RSS
As I reported back in my November 11th column in Taki’s Magazine, Pfizer shut down lab processing of its world-historical vaccine clinical trial from late October until the day after the election to avoid having to follow its published protocol on when to assess its results. Now, what I gleaned from a close reading of StatNews has been confirmed by a New York Times article:
Politics, Science and the Remarkable Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine
The furious race to develop a coronavirus vaccine played out against a presidential election, between a pharmaceutical giant and a biotech upstart, with the stakes as high as they could get.
By Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland, David Gelles, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Denise Grady
Published Nov. 21, 2020
Updated Nov. 30, 2020… In a double-blind clinical trial, the gold standard for testing new medicines or vaccines, neither the company nor the participants know who receives vaccines and who gets placebos. Only an independent review board has access to that information.
The protocols for the trials lay out under what conditions the board can look at the results. Pfizer’s trial protocol was the most aggressive of all six vaccine candidates, allowing for a check of interim results once 32 participants developed Covid-19.
Pfizer’s published protocol called for interim analyses when the number of cases across the two arms reached 32, 62, 92, and 120, with a final analysis after 164 cases (see pp. 102-104).
Pfizer wound up blowing off its first two called-for analyses without disclosing their change of plans to investors, causing some stock analysts to issue cautionary reports.
It was a lower benchmark than Moderna and the other companies had adopted and F.D.A. regulators warned Pfizer they were highly unlikely to issue an emergency use authorization for a coronavirus vaccine based on such a small data set.
But that’s conflating Pfizer’s announcement of efficacy vs. the FDA’s approval of safety, which are two different issues. As it turned out, Pfizer announced the spectacular efficacy of its vaccine on the morning of Monday, November 9th, even though it did not yet have the required 2 months of safety data to officially apply for FDA approval until the second half of November (and the FDA meeting won’t be until Thursday, December 10).
Outside experts criticized Pfizer for allowing itself to peek at the data too early and too often.
But Pfizer laid out the precise math it would follow in declaring whether the vaccine was likely to meet the FDA’s 50% efficacy hurdle or should be declared futile:
Pfizer decided it should drop that first benchmark and asked the F.D.A. to approve a new protocol on Oct. 29, effectively dashing Mr. Trump’s hopes of an announcement before Election Day.
The company also stopped processing test results from trial participants while it worked with the F.D.A.
That’s the smoking gun.
Protocol changes are discouraged once data is available, and Pfizer did not want to cross the benchmark before it got verbal approval to drop it.
In other words, Pfizer crossed its published benchmark before Election Day, but didn’t want to have to announce its results, so it shut down its lab work on the world’s most important project.
That approval came on Nov. 3, Election Day, or the day after.
The delay later enraged Mr. Trump, who claimed it was part of a conspiracy to damage his chance at re-election. Dr. Bourla said he turned a blind eye to the Election Day deadline.
“Before, people were saying it’s too soon,” he said. After the election, “people are saying, ‘Oh, it’s too late.’”
Once Pfizer resumed processing test swabs on Nov. 4, it quickly became apparent that the infection rate had skyrocketed, as it had nationwide and in other countries.
With 94 Covid-19 cases, the company asked the data monitoring board to reveal the results.
In other words, during its lab shutdown, Pfizer blew past both its first three disclosed interim analyses (32, 62, 92).
On Sunday, November 8th, the independent board called the Pfizer CEO with the results of the blind trial:
Then everyone was ushered from the room except Dr. Bourla and Pfizer’s general counsel, Doug Lankler, so the two men could hear a breakdown of the data that showed the vaccine was more than 95 percent effective. Of 94 people who had gotten sick, they were told, 90 were in the placebo group and only four were in the vaccine group.
With only 4 COVID cases in the vaccine arm out of the first 94 cases blowing away the third interim analysis’s threshold of no more than 25 cases in the vaccine arm out of the first 92 cases overall, we know that Pfizer’s vaccine would have been declared efficacious in either the second interim analysis (62 cases overall with no more than 15 in the vaccine arm) or the first interim analysis (32 cases overall with no more than 6 in the vaccine arm). Even if all 4 vaccine arm cases were among the first 32, that still would be better than Pfizer’s published threshold of efficacy.
So, almost certainly Pfizer should have announced the efficacy of its vaccine by, at latest, early on Monday November 2, using either the first (32 case) or, possibly, the second (62 case) interim analysis.
That evening, Pfizer officials informed a key F.D.A. official of its news, along with a short list of others. Biden’s team was alerted to the development that night. But in a sign of the suspicions that mark the Trump administration, the president’s top health officials did not learn of the news until the next morning, when it became public.
Mr. Trump’s anger about the timing has not abated. In a news conference on Friday, he suggested Pfizer and other drugmakers had taken revenge on him for pushing drug price controls.
“They were going to come out in October, but they decided to delay it because of what I’m doing,” he grumbled. “They waited and waited and waited.”
Obviously, Trump is right.
On the other hand, if Trump really were the authoritarian strongman his haters claim he is and his fanboys hope he is, he would have done something about this, such as, at minimum, dispatch his SEC to warn Pfizer that if they don’t disclose results according to their published protocol, they will be sued.
But that’s not who Trump is.
The NYT also implies that the similar Moderna vaccine, which was announced to be extremely efficacious on November 16, 13 days after the election, would also have been announced to be efficacious in late October or, at least, the day before the election if the Trump Administration weren’t so politically correct:
The call was tense, the message discouraging. Moncef Slaoui, the head of the Trump administration’s effort to quickly produce a vaccine for the coronavirus, was on the phone at 6 p.m. on Aug. 25 to tell the upstart biotech firm Moderna that it had to slow the final stage of testing its vaccine in humans.
Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, a French biochemical engineer, recognized the implication. In the race to quell the pandemic, he said, “every day mattered.” Now his company, which had yet to bring a single product to market, faced a delay of up to three weeks. Pfizer, the global pharmaceutical giant that was busy testing a similar vaccine candidate and promising initial results by October, would take the obvious lead.
“It was the hardest decision I made this year,” Mr. Bancel said.
Moderna’s problem seemed fitting for late summer 2020, when the United States was reeling from not just a pandemic but unrest over racial injustice. Dr. Slaoui informed Mr. Bancel that Moderna had not recruited enough minority candidates into its vaccine trials.
White people are more likely to volunteer for scientific research. I was in the consumer packaged goods marketing research business from 1982-2000. We put together a remarkably scientific panel of consumers by relying on white women’s urge to help out.
If it could not prove its vaccine worked well for Black and Hispanic Americans, who have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, it would not make it over the finish line.
Nonwhites tend to have a perfectly rational but socially dysfunctional “What’s in it for me?” attitude toward scientific research.
At the same time, hitches in the design and execution of the clinical trials were emerging. Both Pfizer and Moderna were facing the problem of too few minority volunteers, but Pfizer had the deep pockets to solve it. The firm expanded its trial from 30,000 to 44,000, a decision that Dr. Eric Topol, a clinical trial expert with Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., estimated cost the firm hundreds of millions of dollars.
When Dr. Slaoui from Operation Warp Speed called Moderna’s chief executive to say Moderna had to recruit more minorities, it came as a body blow. Dr. Slaoui told a colleague afterward: “I just burned all our relationship” with Moderna.
Dr. Fauci met with Moderna’s trial investigators and enlisted N.I.H. experts to help the company reach more Black and Hispanic volunteers. While Moderna won plaudits for diversifying its pool, Pfizer, whose trial was already designed to reach a result quicker than Moderna’s, was now indisputably ahead. …
As we all know, Race Does Not Exist. Except in vaccine trials, where it’s all important.
Both companies ultimately completed the crucial stages of their human trials this month and reported spectacular initial results, vaccines that appear to be about 95 percent effective against a virus that has killed 1.3 million people, a quarter million of them in the United States.
“A delay of up to three weeks:” If Moderna had been allowed to announce three weeks earlier that would have been October 26. Two weeks earlier would have been the Monday before Election Tuesday.
Would it have made a difference if the stock market boomed the day before the election because of the great news about the vaccine?
Here’s CNBC’s headline for Monday, November 9:
Stock market live Monday: Dow soars 800 points, new intraday records, stay-at-home stocks fade
CNBC.com staff
Pfizer’s announcement that preliminary data showed that its Covid-19 vaccine candidate was more than 90% effective sparked a massive Wall Street rally on Monday, with investors rotating into some of the stocks hardest hit by the pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hit intraday record highs during the session.
If Pfizer or Moderna had instead announced the good news exactly one week earlier on Monday, November 2, the day before the election, there would likely have been a similar reaction from investors.
If this alternative timeline good news on November 2 had flipped 1 out of 300 votes, that would have been enough to flip Georgia (0.24% Biden Advantage: 16 Electoral Votes), Arizona (0.30% : 11), and Wisconsin (0.63%: 10). That would have caused a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. The addition of Washington D.C.’s 3 Electoral Votes due to the XXIII Amendment caused the Electoral College to have an even number of votes, which means you can have ties.
A tie in the Electoral College then goes to the House of Representatives, where each state in the new Congress votes as a delegation. Because the GOP is stronger in small states, Trump likely would have won in the House.
So, yeah, Trump probably would have been re-elected if he’d made Pfizer follow its published protocol and/or let Moderna carry out its clinical trial on the kind of people who want to volunteer for clinical trials.
But Trump failed at those tasks.
Addendum: Keep in mind that in close elections, and this one was close in the Electoral College, you can make up all sorts of not-illogical arguments for how This One Thing tipped the election. I can recall during the extended Florida vote count after the 2000 election receiving a press release from a Sikh-American lobby making the argument that Sikhs had determined the election based on how they had voted on the crucial turban-motorcycle issue. Sikhs have very strong feelings against laws requiring helmets while riding a motorcycle because it you can’t wear a helmet and your sacred Sikh turban at the same time. The press release pointed out that Bush and Gore had taken opposite stands in their Party’s platforms on motorcycle helmet laws, and that there were X Sikhs in Florida and if only tiny percentage Y had shifted their vote due to their stance on motorcycle helmet laws, then the other candidate would have been elected President. I did all the math, and, yeah, the Sikhs were right. But still …
So while it’s likely that the delays in announcing the efficacy of the vaccine trials may well have cost Trump the election, the same is true for all sorts of other events.
Wrong: the world’s most important project was to vanquish the Horrible Bad Orange Man, and everyone had their part to play. Including Pfizer.
The weird thing is to screw Trump they also screwed some of their own investors by not telling them they were changing what they were doing. That created a false impression of failure and no doubt some of their stock owners sold. (I think shareholder suits are basically bogus, but i'd see i could sue if i was one of those guys.)
~~~
But despite all the bottom line here--
Given Biden, this was Trump's election to lose ... and he's the one who lost it.
Beyond better action and communication on immigration, beyond getting the troops home from Afghanistan, even beyond the Democrats' summer of riots and open attack on the rule of law, Trump had the opportunity to cast the question of "who do you trust to lead you out coronatime and get America moving again?" and contrast an active, dynamic, positive can-do Trump with a passive, doom-and-gloom, cowering-in-his-basement Biden.
(Heck, Trump could have even gotten himself in the vaccine trial. "A leader leads, doesn't ask the American people to do what he won't do himself.")
But ... no. This thing was completely up in the air going into the 1st debate. Trump had the golden opportunity to draw this contrast and generally skewer the empty-suit Biden and what did we get ... a dynamic leader?
No a lazy, unprepared, ill-disciplined Trump, who confirmed--for any undecideds watching--every "asshole" stereotype of Trump that the establishment (minoritarian, globalist, big-state) media have been pushing for four years.
Trump wants to blame someone--mirrors are available.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue
All of Steve's pontificating about demographic voting trends, etc. is irrelevant if the vote is rigged. But I guess he's on board with the MSM theory that talking about election fraud is best avoided because it's "dangerous for democracy." I don't what else explains the silence.
They would have lots of reasons not to announce it before the election. One of the super legitimate ones is to not have Trump turn their vaccines into a toxic highly partisan political issue like he did with hydroxychloroquine.
If the pharmaceutical companies hate Trump it’s certainly not because he did anything worthwhile to earn their hatred. There would be plenty that a real right wing populist would have done to do that, but that’s not Trump.
Overall I and I’m pretty sure Steve have no idea what is and isn’t typical in in drug trials. It’s kind of absurd to say that the delay (if there even was a delay) was definitely because of one thing or another without some kind of real smoking gun (e.g. an email laying out intent, not what Steve calls a smoking gun). The argument Steve is making is ultimately a probabilistic one that has to be built on a very deep foundation of background knowledge about the process.
Some in the African-American community have argued that there is _too much_ testing on Blacks, and have called for Blacks to stop volunteering for trials.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/this-hbcu-president-joined-a-covid-19-vaccine-trial-his-call-for-more-volunteers-stirred-outrage
“Earlier this month, Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, and C. Reynold Verret, the president of Xavier University of Louisiana, issued a public letter announcing that they were participating in a Covid-19 vaccine trial. Kimbrough and Verret, both leaders of private, historically Black universities in New Orleans, encouraged their students, faculty, staff, and alumni to consider participating in the same trial or others like it…
Their message was in line with others from HBCU leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus. But their letter, because it was aimed in part at students, provoked outrage.
The HBCU leaders should not put students forward as experimental “lab rats,” parents, alumni, and others fumed in a torrent of social media comments that generated headlines in the local press. A prominent economist said they had contributed to the excessive recruitment of Black people for trials. Leaders of a Black church political group demanded that Kimbrough and Verret “immediately disclose if they are being paid to urge students to participate in the trials.”
Trump is absolutely enough of an authoritarian strongman to do this, it’s just that his administration was not competent and loyal enough. And it would have been perfectly legitimate for him to do it, unlike firing Comey and pressuring the Ukrainians to investigate his political opponent.
Trying to paint Trump defeat as rooted in his nobility and principles is really really absurd. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re trying to say but others have.
There was almost no price paid by his opponents for bullying and opposing Trump.
"Guy De Champlagne and his handlers cry out in pain as they strike us."Replies: @Guy De Champlagne
Trump is a gasbag and a pussy who spent most of his presidency “monitoring the situation.” By this year, anybody who mattered had long since figured that out.
Mr. Sailer is too decent to do this, but it is possible to estimate the cost of the delay in human lives, or, at least, establish lower and upper bounds to the number of lives lost to each day’s delay. A very cold-hearted political calculation by Pfizer and Moderna.
You need two months of safety data from one half of your Phase III trial participants, and we're allowed to wonder if the external slowdown of Moderna's trial engineered such a election timed delay; on the other hand, this was their first Phase III trial, but they didn't do the work just by themselves. With the data iSteve brings to our attention, I'd previously heard the recruiting delay imposed was "a month", subtracting three weeks from their EUA application on November 30th gets you November 9th. Add a week and it's the day before the election, but of course too late for real mail-in and absentee ballots. Whereas in October Pfizer said they wouldn't have the safety data required before the third week of November, which matches the 20th of that month data of their EUA application.
To try to get a better grasp on the details, you might start with ClinialTrials.gov, companies must preregister Phase II and above trials before doing them. Here's Pfizer/BioNTech's single entry for all three trials, Moderna's Phase II enrolling 600 adults for two dosings, and Moderna's Phase III.
It's reasonable to assume enemy action from the FDA after they with the CDC sabotaged COVID-19 testing until then end of February, resulting in only 4,000 people being tested under extraordinarily strict requirements to get one. By the time the private sector was allowed to do tests in March, COVID-19 in the US was beyond any theoretical ability to control.
Details on request, but I've covered the most important in previous comments, insane FDA requirements imposed on those not the CDC, plus of course the gross incompetence we've come to expect from the CDC on infectious disease control, which I suppose can't be easily distinguished or disentangled from malice. As @Charon notes in the first comment, "the world’s most important project was to vanquish the Horrible Bad Orange Man, and everyone had their part to play." Remember we're talking about increasingly explicitly murderous Leftists.
A burning question then becomes, "Why is the current social and political response so different than previous responses when it is now clear that Rona is no worse than the Hong Kong flu and it is the political responses to Rona that have caused problems?"
There are some obvious factors:
(1) Federal power has grown immensely at the expense of civil rights and liberties and the rule of law since the 1960, particularly in the twenty years since the immense and on-going erosion initiated in the wake of 9/11.
(2) The Boomers and subsequent generations seem to have a pathological fear and unwillingness to acknowledge many unpleasant realities, including the inevitability of death and disease.
(3) Enormous advances in science, technology, and medicine in the last half century have amplified this unwillingness to face fundamental realities and generated a sense that all that is needed is sufficient action on the party of government, e.g. lockdowns, nucleic acid-based vaccines, etc., to conquer and overwhelm whatever unpleasant reality currently faces the public.
(4) The world's elites have become a hegemon, promoting a new global, neo-feudal world order. They have ruthlessly used Rona Panic as a tool for advancing their agenda.
As far as I’m concerned, the vaccines are a side show, just a part of the historically unprecedented and apparently irrational political response to Rona Panic. My main interest in these novel and, by traditional standards of vaccine testing, untested vaccines is the concern that like all the lock down policies they may prove counter-productive. The worst case scenario might be that sometime after a mass inoculation program, it turns out that the vaccines have extremely deleterious side effects among a very large proportion of those who receive them. The short tests of these vaccines in experiments involving unusually small sample sizes for these types of tests do not reassure me. Nor does the rush of a government I already do not trust to impose mandatory vaccination programs.
Both Pfizer and Moderna Could Have Announced Their Vaccines’ Efficacy Before the Election, Which Likely Would Have Meant a Trump Victory
No one except for clothes-cupboard-12-hours-a-day-living savants were waiting for the release of a coronavirus vaccine to determine which way they’ll vote.
This thing was determined a month or so beforehand, in smokey rooms, mostly lit dark, likely with some ominous music playing in background.
Completely stolen election much akin to your hated Irish takeover from Nixon. Why carry on ignoring the elephant in the room?
(I don’t even have a dog in the fight. Trump was a typical property developer: full of shit, full of graft, crime, favours and immigration.)
Just as a matter of principle alone.
I have less than zero thoughts on its efficacy and nothing but a deep seated loathing for people urging it on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYMzEplnfU
In the future you'll go to cut-and-paste a link and before it's pasted the decision will already be vetted by artificial-intelligence as to whether it meets the required approval rating of Amazon.
Just as you hit ctrl-v your windows will be smashed in, your dog shot your mrs put in a hammerlock as you throw yourself to your knees begging the police to leave your nanna alone for not wearing a face mask.Replies: @Pierre de Craon
And anyway, who better to drain the swamp than someone from Sewage Central?
Now, both StatNews and the New York Times have reported that Pfizer stopped processing nasal swabs from late October until the day after the election in order to not know if it were time to disclose the results of its clinical trial according to the protocol it had published.
Pfizer is free to offer evidence against what these two publications have stated. If you are aware of any evidence other than emphatic denials, please let us know.
"A pivotal clinical trial protocol is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off."
You have a real journalistic scoop here, Steve.
Ditto for vote irregularities. It was the Party Line for years that Russia "hacked" 2016, whatever that means. When it comes to mail-ballots fraud was unthinkable, then fraud was vanishingly rare, then it wasn't "widespread," then it wasn't "significant." The only thing we know for sure is that vote fraud is too boring to think about. Also anyone wanting to talk about vote fraud and claiming to know statistics is probably a virgin.
“Trump probably would have been re-elected if he’d made ” sure that millions of Xiden votes weren’t mysteriously manufactured.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/12/biden-delta-26-percent.htmlOf course, only delusional MAGA types still cling to the delusion that Trump win the election. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.Replies: @Supply and Demand, @epebble
So they would have had to magic up an extra ten or twenty thousand ballots in WI, AZ, NV, GA, PA and MI. Would not have made a difference, not allowing the Democrats to gut election safeguards was the key.
I see Bill Block, the lawyer who brought down Lance Armstrong and Alberto Salazaar, has joined Trump’s effort in Wisconsin. Simple signature check will see all those states flip.
My point is that I have no idea how unusual it is that they stopped processing nasal swabs, what their official explanation is, how reasonable that explanation is. Vaccine testing and approval is an area I know very little about.
Reading the article:
Now I know their official justification: because they wanted to change the benchmark to one more rigorous and didn’t want to cross the threshold of the previous benchmark until they got permission to do that change. Is that unusual? I have no idea. Is that explanation bullshit? I have no idea. I don’t have the background knowledge to make that call.
That would be an excellent reason not to express an opinion about it.Replies: @Guy De Champlagne
If you think any of those vaccines are efficient or even safe, I’ve got a bridge to sell you!
I’d argue Trump is experiencing the same NIH/CDC bureaucratic firewalls LBJ experienced with Westmoreland. (Though, I don’t believe Westmoreland tried to sabotage the Vietnam War just to spoil LBJ’s 1968 presidential campaign despite the bad optics of the Tet Offensive.)
If the Executive bureaucracy in the form of Anthony Fauci doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t need to play. Most major departments have “failsafes” in the event of an angry President. On the extreme end you had Allen Dulles who was likely involved in the JFK assassination after getting fired as CIA Director. But most often they can just slow walk and wait out any President. When Trump fired Comey that likely drained serious political capital despite it being necessary. Right now Fauci is likely going to be part of the Biden Administration for doing everything possible to hinder Trump.
*Damn these files are BIG!
I will never take this injection.
Just as a matter of principle alone.
I have less than zero thoughts on its efficacy and nothing but a deep seated loathing for people urging it on.
In the future you’ll go to cut-and-paste a link and before it’s pasted the decision will already be vetted by artificial-intelligence as to whether it meets the required approval rating of Amazon.
Just as you hit ctrl-v your windows will be smashed in, your dog shot your mrs put in a hammerlock as you throw yourself to your knees begging the police to leave your nanna alone for not wearing a face mask.
Trump was re-elected.
Pfizer and Moderna…… How many billions did Trump send them via Project Warp Speed? And then these skunks sabotage him. I heard Trump boast many times that a Covid vaccine would be announced very soon.
Trump now knows that he should have had his people monitoring Pfizer and Moderna. Monitoring their progress.
__________________________
It seems some took Federal funding. Pfizer did not
Was the Pfizer vaccine part of the government’s Operation Warp
http://www.nytimes.com › 2020/11/10 › health › was-the-pfizer…
Nov 10, 2020 — Pfizer did not accept federal funding to help develop or manufacture the vaccine, unlike front-runners Moderna and AstraZeneca. Pfizer has …
I don’t know about this one. A lot of people claim they won’t get the vaccine. I don’t think many Biden voters would have changed their minds. Would more people have voted for Trump who ended up staying home instead? Hard to say.
Now what about if another stimulus package had been approved before the election, with extra unemployment, additional federal unemployment for millions of gig and contract workers and another round of $1,200 payments? That seems a lot more likely to increase votes for Trump. And yet the Republican Senators didn’t want to sign such a bill. Almost all of them won their seats but Trump didn’t. Interesting that he doesn’t rant and rave against them.
I saw that Clinton, Obama, and Bush are all going to be first in line. I'm hoping the vaccine has an effect on them something like this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0APF3SO9tqE
If Trump had made a deal with Pelosi the Senate would have gone along. But McConnell didn't want to risk making a deal with Pelosi and then have Trump refuse to go along.Replies: @notsaying
FDR inarguably made things far worse, but the blame continues to be pinned largely on Hoover to this day among all but largely scholarly or ideological circles. Trump played the role of Hoover 2.0 so well that the oligarchs could have no qualms throwing him under the bus now rather than keeping him on for the almost certain disasters that will follow.
He didn't. Policy was suboptimal and could have been better for a more rapid labor market recovery. That happens whenever you have human beings making policy.
but the blame continues to be pinned largely on Hoover to this day among all but largely scholarly or ideological circles.
If you preside over a 30% decline in real domestic product per capita (largely driven by horrid monetary policy), people tend to blame you. Them's the breaks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/health/was-the-pfizer-vaccine-part-of-the-governments-operation-warp-speed.html
In July, Pfizer got a $1.95 billion deal with the government’s Operation Warp Speed, the multiagency effort to rush a vaccine to market, to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine. The arrangement is an advance-purchase agreement, meaning that the company won’t get paid until they deliver the vaccines. Pfizer did not accept federal funding to help develop or manufacture the vaccine, unlike front-runners Moderna and AstraZeneca.
Pfizer has distanced itself from Mr. Trump and Operation Warp Speed. In an interview on Sunday, Kathrin Jansen, a senior vice president and the head of vaccine research and development at Pfizer, said, “We were never part of the Warp Speed,” adding, “we have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”
On Monday, a spokeswoman for Pfizer clarified that the company is part of Operation Warp Speed as a supplier of a potential coronavirus vaccine.
Although it’s true that Pfizer and BioNTech had been working on a vaccine all year before the companies struck their deal with the U.S. government in July, a $1.95 billion deal is nevertheless a significant incentive to keep going. In fact, international health organizations have long used such market guarantees to encourage for-profit manufacturers to supply vaccines to the developing world.
“On the other hand, if Trump really were the authoritarian strongman his haters claim he is and his fanboys hope he is, he would have done something about this, such as, at minimum, dispatch his SEC to warn Pfizer that if they don’t disclose results according to their published protocol, they will be sued.
But that’s not who Trump is.”
Assuming Pfizer is breaking protocol, my guess is that neither Trump nor anyone in his administration realized it and were aware they could go after Pfizer for doing so.
Trump has threatened Twitter and social media with rescinding Section 230, so I can’t see him going soft on Pfizer.
Shades of Trump’s attitude towards postal ballots?
I would say that Trump’s problem in the election was that he did not win enough states. Fortunately he won Florida, which had been won by Obama, otherwise the result could have been called a landslide.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6’7″, and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.
https://youtu.be/iRW-rRqgd6o
https://youtu.be/Y5dmNKBGKqAReplies: @Feryl
https://youtu.be/xEpy89d5aW4
More like: The Republicans now need to go to the tech titans and ask them to let them into office once in awhile.
People in late middle age and early old age should make up the bulk of f/t legislative bodies, with no one in their young adult years permitted to run. Persons who have passed the calendar year they turn 72 are properly debarred from running as well.
Have you actually examined some data on the median age of candidates in each party?
The six leaders of the Democratic caucus in Congress were all born prior to 1951 and one was born prior to 1940. The four Republican caucus leaders were born in 1942, 1961, 1964, and 1965. Five of the six notable Democratic presidential candidates this year are over 60 and four are over 70. (The younger fellow was an inappropriate candidate to boot). The two notables in 2016 were 69 and 75 respectively at that time. The median age of Democratic committee chairmen in the House is 72 years. That of Republican ranking minority members is 62.Replies: @Kronos, @Steve Sailer
FIFYReplies: @Supply and Demand
This election had nothing whatsoever to do about “policies.”
Border wall, mandatory e-verify, end refugee racket, clamp down on numbers ... get to moratorium.-- Bring the troops home.
(Our interests do not require it, but even if they did, we simply don't have the ability--in terms of public support for inflicting the necessary carnage--to "nation build" in shitholes ... even beyond all the HBD issues.)-- Repatriate industry.
Reindustrialize. The future is automation anyway, but we can't let all the jobs and capability for that be in China.
The only critical issue i'd add--not in at least rhetorical the Trumpian tool kit:--Drive toward eugenic fertility
Republicans need to talk loud and long about "affordable family formation". About reversing the marriage collapse and making it possible for young men and women to get together and form families. Owning that issue would also help them reach their worse (the most ill-informed) demographic, young women.The core of "affordable family formation" is simply an immigration moratorium. Immigration is what's screwing young people on both the jobs and the housing front. Getting young people to understand that's what immigration means instead of "ethnic restaurants!" is critical. But beyond that is tax policy that precisely targets family formation--huge tax deductions for banging out kids that lets mom's stay home if they like and generally lets young parents' money go entirely to their family and leave financing government to us older/richer folks.And this can be done in such a way--deductions, no refundable credits--and with welfare reforms, that the result is also a push toward eugenic fertility.
Bottom line:No big rush "back to the drawing board" is required. Nationalism--treating your citizens/voters interests as paramount--easily beats minoritarian financier globalism. You just need leaders willing to fight for it and capable of explaining the issues clearly and cogently.Replies: @Jonathan Mason
Dude,
Trump did win reelection, and by a large margin.
Vote fraud matters.
The efficacy of the Russian vaccine was announced a long time ago, so I’m surprised that Trump did not claim credit for that.
Lots of great data there: 30,000 in the experimental arm, 10,000 placebo. They're including a cohort 60 years or older, technically up to 111. 21 +- 2 days between doses, which lets you guesstimate when they'll reach the FDA threshold of two months after the second dose for 15,000 subjects, but there's clearly no way September 10th + 19 days plus two months gets you a date before November 3rd. It of course takes a lot of time and money to enroll subjects into a study, see for example the screening and required blood sampling of 9,520. A quick skim should help explain why Phase III trials are expensive.
I’m sure they had enough spare bogus ballots on hand, in Philly, Atlanta, Detroit and Milwaukee, to give Biden the “win” under any eventuality.
But I am sorry for the several thousand people who will have died needlessly because of the delay.
https://classconnection.s3.amazonaws.com/854/flashcards/1972854/jpg/220px-gen_william_c_westmoreland1354241393307-thumb400.jpg
If the Executive bureaucracy in the form of Anthony Fauci doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t need to play. Most major departments have “failsafes” in the event of an angry President. On the extreme end you had Allen Dulles who was likely involved in the JFK assassination after getting fired as CIA Director. But most often they can just slow walk and wait out any President. When Trump fired Comey that likely drained serious political capital despite it being necessary. Right now Fauci is likely going to be part of the Biden Administration for doing everything possible to hinder Trump.
https://grrrgraphics.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/cia_cartoon_ben_garrison.jpg
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/doctor_fauci.jpg
*Damn these files are BIG!Replies: @Gordo
Why does Garrison stay loyal to Trump when Trump dumped on him?
Why Trump assumed good faith by the Chinese and an array of domestic foes he had publicly denounced I have no idea. They were willing to delay the vaccine and kill many people. When it came down to it he did not understand the depths of his enemies hate and their ruthlessness.
He knew the corporate elite he was presenting himself as opposition to hated him. It is a pity Trump did not read the The Fifth Risk, in it Lewis made clear how much Trump was resented by every branch of government technical civil servants. They particularly loather being oversaw by a committee sat on by Ivanka and the idiot Kushner. The people Trump appointed to head these agencies, such as Wilbur Ross, were alone and completely out of their depth when it came to watching out for anti-Trump shenanigans,
Pfizer delayed announcement of a fake vaccine til after Creepy Pedo Joe Lockdowns pretended to win the election.
The delayed announcement killed nobody, just like the coronasniffles have killed nobody.
This is a nice, simple. compelling argument so tell me where I’m wrong.
It seems certain that Pfizer would have a really good idea of the different probabilities of when they would meet various potential vaccine benchmarks. That’s pretty simple statistics and extraordinarily relevant even outside of their feelings on Trump. Yet they initially chose a benchmark that had a good chance of being met before the election and according to the article fudged standards in order to have one that triggered so early. And based on at least one variable, they expected it to trigger even sooner than it did because it was based on the number of people in both placebo and active groups that got COVID and their vaccine overperformed their expectations. If more people getting the vaccine had gotten sick like they expected them to the benchmark would have tripped even earlier.
IF they hate Trump so much why did they choose that initial benchmark? If everything is all about Trump, then you’re left arguing that he pissed them off some time between the setting of the initial benchmark and the freezing of the swab analysis. That’s certainly possible, and the article gives reasons why that may have been the case, but I don’t think that’s what Steve is saying happened.
There’s going to be a lot of pressure from employers for people to get vaccinated. When you get the first dose you will get a card to carry (no, I am not joking) that among other things will show the dates and what vaccine you got. I would think the places like theaters and airlines will demand to see cards for at least a while.
“Despite the minefield, Johnny Taylor Jr., president of the Society for Human Resource Management, predicts many employers will opt for mandates, more now than he would have guessed several months ago. Employers have an obligation to get rid of known hazards in the workplace, he says, and COVID-19 has proved to be a hazard unlike any other.
“It’s real, and it’s devastating,” he says. “So, I think the dynamic changes. Employers are actually going to position this as, I need to do this, full stop.”
People can ask for exemptions but your employer might not like it.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/937240137/as-covid-19-vaccine-nears-employers-consider-making-it-mandatory
symptoms of Covid-19 are not infectious. They do not shed the virus. It's also likely that persons with mild cases of Covid-19 are only mildly infectious.
The best way of dealing with the current pandemic is the traditional one: quarantine persons who are obviously ill and otherwise proceed with business as usual.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
The Futurama talking heads seem less ridiculous now. Both parties are content with a gerontocracy.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
The main difference between the 2016 and 2020 elections was that in 2016 the democrats were so sure Hillary would win that they didn’t bother cheating as usual. This year, however, they’ve doubled down on fixing the elections. It was a massive steal.
