Evergreen. https://t.co/Kt5S45f2B9
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) July 20, 2021
No matter how stiff the competition, Senator Paul is on it!
"Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about" https://t.co/rdiGNw5RHa
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) July 20, 2021
Per the Washington Post:
… The argument, which echoed an earlier dust-up, centered on Paul’s claim that the National Institutes of Health awarded a grant that partially funded a project that relied on “gain-of-function” research, a controversial practice that involves enhancing a virus in a lab to try to anticipate future pandemics. This type of experimentation has come under growing scrutiny as U.S. intelligence agencies investigate the origins of the novel coronavirus and the theory that it could have accidentally leaked from a lab.
Officials have repeatedly denied Paul’s allegations, and in a hearing in May, Fauci told the senator that the National Institutes of Health “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research” at the Chinese lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
On Tuesday, Paul suggested that Fauci had lied: “Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11 where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?” Paul asked.
“Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement,” Fauci replied, adding that the research had been “judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain-of-function.”
Paul then accused Fauci of “dancing around this because you are trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic.”
“I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, senator,” Fauci shot back…
This is after Sen. Paul’s comments yesterday apparently failed to get him enough traction on social media:
this is disgusting even for rand paul, whose neighbor should be given a second crack at him https://t.co/Llopvuzeov
— NATION-STATE INSURGENCY MACHINE (@golikehellmachi) July 19, 2021
Reminder: Rand Paul's opinion can matter even if he's the only one who holds it. Why? Because most things in the Senate are done with unanimous consent, or else can chew up many days of floor time.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) July 20, 2021
Even if he never quite manages to be the Worst Person in the Senate — or even the Worst Senator From Kentucky — I think we can all agree that Rand Paul is a terrible f*cking excuse for a human being.
debbie
First, I’ve watched Fauci’s Ouchie on Rand several times and it improves every time.
Also, did you guys know @realLizUSA is Trump-in-disguise on Twitter? ?
Peale
Bucks. Bucks. Bucks.
NotMax
Rand Paul is two four-letter words.
//
Omnes Omnibus
@Peale:
You said it.
mvr
High bar for that. But he’s aiming for it.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Yep. They’re driving me crazy.
patroclus
My school (TCU) has been doing the “Fear the Frog” thing for over a decade – the students have a huge banner which they cover the whole section with multiple times during a game. It’s totally cool to see the Milwaukee Bucks expropriate that with the “Fear the Deer” thing.
On topic: Rand Paul sux.
Major Major Major Major
Blech.
japa21
@patroclus: “Fear the Deer” has been around a long time.
Suzanne
Rand Paul has aged a lot in the last year. That asymptomatic COVID did him no favors. Wow. He looks like the piece of shit that he is.
Benw
@Peale: It’s a helluva game so far
Omnes Omnibus
@patroclus: Ahem…
gwangung
@patroclus: Stanford’s been doing “Fear the Tree” for about as long. But you have to give the Bucks credit for doing a rhyme.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: I can’t believe G’s free throw shooting tonight.
Delk
Noted liar Madison Cawthorn called Fauci a punk liar.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Absolutely fucking nuts.
mr perfect
Repeat after me: We Are All Rand Paul’s Neighbour.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Going to be a long 5 minutes.
Martin
Once again worth noting that lying to Congress is only a crime if you aren’t a member of Congress.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: 50 years. Come on!
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: I remember the last championship. But I am old.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: My brother is the biggest basketball fan in the family*; he was born in 1971.
*Except maybe my mom, who will not sleep tonight.
Peale
Gotta try not to scream and wake the neighbors. They really should start these games earlier.
WaterGirl
I imagine Dr. Fauci is a slow burn, not quick to anger. But it appears that when he’s pissed, he’s fucking pissed. Good for Dr. Fauci.
Matt McIrvin
This right here is what the “lab leak hypothesis” is really about– the claim that Anthony Fauci somehow created COVID-19. This is what they’re pivoting to from antivax and pandemic denial. If Fauci is a liberal hero he has to become the conservatives’ villain.
japa21
@Peale: If I start screaming I’ll wake Mrs. Japa. Believe me, that would be worse.
The Moar You Know
Who’s paying the Paul family to take down America? I think this is a reasonable question in light of his performance today.
