@benshawks08 I read all types of stuff I don't agree with. George Will is one of my favorite authors. I almost always read every column by right wingers printed in my paper. I read lots of stories about Lindsey Graham, even Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, including articles they author.
But there are a couple of people here who just bitch and moan and attack, and add less than nothing to discourse. Why bother?
@benshawks08 @bskeet And it is even more frustrating that the most vociferous denouncers of "fake news" are the FOX watchers who disseminate shit like this with nary a critical thought in their bodies.
Incidentally, the "block" button in this site is simply awesome!
None of what anyone is raising is new. There have always been vicious smears in politics going back to the Republic in ancient Rome and no doubt beyond. Demagogery did not start with Trump. Defending a president by attacking past presidents did not start with viewers of Fox News. Intolerance of opposing views did not start with liberals OR conservatives. Stupid impeachments for political points started back in the 19th Century, but at least now we are averaging only one per century.
Every student of political rhetoric knows that Americans always think they live in a unique time. Unforeseen challenges, crazy ideas bandied about, doom of our Republic just over the horizon "if we do this..." OR "if we don't do that..."
Somehow, the country has survived. The worst schism led to civil war, but there were thousands of controversies and even violent flare ups over 250 years. Factionalism was known long before that and this is why the Constitution set up so many obstacles to defeat any attempt for a single faction to impose its will indefinitely.
But there is no defense against a particular faction, or politician, from obtaining or abusing power temporarily. It always depends on what the American people are willing to accept. A majority or strong plurality seems to accept the unacceptable, in the eyes of others, and that perspective wobbles depending on whose ox is gored. There will be back and forth power struggles for time immemorial as the American public imposes its own constraints on what it considers unacceptable.
I am not worried about the effect of Trump and his narcissistic presidency. The Constitution will survive. It survived FDR's expansion of administative government, but it survived Nixon's crimes directly targeting the sanctity of democracy. It survived Vietnam and the abject cowardice of Congress in funding trillions of dollars for undeclared wars. It survived HUAC and McCarthy, Grant's corrupt administration, Jacksonian spoils, Teapot Dome, and the Robber Barons. It even survived Lincoln's violating it right and left in an effort to save it.
I AM really tired of reading every other day about some asinine thing Trump has said or some crazy approach to an issue that makes it worse, but I am also tired of reading every other day how uncertain it is Democracy will survive him.
The pandemic is changing a lot of things, but I see disruption, not revolution. The problem freaking too many people out is that we are used to prosperity as a country, and anything threatening that seems cataclysmic. It would be quite enlightening for most Americans who are spending their time wringing their hands to pick up a book about the times America actually overcame worse things than a bad president or a snide Congress. The Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, the Depression....
Grab a cup of coffee, get educated about the great leaders of the past who saw us through much darker times. Perhaps we can all find kernels of wisdom that will help light the way forward--or at least let us realize the light is there if we look for it.
@justanotherfan said in Wedding Questions:
The thing with weddings is that the day itself blows by so quickly that you invariably miss things.
Plus, invariably the happy couple, that has spent hours choosing the food, hardly gets the chance to even taste it...
Trump does not mean well. Trump cares only for himself. Any well-meaning person would be able to admit a mistake. He is precisely the same as he has been for 50 years.
Don't underestimate the staying power of stupidity.
@Kcmatt7 Before relying on a breakdown of low risk vs medium vs high, please remember low risk means only lower risk of dying from the virus. All ages can catch it, and if they do, will likely spread it back home to people in higher risk brackets.
Please also remember that lower risk people are also dying. One sailor died on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, and since almost 600 have tested positive, I am sure more will.
If even 1 person dies due to catching it at your wedding, is that worth it to you?
I echo the delay and do a big party later strategy. If you like, if travel is open, you can drive down to SC and I would be happy to perform the ceremony at the beach if it is open (and keeping me at a social distance, of course)!
Damn. Which one of you wrote this about me?
@approxinfinity The technology as a cure for abortion thing is my own conjecture insofar as it relates to Blackmun. I remember talking with my dad and others about it a lot, and even reading about it, but a lot of that discussion was also just focused on birth control. A lot of people believed opposition to birth control would fade away.
But virtually everything has been objected to by somebody, hasn't it?
As to my Roe discussion, I cannot guarantee all my thoughts against the vagaries of trying to remember discussions from law school 40 years ago!
@bskeet I am paralyzed by fear of being sane.
Think about it: wouldn't we all be better off if this was all just a psychotic dream in my head?
