‘HEALTH EQUITY’ VS. TEACHING ACTUAL MEDICINE. Med schools in 2024: “Instead of asking, ‘How can individuals protect themselves against health problems?,’ doctors should wonder, ‘What kind of public collective action is necessary to confront health inequity across identifiable populations?’”
Archive for 2024
July 30, 2024
FOUR MORE YEARS? I DONT KNOW IF I CAN TAKE FOUR MORE MONTHS OF THIS: So #WhiteDudesForKamala Had a Celebrity-Filled Zoom Call and the Cringe Was Epic.
BRYAN CAPLAN: What I Told the Chronicle About GMU. “Prudentially speaking, my best response to Walters was ‘no comment,’ but I’m trying to use my tenure nobly by loudly saying what every reasonable person in academia is quietly thinking.”
Plus: “The correct story, in my view, is that far-left faculty feel ‘threatened’ by anything short of 100% control of the university.”
HOW DARE THEY HOLD HER ACCOUNTABLE FOR WHAT SHE SAID SHE BELIEVES: NYT: Dastardly Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Kamala’s 2020 Positions.
UPDATE (From Ed):
WILL THE REAL KAMALA HARRIS PLEASE STAND UP?
Harris no longer supports Medicare for All,
per @reidepstein
Also says she won’t ban fracking, wants to increase funding for the border, and doesn’t want to require ppl to sell their assault weapons back to the govt.https://t.co/3YlRLJS1xz pic.twitter.com/LcL8jLCIY1— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 29, 2024
A better question would be whether there is a core Kamala Harris aside from ambition.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s not “back to the government.” They never belonged to the government. And given the government’s record, I’m not sure a responsible person would sell them a gun.
IF YOU WORK FOR KAMALA HARRIS: Don’t you dare look her directly in the face unless you are a longtime senior staff aide who has been permitted the privilege. That’s according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Jessica Costescu.
DEMOCRAT CIVIL WAR WATCH: California Democrat Delegates Call Kamala ‘Not Our Best Candidate’
BREAKING: COMPANY THAT CENSORS SEARCH RESULTS IS PRO-CENSORSHIP.
When you type "why censorship is" into Google search, the majority of suggestions are pro-censorship. pic.twitter.com/7kAaLavhT3
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) July 29, 2024
Don’t use Google.
I’M BEGINNING TO LOSE TRUST IN OUR GOVERNMENT: Another Secret Service Lapse for Trump in Nashville. Well, this was only vaguely a lapse, really. But: “Speaking of the previous debacle on July 13, the Pennsylvania shooting story only gets worse. Newly revealed text messages indicate that Thomas Crooks had been on authorities’ radar for a full ninety minutes before the shooting. The communications were provided by both local and federal authorities.”
Related: Biden Calls Speaker Johnson “Dead on Arrival.” Twice.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: In Theory, Someone Will Eventually Be Kamala Harris’s Running Mate. “Democrats are in what is no doubt a very weird place right now. On the surface, they’re at least pretending to be bubbly and enthusiastic about the OH SO AWESOME sudden anointing of Vice President Kamala Harris as their nominee. They’re selling it too. The Dems are quite adept at operating in a purely fictional environment, after all. These are the same people who just spent three-and-a-half years pretending that Joe Biden had a functioning brain. They’ve got mad acting skills.”
SO WHY ARE THEY TREATING HER LIKE SHE’S “ACTING PRESIDENT?” Kamala Says Joe Is Fit for Office.
There’s a process for making her the acting president. https://t.co/mCiKevACVv
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 29, 2024
The staff and the press can’t just decide that she’s in charge. And for her to be in charge, Joe has to go.
UPDATE: A friend texts:
Remind me already who died and made Kamala Harris the Dem frontrunner. How’s that work? Dementia Patient in Chief trots her out, and that’s that?
Look, I don’t want to be a dick about it, but I’m trying to find the democracy they are saving in this.
It’s in the same place they always keep it.
JOANNE JACOBS: New Title IX LGBTQ+ rules set off ‘race to the Supreme Court.’ “The new Title IX also would weaken due-process protections for male students accused of sexual misconduct, write Zach Montague and Erica L. Green in the New York Times. It widens the definition of sexual harassment — repeatedly using the wrong pronouns could qualify — sets a lower standard of proof and ends the Trump-era requirement for hearings in which accused students or their lawyers could question accusers. A single administrator could be both investigator and decision maker.”
