Open Mic for the week of 12/18/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
Many important news stories to start the week – none seems more important to start with then the remembrances of Justice Sandra Day O’Conner:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/politics/sandra-day-oconnor-ceremony/index.htmlReport
In economic news:
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/16/1219574403/economy-inflation-prices-wages-disinflation-deflation-interest-ratesReport
The explanation that I’ve seen for this explains that this is a weird thing that mostly won’t affect people who are involved in the discourse.
For example: Someone who was employed at the same job in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 who got raises throughout all of those years was unlikely to have raises keep up with inflation (certainly in 2022 and 2023).
HOWEVER.
Someone who was employed at minimum wage in 2019 and then was unemployed through 2020 and 2021 was very likely to come back to a sizable raise when they re-entered the workforce. Someone who was making $10/hr in 2019 is likely to command $14 or more/hr now.
That’s 40% raise! WELL OVER INFLATION.
It’s the poor SOB with an easily-worked-from-home job who got 4% raises in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 that is saying “man, this is so expensive” when they go out to the grocery store.
And it’s the latter guy who tweets.Report
Hey, we actually agree for once. Yes, this recovery was one where the less-off actually were the one who did well, while the upper middle class stagnated…and the populace seems to kind of hate that.Report
Another bit of economic news: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-ringsReport
(is this about the report that came out in April again?)
(clicks through)
(it’s about the report that came out in April again)Report
‘Tis indeed.Report
I have said before that if Texas doesn’t want to play in a federal republic, they can try to leave again. Otherwise, they really need to stop wasting everyone’s time pulling insane unconstitutional stunts like this:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/18/politics/texas-border-bill-abbott/index.htmlReport
Speaking as the resident lunatic whose retirement pseudo-academic research project includes the questions, “Are there conditions under which a partition of the US is possible? Can those conditions actually occur?”….
It takes 38 state legislatures to amend the Constitution so that a partition can happen. One possible route out for Texas (and other states) is to convince the California and New York legislatures that they simply don’t want to put in the effort to fight something equivalent to Reconstruction again.Report
Both sides are saying this could be American democracy’s last election. None of the falcons can hear the falconers. I could see a lot of people in a lot of states considering that amendment if it came up.Report
I have to admit I’m kind of at a loss as to what has become so untenable about life in these United States that people are allegedly clamoring to leave.Report
Democracy! I’m telling you, we’re losing our democracy!Report
They aren’t clamoring to leave, but since the political minority can’t get its way nationally, they are trying to break the compact at the state level by passing legislation that directly confronts federal responsibilities. Texas isn’t using its congressional delegation to try and solve these problems (which would be the federal approach); rather they are passing laws that intentionally poke a stick in the federal government (including Congress) to try and get their way.
My conclusion is Texas no longer wants to be in the US, though they seem to have forgotten how well that worked for them last time.Report
But let’s be honest here, Philip. Over half of your comments are about how our country is under immediate existential threat. It would be very easy for people in that frame of mind to become ready to walk if an election cycle doesn’t go their way.Report
I have never, ever, seen anybody claim that they’re going to move to another country if the wrong guy gets elected!
Well, other than celebrities. But I’m pretty sure that they’re joking!Report
Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/180/Report
I’ve heard it said that the conservative doesn’t really have an equivalent of “moving to Canada”. Other than the Australian outback, the conservative plan is to go deeper into America.Report
I’ve seen that too, and it rings true. Discontent on the right leads to things like “Take back America”, “Make America Great Again”, etc., but liberals generally seem to be looking elsewhere. Probably related to that Scott Alexander point about “America” as a concept being right-coded.Report
An election cycle didn’t go their way. They literally stormed the Congress a a result, and are working really hard to dismantle the federal republic from with in. All the while working equally hard to put back the guy who led them to do those things. Your call what that means, but Texas continuing to stick it to the man while not actually leaving is not going to end well for Texas.Report
Again, Philip, what I was saying is that that your side isn’t immune to overreaction and riots. And isn’t the whole point of “sanctuary cities” a promise to violate federal immigration law?Report
No, the point of sanctuary cities is to make the feds us federal dollars and federal resources to enforce federal immigration laws. Sanctuary cities correctly state that determining immigration status is not only not their legal prevue, but they are not resourced for it. SO they punt the can appropriately back to the feds. They don’t impede federal immigration enforement, and infact will provide law enforcement assistance if asked via the appropriate channels. But they won’t kick kids out of schools or ask day laborers for their immigration papers when they cite them for jaywalking.Report
Conservatives keep telling us exactly what they want.
