KURT SCHLICHTER: Delusional Never Trump Losers Think We’re Going to Take Them Back.
Archive for 2020
December 3, 2020
OPEN THREAD: Have fun!
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Trump Attorneys Produce Video Alleging Georgia Ballots Were Hidden in Suitcases.
SCHOOLS CLOSED, MINORITIES HARDEST HIT: Seriously. In my county, Arlington, schools closed in March and the geniuses in the public school administration told the teachers not to do online instruction, and not to teach anything new (lest there be some kid, somewhere, who couldn’t log in despite free county-provided Ipads and Internet, because that would be inequitable). Below is a chart showing how kids did on the test they give at the beginning of each school year. As you will notice, black and Hispanic kids have been really hurt, white and Asian kids not so much. I suspect you would see similar, maybe even more inequitable results if you just went by income status. Yet, oddly (not really), it’s the progressives in the county who have been shouting “equity, equity, equity” from the rooftops for the last several years and their allies among the teachers who have been most vociferously lobbying to keep the schools closed.
The gray line is Fall 2020, the lines before are 2019 and ’18, respectively.
THERE’S AN INTERESTING ANTI-BIG-TECH COALITION COMING TOGETHER: ‘Don’t back down’: Tulsi Gabbard tells Trump he has her full support in terminating Section 230.
THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Exclusive: Oregon Gave Antifa Your CARES Act COVID Relief Tax Dollars During the Riots. Wait, It Gets Worse.
PARTY OF HATE: Rashida Tlaib’s all-too-telling anti-Israel tweet.
HANNAH COX: How The Government Broke Higher Education.
DISPATCHES FROM THE NORTH MINEHEAD BY-ELECTION: Politician named Adolf Hitler wins election in Namibia.
(Classical reference in headline.)
WHO’S READY FOR PRESIDENT JOE BREZHNEV? Biden’s Brezhnev vibes.
At least nobody in the Soviet Union voted for Brezhnev — the elections were a sham with Communist party candidates running unopposed. Everything was a sham, actually. In his mumbling, robotic tones, the general secretary delivered long-winded, heavy on Marxist cliches and utterly incomprehensible televised speeches. The economy flattered, dissidents were subjected to psychiatric torture, corruption proliferated, and the rate of substance abuse skyrocketed. That period of Soviet history is known as zastoi, or stagnation. It only made sense that the man on top was some sort of sclerotic.
Like Brezhnev, Biden’s rhetoric is ridden with clichés, but of a different, folksy kind. At the time when political slogans are catchy and provocative — Make America Great Again, Black Lives Matter — Biden’s yard signs read ‘Our best days are still ahead’, and ‘Build back better’. His Twitter account is full of platitudes like ‘This is our moment — ours together — to write a newer, bolder, more compassionate chapter in the life of our nation.’ He’s just a boring ordinary guy — until he lashes out at a voter, or bites on his wife’s finger.
Is Biden the candidate of American stagnation? His cognitive and physical decline is increasingly difficult to hide and it’s highly disturbing to witness it become a subject of speculation. I’ve lived through it before and it gives me the creeps. Free citizens of a free republic shouldn’t need a Kremlinologist to decipher what’s wrong with their president.
Read the whole thing. Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives getting a head start on their four year nap, and the need to study Biden like a Kremlinologist makes perfect sense.
A HAPPY ENDING FOR ROBERT KRAFT: Florida Masseuse Ordered to Pay $31,573 After ‘Soliciting’ Robert Kraft To ‘Commit Prostitution.’ Charges against Kraft were (rightfully) dismissed. The women he patronized now have criminal records.
MORE EVIDENCE THAT THIS IS A SIMULATION? Chaotic early solar system collisions resembled ‘asteroids’ arcade game.
QUESTION ASKED: Did Brexit lead to the UK’s vaccine success?
THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Possible Biden Cabinet Pick Rashida Tlaib Shares Tweet Calling To Eradicate Israel.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH MATTHEW YGLESIAS IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Matt Yglesias takes radical lefty heat for criticizing #DefundThePolice as ‘a bad idea,’ but to his credit, he doesn’t back down.
