Looking on the bright side

by liberal japonicus

I suppose it is that everyone will learn their Greek alphabet
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/26/the-guardian-view-on-the-b11529-covid-variant-caution-needed

Just in case you need a refresher

Haven't had very much discussion here lately, so an open thread for anything about Covid that has caught your eye. I hope I won't regret putting this up.

Comments

[wj]

The areas of this country with low vaccination rates (percentages in the 40s) are a problem. But there are big chunks of the world where rates are more like 5%. Not from idiotic refusals, like here. But just due to lack of vaccine, lack of infrastructure to store, distribute, and administer it, etc.

Those places will continue to provide reservoirs to generate new variants, until we get them help. How long will it take us to recognize where our self-interest lies?

[Hartmut]

To be cynical, the US going Tokugawa will be more acceptable to certain influential circles (and their rabid base) than providing help to 3rd world countries.
Not that it would work, given that the virus is already in-country and the same people are fundamentally opposed to effective countermeasures out of ideology and/or short term 'economic' thinking.

[noonithinkisinmytree]

Sondheim is dead.

Looking on the bright side, the sun will rise in a little over an hour here as if darkness hadn't won yet another one.

[Girl from the North Country]

What wj said @ 09.44

[liberal japonicus]

How long will it take us to recognize where our self-interest lies?

Forever?

[JanieM]

As usual, it depends on who you mean by "we," and what you mean by "self-interest." It has been clear for a long time that as between "liberals" and "the right" in America, one side's definition of the other's self-interest doesn't coincide with the other side's own definition. Ditto for any definitions of collective self-interest.

Is it in "our" self-interest to have a world full of safe, reasonably healthy, reasonably happy people? Apparently a lot of people think not; they seem to think it's better to have a world where the strong and fit amass most of the wealth and rule over the peons.

Etc.

[russell]

my wife called her brother on Thanksgiving. he's retired and plays a lot of pickleball.

one guy he plays with regularly is a Trump supporter. a very nice guy, one on one, always helping out folks who are learning the game.

he is not vaccinated. he's had Covid twice, and thinks he now has pretty good natural immunity. the fact that his first round of Covid didn't protect him from his second round of Covid doesn't seem to register with him.

he's not categorically against getting vaccinated, but is "waiting for more information". unclear what information, exactly, just "more".

a hell of a lot of people are just not gonna get vaccinated. period. some of them are into the whole paranoid thing, but I think most of them just don't take it all the seriously and are fine with just taking their chances. regardless of whatever risk that presents to other people.

the most prudent thing might be to start sending vaccines to places where folks have the desire to get vaxed, but simply don't have access. at least they'll use them.

Covid appears to be a pretty adaptable virus. it's probably gonna be with us for a while.

[wj]

Not that it would work, given that the virus is already in-country and the same people are fundamentally opposed to effective countermeasures out of ideology and/or short term 'economic' thinking.

Any bets on how soon the Fox talking heads start suggesting that, since the omicron variant was first identified in South Africa, true (white) Americans can't be infected? So any measures to deal with it are pure socialist anti-Americanism.

[Hartmut]

The bet should rather be, whether they will blame the African n-words first for ruining all the successful efforts by the likes of deSantis etc. or downplaying the whole thing (as you suggest they'll do). No bet on whether they will blame Biden, that's a given.

[Michael Cain]

I admit that I am a bit confused about urgency. It's so important we have to stop travel on Monday, but not so important we should stop travel the previous Friday?

Granted, experience suggests that by the time new variants are sequenced in other developed countries, multiple cases have already reached the US.

[liberal japonicus]

Janie's point about 'we' is certainly on-point, though with a virus, 'we' is pretty much all of us. Which is why my answer to the question is 'forever'...

[Girl from the North Country]

Of 600 passengers flying from SA to Amsterdam, 61 tested positive for Covid, of whom 13 had Omicron. And you have to assume that the passengers were mostly (or all?) vaccinated. But someone has just told me they heard an interview with the South African doctor who first identified a patient with Omicron, and she said in her experience of the cases she has seen so far that although it is obviously super-transmissible, the symptoms do not appear to be too dire (extreme exhaustion, though). FWIW.

[GftNC]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/south-african-doctor-raised-alarm-omicron-variant-says-symptoms/

[Girl from the North Country]

Just tried (twice!) to post link to report on that South African doctor story, and it looks like I am again being prevented from posting links, now even when I post as GftNC. Rats!

wj -- fixed!