Conservatives don’t want to leave, and they don’t want to stay and abide by majority rule.
They want to “take back their country” and force us to abide by their rules whether the majority wants it or not.Report
Why is it unconstitutional to outlaw things at a state level which are outlawed at a federal level?
Where federal law conflicts with state law, federal law wins. However this isn’t a case of conflict, this is a case where the feds have outlawed this but aren’t enforcing it.Report
“Incorporation” is the quick and dirty answer but the more complicated answer is that the Supreme Court hasn’t incorporated *EVERYTHING* (with exceptions), it’s mostly been given cases and then said “oh, that’s incorporated… so the states can’t do that.”
The most notable example of this is the 2nd. The minute that gets incorporated, a gimungous number of laws… poof. Go away. But it hasn’t incorporated it yet which means that there are quite a few folks out there who agree with the onesy-twosy “incorporation” operation we’ve got going on so far.
But, as you point out, that has little to do with laws that are on the books but fail to be enforced.Report
Measles, mumps, and polio on the rise thanks to anti-vax cranks:
Forecasting the future is difficult. But here’s an easy prediction: The anti-vaccination movement in the U.S. and globally is going to result in the deaths of more children.
This grim portent comes to us courtesy of UNICEF, which is reporting that 30,601 confirmed cases of measles have been reported in Europe and Central Asia this year through Dec.5.
That’s up from 909 cases in those regions in 2022, or an increase of 3,266%.
…
One factor spurring the spread of anti-vaccine propaganda is the politicization of the COVID-19 vaccines. One leading public health advocate has called that phenomenon an “accelerant” for the anti-vaccine movement, which likens it to a can of gasoline in the hands of an arsonist.
For anti-vaxxers, it has been only a short step from opposition to COVID vaccine mandates to opposition to all childhood immunization mandates. This has often borne the banner of “health freedom,” the idea being that individuals should have the untrammeled right to decide for themselves what to put or not put in their bodies.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-19/measles-is-again-on-the-march-across-the-world-thanks-to-anti-vaxxers-such-as-rfk-jrReport
Huh. The Colorado Supreme Court found that Trump is disqualified from holding the Presidency on 14th Amendment grounds.
I thought that that was a crackpot theory.
Report
People think its a crackpot theory because no one ever imagined a real live insurrection would occur in our lifetimes.
But here we are.Report
I can’t comment on how sound the decision is legally* but I can state with absolute confidence that it’s going to be a sh!tshow politically.
There is NOT one neat legal trick that can “Fix” the Trump problem or the general state of mind of the right. The only way through I can see is to outvote the motherfishers in elections.
*Presumably the Supreme court will have to weigh in.Report
it’s going to be a sh!tshow politically.
Why should we think this?
Everyone watched on live tee vee as a defeated politician tried to overthrow a free and fair election, with a violent insurrection and we learned since that it was a broad conspiracy by the party to lie and cheat and overrule the citizens.
This was exactly what the 14th Amendment was about. If the already-corrupt-and-in-disrepute SCOTUS wants to engineer a way to overrule this, they will be adding more fuel to the idea of radical court reform.Report
Has he been convicted Chip? In a court of law? Not yet you presumably will say- and I agree. At this stage, though, what is to stop Georgia or Arizona from booting Biden off their ballot based on something they saw on their live tee vee? They have their own tee vee, as you well know, and it says Biden does all kinds of hideous and evil things. I assure you their live tee vee will applaud them for it.Report
I thought you were talking about politics?
Nothing has ever stopped Georgia or Alabama from kicking Biden off the ballot, or for a sitting Republican Vice President to simply throw out entire state’s slates of electors, or for state secretaries of state to summarily disqualify entire precincts of ballots.
They have already attempted this! Nothing in this ruling gives them any power they didn’t already have this morning.
If this gets debated nationally and provides us with many more headlines and hours of tee vee time showing MAGAs beating cops and smashing up the Capitol I think it just serves to remind people of what’s at stake.Report
Nothing has ever stopped Georgia or Alabama from kicking Biden off the ballot, or for a sitting Republican Vice President to simply throw out entire state’s slates of electors, or for state secretaries of state to summarily disqualify entire precincts of ballots.
Yeah, nothing has stopped them except that no one really thought that you could (or should) do this.
