foothold – is people who don’t want the shot, but also don’t want to make any other adjustments to their daily lives to mitigate the fact that they are potential vectors for the virus.
    Those people are literally the reason we are having difficulty managing the virus. We have vaccines, we have the infrastructure to deliver them to people, however we have millions and millions of people who straight up will not get vaccinated. Some for good reason, some for reasons that are ill-founded, i.e. based on false or misleading information.

  88. Well, the CDC. It has issued an emergency authorization. If it was adequately tested, for even short term safety, they would have approved it.
    Not how it works. Shorter russell: “Emergency” approval doesn’t have to do with testing. It has to do with bureaucracy. It takes time to work thru all the hoops required for regular approval. Time we didn’t have, given how many people were dying.

  91. Yes, the bureaucracy has a purpose. The period of monitoring is to insure that the drug or procedure demonstrates that it is safe in actual use, as opposed to the clinical trial.
    As a practical matter, the vaccines have demonstrated that they are effective and safe. Over a billion people have been fully vaccinated, over four billion doses have been given, over a period of several months. There is not much that the full approval process will add other than another couple of months of observation. In the real world, they are as solid as stuff like this gets.
    If that’s not enough assurance for someone and they don’t want the shot, nobody will make them get the shot. That is a choice, however, and people are responsible for the choices they make.
    If rhetorical-you don’t want the shot, take it on yourself to minimize the risk that your choice presents to other people.
    If there is something about that that is problematic, you will need to explain it to me, because I’m not getting it.

  92. It’s great at foot-dragging…
    And nonetheless has managed to deliver the vaccination to half the population of the United States in less than a year. And the reason it’s only half has nothing to do with bureaucratic foot-dragging.
    Bureaucracy is the way things get done in a consistent way at scale. That’s the reality. It’s not efficient, but it is effective.
    In a perfect world, we might not need it. That’s not the world we live in.

  93. The next step to approval is normally monitoring for some period of time, at least several months if not longer. The next step to approval is normally monitoring for some period of time, at least several months if not longer.
    There is also analysis, including very detailed on-site inspections, of the manufacturing and distribution processes that are required for a full license but not for an EUA. I have been told that this normally takes about a year, can be shortened to six months in a straightforward fashion, but gets difficult to shorten further than that. There was really no way for the FDA to start this part early, since IIRC both BioNTech and Moderna were futzing with their processes to speed them up and increase capacity until very shortly before they submitted the full license applications.

  97. There was really no way for the FDA to start this part early, since IIRC both BioNTech and Moderna were futzing with their processes to speed them up and increase capacity until very shortly before they submitted the full license applications.
    None of them had enough capacity to produce the amount we need worldwide, so the developers were securing production from competitors to meet demand. That’s one of the additional wrinkles involved.

  99. To wrap this up, I think russell summarized our positions pretty fairly. Six mo ths ago we didn’t want children in school because there were no vaccinations for the adults they may encounter, although the children were largely asymptomatic or mildly. Now those adults have easy access to vaccines that seems to be a minimal problem.
    The vast .ajority of current cases are people who have chosen to take the risk.
    As someone who is immunocompromised I understand assessing my own risk in a variety of settings from various threats, not just covid, and adjusting my lifestyle as I require.
    I have great sympathy for people at risk because of those types of limitations. But everyone else getting vaccinated won’t change their choices. Covid won’t be eradicated and they will have to be careful on an ongoing basis.
    Forcing someone to get vaccinated or lose the ability to participate in life is not akin to asking them to wear a seatbelt. Ot is akin to asking them to bungee jump, we all know its safe, almost no o e dies from it. We are asking people to assume a risk when we can protect ourselves so they don’t have to.
    It is my opinion. I dont need a link, I chose being vaccinated. Since I did that I don’t need them to.

  100. when we can protect ourselves
    By losing the ability to participate in life, which by not getting vaccinated people have taken away from other people.

  101. I appreciate Marty acknowledging Russell’s wrap up, though I wish he would have pointed to the links that he was using. Though I’m not sure it would have helped, it might have been ‘ahh, what an idiot, you believe that?’ I was just having an email chat with someone who used to be here (I can’t remember what his handle was here) who got roasted for posting his links, so I acknowledge that possibility. So it’s making yourself vunerable to say ‘I believe this because I read X’. But if you don’t open up yourself to the possibility, you’ll stay in the same place.
    But about approval, this was an interesting article
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/26/the-oxford-vaccine-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-a-world-saving-jab
    some pull grafs
    So much has gone wrong, and the well-intentioned folk at Oxford and AstraZeneca have taken so many blows, that it is hardly surprising that they wonder whether they have been the victims of a deliberate disinformation campaign.
    It seems they have. There is clear evidence that the Oxford vaccine, and other jabs, have been targeted by Russians peddling disinformation in order to promote their own version, Sputnik V.
    […]
    “There’s a long history of trouble with this vaccine. And it’s hard to pin it on any one thing, and I think it would be fair to say maybe we haven’t handled the negative news as well as we might have. But we’re kind of new at this game [and] there was nothing deceitful about what we did. We just perhaps didn’t get in front of the dialogue.”
    […]
    The coupling of Oxford University’s scientific idealists with big pharma was an important contributory factor, and it was this merger of minds and money, idealism and pragmatism that set the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine off on the rockiest of roads.
    “AstraZeneca isn’t really known as a vaccine specialist company,” said Dr Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, who has spent a lifetime in the industry. “Also, not long before, they had shut down their entire anti-infectives division.” That meant AstraZeneca had hardly any involvement with infectious diseases.
    A deal had been expected with the US pharmacetical giant Merck & Co, which is known as MSD outside the US and Canada and has a huge vaccine division. But the UK health secretary, Matt Hancock, is said to have torpedoed it because there was no guarantee that Britain would get priority once doses were available.
    By the time AstraZeneca got involved, Oxford’s scientists had already set up the early trials. That meant, said Ward, that the studies were not tailored to the needs of regulators in the way that big drug companies would have done it.
    “There are things that you can do as an academic and it all seems perfectly rational to an academic who thinks scientifically, but don’t actually make a great deal of sense in drug development terms,” she said. “There is in fact a difference between academic science and development of a product that you’re going to sell in the marketplace.”
    Two things happened that would cause serious problems with regulators later on. Oxford had an extremely cautious approach to older people, and chose to recruit mostly under-60s for the earliest trials in the UK.
    Second, there was a glitch in the production of vaccines for the studies. A contractor accidentally supplied half-doses, according to AstraZeneca’s Sir Mene Pangalos, who headed the research once the company was on board. When they found out, the academic researchers told the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) in the UK , and got the go-ahead to continue with two dosing strengths to see what happened.
    When the trials reported, it turned out that volunteers given a half-dose followed by a full dose got more protection – up to 90%, compared with 62%.
    Pangalos described it as serendipity. Regulatory bodies such as the Food and Drug Administration in the US don’t like serendipity. They like predictability and no surprises. The oddity of the information sowed doubt at the FDA.
    And the Oxford/AstraZeneca explanation of the 90% efficacy turned out to be wrong. Those who got the lower doses also had a bigger gap between the two shots. That, it turned out, was what improved the outcome. As we know now, a strategy of delaying the second dose paid off in the UK, but it was unorthodox.
    The FDA looked askance. It had already been perturbed by the side-effects in the trials.
    I don’t get that they planned on doing two doses, but the half dose screwup forced them to, which then had them do the two doses, which then upped the strength. I haven’t been able to follow this closely, so if anyone has any insights into this, I’d be interested. thx

  102. Covid is a deadly virus. Viruses adapt to become more infectious. The more transmission there is, the faster the virus mutates, the more people get infected, the more people die.
    Not getting vaccinated when you can is an act of supreme selfishness. Unless you’re willing to isolate yourself indefinitely.

  104. would seem to be more than selfishness.
    You bet. It’s an astonishing and shameful display of cynicism, duplicitousness and avarice (for ratings, and thus eventually for money).

  105. Not getting vaccinated when you can is an act of supreme selfishness. Unless you’re willing to isolate yourself indefinitely.
    Totally agree. Especially in light of the way the unvaccinated create a breeding ground for new variants that may end up making what the rest of us chose, in getting vaccinated, to be irrelevant.

  106. Totally agree. Especially in light of the way the unvaccinated create a breeding ground for new variants that may end up making what the rest of us chose, in getting vaccinated, to be irrelevant.
    Always worth repeating, even though Marty either didn’t read my earlier statement of this or chose not to acknowledge it since it did not in any way alter his opinion (which he refused to support with any backing, anyway).
    For all we know he just rolled percentiles and consulted a chart.
    “I’m Gary Gygax and I’m…[rolls dice] pleased to meet you.”

  107. Not getting vaccinated when you can is an act of supreme selfishness.
    I actually think refusing to qear a mask is worse. Someone who refuses to get vaccinated is, whether they admit it or not, taking some risk of damaging themselves. Someone who refuses to wear a mask is, primarily, risking others by refusing to do something with zero possible downside for them. Thus, far more selfish.

  108. I have enough respect for Marty to believe him when he says he’s vaccinated.
    I have enough respect for russell to accept his “no one should be forced to get vaccinated” position.
    I also have enough respect for my (really) elderly relatives that I want no contact with unvaccinated people. I can get along fine without their society, and they can damn well do without mine.
    I never liked freeloaders anyway, and I have no wish to hide my contempt for the type of person whose attitude amounts to “Why should I care if your end of the lifeboat is sinking?”
    –TP

  109. How is getting a vaccination like bungee jumping? The point of bungee jumping is to deliberately do something that simulates falling to your death. Getting a vaccine is… getting a shot at the doctor.
    What exactly is the risk of getting the vaccine at this point? What is going to happen to you, that hasn’t happened to the billion people who’ve gotten it already?
    This really isn’t a matter of everybody just deciding what level of risk they want to assume and then going about their business with no ill effect on anyone else. The pool of people who refuse to get vaccinated makes it possible for the virus to continue to spread and mutate into strains that are more difficult to manage. Plus, they not only don’t want to get the vaccination themselves, they want to overrule any masking mandates or other protocols that might be put into place to prevent the spread of the virus.
    Tony P respects my wish to not have mandatory vaccination. The reason I’m not in favor of mandatory vaccination is that I don’t want people getting killed over it.
    Pro Bono sees the anti-vax impulse as selfish. I think of it less as being selfish and more solipsistic. Less a matter of greedy self-interest, and more a matter of failing to recognize the experience or interests of anyone other than yourself as being real or of having any persuasive force.
    A kind of blindness, more or less.
    The fact that an entire industry has grown up around feeding people utter fucking lies does not help
    If a little more than half of the people who currently aren’t getting vaccinated decide to get vaccinated, we may get in the neighborhood of herd immunity, and COVID will become something like influenza – a persistent but manageable disease.
    If they don’t, we will continue to play mole whack with periodic surges and new mutations.
    We have the means at hand to turn this into noise. We just don’t have anything remotely like the popular consensus necessary to make those means effective.
    Something like 90% or more of cases of the delta variant are people who are not vaccinated. It’s preventable, but people refuse the means of prevention.
    Why? What, in simple practical terms, are the real risks of getting the vaccination at this point?

  110. What, in simple practical terms, are the real risks of getting the vaccination at this point?
    No medical risk. But clearly some experts in the field** think there are serious political risks. Which, for them is a career risk.
    ** i.e. politicians

  112. from that bit that wj posted:
    “Surviving in Andrew Cuomo’s orbit always required more than competence.
    …
    To make it in Cuomoland, above all else, you need to be loyal. To the man, to the brand, the power that pulsed out of the capital and cowed legislators, county executives, and mayors alike.”
    The only thing I regret about the above is that ‘pulsed’ was chosen instead of ‘throbbed’. That would have made it even more Trumpian.

  113. Although it can’t be truly Trumpian, because surviving in his orbit didn’t actually require competence. Fortunately for all of us — with competent people, the last 4 years would have been so much worse.

  114. It’s a bit late for this, but I’m gonna share a long random thought that hit me a couple of days ago, on the subject of ideas that may be treated as controversial.
    In ordinary life (exceptional cases noted later) it doesn’t really matter whether you think the Earth sits still in the center of everything while the universe spins around it; or it annually moves around the Sun, which itself is not the center of everything. (Galileo got this point right in a marginal note: Considering the vast size of the universe, it hardly even makes sense to call anything the center – and old G didn’t know the half of it or the millionth!)
    In ordinary life (ecnl) it doesn’t really matter whether you think the world was created in seven days with a Let There Be Light(*), and stocked with millions of species of life; or it has been around for over 10 billion years, in the last 4 billion of which the amazing complexity of life on Earth has developed according to now-known causal “laws”.
    Ecnl: Of course, these do matter if you want a livelihood in astronomy or physics or mathematics or any biological discipline of for that matter in anything that involves the assessment of “sensible experiments and necessary demonstrations”.
    In ordinary life, on the other hand, it does matter whether there is a disease going around that causes some people to die while coughing up their lungs, and larger numbers to suffer seriously if not so luridly – such disease being highly communicable and almost 100% preventable, with its spreading from an outbreak into the larger population being preventable with 100% certainty under certain conditions. Are people who accept these demonstrations justified in applying moral pressure on those who don’t? Even to the point of excluding them, by force if necessary, from activities that are demonstrably a danger to the rest of the population?
    (*) Humorous sidelight: for an extremely short time in the early history of the Big Bang, virtually all the substance of the Universe was in the form of high-energy photons – of light, if you please. For some reason this does not impress the Fundamentalists.

  115. What’s really needed is a vaccination rate of 85% and then we have to think about third shots soon – so we’re still off by a mile.
    But, all of this pales in comparison if we look at the vaccination rates in developing and threshold countries – they are so low because of lack of vaccines.
    COVAX has effectively been sabotaged by rich countries doing bilateral deals with pharma giants.
    The health, social and economical consequences in these countries are already visible and they are much less able to cope with them than are.
    And since this is a pandemic we cannot just ignore the other half of the world – even if solely guided by self-interest.

