Dan Savage is having a fight with the Greens (details here), and part of it involves a good look at their perennial candidate, “Dr” Jill Stein. Here’s a taste of her bullshit:
I don’t know if we have an “official” stance [on vaccination], but I can tell you my personal stance at this point. According to the most recent review of vaccination policies across the globe, mandatory vaccination that doesn’t allow for medical exemptions is practically unheard of. In most countries, people trust their regulatory agencies and have very high rates of vaccination through voluntary programs. In the US, however, regulatory agencies are routinely packed with corporate lobbyists and CEOs. So the foxes are guarding the chicken coop as usual in the US. So who wouldn’t be skeptical? […]
For homeopathy, just because something is untested doesn’t mean it’s safe. […]
What a fucking loon.
Trentrunner
Fuck her fucking stupid anti-science bullshit.
Dan Savage’s 2-part takedown of Green Party bullshit is a thing of beauty. Fucking purity scam-artists.
Felonius Monk
Jill Stein is billed as a physician. Is she an M.D. (Doctor of Mendacity) or a D.O. (Doctor of Shit)?
Trollhattan
@Felonius Monk:
She’s Rand RuPaul. I just trademarked that.
Calouste
Munich shooter(s) are apparently white nationalist(s).
Mnemosyne
What really frightens me about the anti-vaxxers is that they seem to have fooled some parents of kids who genuinely need a medical exemption (like for an immune disorder) into going along with them, which is the LAST thing those kids need. Kids who can’t be vaccinated for health reasons really depend on herd immunity to protect them, and palling around with anti-vaxxers puts them at a really high risk of getting sick. It’s insane.
cokane
ha, im guessing deeply anti food GMO too
Villago Delenda Est
@Calouste: Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Villago Delenda Est
@Trentrunner: Savage has been relentless, and rightly so, in calling them on their purity bullshit. The last time we went through this, we got a fucking war in Iraq thanks to the purity ponies.
cokane
fuckin a, at least Nader was good on science issues, iirc
different-church-lady
Because when you’re the presidential candidate of a party hoping to be major some day, knowing whether that party has official stances on issues just isn’t a thing one needs to be bothered with.
David ?▶️Hillary/Harley Quinn 2016▶️? Koch
Who?
Felonius Monk
@cokane:
And that enabled President Nader to do exactly what?
CONGRATULATIONS!
She’s not a …licensed doctor? Please someone say she isn’t.
The Other Bob
I am not voting for Stein, but I do not think her comments make her an anti-vaxxer. What she said in the statement was that having pharma insiders on the FDA board approving drugs diminished faith that those rugs are safe.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Trentrunner: Really the only thing you need to know is this: the Greens actively solicit and receive funds from the GOP to run against Dem candidates, and have since at least the mid-00’s.
Never the other way around.
Says it all, really.
Kevin Robbins
I appreciate this post. I had seen a little about Jill Stein, but hadn’t paid a lot of attention. I have a Green running for Congress in my district (NY-21). I pay a lot of attention to him. Please excuse me for the blogwhoring, but this is a post about the radio show he did for awhile. Not mentioned in that post is that he also gave an interview where he said, “We need guns to defend ourselves against tyranny. If you don’t understand that then you’re not paying attention.” Gun-nuttery combined with condescension. Ummm.
Yes, the Greens will be a viable third party real soon.
Felonius Monk
@CONGRATULATIONS!: She’s a graduate of Harvard Medical School and yes she was a licensed MD but retired about 10 years ago from active practice.
cokane
@Felonius Monk: lighten up francis, cant even give a man a backhanded compliment without a team blue bot popping up
David Hunt
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Her wikipedia page says that she graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1979 and practiced Internal Medicine for 25 years. It doesn’t actually say she was licensed to practice medicine, but I infer that it’s implied…
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane: The dogshit that is Nader can never be forgiven for what he did in 2000. Actively campaigning in toss up states, which gave us a war in Iraq that would not have happened if Gore won.