[GftNC]

Testing, one two three:

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safrican-doctor-says-patients-with-omicron-variant-have-very-mild-symptoms-2021-11-28/

[Girl from the North Country]

Oh, I changed to another link, and this time it worked. Phew.

[CharlesWT]

Omicron, the moronic variant...

[cleek]

i'm shocked it took me 50 years to learn this:

O = O-mega
o = o-micron

big O, little O.

d'Oh.

[Russell]

There is also epsilon, which translates to “hairy e”. As opposed to eta, which is perhaps bald?

[wj]

And if we run out of Greek letters, we can always make use of some of the more obscure letters in the Latin alphabet. For example:
þ thorn
ʒ ezh

Did you even know the Latin alphabet had more than 26 letters?

[liberal japonicus]

I think the first one is actually an Old English rune that was used by missionaries and the second one was a variation of z that got picked up for stenography.

Then there is the story of the ampersand
https://www.dictionary.com/e/ampersand/

[hairshirthedonist]

big O, little O.

d'Oh.

Thanks. Now I feel stupid, too.

[wj]

I think the first one is actually an Old English rune that was used by missionaries and the second one was a variation of z that got picked up for stenography.

lj, that's true of the thorn. But it is still in use today in Icelandic.

As for ezh, it is currently used in Skolt Sami (in Finland) and Dagbani (in northern Ghana).

I've actually come across another handful of obscure Latin letters, thanks to a project I've been on these past few years. (And don't get me started on the diacritic marks -- 20 different ones! -- that get used with the Latin script.)

[nous]

Thorn and yogh were medieval/early modern letters used in Middle English. Thorn dates back through Anglo Saxon and is thought to be part of the Elder Futhark (because it features in the Younger Futhark and is in the Old English, Old Icelandic, and Old Norwegian rune poems.

[Pro Bono]

Historically, ezh and yogh were distinct characters, yogh deriving from 'g'.

But early Scots printers used ezh for yogh, resulting in the names Dalziel, pronounced Dee-el, Menzies, traditionally pronounced Ming-iss, and MacKenzie, once pronounced MacKenyie.

[JanieM]

(lj: This isn't about COVID, but there's not a recent fully open thread so I thought I'd toss it out there. Feel free to delete if you want.)

This article about a fight over a proposed solar installation in Nevada made me think of Michael Cain's mention of how much power the west already gets out of renewables.

Not an easy process, balancing competing goods. Or figuring out where straight NIMBY-ism ends and genuine concern for fragile environments begins.

We just had a referendum in Maine where some of the same issues were at play.

[JanieM]

Btw, that Globe article ends with this:

“It felt kind of like the goal of opposing the transmission line was really just NIMBY-ism,” O’Neil said. To him, the vote for climate was a vote to allow the transmission line to be built.

This is just a simple-minded smear of people the guy disagrees with.

The proponents of the power line spent a staggering amount of money campaigning (several multiples of what the opponents spent), fostering a powerful suspicion (in me, anyhow) that the "clean energy" plug was mostly a front for a process that was going to put a lot of money in someone's pockets, and that someone would not be the ratepayer. They want this project desperately and I find it hard to believe that it's climate change they give a shit about.

Furthermore, Central Maine Power, one of the major players, is widely despised in Maine for the way it treats customers and for some major glitches that have happened over the past few years. When I moved here it was a Maine-based company; now it's owned by some outfit based in Spain and I don't think they give a flying banana about Maine or clean energy.

Finally (for now), one of the other major players is Hydro Quebec, which has a bad track record with First Nations people, who (along with the Maine tribes IIRC) came out against the project.

"We" have to do something about climate change (though I'm not optimistic that we will). I don't find it easy to know whom to trust when it comes to deciding whether a given measure is really going to further that goal.

[nous]

I think a lot of the action in renewables is just a retooling of the same approach that frackers have been using, and the capitalist underpinnings are the same, just overlain with a layer of disaster capitalism to grease the wheels.

I'd really like to see some sort of move to require corporations working in renewables to operate as B-corps in order to force them to operate on additional principles besides stockholder value.

[CharlesWT]

Teenagers are making out in the job markets. Last July the unemployment rate for them was 9.6 percent. The last time it was lower than that was 1953 when it was 8.6 percent.