  116. “Why? What, in simple practical terms, are the real risks of getting the vaccination at this point?”
    Really this is the question. And, despite assertions to the contrary, no one knows.
    The vaccine is fragile and quickly eliminated but, hopefully, it’s effect is not. Thus ill effect can’t be completely ignored.
    More people getting it allows more mutation is a new goal post, true, but only newly a concern.
    Viruses always get more infectious as they mutate, this is not true. They can, they can also become more benign. Or, like the Alpha variant, can just stop spreading.
    Then there is this: “for an extremely short time in the early history of the Big Bang, virtually all the substance of the Universe was in the form of high-energy photons – of light, if you please. For some reason this does not impress the Fundamentalists.”
    Stated as a fact as surely as the Fundamentalists would discuss the resurrection. So some zealots are quite impressed.

  117. Really this is the question. And, despite assertions to the contrary, no one knows.
    And no-one will know to an absolute certainty. No-one will know without question what effects of the vax will be after a year, or five, or ten, until a year, or five, or ten have passed.
    And in the meantime people get sick.
    There are all kinds of reasons that people don’t want the vax. If you don’t want the shot, don’t get the shot.
    But if you don’t want the shot, you need to recognize that you present a greater risk, not just to yourself, but to other people. And if you want your wish to not get vaxed to be respected, you are obliged to respect other’s wish to not get sick themselves, and to not have to live in limited circumstances indefinitely in order to make it more convenient for you to opt out.
    If you don’t want the shot, there are going to be places and events where you won’t be welcome. There are going to be people who will not want you around them. There will be places and events where you will be expected to wear a mask, whether you think you need one or not.
    And if you want your choice to not get the shot respected, you are obliged to accept those limitations. Because they are an expression of other people’s understandings of the risks involved.
    You can make your choice for yourself. You can’t insist that everyone accommodate you. Especially not at higher risk to themselves.
    You’re talking about refusing a vaccination during the biggest pandemic event in 100 years. There are going to be areas of life in which you will not be welcome, and will not be able to participate.
    All choices have costs.

  118. “Why? What, in simple practical terms, are the real risks of getting the vaccination at this point?”
    Really this is the question. And, despite assertions to the contrary, no one knows.
    The vaccine is fragile and quickly eliminated but, hopefully, it’s effect is not. Thus ill effect can’t be completely ignored.
    Marty, this is not well thought out. On this basis one should never do anything for fear of long-term ill effects through some unknown mechanism. Eat cake? No, it might make your head fall off – look what happened to Marie Antoinette.
    Viruses always get more infectious as they mutate, this is not true. They can, they can also become more benign.
    You’re confusing two different things.
    Mutations which make a virus more infectious propagate. So the more infectious variant becomes prevalent. That’s natural selection.
    Mutations which make a virus more benign, i.e. less dangerous to the host, are roughly neutral for natural selection, except that it’s good for the virus to induce behaviour – coughing and sneezing – which spreads the virus, and bad for it to induce behaviour – lying down and dying – which stops its spread.

  119. Nobody has PROVEN that grubby, filthy, germ-ridden banknotes won’t kill you, Marty.
    Better just send them to me, I’ll risk it.

  120. On this basis one should never do anything for fear of long-term ill effects through some unknown mechanism.
    This ^^^^^.
    What I also want to point out is that many of the people whipping up suspicion of the vaccination have, themselves, gotten vaccinated. And have had their own families vaccinated.
    There is more going on here than just a sober assessment of risks and probabilities.

  121. Yes because everything is brand new, emergency authorized for only 7 months or so.
    So no one should do anything based how little experience we have with everything.
    That’s a bizarre take, we’ve been exchanging money for centuries.
    The comparisons being thrown out are so ludicrous that its a challenge to even have a discussion.
    Lots of people regularly avoid everything from processed foods to any otc drugs, because mistrust big business and big pharma. Not without evidence, many of those companies have been sued often for selling anything from carcinogens to opioids. To suspend that distrust to put a relatively new vaccine in your body is understandably difficult.
    I suspect that accounts for half of those who say they have no plans to get vaccinated. No I don’t have a link to document that.
    So my take and I am going to step out, is what russell summarized above. As the vaccine is available to protect those that want it, the edge cases will always exist and will have to manage their risk, those that don’t simply don’t pose a great enough risk outside the pool of the unvaccinated to justify being shunned from society.

  122. I’m sure this won’t move Marty, but this article
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/us/politics/pfizer-vaccine-approval.html
    (via LGM)
    points to why FDA approval has been taking so long.
    Full approval typically requires the F.D.A. to review hundreds of thousands of pages of documents — roughly 10 times the data required to authorize a vaccine on an emergency basis. The agency can usually complete a priority review within six to eight months and was already working on an expedited timetable for the Pfizer vaccine. The F.D.A.’s decision to speed up was reported last week by Stat News.
    That’s 6-8 months after the companies submit the data. So hinging your opinions on the face that the FDA is not approving is a bit shortsighted. Though if folks on your facebook feed have suddenly become experts on vaccine approval, understandable I suppose.

  123. There is more going on here than just a sober assessment of risks and probabilities.
    it’s whatever justification is appropriate for the argument.
    * performative obstinance (freedom!)
    * a way to oppose Democrats (Providence! Pelosi’s mask!)
    * sudden expertise (R values!)
    * distrust of expertise (no long term studies!)
    * deep trust of government (waiting for approval!)
    * distrust of government (mind control!)
    * distrust of corporations (profiting!)
    * excuses for racism (it’s the Mexicans and Chinese!)
    really, they’re just rolling coal and getting off on being naughty.

  126. Take the quiz
    just reading that front page, before even clicking the button, you know what the final page is going to be. it’s going to try to convince the reader that the “radical measures” were unjustified.
    here’s the thing – the radical measures were barely implemented and barely followed because of knee-jerk contrarians like that who got their degrees in viral epidemiology from the Trump U bankruptcy clearing sale.
    crowing about how you predicted the failure of something you worked hard to sabotage isn’t really a good look.

  128. Thanks, cleek. I couldn’t even bring myself to bother. I wonder if the guy who wrote that stuff understood how clear it was that it was loaded. But I don’t really care.

  129. i mean, grow the fuck up, GOP:

    Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) has tested positive for a COVID-19 breakthrough infection after defying the House of Representatives’ mask mandate and filing a lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over a resulting $500 fine for going maskless.

    the rest of us are sick of coddling you.

  130. those that don’t simply don’t pose a great enough risk outside the pool of the unvaccinated to justify being shunned from society.
    to be clear, your position here is not what I’ve summarized.
    those that don’t get vaccinated in fact do pose a great enough risk outside the pool of the unvaccinated to justify being excluded from some contexts. I’m not going to use your “shunned from society” language because that is overblown. There are simply going to be contexts where unvaccinated people are not welcome, because they pose a risk that other people are not going to want to take.
    If you have kids who are too young to be vaccinated, you may not and likely won’t want unvaccinated people around them.
    If you have co-morbidities that put you at risk even if you are vaccinated, you may not and likely won’t want unvaccinated people around you.
    If you operate public venues like theaters, restaurants, workplaces, and the like, you may not want to expose your vaccinated patrons to unvaccinated folks.
    If you are vaccinated and *simply don’t want to risk getting the virus* in spite of being vaccinated, you may not and likely won’t want unvaccinated people around you.
    Vaccinated people can get the virus. I know vaccinated people who have contracted the virus. Vaccinated people can get sick, and can communicate the virus to others.
    Vaccination means you are less likely to get COVID, not that you will not get COVID. It means you are likely to have less severe symptoms, not that you will have no symptoms. And it means you are less likely to pass the virus along to others, not that you will not pass the virus along to others.
    Your argument here seems to be that unvaccinated people only present a risk to other unvaccinated people, and therefore there should be no limitations on where anyone can go, because if you don’t want the risk you can always get vaccinated.
    That understates the risk that unvaccinated people present to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, and ignores the numerous costs that we all incur by not being able to achieve herd immunity.
    My wife’s birthday is next week. We had plans to go out to dinner. We cancelled them, because in the context of the delta variant my wife finds the risk of being around people who we don’t know and whose vaccination status we can’t know is greater than what she is willing to accept.
    And we’re both vaccinated. But the risk of getting COVID in spite of that is not nil. It’s *at least* as great as the risk of suffering some unforeseen side effect of the vaccine. It’s a more pressing risk than the risk of some unforeseen side effect of the vaccine, because it is a known risk, not a hypothetical risk.
    The choices of unvaccinated people do have an impact on other people, whether they are vaccinated or not, whether they signed up for the risk of exposing themselves to the virus or not.
    And, as in the case of the restaurant we will not be going to for my wife’s birthday, the choices of unvaccinated people incur costs of all sorts that are unrelated to whether anybody gets sick or not.
    We should be on our way to herd immunity at this point. We are not. Not achieving herd immunity is a drag on the economy and on public life in general. The reason we are not headed for herd immunity are all the people who decide to not get vaccinated.
    If you’re not vaccinated, that is your choice, but you are obliged to accept the fact that you will not be welcome everywhere. That’s not a personal thing, people simply don’t want to get sick.
    Choices have costs. If you make the choice, the burden of paying the cost is on you.
    People who have opted to be vaccinated are assuming whatever risks go along with the fact that the vaccine is only approved for experimental use. In return, they get a freedom of movement that comes with the immunity provided by the vaccine.
    People who opt not to be vaccinated don’t get that same freedom of movement. They are not entitled to it. They’ve made a different choice, one that incurs risks for other people, and being excluded from some places and events is the cost of their choice.
    You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t opt out of the vaccine, and then demand access to places where your presence creates a greater risk for others.
    Or, you can, but you should not expect to be welcome. You won’t be, and shouldn’t be.
    I recognize the right of people to decline the vaccination. “You have to accept me no matter what choice I make”, however, is not on offer. It’s a childish demand, and the rest of us are not obliged to honor it.
    A long post, but perhaps if I keep repeating myself, the point will sink in.

  131. To borrow from Mel Brooks-
    Tragedy is when I have to wear a mask in public.
    Inconvenience is when you get covid and are intubated in the ICU.

  132. Take the quiz and see how inconclusive the data can be. And how subject to spin it can be by all sides.
    Yep, that was some spin.
    Now where are those other sides?
    Data can be very inconclusive if you are asking the wrong questions or collecting the wrong data to answer those questions. I saw this a lot when I was a data analyst for a tech startup. The exec team always tried to use data for things it could not do, or failed to measure things they needed to measure in order to know the things they wanted to know.
    Data can be easily spun if you take that inconclusive data and either misrepresent it as answering a question that it cannot measure, or fail in your analysis to ask good questions about why it looks the way that it does. My refusal to misrepresent data was why I got fired from that data analysis position.
    That quiz is not analysis. It’s just straight up disinformation masquerading as inquiry.

  133. Just to point out the obvious, over 600K people in the US have been documented as dying from COVID-19 in about the last year and a half. Over 4M worldwide. That’s what we’re comparing purely hypothetical long-term aftereffects of the vaccines to, thanks to our pal Marty. It’s an intellectual black hole.

  135. COVID Charts Quiz
    let’s compare virus transmission in CA, with a population density of 252 / square mile and is home to LA with a population of ~4 million, to NV, with a population density of 28 / square mile and whose largest city has a population of ~630K.
    and so on.

  136. Yes, and that’s an estimate. Despite the assertions of conspiracy theorists who will tell you that deaths from COVID are being inflated for money or control over people’s lives or whatever other ridiculous reasons, there are people who have died from COVID and were not documented as such. The focus on COVID is pretty intense, so I doubt the undercount will be anything like that of, say, annual deaths from the flu. (Remember when people were comparing documented COVID deaths to estimated flu deaths back in the good old days at the beginning of the pandemic?) But the estimates based on statistical analyses after the fact will certainly be higher than the documented deaths.

  137. Stuff like this.
    If you don’t want the shot, minimize your contact with other people, *especially kids and old folks*, and wear a mask when that’s not possible.
    If you can’t do this on your own initiative, other folks are probably going to impose it on you. Because people are sick of the freaking virus and are tired of worrying about whether they are going to get sick.
    Grant the respect that you demand from others. It’s as simple as that.

  139. Mike S – Kurt Schlichter, a noted RW shitposter on Twitter, said it in nearly those exact words regarding why he won’t wear a mask: His convenience is more important than the possibility of someone he exposes going into the ICU.

  140. russell @01.17
    For God’s sake, how is a word of that even a little bit arguable?

  141. For God’s sake, how is a word of that even a little bit arguable?
    Non-argumentative Marty would come and argue with it if he hadn’t bowed out.
    Or see CaseyL’s comment at 2:37.

  143. So in Marty-world and Kurt Schlichter world, the convenience of the unvaccinated is paramount, and the rest of us have to keep our distance and curtail our lives if we don’t want to get exposed to them. So, no doubt they’d be willing to wear some kind of badge so at least the rest of us know who to stay away from.
    No? …. No?

  144. I’m sure Marty would have an irrefutable (in his own mind) answer to that, like he has an answer to everything else.

  145. CaseyL – I guess that’s not a surprise given the number of anti-vaxers who’ve expressed variations on “I value my freedom more than life itself.”
    How one is to enjoy freedom in the absence of life itself is left unexplained.

  146. How one is to enjoy freedom in the absence of life itself is left unexplained.
    I suppose they should at least support the right to assisted suicide.

  147. Mike S – The same way they justify keeping America armed to the teeth: The Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of the unvaccinated/unmasked.
    Almost always, of course, someone else’s blood. Not their own.

  148. Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick, in arguing for easing COVID restrictions, said “some things are more important than living.”

  149. the fools and their kids in my dumb little town are out protesting in front of the elementary school to complain about children being masked.
    they’d get more attention if they stood in the road but for some reason, they stay on the sidewalk. it’s like they don’t value their freedom to stand wherever they want whenever they want. cowards.

  150. A Facebook friend posted this about an hour ago:
    My 93yr old vaccinated grandfather is now in the hospital getting oxygen due to contracting the variant. So maybe now isn’t the best time to discuss your antivaxxing statistics and bullshit. I’m not in the mood.
    Get vaccinated, please.
    Meanwhile there’s nothing we can do. We can’t go visit him, we can’t go help with his care. This is a nightmare.
    Stop creating the variants and do your part by getting vaccinated. It’s not just all about you.