No forgiveness for someone that evil.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: I resemble that remark. Riding on herd immunity for diphtheria and pertussis, because I genuinely can’t have the vaccine–at least, I had an allergic reaction the last time they tried, and no doctor is willing to try again. And outbreaks caused by idiot antivaxxer parents really scare me.
Mnemosyne
Though, really, Stein is probably going to get even fewer votes in November than she did in 2012, so it’s a bit of nut-picking. Why not tell us what the LaRouchies are up to?
randy khan
@The Other Bob:
What she’s actually trying to do is thread the needle by saying, in essence, that the anti-vaxxers might have a point without agreeing that they’re right. She more or less comes out against mandatory vaccination (a key anti-vaxxer demand) and then says the reason people don’t want to get vaccinated is that they can’t trust the FDA (a key anti-vaxxer view).
So, yeah, she’s not actually agreeing with them, but what she’s doing is saying she understands what they want and doesn’t have a problem with it.
And the particular irony of it is that she’s supposed to be the “pure” candidate, but this is pure only in the sense of being a pure pander to a bunch of crazy people.
FlipYrWhig
Both anti-vaxxers and Purity Progressives free-ride on the social benefits created and sustained by other people’s actual work and pain.
Trollhattan
Germans are responding to the Munich attack(s) as though there’s a Paris-style citywide plot unfolding. Have shut down transportation.
neilcj
This doesn’t read like support for snake oil to me.
Iowa Old Lady
Many anti-vaxxers and Stein voters share the need to keep themselves “pure” while relying on herd immunity to avert disaster. The 2000 election shows us that doesn’t always work.
ETA: Or what FlipYrWhig said.
Roger Moore
@The Other Bob:
She’s not an anti-vaxxer; she’s just pandering to anti-vaxxers. I think there are problems with the way the FDA does stuff, but they fundamentally aren’t about a revolving door between government and industry. The biggest problems we have are a result of the Republicans deliberately hollowing out the regulatory agencies at the behest of regulated industries. We need a real commitment to regulation, including full funding and powers for regulatory agencies.
Felonius Monk
@cokane: :-)
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Notice that I didn’t slam the people who have the actual medical problem. It’s a few overanxious parents who seem to be deciding that if vaccinations are bad for their kids, they’re bad for everyone. It’s like finding out your kid has a milk allergy and insisting that no child should ever drink milk because it’s obviously poison.
aimai
@Trollhattan: Insulting to RuPaul.
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: chasing me down in multiple threads with your childish logic isn’t a persuasive tactic. it just reveals your juvenile nature further. the people responsible for dead iraqis are the ones that ordered bombs dropped. Not some asshole who mucked up an election 3 years prior to any bomb being dropped.
I find your logic especially galling since we’re all voting for someone WHO VOTED FOR THE WAR. Like, I just dont get this halfwitted logic. The bodies of Iraqis is on Nader. And not a speck of blood deserves to be put at Clinton’s feet? And I say this as someone who’s voting Clinton. Seriously fuck off with the grand standing
? Martin
That doesn’t seem like a statement anyone here should disagree with. Does that mean that there are unwarranted vaccines being floated? No, I don’t see that. But are there unwarranted drug treatments being floated out there outside of the vaccine space because of this? Absolutely. Under the current limited regulatory capture, could that change to where we do have unwarranted vaccines? That’s not unreasonable to worry about.
Joel
You could say that homeopathy is as safe as water.
tobie
@Calouste: Where are you getting this information? I just checked the German edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung and all they said is that they are searching for three suspected shooters and that there’s an acute terror threat. 6 deaths reported. The weapons used were long arms, which I gather is either a rifle or a shotgun.
Miss Bianca
A guy who I just can’t stand – because he’s one of Those Guys who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room, and has no hesitation about letting you know it – and is always whining about *something* that got up in the morning for the express purpose of peeing in his Cheerio bowl – has bit the “Hillary is corrupt” meme hook, line and sinker, and has announced he’s voting for Jill Stein. NMFLTG Miss Bianca rather enjoyed ripping him a new one over that.