[cleek]

thanks a lot, Biden.
/spits.

[wj]

(Going with the "open thread" part, and ignoring the "about covid" part)

Another trailblazer has gone. RIP Lee Elder.
https://www.cbssports.com/golf/news/golf-legend-lee-elder-first-black-player-to-compete-in-the-masters-dies-at-87/

[Hartmut]

The Latin alphabet underwent many changes. When the Romans adopted it, C and G were a single letter (that's why the name pronounced Gaius is traditionally spelled with a C) and X,Y, and Z are at the end because they were additions to transcribe Greek loan words and names. Emperor Claudius tried to introduce three further letters but they didn't catch on. The typical Latin ending -us was originally spelled (like in Greek -os). The Romans reanimated the digamma as the letter F while the ph that later became the standard transcription for Greek phi was in Republican and early imperial times just an aspirated p. The K served no real function (because C too that role) and occurs only in very few old words (e.g. Kalendae => calendar). CH was not the equivalent of Greek chi since Latin simply lacked that phoneme. It was used to transcribe chi but was pronounced as K.
R and S must have been extremly close for Cicero mentions that R spelling of some names (e.g. Papirius instead of Papisius) had come up only one generation ago. And H was so weak that it did not even count as a full letter and many people were unsure when to use it at all (e.g. Catull mocked people for pretentiously overusing it because they believed it sounded educated and fashionable. Falsely adding or dropping it is among the most common spelling errors in classic and medieval Latin).
In other words, the Latin alphabet is a pure ramshackle bastard. No surprise that so many languages put highly different phonemes on the letters and lagged in adapating the spelling to shifts in pronunciation (Icelandic is an extreme example, and to me Faroese sounds like Icelandic additionally raped by Danish tongues).

[wj]

The history of the Latin script is all about adapting to new people and places. First, a couple of millennia ago, the Roman Empire (and Christian missionaries) spread it across western and northern Europe. 500 years ago, new empires (and more missionaries) spread it around the world. All those missionaries wanted to teach their holy books in the local language(s), which typically weren't written at all. So they came up with modifications to deal with phonemes that their own (European) languages lacked . . . and Latin never dreamed of.

When you think about it, it's an impressive feat. One no other script has come close to matching. (FYI, the Latin script is used for over 400 living languages. The closest rivals (Cyrillic and Devanagari) don't achieve double digits.)

[cleek]

being the official script of millennia of highly-successful empires has its perks!

[Michael Cain]

...how much power the west already gets out of renewables.

Anyone who's flown into Denver or Las Vegas or San Diego on a sunny afternoon does wonder about why we're building PV solar farms out in the desert instead of on all those naked roofs.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Pahrump, Nevada.

Pahrump?

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nevada-dead-candidate-20181106-story.html

It's kind of a hostile environment for everything civilizational, 'cept for rattlesnakes of the two-legged variety:

https://www.fox5vegas.com/news/poof-dirt-causing-problems-for-homes-in-pahrump/article_1c8b7028-d040-11e9-a623-6b13fc0e56d8.html

I understand that technological change that helps one end of the environmental problem may screw the other end of the problem:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Behind a paywall, that one, but here's another among many on the topic:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/the-dirty-secret-of-electric-vehicles/

You would think this time around mankind could first help Africa foster establish wise use with clean-up and maintenance of the poisons as we start and proceed to exploit resources and cheap slave labor for new uses, with savage criminal prosecution of the exploiters if they fuck it up this time around.

But political corruption and corporate greed, dirty third world hand in dirty western, probably Christian and libertarian, and therefore invisible hand, will win out again, regardless of how good I might feel about the reduced amount of carbon I'm spewing personally once the cobalt is under my hood.

I often think I'd like to live forever to see what the fuckers do next, but I'm kind of getting the idea, given the iterations during my life, and now believe I'll be missing nothing new under the sun.

Sound like codger talk, but really I'm quite young and immature for my age.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

China, of course, exploits ruthlessly right alongside its western counterparts.

They are conservative thataway.

[JanieM]

Anyone who's flown into Denver or Las Vegas or San Diego on a sunny afternoon does wonder about why we're building PV solar farms out in the desert instead of on all those naked roofs.

I was wondering about that in a more general way even as I was writing my earlier comments.

[wj]

Anyone who's flown into Denver or Las Vegas or San Diego on a sunny afternoon does wonder about why we're building PV solar farms out in the desert instead of on all those naked roofs.

