Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Not all heroes wear capes.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

This fight is for everything.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

In my day, never was longer.

The revolution will be supervised.

Bark louder, little dog.

Let there be snark.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

I was promised a recession.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, While Battling Our Failed Media

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, While Battling Our Failed Media

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, While Battling Our Failed Media 2

… The proposed rule issued by the Department of Health and Human Services seeks to clarify that discrimination on the basis of sex includes decisions regarding “pregnancy termination.” This comes as the federal health department has already pointed to federal civil rights laws — including portions of Obamacare — to caution pharmacists about denying access to medications that can be used for abortions.

Health-care organizations that receive federal funding would also be barred from discriminating against gender transitions and other services that have increasingly become the target of state legislative battles and litigation. Officials also stressed that the new federal anti-discrimination language covers a patient’s sexual orientation and gender identity.

“I think most Americans are familiar with their rights to be free from discrimination — but too often, there are some communities who don’t have that freedom to exercise their rights to access care,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters Monday. “We want to make sure that whoever you are, whatever you look like, wherever you live, however you wish to live your life, that you have access to the care that you need.”

The proposed rule strengthens a provision, Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, that was crafted during the Obama administration but weakened by his successor and has been the subject of extensive litigation. The proposal has also become part of the Biden administration’s strategy to ensure access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade…

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, While Battling Our Failed Media 1


FTFNYTimes:
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, While Battling Our Failed Media

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Fighting for Progress, ing Our Failed Media

I hear what you are saying. And, yes, the data is compelling. Cassandra has been right literally every time she has made a prediction. War. Famine. Rights rollbacks. (A phrase that makes it sound as though maybe the rights are part of a nifty sale rather than a horrible violation of the contract you thought you had with society!) Whenever she has said anything — “Don’t let that horse into the city! It’s full of armed soldiers!” or “If we don’t do anything about the climate, it will get worse” or “Susan Collins, do not take what Brett Kavanaugh just said as reassurance that he doesn’t want to overturn Roe v. Wade” — I have been forced to admit, in retrospect, that she has been absolutely on the money, every time, like that Masonic eye thing that is on the back of all the dollars…

And, yes, once again, Cassandra is trying to warn us. She thinks something terrible will happen and wants to tell us so that we can prepare, just as she told us in the past about Donald Trump not accepting the results of the election, or the horrifying consequences of state trigger laws about abortion, or the dozens of other things she has been right about. Now, given her track record, you might say: Let’s hear this lady out!

But I have to say: What are the odds that she’s right again?…

Who are you going to believe — me, a guy telling you that the Supreme Court has probably done all that it wants to do and there is no chance that it will come for Obergefell v. Hodges next, or Cassandra, a literal prophetess who has always been right and is screaming that I am wrong? I know only two things about Cassandra: She is a hysterical woman to whom we should not give the time of day, and she has been (technically, in only the strictest, most literal sense) right about every single thing that she has predicted so far. Also, her predictions are so depressing! I don’t want to live in a world where what Cassandra says is true, even though, technically, I guess, I do live in that world right now…

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I don’t want to live in a world where what Cassandra says is true, even though, technically, I guess, I do live in that world right now…

    The solution to that particular conundrum is well within your abilities to solve.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    @Suzanne:

    upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”

     

    Slight tweak to say “upon my loins” and I think we have the official campaign slogan for Baud! 20XX!

  7. 7.

    satby

    Anne Laurie, you and I must have almost the same Twitter feed.

    I love that Daily Show clip. Trevor Noah has turned out to be a far batteries and comedian than Jon Stewart.

  12. 12.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suzanne:

    Another good piece to read: How The Fight To Ban Abortion Is Rooted In The ‘Great Replacement’ Theory.

    “Great Replacement” theory is of course an abhorrently racist belief.  But beyond that, I don’t see how the idea even works.

    Because of the effects of centuries of economic discrimination in America, it’s going to disproportionately be women of color who won’t be able to afford to travel to a place where they can safely get an abortion.  Seems to me they’d be hastening the Great Replacement they’re so afraid of.