I’ve had to start pushing back vigorously, on FB and in person, against the Hillary bashing that has made a vanity candidate like Jill Stein look anything like a viable choice for President. I hope to hell Bernie Sanders actually starts pushing more vigorously*for* HRC, and not just *against* Trump. And I would love it if he would just come out and say, “forget voting third-party, people”. I can haz pony now?
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: Indeed, I was agreeing with you (sorry about implications to the contrary).
FlipYrWhig
@Iowa Old Lady: I think yours was better.
Geeno
@The Other Bob:
But they really bring the room together.
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane: There would have been no war to vote for if Nader had not broken his pledge to not campaign in contested states. It’s one thing to stupidly build your third party with a Presidential election in “safe” states that won’t matter (instead of building it properly, at the local level, then the state level, then the national (congressional) level), and quite another to go into tossup states and effectively make it possible for a warmongering asshole to come into power. All because you’ve got the “Nach Hitler, Uns” attitude.
If you think I’m following you around, you’re wrong. I call bullshit when I see it, and you’re spouting purity pony bullshit.
Fuck Nader, fuck Stein, and fuck you, too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joel: Dihydrogen oxide kills!
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
No worries, this is the kind of place where we find ourselves vigorously agreeing from time to time. ?
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m not spouting purity anything, I have never once advocated voting 3rd party. You appear to be intellectually incapable of grasping the nuance of an argument beneath a very basic threshold.
I’m simply arguing that a man is not responsible for actions he didn’t commit. This first mover logic you’re indulging is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen insisted upon. But it’s also transparent you’re not going to apply the logic with any consistency, since a politician who actually voted for it is magically exempted. What you’re doing is just hack IOKIYAD
Citizen_X
@Villago Delenda Est:
In contrast, if Clinton had not voted for the AUMF (not, mind you, “the war”), it would not have made a bit of difference. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor. It was a bit of chickenshit opportunism, mind you, but it didn’t enable the war.
Ditto all the fuck yous.
pseudonymous in nc
Here’s what chafes my arse about the American Greens: the obvious place for them to focus their election funds is on local races, city councils, state legislators, even in presidential years. The UK Greens have one MP for central Brighton but that happened after getting lots of council members elected, usually in crunchy university towns. The Canadian Greens are similar. Yes, I know that ballot access is an issue, but municipal-level elections are often nonpartisan.
Gelfling 545
@The Other Bob: Yeah, they do, because of
this
It’s unheard of here, too. There have always been medical exemptions. It’s one of the reasons it’s so important to have high compliance – so that the medically fragile who cannot be vaccinated are not put at risk. She’s trying to create a false impression here and stir up resentment about immunizations (or else is just ignorant of what a medical exemption is?).
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane: HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSISTING IN BRINGING THE DESERTING COWARD TO POWER. HE MADE THE FUCKUP IN FLORIDA POSSIBLE BY VIOLATING HIS PLEDGE NOT TO CAMPAIGN IN CONTESTED STATES.
Nader has blood on his hands. He is responsible for his actions. His actions made the deserting coward’s selection by the USSC possible.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Fuckin A Dawg.
Gene108
Homeopathy is practiced in other parts of the world, including Germany where it originated, and has its adherents.
There are far worse things out there than homeopathy.
It’s been around for around 200 years.
At least she agrees with science that vaccines do not cause autism.
? Martin
Pro Publica’s online FEC database has switched to cvs downloads because Clinton has been receiving so many individual contributions that it’s too taxing to display them in-browser.
Mike J
@Gene108:
Godwin.
Princess
She not only promotes homeopathy, she wants to pay for it with her single payer healthcare.
I’ll get my water out of the tap, thanks.
Cat48
I cried when my baby girl had to get those horrible shots. Got to do it though.
Tim Kaine is pending on Twitter, but it’s not an announcement. Everyone is bitching bc they want someone exciting, not him! Oh, well, we’ll see.
Cacti
@Gene108:
And bullshit is bullshit, even if it’s popular bullshit.
There are far better things out there than homeopathy too. Like evidence based medicine.
Being old doesn’t mean it’s not bullshit.
