tantric superman

Comic sans: We’re in an acrimonious period of partisan tribalism and have been for some time. Both parties are guilty of overwrought denunciations of their political opponents. My criticisms are often aimed at Democrats; on the anniversary of Jan. 6, I’m addressing squarely those Republicans who for a year have excused the actions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, disrupted Congress as it received the Electoral College’s results, and violently attempted to overturn the election. These apologists say those who stormed the Capitol were innocent patriots, tourists visiting the seat of the national government to petition their elected representatives peacefully. We’re told that these harmless, ordinary Americans are being persecuted as political prisoners Let’s stipulate that while the thousands who went to the Capitol a year ago were wrong to insist the election was stolen, most weren’t violent as they exercised their First Amendment rights to gather peacefully on the Mall—just as I had seen liberals gather to protest both inaugurations of President George W. Bush. But last year there were several thousand protesters willing to use force to disrupt Congress in its constitutional duty to receive and certify the electoral vote. Some went to Washington with that purpose in mind. Others were swept up in the moment’s savagery, led astray by stronger wills with dangerous motives. The leaders of this group were intent on committing violence, some having planned to do so for weeks. Many wore tactical gear. Some came armed with chemical agents, flagpoles, batons and sticks. They broke through barricades and assaulted approximately 140 police officers, in some cases with an officer’s own shield or gear. They smashed doors and windows, illegally entered the Capitol, ransacked offices and searched for leaders of Congress, and made dire threats about what would happen if they found them. More than 725 people have been charged so far, and law enforcement is searching for hundreds more suspects who appear on video or social media, some recorded attacking police officers. At least 163 people have pleaded guilty, and 71 have been sentenced. Only one defendant’s charges have been dismissed. Many of the most serious trials have yet to be held, as lawyers prepare defenses or negotiate plea deals. So, on this anniversary, here’s a simple thought experiment: What if the other side had done it? What if in early January 2017, Democrats similarly attired and armed had stormed the Capitol and attempted to keep Congress from receiving the Electoral College results for the 2016 presidential election? What if Democrats claimed that Donald Trump’s razor-thin victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin resulted from extensive voter fraud and should be rejected, despite having failed to establish in a single court that extensive fraud had actually occurred? What if some of these Democrats breached the Capitol defenses and threatened violence against the Republican speaker, Paul Ryan, and Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell ? What if they insisted that in his role as Senate president then-Vice President Joe Biden had sole authority to seat Hillary Clinton’s electors from any contested states and thereby hand her the presidency? If this happened, would some of my fellow Republicans have accepted it as merely a protest? Would they have called patriots those charged with violent acts against our country, its laws and Constitution? Would they have accepted such extralegal means to change the outcome of a presidential election? No they would not. I’m certain of that. If Democrats had done what some Trump supporters did on that violent Jan. 6, Republicans would have criticized them mercilessly and been right to do so. Republicans would have torched any high official who encouraged violence or stood mute while it was waged and been right to do so. Republicans would have demanded an investigation to find who was responsible for the violence and been right to do so. To move beyond Jan. 6, 2021, we must put country ahead of party. For Democrats, that means resisting their leadership’s petty habit of aggravating partisan fault lines by indiscriminately condemning all who came to Washington that day. We Republicans have a heavier burden. I’ve been a Republican my entire life, and believe in what the Republican Party, at its best, has represented for decades. There can be no soft-pedaling what happened and no absolution for those who planned, encouraged and aided the attempt to overthrow our democracy. Love of country demands nothing less. That’s true patriotism. Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).

I just had a great conversations with two little white kids down the street who are home schooled, and taking a break. They aren't scared of me, despite my meskiness. The are awesome kids. I'm for propping up the public schools and not for demonizing home schooling. Virtual learning is par for the course for home schoolers. Virtual learning is "doable" for parochial and private schools. Public schools have issues with virtual learning, and the more virtual learning they do, the worse they look. That's a cost that has to be factored in.