  16. 16.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    Slight tweak to say “upon my loins” and I think we have the official campaign slogan for Baud! 20XX!

    And without pants, your loins will be on full pub(l)ic display!

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @satby:

    Thanks.  I kind of agree that tweet isn’t great. Not sure Willis’s suggestion is better. It has its own problems.

    ETA: Constantly talking about messaging is boring though.  How about just message the message directly to your followers rather than trying to school other people’s messaging all the time.

  19. 19.

    satby

    @Spanky: oh fuck me, yes. As I mentioned in my reply to Baud, now it’s not even logical autocorrect, just random bullshit with the same number of letters. It should have read “far better host …”

  22. 22.

    germy shoemangler

    I love looking at Burbank real estate listings. For one point five million dollars you can own a 750 square foot box built in 1945 so returning GIs could have a place to bring dames before eventually buying a real house.

    — Kaleb Horton (@kalebhorton) July 6, 2022

  24. 24.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @satby:

    Hehe. Normally I’m pretty good at figuring out what was meant before autocorrect stepped in, but that one had me baffled. :)

  25. 25.

    satby

    @Baud: agree violently. Communication is hard because even a flawless delivery depends on the receiver or the loop isn’t closed. And in mass communication, you have to try to “message” all levels of receivers. You think you can say it better, restate it and move on. Be a helper.

  29. 29.

    JML

    Glad to hear Biden is responding well to treatment. My brother-in-law the nurse tells me that Paxlovid stuff is the real deal (he works in a semi-rural hospital where it’s COVID all the time) and knowing it’s out there as a treatment method brings a little extra peace of mind.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @satby: ​
     
    Well, to get you started: the answer to today’s Wordle is:
    “pneumonoultramiscroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”

  37. 37.

    SFAW

    @satby: ​

    I’d like to see TFG try to pronounce it.* More out-takes than Carter has pills.
    * Just kidding. The less I see of his disgusting visage and form, the better.

    ETA: But “finding that word”? It’s a pretty common word, most people use it at least once a day.

  39. 39.

    Geminid

    @satby: Voice-to-text can be even worse. I once had a customer who was pleased with a chimney repair and texted me to send her my invoice as soon as possible. But it came out “please forward your ass ASAP.” I texted back that I had to keep my ass with me.

  40. 40.

    satby

    @JML: yes, it does. Though even my sister in the nursing home just went through a bout barely needing anything but OTC cold and flu stuff. She tested positive on a Friday evening, so had to wait until Monday morning to have Paxlovid proscribed, and by then was pretty over the symptoms anyway. Fortunately.

  42. 42.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    ETA: Constantly talking about messaging is boring though.  How about just message the message directly to your followers rather than trying to school other people’s messaging all the time.

    Followers? I have followers??

    I can only say the same things but so many times before I get bored with hearing myself say them. So yeah, messaging matters to me: I’d like to hear someone with a bigger megaphone than I have say those things, so I don’t have to.

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A New York City preacher was robbed of more than $1m worth of jewellery while delivering a livestreamed sermon on Sunday when armed bandits crashed his Brooklyn church.

    Bishop Lamor Miller-Whitehead, a Rolls-Royce-driving preacher known for his flamboyant style and friendship with Mayor Eric Adams, was delivering a sermon at his Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries when police say three robbers walked in. They flashed guns and demanded property from Miller-Whitehead and his wife, Asia K DosReis-Whitehead, police said.

    Hillbilly’s Rule #1 in robbery avoidance: Don’t advertise. Never occurred to me to add, “especially on the internet or TV.”

    Miller-Whitehead, 44, formed Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries in 2013, after serving a five-year prison sentence for identity theft and grand larceny. Miller-Whitehead claims he was illegally convicted.

    The picture is coming into focus…

    In an Instagram post Sunday, Miller-Whitehead defended his lavish lifestyle, saying he’s “going to live his life the way God has it set up for him”.

    Yeah, I think it’s safe to say he and Jesus are not on a first name basis.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    After days of hot, humid weather, greater Stanardsville, Virginia is overcast, cool and drizzly this morning. A hint that Autumn is on its way.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    What exactly are you into that you need lions right now?