MomSense
@Calouste:
Fuck. I think this is the anniversary of the Brevik massacre in Norway.
ETA Should be Breivik
Omnes Omnibus
@pseudonymous in nc: I’ve said this before, but a city like Madison, WI, would a perfect location for Greens to run for city council and school board seats. At the city level, the GOP is nada. The Greens failure to do this is one if the things that convinces me that they are not a serious party.
Bobby Thomson
@Felonius Monk: “retired”
nonynony
@Roger Moore:
Right. And for a purity candidate to be blatantly pandering to people that she knows are full of shit, well, it kind of doesn’t speak well for her.
She’s behaving like a typical politician. But running as a purer-than-the-driven-snow politician. Dan Savage is doing good work keeping this front-and-center for his audience to make sure that they understand that EVERYONE who runs for the office of President in this country is going to be a pandering politician. Unless they’re Donald Trump (who isn’t a politician, but probably manages to fit more pandering into 5 minutes than most politicians manage in a campaign).
laura
My dear aunt’s death was hastened by post-polio complications. She was assisted directly and meaningfully by the March of Dimes.
It’s a shame that it’s true that when we ignore history. We’re bound to repeat it.
I get ugly in response to anti-vax fuckery when it’s based on a feeling and not a medical necessity as when an underlying condition is present.
ljt
OT – Just had a long conversation with my daughter who is a teacher in Baton Rouge. She mentioned a comment one of her colleagues (life-long resident of Baton Rouge, African-American woman) made regarding BLM–that this was the first time she (colleague) could recall a civil-rights movement that did not originate with the church, and that the church(es) have been noticeably silent, not just on Alton Stirling, but on the whole BLM movement. Is this true? Why?
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: Like I said, your intellect is not impressive.
You’re attempting to make a first mover argument which is not a logical argument, especially when determining culpability. Shit, if this logic held, then any contributing factor that preceded the 2000 election is responsible for 100,000s of dead Iraqis. This butterfly-effect logic could be applied to the damn butterfly ballots if you wanted. Or even Bill Clinton for preceding W Bush? Thomas Jefferson for helping found the country that bombed Iraq? You can open the door to blaming any and everything when you indulge this absurd grade school logic.
That’s why actors are responsible for the actions. Noone else.
Paul Begala's Pink Tie
I’m friends with a co-chair of the Green Party here in Houston, and I just smile/nod whenever this person goes Green all over the place. Yeah, I suppose you *can* argue that a vote for Jill Stein in TX isn’t a vote for Trump; but I’ve never seen anyone argue (as this person insists) that HRC supporters are accusing Greens of sexism if they refuse to vote for the woman who can actually win. I know no Dems who would make that case, though I could be wrong.
Cornel West is going to be at the nominating convention here in a couple of weeks. Sylvester Turner >>> Cornel.
raven
@Cat48: There’s not going to be an announcement while this shit is going down in Germany.
RSP
@srv:
Oh come on you chickenshit loser, you can do better than that.
Cermet
@Calouste: FUCK! And here I am going later this summer to an area that is a hot bed for right wing Germans (Really, what is called left wing Germans are bad enough but right wing! Damn, damn, damn!)
Gene108
@Princess:
European countries pay for homeopathy via their government subsidized healthcare.
Calouste
@tobie: Try this video, if your German is better than mine. I can read it quite well, but I couldn’t understand much of the rant, except “Ich bin ein Deutscher”.
Cermet
@Gene108: Worse things out there? Like worse than death!? Homeopathy is taking water and thinking it will cure your child from any illness; which, can led to death. Yes, dilute below atomic level and that will cure what ill’s you. Bleeding (for illness) is even older than 200 years and isn’t justified. No one uses “old” alone to justify treatments; that is just stupidity used by someone who has lost an argument and is unable to just keep their mouth shut.
ANY anti-vac argument leads, again, to some people forcing their children to suffer terrible illness and long term damage and even death. She is an ignorant moron.
Iowa Old Lady
@raven: And Clinton needs remarks to make on the topic, which must change by the instant as information comes out.