@approxinfinity It had to go to the Supreme Court. The issue presented was whether restricting someone from getting an abortion unconstitutionally violated that person's rights. Constitutional rights are national in scope, and equal protection cannot be infringed by states under the 14th Amendment.
That some people base their opposition on religious underpinnings does not make the issue involved a religious one. Think of it this way: if I believe that God wants me to have access to a gun, that is irrelevant to my constitutional claim to have unrestricted access--that right is in the Second Amendment. Similarly, my constitutional right to vote is based on the 4 amendments that deal with voting, not my theological contention that religious people who want to deny it are wrong.
The huge problem, though, for abortion rights is that unlike those examples, they are not spelled out in the Constitution. Instead, they are based on a "right to privacy" that is a judicial construct from the Warren Court of the 1960's. Primary among the cases creating it was the Griswold case (1964 or so?) saying states could not restrict access to contraception.
The Court at that time started a process of finding rights in what was called the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights, which basically means that these are rights to be free from government that are so inherent they need not have been spelled out explicitly.
This is the basic conflict between "strict constructionists" and "living document" schools of thought. The former decries adding rights that were never imagined by the framers. The latter believes that the changes in societal conditions since 1787 bring up new situations implicating the ability of Americans to free, and require broad interpretation to protect the framer's goal of preserving that freedom.
Roe could have been based on stronger constitutional grounds, but Blackmun went far afield and the result has been chaos. He could have simply said that absent medical reasons, the state cannot prohibit abortion as a violation of equal protection: in no other situation is someone obligated to put their own life on the line to preserve another, as is required of a pregnant woman forced to continue to delivery. (That is a theory my Con Law professor had, but I have not seen it urged many places.)
He could have stretched the 10th amendment, finding a right to privacy in the "powers . . . reserved . . . to the people." This would have created other problems, because the amendment discusses affirmative power held by states and the people, rather than the feds; it has never been a restriction on states criminal powers.
Anyway, Blackmun invented the trimester breakdown, coupled with the viability standard, apparently as a compromise to get a majority. With absolutely no textual basis and no absolute bright line of protection, it has invited attack ever since.
My own feeling is that Blackmun believed, as did many of us liberals back then, that technology might end the controversy. There was a hope, I suspect, that there would be developed a means of ending pregnancies by transplanting fetuses to willing recipients at an early enough time as to involve no more discomfort or danger than legal abortion (This was a naive hope, I now realize.)
I think Roe will be overturned. I also think that it wouldn't be in such great danger if the abortion rights movement had shown more respect for people who have such a huge distate for the human cost of abortion, but that is a different discussion that also requires recognition that pro-lifers have not demonstrated enough concern for the lives affected after an unwanted birth. Suffice it to say that neither side allows the other any legitimate standing in the debate.
Until a foolproof and safe method of preventing pregnancy is developed, the mess will continue.
Edit: I was writing during several preceding posts, so I haven't read or addressed those after 'Prox's one that began with "My point is that this shouldn’t have gone to the Supreme Court."
Not good for Dotson to go to Graham's team if he wants a chance to get a big role....
@kjayhawks Our governor issued an order to not allow more than 5 people per 1,000 sq ft. Walmart has been doing it. People say it is wonderful.
@nuleafjhawk said in COVID may survive in a freezer for 2 years:
Thanks guys for your answers. I appreciate the time and effort.
One more thing I thought of. I've always been told to NOT use hand sanitizer and/or disinfectant type products on a regular basis. Sure - if you're cleaning the bathroom or whatever. Because it jacks with our bodies natural ability to fight off bacteria and virus'. So why are we bathing in the stuff now? Theoretically, wouldn't that make the problem worse for the reasons listed above? Just asking. I obviously don't know anything.
Hand sanitizers and soap, along with warm water and the physical motion, actually work in 2 ways: first, the physical action and water help to dislodge any viruses from the skin and flush them away. Second, soap and alcohol (>60%) can weaken and break down the outer coating that protects the virus (the "corona"). So both help. An alcohol concentration alone may work, like on a Chlorox wipe. Soap and water take time, so they recommend the 20 seconds to be effective.
In the past, it is cleansers and soaps that contained antibiotics (or claimed to) that scientists were unhappy about. Those antibiotics were being used willy nilly on thousands of common harmless household bacteria. Exposing those bacteria to millions of unnecessary treatments was just another example of overused antibiotics. Eventually, the fear is, some bacteria cells will have mutations so they are stronger than the dying ones and survive treatments. Those bacteria can multiply until the antibiotic is ineffective against a whole strain of mutated bacteria.
If they mutate and become harmful, you end up with antibiotic bacteria and people in the hospital requiring massive doses of stronger stuff. Infections like MRSA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus ↗
The cleansers they want you to use for the virus should not have antibiotics. If you have old ones, toss them!
