The FDA has approved updated COVID-19 vaccines. The shots replace combination vaccines that mixed protection against the original coronavirus strain and even older omicron variants.
Now, the CDC must sign off. https://t.co/vZbBhSztFp
— The Associated Press (@AP) September 11, 2023
Right on predicted schedule! I’ll include more about this very comprehensive Science article in tomorrow’s update, but here’s the nut graf for many (most?) Balloon Juice commentors:
Should I get a booster if I’m at higher risk of severe disease?
Everyone Science spoke with said yes, if you are elderly, immunocompromised, or have medical conditions that make you particularly susceptible to harm from the virus. “For people who are at high risk of severe disease, I think the answer is pretty simple and largely noncontroversial: A 4- to 6-month period of protection has a meaningful clinical benefit,” Barouch says. “It’s clear that that population benefits from a boost and probably more than one boost for the year.”
======
In case you missed Biden's speech,here it is on CSPAN. About 20mins and well worth watching. #September11
President Biden Delivers Remarks on 9/11 Anniversary From Alaska @CSPAN https://t.co/GTFzQKOeJC
— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) September 11, 2023
(Biden’s speech starts around the 7minute mark)
Calls back home to family and a tennis star. An in-room priest visit for Mass. Briefings on Morocco, hurricanes and strike threats. And also, the G20 and a diplomatic visit to Vietnam. Aides said the president was in constant motion on his whirlwind trip. https://t.co/CoqeyAJrrH
— Katie Rogers (@katierogers) September 11, 2023
President Joe Biden visited the memorial to the late Sen. John McCain in Hanoi, Vietnam.
“I miss him,” Biden said on the banks of a central Hanoi lake where McCain’s A-4E Skyhawk was shot down in 1967. @gardnerakayla @justinsink https://t.co/mf0cfwCmDa
— Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen) September 11, 2023
Because this really *is* worth sharing — Jennifer Rubin, “I don’t write about polls. You shouldn’t bother with them, either.” [gift link]:
You might have noticed that I studiously have avoided dissecting the avalanche of 2024 polls. I don’t plan on deviating from this approach — at least not until mid-2024. And you should consider ignoring the nonstop flood of polling and the rickety analysis dependent on it. Here are five reasons we should all go on a poll-free political diet for at least six months:
First, the polling field is broken. Or, if you listen to pollsters’ complaints, it is consistently misapplied and misinterpreted. Polls didn’t come within shouting distance of the right result in either 2016 or 2020. And they misled voters about the fictitious red wave in 2022. Whatever the reasons — call blocking, excessive hang-ups, incorrect modeling of likely voters — even polls taken much closer to elections have consistently turned out to be far off base. The fixation on low-cost, horse-race coverage might satisfy the political media’s desire to project insider expertise or to appear neutral (hey, it’s the voters who say these things!), but there is no excuse to recycle highly suspect information from sources known to be flawed…
The most important reason, however, to minimize attention to polling has to do with the mission and credibility of journalism at a critical time in our democracy. What voters know might be wrong — objectively wrong. They tell pollsters we are in a recession. They tell us Biden was involved in his son’s business ventures. These beliefs are unsupported by evidence. This surely indicates that the media could try harder to explain what is going on. (Maybe more reporting on the changes happening around the country would be in order.)
Certainly, respectable media outlets cannot control where voters get their information, but evidence of such widespread confusion and ignorance indicates that we have a deficit of accurate, reliable information in the electorate. If the truth is getting lost in the shuffle, maybe parroting Republicans’ false claims (for the sake of “balance”) or fixating on polls is counterproductive…
When the stakes are so high, and the fate of democracy hangs in the balance, continuing to gamify politics with meaningless polls does little to improve journalists’ reputation or inform voters. As Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch aptly put it: “The news media needs to stop with the horse race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable ‘tribalism.’ ”
We all would do far better to apply our energy to stemming the tide of disinformation and facing hard truths about a MAGA movement that manages to bamboozle millions of Americans — and remains the greatest domestic threat to democracy we’ve seen.