RaflW
Probably said already, but WT actual F? Vaccines are OK if a foreign authority says so and it’s voluntary, but the same vaccines aren’t OK here because required?
Loon is right. Or maybe idiot loon.
NorthLeft12
According to Ms.Stein, the US is exceptional….in a not so good way. Hmmm, sounds like someone else who was on a different stage recently.
raven
@Iowa Old Lady: Richard Engel is pointing out some of the aspects of this shooting that are unlike other ISIS attacks. Handguns, they split and fewer casualties.
Trollhattan
@laura:
Spouse’s dad was injured in the Korean war (“conflict”) then while recovering caught polio. The combination weakened him to the point she lost her dad as a young teen. The Salk vaccine could have given him decades more life and perhaps even be a granddad to my kid. (Cigarettes took her other granddad, who made it through war in one piece.)
Rusty chainsaws to anti-vaxxers and their enablers.
Immanentize
@Cat48: It is definitely Kaine.
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane: Nader is an actor. He pledged not to campaign in contested states, then he did. His efforts threw Florida into chaos, and allowed the deserting coward to come to power.
Do you REALLY think that Gore would have invaded Iraq in response to 9/11, had 9/11 even happened on his watch? Recall that Clinton’s national security advisers told the deserting coward transition team that Al Qaeda would be their greatest concern, but they blew them off because “Clinton” and fuckstick wanted a new cold war with China. So they ignored all the warning signs and then, when 9/11 happened IMMEDIATELY started to work on invading Iraq because now they had a pretext, no matter how utterly stupid it was (Saddam was no more friendly with Osama than the deserting coward himself).
Nader’s monumental megalomania made it possible for the GOP to come to power and start a war of aggression. Hillary’s role was trivial compared to Nader’s…and Nader and his dipshit followers actually thought that bringing the deserting coward to power would make their “revolution” a certainty. Nader continues with his psychotic delusions that this country is “ripe for revolution” to this day.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I just brought that one up here in the lunchroom at work. Is it really the anniversary?
Trollhattan
@MomSense:
Whoa, that completely escaped me.
kindness
Reading the comments at both the links provided I can say the Greens supporters are very good 101 Keyboarders. Well, good for them. But they seem to all get their knickers in a twist when someone (anyone) brings up viability. Yea, the anti-vaxer bullshit is nuts. It is true that in the old days (when I was a kid) vaccines used mercury and formaldehyde as sterilization agents. Those aren’t good for anyone but they are especially bad for infants who’se livers (the organ that breaks down and stores stuff like formaldehyde) are so tiny the toxin can really screw up the organ. But vaccines don’t have those agents in them any longer. We vaccinated our teen daughter against HPV because if we can help her not get cervical cancer later, well of course we were going to do it. We paid out of pocket as it wasn’t covered then.
Curiously you would think the Greens would be one group I would gravitate to. But they are blowing it by the emphasis on stupid 101 Keyboarder antics like this. This election is too important to be a purity troll.
I’m With Her.
Trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not only is Nader unafraid to, he’s proud of tossing matches at gasoline puddles and has the same need to lecture as Newt Gingrich. They also share the certitude of their opinions even when they’re proven false to their faces. “No, you simply don’t understand.”
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: Perhaps I should clarify for the sub-literate.
Actors are responsible for their own actions.
This is why we don’t jail the parents or friends of criminals, unless they are tied to the crime. Because actors are not responsible for the actions of others. Specifically, in the 2000 election, a constellation of events contributed to Gore’s loss. Subtracting any single one of those events likely would have led to his victory, Nader being one such factor, a poorly run Gore campaign being another. So is Gore’s campaign team ALSO responsible for dead Iraqis? Is a random county board of elections in Florida ALSO responsible for dead Iraqis? Again, this is not a logic we adopt in regular life because it’s absurd. It’s the logic of a point scoring political hack.
? Martin
@Immanentize: Yeah, very likely Kaine.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mnemosyne:
NPR mentioned it this morning. To my shame, I had nearly forgotten about it.