  152. Freedom in action.
    The world as Marty prefers it.
    For people are are fucked, or dead: well, that’s their fault.
    Somehow.
    Inevitably.
    They or their parents screwed up, too bad for them.

  154. The more fool I for biting the hooks.
    Never again.
    Fuck him. All the more since now he’s trolling about mass death.
    Again, fuck him.

  156. conservatism: it really is all about you.
    Just to be clear, that’s actually libertarianism. However often they get conflaited in current US political discourse.

  160. wj, face it, the brand is ruined. I feel the same way about anarchism. Perfectly good concept, ruined by people constantly linking it to bomb-throwers and rabble rousers. I feel your pain.

  161. ruined by people constantly linking it to bomb-throwers
    It’s sister Mary’s turn to throw the bomb.
    Last time it was done by brother John
    (…brother John…)
    Mom’s aim is bad,
    and the coppers all know Dad,
    so it’s sister Mary’s turn to throw the bomb.
    A Doctor Demento favorite.

  162. Liz Cheney says her father is “deeply troubled” about the state of the Republican Party
    Funniest thing I’ve read in a dog’s age.

  163. Me, I’ve been deeply troubled about the state of the Republican Party since it would not countenance a bipartisan agreement that Dick Cheney, along with Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush, should be prosecuted for torture.

  165. That was just a semi-permanent lease. The actual selling was a bit later after a brilliant sales pitch by St.Ronnie and then the Newt collecting. But admittedly Richard N. got the ball really rolling in the first place (not that attempts had not been made earlier).

  166. Oh, and some might look back questioning whether they could have gotten even more out of the bargain had the known how the rabbit (or was that rabid) would run.

  167. i blame Fox.
    they provide the mythology that keeps Republicans ignorant of reality. and they provide the martial celebrity culture that raises the loudest and most vicious yakkers to the top of the pyramid [scheme]. and then GOP politicians want to get a piece of that action, so they try to sound like what they hear on Fox.
    the base elects people who most resemble the people they see on Fox, who then spend their time trying to get mentions on Fox. and that quest requires them to be louder and crasser and dumber than everyone else.
    it’s a machine designed to create the dumbest audience and the brashest scammers.

  169. conservatism: A collective effort to adopt public policies that reinforce its adherents individual need to lard their deeply held feelings of moral superiority over others.

  170. Fox was the brainchild of some of Nixon’s henchmen, admittedly. Iirc there was even a quote from one of them that with Fox around Nixon would have been able to stay in office.
    With Jabbabonk the hypothesis got tested and many believe that it passed the test with flying colours.
    The hypothesis that with good media backing one can start a war was already proven by W.R.Hearst with “Remember the Maine!”

  171. I think it has been the proverbial slippery slope.
    1. Nixon
    2. Reagan
    3. Newt Gingrich
    4. {W + Cheney + Rumsfeld
    5. {Fox Fox Fox, in exactly the sequence laid out by cleek (and for Fox, feel free to substitute or add Murdoch)
    6. Trump
    7. What is to come
    And fertile ground for it was found in a) people who take it as read that you put your own interests well before the public (let alone the global) good, and b) that Western (White, Judeo-Christian) Civilisation is self-evidently the source of everything worthwhile. And no doubt other elements that temporarily elude me – feel free to add.

  173. you be sure to let me know when large groups of Democrats are refusing a life saving vaccine because CNN told them to.

  175. Yes Charles, feel free to provide a side by side comparison, with reference not only to Carlson, but also Ingraham, Hannity, O’reilly back in the day, maybe De Piero and Maria Bartiromo.

  176. Who is F*cker Carlson’s CNN equivalent?
    There are no exact equivalents. But Chris Cuomo comes across as pretty questionable.

  177. While not at CNN, Rachel Maddow comes across as an approximant ideological opposite of Carlson.
    But my knowledge of the various hosts/anchors/reporters/journalists/commentators, etc. on either side is almost entirely second-hand. I almost never pay any direct attention to any of them.

  178. “Pretty questionable” vs. despicable. Not “exact equivalents” but close enough for Libertarian smugness.
    Broderism is to Libertarians what The Force was to the Jedi.
    –TP

  179. While not at CNN, Rachel Maddow comes across as an approximant ideological opposite of Carlson.
    And yet, “But my knowledge of the various hosts/anchors/reporters/journalists/commentators, etc. on either side is almost entirely second-hand. I almost never pay any direct attention to any of them.”
    “Ideological opposite” — I would hope that most of us are “ideological opposites” to a venal, lying fascist scumbag like Carlson.
    Your gotchas don’t even pretend to be coherent anymore, CharlesWT. I hope they at least entertain you.

  181. “The worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake “pox on both their houses” attitude. The main goal is the establishment of a permanent ruling class of Washington insiders, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as “centrism” even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. The establishment of an aristocratic class in America.
    The belief that it all sides are equal and must compromise at all times. Regardless of the final outcome or the level of understanding or intelligence presented by each side.”
    Broderism
    Except maybe for a non-fake “pox on both their houses”, none of that is libertarian. And David Broder is no libertarian.

  182. “Ideological opposite” — I would hope that most of us are “ideological opposites” to a venal, lying fascist scumbag like Carlson.
    It’s not like Maddow is always found in close approximation to the truth. The narrative has become more important than the truth on both sides.

  184. Only libertarians are without narratives, I suppose.
    Isn’t entertainment why everyone is here?
    This isn’t entertainment.
    Bye for now.

  185. i blame Fox CNN.
    they provide the mythology that keeps Republicans Democrats ignorant of reality…
    Truly, Charles, you have outdone yourself.

  186. Call me next time when Rachel calls her audience to harrass kids, praises foreign strongmen and dictators as examples to be imitated at home and threatens her enemies directly or indirectly with extralegal violence (by private or state actors).
    Or on the other side please notice us the next time that Tucker on air admits to an error and apologizes to his audience for it.

  187. But my knowledge of the various hosts/anchors/reporters/journalists/commentators, etc. on either side is almost entirely second-hand. I almost never pay any direct attention to any of them.
    Then why make ill-informed – by your own admission – comparisons?

  188. CharlesWT,
    If you’re allowed to suggest that CNN is somewhat equivalent to Fox and Rachel Maddow is in some way comparable to Tucker Swanson Carlson, then I am entitled to suggest that you’re very like a Broderist — whether or not ol’ David was a Libertarian.
    Thanks for clarifying what YOU mean by “Broderism”. I’m just making MY definition clear to you.
    –TP

  189. I’m always surprised to learn of the sort of sway that CNN and MSNBC are supposed to have over Democrats. Who watches them? In my own immediate circle, I only know one household that does, and they are middle-of-the-road, consumerist neo-liberals whose only claim to radicalness comes from being a same-sex marriage.
    Not that I think my social circle is all that representative, but still…
    My media ecology is mostly BBC or Guardian for breaking news (because the cultural differences catch my attention make the biases easier for me to see) and PBS or Pro Publica or The Atlantic for bigger investigative things, or the Sierra Club and Patagonia for environmental stuff.
    And from there, I chase links or use databases to find the sources reported in those stories and read what those experts have published to get a better idea of the nuance that gets left out of the popular reporting in order to make the writing more accessible.
    Does anyone here spend most of their time on CNN or MSNBC? If not, where do y’all get your information from?

  190. Media Bias / Fact Check
    “Overall, we rate CNN left biased based on editorial positions that consistently favor the left, while straight news reporting falls left-center through bias by omission. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to several failed fact checks by TV hosts. However, news reporting on the website tends to be properly sourced with minimal failed fact checks”
    CNN Bias
    “We rate Fox News strongly Right-Biased due to editorial positions and story selection that favors the right. We also rate them Mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories.”
    Fox News Bias
    “Overall, we rate Reason Magazine Right-Center biased based on story selection that favors Libertarian positions and High for factual reporting due to mostly proper sourcing, and a clean fact check record.”
    Reason
    Of course, this is an apples and oranges comparison. Unlike CNN and Fox, Reason is not an on-air 24 hours a day news organization in a constant battle for ratings.

  191. Fox: strongly right, factually questionable with poor sourcing and conspiracy theories.
    CNN: left biased through omission, failed fact checks broadcast but not online.
    clearly same/same.

    The Columbia Journalism Review describes Media Bias/Fact Check as an amateur attempt at categorizing media bias and Van Zandt as an “armchair media analyst”.[2] The Poynter Institute notes, “Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.”[3]

    and who checks the Columbia Journalism Review?

  192. Does anyone here spend most of their time on CNN or MSNBC? If not, where do y’all get your information from?
    I can’t remember the last time I watched either one. (Being fair minded, I never watch Fox either.)
    My news sources run to my local newspaper (the East Bay Time, in the unlikely event anyone cares), the Washington Post, and the Economist. Other places from time to time, but those are the regulars.

  193. I don’t watch Fox or CNN much, but have seen multiple excerpts of both Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow. The comparison seems to me laughable, not even vaguely possible for both-sideserism. Rather like putting Jane Austen and Mills and Boon on the same level. Both Romance novels, right?

  194. yes, GftNC, that juxtaposition struck me similarly.
    [Hi there, all my Internet friends!]
    I listened to Rachel Maddow’s recording of her book, Blow Out. I happen to enjoy her dramatic presentation, though I admit it’s a question of personal taste. As far as the facts go, though, it is a work of scholarship.
    After listening I looked up her background: Poli. Sci. at Stanford and a Ph. D. from Oxford. No surprise.

  195. I’m not the person to ask, but Guardian is a first read, I’ve loved that newspaper since I first did an exchange in the UK back in the mid 80’s and have had international subscriptions in 4 different countries (pre internet) (The paper was printed on this paper that was like cigarette paper). Though the wall to wall Olympics coverage is not really a good thing, but I guess they have to get their clicks, even though it would probably be better to ignore it all.
    Then a roll thru my FB timeline to see what everyone I know is up to and hopefully nothing bad has happened. If there are any topics that are blowing up, I usually see them, though I never click on anything and if I do want to look at something, I copy the link and strip out the fb identifier info.
    Then google news to see what is trending. If it’s related to Japan, I drop into some newspaper sites to see what Japanese are saying, but if it’s not, it is unlikely to make a dent. So if I have something I’m interested, I will look at the sources listed in the google news topic and make a judgement call, places that I will click are NPR and actual brick and mortar newspapers (you can get by the pop up by saving the page as html and opening the file in your web browser) If it’s something new and it catches my interest, I’ll look up stuff, always willing to drop into wikipedia or chase links, though I try to look for factual stuff, if there is opining in it, I’ll skip it or set it aside to try to find something more factual first. I certainly admit that I look at the facts thru my own lens, but I think there is a difference between starting from things that seem relatively factual and developing your views or taking your opinion tout court from some person who you may or may not be familiar with. Unfortunately, when I hvae pointed out that so and so may not be the best person to go to about something, often gets the reply that they don’t have time to go thru someone’s back catalogue. (for some strange reason, Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan seem to attract such readers)
    And then to other smaller web publications. If it’s new to me, I’ll hit wikipedia and see what kind of problems they have had, which can give you an insight. I don’t immediately reject them if they have had a controversy, but if you go into the talk, you can find a lot of interesting things as well as controversies that don’t get up to the main page. CharleWT puppy dog love had me drop into Reason’s wikipedia page, as I generally don’t give them the time of day, but thought it might be interesting. Well, it was, with some discussion about this link
    https://pando.com/2014/07/24/as-reasons-editor-defends-its-racist-history-heres-a-copy-of-its-holocaust-denial-special-issue/
    Now, I’ve always thought Reason was full of shit, but I still retain the capacity to be amazed.
    As far as talking heads goes, I can read a lot faster than I can listen, so I tend to avoid those. There does seem to be some psychosexual angst wrapped up with discussion of Maddow, when she first came on the scene, the fact that she was a lesbian was always mentioned in the remarkably byzantine ways of the mid 90’s. Speaking of wikipedia, I just dropped into that talk page and it has this
    The article Rachel Maddow is currently subject to discretionary sanctions authorized by active arbitration remedies (see WP:ARBAPDS). An administrator has applied the following restrictions to this article:
    Limit of one revert in 24 hours: This article is under WP:1RR (one revert per editor per article per 24-hour period).
    Consensus required: All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion). This includes making edits similar to the ones that have been challenged. If in doubt, don’t make the edit.
    These restrictions have been imposed pursuant to an arbitration decision which authorized discretionary sanctions for all edits about, and all pages related to, post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people. If you breach the restriction on this page, you may be blocked or otherwise sanctioned. Any uninvolved administrator may levy restrictions as an arbitration enforcement action on users editing in this topic area, after an initial alert. Please edit carefully.
    strangely enough, a similar policy is not in place on Tucker Carlson’s page, so either 1)wikipedia is a liberal rag or 2) Maddow seems to attract a lot of attention from people who feel threatened by her. Again, given I run facts thru my own lens, I’d pick the latter.

  196. People who watch CNN and Rachel Maddox don’t riot and attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. They don’t run around with firearms threatening mayhem and insurrection if they don’t get their way.
    So, on the whole, they don’t bug me all that much.

  198. People who watch CNN and Rachel Maddox don’t riot and attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. They don’t run around with firearms threatening mayhem and insurrection if they don’t get their way.
    The people who do riot and run around with firearms mostly hatewatch Fox except for their devotion to Carlson and Ingraham. The rest of the channel can’t be trusted since they undercut Il Douche-y’s claim to an AZ win.
    They prefer Newsmax these days.

  199. They prefer Newsmax these days.
    But isn’t that a relatively new phenomenon? Pre-election, it was Faux News, all the time.

  200. People who watch CNN and Rachel Maddox don’t riot and attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
    I wonder what the people rioting all over the country last year watch.

  201. Now, I’ve always thought Reason was full of shit, but I still retain the capacity to be amazed.
    You should hold out for a more credible source than Mark Ames before being amazed. Ames has had decades of credibility problems.