And finally… The Way We Live Now:
The latest 'nepo baby' success story: Making it into https://t.co/yrktfCaAHY pic.twitter.com/YEReGav9nI
— AP Entertainment (@APEntertainment) September 11, 2023
When we need it, the neologism will come.
On The Road – ema – NYC People
NotMax
Purple? Cool. “Metallic?” Cooler.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
Baud
We needed nepo baby a long time ago.
lowtechcyclist
Good morning, y’all.
eclare
I can’t wait to get a booster, it’s been a year.
hueyplong
Jenny Rubin is my new like-mindedness crush.
I never, ever, volunteered to live in interesting times, but here we are.
Happily, Mona Charen and the ambulatory cream cheese remain safely on the abhorrence list. The disorientation that would come from considering them part of a reasonable society would just be too much.
bbleh
The FDA has approved updated COVID-19 vaccines.
Also, Microsoft has announced the release of a new, smaller nanochip with extended 5G range that’s expected to improve performance and controllability by as much as 50% over existing technology.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
Good morning.
Another Scott
Rubin is exactly right here. Thanks for the pointer.
In other news, the nitter.net method for reading Twitter is seemingly being blocked again this morning.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@eclare:
Same here.
Am I the only one confused about why there’s a memorial to John McCain in Hanoi?
And while it’s not important to me to know what ‘nepo baby’ means, I was amused that the dictionary.com guy said everything about it except its definition. (I’m gonna guess a ‘nepo baby’ is a young nepotism hire. If I’m wrong, it won’t matter in the least.)
NotMax
Rabbits of the world rejoice. “There ain’t no such thing as too much lettuce.”
VeniceRiley
@NotMax: shiny pokemon!
Baud
@bbleh:
I see what you did there.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
Cyber-Barney fears no puny mammal, yet regrets its unresearched choice of AirBnB venue.
Cyber-Barney will allow puny mammals to relocate it to more populated climes, and then Cyber-Barney will feed!
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist:
ETA: Not that it matters.
Spanky
@lowtechcyclist:
Per wikipedia.
Matt McIrvin
The main reason that booster effectiveness even against severe illness seems to have declined is that this is a relative measurement: almost everyone has some baseline immunity now, from infection or past vaccination or both, so the immunity you get from a booster is a smaller boost relative to that.
I’m not fond of the way that article on the boosters showcases Paul Offit, who has been a minority voice on this for a long time, calling for less vaccination than the general consensus. And Nuzzo’s worry that telling everyone to get a booster could somehow make old and vulnerable people less likely to get boosters is just weird. It seems to me that the simpler a message is, the more likely people will be to pay attention to it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: I went to the source: dictionary.com
eta: also, beat ya by one whole minute! Nah nah na nah nah…
Tony G
@bbleh: Ever since I got the “vaccination” jab two and a half years ago, I’ve renounced all of the bad things that I’ve ever said about Windows and Clippy. I’ve even publicly stated that Bill Gates is the World’s Sexiest Man. Coincidence? Certainly not.
Jeffg166
I got both the flu and RSV shot yesterday. One shot in each shoulder. Little discomfort in the locals. The new covid shot will be next. That gives me a sore shoulder. I am use to it now.
Matt McIrvin
(I come back to flu shots. COVID boosters are at least as safe and effective as flu shots, and COVID is still more dangerous than flu, so why should we be more leery of a COVID booster once a year than of yearly flu shots? Kids and teenagers might be an exception because of the myocarditis risk… but even in their case, they’re more likely to get myocarditis from a COVID infection itself, and the vaccine probably reduces that risk, so that’s not even a slam-dunk argument.)
