I haven’t been the biggest Fauci fan during the pandemic, but it’s pretty impressive that a FOIA dump of over 3,000 of his emails failed to produce any real news.
— Jonathan Myerson Katz (@KatzOnEarth) June 3, 2021
Yeah, it’s all bullsh*t, but here’s some background on the latest nontroversy. TL, DR: The GOP Death Cult got so much sweet mileage out of HRC’s messages (or, actually, the HRC messages they made up in their fevered little minds), they figured it would be almost as easy to repeat the process with Dr. Fauci.
Can’t blame the Washington Post for using the FOIA as it was intended — note how this tweet was worded:
NEW: We obtained nearly 900 pages of Fauci's emails from March and April 2020, opening a window into Fauci's world during the chaotic early days of the crisis. "All is well despite some crazy people in this world," he wrote in one note. w/ @damianpaletta https://t.co/iUKRYZEIaC
— Yasmeen Abutaleb (@yabutaleb7) June 1, 2021
The emails show that Fauci was inundated with correspondence from colleagues, hospital administrators, foreign governments and random strangers — about 1,000 messages a day, he says at one point. https://t.co/PWm2Kiep7j
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 1, 2021
Bess Levin, at Vanity Fair:
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, the GOP collectively decided to make Anthony Fauci, M.D., public enemy number one, having found in the veteran immunologist the perfect target through which to whip up their base and take the spotlight off the fact that the then president had let the virus gain a foothold in the country while actively lying about it at every turn. Fauci, of course, is everything conservatives hate: An educated man of science with not one but two degrees, he committed what Republicans believe was a capital offense when he failed to back up everything Donald Trump said about the disease, including the part about treating it by freebasing bleach. While tiresome and dangerous—Fauci and his family required a security detail at one point—the ridiculous attacks and conspiracies, like that Fauci invented the coronavirus and is “part of a secret cabal with Bill Gates and George Soros to profit from vaccines” have had little impact. Fauci remains employed by the government, and by all accounts Joe Biden is happy with his work. “The president and the administration feel that Dr. Fauci has played an incredible role in getting the pandemic under control and being a voice to the public throughout the course of this pandemic,“ White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this week…
Incidentally, none of the people calling for the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to basically be tried for war crimes have expressed the slightest interest in any investigation whatsoever into the events of January 6 and in fact have lost their collective shit over the prospect of anyone digging into the that day, and the lead-up, too closely…
Look, over there! A jackalope stash of emails!
I remember when Wikileaks exposed a ton of top secret US diplomatic cables that revealed … that the US was saying pretty much the exact same things in private as it did in public.
The Fauci emails strike me as rather similar.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 4, 2021
I mean, I think Fauci should be as subject to substantive criticism as anyone, and it's possible there's stuff to criticize. But I'm a bit taken aback by the shrill "burn the witch" tone out there. It's like he's Goldstein and this is the Two Minutes Hate.
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 4, 2021
Hearing the questions Fauci is being asked even by reputable journalists about his emails tells me:
1. There’s no limit to the ability of some journalists (not just Fox types) to say something exists in a record when it isn’t there. And 2. Fauci is better than America deserves.— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 3, 2021
This morning:
Wallace mocks Lewandowski's attempt to blame Fauci: "At least 2 months after Donald Trump was warned… that this was going to be the greatest threat of his presidency and proceeded to play it down," he "was still praising President Xi" and "talking about how cooperative he was."
— Will Saletan (@saletan) June 6, 2021
It has little to do with him being right or wrong about anything. It's a cultural resentment that he has the gall to think he knows more than they do. https://t.co/AhvzDqH0DD
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) June 3, 2021
Trump backers are going all out, falsely claiming #COVID19 came out of the Wuhan lab, and Tony Fauci paid for it. This is the side of a truck cruising around Falls Church VA. pic.twitter.com/uBCP5G2tTE
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) May 31, 2021
SKREEE!
Doctor Fauci needs to be held accountable.https://t.co/p6vhaYNpVe
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 3, 2021
The twelfth of never:
Marjorie Taylor Greene has requested that Biden investigate Fauci and she wants answers by June 31st, a date which does not exist https://t.co/AOBekO918m
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) June 5, 2021
Excellent Read: Mastodons Among Us
hells littlest angel
Deranged simpletons.
Catherine D.
June 31st? Couldn’t make out the tweet, but FFS?
hells littlest angel
I wonder if Dinesh D’Souza chose that particular screencap himself. Does he secretly hate Ingraham and Paul?
Dorothy A. Winsor
The attacks on Fauci are just insane. I don’t know how the guy keeps his cool
smith
Empty Greene never fails to put her foot in it, does she? Seems to be her only talent.