    You know all those conservative Christians who are always complaining that they’re being persecuted?  How about we add some lions and an amphitheater to the experience?

  61. 61.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: Did you get any rain? I heard on the radio this morning that there is a flash flood warning in St. Louis because they got 6-12″ of rain in the past day! Meanwhile, the Great Oven continues in this part of the country. I looked at the temp data for July for us, and it’s brutal – highs over 90º every day since July 2nd, six days in a row of highs over 100º broken up by a high of  97º yesterday. It’s supposed to be over 100º again today, and then for the next week there is a chance of rain every day with highs in the 80’s. This is just insane weather.

  62. 62.

    SFAW

    @Geminid: ​
     
    After about a week of 90-plus temps here in central MA, the day is starting out reasonably cool.
    So, of course, today is the day the A/C guy is going to be here to fix the system. Which has been out, and about which I called almost a month ago.

  63. 63.

    germy shoemangler

    I’m at the heatwave, I’m at the monkeypox, I’m at the combination heatwave monkeypox inflation covid fascist polio gay panic vibe shift

    — doctor spaceman (@lolennui) July 23, 2022

  64. 64.

    Soprano2

    Well this story is a nightmare. Gotta give NPR props, they aren’t letting up on telling the horror stories that are a result of restrictive abortion laws.

    Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare
    Elizabeth stood up to get some lunch. That’s when she felt something “shift” in her uterus, down low, and then “this burst of water just falls out of my body. And I screamed because that’s when I knew something wrong was happening.”

    Her waters had broken, launching her into what she calls a “dystopian nightmare” of “physical, emotional and mental anguish.” She places the blame for the ensuing medical trauma on the Republican legislators who passed the state’s anti-abortion law, on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed it, and on the inflamed political rhetoric, which Elizabeth says only sees abortion “as one thing, a black-and-white issue, when abortion has all of these gray areas.”

  66. 66.

    Ken

    “His symptoms have now almost completely resolved.”

    I could swear this exact line was used in a comedy (possibly Blackadder?) by a medieval doctor, to which someone responded “But he’s dead.”

    Anyway, thank goodness Biden’s coming through OK.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    All this talk of Cassandra made me want to see what Hillary was up to.

     

    Many of the same Republicans who just voted against protecting birth control and celebrated when Roe was overturned also oppose paid family leave and efforts to make childcare affordable. This is not about supporting families—it’s about dragging women back in time.
    — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 21, 2022

    She’s also pinned a tweet thread from Sen. Chris Murphy “messaging ” Biden’s accomplishments.

  70. 70.

    Ken

    @SFAW: “pneumonoultramiscroscopics ilicovolcanoconiosis.”

    Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious…

    (Sorry, but I subscribe to Mark Twain’s theory that the best way to get rid of an earworm is to infect someone else share it.)

  75. 75.

    eclare

    @Soprano2:   Just about the same here in Memphis.  I have lived here eighteen years, and I have never experienced a summer that has been this consistently hot and dry for so long.  High of 99 today, slight cooling on Thursday.  Maybe some rain.  I feel sorry for the farmers in the Delta.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @Immanentize: Sorry, it’s past the edit time. Maybe a front-pager can fix.

    (I’m surprised mine broke it, but not the original. Something with the blockquote, I guess?)

  77. 77.

    SFAW

    @Ken: ​
     

    Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious…

    Great. Now I have Dick Van Dyke’s “Cockney” accent in my head. You bastid.

  78. 78.

    Feathers

    @Suzanne: Also need to realize how much of it, especially the no exceptions for life and health of the mother, is rooted in Catholic doctrine. The pregnant person has had the chance to live in accordance with God’s will and confess their sins, so they have the chance to go to heaven after they die. The child they are carrying, being unbaptized, will not go to heaven if they die. Thus the child has every priority of being brought into the world so they can be baptized, even at the cost of their mother’s life. Mom had her chance at salvation shouldn’t fear death anyway, being a good Catholic. And if she’s not a good Catholic? Sorry, we make the rules.

    This is why, growing up, I had friends with deeply devout mothers who refused to give birth at Catholic hospitals. Also why we need to get rid of religions running hospitals.