  202. Apologies, second vax yesterday has left me cranky. But the article does have the _actual copies of the articles in question from Reason, which you have said you read since issue 1. If they had that kind of shit back in the day and they still have the same board members, it’s not Ames I need to discount, it’s Reason’s own history. Every publication has skeletons in its history, but those articles seem to be particularly problematic.

  203. But the article does have the _actual copies of the articles in question from Reason, which you have said you read since issue 1.
    I have been reading the magazine for almost fifty years. But I don’t remember the articles or the cover. It may be one of a number of which I missed.
    In the early years, the magazine had only three to four full-time people working on it. And they didn’t have a lot of money to pay for content. My impression was that they sometimes publish less than stellar articles just so they had something to publish. Not an excuse of course. I remember reading articles that didn’t fit the viewpoint of the magazine.
    Ames seems to start with a narrative and tries to connect a lot of dots to bolster it.
    This is from an article in reply to the Ames article.
    “In the newer post, Ames runs through Reason‘s February 1976 issue that was billed as a “Special Revisionism Issue.” …Ames is correct that some of the contributors to that issue developed an interest in or were fellow travelers with that most pathetic area of study known as Holocaust revisionism or denialism. That scurrilous topic is not the focus of any of the articles in the issue, but the inclusion of contributors such as James J. Martin, who would go on to join the editorial board of the contemptible denialist outfit the Institute of Historical Review, is embarrassing. Another of that issue’s contributors, Gary North, would later be excoriated in this 1998 Reason article for arguing in favor of violent theocracy and the stoning of gays and others.
    …
    Much of the material from the issue doesn’t hold up, which is hardly surprising for a magazine issue published almost 40 years ago. Even as the various writers warn explicitly against uncritically accepting revisionist accounts out of inborn contrarianism, there is a generally adolescent glee in being iconoclastic that I find both uninteresting and unconvincing. However, to characterize the issue as a “holocaust denial ‘special issue,'” as Ames does, is an example of how quickly he can lose his always-already weak grasp on reality.”
    Did Reason Really Publish a “Holocaust Denial ‘Special Issue'” in 1976? Of Course Not.

  205. I wonder what the people rioting all over the country last year watch.
    They watched Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd.

  206. Ames seems to start with a narrative and tries to connect a lot of dots to bolster it.
    In the context of a discussion of Reason magazine, this is an amusing comment.

  207. But isn’t that a relatively new phenomenon? Pre-election, it was Faux News, all the time.
    Just goes to show what the Resistance to Modernity is loyal to. Even if there is a pox on both houses, the house on the right is empty because it was not loyal enough to The Grift.

  208. The people who do riot and run around with firearms mostly hatewatch Fox except for their devotion to Carlson and Ingraham.
    And they watch Carlson and Ingraham on… Fox.
    In the interest of full disclosure, I mostly get news from the AP. I also like the Guardian for more in depth reporting.
    AP’s pretty neutral, the Guardian leans to the left.
    Used to read the WaPo, not really anymore. Used to read the NYT until the Bill Keller / Judith Miller / Daniel Okrent crap show, I won’t read them now, full stop.
    Used to read the New Yorker but not really for the last 5 or 10 years. No particular reason, the sub ran out and I never had time to actually finish an issue so we decided to let it be.
    My wife and I watch an hour or two of Netflix most evenings while we eat dinner. Other than that, no TV. It’s not a big statement thing, I just don’t have time for it.
    Used to listen to NPR during my commute but now my commute is the 11 steps downstairs to my office in the basement. Still listen on the weekend while I’m doing errands, but mostly to entertainment stuff rather than news. NPR is basically liberal but they bend over backwards so far to try to seem ‘balanced’ that I don’t find them that interesting.
    ‘Because you are neither hot nor cold, I spew you out of my mouth’. It’s like that.
    Blog wise I hang out here, TPM, and Balloon Juice mostly. TPM does actual reporting, which is refreshing, but they have a stance, so I factor that in. I go to Balloon Juice mostly for Silverman and for the laughs.
    Social media, I hang on Facebook, mostly to see what my musician friends are up to and to keep in touch with family. I’ll make the occasional snide remark there but generally stay away from politics.
    The crap that is going on right now is so obvious that it doesn’t take a whole lot of professional pundit analysis to get the gist. I don’t need Rachel Maddow to break it down for me.

  209. Thanks for the reply Charles, as I said, I usually do that for unknown quantities, so I just thought I’d drop into the wikipedia talk for Reason. If I had known about it, I would have definitely brought it up sooner.
    And your defense is first, Ames can’t be trusted. OK, there are some people I feel the same way about, Greenwald, Taibbi, Megan McArdel, the aforementioned Weiss and Sullivan, so that’s fair, you have your tastes.
    But it wasn’t like Ames was leading me to think that was bad, I took a look at the pages and thought holy shit. ‘It wasn’t a Holocaust Denial issue, it was a Special Revisionism issue!’ Not really a good look.
    Now I understand that holocaust revision was not quite as toxic back then as it is now and maybe I’m not realizing how bad things were. Though historically, that was a time when that was bubbling up
    In 1978 the American far-right activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.[64] The IHR’s founding was inspired by Austin App, a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier.[58] The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III, and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes’s writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians, the majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.[65][page needed]
    In 1980, the IHR promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times and others including The Jerusalem Post. The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox, Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial
    but there was no internet and you say you have no memory of the issue, so whatevs.
    But if you had seen it back then, would you have been nodding your head in agreement? I’m not sure about myself, I was 20 and full of my ability to make precisely the correct moral judgement without any questions. However, I would like to think that I’ve realized that this might not be the way I want to be.
    And whatever got them to do that issue (Hey, they were just a few guys in a garage turing out a fanzine, they can’t be responsible for everything!) I’d still hope that they would acknowledge that it was wrong. The fact that the magazine’s response is NOT to take responsibility but to deny, deflect and raise doubt does more to reduce my thought that Reason is a place I even want to give a single click to.

  210. Ames seems to be trying to imply that the Feb 1976 issue is a special issue dedicated to denying the holocaust. But it just has some authors associated with holocaust denialism at one time or another.
    I googled the text version of the issue. The word holocaust appears only one time. And that is in reference to the fate of the Hindenburg in a review of the movie, The Hindenburg.

  211. The word holocaust appears only one time.
    So you can claim the the Nazis didn’t engage in mass murder of Jews. But as long as you avoid using the word “holocaust,” it isn’t holocaust denial? Good to know.

  212. Aside from a letter to the editor, the word Jews only appears once in the issue. And that’s in Gary North’s article in which he seems to give some vague credence to the denial that 6 million Jews were executed by Hitler. Or my understanding of what he’s trying to say is vague.
    But he seems to be saying the executions were an after-the-fact justification by the Establishment.
    “Probably the most far-out materials on World War II revisionism have been the seemingly scholarly studies of the supposed execution of 6 million Jews by Hitler. The anonymous author of The Myth of the Six Million (whose writing style and use of footnotes internal to the text resembles Hoggan’s The Myth of the “New History” to a remarkable extent) has presented a solid case against the Establishment’s favorite horror story—the supposed moral justification for our entry into the War. (The Myth of the Six Million. [Hollywood: New Christian Crusade Church, 1969])”
    World War II Revisionism and Vietnam

  214. the seemingly scholarly studies of the supposed execution of 6 million Jews by Hitler
    omg, really? That’s one way Holocaust denialism works. Pretend Jews weren’t the target. I’m sure Hartmut could give a lot more examples, but if you claim that the Germans were just doing it because they were carrying disease or were actively seeking to overthrow the state and in the context of a world war, well, of course, they had to kill them. And it wasn’t a ‘supposed 6 million’, it was maybe a couple of 1000. Totally understandable in the context of a total war
    [I feel like I need to say that the above is just me putting out what the magazine with the supposed name of ‘Reason’ is trying to do, I don’t want someone to lift that quote and claim I am arguing that]
    Maybe you can get McT to defend you here, but it looks to me as if you are intent on shredding the last bit of credibility you have. First rule of holes…

  215. And Charles, I feel like I have to say this, please don’t be quoting books like that here to support the arguments they make.
    https://www.colorado.edu/post-holocaustamericanjudaismcollections/2017/02/15/myth-six-million-anonymous-1974-printing
    The Mazal Holocaust Collection includes a large number of books and pamphlets by authors denying the Holocaust. One of the first such books written in English was The Myth of the Six Million, first published anonymously in 1969 by Noontide Press (the Mazal copy is a 1974 edition), founded by the right-wing conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Willis Carto. The book has been attributed to David Hoggan, a Harvard-trained historian and writer who died in 1988. The Mazal collection contains multiple other works published by Noontide Press, Carto, and Hoggan. Like many other Holocaust denial works, The Myth of the Six Million argues that the details of the Holocaust were invented to justify Allied involvement in World War II (here presented as a war of aggression against Germany) and post-war treatment of Germany. The eminent Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz argued that in The Myth of the Six Million, Hoggan modified or fabricated quotes to support his claims. This volume may be of interest to scholars seeking early evidence of Holocaust denial and revisionist conspiracy theories of World War II.

  216. And the apparent author of the book
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_L._Hoggan
    In following years, author Lucy Dawidowicz wrote that Hoggan maintained a close association with various neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial groups.[32] In 1969 a short book was published called The Myth of the Six Million, denying the Holocaust. The book listed no author, but the work was by Hoggan, though published without his permission.[33] This should not be confused with his earlier book of 1965 called The Myth of the ‘New History’, on America’s wars. The Myth of the Six Million was published by the Noontide Press, a small Los Angeles-based publisher specializing in explicitly antisemitic literature owned and operated by Willis Carto. Hoggan sued Carto in 1969 for publishing the book (written in 1960) without his permission; the case was settled out of court in 1973.[33]
    The Myth of the Six Million was one of the first books, if not the first book, in the English language to promote Holocaust denial.[32] In The Myth of the Six Million, Hoggan argued that all of the evidence for the Holocaust was manufactured after the war as a way of trying to justify what Hoggan called a war of aggression against Germany.[34] The Myth of the Six Million was published with a foreword by “E.L. Anderson”, which was apparently a pseudonym for Carto.[35] As part of The Myth of the Six Million, there was an appendix comprising five articles first published in The American Mercury.[35] The five articles were “Zionist Fraud” by Harry Elmer Barnes, “The Elusive Six Million” by Austin App, “Was Anne Frank’s Diary a Hoax” by Teressa Hendry, “Paul Rassinier: Historical Revisionist” by Herbert C. Roseman, “The Jews that Aren’t” by Leo Heiman, and a favorable review of Paul Rassinier’s work by Barnes.

  217. shredding the last bit of credibility you have.
    Runaway winner of the Biggest Understatement of the Month prize.

  218. …justification by the Establishment for entering the war.
    I always figured it was Pearl Harbor that pushed us over the edge.

  219. I wonder what the people rioting all over the country last year watch.
    my guess is D) None of the above.
    CNN is probably far too bland for those who want to Burn It Down.

  220. Hitler declared war on the US, not the other way around. And Roosevelt’s politics centered on the Atlantic convoy war (where US warships running escort for British convoys got torpedoed on several occasions).
    The US adminstration had lots of informations about the Holocaust but deliberately kept it out of sight. A) they feared it to be desinformation to draw the US into the war; B) to go to war ‘for the Jews’ was seen as exremely unpopular to large parts of the population, so it would have been counterproductive to use that in the propaganda; C) I assume there were more than enough antisemites in the administration itself that would have vehemently opposed the idea, if it ever came up.
    Compare also the case of the MS St.Louis
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis
    So, the US establishment did not try to use the treatment of the Jews to justify going to war with Nazi Germany. Had Hitler not taken the initiative (and Japan not attacked Pearl Harbour), the US would have gone to war with Germany some time later over the sinking of the Reuben James*
    ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Reuben_James_(DD-245) )
    A propaganda campaign based on that was already in the making when it got overtaken by ‘more persuasive’ events (non of which involved Jews).
    *the German Uboat commander Erich Topp who sank the ship (not knowing that she was American and aiming for a different vessel in the first place) wrote extensively on the event in his memoirs (those were btw exceptionally frank and honest compared to those written by the majority of other German officers in both World Wars).

  221. I wonder what the people rioting all over the country last year watch.
    Rachel Maddow is a constant target of parts of the left who defame her as a sellout, chill for the Dem establishment and US wars abroad (they probably did not read her books).
    Those guys get almost as nasty as the RWers (although they tend to avoid insults like ‘mad cow’, ‘dyke’ etc. that the Right seemingly cannot do without).

  223. Yeah, sure Hartmut. Maddow is criticized by people who think an American supported genocide ought to be covered by someone who has five hours a week running a show watched by partisan liberals who probably didn’t want to know that not all the evil committed by the US government can be blamed solely on Republicans. Very uncouth.
    https://fair.org/home/msnbc-yemen-russia-coverage-2017/
    As for who to trust, everyone has an agenda, including people who comment on how they don’t trust various people. If you don’t read people you don’t like, you are blinding yourself. You can’t read everyone, but you need to read at least a few people you really dislike because sometimes this assholes may tell you something you don’t want to hear.
    Back to lurking.