HumboldtBlue
@Peale:
What a game.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: we’ll if Faucci is a mad scientist willing to murder 5,000,000 people around the world to destroy Trump, I don’t think it would be wise for Paul to ask more questions. Dude is obviously a bad ass, probably will kill 10,000,000 more if he’s backed into a corner.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: 34 is putting down a legendary performance, and everyone else is doing what they need to do.
japa21
Peale
56 seconds…
HumboldtBlue
Giannis has been legendary. What a game.
Also, the comment problems still persist and it’s increasingly frustrating. The issue of choosing visual v text just doesn’t work properly. At least on Firefox.
patroclus
@gwangung: From, Omnes’ link, the Bucks have been doing it since 2009-10. The Frogs started the Fear the Frog thing soon after Gary Patterson became head coach in 2000. Stanford began unofficially adopting the Tree as its mascot in 1975, but the first article I could find mentioning the slogan was from 2009.
It’s kind of like the debate about who started singing Sweet Caroline at sports events… The Bucks making it rhyme, though, is a unique addition.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus:
friend at work predicted 108 to 98 Bucks.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: I will take it.
patroclus
The ’71 Bucks were my first favorite NBA team. The Big O, Kareem (then Alcindor), Bobby D, and Jon Mc were a great team.
And they do it again 50 years later!
Yutsano
GO BUCKS!!!
So yeah…I’ve been absent even more than normal. Friday afternoon I wasn’t feeling good at work. Been in hospital since with a nasty (but healing) GI bleed. I should be out in a day or two unless I do inpatient rehab. I’ll be okay, just edging back into reality.
japa21
Yessssssss
japa21
@Yutsano:
Take it easy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Stop having health problems. Damn it!
HumboldtBlue
@patroclus:
I grew up watching the Sixers beating Moncrief and Co.
No hate for the Bucks.
That’s a huge win. Particularly for assistant vice-principal Budenholzer.
Omnes Omnibus
They won every way possible in these playoffs.
JCJ
BUCKS WIN!!!
Omnes Omnibus
Giannis went straight to his mom.
patroclus
@HumboldtBlue: Milwaukee is going to be Party City tonight!! It’s great that a small market club can still do it.
I moved on from the Bucks when Kareem left and became a Dallas Chaps fan and still like San Antonio where they eventually moved. And I’m kind of a Mavs fan although I had moved away from Texas by the time they started. (But I was a part-time season ticket holder during the Chicago Bulls’s MJ era, so that’s where I am now. But it’s nice to see the Cheeseheads get a winner again!).
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Just about every player had a big game when needed.
JCJ
Adam Silver never looks healthy
Andrya
I detest Rand Paul, but there is an article in the current issue of “The Nation” that says that Dr. Fauci was not exactly lying in this exchange, but was being a bit deceptive. According to The Nation, NIAID was not currently funding any gain-of-function research, but in the recent past had made a grant to a University of North Carolina researcher who had subcontracted gain-of-function research to China. Normally I would consider The Nation- a leftie magazine- reliable, but this has not been reported elsewhere. I honestly do not know what to believe. If anyone more knowledgeable- I’m looking at you, Ms. Rofer and Dr. Silverman- could shed any light on this, I would be deeply grateful.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Giannis was the obvious star, but it was a team win.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Give the coach a ton of credit.
Omnes Omnibus
Giannis gets MVP? How weird.
japa21
Have to get up early. Night all.
Urza
@Andrya: If it was a subcontract, is that really the same thing? Or, would Fauci even know about a subcontract?
Another Scott
@Andrya: (I haven’t read the Nation story.) Perhaps that is related to this old NPR story from 2014.
I would be very suspicious of any story trying to paint Fauci and the NIH as a villain here. Very suspicious. Known liars are pushing the stories, and that should make everyone suspicious.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Andrya
@Urza: That is not clear to me- one of the reasons I begged for clarification. However, in any bureaucracy there is an important distinction between “I didn’t murder my enemy, I just hired a hit man” vs. “I had no idea that my personal assistant was murdering people”.
LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)
@Yutsano: Owww! I hope you have made/are majing a full and fast recovery.
(and I spent July 4-5 in my own local hospital.)