@benshawks08 Gad, if that makes sense I need a drink. Or you do! But thx!
I lost a whole response where I likened a vaccine to a BOLO issued to the immunity cops. It was more fun, but finally even my phone couldn't deal with how convoluted it was, so it blanked it all out.
Virus vaccines are not designed to treat a viral disease. They are designed to prepare the immune system by training it to recognize a virus and to generate antibodies in response.
It takes a lot of work to develop a vaccine because it has to be designed to look and act enough like the virus to stimulate the response but not enough to act like the full blown virus. You don't want to just simply infect people quicker than random transmission would!
Dead viruses are used sometimes, but many viruses lose all their cohesion when they die, breaking apart so as to be unrecognizable, so a dead virus isn't always the answer.
There is a lot of work going on with this one involving the proteins on the coronavirus's shell (those spiky things in the diagrams). They are trying to develop similar proteins to see if the proteins alone (or on harmless molecules or cells) can provoke the immune system to generate antibodies that prevent that protein from attaching to body cells (mucous membrane cells seem to be a favorite target of this beast). Preventing large scale attachments would prevent or delay the virus from injecting its RNA and duplicating in the cell being targeted.
Sometimes you do see vaccines being used after exposure. For example, rabies. Get bitten, get those horrible stomach shots (6? 9? I think there is a less painful treatment now.) I believe what happens there is that the vaccine works quickly to stimulate the necessary antibody development, faster than the virus works at replicating after exposure.
Tamiflu and other antiviral drugs are not vaccines. Vaccines stimulate antibody responses and prepare the body to generate antibodies when necessary. Antivirals work against the viruses themselves through chemical action that can inhibit how a virus works. (Lots of questions about Tamiflu, by the way--apparently it helps reduce worst symptoms by 1 day, but it may lessen symptoms, too). Antivirals are relatively new, and they are trying to find some for this.
Antibiotics are for bacteria only. They are chemicals that weaken or kill bacteria cells to reduce the infection's opportunity to overwhelm the immune system.
At least this is what I have been told....
@BShark said in The democratic nominee:
I'm still voting on other things to be clear. I just can't bring myself to vote for POTUS this time.
Well, I am sorry you are depriving the country of your voice, one I have come to respect and admire, on the single most critical election. If the "good people" marching with the Nazis, KKK, and other white supremacists prevail, it will be because they exercised the franchise that their forebears deprived millions of people of, the right that many died to obtain.
Not voting if you really don't care is at least a choice, albeit in my mind a poor one because apathy leads to the triumph of extremism.
Not voting because you think there is no difference between candidates and parties suggests an inability to think either critically or objectively about the issues and how those issues have been dealt with over time.
Not voting because it will not make a difference due to living in a hopelessly one-sided state (I know something of this, being in the State of Traitors...um, I mean, South Cackalackee) makes some sense at first glance: why bother?
But the answer to me is I will always vote, no matter how hopeless the cause, to express my voice. I will not let the idiots think they represent everyone.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil..." is the epitaph of those backers of the Democratic progressive movement who sat out 2016.
@BShark
And everyone thought 2016 was bitterly fought. An election with literally no holds barred! Maybe we can replace the Electoral College with WWF refs!
@FarmerJayhawk This election will determine if Biden's do-over of his choice in 2016 came too late. Fortunately for him, the same Republican is running, so the age issue is not a huge problem.
@BShark said in The democratic nominee:
It's America. The white guy with a groping problem prevailed over the Asian, the Woman, and the Jew. Shocks you to see it.
Not sure if you missed it, but a white guy who proudly announced his sexual groping of far more people was elected president.
Now, will he be stupid and pick someone like Harris, from Calif, or Duckworth from Illinois, both of which are solidly blue? Or safe, and pick someone like Kobluchar who is from usually safe Minn? Or be clever, and pick the governor of Michigan, a usually blue state the Dems lost in 2016?
Ignoring all factors here except the Electoral College.
@benshawks08 Oh, come on, let's remember that in that proceeding the Prez and his cronies managed to exclude any testimony from witnesses and never presented evidence in defense, and, oh yeah, the outcome was never in doubt, so clearly, it is the Dem's fault for Trump & Co to not be properly prepared. Oh wait, does that mean they are admitting the response was bad? Was Russian Agent Orange's natural ability to understand pandemics distracted?
@jayballer73 Your poor daughter, after going through the surgery!