Probably, but there are two factors involved, safety as well as efficacy, and the former was the gating factor in applying for FDA Emergency Use Authorizations for both of these mRNA vaccines.
You need two months of safety data from one half of your Phase III trial participants, and we’re allowed to wonder if the external slowdown of Moderna’s trial engineered such a election timed delay; on the other hand, this was their first Phase III trial, but they didn’t do the work just by themselves. With the data iSteve brings to our attention, I’d previously heard the recruiting delay imposed was “a month”, subtracting three weeks from their EUA application on November 30th gets you November 9th. Add a week and it’s the day before the election, but of course too late for real mail-in and absentee ballots. Whereas in October Pfizer said they wouldn’t have the safety data required before the third week of November, which matches the 20th of that month data of their EUA application.
To try to get a better grasp on the details, you might start with ClinialTrials.gov, companies must preregister Phase II and above trials before doing them. Here’s Pfizer/BioNTech’s single entry for all three trials, Moderna’s Phase II enrolling 600 adults for two dosings, and Moderna’s Phase III.
It’s reasonable to assume enemy action from the FDA after they with the CDC sabotaged COVID-19 testing until then end of February, resulting in only 4,000 people being tested under extraordinarily strict requirements to get one. By the time the private sector was allowed to do tests in March, COVID-19 in the US was beyond any theoretical ability to control.
Details on request, but I’ve covered the most important in previous comments, insane FDA requirements imposed on those not the CDC, plus of course the gross incompetence we’ve come to expect from the CDC on infectious disease control, which I suppose can’t be easily distinguished or disentangled from malice. As notes in the first comment, “the world’s most important project was to vanquish the Horrible Bad Orange Man, and everyone had their part to play.” Remember we’re talking about increasingly explicitly murderous Leftists.
Yes but who knows what it really is? As I recall the Russians announced the day after Pfizer said around 90 that theirs was 90, too. I immediately assumed they were doing a Trump and didn’t believe them. Now that Pfizer has increased their effectiveness to around 95 and Moderna says theirs is the same, have the Russians upped their figure?
Trying to paint Trump defeat as rooted in his nobility and principles is really really absurd. I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to say but others have.Replies: @bomag, @AndrewR
LOL
There was almost no price paid by his opponents for bullying and opposing Trump.
“Guy De Champlagne and his handlers cry out in pain as they strike us.”
With the demise of Trump I’d like to point out the greatest flaw in alt-right: the vast bulk of us aren’t right, capitalist, lolbertian or even somewhat inclined or predisposed to consider your economic pabulum as being anything other than lock-step-Oligarchip-sheep.
We are White: Capitalised. It’s an identity not an economy.
Our economic platform is much like the ashkenazi: whatever is best for our kind
Hopefully with the failure of last ditch, gambling machine , no universal healthcare or minimum wage, corporate welfare trump alt-right White people can at last unite
How many lawyers are going to take them to court for killing grandma because they shut this down for political reasons? Cuomo and Whitmer have immunity for their malfeasance due to being in office, I don’t think project warp speed exemptions are going to help Pfizer in that regard.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
think Gina Haspel would do the same thing CIA director Brennan had done with vote rigging in the US instead of Ukraine and the other color revolution countries.
Perfection is not an option.
And anyway, who better to drain the swamp than someone from Sewage Central?
Cute, but not true, the Sputnik V Phase III trial started a month after it was “registered”, and they’re playing ball on this with the rest of the world to the extent they’re submitting information to the US ClinicalTrials.gov. Recruiting began September 10th (click on “History of Changes” at the bottom).
Lots of great data there: 30,000 in the experimental arm, 10,000 placebo. They’re including a cohort 60 years or older, technically up to 111. 21 +- 2 days between doses, which lets you guesstimate when they’ll reach the FDA threshold of two months after the second dose for 15,000 subjects, but there’s clearly no way September 10th + 19 days plus two months gets you a date before November 3rd. It of course takes a lot of time and money to enroll subjects into a study, see for example the screening and required blood sampling of 9,520. A quick skim should help explain why Phase III trials are expensive.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
Is that even a thing anymore? Trumpian views on immigration and regulation often garner 2/3 approval in polls, but the Dems seems to have won with looting and defunding the police, while putting up two candidates who did scant campaigning and had previously wilted under national attention.
More like: The Republicans now need to go to the tech titans and ask them to let them into office once in awhile.
https://youtu.be/iRW-rRqgd6o
https://youtu.be/Y5dmNKBGKqAReplies: @Feryl
I think we’re destined for eternal rule by The Sixties Generation (those born in the 1940’s). We should not be surprised given the constant propaganda about the 1960’s being the most important decade ever. No wonder this generation is so narcissistic.
The sixties were good because as a kid you could run around outside unsupervised until suppertime. It also became a violent decade that ended all that fun. Probably why us later age boomers flipped, and went Republican. Sorry about that. Now how does that make me narcissistic?
Clinton was in early (in his late 40s). (Mostly a set of fortuitous circumstances for him.) And Trump's obviously an old guy, but he's an early boomer. I'm pretty much the peak boomer, and this would be a fine time for me to be finishing up a presidency or doing a 2nd term. Biden's not even a boomer but a very late "Silent", and merely a temporary placeholder. Kamala (1964) you could call a super-late boomer, but she's really GenX--a 70s child.
Unless Pence runs/wins--unlikely--it's very unlikely that the Republican opponent in 2024 will be a Boomer. I'd say it's 50-50 that Trump is the last Boomer president--even if you (incorrectly) label Kamala one. (Depends on Biden's health. I''d bet Kamala is either primaried or loses to a younger Republican in 2024.)
The very last plausible Boomers turn 60 in 2024. We are ceding leadership of businesses and organizations and government to "younger more diverse Americans!" everyday. (Be careful what you wish for.) And we're dying off! (A quarter of Boomers--gone already. My grade school girlfriend/sweetheart died years ago.)
~~~
Young guys here whining about Boomers are frankly pathetic. And out yourselves as people who just don't understand anything.
Boomers simply aren't your problem. There are ethnic issues--Jews pushing
minoritarianism/immmigrationism, blacks doing blackety, blackety, black; Latinos; immigrants. There are issues with global finance and business. There are issues issues of the super-state grabbing more power.
But the generational stuff is small beer. And Boomers are not the PC loons. In terms of voting it's the same old, same old. As people get older, gain more life experience, get married, have children, take on more responsibility, they become "wiser", more realistic, more conservative. Boomers vote more conservatively/sanely than millennials for precisely that reason.
If there's a real generational/demographic split, it appears to be that millennials are more PC and more "safe space" fragile and totalitarian. And in particular that millennial women have drunk the kool-aid and are much more likely to be PC messes.
That said, my take is there's never been an easier time for a young guy to separate himself from the crowd. Be a man, work, earn a living, eat paleo, lift weights, hunt, fish, camp climb, (do something other than video grames) speak based reality, stick to your guns and don't tolerate any millennial female SJW/anti-white b.s. ... and i think there are plenty of young women out there who would be happy to follow you. Mostly young women simply parrot what they are told--by the edublob, Hollyweird, their friends--but an actual man being a man is way more compelling.
We Boomers are all going to be out of power soon, and all dead soon after. Yeah, ok, we sucked. Stop whining, take responsibility and do better.Replies: @ic1000
Or they would have just had to make those nice African-American ladies in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Detroit run a few more stacks of ballots through the scanner.
Giuliani would point out that 10 times more ballots were cast than people, but the state officials would not allow an audit. The media would then say there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud and refuse to cover it.
Even if the President tried to give a major address to talk about it the media wouldn’t cover it.
The vaccine would have changed nothing.
Whether you like it or not Trump behaved consistently with the Constitution. Laziness? Perhaps.
OTOH, perhaps Pfizer was convinced that Joe would win and delayed the announcement so as not to piss him off.
2) I agree it’s probable that the airlines, cruise ship, hotels, and perhaps even employers will require some kind of vaccine card if only to keep lawyers at bay. What would you do if you were the CEO?
Slightly OT, but here’s my prediction of how he presidential election will play out over the next several weeks:
The most intelligent among the Democrat and Republican establishment and Trump’s supporters must have realized that the current crises afflicting this country and the world are likely to come to a crux over the next four years, the result of at least three decades of grotesque greed, stupidity, and incompetence on the part of the USA’s and the world’s various establishments. It seems to me impossible that there’s any way out of this mess short of revolution(s) and I suspect that some among the political establishment and Trump’s supporters understand this. These people realize that winning the USA’s 2021 – 2024 Presidency is a political hot potato.
This would play out worst for the Democrat Party. Evidence of the vote fraud that might win the White House is so palpable that a majority of polled Americans now believe a Biden-Harris win will be illegitimate. Even a sizable minority of polled Democrats share this opinion. If an illegitimate Biden-Harris Presidency oversees the disasters that are coming over the next four years, the Democrat Party will be screwed like no other political party in American history. Wise members of the Democrat establishment, if there are any such, may be looking for a way to dodge this bullet.
Wise members of the Republican Party establishment, in the unlikely event there are any, may have reached a similar conclusion regarding a potential Trump victory, should Trump’s legal arguments prevail in the courts. Trump himself may realize this and his legal maneuverings may just be a ruse to position himself for a triumphant, “I-told-you-so” return in 2024.
If the wisest members of the Democrat-Republican establishment can, I think they will work quietly behind the scenes to get the election thrown into the House of Representatives. There they can engage in surreptitious horse trading to ensure that neither Biden-Harris nor Trump-Pence wins the election. Instead some malleable pair of sacrificial lambs will gain the honor of overseeing the USA crash and burn over the next four years. Both sides will get rid of Trump. They can hope that in four years things will settle down to some kind of new, dismal order. If the Democrat establishment was really smart, they’d pick Bernie Sanders as the sacrificial lamb. As the next four years roll by, this would utterly discredit and destroy the out-of-control left wing of their party.
OTOH, my thinking may be too Byzantine and complex for the boobocracy that currently rules this country. We may be heading into a truly ugly situation where the federal government and the two political parties completely lose the trust of most citizens. That will surely lead to civil conflicts the like of which this country hasn’t seen for over a century and a half.
Guy de Champlagne is riffing on that famous quip by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“A pivotal clinical trial protocol is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.”
Not necessarily. They would have needed to pull out more suitcases from under the table and get more dead people to vote, that’s all.
If Trump had received those extra votes due to a vaccine announcement, the Democrats would have simply printed more ballots to overcome Trump’s margin of victory.
it is strange that the United States is so quick to criticize the electoral process in much less developed countries, particularly when the winner turns out to be somebody who the US government does not like, and yet the US is equally incapable of running fair elections.
Maybe the US also needs to take a look at what other democracies are doing. For example you don't hear a lot about unfair elections in Canada, so maybe they know something that we don't.Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Gary in Gramercy
So precious.
You avoid looking at StatNews articles Sailer links in the same way that Victorian prudes avoided looking at nude table legs. Its author, Matthew Herper, answered your question.
Very.
Alternately, you could try a search engine. Since Sailer is nearly the only person asking about this, Google’s unbent algorithm is in play for the query “Can preset clinical trial endpoints be changed?” In first place is Scott Evan’s aptly-titled peer-reviewed article from 2007, “When and How Can Endpoints Be Changed after Initiation of a Randomized Clinical Trial?”.
Scroll down to Box 1.
Patience is a second alternative, Mr. De Champlagne. Sooner or later, commenter Claude Rains may drop in to add the perspective he gained as Captain Renault on the set of Casablanca.
I must know a different breed of voters. Most are going to avoid the vaccine. On the other hand I can’t help but notice how scared of Covid the wignats are. They probably make up the white male voters that walked away from Trump. Despite thinking they would beat up their granny to get first in line for the vaccine, they never would vote for Trump again. I don’t think it a vaccine announcement before the election would have made any difference. Something about MIGA. Hope they all enjoy their liability free side effects, and not because of Trump. They seem so utterly effeminate to me anymore. (Boys, this is why you don’t gain any traction.)
HCQ was trialed in Asia very early on. It was one of the first ideas peo ple had for treatment, and there was some initial promising results. It wasn’t Trump but the left who turned it into a toxic political issue, starting with blaming him for people who drank chlorine, an absolutely disgusting self-serving illegitimate assignment of blame.
What’s particularly bizarre about the account of Moderna’s decision to slow down its trial is that it reports that it was the head of Operation Warp Speed itself, Slaoui, who was putting pressure on it to do so.
Is this really accurate? Was Trump unable even to get Slaoui on board to get the vaccine out as soon as possible? Was Slaoui himself pressured by other forces to push for tests on minorities at the expense of speed?
Or look at it this way: do they really believe Trump could be as bad as Hitler? If so, sacrificing thousands of lives is no big deal. They after all murdered 100 million minimum in the 20th Century and have absolutely no shame about it today. And show every sign of wanting to continue that in the US, starting with the "irredeemable" deplorables per Hillary, who's just echoing the same 10% of the population estimate as a percentage by her generational peers in the Weather Underground in the 1970s.
(The poll workers also stopped processing ballots from voters while they worked with…)
You have a real journalistic scoop here, Steve.
We start in 1946 . Nine months after the war when troops came home. The eighty year old crowd running Congress would be part of the silent generation. Arguably the most destructive generation of all. Who do you think made up the charismatic professors that flipped the college boomers? Also they are responsible for the sexual revolution and feminism.
The sixties were good because as a kid you could run around outside unsupervised until suppertime. It also became a violent decade that ended all that fun. Probably why us later age boomers flipped, and went Republican. Sorry about that. Now how does that make me narcissistic?
Sorry, but the fix was in on this election. There IS widespread evidence of voter fraud in Democrat controlled cities and counties. It didn’t matter what Trump did with the vaccine or on any other issue because our system is now totally corrupt and the votes needed to elect the favored candidate will simply be manufactured. That’s the country we live in.
But assuming this wasn’t the case, assuming that political actions actually have an impact on how people vote instead of simple tribal affiliation, why would the media allow for accurate reporting of vaccine progress? The narrative would shift to questions of the vaccine’s safety, and how quickly the vaccine had been “rushed through.”
The media were also willing to cover up stories that should have seen Joe Biden drummed out of politics completely. Remember, the controversy about Hunter Biden’s laptop isn’t Hunter trading off his father’s position as Senator and VP (well, it is PART of it), but that Joe is engaged in pay for play politics with hostile foreign governments. Very few people are aware of that, and if they were, I’m sure it would have driven more people away from Biden than Trump’ s supposed lack of vaccine progress drove voters away from him. Then there’s Kamala’s noxious political history. Biden’s poor health. The rape allegation that’s actually credible… it took the full weight of Democrat machine politics, tech industry hyper-manipulation, and good ol’ Chinese foreign influence to get to this nightmare scenario. Early good news about the vaccine just wouldn’t have mattered.
So far, I’ve talked to 3 doctors in Japan, and none are planning to get the vaccine, expressing some worry that possible unknown side-effects are not worth protection against a fairly benign infection.
I saw that Clinton, Obama, and Bush are all going to be first in line. I’m hoping the vaccine has an effect on them something like this…
On a close reading, this juxtaposition of sentences is pretty subversive to The Narrative. Do authors LaFraniere, Thomas, Weiland, Gelles, Stolberg and Grady recognize that? Or perhaps their sleep is untroubled, knowing close reading as the obsolete Pre-Current-Year quirk that it is.
Which would only have led to more ballots being run off on the copiers in Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philly, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Richmond, etc, etc.
Is anyone else having trouble with the “Commenters to Ignore” option? It used to work great, but lately it empties the list after a week or so. I realize it when I’m suddenly seeing comments by Guy De Champlagne, Corvinus, Thomas, etc. I check “Commenters to Ignore” and, sure enough, it’s gone empty. I wrote to Mr. Unz about this and he suggested it was a cookies problem at my end, but I cleaned out that cache and the problem persists.
The Sixties are absolutely meaningless to anyone under thirty. Boomers like to imagine that millennials look up to them for their music and exploits in the Sixties, but all they see are uncool elderly people who have way too much money.
Vaccine testing and approval is an area I know very little about.
That would be an excellent reason not to express an opinion about it.
Mr. Sailer is assuming here:
1. there was a subset of voters who were awaiting news about a potential vaccine under Trump’s watch, and were ready to change their mind the moment there was an announcement;
2. there was a subset of voters who up until the election day were uncertain who they were going to vote for, and needed “good news”, in particular on the vaccine front, and decided not to vote for Trump because he failed to deliver.
The problem with Sailer’s peddling of this vaccine political conspiracy theory, while possible, is that there had been tens of millions of mail-in votes already casted before Pfizers alleged malfeasance, and thus they would have been unaffected compared to those going in person to the polls. More than likely, people had already made up their mind about who they were going to vote for.
Of course, while we should give Trump for authorizing Operation: Warp Speed to find a vaccine for a global scourge, is that not what a president should be doing anyways? Besides, let us NOTICE that Pfizer notably did not accept government money to develop, test, or expand manufacturing capacity under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed initiative to quickly find a vaccine. Pfizer had partnered with the vaccine’s original developer, Germany’s BioNTech, in March 2020. The White House announced Operation Warp Speed in May 2020.
https://www.newsweek.com/election-2020-voter-turnout-67-percent-highest-120-years-1544552
Had Trump been able to wave a COVID vaccine around or say one was imminently towards completion that would’ve been a big triumph. (Though the media would’ve undoubtedly played it down as dangerous/untested or just ignored it like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.) COVID has undoubtedly pissed off a lot of undecided voters who typically find politics too boring to pay attention. But COVID has heavily intruded on their lives and they are now paying attention. These are the kind of people who vote only once and a while. I imagine them as Bill Clinton saxophone voters.
https://youtu.be/a_WuGDYawFQ
They also showed up for Trump in 2016 on account of the best Presidential debate zinger in history:
https://youtu.be/_XzL1sQWRd4
Trump would’ve appeared as a winner with a solution to their COVID problem. (Then again, the Dominion voting machines may had just switched them for more Biden votes.)
Probably true, but as they say, “It’s the thought that counts.”
That the Global Elites would rig such an important medical trial in order to attempt to hurt Trump’s re-election chances speaks volumes as to how much they fear/hate him.
After all, if I fired a gun at you but missed, would it be a conspiracy theory to say I wanted you dead?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
@ Harry Baldwin, which commenter is this, anyway?Replies: @candid_observer
I’ve had the exact same problem and now I’m stuck seeing comments from Corvinus, Thomm, Tiny Duck and all the other posters that everyone else ignores.
You can’t escape hate facts.
I think it’s simple. There should be a rebuttable presumption that something as potentially influential as the vaccine rollout process was exploited for political purposes and/or financial gain if there was an opportunity to do so. That’s where we are as a nation, corrupt as any.
The GOP’s revenge will be to give Pfizer and its CEO an even bigger tax cut, plus more coolie laborers.
“… Pfizer and other drugmakers had taken revenge on [Trump] for pushing drug price controls.”
True enough, and Mr. Sailer has wrapped it up for us. But there was no way that Donald Trump was going to win this election, and unless some legal ground can be used at the SCOTUS we will see the end of it next week. It wasn’t just the drugmakers perfidy, it was everything else.
Note, for example, that there isn’t one word about this knife in the back from Big Pharma in the regular media. This story is under control, just like so many others. It’s their country now, and we just live in it.
The Left and their business supporters worldwide (especially China and Big Tech) cooperated in this effort, as we will see as the rewards are handed out during the first six months of the “Biden” administration, especially if the same techniques work in Georgia in January as in the previous November. Obviously, every effort should be made; I’m going to be contributing to the Republican Senate campaigns, since I don’t vote there.
I looked at the table from Pfizer that you posted as an image Steve. Where does it say that Pfizer was supposed to announce the results before Election Day?
Trying to paint Trump defeat as rooted in his nobility and principles is really really absurd. I'm not sure if that's what you're trying to say but others have.Replies: @bomag, @AndrewR
Trump’s principles can be summed up as “what’s good for me?” and “what does Ivanka want me to do?”
A fundamental issue driving modern failures to communicate across political divides is this: a person adjusts his required standard of proof depending on what he wants to believe. Suspicion alone was enough to sustain Russiagate for years. Ukrainegate, which concept MSM aborted and which term google has paved over (suggesting Ukrainedate), failed to launch despite ample evidence.
Ditto for vote irregularities. It was the Party Line for years that Russia “hacked” 2016, whatever that means. When it comes to mail-ballots fraud was unthinkable, then fraud was vanishingly rare, then it wasn’t “widespread,” then it wasn’t “significant.” The only thing we know for sure is that vote fraud is too boring to think about. Also anyone wanting to talk about vote fraud and claiming to know statistics is probably a virgin.
Don’t underestimate the Leftism of biomedicine. It is, for example, de rigoir for labs to have the radio turned on to NPR.
Or look at it this way: do they really believe Trump could be as bad as Hitler? If so, sacrificing thousands of lives is no big deal. They after all murdered 100 million minimum in the 20th Century and have absolutely no shame about it today. And show every sign of wanting to continue that in the US, starting with the “irredeemable” deplorables per Hillary, who’s just echoing the same 10% of the population estimate as a percentage by her generational peers in the Weather Underground in the 1970s.
So what. It still could have been a razor thin margin election like 2016, where with much less cheating against Trump, he won by 80,000 votes spread over three Rust Belt states he was expected to lose.
Everyone in the Left was determined to Never Again allow such an election outcome.
Maybe. Then again, probably not. Epstein didn’t kill himself, but Trump lost.
“where with much less cheating against Trump, he won by 80,000 votes spread over three Rust Belt states he was expected to lose.”
Assuming there was this massive fraud. But perhaps you are willing to prove how the U.S. Army seized servers for Dominion in Germany, how the Trump team has in its possession a Dominion machine from Ware County, Georgia with clear proof that votes had been purposely switched for Biden, and how Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law by the end of December
“Everyone in the Left was determined to Never Again allow such an election outcome.”
Or more than likely those who had voted for him in 2016 decided on their own to not vote for him in 2020. Is not reasonable to believe that Trump alienated enough people that enabled Biden to win? Is it not reasonable to believe that Biden over Trump was viewed as the lesser of two evils in 2020, compared to Trump in 2016 over Shitlery?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acZXridt7wM&feature=emb_title
Not that it mattered…Trump won by a landslide anyway, causing the panicky printing or diversion of millions of fake votes…If Trump won by a slightly bigger landslide, just more printing and diversion…
Trump spent his whole presidency cultivating hated of people with graduate degrees, and it turns out companies full of them would rather make a non-partisan announcement.
What goes around comes around. Trump sucks at politics.
If Steve is to be believed, they intentionally suppressed the information in order to influence the election.
For your bigger point, in as polarized a nation as the US, you can't "Chinese Menu" your coalition, including group A means X, Y, and Z are not an option, perhaps forever.
A bunch of people with graduate degrees spent his whole presidency cultivating their hatred of him.Replies: @Kronos
Furthermore, if the announcement were non-partisan as you claim, then it's a non-sequitur to say it was due to Trump's politics.
Total comment fail.
How exactly did Trump turn HCQ into a highly toxic partisan issue? The Chinese state media was telling us the last week of January to look into HCQ as a treatment option. Trump didn’t mention it until 60 days later – AFTER the flatten the curve nonsense started.
A few vaccine thoughts:
1) I wish I could find it (might have even been here) that labs had a vaccine in Feb and admittedly something along the lines of it “not really being that difficult” to create. Are any vaccines that quick? Doesn’t it take at least a year, if not more, even for a regular flu?? Why was this PANDEMIC!!!! so easy to defeat?
2) Don’t shareholder’s have a serious right to be pissed at companies sitting on information? Don’t efficient markets depend on this? Not sure about any legality.
3) If by doing nothing at all, I get covid and have a 99.97% chance of recovery, why should I bother getting a vaccine that may only be 90% effective? Wouldn’t a placebo have the same effect? At 99.97% I could attribute my recovery to basically anything and you couldn’t disprove it. Am I missing some statistical angle? And just to head things off, I have no contact with people who work or live in high risk nursing homes.
If you can't understand even 6th grade math just write a comment that says "i do not understand 6th grade math". We'll understand.
The vaccine "efficacy" == "not getting a case of bug". Not "avoiding fatality".
Yes we know you are a young Adonis who isn't going to die (unless a wild boar sneaks up on you). (Heck, i'm not young and a lot of weight work from Adonis and i'm very unlikely to die from the Xi virus either.)
You without vaccine:
Chance of infection eventually = 1
Chance of surviving infection = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = (1-.9997)
You with vaccine that's 95% effective:
Chance of infection eventually = .05
Chance of surviving if infected = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = .05 x (1-.9997)
Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.
And it's actually better than that because that vaccine probably reduces severity--has your immune system responding faster/better--even in cases where you get infected.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue, @Peterike
Shareholders don't have a right to be informed of every minor event. If there hadn't been an election in between nobody would care about the two week (or whatever it was) delay.Replies: @Steve Sailer
It is customary in drug and vaccine development to put work on hold while waiting for a reply from FDA. Once in a while the great Mr. Sailer is wrong and there really is “nothing to se here folks, move on”
Not even wrong.
And of course it could be customary to pause and for that pause to still be politically motivated. But if everything is all about Trump why did they choose a benchmark that even could lead to an announcement pre election? Why risk it?Replies: @Big Evil Pharma Statistician
Tasks aren’t really the strong suit of the neuroatypical. Thankfully he’s mobilized enough support to help him with that in his second term.
I don’t know if this is a smoking gun, but it sure shows motive by one of the key decision makers, vaccine expert Paul Offit:
From Science Magazine back in May:
“Offit, who wrote a book about an infamous 1955 manufacturing accident of a polio vaccine that crippled hundreds of children, worries the impending U.S. presidential election is driving Warp Speed to set unrealistic deadlines. “The thing that really upsets me is I’m trying to think what’s the month after October? Oh, right, November,” Offit says. “I think the current administration may say, ‘This is our October surprise, this is this is my gift to this country, look what we did.’” Offit sits on a committee that is organizing COVID-19 vaccine trials in the United States—the National Institutes of Health’s public-private Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines—and says members were not consulted about BARDA’s investment or the proposed clinical trial. ”
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/doubts-greet-12-billion-bet-united-states-coronavirus-vaccine-october
So back in May we learn that “Offit sits on a committee that is organizing COVID-19 vaccine trials in the United States” and he is “really upset” that there could be a vaccine in October.
Ugh.
The vaccine results, which were slowed until after the election, are glorious: 100% effectiveness (!!!!) against severe disease.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/absolutely-remarkable-no-one-who-got-modernas-vaccine-trial-developed-severe-covid-19
What interests me is that there was that little episode back in the summer where Trump rather abruptly started talking about how Americans paid the highest drug prices in the world, and he was going to make the drug companies change that. The idea came and went without preamble or follow-up; it was curious.
One hypothesis I’d offer is that Trump was trying to bully the drug companies into announcing progress on a Corona Virus vaccine. It may have worked a little too well; the drug companies may have been so frightened they decided they’d best do what they could to keep Trump from getting reelected at all.
This was a call for pre-2016 election Trump nationalism, forcing other countries' socialist monopsonies to pay for their share of new drug development, force them to stop their severe price controls. Of course, we now know Trump's a Boomer civnat for whom that would be several steps too far.
The only good thing what would come out of this insanity is knowing a number of people who are for it would die from situations where a new drug would have saved them (see antibiotics in particular).
“So what. It still could have been a razor thin margin election like 2016… “
Maybe. Then again, probably not. Epstein didn’t kill himself, but Trump lost.
“where with much less cheating against Trump, he won by 80,000 votes spread over three Rust Belt states he was expected to lose.”
Assuming there was this massive fraud. But perhaps you are willing to prove how the U.S. Army seized servers for Dominion in Germany, how the Trump team has in its possession a Dominion machine from Ware County, Georgia with clear proof that votes had been purposely switched for Biden, and how Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law by the end of December
“Everyone in the Left was determined to Never Again allow such an election outcome.”
Or more than likely those who had voted for him in 2016 decided on their own to not vote for him in 2020. Is not reasonable to believe that Trump alienated enough people that enabled Biden to win? Is it not reasonable to believe that Biden over Trump was viewed as the lesser of two evils in 2020, compared to Trump in 2016 over Shitlery?
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
People in late middle age and early old age should make up the bulk of f/t legislative bodies, with no one in their young adult years permitted to run. Persons who have passed the calendar year they turn 72 are properly debarred from running as well.
Have you actually examined some data on the median age of candidates in each party?
The six leaders of the Democratic caucus in Congress were all born prior to 1951 and one was born prior to 1940. The four Republican caucus leaders were born in 1942, 1961, 1964, and 1965. Five of the six notable Democratic presidential candidates this year are over 60 and four are over 70. (The younger fellow was an inappropriate candidate to boot). The two notables in 2016 were 69 and 75 respectively at that time. The median age of Democratic committee chairmen in the House is 72 years. That of Republican ranking minority members is 62.
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Storm-Rising-Suspense-Thriller/dp/042510107X
It had a superb observation (despite being fiction) that the Soviet Union’s elite leadership were often insanely old with a few in the 90+ age bracket. In the book, Mikhail Gorbachev was supposed to be the fresh young face of Communism despite being already a grandfather when appointed as General Secretary. I’m assuming this was a common critique of the Soviet Union in the 1980s by the US press. But now the shoe really is on the other foot. Most US Boomer politicians are set to pull a Ginsberg/McCain and die in office.
https://arliewhitlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ttt0517.jpgReplies: @Art Deco
That apparently includes Wall Street:
pet peeve…
When did we start using the word “historical” to describe current events?
Is this not a bastardization of the word “historical”?
his·tor·i·cal /hiˈstôrək(ə)l/
adjective
• of or concerning history; concerning past events.
“the historical background to such studies”
• belonging to the past, not the present.
“famous historical figures”
☮
What the anti-Trump FDA apparatchiks and the vaccine producers did is far worse. We could have been vaccinating people 3 months ago if we had just done challenge trials on paid volunteers, all else being equal. The major delay here was having to wait until X number of participants in both legs of the trials were diagnosed with COVID-19- what took 4 months only had to take 3 weeks. It was proposed to do challenge trials by a number of true biomedical experts, in March and April, to save exactly this amount of time. There are no ethical concerns involved in challenge trials given that we already had a placebo group sent out into the world to catch COVID-19 the natural way, or that we were injecting humans with a novel m-RNA vaccine in the first place. The only reason for not doing challenge trials was because we might get the November 9th answer on efficacy on August 9th, which would screw up the plans for getting Joe Biden elected.
All you have to do to know Sailer is correct here is to imagine the hypothetical world where Hillary Clinton was President- does anyone doubt that Pfizer and Moderna both would have provided the announcements in October under the exact same circumstances?
Otherwise, anyone in the Western world aside from the morally challenged Dutch seriously considering challenge trials?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @AnotherDad
It gets repetitive, but if loser DiaperDonnie had actually done even one little bitty, teensy weensy, itsy bitsy something, anything, for the half of the population making under the $34k / year median wage in the USA…..he would not have lost in a landslide 8 million vote deficit. Instead DiaperDonnie, his hebe sponsors, and his tard magastinian followers were all about stripping the working poor of their pathetic basic medical plan and suppressing wages everywhere through increased immigration at all levels until the wu-wu pandemic put a temporary stop to it. The minimum wage in at least 20 states is still a pathetic $7.25 / hour. If DiaperBoy had pushed through an increase to $15/hour, he would still have his job. Instead, he was all about goosing the stock market and tax cuts for himself, his family, large corporations, and of course his vile hebe sponsors. Let’s see how long the 0.1% and their 10% apparatchiks can continue to plunder the bottom 80%……………….
And you're an economic idiot, the true minimum wage is $0. If $15 is great, why not $100??
I hate to say it but a subset of such undecided voters do exist. (If enough lived in a battleground State/County to make a sizable difference is another story.) Voter participation this election cycle reached insanely high levels at 67%.
https://www.newsweek.com/election-2020-voter-turnout-67-percent-highest-120-years-1544552
Had Trump been able to wave a COVID vaccine around or say one was imminently towards completion that would’ve been a big triumph. (Though the media would’ve undoubtedly played it down as dangerous/untested or just ignored it like the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.) COVID has undoubtedly pissed off a lot of undecided voters who typically find politics too boring to pay attention. But COVID has heavily intruded on their lives and they are now paying attention. These are the kind of people who vote only once and a while. I imagine them as Bill Clinton saxophone voters.
They also showed up for Trump in 2016 on account of the best Presidential debate zinger in history:
Trump would’ve appeared as a winner with a solution to their COVID problem. (Then again, the Dominion voting machines may had just switched them for more Biden votes.)
Maybe. Then again, probably not. Epstein didn’t kill himself, but Trump lost.
“where with much less cheating against Trump, he won by 80,000 votes spread over three Rust Belt states he was expected to lose.”
Assuming there was this massive fraud. But perhaps you are willing to prove how the U.S. Army seized servers for Dominion in Germany, how the Trump team has in its possession a Dominion machine from Ware County, Georgia with clear proof that votes had been purposely switched for Biden, and how Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act and declare martial law by the end of December
“Everyone in the Left was determined to Never Again allow such an election outcome.”
