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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[bodiddley]

Mel Gibson is (not) dead
Struck with COVID-19 and treated successfully with REMDESIVIR.
God bless all those working tirelessly in laboratories to combat the TRUMP virus.

[bodiddley]

“President Trump is deploying dangerous authoritarian tactics on our streets as a twisted campaign strategy,″ Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said in a statement explaining his vote against the defense bill. “We cannot let these secret police tactics and this attack on our democratic freedoms stand.”

Yup.
Well said.

[barton]

This post will be about 25 words more than troll-bait-ward deserves:  I lived in Portland and it's not all that white.   He's full of shit.   

Yes,  anecdote is not evidence, when it comes to the science of infectious disease. 

[NeedsAdjustments]

Why couldn't the US have been, at least, Italy?

Still, Italy entered this pandemic with major disadvantages compared with the United States.

After all, Italy’s bureaucracy isn’t famed for its efficiency, nor are its citizens known for their willingness to follow rules. The nation’s government is deeply in debt, and this debt matters because Italy doesn’t have its own currency; this means that it can’t do what we do, and print lots of money in a crisis.

Unfavorable demography and economic troubles are also major Italian disadvantages. The ratio of seniors to working-age adults is the highest in the Western world. Italy’s growth record is deeply disappointing: Per capita G.D.P. has stagnated for two decades.

When it came to dealing with Covid-19, however, all these Italian disadvantages were outweighed by one huge advantage: Italy wasn’t burdened with America’s disastrous leadership.

After a terrible start, Italy quickly moved to do what was necessary to deal with the coronavirus. It instituted a very severe lockdown, and kept to it. Government aid helped sustain workers and businesses through the lockdown. The safety net had holes in it, but top officials tried to make it work; in a supreme case of non-Trumpism, the prime minister even apologized for delays in aid.

And, crucially, Italy crushed the curve: It kept the lockdown in place until cases were relatively few, and it was cautious about reopening.

America could have followed the same path. In fact, the Covid-19 trajectory in the Northeast, which was hard-hit in the beginning but took the outbreak seriously, actually does look a lot like Italy’s.

But the Trump administration and its allies pushed for rapid reopening, ignoring warnings from epidemiologists. Because we didn’t do what Italy did, we didn’t crush the curve; quite the opposite. Matters were made worse by pathological opposition to things like wearing masks, the way even obvious precautions became battlegrounds in the culture wars.

So cases and then deaths surged. Even the promised economic payoff from rapid, what-me-worry reopening was a mirage: many states are reimposing partial lockdowns, and there is growing evidence that the jobs recovery is stalling, if not going into reverse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/opinion/us-italy-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[bodiddley]

The Senate approved the annual policy measure, 86-14, a margin that suggests more than enough support to override a potential Trump veto. The House approved its version on Tuesday by a veto-proof margin of 295-125. Now the two chambers will have to negotiate a final version. Both bills authorize $741 billion for the military, including a 3% pay raise for the troops.

I don't see this mentioned anywhere, but isn't this a pretty huge increase at a time where deficits are exploding and money is needed elsewhere and we've pretty much wrapped up occupying and destroying Iraq, Afghanistan & Syria.  To put it into perspective the $60B increase from last year is roughly equal to the #2 defense/war spender, France's annual expenditure.

Defund the fucking military.  they keep buying insanely expensive toys that take decades to work properly, and then they want to test them out on some poor country.  Such as spending over $1T to ruin Afghanistan.

Truth in advertising, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offense Dept.  Or better yet go back to War Department.

[bodiddley]

Why couldn't the US have been, at least, Italy?

Indeed.
I keep mentioning China as a comparison point, because that's where I am and what I'm familiar with (CBA will allow limited amounts of fans for the playoffs).
But you could compare the disastrous US response to the virus with Japan or South Korea or Euro-countries which did a poor job, but still much better than Trumpistan.

Italy did a somewhat sloppy job early on in their outbreak, failing to seal off the north and impose a strict quarantine on Lombardy Province (as China did with Hubei).   But then they got their act together and have things under control now.  Meanwhile the US is going to get worse before it gets better. 

Trump's ineffective and harmful leadership on par with Brasil's.

Italy also had the misfortune of having the first large outbreak outside of China, so their prep time and guidance on effective measures were less than what was available for the US.  I was in Malta when the Italy and Iran outbreaks got underway circa Feb 21.  The Italy outbreak should have been a huge flashing light, a clarion call, or even another metaphor for the US to take swift and effective action.  Didn't happen.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Trump is not Hitler.
Trump is taking the country back from the anarchist grip of others.

No, Trump is more like Mussolini.

[Hamilton Samuels]

Like Kiid, most of Steven Miller’s family has publicly disavowed him. I wonder what country he’ll flee to in January.

At least kid knows who his family is. How's your search coming? Any leads?

[Hamilton Samuels]

Mel Gibson is (not) dead

Struck with COVID-19 and treated successfully with REMDESIVIR.

God bless all those working tirelessly in laboratories to combat the China virus.

Does this mean he'll make another Passion movie, now that he's suffered like Christ, sans nails?