Jack the Second
@laura: The crazy thing with the anti-vaxxers is that the anti-vax movement is as old as vaccines. When people first started vaccinating against smallpox, some people opposed it, both personally and as a practice. So it’s not just about people not remembering how horrible some diseases were or needing someone to blame for their children’s rare conditions. Some people just value some sense of the “natural” over their own lives, over their children’s lives.
The same goes for GMOs. Monsanto’s a red herring (anti-GMO folks are equally opposed to open-source GMO crops) and it’s not really about food safety (we’ve raised literally tens or hundreds of millions of pigs and cows on GMO corn and soybeans, and then dissected each and every one [in slaughterhouses] and not found anything wrong). GMO crops will never be “natural” and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters to a rather large number of people.
Boy will they be pissed when we start dismantling Mercury for parts.
Immanentize
@? Martin: I saw him today
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yup. Altho’ I am personally acquainted with one Green Party elected official – a County Commissioner in San Miguel County, home of To-hELL-U-RIDE – so it *can* be done! He’s the only one, tho’. And I’m not sure how much – if any – electoral support he gets from the national Green Party. Probably none.
Miss Bianca
@laura: By the time I got married and was ready to have children, it was only to discover that I couldn’t – not with my ex-husband, anyway, because he was sterile – as a result of getting mumps as a just-pre-adolescent. There’s a vaccine for it now – there wasn’t back in the early 70s.
So, yeah….being anti-anti-vaxxer is a wee bit personal for me, as well.
Cat48
So it’s Kaine. Newt Gingrich was whining on Twitter bc Obama did not stop the Munich shooting. They think these guys may have been Natzis, because they were wearing black boots & they were large size men & no Allah Akbar!
Yutsano
@Joel: DIHYDROGEN OXIDE AWARENESS DAY!!!
Shawn in Showme
I didn’t realize that pointing out that the pharmaceutical lobby has enormous influence on the FDA was a controversial statement. I don’t care that Stein’s a Green. When you’re right, you’re right. You know our politics are corrosive when you only allow yourself to agree with people in your own party.
Doug!
There is only one true progressive left in this race, and you’re going to tear her down because you don’t agree with her stance on one or two issues? I don’t know if this is the left’s famous circular firing squad or just neoliberal ratfucking.
laura
@Trollhattan: the avoidable stupid. It burns.
? Martin
@Immanentize: You definitely win. :)
chef hiking
You will believe what you want to believe. Hillary believes there should be a religious exception for vaccines is she pandering to the anti vaxers? Stein said medical exception which is reasonable.
No where in either link does she say homeopathy works.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne: @Trollhattan:
5th anniversary I think.
ShadeTail
@Shawn in Showme: Four problems.
1) Stein is, at best, exaggerating the issue.
2) Trying to divorce Stein’s statements from her beliefs is a fool’s game. Fact is, she is deliberately pandering to the extremist fringe by using their dog whistles, making everything she says a huge poison pill. It’s like trying to say Reagan had good points about welfare fraud while blithely ignoring the blatant racism and class warfare behind it.
3) It’s ironic to complain about refusing to agree on the basis of political party, since Stein and the rest of the Greens are far worse about that than the Democrats are.
4) The way to fix the issue is by winning elections, something that, for good or bad, the Green Party really isn’t interested in doing.
Miss Bianca
@Doug!:
I know, I really wish people would just stop picking on HRC that way!
Oh,wait…you *were* referring to Sec. Clinton, right? Or were you talking about Vanity Candidate Woo-Woo Lady?
SFAW
@cokane:
You keep trying to “prove” your “point” by acting as if each action is self-contained, has no historical context, that no chain of events matters (especially as regards events within that chain) except that last event.
It’s a specious argument at best, and intellectually dishonest at not-so-best. But if it helps to soothe your psyche by allowing you to blame Gore, or Hillary, or anyone-but-Nader — well, to each his own, I guess.
Doug!
@Miss Bianca:
I meant Jill Stein.
JAFD
I’m 66 now, so I was about 6 when the first polio immunization campaigns took place. Even though I didn’t understand What Was Going On except that I Got Stuck By Big Needle And It Hurts, I remember feeling ‘the weight lifting off my parents shoulders’ when we left that school gym.