  79. 79.

    Suzanne

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Because of the effects of centuries of economic discrimination in America, it’s going to disproportionately be women of color who won’t be able to afford to travel to a place where they can safely get an abortion.  Seems to me they’d be hastening the Great Replacement they’re so afraid of. 

    That’s why they’re working on criminalizing interstate travel.

    The nutcase right hates educated liberal white women, too. They have a special hatred for them (us) because they (we) now occupy roles in society that mediocre white men used to easily access. And thus, they (we) are not controllable via the traditional means. Women having status, money, power, and education is a problem for them.

  80. 80.

    Ken

    @SFAW: The good news is that it worked for me — I don’t have the earworm. Find someone you can share the song with.

  83. 83.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I just saw a weird online ad for Barbie accessories that showed a plastic dog. You press on the dog’s back and three puppies drop from its belly. Does Ron DeSantis know about this?

  84. 84.

    SFAW

    @Ken: ​
     

    Find someone you can share the song with.

    There’s no one I hate that much. [OK, in fairness, the song is pretty good. But the spoken accent — oy vey.]

  85. 85.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: Women having status, money, power, and education is a problem for them.

    No doubt this is true. Republican women are fooling themselves.

  86. 86.

    HinTN

    @eclare: Summer of 1980 it was 100 degrees by 1000 every morning for over two weeks in July. That was the summer we were putting board and batten siding on the cabin. Had to start st dawn and wrap by 10 every day or we’d have died.

  87. 87.

    Soprano2

    So, today in “LOL so predictable” I saw a friend on FB who has been consistently criticizing Biden for rising gas prices post a meme that “gas prices aren’t falling, they’re still $2.10 too high”. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, maybe that prices should be what they were when Trump left office. One of the comments on that post was that “falling prices are about supply and demand, it has nothing to do with Biden”. Well, I went off on them a little bit about how predictable it was that while blaming him as long as prices were going up now that they’re going down they’ve “suddenly” discovered how supply and demand works, rather than crediting Biden for the falling prices. Good grief…

  88. 88.

    Suzanne

    @SFAW: The rise of assortative mating is one of the biggest social changes since Roe v Wade that I don’t think gets enough attention. It has changed and stratified family formation, and it is no accident that it has occurred simultaneous with an increase in the rates of interracial marriage and women now outnumbering men in higher education.

    Assortative mating has changed who is available to whom. And men who don’t bring a lot to the table in terms of money or status now find that their marriage prospects have decreased relative to 50 years ago. They want to use force of law and economy to make white women marry them and have their babies.

  89. 89.

    Another Scott

    Pete is good. It must be exhausting to have to fight these battles constantly. :-(

    In other news, ScienceAlert – OMG! Regular naps will kill you!!11ONE:

    Is there anything nicer than falling asleep on a lazy afternoon, with a snuggly pet and a half-read book?

    Giving in to this simple pleasure too often might be a sign worth heeding, however, with a huge new study concluding regular, frequent napping is correlated with a higher risk of hypertension and stroke.

    An analysis of 358,451 anonymous UK Biobank records revealed the link, suggesting it may be more than coincidence.

    Being a correlational study, the figures don’t necessarily imply the fault lies with the naps themselves. It’s entirely possible poor sleep patterns is the problem, and those brief moments of daytime rest mightn’t be enough to protect us from the health deficits that occur as a result.

    […]

    [ 10th paragraph: ]

    From the Biobank data, the researchers excluded any individuals who already had high blood pressure, or had a stroke, prior to the commencement of the study. This left 358,451 people whose health information contributed to the study, including 50,507 incidents of hypertension and 4,333 incidents of stroke.

    This wide sample revealed some fascinating information. For example, most of the regular nappers were male, smoked, drank daily, had lower education and income levels, and reported both insomnia and snoring.

    Higher napping frequency was also positively associated with the genetic predisposition towards hypertension.

    These regular nappers had a 12 percent higher risk of hypertension than seldom- and never-nappers, and a 24 percent higher risk of stroke. And this risk was higher for younger participants below the age of 60, whose hypertension risk was 20 percent, compared to 10 percent for over 60.