Yutsano
@LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess): This is the third one I’ve had in four years. There is definitely something screwy going on in my digestive tract. Fortunately after basically replacing all my blood I seem to be stable for now. I am very much taking it easy until hopefully something comes to light.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Andrya: the person posting the article isn’t a reporter, but a college literature professor who occasionally posts “think” columns on The Nation (which lost a lot of credibility when they printed conspiracy theory implying Hillary killed a young staffer of the DNC ¹) . I’ll wait for an actual science or medical reporter, or even a just plain reporter, before dumping on Fauci.
CaseyL
@Yutsano: What Omni said! Get better, and stay that way!
NotMax
@Yutsano
Jeeze, dude, your frequent patient miles account must be prodigious.
Get lots of rest. Eat the Jell-O.
CaseyL
Rand Paul the worst person in the Senate? I dunno; there’s a lot of competition for that title.
Maybe we need to break out some subcategories: Worst Brainless person, Worst Corrupt person, Worst Spineless person… and then the winners of those categories can compete for Best in Show: Biggest Waste of Protoplasm in the Senate.
billcinsd
@patroclus: James Silas was such a great guard, it is a huge shame he destroyed his knee just before the merger
Andrya
@Another Scott: “The Nation” does not paint Dr. Fauci as a villain. It portrays him as shading the truth for genuinely good reasons.
Another point in the article says that in the early stages of the epidemic, Dr. Fauci minimized the value of wearing a mask- which he absolutely did- to prevent a terrified public from hoarding masks desperately needed for front line health care workers. (This has personal valence for me- in April 2020 one of my closest friends told me that he had some kind of special access to medical-grade masks and wanted to give me a large number of them. I thought this was immoral- medical grade masks should go medical workers- but I replied to my friend, quoting Dr. Fauci, that masks were not effective against a virus. To this day, my friend gives me a hard time for being so wrong.)
So, according to The Nation, this was not a case of evil lying, but of false statements to serve a greater good. Nonetheless, if true (and I don’t know if it is true or not) it would violate what I believe to be the first principle of managing a catastrophe- always tell the people at risk the truth.
Again, I want to point out that The Nation is a leftist magazine.
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
Mitch McConnell gets “worst danger to the future of our democracy”, which makes him the worst in class in my book.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Sorry to hear it. Hope you have a speedy recovery!
Craig
@patroclus: here in SF Giants fans were doing Fear The Beard back in the 2010 Series run for pitcher Brian Wilson. Lots of FEAR in sports. Nice job Bucks.
Another Scott
@Andrya: Nit – Fauci and the NIH didn’t say that masks were ineffective. He said, partly for reasons you indicate, that at that time people didn’t need to wear masks (unless they were around people who were infected). Those were the days when ‘everyone’ thought that handwashing was the most sensible thing… Telling everyone to wear masks would have made things worse because of the horrible state of PPE manufacturing and distribution.
There were many discussions here in the late-winter/early-spring about masks, etc.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Andrya
@Another Scott: Dr. Fauci absolutely did that masks were unnecessary or ineffective- here is a link.
Jay
@Andrya:
in the beginning, the “Best Science at the Time”, believed that Covid was spread by formate transmission and large droplets.
Thus, the 6 feet, cover a cough or sneeze, wash your hands you dirty fucking animals,
It was even advanced that you could get Covid through your eyes,
later, it was found that other than some unique situations, ( factory freezer ships and their warehouses), formate transmission is rare, droplet transmission outside of 6 feet is rare, aerosol transmission is the main route of transmission.
that’s when homemade masks filled the gap.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
I think it’s also important to recognize that our early mistakes are not the reason the virus has been so deadly. The reason it’s been so deadly is because we were unable to learn from those mistakes and we keep doing the same dumb things over and over again. Oh yeah, and one of our political parties has made being as stupid as possible about COVID a centerpiece of their platform and discourage their members from taking sensible safety precautions as a test of party loyalty.
Another Scott
@Andrya: I’m sorry that I wasn’t clear.
Fauci never said that masks were ineffective against the virus. Virus researchers and physicians wear masks. He knows that, being one.
He said, as that Reuters story indicates, something much more nuanced and accurate. Namely, that except for some exceptions, the general public did not need to be wearing masks at that time.
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@Roger Moore:
this counts as a thumbs up.
and not just a “political party”, but also the “Common Clay of the New West” .
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Take it easy.
Hope you feel better soon.
Jay
@Another Scott:
yurp.
Richard
@debbie: no, i did not realize that, but i will investigate.