Brachiator
Right wing fools act as though Fauci is the only health authority on planet Earth and ignore the worldwide consensus of health experts.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
What bothers me is where are WaPo’s FOIA requests for DHS, for Azar, for DOJ, for the Pentagon. Where are the emails of the bleach lady. Why are they stopping and frisking Fauci and not the criminal stooges of the former guy.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: This is the Al Gore play on climate change: act like Al Gore made all that stuff up himself and attack him personally.
Just Chuck
“I’ll let you know on exactly June 31st”
debbie
@Just Chuck:
Exactly! That stupid cow
ETA:
debbie
The Thin Black Duke
“Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain.”
Ohio Mom
Followed the link to the Washington Post story and I’m struck anew at how hard Fauci worked, how many hours he put in, when the world was reeling at the start of the pandemic, and trying to find its footing. (Especially in contrast to the world’s laziest president.)
John Revolta
I mean, what’s the point of doing all this Fauci stuff now? Are they trying to pre-emptively head off accusations that they screwed up the pandemic response for the next election?
Josie
Can someone explain “gain of function” research in language a non-science person can understand. I don’t even know what they are accusing him of. I seriously doubt they understand either.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
That is why I mainly ignore all this stuff. But here there is also a weird attack on the idea of expertise, especially when it is attached to government. State and local health officials, especially women, have been derided. Some have received death threats.
I read some moke do this dance of faulty logic: “I distrust big government. Fauci works for big government. Therefore, I distrust Dr Fauci.”
There is a variation of this at play in the UK. You currently have there unceasing opposition to the idea of extending some lockdown measures and the foolish insistence that measures to contain the virus are intolerable assaults on personal freedom. This may be a universal problem with a certain type of conservative.
MomSense
None of this makes any damned sense. The same people who thought it was a Democrat Hoax are now convinced it was a Chinese bio weapon? Which is it?
Chetan Murthy
@Josie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gain_of_function_research#:~:text=Gain%20of%20function%20research%20(GoFR,that%20a%20microorganism%20can%20infect).
I think to you and me, that means “any sort of research that tries to alter the genome of a pathogen, either by actual hacking the thing, or selective breeding”. You could call the centuries of selective breeding for greater milk output [in cows] “gain of milk research”, eh?
The unspoken implication is always “hey, they hacked the genome” even if all they claim is “they selectively bred for greater infectivity!!!!” [dunh-DUNH].
germy
debbie
She wants Fauci impeached. Is that even possible?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: Good question. I believe he’s Civil Service for one thing.
Chetan Murthy
@debbie: Looking at this: https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment.htm#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Constitution%20provides,Power%20to%20try%20all%20Impeachments%20%E2%80%A6&text=The%20president%2C%20vice%20president%2C%20and,States%20are%20subject%20to%20impeachment.
if Fauci is a “civil officer” of the US, sure. No idea if he is. I mean, he’s “civil service”, but I doubt that that means the same thing. Sigh.
She’s off her meds.
germy
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-origin-of-sars-cov-2-revisited/
Brachiator
@MomSense:
This is right up there with dopes who in effect say “The evil Democrats refuse to give President Trump credit for the useless or dangerous vaccine which I refuse to take.”
Baud
@germy:
Now we’re treating Trump as credible?
Josie
@Chetan Murthy: Thanks. I read the article and vaguely understand the idea. What I fail to see is how this makes Dr. Fauci the bad guy in all of this.
MJS
@germy: Manchin voted to convict Trump twice. I seriously doubt he does that if Trump previously successfully blackmailed him. The simple explanation for Manchin is that he does not care if POC get to vote.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Chetan Murthy: I’d say being civil service protects him from the crap being thrown around.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I don’t remember hearing about her “Fire Fauci Act” back in April, but she’s got a real bug up her butt about him.
Anne Laurie
Dr. Fauci led the NIH at the forefront of the AIDS wars, 40 years ago. This ain’t his first time at the goat rodeo!
Ruckus
@smith:
She only seems to stick her foot in her mouth moments after stepping in a pile of steaming something….
It’s a rare gift to be this insane and not wearing a wrap around jacket.
Benw
For once I agree with that piece of shit Dinesh; give Dr. Fauci everything he deserves: a fucking Congressional Medal of Honor.
Sure Lurkalot
Long ago I went to classes to get my real estate license. Part of the test was preparing a settlement statement with various prorations requiring that one know how many days were in each month. Perhaps inevitably, a student asked the instructor how many days were in each month. He replied…remember, “30 days hath September, April, June and November…”. AT WHICH POINT THE STUDENT ASKED “SO HOW MANY DAYS DO THE REST OF THE MONTHS HAVE?” I guess I should have been impressed that said student knew there were more than 4 months…
Anne Laurie
Because — and they know this — they’re not gonna get anything from the Trump miscreants using FOIA. Whatever records those criminals haven’t shredded (assuming they kept records in the first place) would / will be tied up in court for the next decade.