[Hamilton Samuels]

This post will be about 25 words more than troll-bait-ward deserves:  I lived in Portland and it's not all that white.   He's full of shit.   

Yes,  anecdote is not evidence, when it comes to the science of infectious disease.

Well, remember, Red is aka "The Welston Wizard".

[REDSTATEWARD]

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

  https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

Somehow REDSTATEWARD neglected to post this news item.    Its OK, I missed it at first too:

Hundreds of journalists from the Wall Street Journal signed a letter this week criticizing the paper’s opinion section for spreading misinformation.

The stunning rebuke, signed by 280 staffers of the Journal and sent to the paper’s new publisher, calls for better fact-checking, more transparency, and a clearer divide between news and opinion divisions, according to a draft of the letter obtained by Mediaite.

“Opinion’s lack of fact-checking and transparency, and its apparent disregard for evidence, undermine our readers’ trust and our ability to gain credibility with sources,” the letter to publisher Almar Latour says. “Many readers already cannot tell the difference between reporting and Opinion. And from those who know of the divide, reporters nonetheless face questions about the Journal’s accuracy and fairness because of errors published in opinion.

https://www.mediaite.com/print/wsj-reporters-call-out-misinformation-and-disregard-for-evidence-from-papers-opinion-section-in-scathing-letter/

The WSJ Editorial Staff responds:



We’ve been grat­i­fied this week by the outpour­ing of sup­port from read­ers af­ter some 280 of our Wall Street Jour­nal colleagues signed (and some­one leaked) a let­ter to our pub­lisher crit­i­ciz­ing the opin­ion pages. But the sup­port has of­ten been mixed with con­cern that per­haps the let­ter will cause us to change our prin­ci­ples and con­tent. On that point, re­as­surance is in or­der.

In the spirit of col­legial­ity, we won’t respond in kind to the let­ter sign­ers. Their anx­i­eties aren’t our re­spon­si­bil­ity in any case. The sign­ers re­port to the News ed­i­tors or other parts of the busi­ness, and the News and Opin­ion de­part­ments op­er­ate with sep­a­rate staffs and ed­i­tors. Both re­port to Pub­lisher Al­mar La­tour. This sep­a­ra­tion al­lows us to pur­sue sto­ries and in­form read­ers with in­de­pen­dent judgment.

It was prob­a­bly in­evitable that the wave of pro­gres­sive can­cel cul­ture would ar­rive at the Jour­nal, as it has at nearly every other cul­tural, busi­ness, aca­d­e­mic and jour­nal­is­tic in­sti­tu-tion. But we are not the New York Times. Most Jour­nal re-porters at­tempt to cover the news fairly and down the mid­dle, and our opin­ion pages of­fer an al­ter­na­tive to the uni­form pro­gres-sive views that dom­i-nate nearly all of today’s me­dia.

As long as our propri­etors al­low us the priv­i­lege to do so, the opin­ion pages will con­tinue to pub­lish con­trib­u­tors who speak their minds within the tra­di­tion of vig­or­ous, rea­soned dis­course. And these col­umns will con­tinue to pro­mote the prin­ci-ples of free peo­ple and free mar­kets, which are more im­por­tant than ever in what is a cul­ture of grow­ing pro­gres­sive conformity and in­tol­er-ance.    


Friday, July 25, 2020

[NeedsAdjustments]

The WSJ Editorial Staff responds:

I saw it, thanks.  It is a more revealing letter than I think the WSJ Editorial Staff intended, in its clearly partisan mischaracterization of the WSJ staff's concerns, and the insults it levels at its own people.

All while doing nothing to address the concerns expressed, namely the lack of proper fact-checking, and a better separation between news and opinion.

[Hamilton Samuels]

The WSJ Editorial Staff responds:

I saw it, thanks.  It is a more revealing letter than I think the WSJ Editorial Staff intended, in its clearly partisan mischaracterization of the WSJ staff's concerns, and the insults it levels at its own people.

All while doing nothing to address the concerns expressed, namely the lack of proper fact-checking, and a better separation between news and opinion.

As Pete Rose said of newspapers: "What do you want for 50 cents? *






*$1.75, (adjusted for inflation), normal subscription rate for a year. Right now, $12 for 12 weeks.

[Hamilton Samuels]

The WSJ Editorial Staff responds:

I saw it, thanks.  It is a more revealing letter than I think the WSJ Editorial Staff intended, in its clearly partisan mischaracterization of the WSJ staff's concerns, and the insults it levels at its own people.

All while doing nothing to address the concerns expressed, namely the lack of proper fact-checking, and a better separation between news and opinion.

The WSJ is no more or less partisan than its competitors, nor likely does it treat its employees drastically different than at NYT and WaPo or LAT.

It's the news BUSINESS, one must remember.

[REDSTATEWARD]

The WSJ Editorial Staff responds:

I saw it, thanks.  It is a more revealing letter than I think the WSJ Editorial Staff intended, in its clearly partisan mischaracterization of the WSJ staff's concerns, and the insults it levels at its own people.

All while doing nothing to address the concerns expressed, namely the lack of proper fact-checking, and a better separation between news and opinion.

I don’t think you comprehend when you read. 
But it’s nothing new.