Or more than likely those who had voted for him in 2016 decided on their own to not vote for him in 2020. Is not reasonable to believe that Trump alienated enough people that enabled Biden to win? Is it not reasonable to believe that Biden over Trump was viewed as the lesser of two evils in 2020, compared to Trump in 2016 over Shitlery?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
[Corvinus makes the case for a genuine Trump loss, first by laying down a thick cloud of red herrings.]
Simple answer, from the Dems themselves, who realized after the polls closed that their Plan A cheating before that point wasn’t enough, so they had to go to a Plan B that was too big, too blatant to hide. Did Trump deserve to lose, worked hard at it? Absolutely. But I just don’t see any good, solid evidence he actually did.
"Simple answer, from the Dems themselves, who realized after the polls closed that their Plan A cheating before that point wasn’t enough"
That would be Fake News.
"But I just don’t see any good, solid evidence he actually did."
Because you simply choose not to.
‘Mr. Sailer is assuming here:
1. there was a subset of voters who were awaiting news about a potential vaccine under Trump’s watch, and were ready to change their mind the moment there was an announcement;
2. there was a subset of voters who up until the election day were uncertain who they were going to vote for, and needed “good news”, in particular on the vaccine front, and decided not to vote for Trump because he failed to deliver…’
You missed:
3. That an increased vote for Trump would not have just resulted in an increased production of fraudulent ballots in Pennsylvania et al. Democratic activists had announced they were going to do ‘whatever was necessary’ to win.
They did. As we’ve seen, it didn’t really matter how obvious the fraud was. All that was required was that it not be provable.
Assuming there was this increased production of fraudulent ballots. And recall it was Trump who stated he was going to win no matter what, and he primed his supporters into that type of thinking. When he won, no fraud. If he lost, there was fraud. That is insane.
This is all such a big load of big government, anti-liberty crap.
Pharmaceutical hackers should be able to sell their new substances, at whatever price and phase of development they want. Humans should be free to purchase them, act as guinea pigs, etc.
Government certification, e.g. FDA approval, public high school diplomas, drivers licenses, etc., are worthless, except as decoys to make “jobs” for government bureaucrats.
People in late middle age and early old age should make up the bulk of f/t legislative bodies, with no one in their young adult years permitted to run. Persons who have passed the calendar year they turn 72 are properly debarred from running as well.
Have you actually examined some data on the median age of candidates in each party?
The six leaders of the Democratic caucus in Congress were all born prior to 1951 and one was born prior to 1940. The four Republican caucus leaders were born in 1942, 1961, 1964, and 1965. Five of the six notable Democratic presidential candidates this year are over 60 and four are over 70. (The younger fellow was an inappropriate candidate to boot). The two notables in 2016 were 69 and 75 respectively at that time. The median age of Democratic committee chairmen in the House is 72 years. That of Republican ranking minority members is 62.Replies: @Kronos, @Steve Sailer
I recall reading this Tom Clancy book from my grandfather’s library.
It had a superb observation (despite being fiction) that the Soviet Union’s elite leadership were often insanely old with a few in the 90+ age bracket. In the book, Mikhail Gorbachev was supposed to be the fresh young face of Communism despite being already a grandfather when appointed as General Secretary. I’m assuming this was a common critique of the Soviet Union in the 1980s by the US press. But now the shoe really is on the other foot. Most US Boomer politicians are set to pull a Ginsberg/McCain and die in office.
About 1/2 the politburo in 1984 was over 70 and a few were over 80; no nonagenarians. Brezhnev looked like a physical ruin at the time. Andropov did not, but then he disappears from public view less than two years after taking office, dying after some month.
The reluctance to retire on the part of antique members of Congress with satisfactory pensions due is a puzzle. There are about 20 U.S. Senators who should have faced mandatory retirement in the last several years who are still sitting in that body, one of whom was just re-elected the age of 87. It's not a
specifically 'Boomer' phenomenon. My old local member was planning her re-election campaign at the time she died in March of 2018. She'd first been elected in 1986. She was born in 1929.Replies: @Kronos
A vaccine couldn’t save Trump from himself. Four years and I had enough of his petulant and juvenile tweets. I voted against hillary and against biden, Americans are weary of lifetime politicans who are now ruling us, not governing us. Not a subtle difference. I said this before, but if an Alien race visited the Earth and turned all politicians into fertilizer and ruled us with reason for eight years, I could live with that. Eight years and they would grow weary of mankind and depart. Stay safe.
We’ll just have to make up for his shortcomings ourselves.
They had four years to prepare for sandbagging Sanders and Trump. In 2016 they never thought any contingencies were necessary in a race where Hillary and Jeb Bush were the presumed candidates. Both were Deep State royalty by all measures.
So Pfizer conspiracy theory good, voter fraud conspiracy bad?
Maybe both worked in conjunction with each other?
.
Probably true, but as they say, “It’s the thought that counts.”
That the Global Elites would rig such an important medical trial in order to attempt to hurt Trump’s re-election chances speaks volumes as to how much they fear/hate him.
After all, if I fired a gun at you but missed, would it be a conspiracy theory to say I wanted you dead?
I’m fascinated by people, such as yourself, who react with such violent disgust to Trump’s tweets.
If you have a minute, could you please explain what it is about your psychological makeup that brings on this sense of revulsion?
Thank you
Amazingly, even with this freeze out Trump would have won if the election had not been rigged, especially the Dominion software machines, are an open invitation to rig them, dump Trump votes, add Biden votes and cheat.
It is so much easier being a Ubama or a Biden or a Pelosi. You can kick back and smirk while our Lügenpresse does all your PR work for you and ultra cheap! No need to tweet muon.
Our leader has feet of clay. What else is new? But as you stated earlier, all the people he trusted to represent the interests of his administration stabbed him in the back. Would Obama have been reelected if his advisors were equally disloyal? Maybe Trump should have appointed only long-time executives from his real estate empire, not people who begin every new job with a lucrative exit strategy and loyalty to the Swamp which giveth and taketh away all post-public service employment opportunities. Members of both parties are brought to heel by an eventual need for handouts from corporate, university, and foreign rent-seekers.
By the way, how’s Eric Cantor doing these days?
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Storm-Rising-Suspense-Thriller/dp/042510107X
It had a superb observation (despite being fiction) that the Soviet Union’s elite leadership were often insanely old with a few in the 90+ age bracket. In the book, Mikhail Gorbachev was supposed to be the fresh young face of Communism despite being already a grandfather when appointed as General Secretary. I’m assuming this was a common critique of the Soviet Union in the 1980s by the US press. But now the shoe really is on the other foot. Most US Boomer politicians are set to pull a Ginsberg/McCain and die in office.
https://arliewhitlow.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/ttt0517.jpgReplies: @Art Deco
Mikhail Gorbachev was 53 when he took office. Not old at all for the top man.
About 1/2 the politburo in 1984 was over 70 and a few were over 80; no nonagenarians. Brezhnev looked like a physical ruin at the time. Andropov did not, but then he disappears from public view less than two years after taking office, dying after some month.
The reluctance to retire on the part of antique members of Congress with satisfactory pensions due is a puzzle. There are about 20 U.S. Senators who should have faced mandatory retirement in the last several years who are still sitting in that body, one of whom was just re-elected the age of 87. It’s not a
specifically ‘Boomer’ phenomenon. My old local member was planning her re-election campaign at the time she died in March of 2018. She’d first been elected in 1986. She was born in 1929.
Trump has to tweet like a madman because he was and is frozen out by the scum of the mainstream press. And he has to troll and kick up dust with his tweets or they will sink without notice. Take a look at Trump’s twitter sometime. Immediately after his tweets you get thousands of liberal-left losers dogging T with nasty replies and (in their minds) refutations.
Amazingly, even with this freeze out Trump would have won if the election had not been rigged, especially the Dominion software machines, are an open invitation to rig them, dump Trump votes, add Biden votes and cheat.
It is so much easier being a Ubama or a Biden or a Pelosi. You can kick back and smirk while our Lügenpresse does all your PR work for you and ultra cheap! No need to tweet muon.
He didn’t turn it into a political issue, his enemies did. If Trump said that fresh air and exercise were good for the health, you’d soon find a hundred MD bluechecks calling him out and being given publicity in the NYT and NPR.
Reagan’s fourth Soviet leader. No Ronnie, no Gorby. Never forget that.
It’s a simple exercise to compare per capita excess mortality in 1968 (the Hong Kong Flu pandemic) to excess per capita mortality in 2020 (the SARS-COV-2/Covid-19 pandemic), making allowances for the excess deaths in 2020 that were a direct result of lock down policies rather than Covid-19, e.g., suicides, drug overdose deaths, and deaths due to delayed or denied medical care. When one does this one sees that excess death rates in 2020 were mo greater than those in 1968. In other words , the epidemiology of the current pandemic is typical of similar past pandemics, which occurred when a a novel respiratory virus appeared, was allowed to burn its way through the population, and then joined the vast zoo of such viruses with which humanity already copes on an annual basis.
A burning question then becomes, “Why is the current social and political response so different than previous responses when it is now clear that Rona is no worse than the Hong Kong flu and it is the political responses to Rona that have caused problems?”
There are some obvious factors:
(1) Federal power has grown immensely at the expense of civil rights and liberties and the rule of law since the 1960, particularly in the twenty years since the immense and on-going erosion initiated in the wake of 9/11.
(2) The Boomers and subsequent generations seem to have a pathological fear and unwillingness to acknowledge many unpleasant realities, including the inevitability of death and disease.
(3) Enormous advances in science, technology, and medicine in the last half century have amplified this unwillingness to face fundamental realities and generated a sense that all that is needed is sufficient action on the party of government, e.g. lockdowns, nucleic acid-based vaccines, etc., to conquer and overwhelm whatever unpleasant reality currently faces the public.
(4) The world’s elites have become a hegemon, promoting a new global, neo-feudal world order. They have ruthlessly used Rona Panic as a tool for advancing their agenda.
As far as I’m concerned, the vaccines are a side show, just a part of the historically unprecedented and apparently irrational political response to Rona Panic. My main interest in these novel and, by traditional standards of vaccine testing, untested vaccines is the concern that like all the lock down policies they may prove counter-productive. The worst case scenario might be that sometime after a mass inoculation program, it turns out that the vaccines have extremely deleterious side effects among a very large proportion of those who receive them. The short tests of these vaccines in experiments involving unusually small sample sizes for these types of tests do not reassure me. Nor does the rush of a government I already do not trust to impose mandatory vaccination programs.
"Despite the minefield, Johnny Taylor Jr., president of the Society for Human Resource Management, predicts many employers will opt for mandates, more now than he would have guessed several months ago. Employers have an obligation to get rid of known hazards in the workplace, he says, and COVID-19 has proved to be a hazard unlike any other.
"It's real, and it's devastating," he says. "So, I think the dynamic changes. Employers are actually going to position this as, I need to do this, full stop."
People can ask for exemptions but your employer might not like it.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/937240137/as-covid-19-vaccine-nears-employers-consider-making-it-mandatoryReplies: @Jus' Sayin'..., @Anon
The Rona Panic is maintained by confusing two very different things, an infection with SARS-COV-2 and Covid-19. Most people who are infected with SARS-COV-2 never develop Covid-19 or experience mild symptoms. People who test positive for a current or past SARS-COV-2 infection but present no
symptoms of Covid-19 are not infectious. They do not shed the virus. It’s also likely that persons with mild cases of Covid-19 are only mildly infectious.
The best way of dealing with the current pandemic is the traditional one: quarantine persons who are obviously ill and otherwise proceed with business as usual.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
I would say that the DNC’s problem in the election was that Trump won enough states but the immature Pelosis/fragile egos can’t admit they lost. Fortunately he won Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. The result was a landslide.
FIFY
Nobody, including Pfizer had no duty to provide protocols, vaccines or what have you by any given date.
Also, by doing their best, Pfizer is now the first mass provider in UK. The Americans would not read their application even now, although elections are long gone.
You are just a lazy bunch,.
Question: If The Fed printing press offered truly unlimited amounts of money, (including an exceedingly generous profit), what would the resulting vaccination-rollout timeline look like compared to the current timeline? I am very pessimistic about what the current timeline might turn out to be. After all, in 10 months, the US has been unable or unwilling to roll-out sufficient quantities of N95 masks and other PPE. To my knowledge, no journalist has pursued this — contacting experts in the logistics of vaccine production and distribution, and reporting their anonymous educated guesses as to timeline X vs. timeline Y.
See the story of the US mask maker who ramped up for the mini-swine flu pandemic; he almost went out of business, had to lay off most of his workers, after the demand went back to normal and hospitals went back to buying cheap masks from China.
Pretty much. Though in truth i think they rolled because they simply didn’t want the Democrats to extract revenge–no contract for you!–if Biden won. (The Democrats can and will do that.)
The weird thing is to screw Trump they also screwed some of their own investors by not telling them they were changing what they were doing. That created a false impression of failure and no doubt some of their stock owners sold. (I think shareholder suits are basically bogus, but i’d see i could sue if i was one of those guys.)
~~~
But despite all the bottom line here–
Given Biden, this was Trump’s election to lose … and he’s the one who lost it.
Beyond better action and communication on immigration, beyond getting the troops home from Afghanistan, even beyond the Democrats’ summer of riots and open attack on the rule of law, Trump had the opportunity to cast the question of “who do you trust to lead you out coronatime and get America moving again?” and contrast an active, dynamic, positive can-do Trump with a passive, doom-and-gloom, cowering-in-his-basement Biden.
(Heck, Trump could have even gotten himself in the vaccine trial. “A leader leads, doesn’t ask the American people to do what he won’t do himself.”)
But … no. This thing was completely up in the air going into the 1st debate. Trump had the golden opportunity to draw this contrast and generally skewer the empty-suit Biden and what did we get … a dynamic leader?
No a lazy, unprepared, ill-disciplined Trump, who confirmed–for any undecideds watching–every “asshole” stereotype of Trump that the establishment (minoritarian, globalist, big-state) media have been pushing for four years.
Trump wants to blame someone–mirrors are available.
That’s untrue, considering BARDA’s big purchase order for the at-the-time-hypothetical vaccine.
Oh, my bad, the commenter isn’t lying, rather attempting to mislead the uninformed. Seems to happen with some frequency.
@ Harry Baldwin, which commenter is this, anyway?
Pfizer may have wanted to control its own operations as much as possible, and so invested only its own money in research and manufacture. But they would have enjoyed such control had they waited for results before making a speculative investment. Yet Operation Warp Speed made it clear to Pfizer that they would be big losers if they didn't make an upfront investment in manufacturing and distribution to match Moderna. If they wanted to run with this crowd, they had to match those investments across the board.
Oh, please, Steve, do you really think the news of a vaccine would have caused a change in how people voted? That sounds like wishful thinking. This idea is fodder for conspiracy theories that will fester for years.
And does ANYBODY – pro-Trump, anti-Trump, or otherwise – think the president of the USA is responsible for generating a vaccine? I saw Maria Bartiromo interview Trump recently and as she closed the discussion, she thanked him – THANKED HIM – for getting us a vaccine. It was unbelievable. I don’t care how much you love Trump, he is not a laboratory scientist and he does not develop vaccines.
Good. Trump is a phenomenally bad fit for being President, so anything legal to get rid of him is welcome.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
As usual you are disingenuous little weasel pretending to be the only adult in the room. You don’t fool anyone.
This election had nothing whatsoever to do about “policies.”
Our President was reelected and our God-given immune systems are hundreds of times more effective than these fake vaxes.
If Pfizer announces its fake vax 300 times less effective than my body at vanquishing the sniffles, the Democratic Party runs fake ballots through the counting machines til they show a victory for Creepy Pedo Joe Lockdowns, same as they did before Pfizer et al unveiled the fakevax.
Think, McFly, think!
Probably true, but as they say, “It’s the thought that counts.”
That the Global Elites would rig such an important medical trial in order to attempt to hurt Trump’s re-election chances speaks volumes as to how much they fear/hate him.
After all, if I fired a gun at you but missed, would it be a conspiracy theory to say I wanted you dead?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
As someone who views this as an autoconspiracy, a group of like minded people working for the same goals but not necessarily having “the Global Elites” explicitly pulling their strings, you don’t need to go that far. Just posit that for Slaoui and everyone “below” in the process, to not deliberately delay good news about the trials (still undetermined if the safety data gating EUA applications was delayed) would probably be a career ending move at best.
As I keep saying, based on my mid-1970s through all of 1980s (emphasis because it had to have gotten a lot worse) observation of high level biology researchers, sometimes Nobel winners, often by definition otherwise viewed as the #1-2 in their subfield, if they’re not fairly hard Leftists, they operate in a culture so Left of center they must simulate being such. Now, I’m not sure how far this extended into “biomedicine,” drug companies and the like, but it’s a fairly safe bet there’s fairly far in that direction (that they’re willing to work for for-profit companies used to say a lot, it took a long time for the biology research community to really deal with this).
Anyone out there know anyone doing this sort of work, not pure biology, but for example the applied biology of making drugs and biologics like vaccines?
Everything else you say is perfect, including your closing analogy.
"Despite the minefield, Johnny Taylor Jr., president of the Society for Human Resource Management, predicts many employers will opt for mandates, more now than he would have guessed several months ago. Employers have an obligation to get rid of known hazards in the workplace, he says, and COVID-19 has proved to be a hazard unlike any other.
"It's real, and it's devastating," he says. "So, I think the dynamic changes. Employers are actually going to position this as, I need to do this, full stop."
People can ask for exemptions but your employer might not like it.
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/25/937240137/as-covid-19-vaccine-nears-employers-consider-making-it-mandatoryReplies: @Jus' Sayin'..., @Anon
This will be great if it happens. I’d like to see all the delusional people who refuse the vaccine be fired and marginalized.
Also, if everyone else is vaccinated or recovered, who would you get it from?
Vox Day has been posting lots of stuff about Dominion:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/12/biden-delta-26-percent.html
Of course, only delusional MAGA types still cling to the delusion that Trump win the election. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
@ Harry Baldwin, which commenter is this, anyway?Replies: @candid_observer
One point I haven’t seen mentioned regarding Pfizer’s timetable is that it was far more aggressive than for every previous vaccine. Namely, they invested in manufacturing even before they could know whether the vaccine would be safe and effective. Why would a company make such a speculative investment, rather than waiting, as usual, for the results to come in before plunking down this money?
Pfizer may have wanted to control its own operations as much as possible, and so invested only its own money in research and manufacture. But they would have enjoyed such control had they waited for results before making a speculative investment. Yet Operation Warp Speed made it clear to Pfizer that they would be big losers if they didn’t make an upfront investment in manufacturing and distribution to match Moderna. If they wanted to run with this crowd, they had to match those investments across the board.
Steve, are you really unaware that Trump did pull off an actual landslide victory, and that the Left is attempting to commit massive election fraud? How are you failing to notice the more than obvious patterns? You cannot be that deep in denial.
Actually, Mr. Sailer is aware that there is not the type of evidence that proves your ridiculous assertion.
“and that the Left is attempting to commit massive election fraud?”
According to your handlers.
“How are you failing to notice the more than obvious patterns? You cannot be that deep in denial.”
He did his NOTICING. You just don’t want to believe him.
Again and again: by pursuing a heavy-handed “decoupling” campaign to push businesses out of the huge consumer market and manufacturing Walhalla of China, the Trump administration has sided with the Deep State against Corporate America. Not the story conservatives are telling themselves, but that is what happened. With that and his utter failure on COVID, Donald Trump, the business-visionary-in-his-own-mind, has in fact been bad for business. The whole maneuver has also been bad politics, because the Deep State has always been quite clear it hated Trump with a passion, and wanted him gone yesterday. That is, there were no potential allies to be gained in that corner. Alienate your corporate backers as well (the deplorables having long been thrown under the bus by Prince Jared), and you end up a bit … exposed.
Bottom line, it’s all been a toxic mix of runaway ego and the appeasement by an inexperienced, confused figure placating his implacable enemies–exactly the qualities you don’t want in a leader. The Dems habitually bet on Repubs screwing up their stint in government, because fundamentally the latter don’t believe in the concept of government. With Trump, they were even more confident they didn’t need to do, offer, or simply promise anything–just orchestrate some fake outrage and wait for the stable genius to self-destruct. Now the time is coming to collect on those bets.
Yes, what we saw was a landslide against Biden/Cheney more so than a mandate for Trump. But as with Kavanaugh Trump being the only one with integrity/courage enough to stand up for his own side in the face of the fraud does stick out like a sore thumb.
We’ll just have to make up for his shortcomings ourselves.
“Plan A cheating before that point wasn’t enough, so they had to go to a Plan B that was too big, too blatant to hide.” It is so obvious that people don’t believe it. Re: the election steal, I’m reminded of the scene in Gettysburg where the officer reports to Lee that the Union has the high ground because of Rebel delay “even a blind man could have taken that hill.” Why didn’t Trump’s side have this better planned out? These are Democrats we are talking about.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/12/biden-delta-26-percent.htmlOf course, only delusional MAGA types still cling to the delusion that Trump win the election. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.Replies: @Supply and Demand, @epebble
Correct, you sound delusional — and are getting roped in by a known grifter using 1 potential answer to an algorithm that is the least sensible. More likely, large numbers of college educated white men under 40 like myself grew tired of Trump.
Maybe Biden won fair and square; maybe he didn't. Either way, I despise the POS and I will never accept him as POTUS. Joe and KamelToe can go to Hell, and they can take all of their delusional white supporters with them.
Enjoy getting screwed over by the Democratic regime. Don't expect any sympathy from me. You got what you voted for.
Maybe both worked in conjunction with each other?Replies: @Svigor
Yes, both of these things are true.
It’s kind of hilarious how rapidly the Weimerican regime has lost any semblance of legitimacy. Are there any perceptive people left who actually believe in that stinking pile of scheisse? People are herd animals and a great many of them simply aren’t designed to think critically about the system governing them, but I don’t understand how anyone who can could still believe in it.
This used to not be the case. 20 years ago the perspicacious could still look at this system and take it and the people running it seriously. Now it’s obviously a rotting corpse stinking up the place, sorely in need of dismemberment and disposal.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
There’s no need to “go back to the drawing board”.
Trump has shown what works–nationalism. Call it “populist nationalism” if you like. I.e. a nationalism that puts the interest of ordinary middle class Americans first, in stark contrast to establishment globalism which is only in the interest of our WaWa (Washington-WallStreet) axis of looting.
Trump’s problem was … being Donald J. Trump. Or to be fair, that the huge strengths of Trump were outweighed by his even huger weaknesses.
~~
Sitting in plain sight on the drawing board after Trump:
— Immigration control.
Border wall, mandatory e-verify, end refugee racket, clamp down on numbers … get to moratorium.
— Bring the troops home.
(Our interests do not require it, but even if they did, we simply don’t have the ability–in terms of public support for inflicting the necessary carnage–to “nation build” in shitholes … even beyond all the HBD issues.)
— Repatriate industry.
Reindustrialize. The future is automation anyway, but we can’t let all the jobs and capability for that be in China.
The only critical issue i’d add–not in at least rhetorical the Trumpian tool kit:
–Drive toward eugenic fertility
Republicans need to talk loud and long about “affordable family formation”. About reversing the marriage collapse and making it possible for young men and women to get together and form families. Owning that issue would also help them reach their worse (the most ill-informed) demographic, young women.
The core of “affordable family formation” is simply an immigration moratorium. Immigration is what’s screwing young people on both the jobs and the housing front. Getting young people to understand that’s what immigration means instead of “ethnic restaurants!” is critical. But beyond that is tax policy that precisely targets family formation–huge tax deductions for banging out kids that lets mom’s stay home if they like and generally lets young parents’ money go entirely to their family and leave financing government to us older/richer folks.
And this can be done in such a way–deductions, no refundable credits–and with welfare reforms, that the result is also a push toward eugenic fertility.
Bottom line:
No big rush “back to the drawing board” is required. Nationalism–treating your citizens/voters interests as paramount–easily beats minoritarian financier globalism. You just need leaders willing to fight for it and capable of explaining the issues clearly and cogently.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
FIFYReplies: @Supply and Demand
Please quit “MAGA VR World” and take off your Oculus RiftGoggles by Facebook. Now try to reply to that fellow again.
What goes around comes around. Trump sucks at politics.Replies: @Anonymous, @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @Hypnotoad666
How was it non-partisan?
If Steve is to be believed, they intentionally suppressed the information in order to influence the election.
And does ANYBODY - pro-Trump, anti-Trump, or otherwise - think the president of the USA is responsible for generating a vaccine? I saw Maria Bartiromo interview Trump recently and as she closed the discussion, she thanked him - THANKED HIM - for getting us a vaccine. It was unbelievable. I don't care how much you love Trump, he is not a laboratory scientist and he does not develop vaccines.Replies: @Anonymous
Trump Vaccine™ 👊🏻
All you have to do to know Sailer is correct here is to imagine the hypothetical world where Hillary Clinton was President- does anyone doubt that Pfizer and Moderna both would have provided the announcements in October under the exact same circumstances?Replies: @That Would Be Telling
Nit, or maybe not, the major delay for both Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna was waiting until enough people, defined by the FDA as half of their Phase III vaccine trial participants, had two months of experience after the 2nd dose. So your scheme needs to enroll 7,500 + attrition people unblinded, or lots more blinded, simply to test safety.
Otherwise, anyone in the Western world aside from the morally challenged Dutch seriously considering challenge trials?
There's absolutely nothing "morally challenged" about a challenge trial.
First off this thing ain't smallpox. In the case of the Xi virus, for a healthy young person the risk of dying from the Xi's plague even after infection is less than being killed this year in a car accident ... and we aren't telling them not to drive. Pay enough folks what the risk is worth to them.
Secondly, if the thing is actually deadly--the CDC numbers are claiming 25-30K deaths a month--then the benefit of going faster is greater. Go a month faster, save more lives. The scaling on a challenge trial is at least neutral, arguably highly positive the worse the disease. This thing could be smallpox, and the risk in the challenge trial absolutely horrendous ... but then it would be even more horrendous to sit on a successful vaccine another month.
There's no way around it: Challenge trials make sense--academically and morally. If the threat to lives is real, you risk lives to beat the threat. That's how it works whether you're talking about police and firemen or soldiers or vaccine testing. And heck, we actually drafted soldiers--at crappy pay--and subjected them to death. This is volunteers and you can pay 'em what it takes.
If this epidemic is all it's cracked up to be, and this vaccine as straightforward and easy to produce, it's absolutely ridiculous we didn't have this vaccine in challenge trials months ago and have this epidemic under control before flu season.
So like Pelosi, with her freezers that together cost more than that median wage, you believe tax cuts of $100/month for a family of four were chicken feed.
And you’re an economic idiot, the true minimum wage is $0. If $15 is great, why not $100??
But after observing this reaction, he demonstrated he was a sociopath by continuing to boost new developments.
“…an email laying out intent”
Only a confession or a written and digitally stored record of conspiratorial intent will do, thank you!
“…ultmately a probabilistic one…”
You’re one of those people who think you can’t be convicted on “circumstantial evidence” because, you know, Matlock said something.
“…a very deep foundation of background knowledge about the process.”
Do you just say things because they sound good (to you)? It’s not that involved or arcane. It’s regulated by law and standards that are clearly laid out.
You suck as a shill.
About 1/2 the politburo in 1984 was over 70 and a few were over 80; no nonagenarians. Brezhnev looked like a physical ruin at the time. Andropov did not, but then he disappears from public view less than two years after taking office, dying after some month.
The reluctance to retire on the part of antique members of Congress with satisfactory pensions due is a puzzle. There are about 20 U.S. Senators who should have faced mandatory retirement in the last several years who are still sitting in that body, one of whom was just re-elected the age of 87. It's not a
specifically 'Boomer' phenomenon. My old local member was planning her re-election campaign at the time she died in March of 2018. She'd first been elected in 1986. She was born in 1929.Replies: @Kronos
But not young either.
I recall from the book there was a major gathering of some bigwigs after a major terrorist attack on an oil pipeline in the Soviet Union. Their branches of government seemed a lot more complex and maybe included other people who weren’t part of the Politburo. (It was an enjoyable read.)
*When the HBO miniseries “Chernobyl” came out this scene reminded me of that meeting in the book.
Ballots are not signed. Envelopes are signed; and envelopes are discarded once ballots are initially counted.
https://twitter.com/Barnes_Law/status/1335331233706856448?s=20
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1334994862299602947
288,000 ballots in PA were “disappeared”. Steve and most people here don’t seem to care too much about the blatant election fraud.
Steve Sailer is still in the fraudulence game, but he is playing it rather safe via the Pfizer-cushion.
Some names which I would like to be mentioned more often: Shiva Ayyadurai, Jim and Joe Hoft, and - Russel Ramsland (interview with L. Todd Wood).https://www.bitchute.com/video/lorxlmE9xb8W/
https://www.facebook.com/zach.cook.984/videos/2056775834459127
Control of the administration of elections should be taken away from Democrats, and the US should have a constitutional amendment that will form a nonpartisan election administration which will be heavily supervised by international observers.
it is strange that the United States is so quick to criticize the electoral process in much less developed countries, particularly when the winner turns out to be somebody who the US government does not like, and yet the US is equally incapable of running fair elections.
Maybe the US also needs to take a look at what other democracies are doing. For example you don’t hear a lot about unfair elections in Canada, so maybe they know something that we don’t.
So, for example, Florida and Alaska could run each other's elections.
Three words: "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative."
If we include you as a throw-in with Meghan and Harry, can we get Thurston Moore back?
Even if the US was first to approve a vaccine, it would probably take several months to design at least a dozen forms that have to be completed, signed, and notarized before you get your vaccine.
The notarized consent forms will then have to be sent to your state’s apostille office to check that the notary has a current license, and then returned to the vaccine candidate. This process should not take more than 3 months, although naturally state and federal bureaucrats have been slowed down by the Covid virus.
No doubt there will also be a five-page questionnaire, and you will be disqualified from obtaining the vaccine if you cannot name the obstetrician who delivered you at birth, and provide at least five different kinds of government issued ID.
That is the American way.
Laziness, definitely. A respect for Constitutional or legal norms… eh. Trump has never had a problem pushing the limits in plenty of other areas when his own ass has been on the line. He’s pressuring Republican state legislators to throw out election results and appoint their own state electors right now. He’s just not willing to push the envelope the same way when it’s in the public interest. (His administration couldn’t even be a stickler for the rules when it was in their interest. Witness the years-long string of court defeats, e.g., over DACA and the census, for not following the Administrative Procedure Act.) There’s no faithful steward of the Constitution under it all. Just a silly reality TV star who fell into a job far beyond his competence.
I have mixed opinions about Ross Douthat but he took Trump’s presidential measure better and more accurately than anyone else has back in May.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/opinion/coronavirus-trump-orban.html
Of course monster Pharma screwed Trump. These are global-globalist transnational corporations with no allegiance to America. They sell their meds all over the world. The biggest laugh is the 20 second disclaimer recited at breakneck speed in their advertizements…that your ballz might fall off as a side effect..
it is strange that the United States is so quick to criticize the electoral process in much less developed countries, particularly when the winner turns out to be somebody who the US government does not like, and yet the US is equally incapable of running fair elections.
Maybe the US also needs to take a look at what other democracies are doing. For example you don't hear a lot about unfair elections in Canada, so maybe they know something that we don't.Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Gary in Gramercy
Another good idea would be that each state would have its elections supervised and run by officials from a different state preferably one a long way away, so is to take the local bias out of the elections.
So, for example, Florida and Alaska could run each other’s elections.
I’m a thirtysomething white guy myself. I’m not being “taken in” by anyone.
Maybe Biden won fair and square; maybe he didn’t. Either way, I despise the POS and I will never accept him as POTUS. Joe and KamelToe can go to Hell, and they can take all of their delusional white supporters with them.
Enjoy getting screwed over by the Democratic regime. Don’t expect any sympathy from me. You got what you voted for.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2020/12/biden-delta-26-percent.htmlOf course, only delusional MAGA types still cling to the delusion that Trump win the election. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.Replies: @Supply and Demand, @epebble
Georgia county official denies Trump team snagged Dominion voting machine from his office
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/georgia-county-official-denies-trump-team-snagged-dominion-voting-machine-from-his-office
My gut instinct tells me that Trump won. (That and a dollar will buy me a cup of coffee.) I'm not saying it's impossible that Biden prevailed - there are tens of millions of people afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and even Trump's staunchest defenders must concede that his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It's possible that Biden was able to squeak in "legitimately," more or less. (There is always some attempted vote fraud in every election. Only a fool or a liar would deny that.) But I doubt it.
I don't know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 who failed to vote for him this time around. My anecdotal evidence is worth approximately jack-shit, but it jibes with what I've heard from other people around the country.