Various ailments, including COVID-19, seem to affect so many people differently. Our Marine son at Miramar has been quarantined at his off-base apartment for 3 weeks with all the symptoms (fever, aches, shortness of breath, sharp burning chest pain with a dry cough) but tested negative. He is now feeling better, and going back to work. Flu? Negative for that, too. I wonder if the test was bad?
Good luck!
@nuleafjhawk Entirely conjecture on my part! I can only guess that most of the viruses, if transmitted to humans, do not lend themselves to human-to-human transmission. Some may kill humans fast enough that community spread doesn't occur. Some may not be harmful, some might not mutate quickly or at all (very stable RNA).
Since there are numerous plagues and pandemics through history, obviously some viruses have popped up here and there. Pigs, birds, snakes, apes have all been implicated in various diseases.
I would hazard another guess that since viruses were not even discovered until 1901, who knows how many times some virus might have made the jump previously?
Here is an NIH article that contains interesting info. From the Abstract:
"There are 219 virus species that are known to be able to infect humans. The first of these to be discovered was yellow fever virus in 1901, and three to four new species are still being found every year. Extrapolation of the discovery curve suggests that there is still a substantial pool of undiscovered human virus species, although an apparent slow-down in the rate of discovery of species from different families may indicate bounds to the potential range of diversity. More than two-thirds of human viruses can also infect non-human hosts, mainly mammals, and sometimes birds. Many specialist human viruses also have mammalian or avian origins. Indeed, a substantial proportion of mammalian viruses may be capable of crossing the species barrier into humans, although only around half of these are capable of being transmitted by humans and around half again of transmitting well enough to cause major outbreaks. A few possible predictors of species jumps can be identified, including the use of phylogenetically conserved cell receptors. It seems almost inevitable that new human viruses will continue to emerge, mainly from other mammals and birds, for the foreseeable future."
"Human viruses: discovery and emergence"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427559/ ↗
I haven't read the whole thing, but your question made me find it. Bookmarked for later!
@FarmerJayhawk One of those articles said there are something like 5,000 viruses that bats harbor, "so it was only a question of when, not if, one spread to humans."
I cannot figure out if this is reassuring, or if we have 4,999 to look forward to.
@Crimsonorblue22 Never.
@jayballer73 Very scary since the announcement yesterday was carefully worded as just for tests.
Stupid is as stupid does.
@jayballer73 Your life might be a reason for the saying about how you can never understand someone until you have walked a mile in his shoes.
@approxinfinity said in Differentiating fact from opinion on COVID-19:
@mayjay yeah. But bags have air in them. and he doesn't demonstrate how to disinfect fresh stuff. Letting it sit imo alleviates a lot of the risk
I rinse all of my produce in 140° water, open the bags of delivered groceries by reaching into the bag and pulling up on the bottom to dump them out. I switch gloves after getting everything in, wipe down everything, wash my hands a few times. Then use a fresh wipe to go over door handles, garage door opener buttons etc.
I am not worried about air trapped in bags. If it does worry you, open everything in the garage in front of a fan blowing to the outside.
Anything that doesn't need refrigeration can be left in your car for an afternoon. Temps can get to 100 or 120, far above the 85 needed to kill the beast. It is actually a fairly fragile virus. Most people get it by inhaling anyway.
@jayballer73 I knew it a couple of years ago. Found it out by accident (long story not relevant here), and decided it was not something to share here as you seem to have rebuilt your life.
But my experiences in life have reduced the surprise from such things, although certainly not the dismay they happen. I specialized in abuse and neglect in law school and represented kids, parents, and Dept of Social Services in law school. I represented over 100 soldiers charged with the same, or worse. A close friend married a woman whose brother was registered. Other friends have shared experiences too numerous to mention.
All in all, I have been exposed to such stories for 40 years and have learned much about the psychological causes, and effects, of abuse. An overwhelmingly common aspect is how often substance abuse is involved. Usually depression and emotional trauma, self-medicated by alcohol and drugs to stop the pain.
Unfortunately, humans are flawed and inflict their pain on others, as you have admitted. I cannot sit in judgment on your sincerity--I had clients who were more abject in their remorse when testifying, but told me after serving time they had lied and really didn't give a shit about their victims, so I learned not to endorse anyone. But I can say that I have no reason to doubt you so, if your story is true, I do feel sorry for you and your daughter for all you both have lost.
You haven't asked for advice, but I do want to suggest that you try to restrain your angry reactions when someone disagrees, corrects you, or even seems to attack you. You seem to still be carrying a lot of anger, and it feels like a hot poker is flying out of the screen when I read some of your replies (not to me, I realize). When you are tempted to let fly, try writing your reactions and then erasing them, followed by a cooling off period. It can help in not provoking idiots into getting into a ranting war where they just get a kick out of trolling you. And you don't always have to reply when they try.