MisterDancer
It was not loading fully with a link I clicked ~20 minutes ago; it seems fine, now. But yeah, Twitter is clearly trying HARD to stop usage of Nitter.
narya
Good morning, all! I’m also awaiting the arrival of the shots at my local drugstore. I’m visiting my aging parents next month (today is dad’s 93rd birthday!) and I want as much protection for me as well as them as I can possibly get.
W/r/t Biden, I think a challenge is that, because he doesn’t bring chaos wherever he is, and because much of his action is on behalf of others (rather than to glorify his own self), we don’t fully appreciate just how brutal that schedule is. TIFG was such an outrage-generator that we had the (false) sense that he was busy, instead of indulging in “executive (crime)time” and shrieking about something.
MisterDancer
Hilariously, my 1st 2-shot COVID series had me feeling great! But every booster since has laid me out. Weird.
Baud
I will get the booster next month along with my flu shot.
Wag
Jen Rubin is a national treasure. Her political about face over the past several years has been a wonder. I welcome her with open arms.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Another Scott
@MisterDancer: Yup. It’s working again here, too.
Thanks for the follow-up.
Dance on!
Cheers,
Scott.
eclare
@narya:
I am decades younger than Biden and his schedule would wear me out! I mean I know flying around the world on AF1 is worlds different from the cattle cars that modern flights are, but just the time changes would exhaust me.
rikyrah
Waiting for the shot too
Omnes Omnibus
Was John Quincy Adams a nepo baby?
hueyplong
@narya: When you think of Trump as former President Internet Troll, the need for additional qualifiers regarding his “schedule” and “work” sort of fall away.
With the exception of the constant, crying needs for adulation and self-enrichment, the rest of his administration was creepy shit done by wannabe nazis and crooks that played remora to a bloated, gifting shark who figured out that hate worked better than greed on a certain class of rube.
Steeplejack
I got a COVID booster last month—not the new one—so I don’t know where that leaves me. Guess I’ll get the new one the next time I’m eligible.
MisterDancer
I’m hoarding a really great article on that very topic for my next Front Page piece, here. ;)
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Andrew Jackson thought so.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Well, that says something, doesn’t it?
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: Was FDR?
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes. Jackson was a bastard.
hueyplong
@MisterDancer: Look forward to it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Omnes Omnibus: W was.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly:
Nah, he was a trustifarian.
Another Scott
A reminder that “AI” isn’t very “I” yet.
e.g. Sally has 3 brothers, so she has no sisters. Each brother has 2 sisters, so there are a total of 6 sisters in the family. Sally is not one of them, so she has no sisters.
Hey, the computer said it, so it must be right!!1
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Steeplejack: They’d probably tell you to wait a few months, maybe get it in the spring.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Maybe they’re brothers from another mother.
Ken
@Baud: That reminds me, when are we getting our new, much-improved twenty dollar bills? Hmm, Google says not until 2030.
EDIT: To me, 2030 sounds like something out of science fiction. Moreso than 2023, anyway.
Soprano2
Good morning everyone. I’ve been busy IRL so I’ve been scarce lately. I had to have the talk with hubby about not driving anymore, at least until occupational medicine schedules the driving test for him. I think he’ll probably fail it, but we’ll see – I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I finally got a handyman to come and look at the projects I have. He’s going to dismantle the over-60-year-old furnace to get it out of the basement this afternoon. The Terminex people are coming tomorrow to treat our house, so we won’t have more damage. I’m getting stuff done, but it’s such an effort. It’s like pulling hen’s teeth to get people to call you back, it drives me crazy! This weekend I posted a rant at the end of a dead thread about how I’m so tired of people not wanting to do their jobs, like doctor’s offices not calling you back when they say they will. I always wait to give people a chance to call me, I’m not one of those people who call every 30 minutes because I have no patience. It took me a whole week and finally calling the neuropsych doc (who called me back in 10 minutes, I thanked her profusely!) to find out that they had sent occupational medicine an order to schedule an evaluation for hubby. (I checked his portal, there is nothing there about that so I wouldn’t have been able to find that out online, what do these people expect anyway?) I understand that offices are short-handed and people are busy, but geez it’s your job to do these things, so do them! I still don’t have a quote from the HVAC guy who came over a week ago. I just don’t get what’s going on with people these days.
