April 29, 2020

You can't judge a trend by just a few data points, but this isn't good news...

I've been following the numbers at World-O-meter. Com.

For the 6 days before yesterday there'd been a pretty steady drop in mortality rate, nationally speaking. Since April 21 there had been a pretty steady drop in covid-19 deaths. Then it suddenly jumped yesterday, the 28th.

4/21 - 2683 (mortality peak)
4/22 - 2358
4/23 - 2340
4/24 - 1957
4/25 - 2065
4/26 - 1156
4/27 - 1384
4/28 - 2470 (sudden upswing of 900 Covid 19 deaths)

Of course there's always slight variations in the overall trend. Mathematicians call that statistical clustering. But a jump of almost 900 additional deaths from the day before is what you'd expect to see with an increasing trend.

Now, this may just be a one-day outlier datapoint. But it's something to watch carefully. It seems to echo a similar upswing in new cases being reported from a few days earlier (which is, of course, a less reliable statistic because of the large numbers of CV and Covid19 cases not being tested and verified). But the new confirmed confections count looks like this:

4/17 - 32,368 (peak 2)
4/18 - 29,079
4/19 - 26,113
4/20 - 28,131
4/21 - 26,084
4/22 - 30,156
4/23 - 31,888
4/24 - 38,958 (peak 3)
4/25 - 35,419
4/26 - 26,509
4/27 - 23,196
4/28 - 25,409

So there were two national peaks followed by a general downward trend.

Now, the national "peak resource use" had been projected for April 14. This would be a few days after a big infection peak on April 9 & 10 (when there are 34,000 new cases confirmed on each day). And then came these two last peaks.

So there are two possibilities: 1, that Wednesdays are the days most sick people get tested, since the peak date are all hump days. Or 2, that we've exceeded the projected peak twice now in the 2 weeks following Easter Sunday. That was when the anti-lockdown protests began. But more importantly it's when the chatter about "opening up the economy" began.

If it was just new confirmed covid-19 cases, that might be accounted for by an increase in testing. And obviously there is a lag of a week or two from new infection to dying. However the mortality count now saw this sudden jump.

So, if yesterday's sudden spike above 2400 deaths is part of a trend rather than a statistical outlier, we might be seeing the beginning of the effects of some people taking the stay-at-home orders less seriously.

April 28, 2020

A damning barrage of Obama scandals that will rock you liberals to the core

I can barely stand to watch this. It literally took my breath away.
Will America ever recover from the shame?

you gotta admire Fox News for the heroic depths they're willing to go to to uncover scandals

April 26, 2020

The Federalist: Why Conservative Women are So Pretty

Disclaimer: this article popped up in a "suggested reads" advertisement and I found it fucking hilarious. This is tribal narcissism at its most shallow... and it is a hoot to behold.

For whatever screwed up reason, the adbot's algorithm on me was suggesting articles from The Federalist ( a rather dopey headed psuedointellectual right wing e-rag full of spurious logic, half-baked economics platitudes, and more cherry picking than a summer orchard in New Hampshire) from several years ago.

And while I found this a fascinating display of beta male privilege fantasy projection, the real gem here is the total psychological unawareness of how much he's putting himself on the couch. This is as compelling as an autopsy

https://thefederalist.com/2016/04/22/why-conservative-women-are-so-pretty/

Why Conservative Women are So Pretty

"The women of the Right are allowed to believe things that the women of the Left are not. It sets them free to be themselves. And that’s beautiful."

By Henry Scanlon

Yes... They "are allowed to believe" Red State patriarchs are sooo generous

Three years ago I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference and was struck by something I later concluded was probably a figment of my imagination. This year I returned, and, rather than having my recollection dispelled, it was confirmed.

The young women who attend CPAC are spectacular. No kidding: What’s up with this concentration of incredibly attractive young, conservative women? It’s noticeable and remarkable. They are beautiful and stylish in the way French women often are, which is to say in their own way, not in a conforming or predictable way. They all look like the girl the high school quarterback wants to date, and they are confident, relaxed, and smart, joking amongst themselves.

Two grafs in and already, I'm assuming our 2016 author (Henry Scanlon) attended CPAC in a slightly soiled trench coat. Perhaps growing his own little "Statue of Liberty" at the thought that he and the high school jocks that used to never let him sit at the cool table were now objectifying the same girls

I spent years in the photography business...

...oh dear...

I spent years in the photography business, which causes me to reflexively notice what things look like. On the Left, however, you can’t say these things just because they may be true, or, more accurately, especially if they’re true. In other words, okay, I noticed. So sue me.

Perversion excused. But is he seriously arguing that society made him that way? 🤫

It is not easy espousing conservative views at any time or place, given that the overwhelming response of the culture, the media and academia is ridicule and dismissal, but it has got to be especially so in those beehives of social approval: high school and college. A young guy who “identifies” as a conservative might just as well identify as an “absolute zero” as far as the cool kids are concerned (and maybe a lot of the teachers, too.)

