Scott Morefield
@SKMorefield
·
Mar 29, 2021
Here, President Biden begs states that have lifted mask mandates to put them back in place. Based on his assumed 'logic,' you'd think that states that have lifted mandates or never had them were drowning in dead bodies and overcrowded hospitals. Is that the case?
THREAD:
Wait two weeks, they always say. Well, Texas ended its statewide mandate well over two weeks ago. By now, hospitals and funeral homes should be overwhelmed, right? Nope, not even close.
South Dakota never had a mask mandate and is widely considered the most maskless state in the union. Yet, their recent curve is remarkably flat (this is similar to surrounding Montana and North Dakota as well). It's almost like viruses are gonna virus, regardless of what we do.
Georgia never had a statewide mask mandate at all. At this point, things there should be pretty close to an apocalypse that makes "The Walking Dead" (minus the zombies) look like child's play. Or not.
Tennessee, my state, never had a mask mandate either. Sure, we had something of a casedemic, but things also never got close to getting out of control - and the curve has been more than flattened. How on earth did this happen without a statewide mask mandate?
On the other hand, masked-up New York is leading in new cases and hasn't really had much of a downswing. It seems like if masks were the answer, New York would be doing better, doesn't it?
Same with mask-loving New Jersey. These two states (New York and NJ), by the way, also LEAD THE COUNTRY in deaths per million. People always say that without masks things would be worse, but truly, how much worse could it get than #1 and #2? //
RiverRev
19 hours ago
This illustrates my assumed untold truth in this pandemic: we cannot single anyone out, ie, discriminate; so all of us must suffer. We must all wear masks because we cannot single out the diabetic, or hypertensive, or obese one. God forbid that COVID affects any ethnic group over another! It is sheer idiocy that we must all suffer because we cannot be honest and tell the old, sick, and infirm to mask up while the rest of us work through this.
The New York Times
@nytimes
Mike Pompeo is emerging as the most outspoken critic of President Biden among former top Trump officials, ignoring, much as he did in office, the custom that current and former secretaries of state avoid the appearance of political partisanship. https://nyti.ms/3ruQB49 //
🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸
@mrddmia
Dear @nytimes:
Secretary of State @HillaryClinton ran for President after leaving office.
After her stunning defeat to a political novice (Trump), she’s been an outspoken critic for 4 years (and counting).
And former Secretary @JohnKerry hasn’t shut up.
But besides them ... //
Matt Whitlock
@mattdizwhitlock
Replying to @nytimes
What former Secretaries of State have avoided political partisanship?! Hillary Clinton? John Kerry? Colin Powell who has endorsed every Dem for 20 years? Albright called Trump a fascist.
Only recent Secretary of State to respect this “custom” is Condi Rice. //
Plus, we should note that six past secretaries of state – Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan – all went on to be elected president and multiple others ran for president. But let’s not tell the “presidential historian” about all that.
But nice try, New York Times. Maybe make the naked partisanship of your own a little less obvious the next time.
Two Centuries of US Military Operations in Liberia: Challenges of Resistance and Compliance
By Dr. Niels Stephan Cato Hahn / Published March 31, 2020
Book cover with the title Two Centuries of US military Operations in Liberia: Challenges of Resistance and Compliance by Dr. Niels Stephan Cato HahnLiberia is the country in Africa where the United States has the most extended history of military engagement, and each intervention is layered on the experience of previous interventions. Over the years, the interventions have become more comprehensive and sophisticated, and Liberia can be considered an essential case for the general study of US military interventions in Africa. This book reviews the history of the United States-Liberia relations from the early 1820s to 2015, with particular attention paid to the role of the US armed forces. Contrary to most literature on the genesis and development of Liberia, this book demonstrates how US military power has been the primary influence shaping Liberia's history. This includes the role played by the US military in the founding of Liberia, the protection of the country during the European formal colonial era, multiple covert operations in securing US-friendly administrations in Liberia, and direct military interventions when necessary to secure American interests in the region [Niels Hahn/ 2020 / 381 pages / ISBN: 978158566304 / AU Press Code: B-164]
As it turns out, the federal government is still incompetent, and Biden’s only real contribution to vaccine distribution has failed. The program is now being reconsidered.