MisterDancer
Since we’re talking early American history here — did you know Martin Van Buren’s VP, Richard Mentor Johnson’s, was married to a enslaved woman?!?!?
I didn’t either! The VP’s wife was Julia Chinn, and they married — and she died — before the 1837 election. But that fact impacted Johnson’s political ambitions, for hopefully obvious reasons. And her status with Johnson was “higher” than other enslaved people, but we simply have no idea of her opinion on any of this, for, again, hopefully obvious reasons.
It’s a really intriguing article, well worth a few minutes’ read.
Jeffro
and OF COURSE there is already a band called “Nepo Baby” 😭
oh well, I’ll just keep dreaming, back to the day job…
(but maybe they will need a drummer someday 🍀)
Butch
@Matt McIrvin: The government doesn’t like to think it engages in PR so the usual terms are something like community involvement or public outreach. (I used to do some professionally.) Whatever the name, the CDC’s has been awful, starting with an inability to communicate clearly. Everyone knows what personal space or physical separation means; why introduce a bureaucratic term like “social distancing” that has to be explained every time you use it? That’s just one example.
Tony G
@Ken: 2030 will be after the Robot Apocalypse. We won’t need money then.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Hang in there.
I’ve been working, off and on, to try to donate my old car to a local charity. Filled out their web form before the holiday, no response for a week. Sent them an e-mail from my ISP account, get some error message and a undeliverable trace to some Yahoo address. Send the e-mail again via Gmail, no response. I may try calling them before I give up completely and sell it to a dealer. (I hate calling.)
Given the federal tax changes, I won’t be able to deduct the value, so this is a pure gift. It’s like they don’t want my money, or don’t care enough to make sure their online stuff actually works.
(The charity uses some big clearing house that handles the pickup, auction, etc. Maybe they’re the problem. Dunno. But, …)
Good luck with hubby, and the furnace!
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony G
@MisterDancer: Yes, that is exactly what Bill Gates planned with his mind-control nanoparticles! Resistance is futile.
dmsilev
I get emails…
It’s unusual, I’ll give it that. “Einstein had it all wrong”, run of the mill. “Quantum mechanics is all wrong”, pretty typical. “Thermodynamics is a lie, there’s no such thing as temperature”, now that’s original crackpottery. Also, I like the idea of a “ground barking” experiment.
Matt McIrvin
@Butch: I deal with these issues in the context of software design, though I’m not the user-experience person. But a constant danger is what’s sometimes called “nerdview” where the messages and interfaces you display to users are expressing technical details of the implementation that they shouldn’t have to know or worry about. I think scientists and doctors frequently trip over this when talking to the general public.
OzarkHillbilly
Ugh… my dogs would go crazy.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: “‘Average temperature’ is a meaningless concept” has had some currency among climate-change denialists.
Geminid
Welp, I guess Virginia Democrats will have to write off one competitive House of Delegates race. Reports are that there is video circulating the internet of Susanna Gibson, their candidate for the open 57th Delegate seat, of and her husband performing live sex acts. A Virginia Mercury reporter says she occasionally interupted them to type out requests for tips on her Chaturbate feed.
Gibson has decried the “outrageous” and “illegal” invasion of her privacy. David Owen, her Republican opponent released a statement saying that he was sure “Susanna and her family are going through a difficult time” and that he would “remain focused on the race.”
The 57th District lies in western Henrico and Goochland counties, and is one of the few districts, House or Senate, that appears (or appeared) to be in play this fall.
rikyrah
The way this young whippersnapper stunted on this MAGA HOE 😂😂🥳🥳👏🏾
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8jRCd8K/
lowtechcyclist
@dmsilev:
When the ground starts barking, I start running!