We're all out to get you, Henry. You're outnumbered by savages. No wonder conservatives whack off to Chuck Norris movies

Young guys who are politically active on the right side of the fence have a lot to lose, most especially any possibility of being regarded as a member of the social elite, and it may be that quite a few of them—not all, by any means, but yes, a great many—who find their way to a conservative worldview at an early age do so because they aren’t distracted or seduced by the possibility of being homecoming king.

But the smart ones whack off to Ayn Rand novels

Liberated from the siren song of peer popularity, they can instead go deep, emerging to their everlasting credit as constitutional conservatives, maybe even libertarians, able to withstand the onslaught of blame America Howard-Zinn-ification they are assaulted with every day. Instead, they have the time and inclination to figure out how the world really works, and to wonder if maybe the way the world works isn’t a little bit different from what they’re hearing from their teachers and the movies and the news outlets.

In time, if their inquiries are diligent, honest, and fearless, a lot of them wind up in the land of the Constitution, God bless them, and of those, a contingent winds up at CPAC—along with whole squadrons of the prettiest, smartest girls, who, in contrast to the boys, have also found their way not because they have no hope of being in the in-crowd, but because they have no fear of being ejected from it, since the popularity of an attractive young woman can survive almost anything, including being a conservative.

So now we come to the part where he asks if he can touch her hair

Does that explain it? Maybe. It made some sense to me, but didn’t sit well. Implying they embrace conservative views only because they have nothing to lose diminishes the very real accomplishments of these young women, and those of the men, all of whom seem to be warriors for the cause, possessing an inchoate nobility and clear courage that might serve as nothing less than the lifeblood of a better future.

Got it? He's the Christian missionary. Liberals are the savages. This is post-racial MadLibs imperialism. He's replaced the nouns "Christianity" and "The Phillipines" with "Conservatism" and "purple states".

And the adjective "ridiculous" with "inchoate".

I sought counsel from my wife. She is European... I told her that the young women of CPAC reminded me of the women you see on the boulevards of Paris, and I asked her why women over there were so famously stylish.

Women of great traditional beauty, but also those who would not be described that way, all had the ability to move through the world with manifest and undeniable élan, self-confidence, and personal style, some of the ingredients of a world-renowned attractiveness, so much so that it has been remarked upon for centuries. Her answer was immediate, as if it was obvious, or should be. “It’s because they enjoy being a woman. And they’re glad they’re not men.”

*snort*

The women of the Right are allowed to believe things that the women of the Left are not. They are allowed to believe there is a difference between women and men, female and male, and that those differences are real, not a false cultural construct imposed by a self-interested, manipulative patriarchy. Unlike Gloria Steinem, they can express their femininity in any way they choose to, without fear of being accused of a calumnization of the sisterhood.

I have this image in my head of Henry having an image in his head of Gloria Steinem curled up and whimpering in a corner, paralyzed by the fear that other people will disapprove of her for some dominating orthodoxy.

Aside from the hilarious psychological projection, is our friend Henry really that unaware of Gloria Steinem's career and the American culture she rebelled against?

blah blah blah ABORTION blah blah blah GAY MARRIAGE blah blah blah LISA DUNHAM because this was written in 2016...

*ahem, back to Henry*

Maybe it is for these reasons and many similar ones that the women of CPAC walk with a bounce in their step and a light in their eyes, and maybe that is the engine of their attractiveness, the source of their ability to light up the room. They don’t mind being—no, they revel in being—attractive and stylish and a woman in any way they choose to do that, and they make short, confident work of the notion that they ought to, instead, get hip to the struggle and head for gender studies class.

It’s not that a lot of attractive women, for some reason, find their way to conservative views; it’s that something about holding conservative views causes women—all women, across the spectrum—to become particularly attractive.

At this point, I'm assuming he wrote this as a substitute for the pick up lines he would have used if his wife hadn't come along with him to CPAC

Put another way, maybe what I’m noticing is simply women who have been liberated by their worldview to be who they are, uniquely and confidently, unabashedly and apologetically, unencumbered by the politically correct constraints imposed on women of the Left, and the result is a kind of essential womanhood that, far from being oppressive, as the Left would have it, is instead, miraculous and quintessential, and, you could say, God-given.

for your convenience I underlined the spot where he wraps up by paraphrasing Maya Angelou

As a history teacher, one of the first things I like to iterate with my students is the importance of avoiding ethnocentrism, the belief that your culture is superior to other people's culture, that your norms for wealth or quality music or physical comfort or even human beauty are going to be the same norms for all people around the world.

Nope. As ol' Henry lights up for us, notions of beauty and liberation and basic human justice are socially negotiated and then propagated about the population by social gatekeepers (liberals do this too). Henry, for all his intellectual masturbation, seems to lack the wits to see what he finds attractive is a social consensus of his subculture--the sorts of well educated movement conservatives who go to conventions and aspire to get published in The Federalist.