  224. Good to see you, Donald, I’ve wondered where you were.
    partisan liberals who probably didn’t want to know that not all the evil committed by the US government can be blamed solely on Republicans
    Speaking as a partisan liberal, I know this all too well, and always want to keep it in mind. Maddow seems to me (from my limited exposure) to be a good faith interlocutor coming from an acknowledged position.
    If you don’t read people you don’t like, you are blinding yourself. You can’t read everyone, but you need to read at least a few people you really dislike because sometimes this assholes may tell you something you don’t want to hear.
    I absolutely agree with this, which is why (for just one example) I am not prepared to wholesale dismiss Andrew Sullivan, despite often hating his views. This NYT review of his book of essays gives a useful summary of some of his views and switchbacks:
    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/08/books/review/out-on-a-limb-andrew-sullivan.html
    The reviewer says:
    I’m an evangelical conservative. When Sullivan sounded alarms about intolerance on the left, I applauded. When he ramped up his warning about religious conservatives during the Bush years, however, I’d roll my eyes. I especially hated the term he coined for the religious right, “Christianists.” Yes, there were bad apples in religious conservatism, but the comparison to radical Islamists was obvious, and excessive.
    Yet he saw something that was directionally true. The right was harnessing growing government power to growing religious fervor. And as it did, it was shedding a conservatism of more modest ambitions, a conservatism that prized individual liberty and economic freedom, and that understood the limits of government power over human behavior.
    But still, the term “Christianist” felt like a mild slap in the face, right until the afternoon of Jan. 6, when a mob of believers stormed the Capitol on a “righteous” mission to overturn an election — with crosses in the crowd and prayers on their lips

  225. I (naively) didn’t realise that there were different kinds of content depending on where you were reading…
    The Guardian offers four different editions — US, UK, Australia, and International, each with quite different focus — and which version is initially loaded does appear to depend on where you are. The Tisdall opinion piece shows up in the UK and International editions.
    My morning reading list starts: (1) local daily paper, (2) Denver Post for broader Colorado stuff, (3) LA Times for western US coverage, and a western slant on national stuff, and (4) the US edition of the Guardian. That edition of the Guardian seems to do better serious-minded broad US coverage than any other source I’ve found.

  226. “Christiani” (Christians) used to be an insult too. Unfortunately in English the distinction cannot be made that is common with German classical philologists and historians of late antiquity (Christen [neutral] vs. Christianen [pagan Roman insult]). Compare ‘evangelisch’ (protestant) vs. ‘evangelikal’ ([fundamantalist] evangelical).

  227. As for who to trust, everyone has an agenda, including people who comment on how they don’t trust various people. If you don’t read people you don’t like, you are blinding yourself. You can’t read everyone, but you need to read at least a few people you really dislike because sometimes this assholes may tell you something you don’t want to hear.
    Donald, thanks for this and for dropping by. Nice to know you’re still out there. And GFTNC too. It’s worth noting, IMO, that many partisans seem to routinely conflate “something they don’t want to hear” and trolling. Broderism, I suppose.

  228. because people who aren’t arguing in good faith (aka trolls) love to use “you just can’t handle the truth” as their defense/cloud of squid ink.

  229. because people who aren’t arguing in good faith (aka trolls) love to use “you just can’t handle the truth” as their defense/cloud of squid ink.
    Often true, alas. So discerning the practitioners of the bolded four words is the difficult but worthwhile endeavour. Speaking for myself, I am one of those who is not always aware of a commenter’s backstory, and don’t always have the time or inclination to chase it down, so I tend to rely on my assessment of the reliability (not exactly the right word, but I can’t offhand think of a better one) of the argument.

  231. In economic writing that “you can’t handle the truth” mode is what Michelle Chihara calls Big Swinging Dick realism.
    Big Swinging Dick realism both depends on and promotes the idea that financial complexity equals realistic (and that, of course, both equal male). La Berge writes, “For Wolfe, finance is complicated and therefore difficult to represent; for Stone, finance is exclusive and therefore difficult to represent. For both, the capture of finance, its representation, signals a success of the realist mode.” The depiction of the big swinging dicks of Wall Street signals the real: money men and their crass assholery become themselves a hallmark of hard-hitting truth. We wouldn’t believe The Bonfire of the Vanities without a white, male, aggressive Sherman McCoy or Wall Street without Gordon Gekko. The correlation with realism works both ways: money men and their unending dollars seem inevitable, both a condition of possibility for representing the real and proof of their own central importance. La Berge writes: “The economy comes to signify all that is organizing, objective and historical, all that changes but cannot be changed. It is that from which there can be no outside.”
    https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-finance/
    Big Swinging Dick realism is Reason’s editorial narrative voice.
    I see a lot of “hypermasculine [financial, political, scientific etc.] realism” being deployed in these situations where we are unsure whether or not to treat the writer as a troll. I tend always to read this mode as an intentional provocation and attempt to silence – usually because the writer knows that allowing any compassion or fellow feelings for the other side into the discussion will make their own aims appear unjust and small. Big Swinging Dick realism gives the imbalance a sense of inevitability (“but that imbalance is what DRIVES the economy…”).

  232. Well, I’m going to assume that Charles is not a holocaust denialist, he just went and looked for something that would support his view (or actually anything that would support the opposite view) He was just grasping at any kind of alternative narrative. I doubt anything will make him give up his love for Reason, but maybe he will take a little more time when he defends it and not paint himself into a corner.

  233. “Pagan” is also a term of insult, meaning “farmer” or “country hick”.
    Early christians were almost exclusively effete urban elites, not stalwart salt-of-the-earth types.

  234. Early christians were almost exclusively effete urban elites, not stalwart salt-of-the-earth types.
    Two thousand (roughly) years later, it’s still rural folks embracing “that old-time religion.” Apparently some things never change.

  235. The German(ic) word ‘Heiden’ (heathen) translates it directly or even tops it.
    The ‘pagus’ (=> paganus) at least implies cultivated land around small villages while the heath is wild untamed country where wyrd sisters and insane retired kings roam.

  236. Heathen at OED – Etymology: Old English hǽðen = Old Frisian hêthin, -en, Old Saxon hêðin (Middle Dutch, Dutch heiden), Old High German heidan (Middle High German heiden, German heide), Old Norse heiðinn (Swedish, Danish heden); compare Gothic haiþnô Gentile or heathen woman.
    As this word is used in all the Germanic languages in the sense ‘non-Christian, pagan’, which could only have arisen after the introduction of Christianity, it is thought probable that, like some other terms of Christian origin (e.g. church ), it was first used in Gothic, and thence passed to the other tribes. This is supported by the use by Ulfilas, in Mark vii. 26, of the feminine form haiþnô (Vulgate mulier gentilis , all Old English versions hǽðen ). The word has generally been assumed to be a direct derivative of Gothic haiþi , heath n., as if ‘dweller on the heath’, taken as a kind of loose rendering of Latin pāgānus (originally ‘villager, rustic’, later, after Christianity became the religion of the towns, while the ancient deities were still retained in rural districts, ‘pagan, heathen’). But in this there are difficulties chronological and etymological, especially in reference to the form and use of the suffix; and Prof. S. Bugge ( Indog. Forsch. V. 178) includes this among several words which point to Armenian influence on the language of Ulfilas; he takes haiþnô as indicating a masculine haiþans, which he refers to Armenian het῾anos ‘heathen’, < Greek ἔθνος ‘nation’, (plural) ‘nations, Gentiles, heathens’. This would explain the Old High German form heidan, while in Old English, etc., the suffix was, as in cristen, levelled under the ordinary -in, -en, < -în. But even so, the stem-vowel has probably to be explained by assimilation to haiþi heath.

  238. i used to think calling them fascist was hyperbole. well, i’ve long since changed my mind. maybe this will help some of the fascist-hesitant among ObWi readers:
    https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/1424162616633565187

    For too long red state conservatives have offered to live and let live with blue state liberals but the blues are evangelical Marxists who cannot allow us to provide a counter example of freedom. 1/
    So, no more. We must, by any means necessary, force them to be like us. No quarter. No compromise. 2/
    Ban CRT, Marxism and anti-American misinformation. Nationalize big tech and academia and mandate conservatism as their operational ideology. Ban leftist media and entertainment from spreading misinformation.3/
    Penalize barren, non-familial lifestyles through taxes and disqualification from political participation. Establish property and military service qualifications for voting. Increase America’s carbon footprint. Ban masks. Dismantle unions.n4/
    Use the law to ensure blue submission. Imprison dissenters. Force them to act against their deepest beliefs to keep their jobs. End all social programs and deport all illegals. Outlaw crime again. 5/
    Seems kind of harsh. But hey, isn’t this the flip side of what they want to do to us? So I’m unclear why they would object that it’s wrong. 6/

  239. cleek, reads to me like a poorly thought out attempt at channeling “A Modest Proposal” that misrepresents the progressives and misunderstands Swift in the process. But, hey, it lets his side be the hero/victims, so…

  240. Well, I always thought some of them were fascists.
    As for that twitter thread, I was absolutely convinced it must be a (not very good) spoof. Having looked him up – maybe not. In which case, if he’s for real, I have to assume he is actually unhinged.
    Establish property and military service qualifications for voting. Increase America’s carbon footprint
    C’mon. Surely the most likely explanation is that some joker hacked his twitter feed?

  241. it’s not clear that he’s actually being satirical. that last tweet seems like a CYA afterthought that has very little to do with the first five.
    “Penalize barren, non-familial lifestyles through taxes and disqualification from political participation” and “Nationalize big tech and academia and mandate conservatism as their operational ideology,” aren’t satire of anything anyone on the left suggests.
    nobody on the left wants to tax families or ban them from political participation. Democrats are trying to expand access to polls, for everyone, and are being blocked by “conservatives” who want to make voting incrementally harder. and the American left doesn’t really want to nationalize much of anything beyond health care payments – and mandating an ideology to go with it isn’t even close to being a thing.
    “Establish property and military service qualifications for voting.”
    what is that satire of?
    “Ban CRT, Marxism and anti-American misinformation.”
    “End all social programs and deport all illegals.”
    “Outlaw crime again.”
    that’s not satire; it’s literally what “conservatives” argue all day every day everywhere.
    it reads like he was being his usual horrible authoritarian self and realized he’d maybe gone too far, so he tried to use “satire!” to justify his outburst.

  243. I think he was implying that the left was already so far gone on the path of Culture Wars that to match them the right should advocate for equally extreme policies as a way of provoking the left. It implies that the right has been pulling up well short of the sort of fascism that the left has embraced, which, if embraced, would lead to these sort of policy positions.
    The incoherence you point to is exactly why I said that it was poorly thought out.

  244. his shtick is to turn his fascist conservatism to 11 and pretend he’s just venting. it’s all a joke!
    but his Townhall pieces are absolutely brimming with this hyper-masculine, nationalistic, violent, fascistic imagery. the ones that are supposedly paywalled are actually there in the HTML if you want to read them.
    if you spend 2000 words making the same jokes over and over every week, you’re probably not actually joking. and “Quit being so sensitive, I’m just being provocative!” loses its efficacy when you keep saying the same provocative things again and again.
    because if you spend your energy coming up with different ways to make the same joke, you’re not joking anymore. you’re just putting what you really think into joke form. and “I’m just joking” is another joke.

  245. Meanwhile:
    Former Newsmax host and right-wing Florida radio commentator Dick Farrel — who mocked vaccines, the “scamdemic” and “lying freak” Dr. Anthony Fauci — has died of COVID-19.
    A very different Farrel, 65, told friends to get vaccinated, as he struggled with the virus. He died Wednesday, WPTV reported
    I wonder how much coverage this kind of thing gets on the RWNJ media outlets.

  246. I wonder how much coverage this kind of thing gets on the RWNJ media outlets.
    i’ve found no coverage at all. not even a mention on Newsmax (or Breitbart or Fox)

  247. Regarding Reason:
    Ames was wrong to invent a “holocaust denial issue”. Gillespie was much more wrong to find nothing worse in the actual issue than “uninteresting and unconvincing” “adolescent glee”.
    If you want to revise the history of the Shoah, do it with respect for the truth and for the dead. If you want to gainsay the revisers, do the same.
    If your magazine has, in the past, addressed the subject with adolescent glee, apologise humbly.

  248. Pro Bono, Big Swinging Dicks never apologize humbly. That might give the impression that they are wusses!!!

  249. GTFNC—
    I lurk here sometimes but don’t have the patience for online political discussions anymore.
    My feeling about Maddow and MSNBC is that she is the star of a business that caters to a particular set of people who want to hear news delivered in a way that never challenges them. It isn’t as bad as Fox because reality really does have a leftish bias ( IMO) but the world would be better off if none of the cable news networks existed.
    And she is a sellout. She is smart and knows exactly what she is doing.
    Hayes is a sellout too. His weekend morning show many years ago was actually good. Then he went primetime and after a while I stopped watching. Lawrence O’ Donnell — well, who ever cared what he thought.
    Maddow being obtuse—
    https://fair.org/home/hiding-us-role-in-yemen-slaughter-so-bombing-can-be-sold-as-self-defense/
    MckT— I think ObiWi was better when it had a very wide range of commenters, but those days are gone.
    THe American Conservative used to have a wide range of people in the comments, but they fired Larison and the place has gone down the toilet. Dreher has fully embraced his own business model, which is ignoring virtually every issue except cancel culture. Left wing version, of course. He likes Orban.

  250. and “I’m just joking” is another joke.…
    It is, of course, a mode Trump played to perfection.
    FWIW, I agree about Rachel Maddow, Donald. The polarisation is, I think, a reaction to what happened on the right, and isn’t divorced from reality in the same way, but it doesn’t make it listenable.

  251. Interesting, I assumed that like me, people didn’t really watch talking heads, given that almost all of the links shared here are text.
    There was a time, I guess at the beginning of Covid, that I was watching Question Time for Boris, but that was because there would also be some article about how Johnson was TOTALLY STITCHED UP. However, when I went to watch, it always disappointed.
    But it’s far too easy to hide the weak spots of an argument with an arched eyebrow, a gesture, a funny face. So for me, I generally only toss in a youtube link if it is to something important. (like a clip from a Marx Brothers movie or a Monty Python skit.)

  252. MckT— I think ObiWi was better when it had a very wide range of commenters, but those days are gone.
    True. I like to think I can still get a little traction here from time to time, but back then, positions weren’t nearly so fixed or impervious. People could–and did–give ground without fear of aiding and abetting *the enemy*. Some but not much of that left these days.

  253. Dreher has fully embraced his own business model, which is ignoring virtually every issue except cancel culture. Left wing version, of course.
    unsurprisingly Dreher’s is one of the few places i’ve been banned from.