    Increased nap frequency, reported by around a quarter of the participants, is also a cause for concern. Increasing napping frequency by just one category on the survey – for example, from never to sometimes – increased the risk of hypertension by 40 percent.

    Rather than one causing the other, the naps and the hypertension might both be symptoms of the same underlying problem.

    “Although taking a nap itself is not harmful, many people who take naps may do so because of poor sleep at night. Poor sleep at night is associated with poorer health, and naps are not enough to make up for that,” said clinical psychologist and sleep expert Michael Grandner of the University of Arizona, who was not involved in the research.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    Hmm…

    Seriously, being able to look for correlations in large datasets is a good thing. But come on, it’s not hard to talk about the results in a clear way. Napping isn’t risky; having issues that make one want to nap frequently/excessively (like smoking, daily drinking, being male, having low income, having insomnia, etc.) is risky…

    :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  90. 90.

    Soprano2

    @HinTN: I keep telling people that this summer reminds me of 1980, and that’s not a good thing. I had to drive 20 miles to work at 4 o’clock with no air conditioning. This was when I was in college. Here in SWMO the summer of 1954 is legendary – that’s when we established our all-time highest temp of 113º.

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    @Feathers:

    Also need to realize how much of it, especially the no exceptions for life and health of the mother, is rooted in Catholic doctrine. 

    Oh for sure, but religion has largely been about patriarchal control forever. “Catholic doctrine” is not a thing that has ever existed outside of patriarchy. Men have wanted to control women long before the Catholic Church wrote it down.

  92. 92.

    eclare

    @Feathers:   When my mom was pregnant with me in 1968, she made it known under no circumstances was she to be taken to a Catholic hospital.  We weren’t Catholic, but she knew what their priority was.

  93. 93.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: I have always thought families should be traced through the woman, because there is never any doubt who the mother of a baby is.

  94. 94.

    satby

    @Feathers: Catholic doctrine originally followed Jewish law in that the life of the mother was paramount (at least until viability), and I was still taught that as late as the 70s in Catholic nursing school. No idea how or when that got so perverted. I’m in no way a practicing Catholic, but I definitely learned a far different version than what came along later.

    Also, if the parents wished, even stillborn babies were baptised. All Catholics have the power to baptize. We all know my Italian aunt probably baptized her Jewish grandchildren in her kitchen sink the first time she babysat each one.

  97. 97.

    eclare

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:   That’s weird.  I recently read that Barbie is coming out with a Jane Goodall version of the doll.  I loved Barbie as a kid, but all she had were Ken and her Dream House!

  100. 100.

    eclare

    @HinTN:   I remember hearing about the summer of 1980!  Luckily that was the summer I went away to camp for July in a cooler climate.

    But yeah, the legend of that summer lives on.

  101. 101.

    Barbara

    @Soprano2: For me, it was the summer of 1988 — I lived in an unairconditioned walk-up, converted row house in Baltimore, on the second floor.  It was so hot for around two weeks in July that I used to walk my dog to the ATM vestibule a block away and stand in the air conditioned alcove for a while, just to cool off.  It broke after around two weeks.

    This summer has not been that bad for us, here in the Metro DC area.  A few days above 95 is pretty much expected, and they have been punctuated by enough rain and temperatures in the 80s that the grass is still really green even without watering. But I understand that is just a bit of random luck for us.

  103. 103.

    HinTN

    @Soprano2: That summer was the exclamation point on a crazy weather year for us. The previous winter there were 20 days where it didn’t get above 0 °F and nights went to -20 °F. That cabin was freezing cold!

  109. 109.

    Edmund Dantes

    @Another Scott: did they also check for sleep apnea in the group that has a lot of the same symptoms of lots of naps? Weird it’s not in the list.

  110. 110.

    Ohio Mom

    @Soprano2: Some cultures do operate on matrilineal descent, including traditional Judaism: you are Jewish if your mother and maternal ancestors is/was, even if you did not live a Jewish life — say, your ancestral family was forced to convert. This was based on it always being possible to know the mother, the father, not so much.

