Parade of Morons

[johnu]

 

 

 

 

 

It's beginning to look like the new Confederate States will need a bigger cemetery.

I have it on good authority that this "falling" star QOP politician will be returning, although she will be moving to Dallas to join JFK and JFK Jr when they return, so no need for more cemetery plots.

[barmar]

It should be noted that it's not inconsistent to be in favor of vaccines while against vaccine mandates. I'll bet most of the politicians who protest mandates are fully vaccinated, and may even recommend it (Trump recently came out in favor of vaccination). They just think that mandates are government overreach and invasion of personal privacy. It's poor public policy, because we can't solve a pandemic by leaving it up to everyone's personal decisions, especially when they're so much disinformation and politicization of the issue, but it's a common political philosophy.

 

However, Ernby also wasn't vaccinated according to https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/04/husband-kelly-ernby-wasnt-vaccinated-when-she-died-of-covid-19-complications/

[mikeh]

It should be noted that it's not inconsistent to be in favor of vaccines while against vaccine mandates. I'll bet most of the politicians who protest mandates are fully vaccinated, and may even recommend it (Trump recently came out in favor of vaccination). They just think that mandates are government overreach and invasion of personal privacy. It's poor public policy, because we can't solve a pandemic by leaving it up to everyone's personal decisions, especially when they're so much disinformation and politicization of the issue, but it's a common political philosophy.

 

However, Ernby also wasn't vaccinated according to https://www.ocregister.com/2022/01/04/husband-kelly-ernby-wasnt-vaccinated-when-she-died-of-covid-19-complications/

I’m sure you’re correct about some but my impression is that most anti-mandate politicians are simply hypocrites, pandering to their base. They claim to be about freedom, but a cursory knowledge of history and reality makes a mockery of most of their arguments.

 

In the military….which most right wing politicians fetishize (in fairness, most politicians of all stripes, especially in the US, fetishize their military)….all recruits are vaccinated multiple times with no choice given. School kids used to be routinely vaccinated against polio, etc.

[mycroft]

To me, the role of the state is to do the things that are in everybody's best interest, but not necessarily in every *individual's* best interest.

 

Which is why libertarians blow my mind, Objectivists look like active saboteurs, and I will never be a post-1980 (and definitely not a post-2000) Republican (were I American. Having said that I referred to my province's leader as Gov. Greg Kenney yesterday; context should be obvious [*]).

 

I also realize that I am an idealist to such an extent that people slightly to the right of the communists NDP think I'm hopelessly deluded. But I'd rather believe in the best and be disappointed than join the race to the bottom for a little temporary advantage.

 

Having said that, vaccine mandates are right up there with speed limits, helmet and seatbelt laws, and bans on baby walkers. It's a good thing, but since the best resolution for an individual is "everybody else does it so I don't have to", it has to be imposed. And the only real imposition with true effect is the government.

 

[*] if it's not, I have referred to Alberta many times in the past as "extremely north Texas". I will admit, comparing Kenney to Abbott is unfair to Abbott. In the same way that dandelions are unfairly compared to kudzu, of course.

[kenberg]

Baby walkers? I hadn't realized that the world had come around to my way of thinking. My kids were born in 61 and 67 but I figured kids could crawl when they were ready to crawl, walk when they were ready to walk, and climb when they were ready to climb. No need to rush them into anything. Seemed to work out fine.

[pescetom]

Baby walkers? I hadn't realized that the world had come around to my way of thinking. My kids were born in 61 and 67 but I figured kids could crawl when they were ready to crawl, walk when they were ready to walk, and climb when they were ready to climb. No need to rush them into anything. Seemed to work out fine.

 

I had to google it, and I'm a parent.

[Winstonm]

To me, the role of the state is to do the things that are in everybody's best interest, but not necessarily in every *individual's* best interest.

 

Which is why libertarians blow my mind, Objectivists look like active saboteurs, and I will never be a post-1980 (and definitely not a post-2000) Republican (were I American. Having said that I referred to my province's leader as Gov. Greg Kenney yesterday; context should be obvious [*]).

 

I also realize that I am an idealist to such an extent that people slightly to the right of the communists NDP think I'm hopelessly deluded. But I'd rather believe in the best and be disappointed than join the race to the bottom for a little temporary advantage.

 

Having said that, vaccine mandates are right up there with speed limits, helmet and seatbelt laws, and bans on baby walkers. It's a good thing, but since the best resolution for an individual is "everybody else does it so I don't have to", it has to be imposed. And the only real imposition with true effect is the government.