I survived measles, mumps, and German measles, before the vaccines for those came on line.
Unfortunately, we who remember when Wonder Drugs really were Wonder Drugs (and vaccines) are fading away, and it seems like 70 years of antibiotics may be all we get before the bugs catch up with us…
Cermet
@Villago Delenda Est: Good points
SFAW
@Doug!:
Do purity ponies now have fingers, with which to pull triggers? (Not to be confused with Trigger, of course.) Amazing what the NRA will do, to keep expanding their base.
Miss Bianca
@Doug!: BWAAAAHHHAHHHHAAA *gasp* BWAHHHAAHHAHH no please, pull the other one, it’s got bells on!
nutella
@Gene108:
And they are wrong to do so because homeopathy is not healthcare.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
I should know, I’m old.
EriktheRed
@Doug!: The tRump campaign thanks you.
Now piss off.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Perhaps not the best example.
(Insert appropriate smiley here.)
Applejinx
@SFAW: We hold the guns in our little hoofsies and if we want to pull the trigger VERY VERY MUCH our pony magic lets it happen, or at least near enough for television.
Unicorns can stick their cute little horns in there, but then can’t effectively aim, making the whole ‘circular firing squad’ thing work strangely backward. And pegasus ponies can use wingtips but prefer to powerdive into the target at mach 1000, screaming and creating a rainbow mushroom cloud.
The More You Know :D o/`
The Gray Adder
@Felonius Monk: Wikipedia has her as an M.D., Harvard Medical School.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
I nade a funny. Everyone will make of it as they see fit.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
As did i.
[“Um, SFAW? About your idea of ‘funny’? … We need to talk.”]
burnspbesq
@cokane:
But for Nader, there would have been no Iraq war for Clinton or anyone else to vote on.
tobie
@Calouste: Thanks for the link. Yes, a German who identifies himself as someone who’s been in inpatient psychiatric care. Says he’s been bullied by Turks. 9 dead now. Just terrible.
gene108
@Cermet:
1. Not monitoring the effects of medication, any medication, on a patient can lead to death.
2. Anyone, who takes homeopathy or any other medication, without properly consulting physicians and coordinating care and treatment between the different doctors is asking for trouble.
I’m not promoting homeopathy as a cure-all, but I don’t get the hostility to alternate forms of treatment.
Edit:
Vaccines are good and have saved humanity from many needless deaths.
burnspbesq
@Doug!:
And she should STFU and GTFO. All Stein is doing is increasing the probability of a Trump win–and that makes her, too, an existential threat to our democratic institutions.
Robert Sneddon
Actually it isn’t true, in the specific case of mercury which got the woo-woo crew all het up and dragged in the autism anti-vaccination true-believers. The preservative in question, thiomersal has an atom of mercury in it in the same way table salt is made up from atoms of sodium (a highly reactive metal) and chlorine (a toxic gas used in warfare). Thiomersal breaks down into harmless ethylmercury in the body and is expelled (usually pissed out). There is a similar-sounding compound, methylmercury which is very definitely not harmless but that’s got nothing to do with thiomersal.
Thiomersal is no longer used, after sixty years and more of helping to protect billions of people from ill-health through clean uncontaminated vaccinations. It’s still as safe and effective as it ever was but it has *mercury* in it! It is still being blamed to this day for all sorts of effects though because the woo-woo crew hate to let go of a favourite chew-toy.
burnspbesq
The Last Word on Homeopathy
jonas
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Since when does an MD make one immune to nutty opinions, even on ostensibly “scientific” topics? See Carson, Ben.
jonas
@gene108:
Homeopathy isn’t an “alternative” treatment to anything. It’s not a treatment at all. It’s woo. That’s the problem.