POLITICO
@politico
The Biden administration is rethinking a costly system of government-run mass vaccination sites after data revealed the program is lagging well behind a much cheaper federal effort to distribute doses via retail pharmacies. //
Who could have possibly foreseen this? Well, except Donald Trump and every other critically thinking person on the planet. State, local, and private entities already had the infrastructure setup, whether it was an already existent state health center or a pharmacy with the current staff to give vaccines. Republicans knew that which is why they prioritized the development and initial procurement of the vaccine. They didn’t then try to set a bunch of rules and jam down a federally controlled distribution process. That has led to the United States being one of the best countries (and certainly of our size) in the world at getting the vaccine into the population.
In other words, Trump’s plan succeeded, and all the hysterical narratives about him “not doing anything” by leaving it to the states was nonsense. Further, Biden’s promise to get 100 federal sites up and going never even materialized. The last count I heard, there were under a dozen open.
‘When I saw what happened in New York City, almost over-running of our healthcare systems, and that’s when it became very clear that the decision we made on January 10 to go all out and develop a vaccine, may have been the best decision that I’ve ever made with regard to intervention as the director of the institute,’ Fauci said.
Fauci’s remarks seemed to gloss over the key role played by pharmaceutical companies and Operation Warp Speed – the Trump administration’s program to manufacture, test and deliver vaccines to the public in record time.
Yes, I’m sure no one had thought of needing a vaccine for a deadly, global disease before Fauci’s brilliance came onto the scene. Truly, we should build statues of this man and order a new stock of emotive candles.
To be clear, Fauci had absolutely jack to do with making the decision to start developing or developing a vaccine. To the extent that Trump deserves credit, and he does, it’s because he took the lead to negotiate Operation Warp Speed, which incentivized private companies to research and develop the vaccines we now have on the market. Past that, those individual companies did all the work, which is a testament to our free market system and its benefits. Compare the United States’ speed to a vaccine and our distribution with that of Europe, for example.
What Fauci is trying to do here is take credit for something he had almost nothing to do with. Perhaps he suggested in a meeting at some point that a vaccine would be needed. Again, that probably occurred to a dozen other people in the room as well, but it certainly wasn’t “his” decision to begin development, and he had nothing to do with anything that happened after that as well.
Let me be clear: We should have taken efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus. We cannot, however, jump to the conclusion that all mitigation efforts were effective when, in fact, many are not. The thing about science is that it is never absolute. Science changes, evolves, and progresses. “Settled-science” is not a thing. Questioning data coming from a scientific debate does not make one “anti-science.” Had we simply provided for those who were over the age of 60 and/or had a pre-existing condition we could have avoided the majority of the negative consequences from which we have suffered.
The US has by far the highest number of privately owned guns in the world. Estimated for 2017, the number of civilian-owned firearms in the US was 120.5 guns per 100 residents, meaning there were more firearms than people. The world’s second-ranked country was Yemen, a quasi-failed state torn by civil war, where there were 52.8 guns per 100 residents, according to an analysis from the 2018 Small Arms Survey.
Another way of looking at that: Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population, yet they own roughly 45 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms.
I read this and I have to admit, I am horrified.
These are some rookie numbers. //
The way I see America’s “gun problem” is the exact opposite of the way Vox sees it. I think America’s gun problem comes from the fact that not enough people carry guns at any given time at any given place. An armed society is a polite one, and I have the numbers to back it up.
For instance, did you know that 98 percent of mass shootings that occurred since the 1950s happened in gun-free zones? Did you know that over a million people in Texas are licensed to carry a firearm and that 0.4 per 100,000 have committed a homicide? Compare that to the .99 per 100,000 homicide rate in jolly ol’ Britain where guns are banned.
The fact is, when there’s a gun present, would-be attackers take a good long while to weigh their action with their life and usually they’ll choose their life.
https://www.dps.texas.gov/RSD/LTC/Reports/ConvictionRatesReport2016.pdf
We suspect that closely examining the FSF's own mission statements—as opposed to simply assuming its mission—answers many of the questions about RMS' return. The FSF describes itself as an organization far more concerned with maintaining a part of history it holds dear—and attacking its perceived enemies, whether real or not—than with discovery, outreach, and mentorship to new faces in free software.
why you shouldn't enable auto reboot after a panic.
In a unanimous ruling, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Shawnee State University violated Prof. Nicholas Meriwether’s rights of free speech and free exercise of religion by punishing him for resisting school rules that forced him to address students in the terms of their choosing.
Meriwether, a philosophy professor and devout Christian, sued Shawnee State, claiming that its mandate to use terms that conflict with biology infringed on his religious belief that gender is fixed from the moment of conception.