I posted that it was unlikely that such a law was passed, and yet you asked me what that law would do and on what basis it would be passed. I did so, and then you said it had no utility, but admitted it might "clear things up a bit". And then you argue that there is no way it would be passed, which is what I posited in the first place. It wasn't a particularly interesting exercise. I'm an employment lawyer, and some clear federal direction that was quickly okayed by the courts would have made things much easier for companies like mine going forward, because we could have relied on such mandates as sound defenses in the face of the large number of employees who would have opposed the moves. I'll just accept your argument that all the angst of companies trying to deal with pandemic issues in the past couple of years was wasted time, that we could have been as absolutely over the top in our mandates in all 50 states with virtually no repercussions, we can move on.

Fine with me. Although it's still important to understand the efficacy of vaccinations (vs. acquired immunity as well). And for a political standpoint, I think government agencies would be well served to be thinking about the signposts that might cause them to alter their policy. I think "annual death total" is a great measuring post.

I don't know the trajectory of this disease. However, at some point there should be a scientific determination that the risk to school children remains so great that we require the vaccine. So somewhere between polio and flu? This debate would be much different if school age children were in an at risk group and if the vaccines have been approved quickly for all their age groups.

This is a crazily uninformed post. The primary concern any business would have in imposing a mandate on its employees without protection from government laws is crazy lawsuits by crazy employees and customers. That's why businesses have been frustrated by the federal mandates and the courts fucking with them. Companies would love to the mandate so that they can rely on it to fend off lawsuits. Without it, they face lots of loony constitutionally based lawsuits. Companies have to comply with the ADA. Right now, companies are inundated with requests for accommodations based on COVID Companies have to make religious accommodations, including for those with people who have a sincere believe that the vaccines are the mark of the devil or whatever sincere but hard to understand reason they have.

That's fair. But both have a cost. He wants to ignore the cost on vaccines. I don't think that is an appropriate.

Are you suggesting that a COVID vaccine mandate is never going to end? I doubt it. The question is at what point to we pivot to a more "flu like" protocol in regard to COVID. I think it is completely fair for that discussion to begin now.

Well, it would be a bill, which would then become law. The commerce clause. Because we want(ed) people to get vaccinated. The law would outline how the businesses would be immune from lawsuit and outline any exemptions from ADA or religoius accommodation.

It's too late at this point because the Repubs will do anything to make Dem legislation fail, but the Biden admin should have seen from the outset that the way to maximize vaccines would have been to pass legislation that allowed all businesses to determine for themselves whether they would require their employees and customers to be vaccinated. They could have thus been on the side of individual choice for both individuals and businesses. They could have let the states and localities fight the battle of local mandates. If the Repubs fought those mandates the Dems could have at least been seen as being on the side of "liberty" - which might have appealed to some swing voters.

I simply think that is not true, and this is why we have such political divisions. The "free testing" costs someone money. I've had four. President Biden wants 500 million. So ultimately, let's just agree that my little grandson is going to be paying for this in terms of reduced educational opportunity or reduced social security benefits, just like he'll be paying for all of the various expenses that we don't properly fund with current taxes. I'm willing to wait on the final tally of the negative implications of school closures/falling behind in school, but there will be real consequences. I think it's imperative that we make sure we define what "protecting the public" means in our discussions, because when we use it too broadly its hard to discuss the issue. (I'm thinking we need to focus on "protecting those vulnerable to serious illness or death from COVID" -- and we need to stay focused on that.) Whoever fails to focus on that definition and frankly, whoever continues to perpetrate solutions that don't fit the current situation and whoever doesn't admit that prior steps may not have been that effective, is going to face some pretty bad consequences in future elections.

But if prior infection means that you are as protected from "serious illness" as the vaccine, that's a different question, and calls into question the whole issue of booster mandates and testing mandates. In other words, is it reasonable to be concerned about serious illness and being put on a ventilator, but NOT being particularly concerned about getting reinfected? I think so, given the fact that we are going to have access to great medicines to treat COVID over the next weeks, then then its very reasonable to measure the $$$ and social and psychological costs of mandates against their value - which seems to be decreasing rapidly. (One of the more interesting arguments in the podcast is that we shouldn't be doing so much testing. If someone is at risk and a doctor recommends a test, great. If not, we shouldn't all be testing if we've been vaccinated and just have a cold. I have taken four negative tests to date when I had a mild virus.) https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-natural-immunity-what-you-need-to-know https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00676-9/fulltext Although longer follow-up studies are needed, clinicians should remain optimistic regarding the protective effect of recovery from previous infection. Community immunity to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic can be reached with the acquired immunity due to either previous infection or vaccination. Acquired immunity from vaccination is certainly much safer and preferred. Given the evidence of immunity from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, however, policy makers should consider recovery from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection equal to immunity from vaccination for purposes related to entry to public events, businesses, and the workplace, or travel requirements.