I mostly came here to talk about that martinet little curly top rand paul and how disgusting he is. I wanted to ask questions about his understanding of reality. I wanted to ask him to retire before he totally destroys his reputation.
Of course, he will be fine because his supporters will lend him money.
Tony Jay
@patroclus:
Neil Diamond might be getting on in years but he can, and will, fuck up a motherfucker for chatting this kind of shit about his skills.
Hob
@Andrya: Repeating “The Nation is a leftist magazine” over and over does not make the article you cited any more definitive. It is a brief summary of other people’s reporting with a particular interpretation placed on it by the author, who is an English professor who writes opinion pieces for The Nation and has no more special knowledge of these matters than you or I. If you want to find out more about the nature and significance of Dr. Baric’s work and whether it’s appropriate to characterize it as “funneling money to Wuhan”, I suggest that you try looking for more detailed coverage, for instance in the Washington Post.
Also, as a general rule, being published in The Nation is not really a reliable sign that someone isn’t full of shit and doesn’t have an ax to grind. I’ve been reading them for 30 years. They have published plenty of terrible stuff over the years along with their good work, including some really egregious Putin-polishing in the last decade.
Hob
@Andrya: You’re also missing the point of Another Scott’s response, which was that it simply isn’t true that this Nation piece is some scoop that “hasn’t been reported elsewhere” as you said. The Baric business got some press 7 years ago and has been rehashed since. Rand Paul is now very explicitly trying to turn it into a “Fauci created COVID” story and that is the context of the exchange where you’re claiming Fauci is being deceptive. It is very clear what Paul is saying here, and it’s bullshit, and Fauci is absolutely right to say it’s bullshit. Paul is trying to produce a soundbite in which Fauci can be seen to hem and haw and say something vague that can be construed as conceding Paul’s bullshit point. Fauci has absolutely no duty to engage on this. You keep saying it’s his duty to tell the people the truth– but he has no secret to reveal, there is nothing to explain that isn’t already a matter of public record. If you insist on construing the Baric matter in the way that David Bromwich did, OK– Fauci disagrees with that interpretation, but the facts of the matter are not in dispute, only the question of whether it’s more fair to describe those facts as falling into category A or category B. Paul is counting on the fact that most people have never heard of “gain-of-function research” and don’t know that it can be construed in different ways, more broadly or more narrowly. If you feel that Fauci’s job should be to educate the American people about these research concepts, even though they’re only being brought up now as part of a vicious propaganda effort and are not otherwise relevant– OK, why not, but the time and place for that is sure as shit not in the middle of a Rand Paul bullshit publicity stunt.
r€nato
Rene Boucher is a hero. Too bad he didn’t finish the job.
satby
@Hob: Well done!
Booger
@Delk: Can we stop dignifying that little turd by using that name? Madison may be his middle name, which resonates with a certain addlepated demographic, but he’s David M. Cawthorne, so I believe ‘little Davey Cawthorne’ is better suited to his true gravitas.
SFAW
@japa21:
I vaguely remember that team, wasn’t their center some guy named Alcindor*? Whatever happened to him?
* Or, for you Mad magazine nerds, Lew “Shorty” Incinerator.
SFAW
@Yutsano:
Oy. I hope you have a complete recovery, ASAP. And that “all my blood has been replaced” in a later comment? That would scare the crap out of me. Best wishes. [I’d say “thoughts and prayers,” but given how that’s been perverted by the RWMFs …]
AM in NC
@Booger: I kind of like Little Maddy Cawthorn – it resonates on a few levels.
SFAW
@r€nato:
Maybe he didn’t have the speed/energy when Little
DorkLord Randy went running away to his daddy (“Daddy, make him stop!!!”).I think the Senate should start an investigation into how Randy got licensed in KY. In a rational world/state/commonwealth, setting up a fake licensing board — just so said board can grant you a license — would be a crime. But it’s KY, so normal rules don’t apply, I guess.
SFAW
@AM in NC:
I’d like to see him “Santorumed,” where googling his name — whether Maddy or Davey or Douchebag or whatever — brings back “lying coward” results.
Matt McIrvin
@Andrya: Didn’t The Nation get heavily into anti-anti-Trump “leftism” of the type that mostly hates liberals, lately? or am I confusing them with someone else?
edit: I think I was thinking of their Russia-Ukraine contrarianism.