Miss Bianca
@Robert Sneddon: thank you for making this point. The whole “vaccines got mercury, AAGGH!” bit that the anti-vaxxers pull is so intellectually lazy, where it’s not downright dishonest, that it makes me crazy. Crazier, I should say. //
Splitting Image
@pseudonymous in nc:
Exactly this. For instance, the Green Party ought to be pushing hard for green power in Kentucky and West Virginia. Not on a platform of “save the world”, but on a platform of “save our jobs”. Coal is going away and not coming back, and the best help those states could get is a fair share of the energy jobs which will replace it. The states may trend conservative, but “jobs jobs jobs” is a language they understand. Trying to elect Jill Stein President just ensures that the honourable Senators from West Virginia and Kentucky will remain on hand to put the brakes on any legislation she manages to get into Congress.
Global warming may be a global problem, but solving it requires a lot of local actions and exactly what needs to be done varies from region to region. There are a lot of activists who understand this, but the Green Party doesn’t have a very good track record of representing them.
As for homeopathy, it is a long-standing scam that should delegitimize any politician who supports it even obliquely. There is nothing wrong with water – in fact I woke up with a leg cramp this morning because I was dehydrated – but it won’t cure cancer or very much else.
ThresherK
I don’t know if we have an “official” stance [on vaccination]
Either lead an org who has a stance or leave it. I don’t give a crap for someone who goes to the old canard of “I personally…” in lieu of real fking policy.
Ella in New Mexico
@Mnemosyne:
Which they often do. An old friend of mine who seems to have slowly gone off the rails over the past few years is now a rabid anti-vax conspiracy theorist. Back when they were little, she decided that because her kids “couldn’t digest” milk and red meat, that they were “clearly poisons”, along with all GMO foods, artificial sweeteners, and fluoride in any form. Of course, they should be outlawed and never allowed in public schools because it’s “child abuse”.
She also currently believes in coffee enemas, ear candling, and Himalayan Salt lamps to purify the air. And all things Alex Jones.
But hey, this is coming from a woman who lived in a tent in Gallup, NM for an entire summer with her two kids to “be in touch with the spirits”, so I’m not surprised.
Miss Bianca
@Ella in New Mexico: Hey, she could have just headed down to the refurbished bar in Pecos my friends live in. Plenty of spirits there, both alcoholic and ethereal!
SFAW
@jonas:
Well, as they used to say in Boston: “Woo-Woo for you-you!”
efg knows what I mean.
burnspbesq
Can’t lind a link, but there are photos of HRC laying flowers on the sidewalk in front of Pulse. Powerful stuff.
MoxieM
What can you expect from a person who doesn’t neuter their Great Dane, and then when it gets in fights with other dogs, blames the kid (kid!!) on the other end of the other leash.
True story, multiple times. Mrs. Dr. Professor Lecturin ‘Couldn’t Get Elected Dog Catcher,’ M.D., Ph.D., LLD.,JD., LLC. lived nearby me for years…until I moved thank FSM.
Cypher
You vaxtremist kooks can’t attack the argument, so you attack the person. That transparent and pathetic strategy doesn’t work anymore. Poor you.
nastybrutishntall
FWIW the placebo effect does have volumes of evidence supporting it. In cases of mild or self-limiting conditions, or palliative medicine, placebos are generally safer than drugs, because every drug has side effects or potential allergies. So in those cases, homeopathy is fine. Placebos even work if you are told they are placebos. Science!
Big Picture Pathologist
@Miss Bianca: @Villago Delenda Est:
Sigh… learn your history VDE:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/ballot_box/2001/11/gore_wins_after_all.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_em_top
By the way, les … if you’re still out there, fuck you.
SFAW
@Big Picture Pathologist:
Not clear how Weisberg’s “analysis” conflicts with anything Villago wrote. Weisberg can put forth the idea that Gore really, actually, truly, no-shit, won the election all he wants — it still won’t give us a do-over on the Bush disaster. And Weisberg chose to focus on a completely different aspect of the election. Nice “thought exercise,” but ultimately pointless.
colnago80
@Felonius Monk:
Believe it or not, she has a medical degree from the Harvard Medical School! Considering that clucks like E. W. Jackson and Tom Cotton have law degrees from the Harvard Law School, it might lead one to consider the possibility that Harvard is overrated. Ya think?