I look at the roofs in my neighborhood (with Google Earth, if you must know; some aren't visible from the street). And I'm impressed by how many do have solar panels.

Nowhere near enough, of course. But consider that you have to be willing to invest in something that won't pay for itself for 7-10 years. And how few people seem to be able to plan that far ahead. (See savings for retirement, lack of -- among those who have plenty of cash flow, so they could.) Not to mention how many people move more often than that.

/your compulsive optimism for the day.

[Michael Cain]

I look at the roofs in my neighborhood (with Google Earth, if you must know; some aren't visible from the street). And I'm impressed by how many do have solar panels.

You're in California, right? I understand that Schwarzenegger's push for the "million solar roofs" initiative there made a big difference getting people started, and once people got used to it things kept rolling.

[JanieM]

There's a small solar installation going in on some scrubby land near the interstate, along the route I've been going to help out with the grandkid. It's tiny compared to the one being proposed in Nevada, but as someone who's also concerned about the ongoing loss of habitat and the preservation of relatively untouched land, it seems like a good kind of spot to be using.

It reminds me of my dad, who used to wonder why we didn't use the wide medians of interstate highways (well, they're not always wide, but where I grew up they were) to grow crops.

[wj]

my dad, who used to wonder why we didn't use the wide medians of interstate highways (well, they're not always wide, but where I grew up they were) to grow crops.

My response would be: pollution. Not as bad as when all gas was leaded. But still not wonderful for stuff you are going to be eating. Or food animals eating either.

[liberal japonicus]

no worries Janie, fine to put it here.

Interesting discussion about letters, I'm curious how wj (and others) define something 'as being a part of the Latin alphabet'. I don't think it's wrong to say that it is part of 'the Latin alphabet', depending on how you present it, but I would have never said it that way.

I am reminded of those surveys that ask about the teaching of arabic numerals in school.

[cleek]

is "Latin" the same as the Latin 1 code block?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin-1_Supplement_(Unicode_block)

[byomtov]

Since we're talking about letters, I have a question.

Arabic words written in English are, I guess, transliterations (duh) of the Arabic. Why is the letter "Q" used so often rather than "K" or "C?"(al-Qaeda, Qatar)

Is there some sort of convention that governs this, or is there some sort of nuance of pronunciation the usage is intended to reflect?

[nous]

An omniglot handout for Ancient and Modern Latin alphabet:

https://www.sfu.ca/~ramccall/AncientandmodernLatinalphabet.pdf

Which is, I'm sure, also wrapped up in ISO standards for encoding character sets and in histories of colonialism and the need to translate other languages into languages that use the Western Latin Alphabet. See also scribal training in the Roman church.

[wj]

I'm curious how wj (and others) define something 'as being a part of the Latin alphabet'.

I have tried to be very careful to speak about the Latin script, rather than the Latin alphabet. The later being the 23 letters use in writing Latin itself. (That is, the English alphabet we are familiar with, less J, U, and W.) The Latin script starts from there, but evolves to include a few additional letters, plus a slew of diacritics (as noted above). Most of the languages involved use all of the original 23 letters, and just add various renderings of non-Latin phonemes.

It may be of intetest that the Latin script shares roots with the Greek, Cyrillic, and Armenian scripts. Those did not evolve from Latin, but from a shared ancestor. Which is why they have so many identical letters.

Does that clarify the distinction?

[Pro Bono]

My understanding is that Q is used to transliterate Arabic Qaf. This pronunciation lesson might help.

[JanieM]

My response would be: pollution. Not as bad as when all gas was leaded. But still not wonderful for stuff you are going to be eating. Or food animals eating either.

My dad was a simple guy. It was probably the early 1960s. Awareness of pollution from cars wasn't what it is now. Never mind all the other problems that would stand in the way of growing crops on median strips.

My point, with a little nostalgia thrown in, was: there's a lot of land sitting around (!) that's neither pristine desert nor right in the middle of someone's neighborhood.

[Michael Cain]

My response would be: pollution. Not as bad as when all gas was leaded. But still not wonderful for stuff you are going to be eating.

Medians and shoulders of rural interstates are planted with perennial grasses wherever possible for erosion and run-off water control. Many states allow harvesting of the shoulders -- where they are wide enough and flat enough -- for hay. Medians are generally ill-suited to heavy farm equipment.