The bottom line is that I don't trust the government, the political establishment, or the media. I'm an open-minded skeptic. For example, I've entertained the possibility that Trump is just another puppet of the Deep State and that everything we've seen over the last few years is kabuki theater for the drooling masses. Maybe Soros is paying off both sides and chuckling to himself, "Ha, ha, those stupid rubes believed that we'd let them elect someone who would genuinely try to drain the swamp."
My gut tells me that Trump had mostly good intentions, that he meant a lot of what he said in 2016, that he was woefully unprepared for the presidency, that the instincts that got him elected did not always serve him well once he was in office, that he was in over his head in Washington, that he wasn't sure whose advice to take, that he didn't realize just how virulent the opposition would be, that he ended up leaning on Jared and Ivanka because he didn't know who else he could trust.
Do I concede that it's possible that I'm wrong about Trump's good intentions? Yes, I do. Perhaps Trump is, as some of his detractors charge, nothing more than a shallow egotist who ran for president as a publicity stunt and then realized, to his surprise, that he actually had a shot at winning the prize. At that point, his natural competitiveness would have taken over: "If I'm truly in the game, then I intend to win." Perhaps he wanted to win the election and become the most famous and (allegedly) powerful man in the world - the ultimate ego trip - more than he ever wanted to lead the country. It's certainly possible.
Am I similarly wrong about Biden? He gives me the creeps. I wouldn't trust him to give me directions out of a paper bag. But is it possible that he's a really great guy who will restore this country to greatness? Yes, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I lost my faith in the system at an early age. That faith has never been restored, even as my political views have evolved over the years.
Twenty years ago today, we were still awaiting the final outcome of the post-election brouhaha in Florida. On that date, I was a naïve, liberal* high-school student with a deep, abiding loathing of George W. Bush. I truly and honestly believed that he had stolen the election from Gore. Even then, I had already read a fair amount of history, so when 9/11 happened, I immediately thought, "Reichstag fire." I opposed the Iraq War from Day One.
It was during the 2008 election campaign that I began to realize that my viewpoint had shifted decisively to the right. I had a negative visceral reaction to Obama, and when he won the nomination, I realized that I would not be voting for the Democratic candidate that November.
I was enthusiastic about Trump from Day One. He pissed off so many loathsome people that I was willing to overlook his (admittedly numerous) flaws.
And he was the better choice. Hillary would have been an absolute disaster, especially as a direct successor to Obama. With the machinery of a Democratic administration already in place, she would have been far more dangerous than the ineffectual Biden will be.
I make no apologies for endorsing Trump's candidacy in 2015 and 2016. I make no apologies for defending him over the last four years. And I make no apologies for supporting his re-election.
Trump has done more to expose the malfeasance of the political establishment and the media than any other public figure in modern American history. Even those who rate him as an absolute failure must admit that he has unmasked the treachery of the Deep State and its nefarious actors for all to see.
Trump has not drained the swamp, but he has disrupted (to some extent) the Democrats' plans for perpetual rule. The radical transformation of America is not as far along now as it would have been if Hillary had won in 2016. If nothing else, Trump has bought us a little more time and forced his leftist opponents to show their true colors.Replies: @James B. Shearer, @northeast
I think Trump supporters are walking into a narrative trap around the details of the election. Here’s what’s undisputed:
1.) All major news outlets and internet companies suppressed the Hunter Biden influence peddling story. No one disputes this.
2.) The democrats like open borders because it allows them to change the electorate and have consistently pushed for opening the borders. No one disputes this.
3.) The democrats like to let felons and other reprobates who should have no part in a democracy vote, because they tend to vote democratic. No one disputes this.
4.) Pharma companies appear to have suppressed the results of their clinical trial until after the election. I don’t think this is undisputable yet but it looks pretty likely to me.
Widespread election fraud, however, is a bit more nebulous. I have no doubt that there were some irregularities, but were they more than any other election? Did they swing the outcome? Truthfully I don’t know. I also have a feeling some seeming irregularities will turn out to be nothing.
Here’s what I see shaping up: Trump supporters spend all their time on election irregularities. Some of them turn out to be likely but unprovable, some turn out to be true but not enough to swing the election, some turn out to be provably false. The media harps on the ones that turned out to be provably false in order to paint trump as a sore loser and imply that all of the claims were false, when in fact only a subset were false.
At the end of the day everyone has used up all their airtime going back and forth about election fraud claims, and conveniently there has been no time for discussion of 1, 2, 3, and 4, which are undisputed facts.
In short, I think it’s wise to avoid getting sucked into conversations about election fraud if you want to change people’s minds. There’s no need to talk about things that are unproven when there are plenty of things that are proven.
The Democrats are masters at creating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) through the constant repetition of unsubstantiated allegations, including outright lies and fabrications. Russiagate and Ukrainegate turned out to be a bunch of BS, but they cast a shadow over the Trump administration even before he took office. The George Floyd narrative is pure horseshit, but the media continue to peddle it as the gospel truth.
Some of the fraud claims might be a bit outlandish, but, let's face it: This was one dirty election. It wasn't the first dirty election in American history and it won't be the last. But why should that stop us from pursuing the full truth about who really won?
We have nothing to lose by casting doubt upon Biden's legitimacy. The Democrats never accepted the Trump presidency as valid. We should return the favor.Replies: @SimpleSong
What goes around comes around. Trump sucks at politics.Replies: @Anonymous, @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @Hypnotoad666
As a class, they hate Republicans with an unquenchable white hot fire. See Reagan, who massively increased our budgets for science, and how it did absolutely nothing for these people with graduate degrees. I saw that up front and first hand at one of the world’s top institutes for STEM. Or see how it was, and still is a matter of faith that civil and strategic defense for the US is immeasurably immoral.
For your bigger point, in as polarized a nation as the US, you can’t “Chinese Menu” your coalition, including group A means X, Y, and Z are not an option, perhaps forever.
No you’re not. Time rolls on as per usual.
Clinton was in early (in his late 40s). (Mostly a set of fortuitous circumstances for him.) And Trump’s obviously an old guy, but he’s an early boomer. I’m pretty much the peak boomer, and this would be a fine time for me to be finishing up a presidency or doing a 2nd term. Biden’s not even a boomer but a very late “Silent”, and merely a temporary placeholder. Kamala (1964) you could call a super-late boomer, but she’s really GenX–a 70s child.
Unless Pence runs/wins–unlikely–it’s very unlikely that the Republican opponent in 2024 will be a Boomer. I’d say it’s 50-50 that Trump is the last Boomer president–even if you (incorrectly) label Kamala one. (Depends on Biden’s health. I”d bet Kamala is either primaried or loses to a younger Republican in 2024.)
The very last plausible Boomers turn 60 in 2024. We are ceding leadership of businesses and organizations and government to “younger more diverse Americans!” everyday. (Be careful what you wish for.) And we’re dying off! (A quarter of Boomers–gone already. My grade school girlfriend/sweetheart died years ago.)
~~~
Young guys here whining about Boomers are frankly pathetic. And out yourselves as people who just don’t understand anything.
Boomers simply aren’t your problem. There are ethnic issues–Jews pushing
minoritarianism/immmigrationism, blacks doing blackety, blackety, black; Latinos; immigrants. There are issues with global finance and business. There are issues issues of the super-state grabbing more power.
But the generational stuff is small beer. And Boomers are not the PC loons. In terms of voting it’s the same old, same old. As people get older, gain more life experience, get married, have children, take on more responsibility, they become “wiser”, more realistic, more conservative. Boomers vote more conservatively/sanely than millennials for precisely that reason.
If there’s a real generational/demographic split, it appears to be that millennials are more PC and more “safe space” fragile and totalitarian. And in particular that millennial women have drunk the kool-aid and are much more likely to be PC messes.
That said, my take is there’s never been an easier time for a young guy to separate himself from the crowd. Be a man, work, earn a living, eat paleo, lift weights, hunt, fish, camp climb, (do something other than video grames) speak based reality, stick to your guns and don’t tolerate any millennial female SJW/anti-white b.s. … and i think there are plenty of young women out there who would be happy to follow you. Mostly young women simply parrot what they are told–by the edublob, Hollyweird, their friends–but an actual man being a man is way more compelling.
We Boomers are all going to be out of power soon, and all dead soon after. Yeah, ok, we sucked. Stop whining, take responsibility and do better.
Liberal Fundamentalism: A Sociology of Wokeness. The essay opens:
Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
1) I wish I could find it (might have even been here) that labs had a vaccine in Feb and admittedly something along the lines of it "not really being that difficult" to create. Are any vaccines that quick? Doesn't it take at least a year, if not more, even for a regular flu?? Why was this PANDEMIC!!!! so easy to defeat?
2) Don't shareholder's have a serious right to be pissed at companies sitting on information? Don't efficient markets depend on this? Not sure about any legality.
3) If by doing nothing at all, I get covid and have a 99.97% chance of recovery, why should I bother getting a vaccine that may only be 90% effective? Wouldn't a placebo have the same effect? At 99.97% I could attribute my recovery to basically anything and you couldn't disprove it. Am I missing some statistical angle? And just to head things off, I have no contact with people who work or live in high risk nursing homes.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @James B. Shearer
Protein Sciences, while they were still some years away from getting FDA approval did it in 2 weeks for a bad bird flu (hint, you don’t have to modify it so you can then grow it in chicken eggs anymore, technology does advance), this was in the ’00s when bird flu became the rage. Thanks to a lot of previous research into how to treat proteins like the infamous spike, and their mRNA technology, and specifically SARS type coronaviruses since we knew a 3rd one would drop any year now, Moderna had their vaccine candidate two days after the SARS-CoV-2 RNA sequence was first published in the PRC.
Because you aspire to stop being a sociopath? And evidently have never heard of the general concept behind the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
It just hit me…
I remember when Washington State voted for legalizing Marijuana…all of my friends in Washington (number significant as all whites moved to Seattle) were shocked and dismayed
What if that was vote fraud? What if none of these elections have been real?
I don’t think the average person is so stupid to vote for Legalizing Marijuana, and maybe they aren’t!
One hypothesis I'd offer is that Trump was trying to bully the drug companies into announcing progress on a Corona Virus vaccine. It may have worked a little too well; the drug companies may have been so frightened they decided they'd best do what they could to keep Trump from getting reelected at all.Replies: @That Would Be Telling
This is an example of Trump being particularly stupid, because his proposals have been nothing less than to put the Pfizers and Modernas out of business, leaving us with our existing stable of cheap generics mostly made in China and India.
This was a call for pre-2016 election Trump nationalism, forcing other countries’ socialist monopsonies to pay for their share of new drug development, force them to stop their severe price controls. Of course, we now know Trump’s a Boomer civnat for whom that would be several steps too far.
The only good thing what would come out of this insanity is knowing a number of people who are for it would die from situations where a new drug would have saved them (see antibiotics in particular).
I take issue with the title of the article…..Trump legitimately won the election.
OT: guess who isn’t doing so well with distance learning
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/minority-students-crushed-lockdowns-600-increase-math-failures-500-english
288,000 ballots in PA were "disappeared". Steve and most people here don't seem to care too much about the blatant election fraud.Replies: @Dieter Kief, @Dieter Kief
It almost looks like some people had been a bit frustrated lately with this “laughably incompetent” (Ron Unz) president.
Steve Sailer is still in the fraudulence game, but he is playing it rather safe via the Pfizer-cushion.
Some names which I would like to be mentioned more often: Shiva Ayyadurai, Jim and Joe Hoft, and – Russel Ramsland (interview with L. Todd Wood).
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Trump%20Virus%22&src=trend_click&vertical=trends
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1335679426516881409
He would say that, wouldn’t he? (Apologies to Mandy Rice-Davies.)
Why did Barack Obama dump Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers?
Answer: Political Necessity
Like Garrison, Wright had a strong group of supporters and pronounced an ideological framework too spicy for centrist Republicans and Democrats. (Un)fortunately, Wright took the mentor-student friendship PR breakup too personally and made a mess of things.
Obama had to distance himself from Bill Ayers too for obvious reasons but Ayers had the political tact to understand Obama’s political dilemma. He was discrete and largely didn’t do anything to embarrass Obama while he resided in office. While I hope Garrison forgives me for comparing him to Ayers, both understand the fickleness of the Washington D.C. idiotic court media.
Trump did win reelection, and by a large margin.
Vote fraud matters.Replies: @RudyM
Thank you. Sailer seems to have a blind spot about taking seriously anything that could get labeled as a “conspiracy theory.” His noticing is very valuable, but the need to appear down to earth is too strong for him to accept “weird” truths.
Sailer loves conspiracy theories. Where you been?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Kronos, @Hypnotoad666
“Which Likely Would Have Meant a Trump Victory”
how?
how does any Republican win a big close race ever again with current levels of Democrat cheating? even worse, Republican officials appear to be doing everything possible to make sure they continue to lose gracefully indefinitely.
Border wall, mandatory e-verify, end refugee racket, clamp down on numbers ... get to moratorium.-- Bring the troops home.
(Our interests do not require it, but even if they did, we simply don't have the ability--in terms of public support for inflicting the necessary carnage--to "nation build" in shitholes ... even beyond all the HBD issues.)-- Repatriate industry.
Reindustrialize. The future is automation anyway, but we can't let all the jobs and capability for that be in China.
The only critical issue i'd add--not in at least rhetorical the Trumpian tool kit:--Drive toward eugenic fertility
Republicans need to talk loud and long about "affordable family formation". About reversing the marriage collapse and making it possible for young men and women to get together and form families. Owning that issue would also help them reach their worse (the most ill-informed) demographic, young women.The core of "affordable family formation" is simply an immigration moratorium. Immigration is what's screwing young people on both the jobs and the housing front. Getting young people to understand that's what immigration means instead of "ethnic restaurants!" is critical. But beyond that is tax policy that precisely targets family formation--huge tax deductions for banging out kids that lets mom's stay home if they like and generally lets young parents' money go entirely to their family and leave financing government to us older/richer folks.And this can be done in such a way--deductions, no refundable credits--and with welfare reforms, that the result is also a push toward eugenic fertility.
Bottom line:No big rush "back to the drawing board" is required. Nationalism--treating your citizens/voters interests as paramount--easily beats minoritarian financier globalism. You just need leaders willing to fight for it and capable of explaining the issues clearly and cogently.Replies: @Jonathan Mason
Encouraging family formation would certainly be a worthy objective.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can’t think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow’s milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the “baby” party, and not just by opposing abortion.
About 30% of Ecuador's population is over 40. You just didn't notice them.
Ecuador's tfr has dropped by > 60% since 1960. If they're fortunate, it will stop dropping very soon.
I've heard there's an alternative to both, and it's free. (My recollection is that cow's milk doesn't sit well on baby stomachs.)
OT, but peerless UK golf commentator Peter Alliss has died at the age of 89. He played in six Ryder Cup teams, coached Sean Connery for Goldfinger's golf game, was commentating on the Masters only last month. Father of six, too - a life well lived.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-9023181/Peter-Alliss-BBCs-voice-golf-dies-89.htmlReplies: @LondonBob, @Jonathan Mason
Working white women will NEVER have a lot of children, no matter how many goodies you give them.
Why on earth would any woman work full time or even part time, have to deal with a man (yes...deal with)...and deal with more than 1 or 2 kids...
No sane woman.
Which is why we have the birthrate that we have nowReplies: @jsm
I think there's a lot that can be done. In addition to my suggestion of a huge--take 'em-of-the-tax-rolls--child tax deduction for young parents, and your suggestions on medical care, i'd think whacking away college cost worries would be great, highly eugenic.
The way to do this is for the feds to create competency tests--or encourage private entities to create competency tests--of basic (HS level through college) math/verbal capability, and subject matter capability and then hire exclusively off of these rather than "college degree".
Let kids and parents sort out whatever program of book, video, on-line, or actually in-person instruction works best for them.
The plain truth is there is absolutely nothing about education that is the least bit "scarce" other than the prestige of diploma. The actual knowledge is in books--now essentially free--or can be given verbally delivered on-line super cheaply. With the Internet the cost drop for knowledge transfer is insane. Our colleges and universities are mostly--some STEM research aside--just huge nests of leftist parasites who suck on public by cartelizing "educated" stamp. And their actually product is ... shit. Actual mid-education--students end up more stupid about the world.
Cut costs--relieving a middle class barrier to parenthood--motivate kids and adults with tractable education goals and send leftists to the unemployment line. Win, win, win!
But all that said, the alpha and omega of "affordable family formation" is simply to end immigration.
This immigration without end--the US open to the world labor market--is simply the enemy of decent life for Americans, a destruction of the American dream. The frontier closed 140 years ago!
Anyone blathering "nation of immigrants" is a genocidal fanatic.
Stop immigration and everything starts getting better.Replies: @Jonathan Mason
https://i.redd.it/w81q8hqsy7s51.jpg
Tit-for-tot is the answer. Closer to the heart.Never mind Roe, overturn Griswold!
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496
One let's hope not-insoluble problem is that economic growth is occurring in techie cities and counties, which are already unfriendly to families. Increased population pressure, from immigrants and internal migrants alike, only makes the crisis worse.
The very young, very male tech sector is very Left. Perhaps targeting these men with pronatalist messages-- "Do you want a family now, or 15 years from now?"-- is a workable strategy.
Shifting the tech meccas to cheaper places farther east is another path. Hey, it worked for film and video!
I don’t know about Moderna, but Pfizers loyalties, as revealed by their campaign contributions, clearly lay with Team Biden.
If Pfizer and Moderna were willing to manipulate their test protocols to throw the election, why wouldn’t they manipulate their test data to make the vaccine appear more efficacious than it is? Or to make it appear efficacious at all, even if it is not?
But of course, nobody would ever do such a thing.
it is strange that the United States is so quick to criticize the electoral process in much less developed countries, particularly when the winner turns out to be somebody who the US government does not like, and yet the US is equally incapable of running fair elections.
Maybe the US also needs to take a look at what other democracies are doing. For example you don't hear a lot about unfair elections in Canada, so maybe they know something that we don't.Replies: @Jonathan Mason, @Gary in Gramercy
“…[Y]ou don’t hear a lot about unfair elections in Canada, so maybe they know something that we don’t.”
Three words: “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”
If we include you as a throw-in with Meghan and Harry, can we get Thurston Moore back?
Paul, I am glad that I fascinate you. Violent would be me throwing things around, stating my dislike for Trump’s inability to act mature is my opinion. Have a great day, no need to respond, we are good.
I was going to thank you for your first comment since it was a decent explanation, but based on your second comment I guess I can ignore it.
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/minority-students-crushed-lockdowns-600-increase-math-failures-500-englishReplies: @Kronos
I’d imagine it’s tough for everyone involved.
*Very interesting interview. I haven’t seen female Becky reporters talk over a woman of color in a long time.
Any bets if the Biden Administration becomes a real thing that Common Core requirements will be quietly snuck into COVID legislation? Get all 50 states distracted with the virus and then BAM!
FDR inarguably made things far worse,
He didn’t. Policy was suboptimal and could have been better for a more rapid labor market recovery. That happens whenever you have human beings making policy.
but the blame continues to be pinned largely on Hoover to this day among all but largely scholarly or ideological circles.
If you preside over a 30% decline in real domestic product per capita (largely driven by horrid monetary policy), people tend to blame you. Them’s the breaks.
Clinton was in early (in his late 40s). (Mostly a set of fortuitous circumstances for him.) And Trump's obviously an old guy, but he's an early boomer. I'm pretty much the peak boomer, and this would be a fine time for me to be finishing up a presidency or doing a 2nd term. Biden's not even a boomer but a very late "Silent", and merely a temporary placeholder. Kamala (1964) you could call a super-late boomer, but she's really GenX--a 70s child.
Unless Pence runs/wins--unlikely--it's very unlikely that the Republican opponent in 2024 will be a Boomer. I'd say it's 50-50 that Trump is the last Boomer president--even if you (incorrectly) label Kamala one. (Depends on Biden's health. I''d bet Kamala is either primaried or loses to a younger Republican in 2024.)
The very last plausible Boomers turn 60 in 2024. We are ceding leadership of businesses and organizations and government to "younger more diverse Americans!" everyday. (Be careful what you wish for.) And we're dying off! (A quarter of Boomers--gone already. My grade school girlfriend/sweetheart died years ago.)
~~~
Young guys here whining about Boomers are frankly pathetic. And out yourselves as people who just don't understand anything.
Boomers simply aren't your problem. There are ethnic issues--Jews pushing
minoritarianism/immmigrationism, blacks doing blackety, blackety, black; Latinos; immigrants. There are issues with global finance and business. There are issues issues of the super-state grabbing more power.
But the generational stuff is small beer. And Boomers are not the PC loons. In terms of voting it's the same old, same old. As people get older, gain more life experience, get married, have children, take on more responsibility, they become "wiser", more realistic, more conservative. Boomers vote more conservatively/sanely than millennials for precisely that reason.
If there's a real generational/demographic split, it appears to be that millennials are more PC and more "safe space" fragile and totalitarian. And in particular that millennial women have drunk the kool-aid and are much more likely to be PC messes.
That said, my take is there's never been an easier time for a young guy to separate himself from the crowd. Be a man, work, earn a living, eat paleo, lift weights, hunt, fish, camp climb, (do something other than video grames) speak based reality, stick to your guns and don't tolerate any millennial female SJW/anti-white b.s. ... and i think there are plenty of young women out there who would be happy to follow you. Mostly young women simply parrot what they are told--by the edublob, Hollyweird, their friends--but an actual man being a man is way more compelling.
We Boomers are all going to be out of power soon, and all dead soon after. Yeah, ok, we sucked. Stop whining, take responsibility and do better.Replies: @ic1000
OT: AnotherDad, via John McWhorter, one of Razib’s commenters linked this maybe-goes-on-too-long essay. But I think Eric Kaufmann wrote it just for you!
Liberal Fundamentalism: A Sociology of Wokeness. The essay opens:
He seems to think there's a liberal, centrist answer to the wokeness problem, which solution will include "a healthy Orwellian fear of egalitarian thought control, backed by a proper understanding of the history of leftist attacks on expressive freedom." In other words, although he doesn't quite say this, high schools and colleges ought to teach that Stalin and Mao -- and the dictatorships they led -- were as bad as Hitler and the Nazis. Anyone remotely familiar with U.S. education at any level knows the likelihood of that is virtually nil. Kaufmann's a Brit, but I'm sure it's no better in the U.K.
Interesting essay, and one worth going back to when I have more time. Thanks for the link.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can’t think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
About 30% of Ecuador’s population is over 40. You just didn’t notice them.
Ecuador’s tfr has dropped by > 60% since 1960. If they’re fortunate, it will stop dropping very soon.
Otherwise, anyone in the Western world aside from the morally challenged Dutch seriously considering challenge trials?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @AnotherDad
The British have been gearing up for a challenge trial to start in January for a long time now.
Mostly unwilling. Doing that needs long term contracts or a great deal of money up front, to for example create new plants to spin the plastic that’s used to filter in N95 masks. As it is, it just might be nearly impossible to do that as fast as you’d like without it becoming part of Operation Warp Speed, and even then could take months.
See the story of the US mask maker who ramped up for the mini-swine flu pandemic; he almost went out of business, had to lay off most of his workers, after the demand went back to normal and hospitals went back to buying cheap masks from China.
Biden won because of the delay in the announcement of a vaccine that nobody wants. That and industrial scale vote fraud. But mostly industrial scale vote fraud.
People in late middle age and early old age should make up the bulk of f/t legislative bodies, with no one in their young adult years permitted to run. Persons who have passed the calendar year they turn 72 are properly debarred from running as well.
Have you actually examined some data on the median age of candidates in each party?
The six leaders of the Democratic caucus in Congress were all born prior to 1951 and one was born prior to 1940. The four Republican caucus leaders were born in 1942, 1961, 1964, and 1965. Five of the six notable Democratic presidential candidates this year are over 60 and four are over 70. (The younger fellow was an inappropriate candidate to boot). The two notables in 2016 were 69 and 75 respectively at that time. The median age of Democratic committee chairmen in the House is 72 years. That of Republican ranking minority members is 62.Replies: @Kronos, @Steve Sailer
Democrats tend to be run by old white people.
You can’t refuse what isn’t available.
Also, if everyone else is vaccinated or recovered, who would you get it from?
That clip is amazing.
Unfortunately, the anti-Russian media storm has been fairly constant for well over a decade. The most recent one being the new “Call of Duty: Cold War” game that’s been recently released.
https://youtu.be/aTS9n_m7TW0
https://www.amazon.com/Promised-Land-Barack-Obama/dp/1524763160/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=obama&qid=1607297411&sr=8-3
Also, I’m currently reading Obama’s new autobiography on his Presidency. (It’s the first volume apparently.) I’m almost finished with it but Obama paints Putin in the most unflattering light of either domestic US politicians or other foreign leaders. Besides dissing Sarah Palin and having “reservations” against Mubarak, Obama’s that terminally happy golden retriever that gets along with everybody.
I listened to Sailer’s recent VDare podcast before reading this book, the notion that Obama represented “the anti-Soviet left” as stated by Sailer certainly rang true throughout this autobiography. In Chapter 13 he presents himself as a paladin/believer of Neoliberal Globalism yet sympathetic to the victims of US hook-or-by-crook interventions. He certainly views nationalism and right-wing popularism as analogous to darkness and fear.
If 1 out of 300 votes switched from Biden to Trump on the news in the 3 closest states, the Electoral College would have been tied 269-269, and Trump likely would have been elected by vote of state delegations in the House.
Is 1 out of 300 votes switching too big of a number? Hard to say. It’s not a huge number, even with all the early voting.
If you're looking for a mind-blowing statistic, well, Berkeley political scientist Dudley McGivney compiled a ranking from the 1940 census of the states by "What Percentage of Adult Citizens were Foreign-Born?" and "What Percentage of Adult Citizens were Negroes?", in order to determine the effect on turnout. Blacks in Mississippi outnumbered immigrants 157-1, while immigrants outnumbered blacks at least 164-1 in North Dakota. (Black % was "Less than 0.1" %. The USAF didn't exist yet.)So the black-to-immigrant ratio was 25,803 times as high in Mississippi as in North Dakota!New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey had higher percentages of foreign-born citizens, but more blacks, too. Their immigrant/black ratios were 5.2-1, 15.7-1, 17.5-1, and 3.1-1, respectively. Likewise, the Carolinas had the same foreign-born figure as Mississippi, 0.3%, but fewer blacks, so their ratio was not as extreme.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
“Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow’s milk.”
I’ve heard there’s an alternative to both, and it’s free. (My recollection is that cow’s milk doesn’t sit well on baby stomachs.)
OT, but peerless UK golf commentator Peter Alliss has died at the age of 89. He played in six Ryder Cup teams, coached Sean Connery for Goldfinger’s golf game, was commentating on the Masters only last month. Father of six, too – a life well lived.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-9023181/Peter-Alliss-BBCs-voice-golf-dies-89.html
Liberal Fundamentalism: A Sociology of Wokeness. The essay opens:
Replies: @Gary in Gramercy
You’re right: Kaufmann (or someone else) should have edited out roughly a third of the essay. I made it through the whole thing, but barely.
He seems to think there’s a liberal, centrist answer to the wokeness problem, which solution will include “a healthy Orwellian fear of egalitarian thought control, backed by a proper understanding of the history of leftist attacks on expressive freedom.” In other words, although he doesn’t quite say this, high schools and colleges ought to teach that Stalin and Mao — and the dictatorships they led — were as bad as Hitler and the Nazis. Anyone remotely familiar with U.S. education at any level knows the likelihood of that is virtually nil. Kaufmann’s a Brit, but I’m sure it’s no better in the U.K.
Interesting essay, and one worth going back to when I have more time. Thanks for the link.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
The best way to encourage family formation is to make wages high enough so that mothers can stay home and have a good life
Working white women will NEVER have a lot of children, no matter how many goodies you give them.
Why on earth would any woman work full time or even part time, have to deal with a man (yes…deal with)…and deal with more than 1 or 2 kids…
No sane woman.
Which is why we have the birthrate that we have now
I meant to click "agree."
Obama’s implicit endorsement of the AOC wing in an interview recently was the sort of thing that used to get a lot of attention. I don’t know if it’s O’s lack of genuine gravitas, still, or that the presidency is just so devalued now–no pretense of GWB as an elder statesman was even offered, and W was only too glad not to have to play that role (he does Westerns).
What was the deal with Obama being virtually invisible during the campaign, damning Biden with faint support, only to emerge after his presumed victory with a book and a return to the public sphere? Shouldn’t he be criticized? Would he have been had Biden lost? Would we have been spared more of dull O’s schtick if Trump won? (or wins?)
It’s sad to see people so readily abandon Trump. Whatever the reality of Democratic election fraud, the real crime has been a four-year campaign to overturn 2016–in its whole and in parts criminal, immoral and dumb. It includes the summer riots. It has a body count. To even humor their shit because, I don’t know, boorish Trump has cooties…like the Arabic dude in the meme, if people call this journalism, or whatever, I will jump off this building I swear it.
Recall that Richard Nixon was derided for accepting $600,000 in 1976 (a contextually similar sum today would be $4,000,000) for 29 hours worth of unscripted one-on-one interviews with David Frost. Nixon had legal bills. AFAIK, that was a one off. Nixon wasn't getting any swag from higher education on a regular basis. Ivy League knucklehead James Fallows says 'who else would have asked for a fee?'. The answer is, just about every president who succeeded him in office, Mr. Fallows, including the chump you worked for (until you found it a good career move to stab him in the back). Harry Truman, who played piano in the whorehouse of Kansas City politics for 20+ years, thought it unseemly to accept speaking fees and board seats. Gerald Ford was like Homer Simpson in front of a plate of doughnuts when those offers came over the transom. And pretty much all the rest of them, Reagan a qualified exception. George W. Bush is paid handsome sums for confidential remarks in front of trade association audiences. You don't hear about them because the public's not invited to attend and his remarks aren't interesting enough to leak.
A guy hitting a piñata and hoovering up what falls out does not have the makings of an actual elder statesman.Replies: @Dennis Dale
Thank you. Sailer seems to have a blind spot about taking seriously anything that could get labeled as a “conspiracy theory.”
Sailer loves conspiracy theories. Where you been?
A worldwide one at that.Replies: @Art Deco
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
Agree.
I think there’s a lot that can be done. In addition to my suggestion of a huge–take ’em-of-the-tax-rolls–child tax deduction for young parents, and your suggestions on medical care, i’d think whacking away college cost worries would be great, highly eugenic.
The way to do this is for the feds to create competency tests–or encourage private entities to create competency tests–of basic (HS level through college) math/verbal capability, and subject matter capability and then hire exclusively off of these rather than “college degree”.
Let kids and parents sort out whatever program of book, video, on-line, or actually in-person instruction works best for them.
The plain truth is there is absolutely nothing about education that is the least bit “scarce” other than the prestige of diploma. The actual knowledge is in books–now essentially free–or can be given verbally delivered on-line super cheaply. With the Internet the cost drop for knowledge transfer is insane. Our colleges and universities are mostly–some STEM research aside–just huge nests of leftist parasites who suck on public by cartelizing “educated” stamp. And their actually product is … shit. Actual mid-education–students end up more stupid about the world.
Cut costs–relieving a middle class barrier to parenthood–motivate kids and adults with tractable education goals and send leftists to the unemployment line. Win, win, win!
But all that said, the alpha and omega of “affordable family formation” is simply to end immigration.
This immigration without end–the US open to the world labor market–is simply the enemy of decent life for Americans, a destruction of the American dream. The frontier closed 140 years ago!
Anyone blathering “nation of immigrants” is a genocidal fanatic.
Stop immigration and everything starts getting better.
John Major was the last British prime minister who never went to college. He got his education in the banking system, and we're certainly more than able to hold his own against college educated people.
I was strolling last night on the Malecon 2000 in Guayaquil, Ecuador last night, and there were hundreds if not thousands of people out there walking around, almost all comprised of either couples walking hand in hand, or young families with one two or three children, who were mostly well behaved.
Hardly anybody over 40 out there. I can't think of a place in the United States where you would see a similar scene.
The interest thing that is the Ecuador has free birth control pills and injections available to all, and yet the country is full of children. And there are all kinds of benefits for children (and old people like me.) For example I was on the river boat cruise last night, and children went free.
The US could do a lot to encourage family formation. One thing would be to make sure that having babies does not carry any kind of medical copay or deductible for pregnant mothers who have health insurance. In other would be to have much more generous leave allowances for new parents, maybe up to a year, and much better provisions for affordable child care.
Something could also be done to reduce the exorbitant cost of baby feeding formula in the US, or simply to encourage people to replace the formula with cow's milk.
Hopefully Republicans will become the "baby" party, and not just by opposing abortion.Replies: @Art Deco, @YetAnotherAnon, @Thoughts, @AnotherDad, @Reg Cæsar
Boanthropy never helped anyone.
Tit-for-tot is the answer. Closer to the heart.