I’VE GIVEN UP ON GOVERNMENT MAKING RATIONAL DECISIONS: Long-Term-Care Residents and Health Workers Should Get Vaccine First, C.D.C. Panel Says. Comment from my friend Kate Litvak:
This is unbelievably stupid. What is the point of prioritizing nursing home residents? They are stationary. They aren’t going anywhere. We should not spend vaccines on them, but instead, we should create safe bubbles around them by prioritizing the people with whom they have contact. That means all workers of nursing homes (not just medical workers). These workers are not only bringing disease into nursing homes, but after work, get on public transit to go home and spread the disease through the community.
We should prioritize people who have the highest number of (necessary) interactions with others — health workers, transportation, supermarket, police, workers of meat processing plants, etc.
And among the first should be TEACHERS!! This will destroy the excuse that the teachers’ unions use to justify not working while getting paid in full. Once we vaccinate all the teachers, we must open the schools. Teachers who will then refuse to show up should be fired for cause. Kids aren’t much at risk and are in low probability to spread the virus. Families who don’t want their kids to attend live classes can continue online, but that will be their choice — not the choice of the teachers’ unions.
When the kids are out at schools, we preserve their education and sanity, and also preserve the ability of their parents to actually work and get the economy back on track.
But instead, we are giving the vaccine to nursing home residents. Who are stationary, can be effectively isolated, and have little impact on the economy, education of kids, and our sane future. Sheer idiocy.
UPDATE: I’ve received some feedback that nursing home residents should be vaccinated early so they can receive visitors after months of isolation from their families. But do we think that the homes are going to let visitors in unless and until those visitors are also vaccinated? The vaccines are 90-94% effective, so given the liability issues involved, the odds that they would allow unvaccinated visitors to see vaccinated residents when a month or two or three later the visitors will also be vaccinated seem low to me. Not to mention that if staff aren’t vaccinated, the visitors could infect the staff.
UPDATE: The CDC has published the underlying report that their panel approved. The report suggests that “health care personnel” is defined very broadly, which means that nursing home staff will be vaccinated–which raises the question as why residents also need to be vaccinated quickly. A dissenting panelist raised an additional objection: Nursing home residents tend to be elderly and unhealthy, and generally safe vaccines might not be safe for that population, and we have no data on that. It’s also not clear to me why pharmacy staff are more of a priority than any other retail worker, unless they work in a medical facility.From the report:
Approximately 21 million U.S. health care personnel work in settings such as hospitals, LTCFs, outpatient clinics, home health care, public health clinical services, emergency medical services, and pharmacies. Health care personnel comprise clinical staff members, including nursing or medical assistants and support staff members (e.g., those who work in food, environmental, and administrative services) (8). Jurisdictions might consider first offering vaccine to health care personnel whose duties require proximity (within 6 feet) to other persons. If vaccine supply remains constrained, additional factors might be considered for subprioritization.*** Public health authorities and health care systems should work together to ensure COVID-19 vaccine access to health care personnel who are not affiliated with hospitals.
Approximately 3 million adults reside in LTCFs, which include skilled nursing facilities, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities. Depending upon the number of initial vaccine doses available, jurisdictions might consider first offering vaccination to residents and health care personnel in skilled nursing facilities because of high medical acuity and COVID-19–associated mortality (6) among residents in these settings.
CHANGE: Tamara Keel: The Handgun Red-Dot Revolution. “The ‘target focus’ allowed by the MRDS doesn’t constrain your field-of-vision the way a hard front-sight focus does. In a competition setting, this means that you can keep an entire target array in view. . . . We’re in a day and age where the possibility of a lone concealed carrier finding themselves faced by multiple threats is not a far-fetched hypothetical. In a situation where the defender is outnumbered by aggressive, mobile assailants, anything that allows them to keep their head up and their awareness spread across as wide an area as possible would be a big help.”