Just looking at the way the two parties are structured, and the ways they govern states, I would be very hesitant to throw open the, “Hey, you can keep people from holding office based on contestable theories that they gave aid and comfort to the enemies of the US!” door for the GOP to just waltz on through.Report
Pillsy got to the point before I did. If all the states with Blue or Red Trifectas throw their opposing party’s nominee off the ballot that is not a good place for us to be as a country and NOT a good place to be for team Blue. And if a few Red Governors in ’24 decide they can do it unilaterally without a trifecta? That is the ballgame Chip. Right there.Report
A quick google search says that past instances have involved either people convicted of insurrection or classes of people (namely Confederate officers and office holders) barred by statute. Which doesn’t mean it couldn’t be construed the way CO has held, just that we won’t likely know until SCOTUS has its say.
Of course even if SCOTUS says there either needs to be a statute passed by Congress or a conviction it would not necessarily be good news for Trump, as long as he has criminal cases against him.Report
Of course even if SCOTUS says there either needs to be a statute passed by Congress or a conviction it would not necessarily be good news for Trump, as long as he has criminal cases against him.
It might not be great news for Trump, but it would be good news for everybody else.
FWIW, I do think we can trust SCOTUS to save us on this one, given that this is one of those rare times where basic sanity and arrant Republican hackishness cut in the same direction.Report
Maybe. My gut tells me that this is the kind of thing where SCOTUS typically punts. Which is unfortunate because its evidence of a real constitutional breakdown. The fact that Congress was unable to convict him after 1/6, which amounted to a direct attack on one branch by another, makes it hard for me to envision a plausible scenario where they’d actually remove a president.Report
Which is unfortunate because its evidence of a real constitutional breakdown.
Very definitely. I’ve been slowly making my way through the CO court ruling and it makes sense to the best of my ability to tell.
But I’m really worried it will open up space for much less defensible disqualification, not because the CO Supreme Court is making mistakes about the laws in question, but because the laws in question are being applied in domains they were never meant to handle, and only have to handle them now because of upstream failures, of which the biggest is definitely Congress not removing Trump post 1/6.Report
The law in question was literally drafted when half of America was in ashes and ruin from the bloodiest war ever fought by our country until that time.
I don’t understand this apprehension that somehow the people who experienced an actual civil war would somehow fail to understand a constitutional crisis.Report
They understood a Constitutional crisis, but not necessarily this Constitutional crisis.Report
I think the confounding variable beyond the 14th Amendment is that the Colorado legislature probably never anticipated a major political party nominating a person for president who has a serious eligibility question when they drafted their election laws.Report
That is definitely possible and may well factor into whatever SCOTUS does (which I do think will be to reverse).
Maybe I am getting defensive because it isn’t clear to me that the courts were the ones in the wrong. Trump is the one forcing them to rule on these issues.Report
Conviction is for imprisoning him. We’ve had judges rule that he was engaged in insurrection.
Trump’s own legal team isn’t trying to claim he wasn’t, they’re claiming the President can engage in insurrection and this AM doesn’t apply.Report
I’m not, and I don’t think Pillsy is either, claiming the CO courts ruling is irrational or legally incorrect. It can still be a bad idea while adhering to those parameters as you, of all people, well know.Report
I can see it being a bad idea from a political point of view and from some other points.
However if someone asks the court to toss him because he committed insurrection, then the court has the problem that he committed insurrection, even his own lawyers don’t claim otherwise, and that AM says what it says.
Everyone involved in the civil war wasn’t hauled off to jail after it ended. Insisting that he needs to be convicted of something that puts him in jail is the wrong standard.Report
So you think this was correctly decided by the CO court and that the Supreme Court should do what about the appeal?Report
The “black letter law” in me says the Supremes should say he did in fact commit insurrection and ergo he can’t run anymore than a foreign born citizen could.
That’s what the rule of law says, and we should stop trying to twist it because Trump’s followers will be unhappy.
Then after he can’t be President anymore, we finish the other legal cases and toss his ass in jail.
If the GOP manages to turn this into a political bonus then whatever, that’s a different issue. If they win and then pardon him then whatever. With a GOP President around Trump won’t be able to monopolize power because he’ll be a crazy old man and POTUS has real power.Report
Here’s another crackpot theory.
Report
Ah.
So this morning, MAGA Republicans, the same guys who wanted Mike Pence killed if he was so bold as to certify the 2020 election, were willing to count Biden electors and gracefully accept a loss.
But this ruling changed their minds. Am I getting this right?Report
I thought you were talking about politics?Report
The “Look what you made me do” stuff doesn’t work any more.Report
To quote the mostly absent Trumwill, “This won’t end well.”