    Modern American Reform Judaism, in response to increasing intermarriage, declared that which parent is Jewish doesn’t matter, you are Jewish if just your father is, IF you grow up practicing Judaism.

    This has served to make the rift between Liberal and Orthodox Judaism deeper, to which I say, Good, I’d just as soon not have anything to do with those antediluvians.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Ah, creating and founding your own church, even if it’s only a sparsely attended storefront operation, the tax dodge available to ordinary nobodies.

    There’s probably a ratio describing down-and-out neighborhoods and the number of um, unaffiliated, one-of-a-kind congregations.

  111. 111.

    Another Scott

    @Soprano2: “Never” is too strong a word.  Human biology is complicated!

    Lydia Fairchild:

    Lydia Fairchild (born 1976) is an American woman who exhibits chimerism, having two distinct populations of DNA among the cells of her body. She was pregnant with her third child when she and the father of her children, Jamie Townsend, separated. When Fairchild applied for enforcement of child support in 2002, providing DNA evidence of Townsend’s paternity was a routine requirement. While the results showed Townsend to certainly be their father, they seemed to rule out her being their mother.

    Fairchild stood accused of fraud by either claiming benefits for other people’s children, or taking part in a surrogacy scam, and records of her prior births were put similarly in doubt. Prosecutors called for her two children to be taken away from her, believing them not to be hers. As time came for her to give birth to her third child, the judge ordered that an observer be present at the birth, ensure that blood samples were immediately taken from both the child and Fairchild, and be available to testify. Two weeks later, DNA tests seemed to indicate that she was also not the mother of that child.

    A breakthrough came when her defense attorney,[1] Alan Tindell, learned of Karen Keegan, a chimeric woman in Boston, and suggested a similar possibility for Fairchild and then introduced an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about Keegan.[2][3] He realized that Fairchild’s case might also be caused by chimerism. As in Keegan’s case, DNA samples were taken from members of the extended family. The DNA of Fairchild’s children matched that of Fairchild’s mother to the extent expected of a grandmother. They also found that, although the DNA in Fairchild’s skin and hair did not match her children’s, the DNA from a cervical smear test did match. Fairchild was carrying two different sets of DNA, the defining characteristic of chimerism.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack

    @Geminid:

    “Hint of autumn”?! It’s just the rain cooling things off. Now 75° here in Seven Corners, but back up to 90° on Thursday.

  113. 113.

    WaterGirl

    @Immanentize: was it Ken or the original SFAW comment?  I need to know which one to fix.

    edit: never mind, it occurred to me that I could just look at this thread on my phone, which i never do unless I am stuck somewhere waiting for something.  fixed now.

  114. 114.

    Another Scott

    @Edmund Dantes: I don’t see it in the web page for the journal article (article is paywalled).

    No wonder the popular press reporting is getting the causality wrong:

    Results:

    Compared with never napping, usually napping was associated with a higher risk of essential hypertension (hazard ratio, 1.12 [95% CI, 1.08–1.17]), stroke (hazard ratio, 1.24 [95% CI, 1.10–1.39], and ischemic stroke (hazard ratio, 1.20 [95% CI, 1.05–1.36]) in our prospective observational analysis. Both the 1-sample and 2-sample MR results indicated that increased daytime napping frequency was likely to be a potential causal risk factor for essential hypertension in FinnGEN (odds ratio, 1.43 [95% CI, 1.06–1.92]) and UK Biobank (odds ratio, 1.40 [95% CI, 1.28–1.58]). The 2-sample MR results supported the potential causal effect of nap frequency on ischemic stroke in MEGASTROKE (odds ratio, 1.29 [95% CI, 1.04–1.62]).

    Conclusions:

    Prospective observational and MR analyses provided evidence that increased daytime nap frequency may represent a potential causal risk factor for essential hypertension. The potential causal association of increased nap frequency with ischemic stroke was supported by 2-sample MR and prospective observational results.

    They’re massacring the word “causal” there.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    SFAW

    @WaterGirl: ​
     
    Mine seems to be showing up OK, and I didn’t get a “Your comment doesn’t effing work, numbnuts” message, so I’m thinking it’s Ken’s.