It’s quite possible FOIA requests are still outstanding, actually. But Fauci / the Biden administration actually comply with the rules, like a bunch of
losers & suckers<honest citizens.TomatoQueen
@Benw: He’s a civilian, and so has already received the Medal of Freedom. Dubya, 2007.
https://www.nsf.gov/od/nms/recip_details.jsp?recip_id=5300000000430
Matt McIrvin
@Josie: The claim they’re trying to imply without saying it is that Fauci was knowingly involved in a conspiracy to deliberately create COVID-19 as a Chinese bioweapon. Since that is completely ridiculous and implausible, they have to not say it directly, but instead say things that are more defensible, but seem to imply it to someone who already buys into the conspiracy theory. So, they say Fauci was involved in funding “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan and that COVID-19 was a lab leak from this project.
Mike in NC
The very first Medal of Freedom that President Biden awards anybody must go to Dr Fauci.
Anne Laurie
Yep. The head of the Belgian virology cadre is currently working out of a safe house, along with his family, because there’s an armed & dangerous nutbag gunning for him — and the nutbag has the public support of ‘hundreds’ of his fellow citizens. Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Australia have all had street riots by ‘concerned freedom-loving citizens’ convinced that the virus doesn’t exist, and even if it did, it’s all a plot by Tha Gubmint to steal our FREEDUMBS.
And that’s just the ‘Western democracies’, mind you.
TomatoQueen
@Mike in NC: see #35
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
TFG talked about firing Dr Fauci. But as was mentioned then, POTUS cannot fire civil servants like Dr Fauci at will, like he can presidential appointees; any such action has to be initiated by Dr Fauci’s superiors, and go through the civil-service disciplinary process. Dr Fauci’s boss, NIH director Dr Francis Collins, said then that he had no grounds to fire Dr Fauci. I doubt that has changed.
Josie
@Matt McIrvin:
Now I get it. I am ashamed of myself for hating these people as much as I do. I’m old enough to have seen Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush family all do their evil stuff, but this crew takes the cake. I hope they overreach and get trounced for it. All of them.
cmorenc
@germy:
If there were actually any dead girl / live boy incidents GOP operatives could pin on Manchin, they would have forced him to resign by now, since his replacement would almost certainly be a Republican RWer. There would be insufficient advantage to keeping Manchin in place as a blackmailed operative inside the D caucus.
That was just Trump making whatever shit up he thinks convenient to his purposes at the moment.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: It’s okay though. I am sure everyone who has given up on the US will find a sane country to which to emigrate.
TomatoQueen
The worst thing I saw today was just now Joe Manchin at the Kennedy Center Honors, singing along with crowd as Emmy Lou Harris and Mary-Chapin Carpenter played We Shall Overcome. If only I could go over to that TV and slap him.
Brachiator
@Baud:
“Credible?” I read that as “cretinous.”
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@TomatoQueen: two people have received the MOF twice (Ellsworth Bunker and Colin Powell).
Biden should give Fauci the MOF a 2nd time just to aggravate the maga cult.
Amir Khalid
@Mike in NC:
He already has a Medal of Freedom awarded by George HW Bush, recognising his work on AIDS. But if he can be awarded a second one, he certainly should be.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@cmorenc: moreover, Manchin voted to Impeach Dump TWICE.
Not the act of someone compromised, especially when Dump kept insisting there would be a bipartisan rejection of impeachment (to them and the Village media, a single breakaway Dem vote constitutes broad bipartisanship).
Chetan Murthy
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Boy, that’s some pretty “un-meritorious” company there. I don’t know so much about Bunker (though he was a serious war hawk, which is what gives me pause) but … *Colin Powell*? Geez. Still, better him than Dick Cheney, I guess. OTOH, I guess in 1993 when he got the second one, he hadn’t *completely* beshitted his reputation. Sigh.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Chetan Murthy:
I always felt Clinton was trying to keep Powell inside the tent, even if just tenuously.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Catherine D.:
As someone on Twitter said, it’s because her calendar skips Juneteenth.
Chetan Murthy
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Oh, very nice! This fits with his entire Presidency: an attempt to slow down the headlong rush to madness that RaYgUn started. Thank you for this!
Hot takes about how WJC Didn’t. Even. Try. in 1…2…3…
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
Wow. I had no idea.
This is unbearably sad and stupid.
mrmoshpotato
Marjorie Taylor Shitstain
Fuck all this trash. All of them should be digging the thousands of graves now needed.
Ruckus
@Josie:
Everything they are doing is just an extension of what the conservatives of the last 50-60 yrs (and very likely much longer) have been doing. Modern life/communications makes it easier to not only say this crap, but to spread it wide and far. And that feeds upon itself and reenforces itself.
zhena gogolia
Meanwhile, JL Cauvin is still brilliant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idsaHe4LLVI
Central Planning
Sadly, I had to talk to a RWNJ the other day about work stuff. He brought up the Fauci emails, and how tons of the info is redacted. He’s convinced the government is hiding something and there is a conspiracy about the virus coming out of the Wuhan lab. I try to avoid him as much as possible.