[wj]

is "Latin" the same as the Latin 1 code block?

No. What Unicode labels the first "Latin" code block is more accurately "letters, numbers, and other symbols used in English." Thus it includes the 3 letters added for the English language, but not those used in any other language using the Latin script.

[byomtov]

I am reminded of those surveys that ask about the teaching of arabic numerals in school.

A friend who taught law tells of referring a student to a section of the text. When the student couldn't find the passage my friend said, "Near the bottom of the page, where the Arabic numerals are." You can guess the response.

Another linguistic tale was of a student looking at some old English cases, and remarking, "This guy Rex sure was litigious."

[wj]

One thing about massive ignorance, it provides the rest of us with easy laughs. (Except when we have to say, "I could cry!")

[Michael Cain]

What Unicode labels the first "Latin" code block is more accurately "letters, numbers, and other symbols used in English."

More specifically, the very first Unicode "Latin" block had the block name 'ASCII', contained 127 characters, including those with cryptic names like BEL, LF, CR, and ESC. In short, the character set used by the vast majority of American programmers at the time it was adopted.

[Pro Bono]

Near the bottom of the page, where the Arabic numerals are

It was a shock to me when I first went to Egypt and found I didn't recognise the numerals on car number plates.

[CharlesWT]

The first programming I did used the EBCDIC character set.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"One thing about massive ignorance, it provides the rest of us with easy laughs"

and can drive one to drinking al-cohol at the resistance to learning al-gebra.

[Michael Cain]

The first programming I did used the EBCDIC character set.

Technically that's true for me, too, since it was on an IBM mainframe. But my access was using a Teletype machine, and the mainframe converted to and from ASCII for I/O. By the time I got around to manipulating raw bytes, though, I was writing in C on Unix, so it was all ASCII for me.

It's been fun over the years watching programming languages evolve to separate the notion of 'bytes' versus 'characters'.

[hairshirthedonist]

"This guy Rex sure was litigious."

Oh, was it Rex Borowski? That jerk sues everyone!

[cleek]

black men, like white men, are free to use the character set of their choice.

Almost 1 in 10 Black men in the US are held in prolonged solitary confinement in prison at least once before their early 30s – a practice considered torture by the United Nations because of its severe impact on mental health. This is according to an analysis in Pennsylvania, where incarceration rates are representative of the US as a whole.

[Girl from the North Country]

Another linguistic tale was of a student looking at some old English cases, and remarking, "This guy Rex sure was litigious."

This made me smile, as did Hilzoy's recent retweeting of someone, straight after the Mu variant was identified, who asked something like "where are they getting these crazy names from anyway?".

But then I remembered that these are the people who are voting, or not voting, these days, and I stopped smiling. You may well argue that a knowledge of these kinds of subjects is irrelevant to responsible civic behaviour, but it reminded me of this rather resonant recent quote from Ian Leslie, presumably in reply to someone asking the question quoted first:

““Why does it matter if a child knows the date of the Battle of Hastings?” It matters because facts stored in long-term memory are not islands unto themselves; they join up with other facts to form associative networks of understanding”.

[wj]

facts stored in long-term memory are not islands unto themselves; they join up with other facts to form associative networks of understanding

True, but only if you have enough facts in a particular area to form a network. It appears that a depressing number of voters managed to get thru high school without breaching that threshold when it comes to a variety of fields. Instead, their networks revolve around "facts" from Fox commentators. With predictable impact on their ability to interact with reality.

[cleek]

"Abe Lincoln was a Republican! Strom Thurmond was a Democrat!"

[Pro Bono]

I think I mildly disagree with Ian Leslie about the Battle of Hastings. Not many in the UK could tell you the date of anything between then and Magna Carta, so there are few facts to join up.

It seems strange to me that history should be presented as dynasties of monarchs and the battles they win and lose. Most of what actually mattered was the development of agriculture, the spread of diseases, and consequent population growth and decline.

However, the Norman Conquest changed the language we all now speak, so it's worth knowing the date of the Battle of Hastings as roughly the beginning of Middle English.

[wj]

the Norman Conquest changed the language we all now speak, so it's worth knowing the date of the Battle of Hastings as roughly the beginning of Middle English.

On the other hand, someone could take the lesson that immigrants could come in, take over government, and start running the country. Then stay in charge for centuries.