  118. 118.

    Rekoob

    @Steeplejack: Since you’re around, greetings from Lewes! I’m slowly getting settled in and am exploring the region. Perhaps we can meet for a Dogfish Head IPA on one of your Rehoboth visits.

  121. 121.

    Ohio Mom

    @Another Scott: Chimerism has something to say about the fundamentalist religious belief that the embryo is ensouled.

    Does Lydia Fairchild have two souls, hers and the one belonging to the twin she absorbed during her development in her mother’s womb?

  125. 125.

    wenchacha

    @Feathers: Very true. There is also the issue of the Lord not blessing a country which allows abortions and gays and premarital sex. Why, He might send Hurricane and tornadoes and fires and plagues. We won’t believe in the plagues, except for gay ones.

  126. 126.

    MinuteMan

    @lowtechcyclist: ​

    @lowtechcyclist: ​
     

    “Great Replacement” theory is of course an abhorrently racist belief. But beyond that, I don’t see how the idea even works.

    Wait for Phase II where the Sordid Six come for contraception.

  127. 127.

    Steeplejack

    @Rekoob:

    Hello! Would love to hear the details of your move and current situation. I was just talking about you with my brother last week. He and his ménage decamped to Rehoboth Beach for the summer, and we were talking about the difference between “visiting” and “living there.” I mentioned that you had been talking about moving there and were investigating locations.

    I have no firm plans to go down there at the moment, but if I do perhaps we can get together.

  128. 128.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @germy shoemangler: Just out of grad school the only job I could score was as a TA running 4 recitation sections of Sadistics for Sociology Majors, one right after the other from 8 AM to noon on Fridays.

    I tell you this to note that on days when I was proctoring a midterm, I would collect the papers while the first section was exiting through the back door, then open the front door to confront the terrified faces of the 9 AM section, and before I’d let them in I’d announce something on the order of

    At the end of the first quarter, the score is Lions 21, Christians 0.

    & adjust for all subsequent sections. Probably couldn’t get away with that theze daze, but…

  129. 129.

    VOR

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  I saw the news about the robbery and wondered what kind of preacher has $1million worth of jewelry lying around.

    Yeah, he needs to use that money to buy a private jet. You know, as scripture clearly states. ;-)

  130. 130.

    Miss Bianca

    @Suzanne:

    In an 1865 essay issued by order of the AMA, Storer went so far as to say of white women that “upon their loins depends the future destiny of the nation.”

    Ewwww. That’s all I got to say about that.

  131. 131.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Geminid: One of the nonlinear effects of “global warming” comes from increased evaporation, which produces higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, which promotes cloud formation. More cloudiness during daytime hours means more sunlight is reflected into space, lowering surface temperature; but more cloud cover at night traps the infrared radiation from heated surfaces that would otherwise escape into space.

    FTR anyone who’s been paying attention and thought a bit about it understands that the real coalmine-canary of AGW isn’t daytime highs but nighttime lows. Here in Baltimore the highs aren’t all that different from a couple of generations back (I fondly recall one from late June 1988: 104° F). But it used to be possible to sleep comfortably at night, for all but the nastiest 5-10 days of the summer, with nothing but a fan in a screen window drafting through the house. These daze there are maybe 5-10 nights every summer when AC is not required for sleep.

  132. 132.

    Dalai Rasta

    Is it okay to post a pet bleg? My Noel had to have surgery to remove a mammary growth on her belly, and my mother and I have had a lot of financial trouble recently.

    We got displaced from our home after Hurricane Ida, and we’ve been living out of a hotel room for the last nine months. FEMA paid for our room through March, but since then they’ve told us that they’ll only give us rental assistance. The problem with that is that my mother uses a wide-base wheelchair, and none of the rental properties in our area have proper accommodations for her.

    As a result, we’ve been using what remains of my father’s death benefits while repairs are being completed on our home, while both our insurance and FEMA claiming that those repairs are the other’s responsibility.

    Despite this entire mess, our only priority at the moment is Noel, and we’re hoping that the lab work on her doesn’t give us any more bad news.

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