 

[*] if it's not, I have referred to Alberta many times in the past as "extremely north Texas". I will admit, comparing Kenney to Abbott is unfair to Abbott. In the same way that dandelions are unfairly compared to kudzu, of course.

 

Or you could just watch Star Trek reruns: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. - Mr. Spock.

[Winstonm]

I'm sure you're correct about some but my impression is that most anti-mandate politicians are simply hypocrites, pandering to their base. They claim to be about freedom, but a cursory knowledge of history and reality makes a mockery of most of their arguments.

 

In the military….which most right wing politicians fetishize (in fairness, most politicians of all stripes, especially in the US, fetishize their military)….all recruits are vaccinated multiple times with no choice given. School kids used to be routinely vaccinated against polio, etc.

 

I read yesterday that 3-5% (I don't remember exactly) of active armed forces in the U.S. have refused vaccinations. I believe they should be immediately shipped out with a dishonorable discharge and lose all military benefits.

 

Like Hamman said of the Spingold team event: we play hardball here.

[Winstonm]

Another on bites the dust.

 

 

QAnon and anti-vaccine podcaster has died from complications due to COVID-19 after contracting the virus at a conspiracy theory conference that turned into a superspreader event, and where fellow attendees baselessly blamed their illness on an anthrax attack.

 

Doug Kuzma, 61, from Newport News, Virginia, died on January 3 after being hospitalized 10 days earlier. Kuzma broadcasted on the FROG News podcasting network, which stands for “Fully Rely On God.” Kuzma and his FROG fellow hosts pushed an array of conspiracy theories ranging from QAnon to COVID denial and election fraud lies.

 

 

[johnu]

In the military….which most right wing politicians fetishize (in fairness, most politicians of all stripes, especially in the US, fetishize their military)

The ultra right fringe politicians who are always ready to put the lives of our military at risk for no particularly good reason are AKA "ChickenSh*tHawks".

[pilowsky]

I read yesterday that 3-5% (I don't remember exactly) of active armed forces in the U.S. have refused vaccinations. I believe they should be immediately shipped out with a dishonorable discharge and lose all military benefits.

 

Like Hamman said of the Spingold team event: we play hardball here.

 

It's a nice thought but apparently not true according to the Military Times.

The military times is a publication of a private media organisation so I can't vouch for the story.

They wanted me to support them by watching advertisements - I may allow it since I'm in the market for a space laser - so long as I can control it using my Android phone.

[Winstonm]

It's a nice thought but apparently not true according to the Military Times.

The military times is a publication of a private media organisation so I can't vouch for the story.

They wanted me to support them by watching advertisements - I may allow it since I'm in the market for a space laser - so long as I can control it using my Android phone.

 

 

Advantage Australia.

[thepossum]

To me, the role of the state is to do the things that are in everybody's best interest, but not necessarily in every *individual's* best interest.

 

 

If that is the role of the state put me down as a libertarian

 

When you say everybody's best interest we are talking some average across a population are we not?

 

I realise there is some weird theoretical thing called Pareto optimisation (something like that) where allegedly you can do such a thing in theory

 

A few examples of how to improve everybody on average. remove the lowest half of the population for starters etc

 

More seriously (as if my above descriptions of brutal fascism aren't serious enough) there appear to be forces in the world that think poverty (at least relative poverty) can be addressed by destroying the global economy on average. Its one approach

 

Can I also ask among the company of morons (:)) why libertarianism is such a dirty word. I have been abused and insulted and accused of being right wing for believing in libertarian principles. What happened to the left?

 

What else. But surely people are happy being forced to live on their below poverty level universal handout with no chance of aspiring to be one of us

 

EDIT I realise of course I have fallen into the trap of the repeated endless extreme stuff without a real conversation :) that's the problem with parades of morons. Allegedly dialectic makes progress but I don't see much evidence anywhere of that

 

EDIT 2 I do have very personal, genuine and legitimate reasons for my libertarian beliefs and health cynicism and cynicism over the greater good (whatever that means)

[hrothgar]

I have been abused and insulted and accused of being right wing for believing in libertarian principles. What happened to the left?

 

If this post is an example, I suspect that you're being insulted because you don't seem capable of having an intelligent discussion about this topic.

 

You're offering a bunch of opinions wrapped in ignorant econo-babble.

 

Go do some basic reading on public economics.