PAM Dirac
@Amir Khalid:
To be precise Fauci has Civil Service protection for his Federal employment, including his salary. His does not have Civil Service protection for his position as director of NIAID or his Lab Chief appointment. Even though he could be stripped of his positions without any Civil Service procedures, you are correct that the one to do that would be Francis Collins and there is zero chance that Collins would do that. I said last year that there was zero chance Collins would do that. I have personally seen Collins stand up to politicians and I have no doubt he will continue to do so.
West of the Rockies
Marjorie Taylor Greene demands…
She doesn’t have the authority to demand diddly-doodah-day. What a pinhead.
debbie
@Brachiator:
I believe the BBC reported he’s ex-military.
Subsole
@MomSense: Both. These omnidefectives abandoned higher logic a while ago.
Subsole
@germy:
I dunno if I am ready to believe a conspiracy that relies on something that came out of dipshit donnie’s subnasal asshole.
Just sayin’.
Uncle Cosmo
FTR:
So, “Soylent” Greene wasn’t the first person to think of June 31. Just the first one to think it was an actual date.
Gin & Tonic
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Fauci had to deal with Larry Kramer in the 80’s. I bet nothing can faze him.
Poe Larity
Since Trump lifted the gain-of-function ban, he should be 100% responsible for any bad outcome.
Subsole
@MJS: I still cannot get over all the white folks who honest to god think discrimination is gonna stop with blacks.
Like, you really think they won’t bounce your piddly white ass the instant they can get away with it?
@Ruckus: Disagree. If it were a gift we could mark her ‘return to sender’.
PAM Dirac
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
A huge part of the job is being a buffer between the nut job politicians and the staff that are doing the actual work. The current situation is more public and the nut jobs are now the leadership in one party, but making reasonable sounding answers to idiotic questions is something all NIH Institute Directors have been doing for years.
Chetan Murthy
@Uncle Cosmo: I’m oblivious enough that I didn’t notice that idiocy! June 31st! Indeed! How about the Eleventieth of Unvember, MTG?
HI-larious!
Geminid
@debbie: The guy gunning for the Belgian virologist deserted from the Belgian Army recently. He is a trained sniper, and there is a nationwide manhunt for him.
Morzer
@germy: I’d like to kick Manchin in the nuts, but I really doubt that the guy ever had any. As for whether he still has brain function…
Maybe we can get Cole to plant a willow really close to his palatial mansion or something….
Villago Delenda Est
Rand Paul is among the most “criminally culpable” of all Rethuglican politicians.
Unique uid
Surprised I haven’t seen this here – did we win Texas?
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1401150079138996225
I was just reading last nights “Letters from An American “, she mentioned it
jl
Fauci was responsible for supporting academic, non-profit and government research that resulted in the knowledge and technology needed for the Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines, among the best in the world, to be developed within one year. In fact, for one of the essential working cores of Moderna vaccine was developed within weeks of the release of the genetic code of the virus by Chinese researchers. That was more than a year ago. And much of that was due to Fauci’s far-sighted vision in supporting a wide portfolio of promising basic research. So, Fauci deserves another medal.
Fauci has made some serious mistakes, but they were the same serious mistakes made by the US Public Health establishment. The confusion about masks early on, strange inability to prepare for the possibility that there was lots of asymptotic spread and that aerosolized transmission was just as, often more, important than droplet. I think that was due to the RCT p-value < 0.05 fetish that infects many of the credentialed blue ribbon types who seem to have run everything. Even if those possibilities were less than basic research standards of evidence, the devastating consequences of not allowing for them, as insurance, was a mistake. This is just a proper understanding of the role of classical and Bayesian statistics in decision making with large costs of both Type I and Type II error, and large costs of delaying decisions.
I think Fauci has given poor responses to some questions, like how to solve the IP obstacle in increasing production of the best vaccines. I saw some media anchor chew him out for a weak response. But is that Fauci’s fault? He can’t be an expert in everything. That is more a problem that has continued under Biden: grossly inadequate resources devoted to the covid pandemic in the US. It is the political leadership, both under Trump and Biden, that has trotted him out as a kind of omniscient philosopher God-King of all things related to the pandemic.
The attacks on Fauci are the most cynical political demagoguery. Part of the reactionary propaganda machine that has the blood of who knows how many thousands of people dead and disabled, others whose lives and livelihoods have been ruined by the poor US response to covid, setting aside the great success of our vaccine development.