Never mind Roe, overturn Griswold!
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496
One let’s hope not-insoluble problem is that economic growth is occurring in techie cities and counties, which are already unfriendly to families. Increased population pressure, from immigrants and internal migrants alike, only makes the crisis worse.
The very young, very male tech sector is very Left. Perhaps targeting these men with pronatalist messages– “Do you want a family now, or 15 years from now?”– is a workable strategy.
Shifting the tech meccas to cheaper places farther east is another path. Hey, it worked for film and video!
no pretense of GWB as an elder statesman was even offered,
Recall that Richard Nixon was derided for accepting $600,000 in 1976 (a contextually similar sum today would be $4,000,000) for 29 hours worth of unscripted one-on-one interviews with David Frost. Nixon had legal bills. AFAIK, that was a one off. Nixon wasn’t getting any swag from higher education on a regular basis. Ivy League knucklehead James Fallows says ‘who else would have asked for a fee?’. The answer is, just about every president who succeeded him in office, Mr. Fallows, including the chump you worked for (until you found it a good career move to stab him in the back). Harry Truman, who played piano in the whorehouse of Kansas City politics for 20+ years, thought it unseemly to accept speaking fees and board seats. Gerald Ford was like Homer Simpson in front of a plate of doughnuts when those offers came over the transom. And pretty much all the rest of them, Reagan a qualified exception. George W. Bush is paid handsome sums for confidential remarks in front of trade association audiences. You don’t hear about them because the public’s not invited to attend and his remarks aren’t interesting enough to leak.
A guy hitting a piñata and hoovering up what falls out does not have the makings of an actual elder statesman.
Isn’t the rule of thumb in Illinois that Republicans have to aim for 55% to ensure a win?
If you’re looking for a mind-blowing statistic, well, Berkeley political scientist Dudley McGivney compiled a ranking from the 1940 census of the states by “What Percentage of Adult Citizens were Foreign-Born?” and “What Percentage of Adult Citizens were Negroes?”, in order to determine the effect on turnout. Blacks in Mississippi outnumbered immigrants 157-1, while immigrants outnumbered blacks at least 164-1 in North Dakota. (Black % was “Less than 0.1″ %. The USAF didn’t exist yet.)
So the black-to-immigrant ratio was 25,803 times as high in Mississippi as in North Dakota!
New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Jersey had higher percentages of foreign-born citizens, but more blacks, too. Their immigrant/black ratios were 5.2-1, 15.7-1, 17.5-1, and 3.1-1, respectively. Likewise, the Carolinas had the same foreign-born figure as Mississippi, 0.3%, but fewer blacks, so their ratio was not as extreme.
Otherwise, anyone in the Western world aside from the morally challenged Dutch seriously considering challenge trials?Replies: @Steve Sailer, @AnotherDad
TWBTelling, i’ve appreciated your comments here–good knowledge, good sense. But this strikes me as absolutely ridiculous.
There’s absolutely nothing “morally challenged” about a challenge trial.
First off this thing ain’t smallpox. In the case of the Xi virus, for a healthy young person the risk of dying from the Xi’s plague even after infection is less than being killed this year in a car accident … and we aren’t telling them not to drive. Pay enough folks what the risk is worth to them.
Secondly, if the thing is actually deadly–the CDC numbers are claiming 25-30K deaths a month–then the benefit of going faster is greater. Go a month faster, save more lives. The scaling on a challenge trial is at least neutral, arguably highly positive the worse the disease. This thing could be smallpox, and the risk in the challenge trial absolutely horrendous … but then it would be even more horrendous to sit on a successful vaccine another month.
There’s no way around it: Challenge trials make sense–academically and morally. If the threat to lives is real, you risk lives to beat the threat. That’s how it works whether you’re talking about police and firemen or soldiers or vaccine testing. And heck, we actually drafted soldiers–at crappy pay–and subjected them to death. This is volunteers and you can pay ’em what it takes.
If this epidemic is all it’s cracked up to be, and this vaccine as straightforward and easy to produce, it’s absolutely ridiculous we didn’t have this vaccine in challenge trials months ago and have this epidemic under control before flu season.
I very much enjoyed the series. It definitely had a strong anti-Soviet/anti-Russian overtone but is truly superb.
Unfortunately, the anti-Russian media storm has been fairly constant for well over a decade. The most recent one being the new “Call of Duty: Cold War” game that’s been recently released.
Also, I’m currently reading Obama’s new autobiography on his Presidency. (It’s the first volume apparently.) I’m almost finished with it but Obama paints Putin in the most unflattering light of either domestic US politicians or other foreign leaders. Besides dissing Sarah Palin and having “reservations” against Mubarak, Obama’s that terminally happy golden retriever that gets along with everybody.
I listened to Sailer’s recent VDare podcast before reading this book, the notion that Obama represented “the anti-Soviet left” as stated by Sailer certainly rang true throughout this autobiography. In Chapter 13 he presents himself as a paladin/believer of Neoliberal Globalism yet sympathetic to the victims of US hook-or-by-crook interventions. He certainly views nationalism and right-wing popularism as analogous to darkness and fear.
What goes around comes around. Trump sucks at politics.Replies: @Anonymous, @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @Hypnotoad666
No he didn’t.
A bunch of people with graduate degrees spent his whole presidency cultivating their hatred of him.
Sailer loves conspiracy theories. Where you been?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Kronos, @Hypnotoad666
Cheating in this election wasn’t a conspiracy. It was a mass movement.
A worldwide one at that.
“They were willing to delay the vaccine and kill many people”
Pfizer delayed announcement of a fake vaccine til after Creepy Pedo Joe Lockdowns pretended to win the election.
The delayed announcement killed nobody, just like the coronasniffles have killed nobody.
Recall that Richard Nixon was derided for accepting $600,000 in 1976 (a contextually similar sum today would be $4,000,000) for 29 hours worth of unscripted one-on-one interviews with David Frost. Nixon had legal bills. AFAIK, that was a one off. Nixon wasn't getting any swag from higher education on a regular basis. Ivy League knucklehead James Fallows says 'who else would have asked for a fee?'. The answer is, just about every president who succeeded him in office, Mr. Fallows, including the chump you worked for (until you found it a good career move to stab him in the back). Harry Truman, who played piano in the whorehouse of Kansas City politics for 20+ years, thought it unseemly to accept speaking fees and board seats. Gerald Ford was like Homer Simpson in front of a plate of doughnuts when those offers came over the transom. And pretty much all the rest of them, Reagan a qualified exception. George W. Bush is paid handsome sums for confidential remarks in front of trade association audiences. You don't hear about them because the public's not invited to attend and his remarks aren't interesting enough to leak.
A guy hitting a piñata and hoovering up what falls out does not have the makings of an actual elder statesman.Replies: @Dennis Dale
Good point, wrong example. Nixon was ostracized for his crimes, and maybe more for just being Nixon, by his day’s equivalent of our fake news media. He didn’t fall out of the public eye because he’s a lightweight. Come on.
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon! And equally ironic, Trump will be the last serious president–for he was a return to a serious presidency after the frauds of W and O; by a return to “serious” I mean what Peter Thiel said when campaigning for Trump–he would be a return to a “normal country”–where the executive defends national interests and answers ultimately to the citizenry.
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon!
Huh? This has to be another example of the IQ obsession on these boards.
Nixon was a man of considerable intellect, but it was all instrumental. He had no well-developed principles at all. He was astonishingly adept at promoting himself, considering he was fundamentally an introvert with deficient people skills.
Outside of electoral politics, Nixon had a failed venture in the food processing industry, a brief period in the civil service, a period as an associate engaged in transactional law practice, and a more lucrative period in New York law derived in some measure from his prominence. He waived an exemption and served in the Navy. He was bound and determined to seek an executive position of a sort he'd never held before, then proved to be a wretched administrator.
George Bush the Elder was a combat veteran who built his own business and never drew a salary from political office until he was 42 years old. Plenty impressive for most of us.Replies: @S. Anonyia, @Dennis Dale, @Anonymous
The weird thing is to screw Trump they also screwed some of their own investors by not telling them they were changing what they were doing. That created a false impression of failure and no doubt some of their stock owners sold. (I think shareholder suits are basically bogus, but i'd see i could sue if i was one of those guys.)
~~~
But despite all the bottom line here--
Given Biden, this was Trump's election to lose ... and he's the one who lost it.
Beyond better action and communication on immigration, beyond getting the troops home from Afghanistan, even beyond the Democrats' summer of riots and open attack on the rule of law, Trump had the opportunity to cast the question of "who do you trust to lead you out coronatime and get America moving again?" and contrast an active, dynamic, positive can-do Trump with a passive, doom-and-gloom, cowering-in-his-basement Biden.
(Heck, Trump could have even gotten himself in the vaccine trial. "A leader leads, doesn't ask the American people to do what he won't do himself.")
But ... no. This thing was completely up in the air going into the 1st debate. Trump had the golden opportunity to draw this contrast and generally skewer the empty-suit Biden and what did we get ... a dynamic leader?
No a lazy, unprepared, ill-disciplined Trump, who confirmed--for any undecideds watching--every "asshole" stereotype of Trump that the establishment (minoritarian, globalist, big-state) media have been pushing for four years.
Trump wants to blame someone--mirrors are available.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue
Sad but true. Tragic actually. Look at the cost.
1) I wish I could find it (might have even been here) that labs had a vaccine in Feb and admittedly something along the lines of it "not really being that difficult" to create. Are any vaccines that quick? Doesn't it take at least a year, if not more, even for a regular flu?? Why was this PANDEMIC!!!! so easy to defeat?
2) Don't shareholder's have a serious right to be pissed at companies sitting on information? Don't efficient markets depend on this? Not sure about any legality.
3) If by doing nothing at all, I get covid and have a 99.97% chance of recovery, why should I bother getting a vaccine that may only be 90% effective? Wouldn't a placebo have the same effect? At 99.97% I could attribute my recovery to basically anything and you couldn't disprove it. Am I missing some statistical angle? And just to head things off, I have no contact with people who work or live in high risk nursing homes.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @James B. Shearer
Seriously, will all the anti-vaxers here stop with this mathematically illiterate nonsense.
If you can’t understand even 6th grade math just write a comment that says “i do not understand 6th grade math”. We’ll understand.
The vaccine “efficacy” == “not getting a case of bug”. Not “avoiding fatality”.
Yes we know you are a young Adonis who isn’t going to die (unless a wild boar sneaks up on you). (Heck, i’m not young and a lot of weight work from Adonis and i’m very unlikely to die from the Xi virus either.)
You without vaccine:
Chance of infection eventually = 1
Chance of surviving infection = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = (1-.9997)
You with vaccine that’s 95% effective:
Chance of infection eventually = .05
Chance of surviving if infected = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = .05 x (1-.9997)
Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.
And it’s actually better than that because that vaccine probably reduces severity–has your immune system responding faster/better–even in cases where you get infected.
So the vaccine takes you from basically no chance of dying to basically no chance of dying.
The Adonis cracks don’t help your argument. Everyone under 50 is a covid Adonis.
Looks like I read your comment wrong. I’m a dick.
Alternative hypothesis: The Dems would have had to produce one or two extra suitcases of ballots.
All of Steve’s pontificating about demographic voting trends, etc. is irrelevant if the vote is rigged. But I guess he’s on board with the MSM theory that talking about election fraud is best avoided because it’s “dangerous for democracy.” I don’t what else explains the silence.
Working white women will NEVER have a lot of children, no matter how many goodies you give them.
Why on earth would any woman work full time or even part time, have to deal with a man (yes...deal with)...and deal with more than 1 or 2 kids...
No sane woman.
Which is why we have the birthrate that we have nowReplies: @jsm
Sorry, Thoughts,
I meant to click “agree.”
A worldwide one at that.Replies: @Art Deco
The cheating was manifest.
If you can't understand even 6th grade math just write a comment that says "i do not understand 6th grade math". We'll understand.
The vaccine "efficacy" == "not getting a case of bug". Not "avoiding fatality".
Yes we know you are a young Adonis who isn't going to die (unless a wild boar sneaks up on you). (Heck, i'm not young and a lot of weight work from Adonis and i'm very unlikely to die from the Xi virus either.)
You without vaccine:
Chance of infection eventually = 1
Chance of surviving infection = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = (1-.9997)
You with vaccine that's 95% effective:
Chance of infection eventually = .05
Chance of surviving if infected = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = .05 x (1-.9997)
Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.
And it's actually better than that because that vaccine probably reduces severity--has your immune system responding faster/better--even in cases where you get infected.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue, @Peterike
thanks, now tell me when to sell my Pfizer stock
No particular reason to believe George W Bush is a ‘lightweight’.
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon!
Huh? This has to be another example of the IQ obsession on these boards.
Nixon was a man of considerable intellect, but it was all instrumental. He had no well-developed principles at all. He was astonishingly adept at promoting himself, considering he was fundamentally an introvert with deficient people skills.
Outside of electoral politics, Nixon had a failed venture in the food processing industry, a brief period in the civil service, a period as an associate engaged in transactional law practice, and a more lucrative period in New York law derived in some measure from his prominence. He waived an exemption and served in the Navy. He was bound and determined to seek an executive position of a sort he’d never held before, then proved to be a wretched administrator.
George Bush the Elder was a combat veteran who built his own business and never drew a salary from political office until he was 42 years old. Plenty impressive for most of us.
Jesus.As for Dad, he did not "build his own business"; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a "wimp"--watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War. I don't care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.As for your "vision" hooey, I actually recall that same Bush Sr getting tagged with a gaffe for dismissing "the vision thing" when someone asked what his was. I approved. He was just such a shitty communicator (unlike Nixon, who could always hold his own extemporaneously) he didn't know or care to add sometimes you just need a steady hand on the rudder. He should have said he liked the direction of the country and wanted to preserve it. But he thoroughly lacked imagination and was no natural politician. Which is not a compliment--guy who seems to lack all charisma, a senator's son who ended up running the CIA for a while ends up president? Why?Nixon had a vision, ffs. His was to win the Cold War. He went to China (standing by for long transmission on how anyone could have seen how idiotic that was).So, no.Replies: @Art Deco
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon!
Huh? This has to be another example of the IQ obsession on these boards.
Nixon was a man of considerable intellect, but it was all instrumental. He had no well-developed principles at all. He was astonishingly adept at promoting himself, considering he was fundamentally an introvert with deficient people skills.
Outside of electoral politics, Nixon had a failed venture in the food processing industry, a brief period in the civil service, a period as an associate engaged in transactional law practice, and a more lucrative period in New York law derived in some measure from his prominence. He waived an exemption and served in the Navy. He was bound and determined to seek an executive position of a sort he'd never held before, then proved to be a wretched administrator.
George Bush the Elder was a combat veteran who built his own business and never drew a salary from political office until he was 42 years old. Plenty impressive for most of us.Replies: @S. Anonyia, @Dennis Dale, @Anonymous
Elder Bush came from serious money, Nixon did not. Much easier to succeed in business when you know the right people.
He and his wife hied off to west Texas where they knew no one and he made his pile in an industry in which neither his father nor his grandfathers had ever been engaged.
Steve Sailer, people in private businesses have no obligation to help any candidates get elected by *their* efforts. With what right would Trump claim the vaccine? He didn’t reaerch it, or develop it, and as a governant he didn’t even create any particular government insitutution or grant that would foster vaccine development *before* the pandemic hit. If Trump had, as soon as he took office, said:
“You know what? I have been reading the scientific evidence lately, and there are new airborne viruses being detected in several exotic species of animals that could corss-infect from species to species. This is very dangerous, and could go haywire. So, as President, I am going to sign an act increasing funding for the NIH, as well as cut taxes for pharmaceutical companies that invest more in R&D for the development of vaccines, etc,”
Did Trump do that? No, he actually cut off federal funds to the NIH.If Pfizer had received a billion Dollars in federal funds way back in 2017 or 2018 to help vaccine development for airborne viruses due to Trump’s action, then you would have a point that it was very shitty for the vaccine announcement to be done after the elections. But he did NOTHING. Why should he get credit?
You think this is unfair to Trump? I think it would be more unfair to Biden, as Trump’s INCOMPETENCE IN MANAGING NATIONAL HEALTH would go completely unpunished, and he would get credit for somethingt that he in no way fostered.
Conservative Republicans are notorious for cutting federal funds for everything esxcept military spending.
I think the people at Pfizer and Moderna simply don’t want their *private* achievements being politicized, so they left the announcement for after the election on purpose, not to hinder Trump, but simply out of respect for their shareholders, most of whom don’t want this kind of attention towards their portfolios.
Why should the fat pig Trump get credit for something completely unearned? Trump is anti-science, anti-government spending and has even stated that he has sympathy for people that believe that vaccines cause autism and all sorts of diseases. So why should this man get the credit?
Also, you seriously underestimate just how difficult it is for a medicine to be approved. That is because every medicine is a poison, who’s toxic action needs to be carefully evaluated, and then weighted against the benefits for the treatment of ailments. Otherwise, the thalidomide tragedy would happen over and over again. Also, medicines for use in humans need to be particularly stingy, because humans, for whatever reasons, are much more delicate and sensitive to drugs than most animals. For instance, a rat, with a body mass 60 times smaller than a human, requires a higher dose of strycnine to be killed. As the founder of modern medicine, that great Swiss Paracelsus said:
“The difference between a poison and a medicine is the dosage.”
Medications for use in humans need to be evaluated for toxicity, carcinogenic potential, mutagenic potential, hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity and neurotoxicity. Then, thye have to determine the LD50, the IC50, the affinity(dissociation constant) and a shit ton of other measures. One year is a very, very, very short time to make a vaccine. They usually take 5-10 years and can take up to 15 years. Adn it takes another 10 years after that for the chronic effects to be determined.
The weird thing is to screw Trump they also screwed some of their own investors by not telling them they were changing what they were doing. That created a false impression of failure and no doubt some of their stock owners sold. (I think shareholder suits are basically bogus, but i'd see i could sue if i was one of those guys.)
~~~
But despite all the bottom line here--
Given Biden, this was Trump's election to lose ... and he's the one who lost it.
Beyond better action and communication on immigration, beyond getting the troops home from Afghanistan, even beyond the Democrats' summer of riots and open attack on the rule of law, Trump had the opportunity to cast the question of "who do you trust to lead you out coronatime and get America moving again?" and contrast an active, dynamic, positive can-do Trump with a passive, doom-and-gloom, cowering-in-his-basement Biden.
(Heck, Trump could have even gotten himself in the vaccine trial. "A leader leads, doesn't ask the American people to do what he won't do himself.")
But ... no. This thing was completely up in the air going into the 1st debate. Trump had the golden opportunity to draw this contrast and generally skewer the empty-suit Biden and what did we get ... a dynamic leader?
No a lazy, unprepared, ill-disciplined Trump, who confirmed--for any undecideds watching--every "asshole" stereotype of Trump that the establishment (minoritarian, globalist, big-state) media have been pushing for four years.
Trump wants to blame someone--mirrors are available.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue
Please…– Trump won the election in a landslide, Biden didn’t even campaign because it didn’t matter as the “fix” was in on every level imaginable, they spent 4 years trying to undo the 2016 election and we’re to believe they were “fair” in the laughable shenanigans of the 2020 Election? — there has never been so much blatant and obvious cheating and fraud ever in a National Election — the problem is both the Dems and Republican Uniparty Creeps both want him out so both are good with what was pulled in stealing the election in just about the most obvious way ever….
This article from a gambler’s perspective lays it out nicely — in any other arena if the obvious “moves” made here were done — everyone would be yelling FRAUD and arrests would have been made already — but Orange Man Bad means 24/7 propaganda and lying (all financed by “Elite” NWO Billionaires with bottomless pits of money and the morals of Satan) which we have seen now for 4 years (sane people have seen it anyway others think Putin was in the Whitehouse due to “Russia Collusion”…maybe your one of those…barf….) —
I find it hard to believe any one can say Biden “won” with a straight face — it is farcical and I never liked Trump but I wouldn’t pretend to be that stupid even if I detested him….:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/12/wayne-root-course-election-stolen/
Yes, obviously, no one was sitting around in their pajamas, thinking “If a vaccine is announced before Election Day, I shall vote for Trump. Elsewise, Biden.” But people prefer a strong horse to a weak horse. And Trump announcing a successful vaccine a week before the election, would’ve strengthened his perception as the strong horse. Nothing succeeds like success. Humans are herd animals.
> It is customary in drug and vaccine development to put work on hold while waiting for a reply from FDA… there really is “nothing to see here folks, move on”
Not even wrong.
“… That seems a lot more likely to increase votes for Trump. And yet the Republican Senators didn’t want to sign such a bill. ..”
If Trump had made a deal with Pelosi the Senate would have gone along. But McConnell didn’t want to risk making a deal with Pelosi and then have Trump refuse to go along.
"In October, he told Fox News that he wanted to "do it even bigger than the Democrats," adding: "Now, not every Republican agrees with me, but they will."
On why he would support this, he said the government would "get the money back" due to the benefits of such action."
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-stimulus-support-1552093Replies: @James B. Shearer
1) I wish I could find it (might have even been here) that labs had a vaccine in Feb and admittedly something along the lines of it "not really being that difficult" to create. Are any vaccines that quick? Doesn't it take at least a year, if not more, even for a regular flu?? Why was this PANDEMIC!!!! so easy to defeat?
2) Don't shareholder's have a serious right to be pissed at companies sitting on information? Don't efficient markets depend on this? Not sure about any legality.
3) If by doing nothing at all, I get covid and have a 99.97% chance of recovery, why should I bother getting a vaccine that may only be 90% effective? Wouldn't a placebo have the same effect? At 99.97% I could attribute my recovery to basically anything and you couldn't disprove it. Am I missing some statistical angle? And just to head things off, I have no contact with people who work or live in high risk nursing homes.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @James B. Shearer
“2) Don’t shareholder’s have a serious right to be pissed at companies sitting on information? Don’t efficient markets depend on this? Not sure about any legality.”
Shareholders don’t have a right to be informed of every minor event. If there hadn’t been an election in between nobody would care about the two week (or whatever it was) delay.
That would be an excellent reason not to express an opinion about it.Replies: @Guy De Champlagne
Then I guess we should shut down this thread. And if we apply that principal to all issues shut down all comments and only let Steve talk about golf courses and 1980s and 1990s Chicago test marketing.
There was almost no price paid by his opponents for bullying and opposing Trump.
"Guy De Champlagne and his handlers cry out in pain as they strike us."Replies: @Guy De Champlagne
I don’t disagree. My point was that Trumps limiting factor is not his principles, since he’s actually guilty of far more authoritarian actions than trying to massage the FDA process to get a pre election announcement. Trump’s limiting factor is his competence and his garbage appointments.
As I commented on your Nov 9 post, it is far more likely that it was FDA’s nudges that made both Pfizer and Moderna delay the results. The latest facts only make it even more likely. Not that CEOs of both companies needed a lot of convincing – chances are, like vast majority of good rich people, they too hated the Orange Man. In the end, it was a very definition of a conspiracy.
I have no idea if you’re right or wrong. But my point is that I can imagine someone who does know all about the process saying exactly what you did. Evaluating Steve’s argument requires a huge amount of background knowledge that Steve and his commenters don’t want to admit they don’t have.
And of course it could be customary to pause and for that pause to still be politically motivated. But if everything is all about Trump why did they choose a benchmark that even could lead to an announcement pre election? Why risk it?
I don’t move on the company director floor where such a decision would be made, but I have 20+ years of experiences in developing drug/vaccines and getting then through regulatory negotiations. Nothing here seems out of the ordinary to me, for what it’s worth
Shareholders don't have a right to be informed of every minor event. If there hadn't been an election in between nobody would care about the two week (or whatever it was) delay.Replies: @Steve Sailer
The most talked about clinical trial in the world isn’t “every minor event.”
A two week delay in announcing preliminary results is a minor event.
At this point I’m pretty burned out by this cycle. Biden for all PRACTICAL PURPOSES won.
So how can we the peons get back at these two specific companies? Short their stock? Boycott? I dunno you tell me….
Overall i'd go with (am trying to go with) a form of "think globally, act locally". i.e. "live your best life", enjoy the sunshine and what freedoms we have. Try to red pill people (esp younger people) in your circle in as much as it's safe to do so. Maybe get involved in local or state politics to whatever degree it is feasible and try to keep the wokeness in check. Maybe find out who your state reps and such are and lobby them about instituting election reform, like voter id laws. Maybe write some letters to support the use of eVerify (if you care about the immigration thing). etc. etc. i.e. work on issues and systems rather than being bitter about this Biden thing.
Basically we have to play the long game and do things like the Federalist Society (https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/360598-meet-the-powerful-group-behind-trumps-judicial-nominations). I have no taste for revolution and separatism and all that.
Sailer loves conspiracy theories. Where you been?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Kronos, @Hypnotoad666
Especially the quantitative sort.
Regardless of how many people voted for Trump he was going to “lose” — it’s not who votes it is who counts the votes, and out of which hidden suitcases pulled from under which tables…. — anyone thinking after 4 years of trying to frame him and destroy him they were going to allow him to actually have a second term is not very bright….
There’s too much truth to that. He was always thinking about and considering doing this, that, and the other thing, but nothing much truly significant ever got done.
Glad you asked! He is doing alright, thank you very much!
In 2014, he went straight for an investment banking job at Moelis & Co for a salary that was low 7 figures. He remains there today and his stock ownership of this company is valued at $3.6M today. As you can imagine, he probably has other personal investments and benefited greatly from Trump era stock market.
Yes, that’s the kind of deal that makes the “servants of the people” jobs so attractive: You can’t fail.
Also, Prescott Bush (W’s grandfather) was a heavy East Coast financial/political backer for Nixon. Nixon felt compelled to help out on George H.W. Bush’s early political campaigns.
Nixon campaigned for scores of Republican candidates in 1966. He was collecting IOUs.Replies: @Kronos
Not red herrings, but reasonable conclusions that you cannot bring yourself to admit.
“Simple answer, from the Dems themselves, who realized after the polls closed that their Plan A cheating before that point wasn’t enough”
That would be Fake News.
“But I just don’t see any good, solid evidence he actually did.”
Because you simply choose not to.
“3. That an increased vote for Trump would not have just resulted in an increased production of fraudulent ballots in Pennsylvania et al. Democratic activists had announced they were going to do ‘whatever was necessary’ to win.”
Assuming there was this increased production of fraudulent ballots. And recall it was Trump who stated he was going to win no matter what, and he primed his supporters into that type of thinking. When he won, no fraud. If he lost, there was fraud. That is insane.
If by “re-elected” you mean “received more legitimate votes”, you might well be correct. If by “re-elected” you mean “will be inaugurated on JAN 20”, you’re almost certainly incorrect.
If you can't understand even 6th grade math just write a comment that says "i do not understand 6th grade math". We'll understand.
The vaccine "efficacy" == "not getting a case of bug". Not "avoiding fatality".
Yes we know you are a young Adonis who isn't going to die (unless a wild boar sneaks up on you). (Heck, i'm not young and a lot of weight work from Adonis and i'm very unlikely to die from the Xi virus either.)
You without vaccine:
Chance of infection eventually = 1
Chance of surviving infection = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = (1-.9997)
You with vaccine that's 95% effective:
Chance of infection eventually = .05
Chance of surviving if infected = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = .05 x (1-.9997)
Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.
And it's actually better than that because that vaccine probably reduces severity--has your immune system responding faster/better--even in cases where you get infected.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue, @Peterike
When even the NYSlimes puts this out — and they of course are salivating for needles in every arm — maybe we shouldn’t be so blindly believing of Big Pharma and their numbers that make no sense given historical development of vaccines (takes a number of years, at best if ever, not months…) and effectiveness specifically of attempted CVirus vaccines previously (0%)– the Flu vaccine is around 40-45% effective supposedly — this 95% number is believable? Not buying it sorry…: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/science/coronavirus-vaccine-trials.html
The flu vaccine is thought to be pretty effective if many months before the flu season started, the experts who guessed which strains would be circulating in that hemisphere were correct. Obviously they frequently guess wrong, and in any case the parts of the flu virus the body latches onto to make an adaptive immune system response are not "conserved," they can change a lot and the virus will still work. So even a correct guess can "drift" somewhat in the ensuing months.
The Republicans now need to go back to the drawing board and come up with some policies that are genuinely popular.
No doubt they will continue with the current trend of running candidates who are older and older. We can expect to see candidates in the 80s or even 90s in the next few elections.
Melania Trump looks like an outsider at this point, but has a useful resume. Barron Trump is about 6'7", and tall candidates stand out in a crowd.
The next interesting question in national politics will be whom Harris will appoint as her vice president.
Hunter Biden must be in the running, as these things often run in families, although Chelsea Clinton could be another dark horse, and the Kennedys are also so fertile that they can almost certainly breed another square-jawed candidate at their New England political stud farm.Replies: @Kronos, @BB753, @Louis Renault, @bomag, @Art Deco, @James Speaks, @BenKenobi, @AnotherDad, @MBlanc46
America (and Americans) First! End mass immigration. Cut taxes and regulation to spur growth and employment. Those are the platform that got Trump elected in 2016. But the Repubs’ subservience to global capital prevents them from supporting two of those planks. So the Dems will beat them with Gibs and an ever-increasing number of Third Worlders.
Trump now knows that he should have had his people monitoring Pfizer and Moderna. Monitoring their progress.
__________________________It seems some took Federal funding. Pfizer did not Was the Pfizer vaccine part of the government's Operation Warp
www.nytimes.com › 2020/11/10 › health › was-the-pfizer...
Nov 10, 2020 — Pfizer did not accept federal funding to help develop or manufacture the vaccine, unlike front-runners Moderna and AstraZeneca. Pfizer has ...Replies: @Getaclue
Then they came out later and said they were in fact part of it “technically” — it’s all politics and bs– 99.7% survival rate and they’re treating this like the Bubonic Plague, up to 90% false positives, every death is “Covid”, Hospitals paid tens of thousands more to code deaths “Covid 19″…. — they want that needle in everyone’s arm so very bad — the whole thing smells…badly….
If you can't understand even 6th grade math just write a comment that says "i do not understand 6th grade math". We'll understand.
The vaccine "efficacy" == "not getting a case of bug". Not "avoiding fatality".
Yes we know you are a young Adonis who isn't going to die (unless a wild boar sneaks up on you). (Heck, i'm not young and a lot of weight work from Adonis and i'm very unlikely to die from the Xi virus either.)
You without vaccine:
Chance of infection eventually = 1
Chance of surviving infection = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = (1-.9997)
You with vaccine that's 95% effective:
Chance of infection eventually = .05
Chance of surviving if infected = .9997
Chance of dying from Xi virus at all = .05 x (1-.9997)
Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.
And it's actually better than that because that vaccine probably reduces severity--has your immune system responding faster/better--even in cases where you get infected.Replies: @Polistra, @Getaclue, @Peterike
“ Not a complicated concept. Vaccine removes 95% of the issue, and you only have to Adonis your way through a measly 5% chance now.”
So the vaccine takes you from basically no chance of dying to basically no chance of dying.
The Adonis cracks don’t help your argument. Everyone under 50 is a covid Adonis.
Sailer loves conspiracy theories. Where you been?Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Kronos, @Hypnotoad666
He loves conspiracy theories about redeveloping Chicago real estate 20 years ago. The more plausible conspiracy executed 30 days ago to steal the presidency, not so much.
Maybe in 20 years that will interest him, too.
What goes around comes around. Trump sucks at politics.Replies: @Anonymous, @That Would Be Telling, @AnotherDad, @Hypnotoad666
Everything you say is 180 degrees from reality: The professional class hates Trump, not vice versa. And the announcement was obviously partisan.
Furthermore, if the announcement were non-partisan as you claim, then it’s a non-sequitur to say it was due to Trump’s politics.
Total comment fail.
https://youtu.be/OoeCB0MudgAReplies: @Hypnotoad666
As I’ve posted before, since the placebo group and vaccine group in each of the trials presumably had the same overall mortality and health outcomes, the vaccine trials amount to a gold standard test proving covid is innocuous and the vaccines accomplish nothing significant.
I eagerly await the data release. The longer it takes, the more counter-narrative you know it will be.
As iSteve himself commented to someone trying to do this for real, "that’s not how an infectious epidemic works. It doesn’t rise to 1.16% infected and then just stop."
With this dataset your thesis only works if the world freezes as soon as results are announced. If not for the fact that contrary to the FDA's wishes for SCIENCE!!!, the control arms will in due course get vaccinated by the companies due to gratitude and ethics, we would expect everyone in the control group to get COVID-19 sooner or later, instead of less than 200 as of the FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) applications (although those are symptomatic cases, but based on very close monitoring for symptoms). While only 5% from the vaccine arm will.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
Typically, older men are irrationally scared to death of covid-19.
I'd wager taking the vax will be more harmful for guys like Sailer and older boomers than the virus itself. What's more, I'd even keep away from this year's flu shot if you're over 55, overweight or sickly.