Scout211
Liz Dye has a nice legal explainer on Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice substack this morning. Mark Meadows lost big on Friday night and so did Donald Trump.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Am I missing something? Is video of a husband and wife having sex a scandal? Or is a third party involved?
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: I also love “ground barking” specifically, but the entire sentence is a masterpiece:
Love!
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid: Any way the Dems could replace her if she dropped out? Though I guess we’re nearing the time when ballots have to be printed.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2: Third party viewers that she was communicating with in the midst of these acts.
OzarkHillbilly
@MisterDancer: A very interesting person, I’m not sure what to male of the fact that he never freed his wife. I can’t help thinking there was a legal reason for it. Thanx for the link.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, but they don’t tie it to cosmology and dark matter.
jonas
That struck me as well. And not just a memorial, one that appears to be a sculpture depicting the abuse he suffered as a prisoner of war. McCain, along with other Vietnam vets like John Kerry, were instrumental in the US normalizing relations with Vietnam and cooperating to get the remains of US soldiers returned, so perhaps this is sort of a tribute to that.
catclub
Rubin:
That ‘maybe’ is doing a LOT of work.
Jeffro
@Geminid: I’m not too sure about the write-off…this was consensual (if internet-public) stuff with her own husband.
And it looks like the folks who posted some of their ‘content’ may be prosecuted under VA’s “revenge porn” laws. We’ll see.
Nickel bet that if she stays in the race (98% sure she will) that she wins by a percent. ;)
Jeffro
@Soprano2: Nope – your facts are correct. Not much ‘there’ there, especially in the age of trump, Jordan, and Greene.
(and Dobbs)
dmsilev
@Betty Cracker: His blog, because of course there’s a blog, has lots more …expressive writing. Example:
This is not so much word salad as word potato-salad-left-sitting-out-in-the-sun-all-day.
Wag
@Steeplejack: Recommendations would be to get the new one 2-3 months after your last booster
Geminid
@Soprano2: Hell ya, Gibson livestreaming video of her and her husband having sex is a scandal. When she was asking for tips, she did not mean pointers on technique. This will probably be fatal for an unknown running in what is close to a 50-50 district
Although I guess she’s not an unknown anymore.
mrmoshpotato
No drinking disinfectant or shoving a lightbulb up your ass?
Baud
@Geminid:
Oh my.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Now that’s a safe bet!
jonas
@MisterDancer: That’s a really interesting story. While many white slave owners took female slaves as concubines — Thomas Jefferson being Exhibit A — I hadn’t heard of anyone formally (well, sort of) “marrying” one. Of course had Johnson wanted a legitimate wife, he could have officially emancipated her, but apparently never did.
MisterDancer
@OzarkHillbilly: Why? This is not that far removed from how Thomas Jefferson treated Sally Hemings, esp. in France. And that sexual relations with enslaved women was a norm:
Much less when I consider how too many men today clearly want to treat the women they marry, to be really blunt. We’ll dote on them, buy them things, treat them right…so long as they don’t step out of line. (Both Ivanka and Melina Trump might have things to say about modern situations like that.)
Adding weight to this is this line from the article:
I’m sorry. Maybe it’s cynical of me, but I’m not seeing this as some kind of love affair in that romantic way we adore. I think he was just someone who wanted a surrogate for a wife that he could control, and any affection he had was filtered thru that lens.
OzarkHillbilly
US sets new record for billion-dollar climate disasters in single year
We’ve made our bed and now we have to sleep in it.
mrmoshpotato
@dmsilev: I think the white elephant is trapped in an underground room barking its head off.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: I think she should stay in the race. She didn’t do anything wrong; instead, her privacy was invaded by her opponent. It’s gross. I’m tired of Democrats being driven out of politics by things that Republicans don’t bat an eye at in their candidates.
Ken
@dmsilev: So when he says “published at the International Journal of Physics”, what does he actually mean? E-mailed to their submissions address and it didn’t bounce?