The court’s decision, written by a judge appointed to the bench by President Trump and issued Friday, upheld Meriwether’s argument.
“The First Amendment interests are especially strong here because Meriwether’s speech also relates to his core religious and philosophical beliefs,” Judge Amul Thapar wrote in a 32-page decision. //
“To accede to these demands would have required Dr. Meriwether to communicate views regarding gender identity that he does not hold, that he does not wish to communicate, and that would contradict (and force him to violate) his sincerely held Christian beliefs,” the lawsuit reads.
The suit claims that “the number of potential gender identities is infinite” and that there are over 100 “different options currently available.”
School officials countered by saying that respecting students’ pronouns is a part of Meriwether’s job, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment. //
Meriwether’s win on appeal, handed down by Thapar, who was rumored to be one of the attorneys on the list to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the Supreme Court, allows him to recoup damages for the school’s decision to reprimand him.
“Nobody should be forced to contradict their core beliefs just to keep their job,” his attorney John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom, said of Meriwether’s case.
Cruz calls the bill a “brazen and shameless power grab,” noting that it would promote widespread voter fraud. It includes automatic voter registration for essentially anyone who has ever interacted with the government. That would naturally include a lot of illegal immigrants who have driver’s licenses, and without strong verification in place, which H.R. 1 doesn’t have, there’d be nothing to stop them from voting.
Worse, as Cruz points out, even though it would still be technically illegal for an illegal immigrant to vote, H.R. 1 expressly removes any liability for doing so. In other words, you can vote illegally with no repercussions. The bill also strikes down all laws at the state level that prevent felons from voting. That’s another attempt by Democrats to stack the deck with voters they perceive would favor them.
Other terrible aspects include the striking down of voter ID laws, which exist in 29 states right now. Ballot harvesting, which has completely tainted states like California, would also be made universal across the country. Cruz uses the example of a political operative going into a nursing home and harvesting ballots only from those who voted for Democrats. There’s no supervision in that case, and unwanted ballots could just be thrown out after collection.
Cruz ends by calling it the “corrupt politicians act” because the goal is to keep corrupt politicians in power. That should be obvious to anyone thinking critically about what all of these federal mandates would mean. Democrats like to spin it as stopping the “restricting of voting,” but their definition of such is basically that any vote they think will benefit them should be counted regardless of its legality. They are also seeking to give machine politics, i.e. ballot harvesting, a dominant role in deciding elections.
The RTO leads to high prices and rolling blackouts.
As Professor William Hogan of Harvard, one of the architects of the Texas system, said in a recent interview with the Harvard Crimson, the state’s electricity market had “worked as designed.” https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2021/2/26/hogan-texas-energy-prices/
Others were upset that rolling blackouts still happened when the auction price was below $9 per kWh. While I am not an economist, it is clear to me that market caps or not, RTOs lead to expensive, fragile grids. It’s not about those crazy people in the Lone State. It’s about the RTO structure. //
Texas didn’t have blackouts because it was unique. It had blackouts because its grid was built on the RTO system. The sooner people understand that fact, the sooner we can do something about the growing fragility of our grids.
Unfortunately, there rarely seems to be any accountability for FAA incompetence. Did any heads roll for its lack of responsive oversight prior to the Collings crash? If so, I haven’t heard about it. This is managerial and cultural rot. If the organization has an overarching culture of individuals not owning problems and fixing them, nothing gets done.
What to do here? First, the NTSB is right to examine this issue, but is constrained in what it can do. To push the FAA into action would probably require congressional heat. But even that sometimes doesn’t yield results, since the agency is famous for ignoring congressional mandates with little accountability. It seems to me no new regulations are required. It’s reasonable to believe that if existing procedures had been followed, the Collings maintenance issues might have been identified and corrected, with the emphasis on might. It’s a better-than-nothing kind of thing. That applies to the Dillingham skydiving crash in Hawaii, too. Maintenance issues with the airplane were egregious and surveillance was nonexistent. Even cursory FAA inspections should have caught this. The FAA needs to do the basic job, never mind an enhanced one. //
I’d rather such a thing come from AOPA, USPA or EAA rather than the FAA. //
Ultimately, Part 91 flight safety depends much more on the judgment, skill and attitude of the pilot than does Part 121 or even 135 flying. In Part 91 flying, almost all the judgments are made in the cockpit without benefit of the overwatch of professional dispatchers, meteorologists and maintenance at the other end of a satellite phone or an ACARS message. We set it up that way. We want it that way. //
I believe the informed consent doctrine applies here. As I’ve reported before, this is how the FAA decided to oversee tourist spaceflight. Potential passengers are informed in detail that the vehicle is not certified and that they’re on their own for assuming the risk. In my view, it’s long past time to disabuse the public of the notion that Part 91 flying is “safe” and/or that the FAA can make it that way. The government can and should impose requirements to reduce risk in design and manufacturing of aircraft, maintenance and operations and adherence to regulations. That includes reasonable surveillance and enforcement. Reduced risk is not the same thing as safe.