Believe me, I absolutely I get where the CO Supreme Court is coming from, but none the less I feel like I’m hearing a load-bearing that norm that we didn’t even know we had starting to buckle under the strain.Report
I’m just delighted that it’s funny. I was worried that this stuff wouldn’t be.Report
as Jaybird often points out, this is a high-trust/high-collaboration society becoming a low-trust/low-collaboration society.Report
An abused wife took on Tesla over tracking tech. She lost.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/an-abused-wife-took-tesla-over-tracking-tech-she-lost-2023-12-19/
“The San Francisco woman sued her husband in state Superior Court in 2020 on claims including assault and sexual battery. She later named Tesla as a defendant, accusing the automaker of negligence for continuing to provide the husband access to the car despite the restraining order against him. Her lawsuit sought monetary damages from Tesla.”
“Tesla told the woman that it could not remove her husband’s access to the car’s technology because his name remained on the vehicle’s title as a co-owner, along with hers, according to records she filed in her lawsuit. Tesla prevailed in the lawsuit. After denying the San Francisco police request for evidence, the automaker argued she had no proof that her husband used the car’s features to stalk her. Tesla also argued the restraining order against the woman’s husband never specifically ordered the automaker to act.”
“Over the next several months, the woman alleged, she regularly returned to the car to find that its settings and features appeared to have been manipulated. She found the doors open, the suspension settings changed, and the vehicle’s ability to charge turned off. When she asked service center employees for help, they tried to disconnect the car from the Internet, but those attempts failed, she said in court records.”
Ah, a new form of stalking enabled by you EV.Report
Yes, that was my takeaway as well.
That the problem here is the electric motor.Report
It’s not new; if his name is on the title he could have always just reported the car stolen and had it towed.
Personally I’d rather have it be that you can’t just walk(*) into a dealer and say ‘hey this is my car now, please reset everything kthx’. That’s a massive enabler of theft.
(*) or, whateverReport
Kevin Drum reports that the FBI stats show that violent crime is down 15% in big cities and down 8% overall.
This is good!
I’m curious as to why… has policing gone back up? Has a return to full employment resulted in enough people just not having the energy to kill people? Has the marijuana legalization dividend finally started paying off?Report
Crime goes up, crime goes down. You can’t explain that.Report
If it has anything to do with policies, you’d think that we might want to implement more of these kinda policies.
Unless, of course, it is inexplicable.
Perhaps Uranus recently left Aries and entered into Taurus.Report
Or it is just resuming the decades-long downward trend, a trend which no one has satisfactorily explained.Report
Sure. So why did it go up? I mean, there were a handful of people who denied that it went up even as it was going up.
Some argued that we cannot trust FBI stats.
Now that it’s going down, it seems like the FBI is trustworthy again (which is good, I guess)… but we don’t know why it went up. And we don’t know why it’s going down in most places.Report
I’m not sure who ever argued FBI stats weren’t reliable so you will have to talk to them.
I do know plenty of people who argued it was liberal policies which seems silly in retrospect.
But I am also not aware of any satisfactory explanation for the pandemic era spike, anymore than the long downward trend.
if you find one, feel free to post it.Report
To be perfectly honest, I would suspect that anyone who would suddenly come up with a reason that we couldn’t trust FBI crime stats was being disingenuous. Similarly, if they asked for evidence of something and then, when presented with evidence, suddenly explained that they weren’t trained to look at evidence. (Why would you ask for it if you knew you couldn’t comprehend it?)
Sort of a “Hail Mary” attempt to avoid a conclusion.Report
It’s entirely possible that Chip doesn’t know who you’re talking about.Report
Covid, clearly. The intensity and scale of the George Floyd protests and the opportunistic looting? Also exacerbated by Covid. Covid is now endemic, treatable and vaccinatable? Society opens up and crime resumes its slow decline.Report
So the lockdowns? Or whatever we had that were called “lockdowns” but weren’t *REALLY* lockdowns?
I’m not quite sure that that’s a sufficient explanation. The opportunistic looting explains, say, the arson numbers but it doesn’t explain the murder numbers.
There were the occasional stories about the “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence but there weren’t stories about how the majority of new victims were primarily house-members.