And I think important to stress that the vaccine success is due to decades of government and non-profit supported research, and individual researchers who made great personal sacrifices, and took enormous professional risks because they had vision and good ideas that they truly believed in. Not Trump, not fricken Pfizer whose CEO seems be a ruthless unethical profiteer, the stereotypical money suit that doesn’t know nearly as much as he thinks he does about anything other than grabbing money. The bigshot big pharma companies do not deserve any strong patent protection. Their work on the vaccines doesn’t meet any of the usual economic criteria that justifies strong patent protection. What does, they bought because they have endless gobs of money.
TKH
@Josie: The likely proximal cause is the funding of a grant by NIAID to EcoHealth alliance that looked at the diversity of viruses in bats in China. I pulled this section below from the wikipedia entry for Peter Daszak, the head EcoHealth alliance:
Starting in 2014, Daszak was project lead of a six year NIH project which focused on the emergence of novel zoonotic coronaviruses (CoV) with a bat origin.[5] Among the aims of the project was to characterize the diversity and distribution of SARSr-CoVs in bats, viruses with a significant risk of spillover, in southern China, based on data from spike protein sequences, infectious clone technology, infection experiments (both in vitro and in vivo), as well as analysis of receptor binding.[6] The six 1-year projects received $3.75 million in funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the US National Institutes of Health agency.[5]
If you don’t know anything or are willing to ignore what you know for political mileage, then some of that may sound Frankensteinish or can be made to sound that way.
It’s fair to say a sum total of $3.75M will not get you very far if your intention were to make a bioweapon.
James E Powell
@Ohio Mom:
Agreed. And he’s 80. I’m only 66 and I’d have said, fuck off, do what you like, see ya!
Villago Delenda Est
Fauci’s main problem is that he has, by speaking truth, caused TFG to look bad.
There is no greater crime in the cult.
Jackie
@jl: If I recall correctly, there was a HUGE mask shortage at the onset, and Fauci, along with other medical experts wanted medical staff, 1st responders, etc to have first availability to masks. Along with all PPE.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Watch it, after Fauchi dies these same wingnuts will venerate Fauchi as a saint and quote mine his writing to prove Fauchi was always an anti-vaccine. These assholes have utterly no shame.
jl
@Josie: ” Can someone explain “gain of function” research in language a non-science person can understand. I don’t even know what they are accusing him of. I seriously doubt they understand either. ”
I sure can’t. But the link to a virologist podcast AL posted last week, indicates to me that whatever the merits of that research, it is unlikely it had anything to do with the covid pandemic. More evidence supporting a natural zoonotic origin is steadily coming in. The evidence we have is biased, due to political BS both in PRC and the US interfering with getting more info from the lab. But strong evidence is strong evidence, and better than no additional evidence coming in supporting a natural cause.
@DelthiaRicks
Dr. Robert Garry is on #TWiV podcast to explain how SARSCoV2’s molecular biology shows it came from Nature and not a lab, including the receptor binding domain, the furin cleavage site, and the 2 lineages circulating in Wuhan wildlife markets https://bit.ly/3wGGPiw
https://twitter.com/DelthiaRicks/status/1400717519674134530
Lab safety is not up to snuff around the world, and valid to criticize any line of research that produces significant risks. (Read up on history of recent epidemics and outbreaks, and lab accidents and etc. Lots of unsettling emerging disease events happening every year, both lab problems, though that is minor compared to the wild world of natural outbreaks. Probably most unsettling is the research on serology and antibodies out in the boondocks interface of man and wilderness. Lotta antibodies to unknown stuff, that infects a few people and then disappears with nothing, or just a scary minor outbreak.)
My take is more about priorities. Seems clear to me that more priority needs to be given to public health capacity, more resources devoted to outbreak and epidemic control. What is the use of getting better warnings of future pandemics, if public sector competence and capacity is so shitty, the response is going to suck no matter how much warning we have?
Josie
@TKH:
Thanks for your explanation. It all starts to make sense to me now. At least I understand the political hack job they are doing on Dr. Fauci, so that I can discuss it an informed way.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Nope, he has a National Medal of Science for his work on understanding AIDS. So Biden can award him with his first Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Josie
@jl: Yes, I had thought that scientists were leaning in the direction of a link with nature rather than a lab accident, which is why I was puzzled by the sudden attack on Dr. Fauci.
You make a very good point about the slow response to the virus. I hope Biden’s team is able to do something about that.
Chetan Murthy
@Josie:
All depends on your definition of “scientist”, I guess. Heck, Naomi Wolf is a scientist to these jokers, so … go figger, I guess.
Mallard Filmore
@Unique uid:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/6/2033866/-Texas-AG-Paxton-says-his-blocking-mail-in-ballots-prevented-Biden-winning
Benw
@TomatoQueen: cool, thanks for the info.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They also have no faith but bad faith.
They are despicable.
Hilbertsubspace
I look forward to the administrations statements that are coming up on the (30 + i)st of June. Everyone remember to rotate your clocks 90 degrees so that it’s perpendicular to space-time.