  254. Some but not much of that left these days.
    I don’t know how long I’ve been here at this point, but it’s gotta be in the neighborhood of 15 years or so. I know I had been here for a little while when Andy was killed, and I think that was very early 2008.
    During that time the country has gone from arguing about stuff like whether we should have invaded Iraq, to the freak show of the Trump presidency culminating in a mob rioting and attacking the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
    ObWi has changed a lot, but so has the world. From my point of view, there’s not a lot of ground left to give.
    A lot of my counter-parties, for lack of a better word, have gone absolutely freaking insane. Like, “there will be a civil war if we have to wear masks again” insane. Not making it up, that’s from a conversation I had this past week.
    “I’ll kill you if you require me to wear a piece of cloth over my mouth and nose”. There’s no ground to give there, no give and take is on offer. Just, I’ll kill you before I’ll wear a mask, during a pandemic.
    And yes, it’s all a lot of hyperbolic BS, the guy in question is highly unlikely to kill anybody. But how much hyperbolic BS do we all have to walk back before we can get to a conversation that is even remotely reasonable?
    I’d love to have conversations about stuff like tax rates, or industrial policy, or whether we should have a public option for health insurance. There is plenty of room in discussions like that for give and take.
    By my lights, about a third of the nation has lost its mind. Gone straight around the bend. Absolutely barking mad.
    I can’t give ground to that. There isn’t any ground to give.
    I do appreciate the very small handful of conservative voices that are willing to come here and participate. I’m sure ObWi is a lonely place for you all at this point.

  255. Unsurprisingly, I agree with what russell says. But there’s an additional aspect:
    People could–and did–give ground without fear of aiding and abetting *the enemy*
    In those days, it was perfectly possible to not regard the GOP as “the enemy”. Ideological opponents, sure. People whose values and priorities were (in many cases radically) different. But people with whom, in many cases, one could have meaningful dialogue. Let’s not forget that when hilzoy quit, she said that she thought that civility was becoming possible again, that the poison was to a large extent out of the system.
    Since then, despite wj’s lonely rearguard attempts to define conservatism, the GOP and many conservatives have, in russell’s formulation, lost their mind. Or, in an image that makes more sense to me given the personality-cult-like aspects, drunk the Kool-Aid. And the ones who don’t actually believe it have made a cynical careerist calculation that they should pretend that they do.
    It’s impossible to have meaningful dialogue with those people. There is actually no hope of anything resembling “good faith” with them, and the supposition that one’s opponents (no matter how misguidedly) intend the best for the country as defined by any sane person would be absurd in today’s situation.

  257. Somewhere between half and three-quarters of (R) voters think the 2020 election was fraudulent and that Donald J Trump is the rightful POTUS.
    There is no evidence to support that belief.
    What should the conversation consist of? It’s like trying to have a reasonable conversation with someone who firmly believes that 2+2=5.
    It’s not a difference of opinion, it’s a different understanding of reality, and a different understanding of how you determine what is simply and factually true.
    I am at a loss to understand how to work around that.

  258. A few familiar names and some semantic parsing that looks even worse in hindsight.
    I just read that whole thread. Wow.

  259. lj, how do you do that? (i.e. search for your first ever comment here). My Google skills are lousy, nothing I’ve tried has worked.

  260. GftNC, Google seems to have removed support for sort by date, but you can filter by date (click the “tools” button on a search).

  261. Well, it was a bit easier for me, I knew I’d been pulled here by discussion about Malkin’s book and used google advanced search, limited it to this site and searched for “Posted by: Liberal Japonicus” and Malkin and it popped up.
    I did it on yours but I didn’t have a word to limit the search, so I used the tools in the google search list that came up to narrow down the time window and made it smaller. This has your first comment in this
    https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2015/03/limes-and-planes.html

  262. Thanks, ral, I tried that with no luck. About to look at what lj found – my memory is that I couldn’t resist commenting (after lurking for years) when the Count mentioned that he was a double for John Lennon.
    And thanks, lj.

  263. No luck, even trying advanced search. I am a Google incompetent. Never mind, I’ll survive.

  264. i think my first comment is on this, from 2005.
    one reason there are so few conservatives here is the same reason there are few of anybody here: blogging has declined in popularity. things like FB and Twitter have drawn users away from blogs.

  265. Start with quoted string plus site, like so: 

    "by: Girl from" site:obsidianwings.blogs.com

    then successively narrow the date range. A bit inconvenient but it works.
    If nothing is found in the range Google will drop the quotes so you may have to paste the request in again (save it in another window to make pasting easy).

  266. one reason there are so few conservatives here is the same reason there are few of anybody here: blogging has declined in popularity. things like FB and Twitter have drawn users away from blogs.
    I’d guess there’s some kind of critical mass thing going on, too. When you have lots of people commenting, you’re more likely to draw in people with varying opinions. (Duh.) But, on top of that, a given person is more likely to have some number of like-minded “allies.” Even if you’re in the minority, you aren’t remotely alone, so you aren’t just getting beat up all the time. We have a few die-hards that are willing to endure it, at least on occasion.

  267. then successively narrow the date range.
    here’s how i do this on Google (desktop version)
    1. click “Tools”
    2. “Any time” and “All results” will appear under the search box
    3. click “Any time”, “Custom Range…”
    4. set a To date to something a bit later than you might think is your first comment
    5. search
    if you don’t get anything, move the To date up some

  268. ral, cleek, lj: thank you all so much, but I have tried endless variations of all of that, with no luck (both now and in the past) and am now giving up in disgust. That’s not to say that somebody more competent trying your suggestions wouldn’t have succeeded, but I am not that person (tag for understatement).
    To mis-quote Bob Dylan (but without the passive-aggressiveness) I don’t want any of you to keep wasting your precious time, don’t think twice it’s alright.

  271. nd I see cleek in the comments from a couple days after
    so strange. that never shows up in my searches. and then Google complains that a large number of “unusual searches” have been coming from my computer. Google has really ruined their search engine.
    if i browse backwards from there, i see even more of my comments. so, who knows when my first really was…
    interesting to see fafnir was once a commenter here. fafblog was amazing.

  272. Since I consider it my role to provide apropos quotes, let me channel Frances…

    “Well,” said Frances, “things are not very good around here anymore. No clothes to wear. No raisins for the oatmeal. I think maybe I’ll run away.”

    I miss Fafblog too.

  273. twas always thus…
    Sept 8 2004, a post by Moe Lane.
    here’s the entire post, and all comments:

    Yup, taking another break.

    (Packing small bag)
    I’ll be back.
    Posted by liberal japonicus at 10:36 PM in Geekstuff | Permalink

    Comments
    You’ll be missed 🙁
    Posted by: Anarch | September 09, 2004 at 04:42 AM
    This sucks, Moe. The voice of moderations seems a bit too liberal without your ongoing and thoughtful contributions.
    Posted by: double-plus-ungood | September 09, 2004 at 11:29 AM

    i think this is my actual first comment (Sept 13, 2004).

  274. Let’s not forget that when hilzoy quit, she said that she thought that civility was becoming possible again, that the poison was to a large extent out of the system.
    And by the way, in case anybody thought for even one moment that I was saying either a) I thought that the decrease in civility was the current problem/issue, or more likely because of my sloppiness that b) hilzoy thought that the only issue was civility etc, this is what she said in July 2009 in her quitting post:
    The main reason I started blogging, besides the fact that I thought it would be fun, was that starting sometime in 2002, I thought that my country had gone insane. It wasn’t just the insane policies, although that was part of it. It was the sheer level of invective: the way that people who held what seemed to me to be perfectly reasonable views, e.g. that invading Iraq might not be such a smart move, were routinely being described as al Qaeda sympathizers who hated America and all it stood for and wanted us all to die.
    I thought: we’ve gone mad. And I have to do something — not because I thought that I personally could have any appreciable effect on this, but because it felt like what Katherine called an all hands on deck moment. I had heard about times like this in the past — the McCarthy era, for instance — though I had never expected to live through one. Nonetheless, I was. And I had to try to do something, however insignificant.
    ***
    That said, it seems to me that the madness is over. There are lots of people I disagree with, and lots of things I really care about, and even some people who seem to me to have misplaced their sanity, but the country as a whole does not seem to me to be crazy any more.
    So, apart from being one of the only times I can remember hilzoy being wrong, although she was concerned with the civility/demonisation-of-opponents issue, she made it clear that it was the policies, the actual issues as well.
    If only we had known; the country as a whole (or at least approximately one third of it) is crazier now than anyone could ever (not even hilzoy) have foreseen.
    And in case anybody thinks I am talking solely about the US, I believe in the old adage: when America sneezes Britain catches cold. We may be earlier in the process, but the same forces (ahistorical, ascientific, afactual) are at play here, and laying the necessary groundwork.

  275. I have tried endless variations of all of that, with no luck (both now and in the past) and am now giving up in disgust.
    It doesn’t work well for me either: google’s webcrawler seems to find this blog’s archive confusing.

  276. Trying to find my own first comment, I found this, which can’t be the earliest because there’s an earlier one in the same thread. But still:

    What Russell said.
    Posted by: JanieM | April 28, 2008 at 11:51 PM

    Some things are so obvious that you realize them right away.
    I came here when Andy died, so even if there are earlier days when I commented, they can’t be TOO much earlier than that.

  277. on the other hand… back in the olden days, only rarely would posts get more than 50 comments. sometimes posts wouldn’t get any.
    these days, we go 500+ pretty regularly.

  278. hilzoy, in 2009:

    That said, it seems to me that the madness is over. There are lots of people I disagree with, and lots of things I really care about, and even some people who seem to me to have misplaced their sanity, but the country as a whole does not seem to me to be crazy any more.

    Which was understandable, I suppose. Because it was possible to miss the level of invective, specifically race-based invective, which was going to be a feature of Obama’s tenure.

  279. Is there anyone still here who followed Publius over from his blog, Legal Fiction, when he shut it down in 2007 and joined ObWi as a headliner? (That’s how I got here, if that wasn’t obvious from the question.)

  282. Which was understandable, I suppose. Because it was possible to miss the level of invective, specifically race-based invective, which was going to be a feature of Obama’s tenure.
    But again, and at the risk of repeating myself, it’s absolutely not just the invective. It’s the sanity, or lack thereof, as in russell’s formulation. And that was not (I believe) only a product of racism.

  284. The FB interchange I referenced above came from a conversation between some musicians about venues that are starting to require performers to be vaccinated.
    Most of the folks involved are from New England, so in general most of them were ok with it, and in fact strongly in support.
    A couple of folks were not.
    One guy called out all of the people who had died from the COVID vaccine. Not COVID, but the vaccine.
    “Do you want to take that kind of chance with your family?”
    As of right now, about 4.3 million people have died from COVID, about 633K of them in the US.
    Three people have died due to clotting after getting the J&J vax. We now understand the cause of that and no further deaths from the J&J have occurred.
    There are no deaths I am aware of that are attributable to either the Moderna or Pfizer vaxes.
    3 vs 4.3 million.
    Other claims in the thread included “No vaccine, no tax return – it’s coming!”.
    Which is just freaking nutty. It’s just crap the guy is making up.
    Pick any topic you like, and the “conservative” side of the house has gone down some crazy rabbit hole or other. There is, as far as I can tell, no traction to be had in terms of discussing things on anything like a factual basis.
    People are entitled to their point of view, but I don’t see a path to anything like a reasonable conversation.
    I talk about this stuff here, IRL I almost never engage people about any of this stuff. It’s like talking with delusional paranoiacs.
    I’m sure this all sounds like I’m hating on conservatives. I’m not, I don’t hate any of these people. I just have no idea whatsoever how to engage in any kind of conversation with them.

  285. I don’t remember how I got here, it was probably via something at RedState. The first comment of mine I can find is from back in ’05, on some thread from von about Pericles’ Funeral Oration.
    Fun seeing some of the names there.

  286. on the other hand… back in the olden days, only rarely would posts get more than 50 comments. sometimes posts wouldn’t get any.
    these days, we go 500+ pretty regularly.
    Okay, but how many words? ;^)

  287. A friend steered me here, probably 2007/8. It’s still the only place I have ever commented.

  288. on the other hand… back in the olden days, only rarely would posts get more than 50 comments. sometimes posts wouldn’t get any.
    these days, we go 500+ pretty regularly.
    Okay, but how many words? ;^)
    Perhaps as much to the point, how many posts? Seems to me in the old days there were sometimes several a day…. I leave the rest for the reader to fill in.

  289. I vaguely remember Legal Fiction, so I assume that I must have come here that way. And I know it was when I was still at the TU Berlin doing either my diploma thesis (at the time the equivalent of a master thesis over here) or my PhD. But that gives a wide range from late 1999 to early 2008. And I have no idea when I switched from just reading to actually commenting. When did “The Fool” get banned for the first time? I think it must have been around that time.

  290. I started poking in the archives and they seem to start in November, 2003. This sent me on a trip down memory lane into the poetry posts.
    It’s clear that Google search doesn’t find everything, I tested.
    It was Sebastian H. who pulled me here from the Washington Monthly.

  291. My brother told me about Atrios sometime probably 2004/5, and from there found links elsewhere, hilzoy, Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory blog, Balloon Juice, Unqualified Offerings, Sullivan, Coates, Fallows. Mostly lurked all this time. Seldom have anything useful to add.

  292. My wife had been on an RPG maillist with Moe and a bunch of others (the blog name always made sense to me for that reason) and started sending links my way whenever the discussion here looked like something that would interest me. Think at that point Moe was already drifting away, having been radicalized by 9/11.

  293. Still crawling down memory lane, and after this I’m going to stop.

    Lemmy Caution: “An Obama candidacy creates a progressivism that is likely to permanently transform the American political landscape.”
    It seems to me that his candidacy doesn’t so much “create” a progressivism as attempt to tap the potential for it. What remains to be seen is how much potential is out there to be tapped. After 2004, I will never again be surprised at how godawfully wrong I can be about how much of this country is apparently living in a different reality from the one I live in.
    Even so, Obama has my hopes up. Just a teensy bit, mind you….
    Posted by: JanieM | January 27, 2008 at 11:06 PM

    Bold added today, 8/9/21. I was wrong.

  294. I also tried the Google search; first
    I could find (of my posts) was Sept. 9, 2011, about the use of the term “kill” to mean “stream”: Dutch words insinuating itself into the USA, egads!
    The main problem seemed to be that Google finds new stuff in the “most recent posts/comments” bar, even for old posts.
    But to add to the Dutch, I had occasion a month ago to look up the origin of that classic midwestern US picnic staple: Cole Slaw.
    Neither “cole” nor “slaw” are normal English, so WTF?
    Turns out it’s a corruption of Dutch, for “cold salad”. Every family seems to have their own slightly-different recipe; perhaps someday a enterprising culinary historian will analyze the “diverging genomes” to see where they split and recombine.

