OK, a Biden party influence is different from an official memo, silly as it was.
I don't know Harris' ACLU questionnaire, but could you just post some quick examples from it that you think are equivalent to an official memo saying "Marxist equity" or "woke gender ideology"?
This is perhaps true in an abstract philosophical sense: there will always be room for doubt in any empirically-based conclusion, but it is not true in any meaningful practical sense. We absolutely can know where it came from. For example, if someone were, presumably at great personal risk, leak genetic evidence of laboratory-held viruses dated well before the pandemic (say, from 2018 or early 2019) that matched early strains of COVID in China (we have their DNA makeup, and have since early January 2020), that'd be dispositive under pretty much any theory of knowledge short of radical skepticism.
The same is true if we were able to find samples from the local wet market from well before the outbreak (similar timeframe) with the exact DNA signature, except this would give us pretty firm knowledge that it was the result of spillover.
Short of these two things, we have to go with the data we have, which is samples taken from the markets early in the outbreak, as well as later samples, and deduction from the genetic makeup of the early virus. These will not give us 99.999999% certainty, the way the two pieces of evidence described above would, but they'll get us pretty close over time. To a large extent, they already have.
It's only a relevant counter if you can give equivalent examples. Then sure, we quibble over their equivalence, but at least we've got something to quibble over. Simply saying "both sides do it" is not really a counter at all, it's the wave of a hand.
If you find a scientist who has published their arguments in the scientific literature -- and there are some who have -- then it will not be hard to find several scientists who've rebutted those arguments in the scientific literature. This is an exercise you can complete yourself, and I would hope that, since you seem to have largely made up your mind, you have done so and merely concluded that the counterarguments were impotent or incomplete.
Ignoring Jay's BSDI, I think one of the differences in Trump Volume II is how many terminally online people he has in prominent positions, including Musk himself. Sure, there were some of them in Volume I, but most of his major people were more old school (and more old). It's probably also a recognition that a large portion of their supporters are so dialed in to right wing media and social media that "woke gender ideology" and "Marxist equity" are perfectly narrowly tailored phrases.
What it affects is going to ultimately be up to OMB. I don't see any indication that it affects Pell Grants, or funds to states generally, yet, but it's vague enough that OMB could shut down anything it wants, so anyone, from contractors to states to individuals, who receives any sort of federal grant money, should definitely be paying close attention.
No one thinks the science is settled. The science is, however, almost entirely pointing in one direction. Who knows what we'll find in a 5 years, or even next month? But right now, there are no good scientific arguments for a lab leak. There are, however, good political arguments for one, and the politicians are putting serious pressure on scientists, which your talk of censorship would suggest you're opposed to, but your continued beating of any talk of scientist with a stick suggest you're actually in favor of.
It's science, so proving without a doubt is unlikely, but we can have a great deal of evidence for and against hypotheses, and right now, we have a great deal of evidence, in the form of cultures from the market and region, and in the actual makeup of the virus itself, that tell us it was almost certainly spillover from the wet market. The CIA releasing its assessment ("with low confidence") as though it outweighed the scientific evidence is ridiculous, but we're in an age when ridiculous is perfectly fine, so long as it confirms my preexisting beliefs.
What would make you believe it was a Nazi salute? Not people who know him saying that's what it was, not him going straight to Germany to hang out with AfD and speak in support of their nationalist message, not the groypers thinking that's what it was. What, then? Would Musk have to tell you himself?
I'm not excluding any scientists. I'm talking about the scientific consensus, based on scientific arguments, which you can easily find on your computer and/or hand-held computing device.
Unrelated, but I have some great photos from a stop at Bretton Woods while driving through New England a few years ago. The floors, especially in the basement level, are uneven, it smells of mildew, and walking around, inside and out, you get a real feeling that it is very slowly crumbling.
It's interesting that political, and now I guess intelligence groups keep saying, "We think (with low confidence) it was a lab leak," but pretty much all of the scientists are like, "There's pretty much no chance it was a lab leak." Not only that, but they keep saying the political pressure from lab leake obsessives is actually making the science more difficult.
Whomst are we to believe, then, a Republican House committee and the CIA, who of course never lies, or the actual virologists and epidemiologists studying the virus and its origins? It's a real dilemma.
Trump is bad, but in liberals' obsession with him has led to them electing an old man in cognitive decline, running a candidate who got 0 delegates in the last primary, just to avoid an intra-primary fight, and just generally being irrelevant at best on most of the issues Americans, including Democratic voters, actually care about.