Also, what is wrong with these people? Is it mild mental illness, cause I would describe their behavior as twitchy exhortations to shore up self doubt. (I misfortuned into someone Q adjacent in the wild.)
Chetan Murthy
@Hilbertsubspace:
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire
I continue to believe that there’s nothing fundamentally “wrong” with these people, except their moral compass. They’re doing this shit, b/c they’re trying to cleave apart the willing (to murder) from the unwilling.
trollhattan
Can Donny put his pants on correctly?
Experts disagree.
jl
@Jackie: Yes, and to their credit, they were candid about that. But they also went out on a limb in given way too much weight to evidence that cloth masks of various types may be useless or even harmful. A lot of the research supporting that line was 75 to 90s years old.
Some countries caught that problem, did their own research and sent out standardized, high quality cloth masks to their populations in late spring, early summer, 2020.
jl
@Josie:
The podcast doesn’t spend much time addressing the gain of function research directly. My main take away from the discussion is that the virus that the unscrupulous slime have targeted as the source of covid and that the lab was supposedly fiddling with, is far too different from covid for any type of experiment or engineering to work. That virus as 95% similar to covid, but in virology, that much difference is huge.
Intensive searches for possible direct ancestors of covid have turned up several previously unknown viruses that are far more similar to covid than the one found in that abandoned mine that all the sleazy BSers are slobbering over. They’ve been found in South China, Cambodia, Vietnam. Apparently quite a few undiscovered viruses very similar to covid are wandering around all over SE Asia.
The podcast is really interesting, and the technical stuff is all explained so laypeople can understand it.
Edit: the podcast presents evidence that I think for all practical purposes sinks every one of the lab leak and engineering and sinister experiment theories of origin, explained both in technical jargon and plain English. I very highly recommend it, and thank AL again for finding it and featuring it in her great covid updates.
MagdaInBlack
@trollhattan: I saw that but did not follow up because I want multiple crotch shots of tfg even less than I want multiple pictures of his face.
Chetan Murthy
@jl:
And some are jumping to humans: https://news.osu.edu/new-human-coronavirus-that-originated-in-dogs-identified/
jl
@Chetan Murthy: And it happens right here in River City! I mean, um, the US.
In the early 2000s, a new covid bug turned up in Connecticut, called New Haven coronavirus. It was a mostly asymptomatic or mild to moderately severe infection in kids, but there was some evidence that it occasionally caused an inflammatory syndrome similar to what is seen in pediatric cases of covid. Similar, maybe the same bug showed up around the world, high income and low, city and country. Big debate went on for a decade on what it was, and whether it caused the inflammatory syndrome.
Weirdo outbreaks of grotesque variations on ugly infectious diseases turn up several times every year. Very brave or crazy docs, virologists and epidemiologists fly out to the middle of them too see what’s up, try to isolate the bug, and write up a report.
And as I said, serology studies regularly show mystery antibodies out in the boonies to puzzling viruses, bacteria and whatnot that may or may not be related to anything we know. Apparently hard to reverse engineer from an antibody to exactly what it is protecting against.
sdhays
@Mallard Filmore: We needed ~700k more Democratic votes to beat Dumpy Dump in 2020 in Texas. Did 700k Texans really not vote because of mail-in ballot restrictions? If they did, then 2022 ought to be pretty scary for the Texas GQP. But I’m skeptical (just trying to be clear-eyed about our challenges in Texas).
I actually think this is more a guy on a Federal corruption indictment watch (his own staff reported him to the FBI) trying to burnish his GQP credentials ahead of a contested primary. His actions were despicable and certainly cost us, but I’m not convinced that they ultimately saved TFG’s ass in Texas last year.
sdhays
@trollhattan: I just hope he finds out about the mockery, and it bothers him so much that people are lying about him that he amplifies the lie by overcompensating in his next public appearance, hopefully making a specific reference to how does too know how to put his pants on correctly AND ALL BY HIMSELF!!
Omnes Omnibus
Today is the 77th anniversary of D-Day. Just thought it was worth a mention.
zhena gogolia
@sdhays:
Posting this again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idsaHe4LLVI
James E Powell
I don’t watch the Sunday shows or cable, did anyone mention Mark Meadows’s emails?
Saw some stuff on twitter that seemed to show they were interesting.
Morzer
@sdhays: Trump puts his pants on one diaper at a time.
Kent
@sdhays: The problem in TX is largely a turnout problem. At least that’s my impression from living there for over a decade and being involved in local Dem politics.
Essentially Texas is full of massive swaths of nondescript rootless suburbia, much of it filled with people who have come from elsewhere or who are just somewhat disengaged with community. Often because there isn’t much community to actually engage with except for local schools and churches. And if you aren’t engaged in schools or churches it is an endless sea of suburbia with Panera and Chipotle and Starbucks scattered about that are mostly drive-through.