  297. It occurs to me that I can channel all the awesome powers afforded me by the Typepad interface and actually look up people’s first comments. So if you would like, say yes please in the comments and I will give you the post where your first comment appeared. Thought about doing it for everyone who has mentioned it, but then thought that might be a bit much so only if you ask. Bear in mind the time difference, and if it is a bunch of you, I’ll probably collect them into one comment.
    As has been noted, google search will not reliably find your first comment, I just got lucky as Malkin must have detrended as a search item (thank god!) and so mine popped up.
    GftNC had a comment one before the one I said was her last and it is in here
    https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2015/02/oliver-sacks-on-his-terminal-cancer.html
    wallowing in nostalgia, I remain…

  299. Thanks for that, lj! And it just goes to show the tricks memory can play – I thought I started earlier than that, and I could have sworn it was about JDT being John Lennon’s double. Also, if 2015, maybe that’s why my Google searches were so unsuccessful. So, super helpful in more ways than one!

  300. lj, that was two gifts in one: I’ve just re-read the Oliver Sacks piece you link in that opening post, and what a great pleasure it was. I always knew it, but it was wonderful to be reminded; he was a marvellous writer, and a humane and exceptional person. Thank you.

  301. I know what my first comment here was. It took me a few months of lurking to work up the courage to post it. Like others, I got here on a link from Andrew Sullivan.
    However much the nature of ObWi may have changed since early 2008, one thing seems to me to have stayed constant: we all came here with pre-existing ideologies, and thousands of posts and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of comments have persuaded maybe 3 of us to change our minds substantially on even one or two issues.
    I can’t help commenting on Donald’s assertion upthread (which McTX seemed to agree with) that Rachel Maddow is a “sellout”. Seems to me all of us “sell out” one way or another, but IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE WHO YOU SELL OUT TO.
    Sorry, had to get that off my chest.
    –TP

  304. Dutch words in English which come to mind:
    Poppycock: means ‘pappy cack’
    Forlorn hope: a ‘lost troop’ – a suicide mission

  305. “Seems to me all of us “sell out” one way or another, but IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE WHO YOU SELL OUT TO.”
    *sigh* (whispering under my breath) not really.
    I did cut my hair though.

  306. I can’t help commenting on Donald’s assertion upthread (which McTX seemed to agree with) that Rachel Maddow is a “sellout”.
    You might want to reread my very brief comments more carefully. I was acknowledging Donald’s statements to the effect that listening to other voices is useful and ObWi was more interesting way back when. I have no idea if Ms. Maddow is a sell-out or not, but would not be surprised if she has made compromises along the way. We don’t have regular television. Only Netflix and Prime. We use a hotspot. I have no idea what Fox or MSNBC or CNN have to say about any particular issue nor do I care. Mostly, I read at night.
    LJ, if you would be so kind, I would like to know when I first commented. Thank you.

  310. I enjoyed reading McKT’s subtly nuanced viewpoint.
    It occurs to me that there’s a stronger than usually anchoring effect at work in his proposed reaction to rising marginal income tax rates. If one has made enough money when tax rates are low, one will be all the more ready to wind down if they go up. However, if tax rates are high throughout one’s high-earning life, one will tend to work longer and harder, so as to accumulate what one perceives to be enough.
    How much did McKT’s tax rate actually go up?

  311. lj, Thank you!
    Forlorn hope: a ‘lost troop’ – a suicide mission
    German: ‘Verlorener Haufen’ (literally lost heap). Haufen is short for Heerhaufen and in general means a unit of infantry. The early pike formations of the Swiss and the later Landksnecht armies (that imitated the former) were known as Gewalthaufen (violence heap). In Luther’s Bible translation one can find (Genesis 34:30): ‘und ich bin nur ein geringer Haufe’ (an I am but a small heap), which in English Bibles comes out as ‘and I am but few in number’.
    These days Haufen, if referring to people, is rather peiorative and strongly implies low degree of organisation. In the old days it did not automatically carry that connotation (those pike blocs were rather elite and extremly efficient for their time)
    [the finale of the film Alatriste gives a good impression with its Spanish tercio].
    I think it is not really surprising that Haufen (via Dutch ‘hoop’) ended up as ‘hope’ not ‘heap’ in English in the context of ‘forlorn’ since it often occured in hopeless situations or the participants had little hope to get out of it alive, so it became synonymous with suicide mission. Folk etymology.

  312. Nowadays in English “forlorn hope” usually means a vain hope. The association with soldiering has been lost.

  313. The closest I can get to contributing to this etymological discussion is mentioning that I have a dog that is half Norwegian Elkhound, with “elk hound” being a bad English translation of “moose dog” in Norwegian, using English words that sound the most like the Norwegian words without respect to their meaning in Norwegian.

  314. Erm, “elk” in British English includes what our transatlantic friends call a moose. The translation looks fine to us.

  318. I had never heard that elk sketch before. And given that I invented the expression “to pack the elk costume” to describe a close relative’s tendency to pack everything which could imaginably be needed on holiday, I am delighted to have heard it now!

  319. I look at everybody else’s first post dates and I feel like such a child! No idea when my first post was, but pretty sure it was much more recent.

  322. Is there some other word for “squirrel” in British English?
    No, but there is an unequal struggle between the plucky but outcompeted European Red Squirrel and the evil, probably CIA-backed, American Grey* Squirrel.
    Red squirrels are no longer seen hereabouts. The greys spend the autumn digging holes in my lawn to bury acorns, which they promptly forget about.
    But the English are fighting back.
    *or “gray”

  323. I had never heard that elk sketch before.
    This is the version I was familiar with, from the TV show, which doesn’t have the “an elk” intro.
    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2oh8ia
    This (or the audio-only version from the record) is the source of the “This is my theory, which is mine” thing you may occasionally notice people using here.

  324. *or “gray”
    A friend of mine gives me flack for spelling it “grey.” I’ve always spelled it that way for some reason, even as a kid, but she thinks it’s pretentious.

  327. so lj,
    what was the first time I wandered into these hallowed halls? The time I defended the Weathermen against Gary Farber? The time I made a snide remark about Seb’s rice cooker?
    So many embarrassments. Hard to keep track.
    Thanks.

  328. Ah, I had wondered where “this is my theory, which is mine” came from. I also wondered about “also, too”, but I think I gathered recently that that was a Palinism.
    As for the plucky but outcompeted European Red Squirrel and the evil, probably CIA-backed, American Grey* Squirrel I was delighted by both descriptions. One of my treasured childhood memories is of being in Davos (in those days merely a winter sports resort), and the local doctor taking me into the forest (not a euphemism) to show me the red squirrels, who came to his call to be fed. He used to feed deer in his back garden too. It was magical, what with the backdrop of the snow-laden trees, and the hush that snow in the mountains gives. It’s got to be 55 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.

  329. I know I made a condolence comment on the long thread after Andy died. Don’t know if anything came before that.

  330. While Germans killed off their elk/moose population long ago, these anmimals are very popular around here. We are also (very likely) the greatest thieves of Sewdish moose crossing traffic signs.
    The “Elch” is part of several popular sayings* and proverbs** and features prominently in the anthem of former Eastern Prussia.
    Not to forget the proverbial Elchtest (originally a test whether a car is likely to tip over in an emergency evasion maneuvre).
    *e.g. “ich glaub mich knutscht ein Elch” (I believe a moose is hugging me) a rather mild variant of wtf.
    *e.g. Die größten Kritiker der Elche waren früher selber welche (The greatest critics of moose were ones themselves in the past) usually aimed at people that protest too much about behaviour they themselves were guilty of in the (usually no too distant) past (or in their youth, if it’s the ‘young people to-day…! variety)

  331. The absolutely best elk story ever was in a long gone MIT discussion site, about a woman whose dogs started eating an elk carcass in her driveway.
    The thread was widely shared, and thank Dog someone still has a link to it:
    http://web.mit.edu/munch/Public/humor/elk
    Be sure to empty your bladder before reading.

  332. bobbyp, here you are, fighting under the boards with Sebastian
    https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/10/you-write-malki.html
    Reading that, I think one of the reasons I stayed around was the von really didn’t like Malkin. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
    Priest, hope that was a request
    https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/02/things_fall_apa.html
    Not quite right, but I post it cause the shout out to Hilzoy can always be appreciated

  334. Scotsman visits a natural history museum in Canada, at the exhibit of a stuffed moose, asks what it is and is told that it’s a Canadian moose.
    “Och, if that’s a moose, y’must have rats the size of ELEPHANTS!”

  335. “ can’t help commenting on Donald’s assertion upthread (which McTX seemed to agree with) that Rachel Maddow is a “sellout”. Seems to me all of us “sell out” one way or another, but IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE WHO YOU SELL OUT TO.”
    No, it matters principle you betray. In Maddow’s case she had a show beloved by a few million liberals and spent a couple of years not bothering to tell them that the Obama Administration was giving weapons and logistical assistance and fatuous apologetics on behalf of the Saudis as they bombed and starved civilians. She did stories on Yemen— I linked to a description of one and I watched it online years ago. It gave the viewer no hint whatsoever about our despicable policy at the time and Maddow, whatever else she is, is smart. She knew damn well what she was doing.
    My links are more worth reading than my rants. That is a hint.

  338. I’ve skimmed through a bunch of posts and threads from my earliest times on ObWi. It’s strange to see discussions on Republicans ginning up voter fraud as a serious threat and their tendencies toward authoritarianism in posts from 2007. I guess it was more talk and less action then on their part.
    One thing that seems different are the arguments on global warming/climate change. Fourteen years later, and it seems to be becoming far more apparent. You don’t have to be a scientist collecting what most people would think of as obscure data to observe evidence of what’s happening these days. And that latest report – scary.

  339. Donald: No, it matters principle you betray. In Maddow’s case she had a show beloved by a few million liberals and spent a couple of years not bothering to tell them that the Obama Administration was giving weapons and logistical assistance and fatuous apologetics on behalf of the Saudis as they bombed and starved civilians.
    Maddow betrayed a principle, you say. Correct me if I’m wrong: the principle you accuse her of betraying is “Tell the whole truth, even if it makes Obama look bad and makes your liberal audience ashamed of supporting him”, right?
    So, would it be fair to say that Maddow “sold out to Obama”? Or not?
    And, is there no difference, in your view, between selling out to Obama and selling out to He, Trump? Or Viktor Orban? Or Vladimir Putin?
    I ask in all sincerity. You’re as entitled to your principles as I am to mine. I just want us to be clear what our respective principles are. I stated one of my principles: it matters WHO you sell out to. You disagree. So it DOESN’T matter who you sell out to?
    –TP

  340. looking at the old posts cited here, it occurs to me that I was wrong in thinking that conservatives losing their minds is a recent phenomenon.
    probably not kind of me to say, but it is what it is. I don’t think much has changed, really, I’ve just gotten jaded.
    And that latest report – scary.
    yeah, we’re buggered. and not just us. what used to be worst case is best case now.
    drill, baby, drill. remember that? good times.

    “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

    Lotta Toms and Daisys around.

  341. Pro Bono: I enjoyed reading McKT’s subtly nuanced viewpoint.
    That 2008 thread shows how little has changed in the viewpoints of all involved, I think.
    With due allowance for the fact that it was about Obama’s tax plan in particular, it’s still true that the discussion (including McKinney’s comments) drifted into addressing the philosophy of taxation in general. And what’s generally missing from such discussions is: brackets. That the TOP bracket must of necessity start at a low enough income to make a successful lawyer think of withdrawing his valuable labor from The Economy, rather than starting at $2million/year say, generally seems to be taken for granted. McKinney’s subtly nuanced viewpoint did not then (nor has it since, to my knowledge) allow for the vast disparity between his income and the REALLY high ones — a disparity bigger than the one between McKinney’s income and the median one.
    –TP

  342. The difference between back then and now is that now we have entire media architectures built to capture and keep people in their silos. There was more cross-talk in the past and the conversations were less driven by social media algorithms.
    Remember google bombing?
    Disinformation is big business and online celebrity these days.

  343. McKinney’s subtly nuanced viewpoint did not then (nor has it since, to my knowledge) allow for the vast disparity between his income and the REALLY high ones — a disparity bigger than the one between McKinney’s income and the median one.
    I’ve tried many times to get that point across to McKinney. I think I actually did so successfully a couple of times, but it never seemed to stick. The next time taxes came up, back to square one. “You [insert dismissive insult for liberals/progressives/The Left] always think…” without any discussion of the specifics. And like when discussing race, it always revolved around anecdotes about his law firm.
    But, hey, no one’s putting a gun to my head. I still take the bait!

  344. Pet peeve of mine that McK’s old comment reminds me of: the talk was constantly of the “$250k bracket.” But by the time of those discussions, the top bracket had been indexed to upwards of $400K, if i remember correctly, and no one realized that or at least acknowledged it. I know it’s nothing compared to the difference between that cutoff and REALLY big incomes, but it’s still a lot.

  345. That 2008 thread shows how little has changed in the viewpoints of all involved, I think.
    Well, one thing that has changed is that we know a lot more about each other. No one who has been around is going to explain to McKT about the court system, hopefully he’s realized that I don’t live in the US, we’ve figured out other people’s back stories so we can take that into account when we talk to each other. That’s not nothing, methinks.

  346. Balkinazation stopped allowing reader comments in the last year or so (Covid time frame is a struggle), up until then Brett was still commenting there if one felt the need to indulge a certain type of nostalgia.

  348. That’s not nothing, methinks.
    No, not nothing at all. Probably why we stick around. We’ve gotten to know each other. Which probably says more than I have time to think about right now. My trial wraps up today. I’ll try to find a minute for some more mellow, noncontroversial exchanges later this week.
    ProB–I was doing a lot of yoga back then. It kept me totally centered.

