WNash

I’ve been told that stuff is great, please post a review

I think the Democrats are generally awful, so you’re incorrect

Yeah, this is the “nice” version of why I have you on ignore. The version with the cruel language and the name-calling is not something I need to see. But I do appreciate that you’re not arguing the math. EDIT: I should add that you have a very fair point in your slippery slope argument about international poverty and where do attempts at economic fairness stop. I should say that we can model fairness for other countries, but I should also add that our predatory economic system causes some of that overseas inequality too.

The fact that you’re omitting what allowed Republicans to maintain control of the court with ultimate authority is a pretty good indication that you are making a bad faith, non-objective argument.

I typically have you on ignore because your rants calling poor people lazy have been so morally noxious, but I figured you were replying to me, so I’ll respond since your points are somewhat substantive. You’re right that there’s global inequality that dwarfs what goes on in the US, but human beings aren’t organized internationally in a way that can address this. Some countries have been really effective at maintaining a low GINI coefficient, and some have been terrible at it. The only way that people have any chance at fixing this is on the national level. Most of the poorest countries still have high GINI, which is ridiculous, but ultimately this has to be dealt with by each country’s own system. What people need to survive this pandemic is income replacement, not wealth replacement. And most people don’t need income replacement. Real unemployment is probably in the ballpark of 25-30%, so we don’t need to replace the income of the remaining roughly 2/3rds. The ratio of total personal wealth to total personal income is about 5:1. Conservatively estimated, the top 1% controls roughly 30% of the wealth (about $35 trillion net household worth). Considering that we are replacing only the income of the bottom third, and the 30% decile is about $25k per year, it would only take about $750 billion to replace *all* annual personal income for the bottom third. That’s about three-quarters of one percent of the wealth of the richest 1%. So two years of replacement income for the bottom third is about 1.5% of the wealth of the richest 1%. Let me point out that two times that amount has been spent on that part of the pandemic stimulus that does NOT include the $1200 per person payout. The fact that it hardly seems possible that so few people own so much doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with my math, it means that there’s an insane problem with the capture of our government by the richest people.

You’re minimizing the effect that the prevalence of unitary executive theory among the judiciary and court packing has on Article III oversight. Court packing has also allowed one party to restrict voting and gerrymander to the extent that Article II oversight is greatly hampered. If our constitutional system can be so easily warped, it’s hard to say it’s all that great.

I agree, but the executive branch’s extreme secrecy and rejection of any and all oversight is about as far from what the founding fathers intended as can be imagined. For example, emoluments are explicitly banned by the Constitution, but this administration is fighting accountability for emoluments at every turn: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/14/trump-to-ask-supreme-court-to-stop-emoluments-lawsuit.html

This is very cool, and gives me some hope. Thanks!

Herd immunity without vaccine has an extremely high death toll, literally millions in the US alone. Moreover, it’s getting very clear that the sequelae of COVID-19 even among healthy young people are often devastating — stroke, kidney and heart disease, possible Kawasaki syndrome in kids, and other as yet unknown long term problems — and are not captured in the fatality rate. This is not remotely comparable to the flu. This is a good explanation of the problem of herd immunity with no vaccine: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/without-a-vaccine-herd-immunity-wont-save-us/amp/. A vaccine that is at least partially effective has a good likelihood of relative success at creating herd immunity. Simply reducing the severity would be a huge step forward, and researches are moving different kinds of vaccines — mRNA, attenuated, inactivated, etc. — may be combined for increased potency. And treatment protocols have already been revised and are showing preliminary success. I’d be much happier about re-opening society of the death rate were cut by 75% and the long term effects were controlled. There’s plenty of wealth to support a better than subsistence existence for everyone in the US, but it’s not only being hoarded by a tiny number of extremely greedy people, but this crisis is being used by those same people to even *further* concentrate wealth. Why else would capital markets be made more or less whole, while everyone else has to eat shit? And of course the real elites are encouraging us peons to fight each other for the right to die a horrible death as a result of making more money for them.

I’m sorry to hear about your mother. My mother lives 1000 miles away, halfway between her two sons. She has one grandchild, my toddler daughter. She’s 78, and she’s terrified she’ll never get to see her again. So she’s in the opposite position from your mom, willingly isolated and trying to avoid exposure to give doctors time to develop treatment protocols and researchers time to develop a vaccine. I have tried to get her to move up here with us, but she is reluctant to isolate her other son (no kids, divorced) in Texas.