If you can frame reasonable questions, I suspect that you'll find people willing to offer their opinions.

[kenberg]

If that is the role of the state put me down as a libertarian

 

When you say everybody's best interest we are talking some average across a population are we not?

 

I realise there is some weird theoretical thing called Pareto optimisation (something like that) where allegedly you can do such a thing in theory

 

A few examples of how to improve everybody on average. remove the lowest half of the population for starters etc

 

More seriously (as if my above descriptions of brutal fascism aren't serious enough) there appear to be forces in the world that think poverty (at least relative poverty) can be addressed by destroying the global economy on average. Its one approach

 

Can I also ask among the company of morons (:)) why libertarianism is such a dirty word. I have been abused and insulted and accused of being right wing for believing in libertarian principles. What happened to the left?

 

What else. But surely people are happy being forced to live on their below poverty level universal handout with no chance of aspiring to be one of us

 

EDIT I realise of course I have fallen into the trap of the repeated endless extreme stuff without a real conversation :) that's the problem with parades of morons. Allegedly dialectic makes progress but I don't see much evidence anywhere of that

 

EDIT 2 I do have very personal, genuine and legitimate reasons for my libertarian beliefs and health cynicism and cynicism over the greater good (whatever that means)

 

As to libertarianism, my first objection to it is that it is an ism. I can say that I generally do not wish to tell others to do, but when a pandemic is sweeping the world I make an exception. No ism needed, or if pushed I would say realism. If we are to speak of religious exceptions, I can respond without getting into deism or atheism. I cannot see why a merciful god would tell people that they cannot get vaccinated but if that is the case then they need to stay away from the rest of us. Again, no philosophy, no religion, no ism needed.

[Winstonm]

I believe in personal freedom but I also believe a strong central representative government is not antithetical to the former. Now is such a time. There is in no true sense an individual as we are all part of a greater organism, humankind, nations, neighborhoods, and families. The well being of each of those organisms supersedes the will of any single cell, i. e., person.

 

For the unvaccinated, Elba seems a fine location to live out their lives in COVID denial.

 

As for libertarians, I can reduce it to this: remember how you thought about yourself and your place in the world when you were 13; now compare those thoughts to who you are now. If there is not a dramatic difference then Houston, we have a problem.

[Winstonm]

A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease.

 

Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands of followers across right-wing social media networks by promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy under the screenname "CirstenW." She was prominent enough to become a sort of QAnon interpreter for comedian conspiracy theorist Roseanne Barr and started recording videos about QAnon with her.

 

[pilowsky]

Are there exceptions for people that can hit balls with sticks?

[Winstonm]

Are there exceptions for people that can hit balls with sticks?

I think the exceptions are for those who have been a Jeopardy answer

[y66]

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/fauci-defends-calling-gop-senator-a-moron-im-just-following-the-science

 

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After being heard on a hot mike calling a Republican senator a moron, Dr. Anthony Fauci defended his decision by saying that he was “just following the science.”

 

The esteemed virologist said that, in calling Senator Roger Marshall, of Kansas, a moron, “I didn’t mean to offend. I was just trying to be accurate from a scientific standpoint.”

 

“As a scientist, I believe it’s important to use the correct nomenclature,” Fauci said. “You need to call a virus a virus, and a bacterium a bacterium. In this same way, I am confident that I was correct in calling Senator Marshall a moron.”

 

Fauci said that he does not use the word “moron” capriciously, but only after extensive scientific experimentation proves that it applies.

 

“Take Rand Paul, for example,” Fauci said. “I didn’t determine that he was a moron until after forty-five seconds of hearing him speak.”

[barmar]

School kids used to be routinely vaccinated against polio, etc.

Most places in the US still have mandatory vaccines for school children, although I think they generally allow religious exemptions.

 

But those laws were passed decades ago, when there was much more trust in the government. I think it would be near impossible to institute such requirements now, which is why COVID-19 vaccination requirements have been a tough battle. I don't think any of them have been passed as laws, they've been done as emergency mandates specific to the pandemic.

 

The same thing goes for military vaccination requirements.

[Winstonm]

Most places in the US still have mandatory vaccines for school children, although I think they generally allow religious exemptions.

 

But those laws were passed decades ago, when there was much more trust in the government. I think it would be near impossible to institute such requirements now, which is why COVID-19 vaccination requirements have been a tough battle. I don't think any of them have been passed as laws, they've been done as emergency mandates specific to the pandemic.

 

The same thing goes for military vaccination requirements.