I mean… if they were, that would be a really, really interesting story. One that I would have liked to have read.Report
I can’t prove it but I really do believe people went a little crazy. Anecdotal but even now in my close-in suburb I see more abandoned stuff on the side of the road, a lot more erratic driving, and other signs of low level chaos that haven’t totally dissipated. Totally unfalsifiable but I think if George Floyd was killed in May 2019 whatever happened would have been localized like it was in Ferguson in 2014 and Baltimore in 2015. I think a lot of people were looking for an excuse to get out and get nuts and this was happened to be it.Report
I think the fact that a cop sat on a guy’s neck until he died and that cop did not immediately get put under the jail made a lot of people figure that we were done, that America was Over, that you could just do whatever you wanted and act however you liked and nobody was going to come punish you for it, and you know what? Those people were right.Report
The historic pause in all social and commercial activity in the country which led to a lot of unemployment and idleness for young healthy but poorly paid workers happened to coincide with an unusual surge in general civil disorder like protests spinning out of control and a bump in crime? And then when that historic pause ended the accompanying civil disorder steadily dissipated as well? I know correlation isn’t causation but it seems really correlated to me.Report
“and vaccinatable”
Not based upon folks telling me they’ve gotten covid, confirmed by testing, and are regularly vaxed for it.Report
The vaccine may not make you completely immune to Covid but it turns Covid into, at worst, something that’s about as dangerous to you as a cold is. If you’re very elderly or frail or immunocompromised, of course, that cold remains quite dangerous but for the overwhelming majority of people if you get the jab and keep up on it then Covid just becomes a cold. That’s plenty. People don’t hide inside en masse for fear of getting a cold.Report
That has been my experience. I have two confirmed cases – one before the vaccines and one after the first full vaccine round. That first case was a significant assault on my relatively healthy system, so much so that I ended up having a monoclonal antibody infusion to push past it (right before we were hit by Hurricane Zeta). The second confirmed case – almost exactly a year later, was a bad cold and required regular applications of dayquil and nyquil for about 5 days.
YMMV of course, but the vaccine did what it was supposed to, which i taught my immune system how to better fight COVID.Report
It keeps people out of the hospital so that there are beds for old people and people with compromised immune systems. That’s the big societal reason to do it. I’ve also gotten it twice and while even though my chances of a severe case are really low without vaccination I’d rather do all I can to be certain I won’t be the a-hole taking up space from someone with an acute condition, be it from covid or anything else.Report
Vaccine: “a substance used to stimulate immunity to a particular infectious disease or pathogen, typically prepared from an inactivated or weakened form of the causative agent or from its constituents or products.”
Immunity: “a condition of being able to resist a particular disease ” Tell me how many people get tetanus after getting a a tetanus vaccine, or yellow fever. Reducing the likelihood ain’t immune. Covid vaccines should never have been labeled vaccines, they aren’t.Report
Given tha they are prepared from mRNA of the virus (one of those constituents) and they stimulate immunity (where resistance biologically doesn’t always equal mean not being symptomatic) What would you call them instead? Because they aren’t placebo either.Report
My understanding of the process is there is a complete physical break after sequencing the target protein in the virus. The mRNA is designed and manufactured using the information about the protein, but no actual viral material is used. It’s one of the important safety features of the mRNA vaccines.Report
Breakthrough infections are common in a lot of vaccines, and vaccine trials (at least for entirely novel classes of vaccine, where you don’t have an existing vaccine to compare against) routinely seek to show a reduction in disease incidence and/or severity over placebo.Report
Read your own definition Damon. “a condition of being able to resist a particular disease ” Resist does not always mean completely defeat without symptoms or infection. Amelioration of the symptoms from life threatening to nuisance is an incredible boon.Report
It’s a minor point, but among the many messaging failures associated with Covid, it probably would have been better to revive the slightly antiquated term, Inoculation.
Sure, vaccination and inoculation are nearly synonyms, but vaccination has become associated with immunization against Polio and other diseases rendering immunity. And, further, a strategy of eradication based on immunity.
Whereas a public policy of inoculation to protect individuals against severe cases would have helped with the messaging, and changed the second half of the public policy debate/fiasco from zero covid to personal risk mitigation covid.Report
Covid was a whole “shitshow” of messaging failures. Not to mention the out and out lies well documented, and the panic by the ruling class. Remember the ventilator fiascos? It demonstrated for me that most of them in the administration and bureaucracy were “faking it until they made it.” and were likely not that qualified to actually do their jobs.Report
The Oakland Unified School District Board of Education cancelled it’s December meeting because two directors of it were planning to bring a “resolution” about the Israel-Hamas War to a vote. This resolution would have ended up like a circus.
https://mailchi.mp/jcrc/tell-ousd-no-resolution-716960
The way that the Israel-Hamas War has been playing out in Democratic politics is interesting because the party is really split on the issue. Both the Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian forces within the Democratic Party are using it as a way to enforce boundaries.Report
What an odd phrasing…
Report
The year is 3403. Crime is legal, and cop’s are illegal. Only one man is willing to break the law to make the law legal again: Crimecop.Report
Put a chick in it!Report
News came out that Mike Johnson and his then teenage daughter were profiled on a German TV special on purity balls.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/speaker-mike-johnson-daughter-profiled-attending-purity-ball/story?id=105785626
This is one of the areas where my side can get inconsistent. We recognize the cringe and sexual double factors of purity balls and Ultra-Orthoodox modesty clothing, with their being a minor media genre that features young Ultra-Orthodox Jewish rebelling against their restrictive communities, but when it comes to Muslim modesty clothing something switches in the brain and many liberals start going on about “diversity symbols.”