It's silly in the current context, but I could see the demagogues leaping to make use of it. (Fortunately, many of the demagogues seem at least as ignorant of history as their audience.)

[byomtov]

It seems strange to me that history should be presented as dynasties of monarchs and the battles they win and lose. Most of what actually mattered was the development of agriculture, the spread of diseases, and consequent population growth and decline.

Don't leave out trade and technologies, like metalworking, other than agriculture.

On the other hand, someone could take the lesson that immigrants could come in, take over government, and start running the country. Then stay in charge for centuries.

Or they could come in and enrich the language, the cuisine, and the culture in general. Who knows, we might learn something from them.

[CharlesWT]

One of the earliest and most pervasive technologies was textiles.

[Girl from the North Country]

Clearly (and I'm sure it was obvious from what you all know of me that I would think this!) there is much discussion to be had on what the specific "islands" should be that would then "join up with other facts to form associative networks of understanding". I did not necessarily mean that the Latin for "king" and the Greek alphabet would necessarily qualify as desirable facts to be taught in an ideal curriculum, but that very discussion could form a worthwhile topic of a future thread, IMO. To quote just two recurring examples from ObWi itself, "Carthago delenda est!" and "Kill them all, God will know his own": are shorthand (known to all or most of us, so why not for a generation just now being taught?) for concepts that are useful when discussing other, and contemporary, situations.

[Hartmut]

On the other hand, someone could take the lesson that immigrants could come in, take over government, and start running the country. Then stay in charge for centuries.

It's silly in the current context, but I could see the demagogues leaping to make use of it. (Fortunately, many of the demagogues seem at least as ignorant of history as their audience.)

German neonazis do it. I encountered stickers saying that American Indians did not stop immigration and today live on reservations (with the conclusion left to the German reader). This might look absurd to American RWers who consider natives as subhuman savages but it does less so to their German equivalents who often have grown up with the books of Karl May(1842-1912)* who glorified them (at least some tribes) and saw their decline as an undeserved tragedy.

*Although May's books were very popular in the 3rd Reich, he himself was a pious catholic pacifist with no sympathy for jingoism (but very proud of German cultural heritage), so in no way a nazi precursor.

[Hartmut]

I would expect at least a basic knowledge of the Greek letter names (although not necessarily the order) since a significant number of those occur in math, chemistry and physics on highschool level.
Admittedly, I know enough people who successfully finished secondary school but have forgotten about everything they were supposed to have learned in those disciplines (that includes physicists concerning chemistry).

[nous]

On the other hand, someone could take the lesson that immigrants could come in, take over government, and start running the country. Then stay in charge for centuries.

So pretty much every Scottish Historical Romance ever?

To quote just two recurring examples from ObWi itself, "Carthago delenda est!" and "Kill them all, God will know his own": are shorthand (known to all or most of us, so why not for a generation just now being taught?) for concepts that are useful when discussing other, and contemporary, situations.

I expect that most people here will know the historical context for the former, but not so much the latter.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

"Or they could come in and enrich the language, the cuisine, and the culture in general. Who knows, we might learn something from them."

Or, we could do it the American way, jail "them" and detain "their" children indefinitely in squalor and without legal representation -- Hispanics -- in this instance, and yet sit back and enjoy a nice fake cuisine taco bowl because the former conservative hatefest made us hungry.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hes-to-the-left-of-lenin-republicans-fear-cordray-at-fed-would-further-bidens-federal-takeover-of-u-s-banking-system-11638301005

https://news.yahoo.com/lauren-boebert-outrageously-calls-ilhan-234735881.html

Yeah, tell me there won't a savagely violent civil war in every street in this country.

Gunfire is the only language Conservative Movement Republicans capiche.

Speak it.

Put me on an elevator in the Capitol Building with Boehbert and let her shit her subhuman genocidal terrorist mouth in my direction.

Ilhan needs to carry deadly force at all times and Cordary must show for his hearing in front of Kennedy pointing an AR-15 at the latter.

No more.

[wj]

Why do new covid variants keep turning up? Now you could reasonably think that the availability of a large pool of unvaccinated people (whether due to unavailability or idiocy) provides opportunities for the virus to mutate. Or, if you prefer, evolve.

But if you reject the very idea of evolution, that can't be true. So the only alternatives are:
1) decide the whole covid thing is a hoax. Never mind the piles of fatalities.
2) decide that someone, probable a group (of politicians, probably) that you love to hate is creating them deliberately.