The wingers get engaged and activated, often through their churches and work as well as social media and Fox. The Dems not so much. In many areas of TX, the Democratic party is more of an urban ethnic party that doesn’t really make any concerted pushes into the suburbs. That is how it was where I lived. No one ever knocked on our door, there was very little outreach. It is worse in the Hispanic areas. Unless there are actual local Hispanic politicians, there is very little effort.
Get suburbanites and Hispanics to vote in TX at the same rate that they vote in CA or other large urban states and the GOP will be history.
Gretchen
One reason they discouraged masks for normal people is that they thought that the virus spread more easily by touch and they were afraid that untrained people would contaminate themselves touching the outside of the mask when taking it off and then touch their faces with their contaminated hand putting it back on. They make a big deal of this when teaching hospital workers to remove masks without touching the outside.
Kelly
A friend of the family I knew as a child landed on Omaha beach. Shot on the sands. Said he was trying to take cover in a hole that was much too small and he didn’t think he could have been any more scared. I don’t remember how long he waited for evacuation. His buddies drug him to better cover. His demeanor as he described it really struck me because most of the time he was a blow hard and a jerk. But he was for real about that.
piratedan
so does this mean our fears have come true, that not all Democrats are clean, some of them are shades of grey and obviously money matters to the likes of Manchin and the thought of cleaning up campaign finance would eliminate access to the money trough for him. Considering the financial actions of his daughter, were we collectively whistling past the graveyard thinking that the interests of the country would matter more than his own… apparently so.
So, instead of being mad at Manchin for being so cravenly human, I will continue to work on electing better Democrats so that he becomes immaterial. Am I disappointed, sure as fuck. Because it feeds all those narratives that we hate, both sides, no difference between the parties yada yada yada. Will save most of my vitriol for someone like Senator McConnell who continues to illustrate how successfully money corrupts the process and thwarts any good faith attempts to address it.
jl
@piratedan: Manchin has talked out of both sides of his mouth reversed course and contradicted himself from week to week on most of the big Democratic initiatives, it’s hard to know what he thinks.
I think Manchin has made it clear he won’t vote for any bill that has strong financial disclosure requirements in it. I think that is one of the few strands of consistency in his comments. On voting rights, he’s made noises that he’ll vote for something called the John Lewis bill (?) which is, as I understand it, HR 1 with the meaningful financial disclosure requirements left out.
Captain C
(Failed attempt at putting a tweet in deleted ‘til I figure it out)
jl
@Captain C: I’ve been thinking that Sinema’s antics would circle around and bite her in the backside. Didn’t expect to start so soon.
Both Manchin and Sinema have been acting like toxic dingbats. I’ve read that they’re doing political positioning that they have to do to stay in office. But I have my doubts if they are taking the best approach. Unless you are a cowardly or utterly shiftless crook who is gullible enough to read CW pundit tea reading of polls, and lack the creativity or leadership talent, or brains to do anything else.
jl
@Captain C: Yes, pleased do, I’d like to read it.
You can just put in the title, author and outlet, so we can search it.
RaflW
Some here ave noted Dr. Fauci’s work on AIDS. One might wonder if the good doctor helping ameliorate that dread disease doesn’t factor in at least a bit in the twisted, terrible hearts of Republican lawmakers. I don’t think they ever really got over their moralizing about the various ways the disease typically spreads. One need look no further than Indiana, as it resumes the stupidity around needle exchanges that Christianist extremist & general idiot Mike Pence already tried, disastrously, once before.
jl
@RaflW: One of Fauci’s strengths is that he’s had extensive practical field experience at battling an emerging disease. Practical experience with emerging diseases, or messy outbreaks of existing diseases is important, and I think the US hasn’t used the expertise that exists in the community nearly enough.
As did Jerome Adams, the previous Surgeon General and, maybe surprisingly, a Pence protege. Turns out that Adams was constantly pestering Pence to reverse course on needle exchange in Indiana, and Pence finally listened as disaster unfolded. Then Adams did a good job working with a plan that seemed to have purposely GOP-legislated to fail.
The Moar You Know
@Anne Laurie: not just some rando nut bag. The Belgian military has a LOT to explain here. The man is active service, trained and working sniper, and has made off with several weapons, including his personal sniper rifle and a goddamn rocket launcher. Yeah, you read that right. And the military knew this jamoke had been making threats and who those specific threats were aimed at, and did nothing until the guy decided to not show up for work one day and left a note saying “I’m taking scientist guy and his whole fucking family out”. All militaries excuse right wing fanatics (see one Hitler, Adolf) but this is bad even for a military. Hopefully some heads will roll. Doubt it.