So the answer to member Homendy’s question is no, there isn’t a practical way to anoint a Part 91 operation as “safe” because even enhanced surveillance—which the FAA has proven itself incapable of performing—is unlikely to deliver the public’s idea of flight safety, which is Delta Air Lines. Thumbs up to better surveillance and inspections and the FAA doing its basic job of assuring compliance and of enforcing against the really bad operators. We often know who they are ahead of any accident happening. But we should stop misleading the public that flight on Part 91 airplanes represents the same level of safety as airline flying. It does not.
The Cirrus G2 Vision, the World’s Most Popular Jet, Can Fly You Home With the Push of a Button
With its advanced technologies, the Cirrus G2 Vision Jet had the most deliveries of any new business aircraft last year. //
The Safe Return system is available to passengers or the pilot within minutes of takeoff, leveraging the data about the plane as well as the conditions all around it to calculate a new flight plan, avoid any terrain and weather in its path, approach the nearest airport, and complete a fully autonomous and safe landing without pilot or passenger intervention.
Priced between $2.3 and $2.75 million, the G2 Vision Jet’s average range is up to 1,467 miles, with a cruise speed of about 358 mph, which would make a four-hour drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas into a 51-minute flight, or an 11-hour drive from Charleston, SC to New York City into a two-hour flight. Those kind of stats, plus the advanced technology and cabin ergonomics, show why it was the most popular business jet last year.
Claims they remove 99% of viruses are unproven; cheaper air filters are more effective. //
The pandemic has given more urgency to come up with standards, and members are working on them, but Owen says the process could take years.
In the meantime, Zaatari has a simple message for school administrators and parents calling her for advice: stick to the basics. “It’s so cheap to use current proven technologies,” she says. “There’s so much misinformation.”
40,000 lines of flawed code almost made it into FreeBSD's kernel—we examine how.
When directors and producers set out to make a movie, it’s easy to envision they have this perfect idea in their head from the beginning, and that idea is what moviegoers eventually see on the big screen. But that’s just not how the creative process works. From beginning to end, changes both big and small are happening as the finished movie is coming together. This happens most often on the cutting room floor where entire scenes are edited out, but it also happens during filming, when unplanned moments come to light. In these cases, it’s usually the actors who are making slight tweaks to their planned lines. Usually, the director yells “Cut!” after hearing this and informs the actor just to read the line as given. But there are times when the improvised line is so perfectly suited for the moment, it makes the entire scene (and film) better. These famous lines not in the script were simply too good for the director to cut from the film.
H.R. 1 would federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process—which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom. It would (among other things) implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules that occurred during the 2020 election; go even further in eroding and eliminating basic security protocols that states have in place; and interfere with the ability of states and their citizens to determine the qualifications and eligibility of voters, ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, secure the fairness and integrity of elections, and participate and speak freely in the political process.
The latest report is that Wisconsin has joined the ranks of states that will investigate what happened last year by adopting a resolution authorizing an investigation that “would give the investigators subpoena power to compel testimony and gather documents.” That’s at least three states who are keeping the issue in front of the public, counting Arizona and Georgia.
While these actions are excellent, there are three significant challenges that must be overcome in order to restore election integrity and voter confidence in US elections:
Overcoming Democrat attempts to institutionalize election fraud nationwide, as well as their unified resistance to revising state election laws to prevent fraud.
Restoring trust in federal and state government agencies, especially law enforcement, to enforce state election laws to the letter.
Educating the general public about why restoration of election integrity is of vital importance in preserving our constitutional Republic. //
Signing HR 1 into federal law will effectively end our constitutionally-based political system, with all of its checks and balances, replacing it over time with a one-party political dictatorship that would be immune to the outrages of average Americans over capricious authoritarian federal and state policies implemented since corrective elections to replace “elected officials” would be impossible. Third World dictators would be proud.