DON SURBER: Media Pushes to Elect A Coconut.
WAIT’LL THEY FIND OUT WHAT THE AIR FORCE’S JOB IS SUPPOSED TO BE: Woke Air Force Guidebook Recommends Angela Davis, Says Using Word ‘Savage’ is Racist.
SOCIALISTS STICK TOGETHER: Border Czar Kamala Harris Embraced Socialist Honduran Leader Who’s Now Endorsing Maduro’s Stolen Election.
LIGHTNING DEAL: VTOMAN X5 Jump Starter with Air Compressor. #CommissionEarned
THOSE WERE THE DAYS: I was looking through some online archives available through my university’s library, and noticed that there was a time in her political career that Kamala Harris talked a lot more about her Indian heritage.
For example, from 2009 (this was reprinted online in 2020): “One of the most influential people in my life, in addition to my mother, was my grandfather (TV Gopalan), who actually held a post in India that was like the secretary of state position in this country. My grandfather was one of the original independence fighters in India and some of my fondest memories from childhood were walking along the beach with him after he retired and lived in Besant Nagar in Madras.” I take it that she was exaggerating both his contribution to Indian independence and the post he held …
From a 2003 profile (similar to one available here):
A product of two cultures, Harris delights in her multiculturalism. Her grandfather was an Indian diplomat who served in posts in Delhi and Zambia, and an aunt, an obstetrician in Chandigarh, is so beloved by her patients that they often leave baskets of fruit on her doorstep after she delivers their babies. In the 1940’s, Harris told the San Francisco Examiner recently, her grandmother drove around India in a VW bug, urging village women through a bullhorn to use birth control. “Even though my grandma had an arranged marriage when she was 12, she and my grandfather were very open-minded people,” she said. [Though they were initially “not too happy” when her mother declined an arranged marriage and married a black man she had fallen in love with instead.]
By 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported: “She seldom delves into her Indian heritage, reflecting a broader reticence to share personal stories beyond a handful of well-worn anecdotes.”
I don’t think any of this is damning in any way, but it’s interesting to see how ambitious public figures curate their image over time. At some point in Harris’ political career, for example, she thought talking about her grandmother’s arranged marriage at age 12 and how that didn’t stop the grandmother from being an outspoken feminist was helpful, and at some point she decided it wasn’t.
[Cross-posted at the Volokh Conspiracy]
BIDEN’S LATEST DEMENTED ACTION: The lamest lame duck executive seeks to meddle with the judicial branch. “These are familiar proposals. Are we to discuss them anew because they are proposed by our greatly diminished President? There is no prospect of passing these amendments. We are simply being assigned a topic by a very foolish fond old man.”
UPDATE:
“Now that I have honorably limited my government service to just 51 years, I think the proper limit for a position that is supposed to be lifetime should be 18 years. Rules start NOW!” https://t.co/lt5ENXgE0H
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) July 29, 2024
STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME: Tesla analyst nearly crashes while using Full Self-Driving.
“The Model Y accelerated through an intersection as the car in front of us had only partly completed a right turn,” Stein wrote in a report to clients Monday. “My quick intervention was absolutely required to avoid an otherwise certain accident.”
Stein, who maintained his rating and $215 price target, emerged from the experience “befuddled at what Tesla might show” at an unveiling of robotaxi prototypes in October. Musk said last week that the company decided to delay the event by about two months, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Stein’s report. Musk posted Monday on X that the carmaker is deploying an updated version of Full Self-Driving, or FSD, which doesn’t make the company’s vehicles autonomous.
Musk has placed greater emphasis on FSD and Tesla’s broader artificial intelligence efforts as sales of its electric vehicles have slowed. The chief executive officer’s messaging has helped support a stock that had sunk more than 40% for the year as of mid-April. The shares were down 12% as of last week’s close and climbed Monday after Morgan Stanley designated Tesla its new top pick among U.S. auto stocks.
Stein gave FSD a try earlier in April, following Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call, and again this month. He wrote up a mixed review the first time around — “stunningly good, but not useful today” — and summed up the second test run as “no better, arguably worse.”
Full self-driving always seems to be just one or two more big software updates away.
WELL, OF COURSE THEY’D PREFER HARRIS: Iran Is Working to Undercut Trump in Presidential Election, U.S. Spy Agencies Say: Tehran’s preference is rooted in concerns about a Trump presidency fanning tensions with U.S.
“Fanning tensions.”