Garrison seems to have been blown off because of unauthorised versions of his cartoons.
If Trump had made a deal with Pelosi the Senate would have gone along. But McConnell didn't want to risk making a deal with Pelosi and then have Trump refuse to go along.Replies: @notsaying
But Trump was wanted to go big before the election. He wanted more stimulus payments that he could take credit for. It was McConnell who said he didn’t have enough Republican Senators on board.
“In October, he told Fox News that he wanted to “do it even bigger than the Democrats,” adding: “Now, not every Republican agrees with me, but they will.”
On why he would support this, he said the government would “get the money back” due to the benefits of such action.”
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-stimulus-support-1552093
"“The American people, in the end, need help,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, told reporters. “And wherever this thing settles between the president of the United States and his team that has to sign it into law and the Democrat not-insignificant minority in the Senate and majority in the House is something I am prepared to support, even if I have some problems with certain parts of it.”"
But Pelosi and Trump (who don't like each other) didn't reach an agreement (possibly because Pelosi didn't actually want to make a deal that might help Trump win re-election) so nothing happened.
So how can we the peons get back at these two specific companies? Short their stock? Boycott? I dunno you tell me....Replies: @vhrm
There’s nothing you can do to the pharma companies so don’t worry about them, i thnk. In the short run maybe throw some $$ at those Georgia Senate races to help make sure the Dems. don’t get the Senate.
Overall i’d go with (am trying to go with) a form of “think globally, act locally”. i.e. “live your best life”, enjoy the sunshine and what freedoms we have. Try to red pill people (esp younger people) in your circle in as much as it’s safe to do so. Maybe get involved in local or state politics to whatever degree it is feasible and try to keep the wokeness in check. Maybe find out who your state reps and such are and lobby them about instituting election reform, like voter id laws. Maybe write some letters to support the use of eVerify (if you care about the immigration thing). etc. etc. i.e. work on issues and systems rather than being bitter about this Biden thing.
Basically we have to play the long game and do things like the Federalist Society (https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/360598-meet-the-powerful-group-behind-trumps-judicial-nominations). I have no taste for revolution and separatism and all that.
“The most talked about clinical trial in the world isn’t “every minor event.””
A two week delay in announcing preliminary results is a minor event.
A bunch of people with graduate degrees spent his whole presidency cultivating their hatred of him.Replies: @Kronos
Before Trump started to dabble in politics starting in 2000, he never experienced such hatred from the professional classes during the 1980s and 1990s right? He would’ve been considered loosely a member of that class.
"In October, he told Fox News that he wanted to "do it even bigger than the Democrats," adding: "Now, not every Republican agrees with me, but they will."
On why he would support this, he said the government would "get the money back" due to the benefits of such action."
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-stimulus-support-1552093Replies: @James B. Shearer
There was a window of time in early August when a deal seemed possible. At that time McConnell said:
““The American people, in the end, need help,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, told reporters. “And wherever this thing settles between the president of the United States and his team that has to sign it into law and the Democrat not-insignificant minority in the Senate and majority in the House is something I am prepared to support, even if I have some problems with certain parts of it.””
But Pelosi and Trump (who don’t like each other) didn’t reach an agreement (possibly because Pelosi didn’t actually want to make a deal that might help Trump win re-election) so nothing happened.
Any such relation to Ronald Reagan? Ronald Wilson Reagan, not the younger Ronald Prescott Reagan.
Two lumpy coal burners in the stocking for you!
1.) All major news outlets and internet companies suppressed the Hunter Biden influence peddling story. No one disputes this.
2.) The democrats like open borders because it allows them to change the electorate and have consistently pushed for opening the borders. No one disputes this.
3.) The democrats like to let felons and other reprobates who should have no part in a democracy vote, because they tend to vote democratic. No one disputes this.
4.) Pharma companies appear to have suppressed the results of their clinical trial until after the election. I don't think this is undisputable yet but it looks pretty likely to me.
Widespread election fraud, however, is a bit more nebulous. I have no doubt that there were some irregularities, but were they more than any other election? Did they swing the outcome? Truthfully I don't know. I also have a feeling some seeming irregularities will turn out to be nothing.
Here's what I see shaping up: Trump supporters spend all their time on election irregularities. Some of them turn out to be likely but unprovable, some turn out to be true but not enough to swing the election, some turn out to be provably false. The media harps on the ones that turned out to be provably false in order to paint trump as a sore loser and imply that all of the claims were false, when in fact only a subset were false.
At the end of the day everyone has used up all their airtime going back and forth about election fraud claims, and conveniently there has been no time for discussion of 1, 2, 3, and 4, which are undisputed facts.
In short, I think it's wise to avoid getting sucked into conversations about election fraud if you want to change people's minds. There's no need to talk about things that are unproven when there are plenty of things that are proven.Replies: @Stan Adams
Do leftists confine themselves to discussion of undisputed facts? Or do they go after their opponents with everything they’ve got?
The Democrats are masters at creating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) through the constant repetition of unsubstantiated allegations, including outright lies and fabrications. Russiagate and Ukrainegate turned out to be a bunch of BS, but they cast a shadow over the Trump administration even before he took office. The George Floyd narrative is pure horseshit, but the media continue to peddle it as the gospel truth.
Some of the fraud claims might be a bit outlandish, but, let’s face it: This was one dirty election. It wasn’t the first dirty election in American history and it won’t be the last. But why should that stop us from pursuing the full truth about who really won?
We have nothing to lose by casting doubt upon Biden’s legitimacy. The Democrats never accepted the Trump presidency as valid. We should return the favor.
True, and by doing this, they are completely and utterly trashing their own credibility. Some people believe it, sure, because they believe anything on TV--those people can't be helped. But anybody with half a brain has now decided the media is full of it. The legacy media can afford to make this mistake because they have a _lot_ of institutional power behind them. We don't. We are arguing against the received wisdom. People will be predisposed to dismiss us as cranks, just as they are predisposed to believe TV talking heads. Let's not be so foolish as to make it easier for people to dismiss the core of our arguments by sprinkling in some easily disprovable facts.
I'm not against trying to delegitimize the Biden presidency, but you can do that with stuff that is definitely true. Just keep hammering it, over and over. Talk about Hunter Biden, over and over.
Talk about felons voting, over and over. Convicted rapists get to vote now, and Democrats are thrilled! How do you feel about that, my feminist niece, and would you like some turkey? There's plenty of material out there. Why bother with the questionable stuff?
The key to the survival of the old core, or Heritage Americans, or whatever you want to call us, is that you need to get the white elites to care about white proles, and vice versa, and they need to act as a block. This is a really hard thing to do because their economic interests diverge to an extent. So you have to bind them together with other things--culture, common enemies, etc. It's tough. Anything fringe-y tends to split the coalition. I voted for Trump and I'm sad he lost but I certainly recognized that the intra-white polarization he caused was a long-term problem. This struggle will continue long after we are all dead.Replies: @Stan Adams
https://twitter.com/Barnes_Law/status/1335399953900793856?s=20
It would not have mattered. They would have stuffed as many ballots as needed.
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon!
Huh? This has to be another example of the IQ obsession on these boards.
Nixon was a man of considerable intellect, but it was all instrumental. He had no well-developed principles at all. He was astonishingly adept at promoting himself, considering he was fundamentally an introvert with deficient people skills.
Outside of electoral politics, Nixon had a failed venture in the food processing industry, a brief period in the civil service, a period as an associate engaged in transactional law practice, and a more lucrative period in New York law derived in some measure from his prominence. He waived an exemption and served in the Navy. He was bound and determined to seek an executive position of a sort he'd never held before, then proved to be a wretched administrator.
George Bush the Elder was a combat veteran who built his own business and never drew a salary from political office until he was 42 years old. Plenty impressive for most of us.Replies: @S. Anonyia, @Dennis Dale, @Anonymous
No particular reason to believe George W Bush is a ‘lightweight’.
Right. Not the mediocre professional and personal history. Not the inability to complete a sentence. Not his cowardly behavior in the first days of 9/11. Not the complete absence of any worthy writing, any memorable speeches, anything.
Jesus.
As for Dad, he did not “build his own business”; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a “wimp”–watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War. I don’t care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.
As for your “vision” hooey, I actually recall that same Bush Sr getting tagged with a gaffe for dismissing “the vision thing” when someone asked what his was. I approved. He was just such a shitty communicator (unlike Nixon, who could always hold his own extemporaneously) he didn’t know or care to add sometimes you just need a steady hand on the rudder. He should have said he liked the direction of the country and wanted to preserve it. But he thoroughly lacked imagination and was no natural politician. Which is not a compliment–guy who seems to lack all charisma, a senator’s son who ended up running the CIA for a while ends up president? Why?
Nixon had a vision, ffs. His was to win the Cold War. He went to China (standing by for long transmission on how anyone could have seen how idiotic that was).
So, no.
As for Dad, he did not “build his own business”; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. That's the second brazen lie you've told in this exchange. No one but George Bush and his partners built George Bush's businesses. His father was not in Congress at all when he went out to Texas and you name not one thing his father did that advanced his son's business interests. He sold Zapata Oil in 1963 for a sum just shy of $1 million, or north of $6 million in today's currency. Note, this was at a time and place where real incomes were about 30% of what they are today. Your neighbor sells his business tomorrow for $20 million, and you tell him he's done 'so-so'. Do you have any idea what you sound like?
He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a “wimp”–watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War.There are three distinct lies in this sentence. It's a pattern with you. (That aside, it's irrelevant to his demonstrated skills 'ere going into politics).
I don’t care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.Only a very strange person would grant Garry Trudeau - a cartoonist whose entire career has been built on provoking status jonesing among his readers - the status of oracle and gold standard in public affairs.
Nixon had a vision.Nixon was about Nixon.
His was to win the Cold War.You've confounded Nixon with Reagan.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Dennis Dale
288,000 ballots in PA were "disappeared". Steve and most people here don't seem to care too much about the blatant election fraud.Replies: @Dieter Kief, @Dieter Kief
Here’s more about voter fraud big style by tech liberterian David Byrne:
https://www.facebook.com/zach.cook.984/videos/2056775834459127
I've heard there's an alternative to both, and it's free. (My recollection is that cow's milk doesn't sit well on baby stomachs.)
OT, but peerless UK golf commentator Peter Alliss has died at the age of 89. He played in six Ryder Cup teams, coached Sean Connery for Goldfinger's golf game, was commentating on the Masters only last month. Father of six, too - a life well lived.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-9023181/Peter-Alliss-BBCs-voice-golf-dies-89.htmlReplies: @LondonBob, @Jonathan Mason
Alliss didn’t sound great commentating on this year’s Masters, not surprised to hear he has died, big loss, golf won’t be the same.
You’re using the wrong dataset to try to prove your thesis.
As iSteve himself commented to someone trying to do this for real, “that’s not how an infectious epidemic works. It doesn’t rise to 1.16% infected and then just stop.”
With this dataset your thesis only works if the world freezes as soon as results are announced. If not for the fact that contrary to the FDA’s wishes for SCIENCE!!!, the control arms will in due course get vaccinated by the companies due to gratitude and ethics, we would expect everyone in the control group to get COVID-19 sooner or later, instead of less than 200 as of the FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) applications (although those are symptomatic cases, but based on very close monitoring for symptoms). While only 5% from the vaccine arm will.
The longer they observe the control group the more useful the data would be. If they destroy the continuing validity of the experiment because "ethics," then so be it. But if nobody is getting any sicker in the control group in the first place then there really is no ethical concern.
The bottom line is that you Team Panic people have no legitimate study proving that covid is especially dangerous. And, worse, you refuse to conduct one. For example, you could easily identify one big sample group and measure all their health factors and comorbidities. You could then test them regularly for covid. You could then compare apples-to-apples and isolate the effects of covid by comparing the outcomes of those who contract covid all other factors being equal, with those who did not. But you won't do this because it might not give the result you want.
All Team Panic has is (a) Fake CDC death numbers of people who maybe died "with" covid; and (b) Modest increase in excess death totals which are only circumstantial evidence of causation and are totally confounded with the negative health effects of the lockdowns.
Maybe covid is exactly as dangerous as claimed -- which is still only about three times worse than the usual flu. Or maybe it's not. But stop talking about "science" being on your side until you actually do a scientific experiment. Which you never will.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Steve Sailer
Not that I’m aware of.
But if I were Reagan, I’d have been terrified that either George H. W. Bush or E. Howard Hunt would do me in. (Both were strongly affiliated with the more dangerous elements of the CIA.)
Imagine Bush I’s goofy “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” voice saying “It’s time to say goodbye” when the poison laced wine starts to kick in. Also, maybe Bush I was intentionally poisoned when he vomited on that Japanese official but the various immunities he built up in Langley kicked in and saved his life.
“Oh that was just Walter from my Skull and Bones days. He somehow snuck a “Langley special” into my food and I didn’t notice. We still prank each other even after all these years. Eight years ago I sabotaged the breaks in his wife’s car. Thanks to me she made it to that mall shopping special in record time! We tried giving Castro numerous “Langley specials” over the years but he just got diarrhea. The poison specialists attributed it to Cubans having better gut bacteria compared to people in the US.”
Bush was CIA director for all of 1 year. No clue how you got the idea Howard Hunt was ever 'dangerous' or why you fancy he'd have been in a position to 'do in' Ronald Reagan. In 1981, he was an old man living in Miami writing fiction.Replies: @Kronos
You may not remember Spy, a short-lived but fondly-remembered satirical magazine from the early 1990’s. It typically referred to Trump as a “fat-fingered vulgarian.”
There is a problem with any premise that insists there was some number of actual voters showing up to vote for Trump that would have caused his vote total to exceed those attributed to Biden.
It’s very useful to winning elections when one can program the final tally on a whim.
Elder Bush came from serious money, Nixon did not. Much easier to succeed in business when you know the right people.
He and his wife hied off to west Texas where they knew no one and he made his pile in an industry in which neither his father nor his grandfathers had ever been engaged.
Nixon felt compelled to help out on George H.W. Bush’s early political campaigns.
Nixon campaigned for scores of Republican candidates in 1966. He was collecting IOUs.
https://thedispatch.com/p/fda-career-staff-are-delaying-the
This whole “Trump would have won if he had…” stuff is worthy of only the most pozed of normie writers on the right. Trump did win and anything that may have heppend to help his cause would have just increased the margin of the cheat.
As iSteve himself commented to someone trying to do this for real, "that’s not how an infectious epidemic works. It doesn’t rise to 1.16% infected and then just stop."
With this dataset your thesis only works if the world freezes as soon as results are announced. If not for the fact that contrary to the FDA's wishes for SCIENCE!!!, the control arms will in due course get vaccinated by the companies due to gratitude and ethics, we would expect everyone in the control group to get COVID-19 sooner or later, instead of less than 200 as of the FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) applications (although those are symptomatic cases, but based on very close monitoring for symptoms). While only 5% from the vaccine arm will.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
Obviously, the study applies only to the time period for which the study is conducted. You are being deliberately dense to suggest otherwise.
The longer they observe the control group the more useful the data would be. If they destroy the continuing validity of the experiment because “ethics,” then so be it. But if nobody is getting any sicker in the control group in the first place then there really is no ethical concern.
The bottom line is that you Team Panic people have no legitimate study proving that covid is especially dangerous. And, worse, you refuse to conduct one. For example, you could easily identify one big sample group and measure all their health factors and comorbidities. You could then test them regularly for covid. You could then compare apples-to-apples and isolate the effects of covid by comparing the outcomes of those who contract covid all other factors being equal, with those who did not. But you won’t do this because it might not give the result you want.
All Team Panic has is (a) Fake CDC death numbers of people who maybe died “with” covid; and (b) Modest increase in excess death totals which are only circumstantial evidence of causation and are totally confounded with the negative health effects of the lockdowns.
Maybe covid is exactly as dangerous as claimed — which is still only about three times worse than the usual flu. Or maybe it’s not. But stop talking about “science” being on your side until you actually do a scientific experiment. Which you never will.
All cause mortality as collected and reported by the CDC from state death certificates, that is, I'm only trusting the CDC to do collation and addition, and unlike that Johns Hopkins idiot am smart enough to read the caveats about the most recent weeks (TL;DR, it can take up to 8 weeks for the CDC to receive death certificates, and COVID-19 blamed ones are taking longer than others), starting on the week 2/22/2020, all cause mortality has always been above 100%. If we use a very conservative 120% as a cutoff, 14 weeks have been at or above it, with two weeks at 142% and one at 137%. I don't have enough detailed statistics background to know if using a cutoff of 115% or even 100% would be strong, but I can't look at these numbers of deaths and say they're "modest."
And, hey, if you're serious, dig up the prior years total mortality, total up the provisional 2020 all cause mortality numbers minus enough recent weeks, and see if they don't roughly agree with the Official and indeed somewhat suspect COVID-19 fatality numbers. Or at see if we're well above the mid-20th Century pandemics which killed ~100,000 Americans. This is a study you can do yourself, if you're confident you can prove your "modest" proposal.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
Jesus.As for Dad, he did not "build his own business"; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a "wimp"--watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War. I don't care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.As for your "vision" hooey, I actually recall that same Bush Sr getting tagged with a gaffe for dismissing "the vision thing" when someone asked what his was. I approved. He was just such a shitty communicator (unlike Nixon, who could always hold his own extemporaneously) he didn't know or care to add sometimes you just need a steady hand on the rudder. He should have said he liked the direction of the country and wanted to preserve it. But he thoroughly lacked imagination and was no natural politician. Which is not a compliment--guy who seems to lack all charisma, a senator's son who ended up running the CIA for a while ends up president? Why?Nixon had a vision, ffs. His was to win the Cold War. He went to China (standing by for long transmission on how anyone could have seen how idiotic that was).So, no.Replies: @Art Deco
Right. Not the mediocre professional and personal history. Not the inability to complete a sentence. Not his cowardly behavior in the first days of 9/11. Not the complete absence of any worthy writing, any memorable speeches, anything.
(1) He was perfectly able to complete a sentence. He was less articulate than some other politicians, but so what? (2) He never behaved in a cowardly fashion in Sept. 2001. (3) You’re not going to find ‘worthy writing’ or ‘memorable speeches’ from any American politician not named ‘Daniel Patrick Moynihan’. You won’t find them from Nixon, either. Nixon did write several books, but I don’t think anyone paid much attention to any bar, perhaps The Real War. Even faculty members who go into electoral politics are seldom people who are engaging speakers and writers.
I’m not sure what complaints you have about his ‘personal history’. He had a satisfactory domestic life and no history of feuding with his relatives. He had a drinking problem prior to 1986 and it’s a reasonable inference he used street drugs at some point during the period running from 1964 to 1974. The scandals adhering to his children were on the order of being caught in a bar with a fake ID. News flash, the Bushes aren’t Mormons.
His ‘mediocre professional history’? That’s a somewhat legitimate complaint. Looks pretty rum from someone extolling Richard Nixon’s impressiveness. We’ve had presidents with long and satisfying careers outside of electoral politics. They include Hoover, Eisenhower, Trump, Ronald Reagan (in a way), Jimmy Carter (to a degree) and George Bush the Elder (to a degree). They don’t include Nixon or any of the rest of them.
As for Dad, he did not “build his own business”; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so.
That’s the second brazen lie you’ve told in this exchange. No one but George Bush and his partners built George Bush’s businesses. His father was not in Congress at all when he went out to Texas and you name not one thing his father did that advanced his son’s business interests. He sold Zapata Oil in 1963 for a sum just shy of $1 million, or north of $6 million in today’s currency. Note, this was at a time and place where real incomes were about 30% of what they are today. Your neighbor sells his business tomorrow for $20 million, and you tell him he’s done ‘so-so’. Do you have any idea what you sound like?
He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a “wimp”–watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War.
There are three distinct lies in this sentence. It’s a pattern with you. (That aside, it’s irrelevant to his demonstrated skills ‘ere going into politics).
I don’t care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.
Only a very strange person would grant Garry Trudeau – a cartoonist whose entire career has been built on provoking status jonesing among his readers – the status of oracle and gold standard in public affairs.
Nixon had a vision.
Nixon was about Nixon.
His was to win the Cold War.
You’ve confounded Nixon with Reagan.
How many hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Americans, died in Bush's wars? (The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.) How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
Screw Bush and the neocon scum who infested his administration.Replies: @Art Deco
As for Dad, he did not “build his own business”; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. That's the second brazen lie you've told in this exchange. No one but George Bush and his partners built George Bush's businesses. His father was not in Congress at all when he went out to Texas and you name not one thing his father did that advanced his son's business interests. He sold Zapata Oil in 1963 for a sum just shy of $1 million, or north of $6 million in today's currency. Note, this was at a time and place where real incomes were about 30% of what they are today. Your neighbor sells his business tomorrow for $20 million, and you tell him he's done 'so-so'. Do you have any idea what you sound like?
He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a “wimp”–watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War.There are three distinct lies in this sentence. It's a pattern with you. (That aside, it's irrelevant to his demonstrated skills 'ere going into politics).
I don’t care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.Only a very strange person would grant Garry Trudeau - a cartoonist whose entire career has been built on provoking status jonesing among his readers - the status of oracle and gold standard in public affairs.
Nixon had a vision.Nixon was about Nixon.
His was to win the Cold War.You've confounded Nixon with Reagan.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Dennis Dale
You’re defending the bastard? Seriously?
How many hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Americans, died in Bush’s wars? (The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.) How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
Screw Bush and the neocon scum who infested his administration.
(The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.)
The people who are actually tallying the numbers estimate the toll at 200,000. Almost none of the deaths since 2011 are attributable to American troops and that same agency only attributes a modest fraction of those who died between 2002 and 2012 to American and allied soldiers.
How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
That will happen consequent to any war. Your point?Replies: @Muggles, @Stan Adams
Supposedly the Hinckleys were good friends of the Bushes.
The longer they observe the control group the more useful the data would be. If they destroy the continuing validity of the experiment because "ethics," then so be it. But if nobody is getting any sicker in the control group in the first place then there really is no ethical concern.
The bottom line is that you Team Panic people have no legitimate study proving that covid is especially dangerous. And, worse, you refuse to conduct one. For example, you could easily identify one big sample group and measure all their health factors and comorbidities. You could then test them regularly for covid. You could then compare apples-to-apples and isolate the effects of covid by comparing the outcomes of those who contract covid all other factors being equal, with those who did not. But you won't do this because it might not give the result you want.
All Team Panic has is (a) Fake CDC death numbers of people who maybe died "with" covid; and (b) Modest increase in excess death totals which are only circumstantial evidence of causation and are totally confounded with the negative health effects of the lockdowns.
Maybe covid is exactly as dangerous as claimed -- which is still only about three times worse than the usual flu. Or maybe it's not. But stop talking about "science" being on your side until you actually do a scientific experiment. Which you never will.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Steve Sailer
Rather than use up an AGREE/DISAGREE/ETC. and simply mark your post “Troll,” this point could use a little specificity.
All cause mortality as collected and reported by the CDC from state death certificates, that is, I’m only trusting the CDC to do collation and addition, and unlike that Johns Hopkins idiot am smart enough to read the caveats about the most recent weeks (TL;DR, it can take up to 8 weeks for the CDC to receive death certificates, and COVID-19 blamed ones are taking longer than others), starting on the week 2/22/2020, all cause mortality has always been above 100%. If we use a very conservative 120% as a cutoff, 14 weeks have been at or above it, with two weeks at 142% and one at 137%. I don’t have enough detailed statistics background to know if using a cutoff of 115% or even 100% would be strong, but I can’t look at these numbers of deaths and say they’re “modest.”
And, hey, if you’re serious, dig up the prior years total mortality, total up the provisional 2020 all cause mortality numbers minus enough recent weeks, and see if they don’t roughly agree with the Official and indeed somewhat suspect COVID-19 fatality numbers. Or at see if we’re well above the mid-20th Century pandemics which killed ~100,000 Americans. This is a study you can do yourself, if you’re confident you can prove your “modest” proposal.
” which likely would have meant a Trump victory”
Which planet is Steve reporting from? ON this planet Trump was in fact victorious, he did in fact win the election, which is being mutilated by the obvious brazen attempts of the Democrats to add millions of phoney votes to their tally.
Steve makes me wonder with such distorted opinions.
Authenticjazzman “Mensa” qualified since 1973, airborne trained US Army vet, and pro Jazz artist.
As for Dad, he did not “build his own business”; he was an ambitious scion of a powerful senator who found his way into the oil business and did so-so. That's the second brazen lie you've told in this exchange. No one but George Bush and his partners built George Bush's businesses. His father was not in Congress at all when he went out to Texas and you name not one thing his father did that advanced his son's business interests. He sold Zapata Oil in 1963 for a sum just shy of $1 million, or north of $6 million in today's currency. Note, this was at a time and place where real incomes were about 30% of what they are today. Your neighbor sells his business tomorrow for $20 million, and you tell him he's done 'so-so'. Do you have any idea what you sound like?
He was a war hero who connived to rubble Iraq on behalf of Israel so he could stick it to Dan Rather and everybody else who had taken to calling him a “wimp”–watch him fail to conceal the smile on his face in his address to the nation announcing the first Iraq War.There are three distinct lies in this sentence. It's a pattern with you. (That aside, it's irrelevant to his demonstrated skills 'ere going into politics).
I don’t care how many planes he crashed. Bush was such a non-force as a politician Garry Trudeau used to include him in his strips as an empty spot. Not fair, but you know, you have to really lack force of personality to be a war hero and have Garry effin Trudeau calling you a pussy.Only a very strange person would grant Garry Trudeau - a cartoonist whose entire career has been built on provoking status jonesing among his readers - the status of oracle and gold standard in public affairs.
Nixon had a vision.Nixon was about Nixon.
His was to win the Cold War.You've confounded Nixon with Reagan.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Dennis Dale
If I was a troll I’d congratulate myself for getting someone to waste their time defending the intelligence and character of W. No mean feat.
But no, I’m not going to actually read it. Come on man!
Like anyone else, W is a mix of things. Doesn't give you a license to lie about him.
Deleted due to duplication.
AJM
Trump won the elections, anyway. Fraud might win the presidency, but that’s what fraud is for.
All cause mortality as collected and reported by the CDC from state death certificates, that is, I'm only trusting the CDC to do collation and addition, and unlike that Johns Hopkins idiot am smart enough to read the caveats about the most recent weeks (TL;DR, it can take up to 8 weeks for the CDC to receive death certificates, and COVID-19 blamed ones are taking longer than others), starting on the week 2/22/2020, all cause mortality has always been above 100%. If we use a very conservative 120% as a cutoff, 14 weeks have been at or above it, with two weeks at 142% and one at 137%. I don't have enough detailed statistics background to know if using a cutoff of 115% or even 100% would be strong, but I can't look at these numbers of deaths and say they're "modest."
And, hey, if you're serious, dig up the prior years total mortality, total up the provisional 2020 all cause mortality numbers minus enough recent weeks, and see if they don't roughly agree with the Official and indeed somewhat suspect COVID-19 fatality numbers. Or at see if we're well above the mid-20th Century pandemics which killed ~100,000 Americans. This is a study you can do yourself, if you're confident you can prove your "modest" proposal.Replies: @Hypnotoad666
I am not disputing the raw data on excess deaths. My point is that it doesn’t prove CAUSATION because, among other reasons, it is “confounded with the negative health effects of the lockdowns.”
The fact that the CDC’s invalid guestimate of death by covid and the confounded excess death numbers happen to be similar doesn’t really prove anything. Two invalid data points don’t equal one valid one.
But since no one wants to do the actual work of figuring out the real mortality caused by covid we just have to make policy based on fear and conjecture. I think that’s stupid. But everyone else is fine with it.
Maybe England can be the test case. If they do vaccinations and lockdowns at the same time, the change in excess deaths would indicate how much mortality was due to covid, and how much was due to lockdowns.
In all likelihood, we’ll never know what really happened on election night.
My gut instinct tells me that Trump won. (That and a dollar will buy me a cup of coffee.) I’m not saying it’s impossible that Biden prevailed – there are tens of millions of people afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and even Trump’s staunchest defenders must concede that his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It’s possible that Biden was able to squeak in “legitimately,” more or less. (There is always some attempted vote fraud in every election. Only a fool or a liar would deny that.) But I doubt it.
I don’t know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 who failed to vote for him this time around. My anecdotal evidence is worth approximately jack-shit, but it jibes with what I’ve heard from other people around the country.
The bottom line is that I don’t trust the government, the political establishment, or the media. I’m an open-minded skeptic. For example, I’ve entertained the possibility that Trump is just another puppet of the Deep State and that everything we’ve seen over the last few years is kabuki theater for the drooling masses. Maybe Soros is paying off both sides and chuckling to himself, “Ha, ha, those stupid rubes believed that we’d let them elect someone who would genuinely try to drain the swamp.”
My gut tells me that Trump had mostly good intentions, that he meant a lot of what he said in 2016, that he was woefully unprepared for the presidency, that the instincts that got him elected did not always serve him well once he was in office, that he was in over his head in Washington, that he wasn’t sure whose advice to take, that he didn’t realize just how virulent the opposition would be, that he ended up leaning on Jared and Ivanka because he didn’t know who else he could trust.
Do I concede that it’s possible that I’m wrong about Trump’s good intentions? Yes, I do. Perhaps Trump is, as some of his detractors charge, nothing more than a shallow egotist who ran for president as a publicity stunt and then realized, to his surprise, that he actually had a shot at winning the prize. At that point, his natural competitiveness would have taken over: “If I’m truly in the game, then I intend to win.” Perhaps he wanted to win the election and become the most famous and (allegedly) powerful man in the world – the ultimate ego trip – more than he ever wanted to lead the country. It’s certainly possible.
Am I similarly wrong about Biden? He gives me the creeps. I wouldn’t trust him to give me directions out of a paper bag. But is it possible that he’s a really great guy who will restore this country to greatness? Yes, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
I lost my faith in the system at an early age. That faith has never been restored, even as my political views have evolved over the years.
Twenty years ago today, we were still awaiting the final outcome of the post-election brouhaha in Florida. On that date, I was a naïve, liberal* high-school student with a deep, abiding loathing of George W. Bush. I truly and honestly believed that he had stolen the election from Gore. Even then, I had already read a fair amount of history, so when 9/11 happened, I immediately thought, “Reichstag fire.” I opposed the Iraq War from Day One.
It was during the 2008 election campaign that I began to realize that my viewpoint had shifted decisively to the right. I had a negative visceral reaction to Obama, and when he won the nomination, I realized that I would not be voting for the Democratic candidate that November.
I was enthusiastic about Trump from Day One. He pissed off so many loathsome people that I was willing to overlook his (admittedly numerous) flaws.
And he was the better choice. Hillary would have been an absolute disaster, especially as a direct successor to Obama. With the machinery of a Democratic administration already in place, she would have been far more dangerous than the ineffectual Biden will be.
I make no apologies for endorsing Trump’s candidacy in 2015 and 2016. I make no apologies for defending him over the last four years. And I make no apologies for supporting his re-election.
Trump has done more to expose the malfeasance of the political establishment and the media than any other public figure in modern American history. Even those who rate him as an absolute failure must admit that he has unmasked the treachery of the Deep State and its nefarious actors for all to see.
Trump has not drained the swamp, but he has disrupted (to some extent) the Democrats’ plans for perpetual rule. The radical transformation of America is not as far along now as it would have been if Hillary had won in 2016. If nothing else, Trump has bought us a little more time and forced his leftist opponents to show their true colors.
FWIW I voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Authenticjazzman
If I was a troll I’d congratulate myself for getting someone to waste their time defending the intelligence and character of W. No mean feat.
Like anyone else, W is a mix of things. Doesn’t give you a license to lie about him.
To the admin : Just why was my last harmless and factual posting blocked?
AJM
I've heard there's an alternative to both, and it's free. (My recollection is that cow's milk doesn't sit well on baby stomachs.)
OT, but peerless UK golf commentator Peter Alliss has died at the age of 89. He played in six Ryder Cup teams, coached Sean Connery for Goldfinger's golf game, was commentating on the Masters only last month. Father of six, too - a life well lived.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/golf/article-9023181/Peter-Alliss-BBCs-voice-golf-dies-89.htmlReplies: @LondonBob, @Jonathan Mason
Alliss in wonderland. I always liked him.
I think there's a lot that can be done. In addition to my suggestion of a huge--take 'em-of-the-tax-rolls--child tax deduction for young parents, and your suggestions on medical care, i'd think whacking away college cost worries would be great, highly eugenic.
The way to do this is for the feds to create competency tests--or encourage private entities to create competency tests--of basic (HS level through college) math/verbal capability, and subject matter capability and then hire exclusively off of these rather than "college degree".
Let kids and parents sort out whatever program of book, video, on-line, or actually in-person instruction works best for them.