He assumes that what he sees as beauty, as aesthetically pleasing, is an objective standard. What he is finding "beautiful" is the comfort and reassurance that a woman, if approached (if!) won't challenge his world view. Undoubtedly the women at CPAC (and the men) will present no discomforting ideas to any interactions they'll have with Henry, if he just works up the gumption to go talk to them. This is comforting, and therefore attractive, and therefore nurturing, like his mother's breasts.

Why Henry wants to only have people around him who never challenge his ideas is a topic best left for an actual psychologist's couch.

Anyway, I thought this article gave some unintentional insight to how the conservative mind works.

April 15, 2020

Twitter thread blows the lid off who's REALLY responsibly for it all!!

https://mobile.twitter.com/MattZeitlin/status/1250125344578965509?fbclid=IwAR3HjkI4BYZ25PVj34wxFure_N-ESPkln4MRW9ZlDV0w3tLpN9j_5iylyCs

And as with everything on the internet, you need to read the comments

April 12, 2020

Tara Reade's accusation is swift-boating. (Link to evidence against her account)

I have a good deal of sympathy for Tara Reade. She's been a victim of domestic abuse and seems to be a woman under serious psychological stress.

The last thing we should do is attack her personally. but it's pretty clear that right wing media is going to cynically exploit her psychological state or mental condition thats producing her erratic and inconsistent accusations.

I strongly encourage everyone to read this link to an objective accounting of Reade's history of publication concerning Biden and other public issues.


https://link.medium.com/nICOhGgCh5


The villains here are the "moralistic" right-wing journalists who plan to use her and manipulate her story into an even bigger fabrication.

April 6, 2020

The definition of "trumped up charges" against Captain Crozier

I wish that wasn't a pun. I fucking hate the normal use of the word 'trump' now. But I digress...

{Thomas} Modly, the Navy’s civilian boss, reversed course, telling reporters that he fired Crozier because he lost confidence in the officer for not using a secure email network to properly route his complaint.

Crozier’s unclassified email wound up with 20 or 30 other individuals and at some point was provided to the Chronicle reporters. Modly said the public airing of the complaint had unnecessarily alarmed sailors and provided enemies with information that exposed weaknesses on one of the country’s most important warships.

He's literally being fired for reporting a problem up the chain of command. It looks like the leak came from within the Navy Department that Crozier sent the email to.

Worth reading to understand the Navy view of this messenger-shooting:

1. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy-secretary-blasts-fired-aircraft-carrier-captain

2. Other messengers being shot: https://taskandpurpose.com/analysis/brett-crozier-firing-navy-pattern

3. The coming investigation https://taskandpurpose.com/news/crozier-investigation

April 4, 2020

Kushner's virus team members using personal email addresses to coordinate policy

https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-coronavirus-team-members-email-addresses-1495921

from Newsweek

Jared Kushner's Coronavirus Team Members are Using Personal Email Addresses to Coordinate Policy: Report

by David Brennan on 4/3/20

Kushner — President Donald Trump's son-in-law who has amassed a large portfolio of high profile responsibilities over the past three years — has emerged as a leading figure in the White House's COVID-19 strategy, assisted by a team of private sector associates with limited government experience.

The Times spoke with a government official who described Kushner's team — reportedly dubbed the "Slim Suit Crowd" for their dress sense — as being like a "frat party" that arrived by U.F.O. and overtook the federal response to the pandemic. 🤣

Kushner and his team supposedly took a more relaxed approach than established officials, the Times reported, using personal email accounts to discuss policy matters and the FreeConferenceCall.com website to set up important meetings. 😣

Speaking Thursday, Kushner said he had been instructed by the president to "break down every barrier needed to make sure that teams can succeed." He added, "The president also wanted us to make sure that we think outside the box, make sure we're finding all the best thinkers in the country, making sure we're getting all the best ideas."

April 4, 2020

Time Magazine: The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic (May 15, 2017)

( I encourage you to read the whole article. It doesn't seem to be behind Time magazine's pay wall right now.)

I've been on this form for over 18 years and this feels like the saddest most depressing thing I've ever posted.

March 28, 2020

Biden or Sanders would beat Trump in an election right now

The poll was released March 24 and found:

Biden -- 47 
Trump - 42 

and

 
Sanders- 46 
Trump - - 42

Survey: 
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/ 

Newsweek article: 
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-bernie-sanders-would-both-beat-donald-trump-general-election-if-it-were-held-today-1493939

March 28, 2020

Biden or Sanders would beat Trump in an election right now

The poll was released March 24 and found

Biden -- 47
Trump - 42

and

Sanders- 46
Trump - - 42

Survey:
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary/

Newsweek article:
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-bernie-sanders-would-both-beat-donald-trump-general-election-if-it-were-held-today-1493939