Another way to put this is that with Evangelical Christians and Orthodox/Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the presumption is seen as coercion while with Muslim women, the presumption is that they are wearing the modesty clothing on their free will rather than being coerced to do so. There is no factual basis for either assumption. My guess is that since Evangelicals are White and Jews at least code white, the belief is that they need to embrace modernity while since Muslims are not white, they gain immunity towards modernity.Report
We always knew it would come to this:
GREAT BARRINGTON — The plainclothed police officer who entered an eighth grade classroom to search for a book wore a body camera and recorded the incident, leading to more legal questions and concerns.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocates say they are alarmed by the recording, as well as the entire Dec. 8 incident that took place after classes let out at W.E.B. Du Bois Regional Middle School.
…
They also say they cannot recall any instances of police going to a school to search for a book. Schools and libraries have internal procedures for book challenges.
“That’s partly what is so concerning,” said Ruth A. Bourquin, senior and managing attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts. “Police going into schools and searching for books is the sort of thing you hear about in communist China and Russia. What are we doing?”
https://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/southern_berkshires/great-barrington-gender-queer-book-police-ban-classroom-du-bois-middle-school-aclu-rights/article_14ba4abc-9eb9-11ee-83c9-0b3ff1c1b9dd.htmlReport
More documents being released that give evidence for a lab leak.
Yeah, yeah. “At this point, what difference does it make?”Report
Once again.
Is the Daily Mail a trustworthy source of information?
Is their assertion corroborated by other trustworthy sources of information?Report
They get into this into the article!
Here’s the takeaway that involve only matters of fact and not matters of opinion:
There are documents that have recently been released through FOIA.
The ECcoHealth Alliance has officially claimed that statements from these documents have been taken out of context and point out that the project discussed in the documents was never funded by DARPA.
Those are both matters of fact.Report
Uh huh.
So we are not being asked to trust the source of the information, but instead you want us to look at the original documents and decide for ourselves?Report
If you don’t trust the source and you don’t want to look at the original documents, I suggest trusting the government.Report
I never said I didn’t.
That was my question to you-
Do you trust the source? Should we trust the source?
Or rather, are you asking us to go straight to the documents and decide for ourselves?
You came here and presented this story. What is it that you are asking of us?Report
What do you mean? I believe that there were, in fact, documents that have recently been released through FOIA.
Do you not believe that there have been documents recently released through FOIA?
I believe that the EcoHealth Alliance has denied that the documents refer to something that happened but say that the plan was never funded.
Do you not believe that the EcoHealth Alliance has done so?
The editorializing? I don’t “trust” the editorializing.Report
OK so you want to talk about the documents themselves. Fine lets do that.
Lets leave aside questions about the veracity of he source, and focus on the documents themselves.
First off, are these documents real? Are they forged or redacted or altered in some way?
Are they complete? Are there others which might cause a different interpretation?
Last and most importantly, do you even understand them? Can you understand the words printed on the page in a manner sufficient to draw a conclusion about the lab leak theory versus wet market theory?Report
The Daily Mail isn’t the source.
This is the organization that Eco Alliance is referencing:
https://usrtk.org/about-u-s-right-to-know/
Multiple other organizations are going through the FOIA releases… hopefully one that you approve of will also go through the documents. Maybe one that pushed the Lancet letter as ‘True Science’.
There’s more coming out … and seriously, Occam’s Razor is sharp.Report
First off, are these documents real?
I don’t understand what you mean by “real”.
Do you mean “did the government release them as the result of a FOIA request”?
Yes. I believe that the government released these documents as the result of a FOIA request.
Is this in question?
Are they forged or redacted or altered in some way?
I suppose they could be. Is the implication that the government is lying about them or that the people who released them after receiving them from the government has changed them?
Last and most importantly, do you even understand them?
I certainly understand them enough to say “golly, this looks bad”.
The good news for you is that EcoHealth Alliance is already denying that the information in the documents is accurate.
And let’s get to one of the meta-questions:
Do you trust *ME* more than the links to the documents in question?
If not, I’d suggest clicking the links and reading it for yourself.Report
There is a “trove” of documents.
Did you read them?