Yeah, the podcast generally appealed to my enlightened centrism.

Yep, that's part of the point of the podcast. Many of us got locked in early on in this thing. I've been pissed for a while at kids in laws who are trumpy and none of them got their vaccines, and all have had COVID at least one or two times, and they all have been fine. At some point I may need to admit that they didn't necessarily pose a greater risk to my family's health. If that's the case, then, I need to admit that all my beefs aren't "my good science v. your bad science".

These are doctors on the podcast so they aren't afraid in pointing out mistakes that were made along the way. They admit themselves that they were cautious in the beginning, taking their kids out of school before anyone was doing so, but the point is what we do now, going forward. In terms of getting ourselves vaccinated, again, these are doctors, so they know patients won't get vaccinated, or lose weight, or exercise when it's clear they should, so ultimately, with their being a limited number of persons who truly are at risk, they ultimately don't have time to fret about dumbshits who won't get vaccinated. If they die, they die, and we should be worried about people who are at risk who ARE doing everything they can to stay safe.

The issue is effective for what? These doctors seem to be arguing that vaccines reduce the chance of virtually all people dying to zero. You can't do better than zero, so not only should we have shifted the vaccines to poor countries, we should admit what happens to a vaccinated person who gets COVID. They have a bad cold and they can transmit the disease. Boosters give them a less bad cold and they can still transmit the disease. The particular podcast is not afraid of getting into the weeds and citing studies.

Initial vaccines, and prior survived exposure, protect virtually everyone from death. Booster provides almost no extra protection, the fact that healthy people are getting boosters rather than us focusing on countries that haven't got their initial vaccines, is terrible and many have died because of it. First vaccine is critical. Boosters don't do much, and booster mandates for kids returning to school is just politics based on bad science. Advantages of keeping any healthy kid out of school because of any mandate at this point are simply outweighed by social and psycological hazards. Having the second shot so soon after the initial shot was bad science. Given the new therapies, the only people who are in danger, are those with underlying health issues and the morbidly obese. Netted out, no doubt about the value of vaccines to individual help. Vaccines and booster of very questionable utility in "protecting others" and thus policies that do so are of questionable and potentially negative consequences. Bottom line - we were all super cautious, but the science points to us admitting that this is a virus that is a true danger to a very limited number of people and our policies need to quickly shift to focusing on them. Also, I had not heard the term omnicold. Not quite finished with it.

Putting this here as a PSA. I thought this was one of the best even keeled discussions regarding vaccines, boosters and the current state of affairs. I'll admit to being a fanboy of this particular podcast and especially the guests he has on. https://peterattiamd.com/covid-19-current-state-omicron/ From a political standpoint, makes me think the Dems need to pivot as fast as they can, as science permits, to treating this like the flu.

Okay, Gracias.

So I usually get mine from La Popular but it's getting more and more iffy -- picked them up from The Garden Cafe this year. In any case, I was thinking of going to get mine at La Tamaleria Neuvo Leon in Richardson this year if La Popular effed it up. Is that the place in Richardson you are talking about?

I;ll buy Dakota, and put her in the beach chair next to me for the duration of my Greek vacation. I'll accept that the acting was excellent. Buckley is always good and so is Colman, but it was an actors' movie and it was great that Maggie got her say, but on the whole it was a beating. Good job, A for effort, etc. Kudos all around. But not memorable and not worth spending the unpleasant time with this unpleasant lot.

Ha ha. My thoughts exactly. I was willing to give Daniel San just a smidgen of respect until the Pete Cetera=great Chicago shit. That being said, when Peter Cetera was second fiddle things were okay by me.

Holy shit you guys get into the weeds. I thought Sugar Bowl was pretty damn great for being a low scoring affair. I thought Baylor has some goddam players. Plus fuck the SEC, even if its Baylor doing the cornholing.