Good luck. May your rehab efforts be successful.
@jayballer73 If we are not going to deal with idiots, who is left? 🤔
Very sweet story. I met my wife face to face (at the Smithsonian in D.C.) but shockingly she still wanted to start dating!
@jayballer73 Where did you two meet, anyway? I hope things go well. We are bunkered down, too. Wife has asthma and atrial fibrillation, and I have high blood pressure and diabetes, so we are elevated risk even more than just being mid-60s. But your concern is even greater, and I wish you well in taking such care to protect your bride.
I am suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I feel badly about that, so I guess it is best to track our great leader in his own words.
As an addendum, we now have over 300,000 known cases in the US, more than twice as many as any other ccountry. 8,000+ deaths. Adding more than 12% every day.
@ajvan We went on a walk today, about 2.5 miles. Wore bandanas just to see what it was like and how comfortable they would be. (No one else out of probably 50 pedestrians and maybe 35 drivers was wearing a mask, but this was not inside.) We were on wide residential streets and it was very breezy, with no one even as close as 10 feet away, so no issues.
Felt like bandits and we were hoping people would toss us their wallets (I had gloves available!), but alas, no one did.
@dylans That cartoon is funny! I will enjoy seeing his appointment of medical expert Jared added to the cartoon!
And the unproven anti-malaria drugs are also used to treat lupus. Some lupus patients cannot get them now. Yeah, good job.
Just that it protects media expressing opinion on public officials. I will have to read the suit.
@approxinfinity Interesting, but not far. Dylan's post about stupid people cleaning up the gene pool might be applicable.
But it might be fun watching Trump's favorite network using Times v. Sullivan to defend itsel b/c he wants that ruling overturned.
@dylans On your second paragraph, the problem is that stupid people are killing other people, too, including thousands of pretty smart health care workers. Restricting availability of protective equipment isn't cleansing the gene pool.
@dylans Opinion yes, but public figures need to not try to present "alternate facts" which was a phrase invented by this WH.
@kjayhawks I haven't yet searched but I haven't figured out where Congress gets that power. They can suspend habeas corpus but that only allows arrests without having to justify it to a court. And Congress can only do that during a rebellion or invasion.
@dylans Everyone doing what they can? Hmm...no lockdown here for SC, ventilators and equip w/held from states needing them, POTUS not following his own experts' recommendations on masks, gov of GA denying 2 months of info about asymptomatic transmission, people still having parties, etc etc etc.
And the WH has taken every opportunity to politicize this from the start and keeps doing it. Are we supposed to blindly follow the lies being spewed daily?
It is going to take a long time to go away if we don't find a vaccine. If it reduces here due to warm weather, it will increase in the Southern hemisphere, and return in the fall.
On March 19 (16 days ago) there were 244,000 world-wide cases. Now there are more than 4 times as many. There were 10,000 deaths. Now, 6 times that many. Of known cases with an outcome, the rate is 21%. If there are 10 times as many infections as officially counted (as many suspect), this thing is insanely burning a wide swath with no end in sight.
How can that all magically go away when we still have officials thinking they do not need to do everything in their power to fight it?
@kjayhawks said in The democratic nominee:
If they weren’t wrong all the time
You need to read more. Most importantly, don't let the sensationalist cases color the entire picture. There are thousands of reliable news stories every day. Mistakes happen, but usually get corrected.
Blatant falsehoods and malpractice happen in medicine, too, but I don't enter every medical office telling them I expect them to lie.
I am not saying that everything has to be accepted as gospel truth, just that you need some discretion and the ability to check things out if something seems fishy. I am on a cruise forum and am constantly trying to correct the crap people post from Facebook (you know, had dinner with someone whose uncle is Chinese with a master's degree, and he gave us all this great info about the coronavirus....).
@kjayhawks When you don't trust anything in the news, consider yourself a trophy for the far right, which started campaigning against the news media as a political strategy in the 80s and 90s. In 2016, a few traditional conservatives (fiscal restraint, strict ethical rules, less dependence on govt, etc) lamenting the rise of Trump wrote about their regret that they had convinced a huge segment of the country not to believe what the media told them because they realized the media was needed to correct the idiocies being bandied about.
Dabo Swinney is absolutely certain football will be played this fall and that Clemson's "Death Valley" will be packed and rocking.
FWIW entry of the day value=Zero.
@BShark One explanation for a large mysterious increase in deaths that do not seem to be coronavirus related is "suffocation suicide" -- people dying from keeping their heads in the sand.