Can you explain to us what they say that causes you to say “golly, this looks bad”?Report
Did you read them?
I read some of them.
Can you explain to us what they say that causes you to say “golly, this looks bad”?
Sure. Most of what I see that looks bad is summarized here.
Would you like me to copy and paste excerpts from that webpage for you or would you prefer to read it for yourself?Report
First, and again, are you relying on the expertise of your source, or are you relying on your own understanding of the matter?
Second, can you lay out in your own words why your link makes the zoonotic theory less credible and the lab leak theory more credible?Report
First, and again, are you relying on the expertise of your source, or are you relying on your own understanding of the matter?
For what? The stuff that makes *ME* say “golly, this looks bad”? I am making one assumption:
1. These documents were, in fact, the ones delivered by the FOIA
From there, I am able to look at the stuff and say “golly, this looks bad”.
Second, can you lay out in your own words why your link makes the zoonotic theory less credible and the lab leak theory more credible?
It’s not that it makes one more credible and the other less credible. I disagree with that framing. It’s that it’s evidence for labs studying stuff exceptionally similar to the SARS-CoV-2 and how someone suggested that this be deliberately studied at BSL-2 level labs instead of BSL-3 or BSL-4 labs because of the convenience of doing so despite the increased risks of lab leaks.
If you want to jump to “but that’s not *PROOF*”, know that I’ll just say something like “I’m pleased that we’ve moved from you asking for evidence to asking for proof”. So if you want to avoid that, you probably want to take a different avenue.Report
Your very first comment was “More documents being released that give evidence for a lab leak.”
This is your assertion.
And your support, everything you’ve offered so far, is that because a group proposed, but never performed, a study on Covid-type viruses in the vicinity near where Covid originated, this “gives evidence for a lab leak”?
That’s it??Report
but never performed
Assumes facts not in evidence.
All we know is that DARPA didn’t fund it.
Unless you have evidence otherwise?Report
“The ECcoHealth Alliance has officially claimed that statements from these documents have been taken out of context and point out that the project discussed in the documents was never funded by DARPA.”
Is there any evidence that the ‘project discussed in the documents’ ever took place?Report
Is “Covid-19” evidence?Report
Um, no. That’s not how evidence works.Report
Mmm.
In any case, these documents from 2018 say “we should test a virus that does X, Y, and Z at Site S.”
In 2019, a virus that does X, Y, and Z starts plaguing the world next to Site S.
Bad luck.
I am pleased the EcoHealth Alliance denied that the studies were done, though. That’s an awful coincidence.Report
Correlation (Meaning the likelihood that two things happen together) is not now, nor ever will be causation.Report
Oh, absolutely not.
Indeed, since the correlation looks so bad, it makes sense that it would be covered up and people would be dissuaded from even discussing it.Report
What’s happening now is closer to History of Science work. The pandemic has come and gone and nothing will alter that event. As this moves into the rearview mirror of history, it’s easier for people who were committed to ‘The Narrative’ that made the proximate origins an important political position to take. Good Guys: Zoonotic / Bad Guys: Lab Leak.
And what we’re seeing now is the unraveling of the cover-up. And it really goes back to an origin story of the principle actors in the cover-up going way out over their skis — beyond any plausible Scientific claim — that the origin *had* to be Zoonotic. One by one the actors in that bad episode — the Lancet episode — have been shown to either doubt their certainty (obviously) and worse to have distinctly conflicting interests in shutting down any possible inquiry into the origins.
The ‘trove’ of documents are just the official records that historians (and journalists) use to build new inquiries into ‘what happened’ and ask more questions.
EcoHealth’s position is *not* that they *weren’t* proposing to do the work of synthesizing SARS-CoV spike proteins that would bind to human ACE2 for testing purposes while collaborating with WIV/UNC and others… its that it wasn’t funded, so the plan for doing so could never have ever been acted upon in any possible way. QED.
But, we know that this isn’t entirely how ‘science’ works and we have a confounding vector in that WIV is, well, a Chinese institute that may have its own set of goals and objectives.
We should note that the goal of the DEFUSE project was NOBLE… identify via predictive models how Bat Corona Viruses in S.China could turn into something ‘like’ SARS-COVID-2 and then proactively immunize the bats by synthesizing spike proteins.
The DEFUSE proposal is linked and available… I’d suggest reading starting at p.9: SARSr-CoV _QS detection, sequencing, and recovery_
https://drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/main-document-preempt-volume-1-no-ess-hr00118s0017-ecohealth-alliance.pdf
It certainly doesn’t prove that a lab leak happened, it just shows that the people who published the Lancet Article that became the ‘backbone’ of the Zoonotic Narrative were interested in doing ‘gain-of-function’ research on the very virus that developed a unique furin cleavage particularly amenable to ACE2 receptors in humans.