  349. Speaking of squirrels, as we were, I have just seen on a nature documentary (Earth from Space) adorable, tiny female Siberian Flying Squirrels, which, while normally solitary, during snowbound winters on Japanese islands, meet up with stranger squirrels and share dens for the winter. According to the Asahi Shimbun, they are called the ninja of the forest
    https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/photo/27529007

  350. my wife grew up near Kent OH. at some point somebody at the state university there got hold of some black squirrels, and either they released them or the squirrels escaped.
    so now the official critter of Kent OH is the black squirrel. there are bumper stickers and everything.
    they migrate around, we had a few here where we are for a couple of years, but the gray squirrels kicked them out.
    gray squirrels are apparently obnoxious dudes.

  351. “ Maddow betrayed a principle, you say. Correct me if I’m wrong: the principle you accuse her of betraying is “Tell the whole truth, even if it makes Obama look bad and makes your liberal audience ashamed of supporting him”, right?”
    The issue is not which politician gets betrayed. The issue was and still is that we were and are helping the Saudis kill innocent people in very large numbers and Maddow and most of the other MSNBC hosts ignored it. For years. Yes, I think it was because this type of issue doesn’t fit into MSNBC’s business model,at least not then. It didn’t fit the model of Democrats good, Republicans bad. Many issues do, IMO, but not all. The anti interventionist position is starting to make headway. Maybe their business model will change.
    The issue is the killing of innocent people with our help and it is unbelievable that I have to spell this out. Maddow with her platform should have spent a significant part of her time on this— maybe a serious story every couple of weeks, perhaps every time there was a major air strike or another report on starving children. Something like that, maybe more, maybe less, but all of her regular viewers should have known about this.
    Back to lurking.

  352. The anti interventionist position is starting to make headway
    Donald, I’m just watching the situation in Afghanistan unfold. Obviously, nobody wanted this to happen exactly in this way, but would you (as I think a serious anti interventionist) be prepared to say what your feelings on the current situation are?

  353. Maddow is a favorite of, yes, the Democratic pragmatist centrists, who do have a point that we must achieve all policy wins by coalition.
    But in return, they bitterly complain whenever progressives point out the people being sacrificed in the name of that policy win. And they seem to want to make themselves out to be self-sacrificing martyrs to the liberal cause. Look at all the principles they have compromised in order to get that win. It hurt them to do it, but they are pragmatists and grown-ups and will take the moral Purple Heart, thank you, because they fought that battle and won.
    I think there is room both for compromise and for an unflinching look at the cost of that compromise, along with deep questions about whether something can be done to make that sacrifice unnecessary the next time.

  354. Donald, I’m just watching the situation in Afghanistan unfold. Obviously, nobody wanted this to happen exactly in this way, but would you (as I think a serious anti interventionist) be prepared to say what your feelings on the current situation are?
    I’m interested in Donald’s view as well.
    I think it’s a horrible situation, but I also think that the descent of Afghanistan back into theocratic warlordism is unavoidable. The cost of intervention, in wasted resources and broken humans, is unsustainable and we have made no headway against this tide in 20 years of attempts at transformation/mitigation. I’ve had long talks with two people I know personally who were embedded over there during the height of the occupation, and they both came away with the sense that, however good the US’s intentions, and the good faith efforts of our troops, we did not have either the resources or the understanding to do anything but mark time.
    I think we’ll get more mitigation from investing in humanitarian approaches than we will from intervention.
    And our interventionist militarism has helped to fuel the US’s own problems with warlord bands of radicalized soldiers desensitized by trauma. We have our own damaged and violent population to deal with.

  355. they bitterly complain whenever progressives point out the people being sacrificed in the name of that policy win.
    As opposed to (some*) progressives, who bitterly complain when centerists make a pragmatic compromise in order to get a partial win. Instead of refusing to compromise and getting nothing.
    * Others, Sanders for example, seem to be taking the pragmatic approach of taking half a loaf when he can get it. Not abandoning his overall goals, but willing to take a small win (and, perhaps, move the Overton window).

  356. Reading an old book (1930’s?) about wildlife in Eastern PA, my all-too-fallible memory is that it claimed that the gray squirrels were an English invader. Maybe it’s like “Spanish Pox” where everyone blames someone else.
    The little red squirrels, which almost never run around the ground, so you only see them in areas that have trees connecting to a larger forest, called “chickorees” were said to be native. They gray squirrels seem to drive them off.
    Northern midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, etc) are said to have LARGE red squirrels.
    Also saw a flying squirrels, lying dead outside a large window. Should have tested it for polonium or Novichok, I guess.

  357. I think it’s a horrible situation, but I also think that the descent of Afghanistan back into theocratic warlordism is unavoidable.
    Agreed. But I think that we could, and should, be doing a lot more to help those who supported us to get out (rather than stay and get themselves and probably their entire families killed). The cost of that, even if (to be as extreme as possible) we resettled them here and supported them at public expense for life, would be less than continuing the war.

  358. As opposed to (some*) progressives, who bitterly complain when centerists make a pragmatic compromise in order to get a partial win. Instead of refusing to compromise and getting nothing.
    That is the counter-narrative. Martyrs vs. Purity Bingo.
    But the antagonistic stance is not necessary. We could acknowledge the disconnects on the left and still work in solidarity. We’re all just too addicted to the sports radio hot takes and team rivalries.
    Agreed. But I think that we could, and should, be doing a lot more to help those who supported us to get out (rather than stay and get themselves and probably their entire families killed). The cost of that, even if (to be as extreme as possible) we resettled them here and supported them at public expense for life, would be less than continuing the war.
    Make it so.

  360. Huh, call that a red squirrel, do you?
    http://naturemappingfoundation.org/natmap/facts/douglas_squirrel_712.html
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_red_squirrel
    I think not:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_squirrel#/media/File:Squirrel_posing.jpg
    (not to mention, regard the highly superior ear tufts of the European or Eurasian red squirrel).
    When I were a lass (see Four Yorkshiremen sketch) there were only red squirrels around in the UK. Now, they have (as Pro Bono mentioned) been outcompeted by those obnoxious dudes the NORTH AMERICAN GRAY SQUIRRELS
    https://www.britannica.com/animal/North-American-gray-squirrel
    and are confined to parts of Scotland and certain offshore islands. Part of the greys’ advantage is apparently that they can carry, but are immune to, squirrel pox. (Disclaimer: this description should not be construed as making any statement regarding the risk of infectious diseases brought in by immigrants.)
    On Afghanistan, the whole thing is so distressing as to be almost unwatchable. I admit I supported the original war in Afghanistan (although clearly not in Iraq) after 9/11, on the grounds of a) the laws of war, and b) because of the situation of Afghan women under Taliban rule. I have just seen an Afghan woman in Kabul, who has been working for 20 years on education for women and for Afghan democracy, interviewed on C4 news, talking fearfully but fatalistically about what is now likely to happen. Interestingly, when asked if she blamed the US and the Brits for the withdrawal and the swift collapse, she said not at all, she blamed the corrupt and incompetent Afghan government who have been supported for 20 years and still prove unable to do anything. The whole thing is absolutely horrible.

  361. A cynic might say that to be corrupt and incompetent (except in torture and putting down civilians) tends to be a prerequisite to get installed or supported as ruler by the US (with Central Europe post WW2 being a rare exception).
    As for squirrels, I cannot remember ever having seen a gray one around here. Red ones are more rare these days than they used to be when I was a kid (if my memory is correct) but they are the only ones.
    Foxes seem to have become far more common.
    And wild boar seem to be quite attracted to the big city these days and whole family units even show up far from the next wooded area/park in the middle of the day. Tourpigsm?

  362. in some parts of the US (NY great lakes area, for one), the gray squirrels are black. we call them ‘squirrels’.

    The genetic trait that produces black panthers is the same that also produces black gray squirrels.

  363. red squirrels…are confined to parts of Scotland and certain offshore islands
    Not quite true. There’s a nature reserve in Formby, on the coast north of Liverpool, where I’ve seen them.
    (I suppose George Formby, or his father, took his name from the place.)

  364. I have never seen any squirrels other than the gray ones here in Western Washington, though if the red squirrels ever were here, they might still be in the remaining wild areas.
    I am very fond of the large red squirrels with the ear tufts: they look quite badass. And also quite fond of whichever species of squirrel whose males have humongous balls, because it’s apparently very easy to take inadvertently pornographic photos of them.

  365. In rural areas down here in Georgia we have fox squirrels. I’ve only seen one once, I was driving down a two lane back road and on the shoulder/nearby yard I saw a creature I didn’t recognize, more like the size of a small cat but hopping around in a non-catlike way. A cousin later informed me what I had most likely seen.

  368. chipmunks are better than squirrels, because they have racing strips.
    and “chipmunk” comes from the Ottawa word for “red squirrel”.

  370. Do they do racy strips too?
    But let’s hope they don’t start singing.
    (either in the sense of vocalizing or trying to set fire to something)

  373. Alas and alak. The Supreme Court rejected a request to block Indiana University’s requirement that students be vaccinated for covid-19. (Eight students sued the university saying the mandate violated their constitutional rights.) Actually, it eas Justice Amy Coney Barrett (acting alone**) who rejected the petition.
    Sometimes, you appoint someone you think is an ideologue for your side. And they turn out not to be a totally blind rubber stamp. How irritating.
    ** The Supreme Court has some arcane procedures for deciding whether a petition for an expedited hearing, which is what this was, gets approved.

  374. lj, would you mind finding my first post as well, thanks!
    I’ll probably be embarrassed, if only for the fact that it must have been almost 20 years ago …
    Btw, does anybody know what happened to Gary Farber and Jesurgislac?
    Also, I fondly remember Edward Winkleman who was a gentleman – and wise enough to get out of here in time, lol.

  376. Jesurgislac’s last comment was apparently in 2011. she had been lurking on and off for a while before then, though.
    i sortof remember there being a conflict between her and Gary, which lead her to take a break that never really ended except for a handful of drop-ins.

  377. As far as I remember, Jesurgislac just disappeared. No preparation, no trigger that was apparent, no explanation. I’ve tried to find a trace of her a couple of times over the years with no luck. She did have a presence in a couple of other places on the web, with the same handle, and she disappered from those places too. Unlike some of us now, years later, she had not, as far as I ever saw, given away any information about herself in real life, so I never had anything to go on but her handle.
    If anyone knows, it would be nice to know she’s okay and just decided one day to go off and do other things.

  378. From Gary’s FB bio:
    *Before* impugning an opponent’s motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.”
    — Sidney Hook
    I like it.

  380. I thought Jesurgislac clashed with Brett once too often and it was either about abortion or the question whether to ask women to be more cautious about situations where they could be in risk of rape is blame shifting in disguise.
    Can’t remember either why Gary left. Wasn’t there something about his health too at the time?

  381. Gary had some issues with gout IIRC, and was struggling to keep a roof over his head as a full-time blogger.
    More than anything, though, I think losing Andrew marked the end of his tenure here. I believe both he and Hilzoy went to Andrew’s memorial at Ft. Carson, and both left the blog shortly thereafter.
    At least that’s how I remember it.

  385. Gary was around for several years after Andrew died.
    Ah…then it must have been that my own participation got eaten by a dissertation around that time, which is why I don’t remember much of Gary after that point.
    Hoping Slarti and OC Steve are doing okay, too.

  388. Looking at the post nous put up, I see I wrote this
    I feel, because the two posts below this one deserve to be on the top of the blog, but as I wrote in the deleted post, I’m going to try and get an open thread up every Friday. I went with Friday nite my time, which is Friday morning for the bulk of the folks here, and I’ll try to find the sweet spot in terms of time as we go along.
    So, will try that again.

  389. I seem to remember that OCSteve stopped by not that long ago, maybe even in the last year.

  390. I read (somewhat hastily) that whole thread with the OC Steve comment. My own comments make me today want to tell me then to STFU. Oy vey!

  396. Wow, I knew that my sense of time had been very fucked up in the last few years, but I could have sworn that OCSteve had dropped by more recently than that! Salutary realisation….

  397. Wow, I knew that my sense of time had been very fucked up in the last few years
    Mine has been that way for a while, worse in the pandemic phase. Sometimes I can’t tell if something was a week ago or a couple of years. Part of it, but only part, is that it’s almost like the year and a half of COVID is time out of time, so things that happened just before the shutdowns started seem like a couple of weeks ago.

  398. Same. And in addition, come to think of it, that last comment of OCSteve was just days before my mother died, so no wonder it’s lost in a whirl of confusion.

  399. Part of it, but only part, is that it’s almost like the year and a half of COVID is time out of time, so things that happened just before the shutdowns started seem like a couple of weeks ago.
    https://xkcd.com/2502/
    We can only hope 2022 doesn’t need an asterisk as well. Hope, but not, alas, expect.

  400. Ditto on COVID screwing up my sense of time. “Oh, wait. That was two years ago.” I say that a lot.

  401. “That was two years ago” — a familiar thought train. I feel like I’ve been one of the lucky people in relation to COVID — someone to shop for me, congenial surroundings, didn’t get COVID, was half a hermit to begin with.
    But!
    April 2019 — my intention to semi-retire is turned into full retirement as of June ’19, not by my choice. This is a big blow, long story, but it takes me several months to really start accepting it.
    Sept 2019 — trip to Ohio; my sister and I get into serious conflict with my mom over her insistence on continuing to live alone at 95, with various … problems.
    Oct 2019 — ex-husband, father of my kids, landlord, neighbor, friend of 50 years standing — is diagnosed with a rare cancer and starts treatment in Boston that lasts on and off for several months, including 2 surgeries.
    Nov 2019 — my mother ends up in “rehab” (nursing home) and we know she’s not coming home, one way or another
    Dec 2019 — two weeks in Ohio to help sibs empty Mom’s apartment
    Feb 2019 — weekend away followed by 5 days of pretty bad respiratory illness (who knows!)
    March 2020 — it begins………
    April 2020 — Mom dies
    So it goes.
    All this against the background of Clickbait’s attempted destruction of my country, and the descent into absolute insanity of a significant portion of my fellow citizens.
    Sheesh.

  403. yesterday, i couldn’t remember if the WFH started in 2019 or 2020 – because it seems like “WFH for 17 months!” should feel like much a bigger deal than it has.

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