And will continue to do so: "Here comes the MEV - the Midterm Election Variant!" Every day, a new level of idiocy appears....

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/the-new-rights-strange-and-dangerous-cult-of-toughness/620861/

Here it comes. David French no less.

All is lost to ignorant subhuman conservative vermin.

If there were a vaccine to combat ignorant subhuman conservative vermin, and Anthony Fauci attempted to administer it, ignorant subhuman conservative subhuman vermin would murder him with their God-given ignorant subhuman conservative vermin weapons.

What does the so-called Left (I mean those left of Lennon but just to the right of Ringo Starr) have in the way of resistance. Maybe we could indulge in some horseshit multi-level marketing, yet another patented manipulative quack American piece of all-American dogshit:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/11/breakaway-movement-gen-z-multilevel-marketing/620592/

We are marinated in crap.

Fuck all Conservative Santas:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/fox-news-santa-shortage-blame-biden

Kill all conservative Robespierres. Or elect them to run what they want to kill, Mlaes little difference in the dead fucking conservative vermin America of stolen elections.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/where-things-stand-november-30-2021-another-jan-6-rioter-runs-for-office-texas-middleton

"Here Comes The MEV"

The White House fucking Trump doctor:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/politics/omicron-ronny-jackson/index.html

Genocidal murderers. Enjoy your tax cuts, moderate conservative assholes.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

He's the leader of one hundred million ignorant murderous genocidal conservative vermin in America, including the both sides do it mealy-mouthed shits:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tested-positive-for-covid-before-biden-debate-not-after-says-mark-meadows-in-new-book?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Why is Biden stopping the flow of fentanyl into this great country of ours when that drug, combined with ivermectin and the bleach and Red Bull cocktail down at the conservative Drink Up and Die Tap are the surest ways of eliminating the murderous enemies of America from the face of the Earth, I mean, besides the God-given NRA-prescribed Second Amendment solutions:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/30/2066826/-Huge-amounts-of-drugs-have-been-seized-at-the-border-and-Republicans-are-very-mad-about-it

Besides, we're restricting supply-side measures to pusher-man subhuman murderous conservative office-seekers via stolen elections, who have killed before and yearn to up the bodybag count.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/4/25/17282064/ronny-jackson-trump-va-opioid-epidemic

[hairshirthedonist]

So, I guess this is open thread beyond COVID now, and probably has been for a while.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kyle-rittenhouse-says-destroying-ar-15-used-kenosha-protest-rcna7204

If I take Rittenhouse at his word on the point that he wants nothing to do with the AR-15 he used to kill 2 people and maim another, is there a lesson for wannabe vigilantes that going out and shooting people might not be the fantastic experience they think it is? If so, will that lesson resonate with any of them?

[wj]

is there a lesson for wannabe vigilantes that going out and shooting people might not be the fantastic experience they think it is? If so, will that lesson resonate with any of them?

Most likely, the lesson they will take is that perhaps Rittenhouse is not quite the hero that they thought he was. More likely that than acknowledge that being a vigilante is not the world's greatest idea.

[nooneithinkithinkisinmytree]

How many AR-15s have been purchased by conservative haters since Rittenhouse went all Rittenhouse a year and half ago?

One down, probably tens of thousands ready to go next time.

Kyle the risen fucking Christ he now is.

If the ilk aren't too busy for the time being burning books in Virgina and elsewhere.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/omar-death-threat-voicemail-boebert

If the caller was a black kid threatening a Republican piece of murderous shit, he's be shot dead by any number of high-integrity fucking conservatives and their cop enforcers.

Conservatives, get yer house straight or I will burn your fucking house to the ground.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

None of this thread is beyond Covid.

It's all right on point as the deadly conservative movement has weaponized Covid against all of us.

Covid's just a another armament in their arsenal.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

Dewormed and deactivated:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/30/2066921/-Lamb-Takes-Sheep-Dewormer-And-Dies

[CharlesWT]

Ivermectin was first developed to treat people. The developer got a Nobel prize for it. After the fact, animals were treated with a people dewormer.

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

So take some and stfu.

[cleek]

But. Clinton. Just. Doesn't. Excite. Me.

[wj]

But. Clinton. Just. Doesn't. Excite. Me.