Geminid
@Captain C: The former Arizona Attorney General is making a real political threat. I think Senator Synema likes her job and knows she will have to win a Democratic primary if she wants to keep it past 2024. I am told there are two capable Arizona Representatives who would be strong primary challengers, especially if endorsed by Mr. Woods and other party leaders. And I expect that a lot Democratic voters are on the same page.
jl
@Geminid: I’ve been thinking that Sinema’s toxic bad faith, and looney, antics would cause some serious blow-back.
Both Sinema and Manchin think they very smart people, triangulating their constituencies with all the savvy that a Politico hot take piece would ever want.
But.. maybe they are both arrogant fools who’ve lost track of the plot.
Geminid
@jl: In political terms, Manchin has a better grip on his state constituency than Sinema. He was a successful governor and he’s won two Senate races.
And Arizona and Arizona politics are more dynamic than West Virginia’s. Arizona is growing, and trending from red to purple. Democrats turned out in record numbers last November. They turned out for for Biden and Kelly, though. Those same Democrats could decide they can have better than Sinema in 2024.
Another Scott
Framing isn’t everything, but it does matter. We humans like stories (narratives). Communications matters.
Cheers,
Scott.
Mo MacArbie
@Another Scott: The big problem in Dem messaging is illustrated by the first comment on that tweet, when the dude pipes up to say, “I think they should say that this way…”
Uncle Cosmo
Not to minimize the blowhardiness and jerkitude of the generic “Greatest Generation” grunt…but I have to wonder how the gigantic meatgrinder of mass mechanized warfare mangled the psyches of formerly decent human beings.
Dad was drafted aged 30 in 1943, when they took anyone who could walk; became a diesel mechanic in a motor pool that set up shop (a couple of days after the initial landings) on Leyte and Okinawa. He was happy to recall that he “never fired a shot in anger.”
He told us funny stories about life in the Army. Later in life we started to pry out some of the darker stuff. Like lying in a slit trench** the night after landing on Leyte, clutching his M1, after word came down that the Japs were sneaking through the front lines to murder the rear echelons. Like never sleeping a wink in darkness when deployed after that, because no son of the Rising Sun was going to slit his throat while he lay unconscious. (How did you keep going? – I took catnaps during the day.) Scared half out of his mind. Maybe more than half.
I must’ve been 12 or 13 when I recounted to him the gaudy and gory stories my buddy up the alley had been told by his dad, who’d manned a machine gun on a Marine landing craft in the Pacific. It was one of the handful of times I ever saw him visibly furious. Don’t you believe a word of it! he shouted at me:
A close friend of my college GF was the result of a wartime romance: Her father was with Patton when the Third Army roared into Czechoslovakia, her mother a Czech girl he brought home and married. I never met either, but reputedly he became an abusive drunk while his wife held the household together. I don’t excuse such (reported) behavior – but I wonder what he might have lived through; I wonder who he might have been had he not lived through it….
** What you dig instead of a foxhole when the water table is 18″ down.
dimmsdale
@jl: @TKH: Many thanks for your comments. I’ve been following a commentator on YT (a PhD pathologist) who was able to show genetic sequencing of all the viruses surrounding the SARS-COV-2 virus, making a point that the COV-2 virus is SO DIFFERENT from its neighboring viruses that it “could only have” been done in a lab. I’m not science-literate at all, so I’ll be checking out the podcast you mention.
At some point it starts sounding like all the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, where speculation is built on speculation to result in a “could only have” point (which is itself speculation); e.g. “The towers’ in-footprint collapse COULD ONLY have been accomplished via shaped charges”), and without actual facts (which possibly only the Chinese possess at this point) the whole Fauci /conspiracy /gain-of-function theorizing becomes a kind of religion.
It’s exhausting if you try to follow it all; so I appreciate your comments!
J R in WV
@jl:
See, here’s your problem. You seem to be assuming that Manchin THINKS, when in fact he can not think at all. Does not, will not think! Ever!!
J R in WV
My last comment about Joe Manchin (for now, anyways) is about his “successful” terms as governor. At the time I was part of a software development team, and from the beginning we always formed a small committee to do hiring interviews and to make decisions on job offers, whether for a full time employee or for a contractor to work with FTEs on projects. We had pretty good luck for the most part with both FTEs and contractors.
Then after Gov. Manchin took charge, changes in hiring were implemented. First we were informed that in FTE hiring we had to ask every applicant what the minimum salary they would accept for the position was, and that datum went to the state office of personnel, which approved salary offers to potential new employees. Then when the paperwork came back to our agency, the approved salary was ALWAYS a couple of thousand $$ per year less than that applicant’s minimum acceptable salary.
So the preferred applicant would NEVER accept that low-ball salary that was the most we could legally offer. We discussed showing people during that portion of the interview a sticky with “please boost your minimum acceptable salary offer by $2500” written on it but never did that.
So hiring the best applicants was pretty much not EVER happening during Manchin’s terms as governor. Evidently it was more important to him to keep the head count down in state government employee population than to hire competent software developers.