The plain truth is there is absolutely nothing about education that is the least bit "scarce" other than the prestige of diploma. The actual knowledge is in books--now essentially free--or can be given verbally delivered on-line super cheaply. With the Internet the cost drop for knowledge transfer is insane. Our colleges and universities are mostly--some STEM research aside--just huge nests of leftist parasites who suck on public by cartelizing "educated" stamp. And their actually product is ... shit. Actual mid-education--students end up more stupid about the world.
Cut costs--relieving a middle class barrier to parenthood--motivate kids and adults with tractable education goals and send leftists to the unemployment line. Win, win, win!
But all that said, the alpha and omega of "affordable family formation" is simply to end immigration.
This immigration without end--the US open to the world labor market--is simply the enemy of decent life for Americans, a destruction of the American dream. The frontier closed 140 years ago!
Anyone blathering "nation of immigrants" is a genocidal fanatic.
Stop immigration and everything starts getting better.Replies: @Jonathan Mason
You are right about education. Before the 1960s that was the way it was in Britain. Only a very small percentage of teenagers went into tertiary education, but people could become lawyers or accountants by learning on the job, taking night classes, and taking exams.
John Major was the last British prime minister who never went to college. He got his education in the banking system, and we’re certainly more than able to hold his own against college educated people.
Steve is funny that way. Once he gets a story inside his head, he can’t see the bigger picture. Hence his blog has become a coronavirus /vaccine non-stop newsfeed since March. Sailer hardly even covered the elections.
Typically, older men are irrationally scared to death of covid-19.
I’d wager taking the vax will be more harmful for guys like Sailer and older boomers than the virus itself. What’s more, I’d even keep away from this year’s flu shot if you’re over 55, overweight or sickly.
He’s the last impressive figure to have occupied the office–yes, Nixon!
Huh? This has to be another example of the IQ obsession on these boards.
Nixon was a man of considerable intellect, but it was all instrumental. He had no well-developed principles at all. He was astonishingly adept at promoting himself, considering he was fundamentally an introvert with deficient people skills.
Outside of electoral politics, Nixon had a failed venture in the food processing industry, a brief period in the civil service, a period as an associate engaged in transactional law practice, and a more lucrative period in New York law derived in some measure from his prominence. He waived an exemption and served in the Navy. He was bound and determined to seek an executive position of a sort he'd never held before, then proved to be a wretched administrator.
George Bush the Elder was a combat veteran who built his own business and never drew a salary from political office until he was 42 years old. Plenty impressive for most of us.Replies: @S. Anonyia, @Dennis Dale, @Anonymous
Nixon was more loyal to the American nation than any president since, with the possible exception of President Trump.
That is the crucial principle for a president to have.
There is nothing about Nixon which distinguishes him on this point from Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford. (Or George Bush the Elder, while we're at it).
Steve-there’s no question you were on to something. Both Pfizer and Moderna are now snubbing Trump because he correctly analyzed what they were doing. Both CEOs wouldn’t be able to look Trump in the eye and they know it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9027973/Pfizer-Moderna-SNUB-Donald-Trumps-White-House-vaccine-summit.html?ito=push-notification&ci=58240&si=13534066
The best line from this slanted anti-Trump piece is that ” Bourla defended the company’s decision not to take federal funds saying that Pfizer wanted to ‘liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy’ and ‘keep Pfizer out of politics.’
OT-The Daily Mail used to have a novel, although tabloidesque, appeal. For example, I believe they are the only MSM source to show the bodycam footage leaked by the MPD in the George Floyd case, which I suspect will play a major role in eventually exonerating the cops. But since around September, they’ve became a major organ of unadulterated Trump hatred. It’s amazing how news outlets go bonkers over elections.
I think the main thing is they're just being very tabloidy and using exaggerated headlines with titillating verbs and WORDS IN CAPS, but they definitely got saltier on Trump too.
They still have stories like this though:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9029651/Shocking-moment-courageous-retired-firefighter-killed-shootout.html
( 3 vibrant looking youths fatally shot a (vibrant) retired FD Lieutenant in Chicago. At least he went down shooting but def shows the limitations of what being armed will get you. Also, i'm sure the attackers are actually white people in blackface, but that's a different story. )
The Democrats are masters at creating FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) through the constant repetition of unsubstantiated allegations, including outright lies and fabrications. Russiagate and Ukrainegate turned out to be a bunch of BS, but they cast a shadow over the Trump administration even before he took office. The George Floyd narrative is pure horseshit, but the media continue to peddle it as the gospel truth.
Some of the fraud claims might be a bit outlandish, but, let's face it: This was one dirty election. It wasn't the first dirty election in American history and it won't be the last. But why should that stop us from pursuing the full truth about who really won?
We have nothing to lose by casting doubt upon Biden's legitimacy. The Democrats never accepted the Trump presidency as valid. We should return the favor.Replies: @SimpleSong
> The George Floyd narrative is pure horseshit, but the media continue to peddle it as the gospel truth.
True, and by doing this, they are completely and utterly trashing their own credibility. Some people believe it, sure, because they believe anything on TV–those people can’t be helped. But anybody with half a brain has now decided the media is full of it. The legacy media can afford to make this mistake because they have a _lot_ of institutional power behind them. We don’t. We are arguing against the received wisdom. People will be predisposed to dismiss us as cranks, just as they are predisposed to believe TV talking heads. Let’s not be so foolish as to make it easier for people to dismiss the core of our arguments by sprinkling in some easily disprovable facts.
I’m not against trying to delegitimize the Biden presidency, but you can do that with stuff that is definitely true. Just keep hammering it, over and over. Talk about Hunter Biden, over and over.
Talk about felons voting, over and over. Convicted rapists get to vote now, and Democrats are thrilled! How do you feel about that, my feminist niece, and would you like some turkey? There’s plenty of material out there. Why bother with the questionable stuff?
The key to the survival of the old core, or Heritage Americans, or whatever you want to call us, is that you need to get the white elites to care about white proles, and vice versa, and they need to act as a block. This is a really hard thing to do because their economic interests diverge to an extent. So you have to bind them together with other things–culture, common enemies, etc. It’s tough. Anything fringe-y tends to split the coalition. I voted for Trump and I’m sad he lost but I certainly recognized that the intra-white polarization he caused was a long-term problem. This struggle will continue long after we are all dead.
Leftists always win because they treat every conflict as all-out war, and every skirmish as the decisive battle. I'm not saying that we should adopt all of their tactics - frothing at the mouth is most unseemly - but we'd do well to get our hands just a little bit dirty from time to time. We are fighting for our lives, are we not?Intra-white polarization is a permanent feature of American politics dating back to the formation of the Republic. What was the Civil War if not an expression of irreconcilable differences between two groups of whites?
"White nationalism" is a non-starter. American whites, dispersed across the continent, are too diverse to vote as a bloc. The founding fathers knew this, and that is why they created a federalist system in which each state was allowed to have a certain measure of autonomy and sovereignty. That system broke down in the 1860s and was fully replaced by a Washington-based totalitarian regime in the 1930s.
Still, even with a multitude of ethnic and religious differences, White America with the demographics and social norms of the 1950s was a very nice place to live. But that idyllic iteration of America began screwing itself over in the 1960s. So what can we say?
We have already seen that white Californians flee to states such as Colorado and then begin voting in politicians who implement the same failed policies that made their home state such a mess. Is it possible to dissuade these people of their delusions? How do you get them to see reason? I'm not sure that you can.
We have also seen the phenomenon where the relatives of whites murdered by blacks go on television to proclaim their solidarity with the anti-racist cause. If a man still professes his support for the diversity project after his daughter has been raped and murdered by a black man, what can you tell him that will change his mind?
I'm not saying that it's impossible to change hearts and minds, only that it is a long and difficult process, and that some hearts and minds are truly unreachable. Given the rapidity with which America is unraveling, we might not have that kind of time. We can hope that more and more normies will wake up as things get worse and worse, but we would be unwise to underestimate the extent to which GoodWhites can delude themselves. You will see true believers cheering their own dispossession right up to the bitter end.Yes, and it began long before our great-grandparents were born.
The struggle is eternal. The plight never ends. Survival is a privilege that must be earned every second of every day. Thus it was a thousand years ago; thus it is now; thus it shall be a thousand years hence.
Just as a matter of principle alone.
I have less than zero thoughts on its efficacy and nothing but a deep seated loathing for people urging it on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyYMzEplnfU
In the future you'll go to cut-and-paste a link and before it's pasted the decision will already be vetted by artificial-intelligence as to whether it meets the required approval rating of Amazon.
Just as you hit ctrl-v your windows will be smashed in, your dog shot your mrs put in a hammerlock as you throw yourself to your knees begging the police to leave your nanna alone for not wearing a face mask.Replies: @Pierre de Craon
My sentiments precisely. Gullibility, ignorance, and conformism are rampant on all of Sailer’s covid threads, and the problem starts at the source. What sort of global disease threat produces a death toll no greater than the toll recorded, week by week for the past ten months, during 2017, 2018, and 2019?
No injection for me either, for Pat Hannagan’s reasons and additionally because the genetic materials all ultimately stem from elective abortions.
I’ve read the other day that an English expert had it that due to lockdown ca. 50 000 (!) people might have died prematurely of cancer this year in GB.
Here is the link to the thesis of the additional 50 000 cancer deaths in GB because of the measures taken to keep CO-19 down: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8247141/If-goes-six-months-50-000-people-die-cancer.html
A missed cancer diagnosis might kill you a year or more from now (and it could be debatable whether the early diagnosis would have saved you). An extra suicide shows up right away. And who knows when and how the the long term effects of extra stress or depression might manifest. They don't lend themselves to week-by-week tracking.
But maybe we should be tracking things like decreased diagnoses of early cancer on the assumption the same amount of canse is there, but just isn't being found. That would be a leading indicator of deaths caused by current lockdown which will manifest later. Likewise, increased diagnoses of late stage cancer are probably a lagging indicator of deaths that were caused by past lockdowns that prevented doctor visits.
Either way, the different timing of these types of deaths, as compared to both the incidence of covid and the lockdowns themselves, will confound any simple cause-and-effect arguments based on merely counting weekly excess deaths.
I hope somebody really smart is looking at these issues behind the scenes. Because all we ever hear about are politicians and politicized health officials doing stupid things for appearances.Replies: @Dieter Kief, @Dieter Kief
Would like to point out though that on Oct 26 there were 65k daily cases in the USA. On Nov 8 there was 175k. The only universe where the trial sees the number of cases it needs before election day would require that crazy surge to happen.
So I’ve decided to put forward a much more likely conspiracy theory:
Trump knew that the vaccine trials would end faster if there was a huge surge in daily covid cases, and so his campaign deliberately spread the virus across the country by infecting their staff and holding massive maskless rallies. He figured if they got to 150k+ daily cases before Nov 1, the vaccine results would be released as a November surprise.
The facts aren’t in dispute, he definitely did those things and Dr. Atlas knew more daily cases would be good for vaccine trials. Really it’s just a matter of motive 😉
How many hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of Americans, died in Bush's wars? (The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.) How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
Screw Bush and the neocon scum who infested his administration.Replies: @Art Deco
Not sure who you’re talking about.
(The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.)
The people who are actually tallying the numbers estimate the toll at 200,000. Almost none of the deaths since 2011 are attributable to American troops and that same agency only attributes a modest fraction of those who died between 2002 and 2012 to American and allied soldiers.
How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
That will happen consequent to any war. Your point?
A good friend of mine lost a brother to suicide recently. That brother once had to kill an Iraqi child who was attempting to murder American troops with an IED.
Even a "necessary" war degrades everyone involved - the combatants, the innocents, even the bystanders on the homefront. It corrupts us all.
A wholly unnecessary war is a travesty.
How ironic that we should be having this discussion on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a day that marked America's entry into the worst war man has ever fought. How much potential human capital was shredded into hamburger by that "good" conflict? How much long-term damage was done to Western civilization? One can argue that World War I was the death blow and WWII was merely the nail on the coffin, but the bottom line is that in both conflagrations tens of millions died because their leaders betrayed them, as Bush betrayed the troops who fought in his war.
Saddam was not a threat to the United States in 2003. He wasn't even that much of a threat to Israel.
But Bush told us that America was in imminent danger and that we needed to act immediately. He invoked the specter of a "mushroom cloud" rising over a major American city:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iusLiSEsTOk
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Not a single one - at the very least, nothing that would justify an American invasion.
An unapologetic Bush had the gall to joke about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvliUuXjbL4
But if I were Reagan, I’d have been terrified that either George H. W. Bush or E. Howard Hunt would do me in. (Both were strongly affiliated with the more dangerous elements of the CIA.)
Bush was CIA director for all of 1 year. No clue how you got the idea Howard Hunt was ever ‘dangerous’ or why you fancy he’d have been in a position to ‘do in’ Ronald Reagan. In 1981, he was an old man living in Miami writing fiction.
Both of these books are quite interesting in their own right. Both Haig and Bush I had strong CIA ties and were rivals in the Reagan administration.
https://www.amazon.com/Nixons-Secrets-Untold-President-Watergate-ebook/dp/B00L4FSW1EThis book strongly contends that Bush I had substantial dealings with the CIA since the early 1950s. They didn’t name the main building after him just because he remembered everyone’s birthday while Director.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bush_Center_for_Intelligence
https://www.amazon.com/Family-Secrets-Americas-Invisible-Government-ebook/dp/B003NSBMNA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=family+of+secrets&qid=1607392658&s=digital-text&sprefix=family+of+secret&sr=1-1Replies: @Steve Sailer
Nixon was more loyal to the American nation than any president since, with the possible exception of President Trump.
There is nothing about Nixon which distinguishes him on this point from Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford. (Or George Bush the Elder, while we’re at it).
(The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.)
The people who are actually tallying the numbers estimate the toll at 200,000. Almost none of the deaths since 2011 are attributable to American troops and that same agency only attributes a modest fraction of those who died between 2002 and 2012 to American and allied soldiers.
How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
That will happen consequent to any war. Your point?Replies: @Muggles, @Stan Adams
How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
That will happen consequent to any war. Your point?
Yes, Mr. Deco, innocent people are badly harmed or killed as well as soldiers, in any war.
The point is to avoid wars that can result it that. Some may not be avoidable, but in the case of Bush Sr. it was (we are still in Iraq BTW).
Being a war worshiper is not an act of heroism or manliness. It is a demonstration of your pathological failings as a thinking man. Sneering at others is not a valid argument either.
No, we're not 'still in Iraq'. There's a garrison there, but it has only 5,000 men and it's not involved in combat.
The rest of your comment is facile. Any political decision-making is made under uncertainty. Do you fight now or fight later? Are the consequences of fighting now worse than not fighting? How are the costs distributed?
Being a war worshiper is not an act of heroism or manliness. It is a demonstration of your pathological failings as a thinking man. Sneering at others is not a valid argument either.
You go around calling your critics 'war worshipers', you get sneered at and you deserve that and not much more. Them's the breaks.
“Steve, are you really unaware that Trump did pull off an actual landslide victory”
Actually, Mr. Sailer is aware that there is not the type of evidence that proves your ridiculous assertion.
“and that the Left is attempting to commit massive election fraud?”
According to your handlers.
“How are you failing to notice the more than obvious patterns? You cannot be that deep in denial.”
He did his NOTICING. You just don’t want to believe him.
When did we start using the word "historical" to describe current events?
Is this not a bastardization of the word "historical"?
his·tor·i·cal /hiˈstôrək(ə)l/
adjective
• of or concerning history; concerning past events.
"the historical background to such studies"
• belonging to the past, not the present.
"famous historical figures"
☮Replies: @Ancient Briton
Probably mixed it up with ‘historic’.
And of course it could be customary to pause and for that pause to still be politically motivated. But if everything is all about Trump why did they choose a benchmark that even could lead to an announcement pre election? Why risk it?Replies: @Big Evil Pharma Statistician
@Guy De Champagne
I don’t move on the company director floor where such a decision would be made, but I have 20+ years of experiences in developing drug/vaccines and getting then through regulatory negotiations. Nothing here seems out of the ordinary to me, for what it’s worth
(The civilian death toll in Iraq has been estimated in excess of one million.)
The people who are actually tallying the numbers estimate the toll at 200,000. Almost none of the deaths since 2011 are attributable to American troops and that same agency only attributes a modest fraction of those who died between 2002 and 2012 to American and allied soldiers.
How many soldiers returned from the battlefield with grievous physical and psychological wounds?
That will happen consequent to any war. Your point?Replies: @Muggles, @Stan Adams
My point is that those people died for nothing. The Iraqis are no better off than they were under Saddam and neither are we.
A good friend of mine lost a brother to suicide recently. That brother once had to kill an Iraqi child who was attempting to murder American troops with an IED.
Even a “necessary” war degrades everyone involved – the combatants, the innocents, even the bystanders on the homefront. It corrupts us all.
A wholly unnecessary war is a travesty.
How ironic that we should be having this discussion on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a day that marked America’s entry into the worst war man has ever fought. How much potential human capital was shredded into hamburger by that “good” conflict? How much long-term damage was done to Western civilization? One can argue that World War I was the death blow and WWII was merely the nail on the coffin, but the bottom line is that in both conflagrations tens of millions died because their leaders betrayed them, as Bush betrayed the troops who fought in his war.
Saddam was not a threat to the United States in 2003. He wasn’t even that much of a threat to Israel.
But Bush told us that America was in imminent danger and that we needed to act immediately. He invoked the specter of a “mushroom cloud” rising over a major American city:
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Not a single one – at the very least, nothing that would justify an American invasion.
An unapologetic Bush had the gall to joke about it:
The biggest national excess death (all causes) weeks were in mid-April, when lockdowns had only been in effect a few weeks. Excess deaths then receded as the lockdowns continued, suggesting most of the excess deaths were caused by COVID and not by lockdowns.
Non-lockdown places like Sweden had the same spike as NYC except that their excess death curve almost immediately went back to normal afterward (or even slightly better).Replies: @Steve Sailer
I wouldn’t dispute the spike in the NYC area in April was covid. It seems like everyone in the area got it all at once and the herd was culled. Those death numbers were also padded a bit by the nursing home fiasco and the (at least in retrospect), medical malpractice of indiscriminately intubating everyone.
Non-lockdown places like Sweden had the same spike as NYC except that their excess death curve almost immediately went back to normal afterward (or even slightly better).
True, and by doing this, they are completely and utterly trashing their own credibility. Some people believe it, sure, because they believe anything on TV--those people can't be helped. But anybody with half a brain has now decided the media is full of it. The legacy media can afford to make this mistake because they have a _lot_ of institutional power behind them. We don't. We are arguing against the received wisdom. People will be predisposed to dismiss us as cranks, just as they are predisposed to believe TV talking heads. Let's not be so foolish as to make it easier for people to dismiss the core of our arguments by sprinkling in some easily disprovable facts.
I'm not against trying to delegitimize the Biden presidency, but you can do that with stuff that is definitely true. Just keep hammering it, over and over. Talk about Hunter Biden, over and over.
Talk about felons voting, over and over. Convicted rapists get to vote now, and Democrats are thrilled! How do you feel about that, my feminist niece, and would you like some turkey? There's plenty of material out there. Why bother with the questionable stuff?
The key to the survival of the old core, or Heritage Americans, or whatever you want to call us, is that you need to get the white elites to care about white proles, and vice versa, and they need to act as a block. This is a really hard thing to do because their economic interests diverge to an extent. So you have to bind them together with other things--culture, common enemies, etc. It's tough. Anything fringe-y tends to split the coalition. I voted for Trump and I'm sad he lost but I certainly recognized that the intra-white polarization he caused was a long-term problem. This struggle will continue long after we are all dead.Replies: @Stan Adams
Your unspoken assumption is that there is still a broad base of “responsible” moderates who will respond to calm, measured, logical arguments against the tripe peddled by CNN. I’m not sure that there is.
Leftists always win because they treat every conflict as all-out war, and every skirmish as the decisive battle. I’m not saying that we should adopt all of their tactics – frothing at the mouth is most unseemly – but we’d do well to get our hands just a little bit dirty from time to time. We are fighting for our lives, are we not?
Intra-white polarization is a permanent feature of American politics dating back to the formation of the Republic. What was the Civil War if not an expression of irreconcilable differences between two groups of whites?
“White nationalism” is a non-starter. American whites, dispersed across the continent, are too diverse to vote as a bloc. The founding fathers knew this, and that is why they created a federalist system in which each state was allowed to have a certain measure of autonomy and sovereignty. That system broke down in the 1860s and was fully replaced by a Washington-based totalitarian regime in the 1930s.
Still, even with a multitude of ethnic and religious differences, White America with the demographics and social norms of the 1950s was a very nice place to live. But that idyllic iteration of America began screwing itself over in the 1960s. So what can we say?
We have already seen that white Californians flee to states such as Colorado and then begin voting in politicians who implement the same failed policies that made their home state such a mess. Is it possible to dissuade these people of their delusions? How do you get them to see reason? I’m not sure that you can.
We have also seen the phenomenon where the relatives of whites murdered by blacks go on television to proclaim their solidarity with the anti-racist cause. If a man still professes his support for the diversity project after his daughter has been raped and murdered by a black man, what can you tell him that will change his mind?
I’m not saying that it’s impossible to change hearts and minds, only that it is a long and difficult process, and that some hearts and minds are truly unreachable. Given the rapidity with which America is unraveling, we might not have that kind of time. We can hope that more and more normies will wake up as things get worse and worse, but we would be unwise to underestimate the extent to which GoodWhites can delude themselves. You will see true believers cheering their own dispossession right up to the bitter end.
Yes, and it began long before our great-grandparents were born.
The struggle is eternal. The plight never ends. Survival is a privilege that must be earned every second of every day. Thus it was a thousand years ago; thus it is now; thus it shall be a thousand years hence.
That raises an interesting timing problem in trying to quantify and track deaths caused by lockdowns. Unlike covid, lockdown deaths could come from a variety of reasons (e.g., missed cancer diagnoses, depression, etc.). Some of these would show up at different time intervals than others.
A missed cancer diagnosis might kill you a year or more from now (and it could be debatable whether the early diagnosis would have saved you). An extra suicide shows up right away. And who knows when and how the the long term effects of extra stress or depression might manifest. They don’t lend themselves to week-by-week tracking.
But maybe we should be tracking things like decreased diagnoses of early cancer on the assumption the same amount of canse is there, but just isn’t being found. That would be a leading indicator of deaths caused by current lockdown which will manifest later. Likewise, increased diagnoses of late stage cancer are probably a lagging indicator of deaths that were caused by past lockdowns that prevented doctor visits.
Either way, the different timing of these types of deaths, as compared to both the incidence of covid and the lockdowns themselves, will confound any simple cause-and-effect arguments based on merely counting weekly excess deaths.
I hope somebody really smart is looking at these issues behind the scenes. Because all we ever hear about are politicians and politicized health officials doing stupid things for appearances.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htmReplies: @That Would Be Telling
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
That’s because of why each of these vaccines had their stated effectiveness. The first SARS vaccine apparently caused antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a problem which as since then been fixed. “Active” vaccines like these mRNA COVID-19 ones frequently reach 95% effectiveness, the 5% failures are from wonky immune systems.
The flu vaccine is thought to be pretty effective if many months before the flu season started, the experts who guessed which strains would be circulating in that hemisphere were correct. Obviously they frequently guess wrong, and in any case the parts of the flu virus the body latches onto to make an adaptive immune system response are not “conserved,” they can change a lot and the virus will still work. So even a correct guess can “drift” somewhat in the ensuing months.
Bush was CIA director for all of 1 year. No clue how you got the idea Howard Hunt was ever 'dangerous' or why you fancy he'd have been in a position to 'do in' Ronald Reagan. In 1981, he was an old man living in Miami writing fiction.Replies: @Kronos
Well I messed up. I mixed up Hunt with Alexander Haig. Sorry Art Deco.
Both of these books are quite interesting in their own right. Both Haig and Bush I had strong CIA ties and were rivals in the Reagan administration.
This book strongly contends that Bush I had substantial dealings with the CIA since the early 1950s. They didn’t name the main building after him just because he remembered everyone’s birthday while Director.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bush_Center_for_Intelligence
The longer they observe the control group the more useful the data would be. If they destroy the continuing validity of the experiment because "ethics," then so be it. But if nobody is getting any sicker in the control group in the first place then there really is no ethical concern.
The bottom line is that you Team Panic people have no legitimate study proving that covid is especially dangerous. And, worse, you refuse to conduct one. For example, you could easily identify one big sample group and measure all their health factors and comorbidities. You could then test them regularly for covid. You could then compare apples-to-apples and isolate the effects of covid by comparing the outcomes of those who contract covid all other factors being equal, with those who did not. But you won't do this because it might not give the result you want.
All Team Panic has is (a) Fake CDC death numbers of people who maybe died "with" covid; and (b) Modest increase in excess death totals which are only circumstantial evidence of causation and are totally confounded with the negative health effects of the lockdowns.
Maybe covid is exactly as dangerous as claimed -- which is still only about three times worse than the usual flu. Or maybe it's not. But stop talking about "science" being on your side until you actually do a scientific experiment. Which you never will.Replies: @That Would Be Telling, @Steve Sailer
We have excess deaths from all causes, which peaked at 42% above average nationally for a week in mid-April and will likely get back to that range before the winter is over.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/trump-covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
Both of these books are quite interesting in their own right. Both Haig and Bush I had strong CIA ties and were rivals in the Reagan administration.
https://www.amazon.com/Nixons-Secrets-Untold-President-Watergate-ebook/dp/B00L4FSW1EThis book strongly contends that Bush I had substantial dealings with the CIA since the early 1950s. They didn’t name the main building after him just because he remembered everyone’s birthday while Director.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bush_Center_for_Intelligence
https://www.amazon.com/Family-Secrets-Americas-Invisible-Government-ebook/dp/B003NSBMNA/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=family+of+secrets&qid=1607392658&s=digital-text&sprefix=family+of+secret&sr=1-1Replies: @Steve Sailer
There is a lot of evidence that George H.W. Bush’s offshore oil-drilling operations in Mexico provided logistical support for the CIA’s Bay of Pigs operation. I don’t find that terribly scandalous in and of itself.
Non-lockdown places like Sweden had the same spike as NYC except that their excess death curve almost immediately went back to normal afterward (or even slightly better).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Well, America’s excess death totals haven’t gone back to normal yet, and are currently on a major upswing. America isn’t Sweden.
Hospitals have no problems with the number of patients. The number of people on ventilators was smaller in the first half of this year than last year. There were no excess deaths in the first half and will be some in the second half of 2020.
And the (a little bit at least: dubious) death counts are slowly but steadily catching up to the Swedish ones. Actually it is 633 /deaths per million (in all of Switzerland) to 698 in Sweden.
It's a shame no one will do a valid analysis of the true danger of either covid or lockdowns. But that would be the smart thing to do and we stopped being a smart country awhile ago.
My gut instinct tells me that Trump won. (That and a dollar will buy me a cup of coffee.) I'm not saying it's impossible that Biden prevailed - there are tens of millions of people afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and even Trump's staunchest defenders must concede that his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It's possible that Biden was able to squeak in "legitimately," more or less. (There is always some attempted vote fraud in every election. Only a fool or a liar would deny that.) But I doubt it.
I don't know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 who failed to vote for him this time around. My anecdotal evidence is worth approximately jack-shit, but it jibes with what I've heard from other people around the country.
The bottom line is that I don't trust the government, the political establishment, or the media. I'm an open-minded skeptic. For example, I've entertained the possibility that Trump is just another puppet of the Deep State and that everything we've seen over the last few years is kabuki theater for the drooling masses. Maybe Soros is paying off both sides and chuckling to himself, "Ha, ha, those stupid rubes believed that we'd let them elect someone who would genuinely try to drain the swamp."
My gut tells me that Trump had mostly good intentions, that he meant a lot of what he said in 2016, that he was woefully unprepared for the presidency, that the instincts that got him elected did not always serve him well once he was in office, that he was in over his head in Washington, that he wasn't sure whose advice to take, that he didn't realize just how virulent the opposition would be, that he ended up leaning on Jared and Ivanka because he didn't know who else he could trust.
Do I concede that it's possible that I'm wrong about Trump's good intentions? Yes, I do. Perhaps Trump is, as some of his detractors charge, nothing more than a shallow egotist who ran for president as a publicity stunt and then realized, to his surprise, that he actually had a shot at winning the prize. At that point, his natural competitiveness would have taken over: "If I'm truly in the game, then I intend to win." Perhaps he wanted to win the election and become the most famous and (allegedly) powerful man in the world - the ultimate ego trip - more than he ever wanted to lead the country. It's certainly possible.
Am I similarly wrong about Biden? He gives me the creeps. I wouldn't trust him to give me directions out of a paper bag. But is it possible that he's a really great guy who will restore this country to greatness? Yes, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I lost my faith in the system at an early age. That faith has never been restored, even as my political views have evolved over the years.
Twenty years ago today, we were still awaiting the final outcome of the post-election brouhaha in Florida. On that date, I was a naïve, liberal* high-school student with a deep, abiding loathing of George W. Bush. I truly and honestly believed that he had stolen the election from Gore. Even then, I had already read a fair amount of history, so when 9/11 happened, I immediately thought, "Reichstag fire." I opposed the Iraq War from Day One.
It was during the 2008 election campaign that I began to realize that my viewpoint had shifted decisively to the right. I had a negative visceral reaction to Obama, and when he won the nomination, I realized that I would not be voting for the Democratic candidate that November.
I was enthusiastic about Trump from Day One. He pissed off so many loathsome people that I was willing to overlook his (admittedly numerous) flaws.
And he was the better choice. Hillary would have been an absolute disaster, especially as a direct successor to Obama. With the machinery of a Democratic administration already in place, she would have been far more dangerous than the ineffectual Biden will be.
I make no apologies for endorsing Trump's candidacy in 2015 and 2016. I make no apologies for defending him over the last four years. And I make no apologies for supporting his re-election.
Trump has done more to expose the malfeasance of the political establishment and the media than any other public figure in modern American history. Even those who rate him as an absolute failure must admit that he has unmasked the treachery of the Deep State and its nefarious actors for all to see.
Trump has not drained the swamp, but he has disrupted (to some extent) the Democrats' plans for perpetual rule. The radical transformation of America is not as far along now as it would have been if Hillary had won in 2016. If nothing else, Trump has bought us a little more time and forced his leftist opponents to show their true colors.Replies: @James B. Shearer, @northeast
“I don’t know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 who failed to vote for him this time around. My anecdotal evidence is worth approximately jack-shit, but it jibes with what I’ve heard from other people around the country.”
FWIW I voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
Translation : I am publically admiting that I am totally and hopelessly insane.
AJM
Suppose Biden had lost narrowly instead of winning narrowly. And suppose the Pfizer vaccine had been a total failure. Would we now be reading stories about how Pfizer delayed announcing the failure to help Trump?
The scandalous part is where Bush was appointed DCI as an outsider to clean house after the Church hearings, when he wasn’t an outsider.
Nixon campaigned for scores of Republican candidates in 1966. He was collecting IOUs.Replies: @Kronos
True, but Nixon was very much connected to the Bush family.
It was a very interesting chapter.
Your source is pulling your leg. George Bush had been in Congress for all of 19 months when Nixon was sorting through possible VP choices.
Few reporters have delved deeply into the symbiotic relationship with the blue-blooded Bush family, pillars of the Eastern Establishment, and Richard Nixon, the grocer’s son from Yorba Linda. Yet it is indisputable that if Nixon had never become president, neither would George H. W. Bush, nor his son George W. Bush. Without the Nixon presidency, there would not have been a Bush dynasty.
This is flagrantly silly. There are any number of contingencies that might have generated a different sequence of events in re the careers of particular politicians and there is nothing 'undisputable' about any given set of hypotheticals over a span of time 33 years in length.
George Bush lost a senatorial election in 1970 and thereafter was given a series of patronage jobs by Nixon and Ford. They used him as a utility man - he was in four different jobs and didn't spend more than two years in any one of them. He had more consequential appointments during the Ford Administration than he did under the Nixon Administration. No clue how it is you or your source fancy the 'relationship' between Bush and Nixon was peculiarly 'symbiotic'. Bush was one of scores of men who held discretionary appointments of equal consequence and then some. What was odd about Bush was not his 'relationship' with Nixon, but his energy and ambition. None of his peers later built a competitive presidential campaign and only two (Donald Rumsfeld and Alexander Haig) made any attempt at it.
While we're at it, what's this 'blue-blooded pillar of the Eastern Establishment' hoo ha? Prescott Bush grew up in Columbus, Ohio; his wife grew up in St. Louis. At the time they married in 1919, the business which had made her family wealthy was about 40 years old and his family's money was newer than her's. He landed his 1st position in New York finance in 1924.Replies: @Kronos
Not to get all wonky on you, but it seems like excess deaths should be the number of deaths above average, roughly. But negative values are thrown out, so there will never be a shortage of deaths or an unexpectedly low period. So it is more like variance … a measure of volatility.