I can see how some people see what he has done as a necessary shake-up of a corrupt system, but what absolutely confuses me is how those same people won’t hold him accountable for obvious self-dealing and genuine graft, both personally and by his administration. He has replaced one swamp with a far worse swamp, a morass of uncontrolled corruption.

Researchers are also finding indications that COVID-19 may have long-term effects for survivors, including cardiological, pulmonary, neurological, and renal complications. New information has been evident as the “pause” has gone on that shows the disease is certainly not localized to the lungs. Effects on ACE2 receptors, found in many major organs, and clotting complications have resulted in kidney failure, strokes, and abnormal heart rhythms even in many younger patients with “mild” cases. There are even indications that in relatively mild cases in young people, COVID-19 can damage gonadal function and disrupt male sex hormone production, potentially harming fertility in prime reproductive-age men. (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.21.20037267v2) The approach that would do the least harm long-term would be to continue the pause and give researchers and doctors time to develop effective protocols (and ideally a vaccine). But that would require literal redistribution of wealth, and the rich people who call the shots would rather see the people who do the work have their health ruined than give up some of their own hoard.

Getting some moisture enhancement off Lake Huron? The widespread cellular structure is pretty cool.

Pretty impressive burst of snow here. Radar returns show BUF is getting the same stuff, so this will likely go down as more than a trace.

The data you cite has no information about mortality rates. It’s just a list of total deaths by age group, without even the context of a date. Without reliable mortality rate data and an aggressive testing plan, it’s hard to imagine that people will want to come running back to work.

Nursing homes have been the site of many super-spreader events. When testing was nearly unavailable, nursing homes were given priority for test kits. As a result, this data is going to skew to the very old. Age is certainly a risk factor, but there’s an inherent bias in this sample, and if people draw the conclusions that this disease really just kills the elderly, that bias is potentially very dangerous.

The 10:1 maps seem like a stretch to me. Is there enough depth of cold to support that? If there is accumulating snow at all, shouldn't we be thinking more like 6:1 or 8:1 ratios? Not complaining, it's still pretty cool to see this in May (though I have a new Mantis tiller and I want to actually use it before June).

Toddlers and little kids can tolerate much higher fevers than adults... but greater than 107 is shocking.

On the bright side, this has been great weather for digging up tree stumps with deep roots.

You’re a morally good person. Call it the categorical imperative or the principle of justness or the Golden Rule, many faiths see the moral rectitude of behaving in a way towards others that can be fairly reciprocated. Pence seems to have checked his moral principles at the doors of the White House.

One important value of this country is the right to practice religion freely. Many Hasidic groups are made up of descendents of handfuls of families from the same village or neighborhood in Europe who survived the Holocaust and preserve their culture and language here. I find that incredibly moving even if I don’t agree with their view of how to worship. And these huge weddings are very much an essential part of their view of how to be Jewish - this is an overview: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvah_tantz. But their rights cannot put other people in harm’s way. For now, the big weddings have to stop.

They’re the very elites that they claim to hate. The rules *never* apply to them. It’s not the refusal to wear masks that will cause them to lose in a landslide but the fact that this is yet another example of how they act as though they’re better than everyone else.

Here’s the thing: no state is going to come out of a blanket refusal of the feds to bail states out without being ruined. Multiple red states raise most of their revenue through sales taxes. Tax collections have plummeted while the austerity budgets of the last ten years have left no fat to cut from spending. I think McConnell and others hope that they can obtain the policy outcomes they want by targeting the pain to fall on a few states, but that’s a fantasy. They’ll have to put multiple red states —including Florida and Texas — through the wringer to hurt New York and California. If they think they can manage that without paying a heavy price for that on Election Day, their arrogance has no limit.

Some of the Hasdim are creating real problems for lowering the prevalence of COVID by building a huge viral reservoir, and there should be accountability, but that tweet by Deblasio was ridiculous. This is sad, and by spreading the disease, many Hasids are putting health care workers at risk. That’s not ok, but neither is anti-Semitism. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/nyregion/coronavirus-jews-hasidic-ny.html

This can’t be true. Even his devoted followers know that Trump often talks a lot of nonsense, and nobody would be so stupid as to huff Lysol or whatever. But maybe I’m wrong.