That's because you aren't a conservative. (Or a reactionary.)

After all, you have only to look back at the 2016 election to see how worked up they got over her. "Excited" would be putting it mildly. ;-)

[nooneithinkisinmytree]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/supreme-court-abortion-roe-mississippi-conservatives

We need a one thousand-fold increase in the ownership of fully automatic military grade weaponry and ammo in this country.

Especially among pregant women who would rather not have rapist creep Kavanaugh and pubic-hair nibbling fuck Thomas determining what they do with their bodies.

Amy is trash.

Place on a bounty on every vermin conservative head in this country.

Collect one million dollars for every hide and scalp harvested.

Birth control is next.

But let's continue speculating on where they might stop.

[cleek]

omicron has landed, in the US that is.

[Hartmut]

One can only hope that it blows up in their faces by overturning Roe just a few months before the next election, thus giving some extra motivation to voters.
But I guess the court will be sly enough to not formally overturn it but to let something like the Texas model through (while also making clear that it cannot be used as a precedent [the same slight-of-hand as in Bus v. Gore] to e.g. undermine the 2nd amendment, corporate personhood, dark money etc.).
Of course some on the Right will not be satisfied with that and demand a formal declaration that Roe is unconstitutional per se (and that this decision CAN be used as a precedent to go after contraception next).

[Tony P.]

The MAGAts stole the SCOTUS fair and square. Just stating the Moderate(TM) position here.

He Who Sits Alone In His Tree warns that "Birth control is next", which may come to pass. But I'm ultimately more worried about the "right to die".

Religious dogma knows no bounds. If the God of Abraham decrees that you can't win, you can't break even, and you can't get out of the game, then His earthly minions will make sure He cannot gather you unto Himself until you have suffered enough. And only they are allowed to define enough.

Roberts supposedly cares deeply about the Supreme Court as an institution. Bollocks. At this point, he can only preserve the respectability of his Court by resigning. Tomorrow. Alternatively, he can make history as the last Chief Justice of the United States.

--TP

[Hartmut]

The Right already considers Roberts a traitor. That's what made it so important for them to get ACB on the court, so he would not be needed in cases where his 'protect the institution' stance would get in the way.

[wj]

Hartmut, see my new post on the subject.

[JakeB]

I remain pissed that they skipped over Xi, probably the coolest looking letter in the alphabet.

[wj]

I remain pissed that they skipped over Xi, probably the coolest looking letter in the alphabet.

Perhaps some concern that it would not be consistently pronounced. Let alone correctly.

[Girl from the North Country]

Also, concern it is the Chinese premier's surname, so even worse than "the China virus"!

[GftNC]

I guess this is still our only semi-open thread, so this, from the NYT, on a Dem pollster's findings after focus groups with people in Virginia who voted for Biden, but then either voted for Youngkin or strongly considered voting for him:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/02/us/politics/midterm-election-polls.html

[CharlesWT]

"I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." —Terry McAuliffe

After being a teacher, coach, and cafeteria monitor for more than a year, many parents resented being told to sit down and shut up. K-12 parents voted for Youngkin by 15 percentage points

Plus you can't depend on the future votes of voters who voted for you because they were voting against your opponent.

[Girl from the North Country]

The pollster seemed to find that the no. 1, 2 and 3 reasons for the Youngkin vote were to do with economic anxiety, and the feeling that McAuliffe (and the Dems) did not sufficiently address it.

[cleek]

it's hard to address things that might not actually be true.

the unemployment rate is very low, and has returned to pre-COVID levels for most (all?) demographics. inflation is not actually all that high (despite the GOP's contrived wailing). yes, there's a goddamned worldwide pandemic on which creates shortages for some things - but there's also high demand for those things because people have money to buy them.

[wj]

it's hard to address things that might not actually be true.

It is hard to actually do something (or lay out a plan for doing something) about things that aren't true.

But it is possible to address, that is, to speak about, things that voters are concerned about. For example, you could say that rising prices, which are a problem, are due to shortages caused by global supply chain issues. And that, as governor, you aren't really in a position to do anything about bottlenecks elsewhere in the world. But that, if elected, you will be working with the Federal government to deal with it. Carefully without mentioning that the Federal government doesn't have any quick fixes available either.**

Then you go back to talking about what has already been done.

** And if they did, the opposition would fight tooth and nail to keep them from doing so. True, but not helpful to point it out.