I’ll confess, these CDC wonks sound credible enough. But if, at the end of the year, unadjusted 2020 deaths aren’t at least 10% higher than unadjusted 2019 deaths, its going to look odd. And if they turn out lower?
Some JHU B School Statistics Assistant Professor was silenced for mucking around with unadjusted figures and raising questions. It was written up in the JHU student newspaper, then retracted.
I remember Spy and I remember Trump as “short fingered vulgarian” too! It’s the only thing I can remember about Spy besides the fact that it was a funny magazine and I was sorry it disappeared.
It would make sense to add the German-speaking part of Switzerland to the Sweden example. Restaurants and museums are still open, they allow music events for up to fifty people, church service dito, schools are open, public transport is doing fine (a noticeable difference to Sweden), almost everybody is at work just like always.
Hospitals have no problems with the number of patients. The number of people on ventilators was smaller in the first half of this year than last year. There were no excess deaths in the first half and will be some in the second half of 2020.
And the (a little bit at least: dubious) death counts are slowly but steadily catching up to the Swedish ones. Actually it is 633 /deaths per million (in all of Switzerland) to 698 in Sweden.
The number of deaths in 2020 in the U.S. will be about 15% higher than in 2019.
Note that death certificates trickle in pretty slowly to the CDC, so the final 2020 number won’t be fairly sure until February or so.
A missed cancer diagnosis might kill you a year or more from now (and it could be debatable whether the early diagnosis would have saved you). An extra suicide shows up right away. And who knows when and how the the long term effects of extra stress or depression might manifest. They don't lend themselves to week-by-week tracking.
But maybe we should be tracking things like decreased diagnoses of early cancer on the assumption the same amount of canse is there, but just isn't being found. That would be a leading indicator of deaths caused by current lockdown which will manifest later. Likewise, increased diagnoses of late stage cancer are probably a lagging indicator of deaths that were caused by past lockdowns that prevented doctor visits.
Either way, the different timing of these types of deaths, as compared to both the incidence of covid and the lockdowns themselves, will confound any simple cause-and-effect arguments based on merely counting weekly excess deaths.
I hope somebody really smart is looking at these issues behind the scenes. Because all we ever hear about are politicians and politicized health officials doing stupid things for appearances.Replies: @Dieter Kief, @Dieter Kief
This US-report claims, that 30% of the 2020 excess deaths up until October were not directly caused by CO-19
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
A missed cancer diagnosis might kill you a year or more from now (and it could be debatable whether the early diagnosis would have saved you). An extra suicide shows up right away. And who knows when and how the the long term effects of extra stress or depression might manifest. They don't lend themselves to week-by-week tracking.
But maybe we should be tracking things like decreased diagnoses of early cancer on the assumption the same amount of canse is there, but just isn't being found. That would be a leading indicator of deaths caused by current lockdown which will manifest later. Likewise, increased diagnoses of late stage cancer are probably a lagging indicator of deaths that were caused by past lockdowns that prevented doctor visits.
Either way, the different timing of these types of deaths, as compared to both the incidence of covid and the lockdowns themselves, will confound any simple cause-and-effect arguments based on merely counting weekly excess deaths.
I hope somebody really smart is looking at these issues behind the scenes. Because all we ever hear about are politicians and politicized health officials doing stupid things for appearances.Replies: @Dieter Kief, @Dieter Kief
This US-report claims, that 30% of the 2020 excess deaths up until October were not directly caused by CO-19
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6942e2.htmReplies: @That Would Be Telling
This long paragraph on limitations of the study is worth skimming, I’ve taken the liberty of dividing it into parts:
This is the biggest red flag for me, why did they try to use the provisional figures from only two weeks earlier when that requires massaging the data because so many death certificates, especially ones labeling the or a cause to be COVID-19, are still making their way to the CDC?
OK, we’re not interested in this data, but it sounds awfully squishy.
Very much worth considering, can be estimated with the raw cause data, and other means in the longer term.
This is the big one, which is why I and many others are looking only at “all cause” mortality. Trying to parse it down to officially caused by COVID-19 depends on the judgements of coroners in 3,000 counties and I don’t know how many cities, and doctors across the nation.
The point is to avoid wars that can result it that. Some may not be avoidable, but in the case of Bush Sr. it was (we are still in Iraq BTW).
No, we’re not ‘still in Iraq’. There’s a garrison there, but it has only 5,000 men and it’s not involved in combat.
The rest of your comment is facile. Any political decision-making is made under uncertainty. Do you fight now or fight later? Are the consequences of fighting now worse than not fighting? How are the costs distributed?
Being a war worshiper is not an act of heroism or manliness. It is a demonstration of your pathological failings as a thinking man. Sneering at others is not a valid argument either.
You go around calling your critics ‘war worshipers’, you get sneered at and you deserve that and not much more. Them’s the breaks.
George Bush’s first of three unsuccessful attempts to become vice president would come in 1968.
Your source is pulling your leg. George Bush had been in Congress for all of 19 months when Nixon was sorting through possible VP choices.
Few reporters have delved deeply into the symbiotic relationship with the blue-blooded Bush family, pillars of the Eastern Establishment, and Richard Nixon, the grocer’s son from Yorba Linda. Yet it is indisputable that if Nixon had never become president, neither would George H. W. Bush, nor his son George W. Bush. Without the Nixon presidency, there would not have been a Bush dynasty.
This is flagrantly silly. There are any number of contingencies that might have generated a different sequence of events in re the careers of particular politicians and there is nothing ‘undisputable’ about any given set of hypotheticals over a span of time 33 years in length.
George Bush lost a senatorial election in 1970 and thereafter was given a series of patronage jobs by Nixon and Ford. They used him as a utility man – he was in four different jobs and didn’t spend more than two years in any one of them. He had more consequential appointments during the Ford Administration than he did under the Nixon Administration. No clue how it is you or your source fancy the ‘relationship’ between Bush and Nixon was peculiarly ‘symbiotic’. Bush was one of scores of men who held discretionary appointments of equal consequence and then some. What was odd about Bush was not his ‘relationship’ with Nixon, but his energy and ambition. None of his peers later built a competitive presidential campaign and only two (Donald Rumsfeld and Alexander Haig) made any attempt at it.
While we’re at it, what’s this ‘blue-blooded pillar of the Eastern Establishment’ hoo ha? Prescott Bush grew up in Columbus, Ohio; his wife grew up in St. Louis. At the time they married in 1919, the business which had made her family wealthy was about 40 years old and his family’s money was newer than her’s. He landed his 1st position in New York finance in 1924.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York. (Rockefeller was in many ways the anti-Cecil Rhodes, who wanted the US to become free from the financial creditors of the British Empire. The World Wars would ultimately make the US not only independent, but flip the script between the power dynamics of US and England.) The Bushes were early supporters of the “Baptist Bastard King of America” and rode with him to glory. It’s likely why both Bush I and Bush II still politically embodied strong Nelson Rockefeller Liberal Republican political policies.
https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l5cAAOSweLZeZUP-/s-l640.jpgReplies: @Art Deco
FWIW I voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Authenticjazzman
Do you anticipate that your chosen candidate will be able to serve a full term in office?
Probably about an 80% chance. Anyway my vote was more anti-Trump than pro-Biden.Replies: @Dieter Kief
“Do you anticipate that your chosen candidate will be able to serve a full term in office?”
Probably about an 80% chance. Anyway my vote was more anti-Trump than pro-Biden.
Right. Because we have lockdowns and they don’t. If that’s the variable then maybe it’s the lockdowns and not covid that’s been killing the most people since April.
It’s a shame no one will do a valid analysis of the true danger of either covid or lockdowns. But that would be the smart thing to do and we stopped being a smart country awhile ago.
” which likely would have meant a Trump victory”
With this one ominous sentence SS has revealed himself to be an actual never-Trumper, a Rino and a covert JB supporter.
Here he is basically stating that he believes all of the BS about JB’s 80 million (phoney) votes, and that he apparently sees no cheating or fraud whatsoever, and that the election results are true as portrayed by the criminal MSM.
AJM
FWIW I voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020.Replies: @Stan Adams, @Authenticjazzman
“I voted for Biden in 2020”
Translation : I am publically admiting that I am totally and hopelessly insane.
AJM
My gut instinct tells me that Trump won. (That and a dollar will buy me a cup of coffee.) I'm not saying it's impossible that Biden prevailed - there are tens of millions of people afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and even Trump's staunchest defenders must concede that his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It's possible that Biden was able to squeak in "legitimately," more or less. (There is always some attempted vote fraud in every election. Only a fool or a liar would deny that.) But I doubt it.
I don't know a single person who voted for Trump in 2016 who failed to vote for him this time around. My anecdotal evidence is worth approximately jack-shit, but it jibes with what I've heard from other people around the country.
The bottom line is that I don't trust the government, the political establishment, or the media. I'm an open-minded skeptic. For example, I've entertained the possibility that Trump is just another puppet of the Deep State and that everything we've seen over the last few years is kabuki theater for the drooling masses. Maybe Soros is paying off both sides and chuckling to himself, "Ha, ha, those stupid rubes believed that we'd let them elect someone who would genuinely try to drain the swamp."
My gut tells me that Trump had mostly good intentions, that he meant a lot of what he said in 2016, that he was woefully unprepared for the presidency, that the instincts that got him elected did not always serve him well once he was in office, that he was in over his head in Washington, that he wasn't sure whose advice to take, that he didn't realize just how virulent the opposition would be, that he ended up leaning on Jared and Ivanka because he didn't know who else he could trust.
Do I concede that it's possible that I'm wrong about Trump's good intentions? Yes, I do. Perhaps Trump is, as some of his detractors charge, nothing more than a shallow egotist who ran for president as a publicity stunt and then realized, to his surprise, that he actually had a shot at winning the prize. At that point, his natural competitiveness would have taken over: "If I'm truly in the game, then I intend to win." Perhaps he wanted to win the election and become the most famous and (allegedly) powerful man in the world - the ultimate ego trip - more than he ever wanted to lead the country. It's certainly possible.
Am I similarly wrong about Biden? He gives me the creeps. I wouldn't trust him to give me directions out of a paper bag. But is it possible that he's a really great guy who will restore this country to greatness? Yes, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I lost my faith in the system at an early age. That faith has never been restored, even as my political views have evolved over the years.
Twenty years ago today, we were still awaiting the final outcome of the post-election brouhaha in Florida. On that date, I was a naïve, liberal* high-school student with a deep, abiding loathing of George W. Bush. I truly and honestly believed that he had stolen the election from Gore. Even then, I had already read a fair amount of history, so when 9/11 happened, I immediately thought, "Reichstag fire." I opposed the Iraq War from Day One.
It was during the 2008 election campaign that I began to realize that my viewpoint had shifted decisively to the right. I had a negative visceral reaction to Obama, and when he won the nomination, I realized that I would not be voting for the Democratic candidate that November.
I was enthusiastic about Trump from Day One. He pissed off so many loathsome people that I was willing to overlook his (admittedly numerous) flaws.
And he was the better choice. Hillary would have been an absolute disaster, especially as a direct successor to Obama. With the machinery of a Democratic administration already in place, she would have been far more dangerous than the ineffectual Biden will be.
I make no apologies for endorsing Trump's candidacy in 2015 and 2016. I make no apologies for defending him over the last four years. And I make no apologies for supporting his re-election.
Trump has done more to expose the malfeasance of the political establishment and the media than any other public figure in modern American history. Even those who rate him as an absolute failure must admit that he has unmasked the treachery of the Deep State and its nefarious actors for all to see.
Trump has not drained the swamp, but he has disrupted (to some extent) the Democrats' plans for perpetual rule. The radical transformation of America is not as far along now as it would have been if Hillary had won in 2016. If nothing else, Trump has bought us a little more time and forced his leftist opponents to show their true colors.Replies: @James B. Shearer, @northeast
Trump spent the better part of his entire term fighting off a coup…totally distorted his presidency.
Probably about an 80% chance. Anyway my vote was more anti-Trump than pro-Biden.Replies: @Dieter Kief
Why did you vote for Trump and then for Biden?
I tend to vote for the out party.
Your source is pulling your leg. George Bush had been in Congress for all of 19 months when Nixon was sorting through possible VP choices.
Few reporters have delved deeply into the symbiotic relationship with the blue-blooded Bush family, pillars of the Eastern Establishment, and Richard Nixon, the grocer’s son from Yorba Linda. Yet it is indisputable that if Nixon had never become president, neither would George H. W. Bush, nor his son George W. Bush. Without the Nixon presidency, there would not have been a Bush dynasty.
This is flagrantly silly. There are any number of contingencies that might have generated a different sequence of events in re the careers of particular politicians and there is nothing 'undisputable' about any given set of hypotheticals over a span of time 33 years in length.
George Bush lost a senatorial election in 1970 and thereafter was given a series of patronage jobs by Nixon and Ford. They used him as a utility man - he was in four different jobs and didn't spend more than two years in any one of them. He had more consequential appointments during the Ford Administration than he did under the Nixon Administration. No clue how it is you or your source fancy the 'relationship' between Bush and Nixon was peculiarly 'symbiotic'. Bush was one of scores of men who held discretionary appointments of equal consequence and then some. What was odd about Bush was not his 'relationship' with Nixon, but his energy and ambition. None of his peers later built a competitive presidential campaign and only two (Donald Rumsfeld and Alexander Haig) made any attempt at it.
While we're at it, what's this 'blue-blooded pillar of the Eastern Establishment' hoo ha? Prescott Bush grew up in Columbus, Ohio; his wife grew up in St. Louis. At the time they married in 1919, the business which had made her family wealthy was about 40 years old and his family's money was newer than her's. He landed his 1st position in New York finance in 1924.Replies: @Kronos
It might have been a hail-Mary pass but he apparently tried (with help from Prescott) to get the VP spot. Also, I think Nixon himself wasn’t in Congress that long either when he became Eisenhower’s VP. Back when the Northern East Coast was still heavily Republican Prescott did have substantial political pull. Though Stone points out Prescott narrowly lost his own Connecticut Senate seat in the 1950s due to it being discovered he donated money to Planned Parenthood. Back when PP didn’t represent female empowerment but negative eugenics/population control of blacks and Catholics.
That is a very good question with a very complicated answer. Russ Baker’s “Family of Secrets” contends that historically the Bushes were typically only mid-tier on the WASP hierarchy. He never really elaborates how or why the Bushes shot up near the top and leaves further research up to the reader.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York. (Rockefeller was in many ways the anti-Cecil Rhodes, who wanted the US to become free from the financial creditors of the British Empire. The World Wars would ultimately make the US not only independent, but flip the script between the power dynamics of US and England.) The Bushes were early supporters of the “Baptist Bastard King of America” and rode with him to glory. It’s likely why both Bush I and Bush II still politically embodied strong Nelson Rockefeller Liberal Republican political policies.
1. He was elected to the Senate in 1952 to fill an unexpired term and re-elected in 1956. He never lost the seat. 2. Nixon had been in Congress for five years and change when Eisenhower tapped him for the VP slot; he'd made himself very obtrusive during those years and had not lost any elections. 3. Roger Stone fancies Bush made three failed attempts to get the VP slot. Which is to say, per Stone, he 'attempted' (during the time he was in charge of the US Mission at the UN) to persuade Richard Nixon to toss Spiro Agnew off the ticket in favor of him. Nixon's intraoffice conversations were recorded from 1971 to 1973, so Stone should be able to point to one. When did this happen? Stone also avers Bush 'attempted' to persuade Gerald Ford to assign him the VP slot in 1976. Ron Nessen discusses in his memoir of the Ford years the process by which the VP selection was made. Scores of Republican office holders were solicited to provide information on an extensive questionnaire (which, per Nessen, only one so asked refused to fill out); presumably Bush was one.
That is a very good question with a very complicated answer. Russ Baker’s “Family of Secrets” contends that historically the Bushes were typically only mid-tier on the WASP hierarchy. He never really elaborates how or why the Bushes shot up near the top and leaves further research up to the reader.There is no mystery. The Bush and Walker families have produced several generations of men reasonably capable in business pursuits. They're known to the public because they ran for an won political offices. Which is something energetic pols from all sorts of backgrounds do. Barack Obama is the custodial grandson of the manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii; Bill Clinton is the stepson of an auto parts dealer married to a nurse-anaesthetist; Ronald Reagan was the son of a salesman and small merchant (with a drinking problem); Jimmy Carter was the son of a south Georgia farmer-merchant; Gerald Ford was the son of a paint merchant; Richard Nixon was the son of a greengrocer.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York.John Rockefeller at his death had a fortune so large that his holdings accounted for as large a share of available assets as the top three characters on the Forbes 400. That likely made him an influential figure. Not too long ago, I saw a contention that the sum of holdings of all Rockefeller scions amount to $11 bn. There's a three-digit population of Rockefeller scions. They haven't run anything of institutional importance in about 35 years. Easy come easy go.Replies: @Kronos, @David In TN
He was for six years, and had gained the eternal hatred of the Left through his critical role in HUAC on the Alger Hiss case, had generally established his credentials as an anti-Communist.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9027973/Pfizer-Moderna-SNUB-Donald-Trumps-White-House-vaccine-summit.html?ito=push-notification&ci=58240&si=13534066
The best line from this slanted anti-Trump piece is that " Bourla defended the company's decision not to take federal funds saying that Pfizer wanted to 'liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy' and 'keep Pfizer out of politics.'
OT-The Daily Mail used to have a novel, although tabloidesque, appeal. For example, I believe they are the only MSM source to show the bodycam footage leaked by the MPD in the George Floyd case, which I suspect will play a major role in eventually exonerating the cops. But since around September, they've became a major organ of unadulterated Trump hatred. It's amazing how news outlets go bonkers over elections.Replies: @vhrm
Yeah… i noticed a shift too.
I think the main thing is they’re just being very tabloidy and using exaggerated headlines with titillating verbs and WORDS IN CAPS, but they definitely got saltier on Trump too.
They still have stories like this though:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9029651/Shocking-moment-courageous-retired-firefighter-killed-shootout.html
( 3 vibrant looking youths fatally shot a (vibrant) retired FD Lieutenant in Chicago. At least he went down shooting but def shows the limitations of what being armed will get you. Also, i’m sure the attackers are actually white people in blackface, but that’s a different story. )
Looks like Trump passed on ensuring more vaccine doses would be made available for American citizens.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/us/trump-covid-vaccine-pfizer.html
Look at the graph at the bottom of that page. Every single week since the one ending March 28th 2020 has been above its “excess” threshold. So any concern about some deaths being shifted forward or back causing apparent excess and not being offset by apparent deficit in other weeks is not an issue this year (because none of the weeks are in apparent deficit).
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York. (Rockefeller was in many ways the anti-Cecil Rhodes, who wanted the US to become free from the financial creditors of the British Empire. The World Wars would ultimately make the US not only independent, but flip the script between the power dynamics of US and England.) The Bushes were early supporters of the “Baptist Bastard King of America” and rode with him to glory. It’s likely why both Bush I and Bush II still politically embodied strong Nelson Rockefeller Liberal Republican political policies.
https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/l5cAAOSweLZeZUP-/s-l640.jpgReplies: @Art Deco
It might have been a hail-Mary pass but he apparently tried (with help from Prescott) to get the VP spot. Also, I think Nixon himself wasn’t in Congress that long either when he became Eisenhower’s VP. Back when the Northern East Coast was still heavily Republican Prescott did have substantial political pull. Though Stone points out Prescott narrowly lost his own Connecticut Senate seat in the 1950s due to it being discovered he donated money to Planned Parenthood. Back when PP didn’t represent female empowerment but negative eugenics/population control of blacks and Catholics.
1. He was elected to the Senate in 1952 to fill an unexpired term and re-elected in 1956. He never lost the seat.
2. Nixon had been in Congress for five years and change when Eisenhower tapped him for the VP slot; he’d made himself very obtrusive during those years and had not lost any elections.
3. Roger Stone fancies Bush made three failed attempts to get the VP slot. Which is to say, per Stone, he ‘attempted’ (during the time he was in charge of the US Mission at the UN) to persuade Richard Nixon to toss Spiro Agnew off the ticket in favor of him. Nixon’s intraoffice conversations were recorded from 1971 to 1973, so Stone should be able to point to one. When did this happen? Stone also avers Bush ‘attempted’ to persuade Gerald Ford to assign him the VP slot in 1976. Ron Nessen discusses in his memoir of the Ford years the process by which the VP selection was made. Scores of Republican office holders were solicited to provide information on an extensive questionnaire (which, per Nessen, only one so asked refused to fill out); presumably Bush was one.
That is a very good question with a very complicated answer. Russ Baker’s “Family of Secrets” contends that historically the Bushes were typically only mid-tier on the WASP hierarchy. He never really elaborates how or why the Bushes shot up near the top and leaves further research up to the reader.
There is no mystery. The Bush and Walker families have produced several generations of men reasonably capable in business pursuits. They’re known to the public because they ran for an won political offices. Which is something energetic pols from all sorts of backgrounds do. Barack Obama is the custodial grandson of the manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii; Bill Clinton is the stepson of an auto parts dealer married to a nurse-anaesthetist; Ronald Reagan was the son of a salesman and small merchant (with a drinking problem); Jimmy Carter was the son of a south Georgia farmer-merchant; Gerald Ford was the son of a paint merchant; Richard Nixon was the son of a greengrocer.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York.
John Rockefeller at his death had a fortune so large that his holdings accounted for as large a share of available assets as the top three characters on the Forbes 400. That likely made him an influential figure. Not too long ago, I saw a contention that the sum of holdings of all Rockefeller scions amount to $11 bn. There’s a three-digit population of Rockefeller scions. They haven’t run anything of institutional importance in about 35 years. Easy come easy go.
But yeah, the Rockefeller soon kicked his kids to the curb a few decades after his death. (The same go’s for the Ford Foundation.)Replies: @Kronos
When Witcover mentioned the field for the 1976 GOP presidential slot, he writes that Republican politicians considered Bush "incompetent." Witcover and his partner Jack Germond didn't hide their low opinion of George H.W. Bush in their books on subsequent elections. They gleefully described Bush "freezing up" during the 1980 New Hampshire debate.
FWIW Witcover had a low opinion of all Republicans. He hero-worshipped Bobby Kennedy. See Witcover's book "85 Days," on Bobby's 1968 campaign. Many of the reporters covering Bobby Kennedy in 1968 were practically campaign aides.Replies: @Art Deco, @Art Deco
1. He was elected to the Senate in 1952 to fill an unexpired term and re-elected in 1956. He never lost the seat. 2. Nixon had been in Congress for five years and change when Eisenhower tapped him for the VP slot; he'd made himself very obtrusive during those years and had not lost any elections. 3. Roger Stone fancies Bush made three failed attempts to get the VP slot. Which is to say, per Stone, he 'attempted' (during the time he was in charge of the US Mission at the UN) to persuade Richard Nixon to toss Spiro Agnew off the ticket in favor of him. Nixon's intraoffice conversations were recorded from 1971 to 1973, so Stone should be able to point to one. When did this happen? Stone also avers Bush 'attempted' to persuade Gerald Ford to assign him the VP slot in 1976. Ron Nessen discusses in his memoir of the Ford years the process by which the VP selection was made. Scores of Republican office holders were solicited to provide information on an extensive questionnaire (which, per Nessen, only one so asked refused to fill out); presumably Bush was one.
That is a very good question with a very complicated answer. Russ Baker’s “Family of Secrets” contends that historically the Bushes were typically only mid-tier on the WASP hierarchy. He never really elaborates how or why the Bushes shot up near the top and leaves further research up to the reader.There is no mystery. The Bush and Walker families have produced several generations of men reasonably capable in business pursuits. They're known to the public because they ran for an won political offices. Which is something energetic pols from all sorts of backgrounds do. Barack Obama is the custodial grandson of the manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii; Bill Clinton is the stepson of an auto parts dealer married to a nurse-anaesthetist; Ronald Reagan was the son of a salesman and small merchant (with a drinking problem); Jimmy Carter was the son of a south Georgia farmer-merchant; Gerald Ford was the son of a paint merchant; Richard Nixon was the son of a greengrocer.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York.John Rockefeller at his death had a fortune so large that his holdings accounted for as large a share of available assets as the top three characters on the Forbes 400. That likely made him an influential figure. Not too long ago, I saw a contention that the sum of holdings of all Rockefeller scions amount to $11 bn. There's a three-digit population of Rockefeller scions. They haven't run anything of institutional importance in about 35 years. Easy come easy go.Replies: @Kronos, @David In TN
Well, it looks like you were once again more correct than I was.
He actually made more money in retirement. Around that time automobiles were coming into their own instead of relying on oil lamp revenue. He also essentially bankrolled the construction of the University of Chicago for Baptist theology learning.
But yeah, the Rockefeller soon kicked his kids to the curb a few decades after his death. (The same go’s for the Ford Foundation.)
“Why did you vote for Trump and then for Biden?”
I tend to vote for the out party.
But yeah, the Rockefeller soon kicked his kids to the curb a few decades after his death. (The same go’s for the Ford Foundation.)Replies: @Kronos
*Foundation
1. He was elected to the Senate in 1952 to fill an unexpired term and re-elected in 1956. He never lost the seat. 2. Nixon had been in Congress for five years and change when Eisenhower tapped him for the VP slot; he'd made himself very obtrusive during those years and had not lost any elections. 3. Roger Stone fancies Bush made three failed attempts to get the VP slot. Which is to say, per Stone, he 'attempted' (during the time he was in charge of the US Mission at the UN) to persuade Richard Nixon to toss Spiro Agnew off the ticket in favor of him. Nixon's intraoffice conversations were recorded from 1971 to 1973, so Stone should be able to point to one. When did this happen? Stone also avers Bush 'attempted' to persuade Gerald Ford to assign him the VP slot in 1976. Ron Nessen discusses in his memoir of the Ford years the process by which the VP selection was made. Scores of Republican office holders were solicited to provide information on an extensive questionnaire (which, per Nessen, only one so asked refused to fill out); presumably Bush was one.
That is a very good question with a very complicated answer. Russ Baker’s “Family of Secrets” contends that historically the Bushes were typically only mid-tier on the WASP hierarchy. He never really elaborates how or why the Bushes shot up near the top and leaves further research up to the reader.There is no mystery. The Bush and Walker families have produced several generations of men reasonably capable in business pursuits. They're known to the public because they ran for an won political offices. Which is something energetic pols from all sorts of backgrounds do. Barack Obama is the custodial grandson of the manager of escrow accounts at the Bank of Hawaii; Bill Clinton is the stepson of an auto parts dealer married to a nurse-anaesthetist; Ronald Reagan was the son of a salesman and small merchant (with a drinking problem); Jimmy Carter was the son of a south Georgia farmer-merchant; Gerald Ford was the son of a paint merchant; Richard Nixon was the son of a greengrocer.
I kinda relied on my own past readings to fill in that noticeable gap. To very briefly sum it up: John D. Rockefeller Sr. began to radically transform the US WASP power map beginning in the late 19th century. Over time, he and his Foundation tried building a national US WASP elite centered in New York.John Rockefeller at his death had a fortune so large that his holdings accounted for as large a share of available assets as the top three characters on the Forbes 400. That likely made him an influential figure. Not too long ago, I saw a contention that the sum of holdings of all Rockefeller scions amount to $11 bn. There's a three-digit population of Rockefeller scions. They haven't run anything of institutional importance in about 35 years. Easy come easy go.Replies: @Kronos, @David In TN
Speaking of George H.W. Bush always reminds me of Jules Witcover’s doorstop of a book on the 1976 presidential campaign, “Marathon.”
When Witcover mentioned the field for the 1976 GOP presidential slot, he writes that Republican politicians considered Bush “incompetent.” Witcover and his partner Jack Germond didn’t hide their low opinion of George H.W. Bush in their books on subsequent elections. They gleefully described Bush “freezing up” during the 1980 New Hampshire debate.
FWIW Witcover had a low opinion of all Republicans. He hero-worshipped Bobby Kennedy. See Witcover’s book “85 Days,” on Bobby’s 1968 campaign. Many of the reporters covering Bobby Kennedy in 1968 were practically campaign aides.
Bush had one set of serious shortcomings: (1) he was a highly competitive man who ran for public offices to amuse himself; he had little in the way of political principles and his opinion was often that of the last person who spoke to him (IMO, his was a common type among his cohort and associates). He had one cosmetic shortcoming: his public speaking was plain awful. The people slamming his son on these boards have forgotten that the father was painful to listen to. The Bushes have their accomplishments in life. They're not incompetents, at least not globally. The problem is that their basic approach to public life generates junk and filler. They only accomplish things by accident. Also, none of them have been edifying out of office. W has spent the last seven years betraying the constituency that put him in office, up to and including putting his imprimatur on the vote fraud we've seen this fall. (Jeb did this as well).
Which is bizarre when you think about it. I had a dear friend who met Bobby Kennedy in a professional setting in 1964. He said RFK interacting with his staff was just revolting to watch. He was pounding the pavement for Eugene McCarthy four years later for that reason. Harold MacMillan's reaction to the Kennedys was thus: "the Borgia brothers have taken over a respectable north Italian town". Godfrey Hodgson, then covering the U.S. government for British newspapers, thought the culture of the Administration was typified by sheer, gaseous, PR humbug (one thing he noticed was he had no trouble getting interviews from people who assured him they worked 18 hours a day).
You could say three agreeable things about RFK: he was a capable public speaker, he fathered 11 children, and he knew how to hold his liquor and keep his pants zipped. Beyond that, he was an unscrupulous character.
When Witcover mentioned the field for the 1976 GOP presidential slot, he writes that Republican politicians considered Bush "incompetent." Witcover and his partner Jack Germond didn't hide their low opinion of George H.W. Bush in their books on subsequent elections. They gleefully described Bush "freezing up" during the 1980 New Hampshire debate.
FWIW Witcover had a low opinion of all Republicans. He hero-worshipped Bobby Kennedy. See Witcover's book "85 Days," on Bobby's 1968 campaign. Many of the reporters covering Bobby Kennedy in 1968 were practically campaign aides.Replies: @Art Deco, @Art Deco
Incompetent at what and compared to whom? Germond was a crapulous man who had perfectly meh post-war military service. Witcover is one of the odd minority of his cohort who never served in the military. Neither man ever ran his own business or undertook any activity more demanding than reporting. Bush worked for Nixon and then Ford, neither of whom ever founded their own business (and neither of whom were combat veterans). Nixon was a perfectly wretched administrator and Ford (as his admirer Nessen’s memoir made clear) was attempting at age 60 to learn by doing (Kissinger thought him a better negotiator than Nixon and more of a square shooter in inter-personal dealings). If Germond and Witcover thought he was incompetent at the mechanics of running a campaign, maybe they’d care to explain how he built a competitive presidential campaign in 1980 consequent to two terms in the House and some stints in 2d and 3d echelon positions in the executive. Who else has managed that in the last century?
Bush had one set of serious shortcomings: (1) he was a highly competitive man who ran for public offices to amuse himself; he had little in the way of political principles and his opinion was often that of the last person who spoke to him (IMO, his was a common type among his cohort and associates). He had one cosmetic shortcoming: his public speaking was plain awful. The people slamming his son on these boards have forgotten that the father was painful to listen to. The Bushes have their accomplishments in life. They’re not incompetents, at least not globally. The problem is that their basic approach to public life generates junk and filler. They only accomplish things by accident. Also, none of them have been edifying out of office. W has spent the last seven years betraying the constituency that put him in office, up to and including putting his imprimatur on the vote fraud we’ve seen this fall. (Jeb did this as well).
When Witcover mentioned the field for the 1976 GOP presidential slot, he writes that Republican politicians considered Bush "incompetent." Witcover and his partner Jack Germond didn't hide their low opinion of George H.W. Bush in their books on subsequent elections. They gleefully described Bush "freezing up" during the 1980 New Hampshire debate.
FWIW Witcover had a low opinion of all Republicans. He hero-worshipped Bobby Kennedy. See Witcover's book "85 Days," on Bobby's 1968 campaign. Many of the reporters covering Bobby Kennedy in 1968 were practically campaign aides.Replies: @Art Deco, @Art Deco
FWIW Witcover had a low opinion of all Republicans. He hero-worshipped Bobby Kennedy.
Which is bizarre when you think about it. I had a dear friend who met Bobby Kennedy in a professional setting in 1964. He said RFK interacting with his staff was just revolting to watch. He was pounding the pavement for Eugene McCarthy four years later for that reason. Harold MacMillan’s reaction to the Kennedys was thus: “the Borgia brothers have taken over a respectable north Italian town”. Godfrey Hodgson, then covering the U.S. government for British newspapers, thought the culture of the Administration was typified by sheer, gaseous, PR humbug (one thing he noticed was he had no trouble getting interviews from people who assured him they worked 18 hours a day).
You could say three agreeable things about RFK: he was a capable public speaker, he fathered 11 children, and he knew how to hold his liquor and keep his pants zipped. Beyond that, he was an unscrupulous character.