 

*when there was more trust in government*

I think you meant “before the 24-hour a day propaganda war began, led by Fox Network “

[y66]

What the Supreme Court’s Vaccine Case Was Really About

 

The fact is that this dispute — which, remarkably, found 27 states aligned against the federal government — was never principally about the vaccine. OSHA’s “emergency temporary standard,” under which employers of 100 or more people were to require vaccination or weekly testing, was mainly a target of opportunity. It offered the conservative justices a chance to lay down a marker: that if there is a gap to fill in Congress’s typically broadly worded grant of authority to an administrative agency, it will be the Supreme Court that will fill it, and not the agency. “Placing constraints on the administrative state,” as Eugene Scalia, Justice Antonin Scalia’s son and secretary of labor during the last year of the Trump administration, observed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in praise of the decision, is “a defining concern of the Roberts court.”

 

There is a rich irony to the political valence of this project. In the Chevron case in 1984, the court held that judges should defer to an administrative agency’s reasonable interpretation of an ambiguous statute. The decision was unanimous and at first made few waves, as its author, Justice John Paul Stevens, noted in his 2019 memoir, “The Making of a Justice.” But it was to become the most frequently cited opinion Justice Stevens wrote in his 34 years on the court.

 

Although the decision itself had no particular political spin, it became highly useful to conservatives during the second Reagan administration, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and Republicans were thrilled to be able to rely, without judicial interference, on the policymaking discretion of the executive branch agencies, still in Republican hands. They embraced such passages in Justice Stevens’s opinion as this one:

 

“Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of the government. Courts must, in some cases, reconcile competing political interests, but not on the basis of the judges’ personal policy preferences. In contrast, an agency to which Congress has delegated policymaking responsibilities may, within the limits of that delegation, properly rely upon the incumbent administration’s views of wise policy to inform its judgments.”

 

But once Democrats gained back the White House, especially when Republicans controlled one or both houses of Congress, judicial deference to the executive branch lost its appeal among Republicans. Conservative judges and lawyers began to lobby for overturning Chevron. That has not happened formally, but it is hard to read the OSHA decision as anything but a functional overturning. The court’s unsigned opinion in the OSHA case flips that presumption on its head: Because Congress, 52 years ago, had not explicitly empowered OSHA to take the action it took in the face of a public health crisis of historic dimension, the agency was acting outside the boundary of its statutory authority.

Among the more head-snapping moments during the nearly four hours of argument in the two vaccine cases on Jan. 7 came with Justice Alito’s comments in the OSHA argument to Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.

 

Justice Alito suggested that the vaccine policy was more onerous than other OSHA health measures because employees who accept the vaccine run some personal risk, presumably of a bad reaction. The justice, who like the eight others has received two vaccine doses plus a booster, wanted to have it both ways: to cast a cloud over the vaccine requirement while not being labeled an antivaxxer. “I don’t want to be misunderstood in making this point because I’m not saying the vaccines are unsafe,” he told the solicitor general. Then what was he saying, exactly?

 

“I don’t want to be misunderstood,” Justice Alito repeated, adding: “I’m sure I will be misunderstood.”

 

This was Sam Alito as victim, the Alito we have seen in recent public outings, such as his appearance in September at the University of Notre Dame, where he accused critics of the court’s so-called “shadow docket” of portraying the court “as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its way.” He complained about what he said were “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court or damage it as an independent institution.”

 

In his opinion dissenting from the court’s decision to permit the vaccine mandate for health care workers, Justice Alito objected that workers were being put “to the choice of their jobs or an irreversible medical treatment.” That was a strange way to characterize a vaccine that demonstrably loses its effectiveness over a period of a few months.

 

As he put it during the OSHA argument, “I’m sure I will be misunderstood.”

 

Not to worry, your honor. We understand you perfectly.

[johnu]

Singer Dies After Deliberately Catching COVID-19 So She Could Obtain A Recently-Recovered Pass

 

Hana Horka, a well-known Czech folk singer, died after a short but difficult battle with the virus. .

 

Horka’s son, Jan Rek, reported that his mother intentionally exposed herself to him and his father, Horka's husband, when they were sick with Covid-19 in order to obtain a recovery pass.

 

This pass would allow Horka to access venues and shows that she would otherwise be barred from due to her vaccination status.

[Winstonm]

Singer Dies After Deliberately Catching COVID-19 So She Could Obtain A Recently-Recovered Pass

 

 

 

Well, the operation was a success....