Hell, the YouGov poll seems particularly friendly to the Dems, and still has them at under 40% favorable (CNN had them at 33% earlier this week):
I wouldn't be surprised to see multiple pushes. I think he'll probably try to do immigration mostly through the Executive Branch, so he gets all the credit for it, so the tax stuff seems like a real possibility. I wouldn't be surprised to see a health care "plan" that's mostly a dismantling of the ACA, some culture war stuff around universities and federal grant money (though maybe he can do that through the Executive Branch as well?), energy sector stuff aimed at encouraging fossil fuel use, budget cuts to everything but defense, increased defense spending, and probably a lot more.
It sounds like Congressional Republicans want to do it all, or at least a bunch of it, in a giant spending or budget reconciliation bill. I'm sure the people who were upset about the giant continuing resolution will be upset about a giant bill doing a million things for the debt ceiling or budget reconciliation or whatever, as well.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
I dunno how to respond to a link to a Wiki talk page, but I can recommend this, and the works cited therein:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
Particularly:
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.01240-24?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGLypleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWomOrcIBe_iUiWbpbj6ZoSFfu-JjoScNehZvizY9avZG96I__pEajP61w_aem_4Dz7htJWLtKLWHfB_GG6CQ
https://ct.prod.getft.io/YXNtLGFhYXMsaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2NpZW5jZS5vcmcvZG9pL2Ficy8xMC4xMTI2L3NjaWVuY2UuYWJwODMzNw.O_lDOw2Z1t6rJr6L4WNDYt28rjYviyiQIL0SZvW8Hw0
along with this accessible counter to the main lab leak arguments:
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/lab-leak-mania
And this more formal one:
https://journals.asm.org/servlet/linkout?suffix=e_1_3_2_15_2&dbid=4&doi=10.1128%2Fjvi.01240-24&key=10.1128%2Fjvi.00365-23&site=asmj
"
Sorry, yes, I should have just said genetic material.
On “Memo: All Federal Grant, Loan, and Financial Assistance “Temporarily Paused””
OK, a Biden party influence is different from an official memo, silly as it was.
I don't know Harris' ACLU questionnaire, but could you just post some quick examples from it that you think are equivalent to an official memo saying "Marxist equity" or "woke gender ideology"?
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
Yes, the FBI and CIA, two sources we should absolutely believe over the scientific literature.
"
and nobody can know where it came from.
This is perhaps true in an abstract philosophical sense: there will always be room for doubt in any empirically-based conclusion, but it is not true in any meaningful practical sense. We absolutely can know where it came from. For example, if someone were, presumably at great personal risk, leak genetic evidence of laboratory-held viruses dated well before the pandemic (say, from 2018 or early 2019) that matched early strains of COVID in China (we have their DNA makeup, and have since early January 2020), that'd be dispositive under pretty much any theory of knowledge short of radical skepticism.
The same is true if we were able to find samples from the local wet market from well before the outbreak (similar timeframe) with the exact DNA signature, except this would give us pretty firm knowledge that it was the result of spillover.
Short of these two things, we have to go with the data we have, which is samples taken from the markets early in the outbreak, as well as later samples, and deduction from the genetic makeup of the early virus. These will not give us 99.999999% certainty, the way the two pieces of evidence described above would, but they'll get us pretty close over time. To a large extent, they already have.
"
I'm not smart enough to figure out whom this is meant to describe, but I am sure there is someone, and it describes them well.
On “The Colombia Gambit”
Dealt himself into like 6 bankruptcies, as all great dealmakers do.
On “Memo: All Federal Grant, Loan, and Financial Assistance “Temporarily Paused””
It's only a relevant counter if you can give equivalent examples. Then sure, we quibble over their equivalence, but at least we've got something to quibble over. Simply saying "both sides do it" is not really a counter at all, it's the wave of a hand.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
If you find a scientist who has published their arguments in the scientific literature -- and there are some who have -- then it will not be hard to find several scientists who've rebutted those arguments in the scientific literature. This is an exercise you can complete yourself, and I would hope that, since you seem to have largely made up your mind, you have done so and merely concluded that the counterarguments were impotent or incomplete.
On “Memo: All Federal Grant, Loan, and Financial Assistance “Temporarily Paused””
Ignoring Jay's BSDI, I think one of the differences in Trump Volume II is how many terminally online people he has in prominent positions, including Musk himself. Sure, there were some of them in Volume I, but most of his major people were more old school (and more old). It's probably also a recognition that a large portion of their supporters are so dialed in to right wing media and social media that "woke gender ideology" and "Marxist equity" are perfectly narrowly tailored phrases.