But, as Ecohealth points out, the project wasn’t funded… so it never happened.
And, given the stakes, I doubt the Chinese will ever allow for a ‘trove’ of information to be searched via FOIA requests… but as the need for the Zoonotic Narrative to have political salience fades, prepare for the ‘everyone knew’ it was a Lab Leak phase.Report
Well, OK, same question for you as Jaybird above.
Have you read enough published documents regarding Covid origins and can you understand them in sufficient depth so as to rule out the zoonotic theory, and can you explain your conclusions to us?
Then can you explain why your position is at odds with the majority of experts who actually study this?Report
Yes, I’m confident that I understand what I’ve read and that what I’ve written on the subject is accurate.
But, It’s a pity you haven’t read what I’ve written nor what has been published.Report
I have, its just that you keep repeating assertions of conspiracies and coverups without much in the way of support.Report
Half of the intelligence apparatus also believes that the lab leak is more plausible than zoonotic.
This isn’t ‘fringe’ it’s debated among and by experts.
No one is ‘asserting’ conspiracies… people are reporting on what actors in the Covid-19 response team responsible for getting their ‘view’ of the origins published in the Lancet said behind the scenes based on documents provided by the US Government.
You should read it, it’s good investigative journalism.Report
What I’ve read is that two think the lab leak theory is more plausible, while five do not.
The 10-page report said scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology did conduct research on coronaviruses, in some cases had inadequate safety measures and had genetically engineered coronaviruses. But the intelligence agencies said they have found nothing that tells them that work at the laboratory caused the pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/us/politics/covid-lab-leak-wuhan-report.html
Which means to me that the actual cause is still not known and maybe never will.
But in any event, Jaybird’s link doesn’t do anything to move the needle one way or the other. It just repeats what I snipped from the NYT article.Report
If I accept “lab leak” do I also have to accept “engineered gain of function”?Report
No… just would want to understand which process was the weak link and how the virus escaped.Report
Which would get you what, aside from a definitive responsible arty? And to what end?Report
I’d like to know if my tax dollars are subsidizing overseas experiments that get loose, kill millions of people, and cause a massive economic and social crisis. If that’s what happened, and I have no idea if it is, it seems like it might be worth reconsidering the policy choices.Report
We already know the Wuhan center got NIH funding at various times. This document tells us that no one had funded them to do the work that would have intentionally created Covid. SO even if they did, there’s no policy change to make outside “Don’t fund China.”Report
If you only read one article about how the Right-Wing is “weaponizing antisemitism” this weekend, be sure to read that one from Vox.Report
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I admit: I don’t understand this variant of protest.
I can understand protests that make the powerful people upset. Heck, it might even change something.
But doing this to normies? Why in the hell would you do this to *NORMIES*?Report
It is page 1 of the activist’s guide to losing friends and alienating people.Report
Because the normies keep electing the people who are doing the things being protested against. Change enough of their minds and you might just change the politicians.
And really this is no different then crossing the bridge to Selma, except there’s
No Bull Conner to call out the dogs and the fire hosesReport
Change enough of their minds and you might just change the politicians.
How many minds were changed this day, do you think?
How many Chicago politicians will get swapped out, do you think?Report
It isn’t about changing minds. It’s about calling attention to the problem. None of the protesters at O’Hare (or in Selma, or in the halls of Columbia decades ago, name your protest) thought they were going to immediately change minds. They were just going to get headlines, perhaps awake some concern or even impatience…and then maybe things might change. Sometimes it works.Report
“We will cause chaos in your life until we get our way” strikes me as apt to backfire.
But, hell. It worked in Selma.Report
Of course it’s apt to backfire. Check out the dogs and fire hoses; check out the “four dead in Ohio;” check out the World Trade Center. They all got your attention, didn’t they? The results, for the folks involved (on either side) might not have been predictable, but things were shaken up. That’s the goal. “The status quo is untenable; rattle the cage!”Report
Its useful to compare street level protests to Congressional protests, like Tommy Tuberville refusing to confirm military officers, or Republicans threatening to default on the debt.
Both are pretests and protests have a lot of different purposes.
One is to display power- “We have the ability to shut things down if we aren’t dealt with.”
Another is to rally the faithful- “Look at how many others feel the way you do!”
Another is to do as you say, to force the issue to the forefront and make people talk about it.
There isn’t really any magic technique that assures ultimate victory but combined with a lot of other tactis protests can be useful.Report