"
This reminds me very much of something I was just reading this morning:
https://defector.com/the-ghosts-of-new-atheism-still-haunt-us
"
How weird is it that we're now being governed by terminally online people?
"
What it affects is going to ultimately be up to OMB. I don't see any indication that it affects Pell Grants, or funds to states generally, yet, but it's vague enough that OMB could shut down anything it wants, so anyone, from contractors to states to individuals, who receives any sort of federal grant money, should definitely be paying close attention.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/27/2025”
No one thinks the science is settled. The science is, however, almost entirely pointing in one direction. Who knows what we'll find in a 5 years, or even next month? But right now, there are no good scientific arguments for a lab leak. There are, however, good political arguments for one, and the politicians are putting serious pressure on scientists, which your talk of censorship would suggest you're opposed to, but your continued beating of any talk of scientist with a stick suggest you're actually in favor of.
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/20/2025”
Appreciate that the left and the far right have this in common: believing everyone is a fed.
"
Not technically a groyper, but same diff. https://images.app.goo.gl/sNSZQ7TXqgexLj7b8
"
If you think I have any respect for the ADL, it's time to recalibrate where you think I fall on the political spectrum.
"
It's science, so proving without a doubt is unlikely, but we can have a great deal of evidence for and against hypotheses, and right now, we have a great deal of evidence, in the form of cultures from the market and region, and in the actual makeup of the virus itself, that tell us it was almost certainly spillover from the wet market. The CIA releasing its assessment ("with low confidence") as though it outweighed the scientific evidence is ridiculous, but we're in an age when ridiculous is perfectly fine, so long as it confirms my preexisting beliefs.
"
What would make you believe it was a Nazi salute? Not people who know him saying that's what it was, not him going straight to Germany to hang out with AfD and speak in support of their nationalist message, not the groypers thinking that's what it was. What, then? Would Musk have to tell you himself?
"
It is absolutely not worth taking seriously.
"
I'm not excluding any scientists. I'm talking about the scientific consensus, based on scientific arguments, which you can easily find on your computer and/or hand-held computing device.
"
Unrelated, but I have some great photos from a stop at Bretton Woods while driving through New England a few years ago. The floors, especially in the basement level, are uneven, it smells of mildew, and walking around, inside and out, you get a real feeling that it is very slowly crumbling.
"
It's interesting that political, and now I guess intelligence groups keep saying, "We think (with low confidence) it was a lab leak," but pretty much all of the scientists are like, "There's pretty much no chance it was a lab leak." Not only that, but they keep saying the political pressure from lab leake obsessives is actually making the science more difficult.
Whomst are we to believe, then, a Republican House committee and the CIA, who of course never lies, or the actual virologists and epidemiologists studying the virus and its origins? It's a real dilemma.
On “Trump Doesn’t Have a Monopoly on Lawlessness”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is reaching Dubya levels of popularity, and a majority of Democratic voters think the party needs a complete overhaul.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/19/politics/democrats-party-change-cnn-poll/index.html
Trump is bad, but in liberals' obsession with him has led to them electing an old man in cognitive decline, running a candidate who got 0 delegates in the last primary, just to avoid an intra-primary fight, and just generally being irrelevant at best on most of the issues Americans, including Democratic voters, actually care about.
Hell, the YouGov poll seems particularly friendly to the Dems, and still has them at under 40% favorable (CNN had them at 33% earlier this week):
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/the-democratic-party-favorability
On “Open Mic for the week of 1/20/2025”
I wouldn't be surprised to see multiple pushes. I think he'll probably try to do immigration mostly through the Executive Branch, so he gets all the credit for it, so the tax stuff seems like a real possibility. I wouldn't be surprised to see a health care "plan" that's mostly a dismantling of the ACA, some culture war stuff around universities and federal grant money (though maybe he can do that through the Executive Branch as well?), energy sector stuff aimed at encouraging fossil fuel use, budget cuts to everything but defense, increased defense spending, and probably a lot more.
It sounds like Congressional Republicans want to do it all, or at least a bunch of it, in a giant spending or budget reconciliation bill. I'm sure the people who were upset about the giant continuing resolution will be upset about a giant bill doing a million things for the debt ceiling or budget reconciliation or whatever, as well.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.