Or is IJP one of those pseudo-journals that will publish any manuscript, provided the check clears?
Kay
I’m looking forward to the ninnies shrieking that they won’t get the vaccine now, when no one gives a shit anymore whether they live or die because they behaved so horribly last time.
The best thing would be to just not pay any attention to them and instead quietly offer the vaccine to normal people, who will treat it like the flu shot. No one has time to pander to another year long hissy fit. They’l be shrieking mostly on Elon Musk’s Twitter anyway, which is a far Right platform.
R-Jud
@NotMax: Thanks for this. Showed it to my snake-loving teenager, who is delighted.
MisterDancer
Sadly, I agree it is such. We’ll see how it plays out — I can see a couple ways to dig out from this hole — but in today’s America, taking money for performing consensual sex is still far, far too stigmatized.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I do too, but boy that’s rough. Nasty, nasty people. I hope she stays in but I won’t blame her if she gets out.
Baud
@MisterDancer:
And trying to overthrow democracy isn’t stigmatized enough.
Soprano2
@Kay: Why do they think anyone even cares anymore whether they get vaccinated or not? It’s all just performative now.
jonas
@dmsilev: Well, time does seem to slow down on those warm, sunny, summer afternoons, so maybe he’s on to something.
In any case, this:
has to be one of the most profound things I have ever read.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I would say conservatives wouldn’t dare attack her on this since their One True Leader paid prostitute(s) and has also been adjudicated a rapist, but I know that’s not true. They’ll strut around morally superior anyway. Because she’s female.
OzarkHillbilly
Yes. Thanx for telling me something I knew a long long long long time ago. I am referring in particular to this part:
Baud
@dmsilev:
One of my favorite Next Generation episodes.
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
Yes, that’s lovely in its own way. I’m also fond of the massive conflation of metaphors, the “white elephant in the room.”
Baud
@jonas:
Both
sidesstates are the same!Soprano2
@Kay: I guess in re-reading it this was a live feed that was available to the public (or to subscribers maybe?). I always wonder why people who have done things like this run for office without coming clean about it upfront. Do they really think no one will find out? I thought someone had hacked her account and stolen private videos, which would be a different situation. IMHO anyone who has stuff like this in their past should reveal it right away, to defuse it. I don’t know if what they did was illegal or not, seems like a gray area to me.
Doug R
Re: that Science article-I dunno about taking booster advice from a pediatrician who’s already caught COVID once and has decided he doesn’t need any more shots.
Since boosters may help protect against Long COVID…
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, and because she’s a Democrat. You know they believe the rules are different for people who aren’t Republicans. *rolleyes
Brit in Chicago
@Another Scott: As part of my wo*k avoidance campaign, I gave this to Bing, the MS AI that comes with their browser, MS Edge. It got the right answer, but I found the reasoning oddly convoluted:
Sally (a girl) has 3 brothers. Each brother has 2 sisters. How many sisters does Sally have?
This is a logic puzzle that can be solved by using simple math. The answer is that Sally has one sister. Here is how we can find the answer:
So, the final answer is that Sally has one sister. I hope this explanation helps you understand the solution. 😊
dmsilev
@Ken:
The latter, I think.
jonas
@Soprano2: It wasn’t like a private tape they had made for themselves; they were livestreaming their sex on a kind of pay-per-view porn site. How she ran for office thinking that something like that wouldn’t be exposed is really sort of gobsmacking, imho
ETA, or basically, what you said up at #96
Geminid
@MisterDancer: Have you read Anette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello? Gordon-Reed devotes a lot of pages to the story of Sally Hemings’ and her brother James Hemings’ time in Paris.
It’s a very detailed book, and won a Pulitzer Prize for History when it came out a decade or so ago.
Brit in Chicago
@Another Scott: The NPR stations that I listen to take old cars, but it’s probably up to your local station.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I hold my hand up when they start and shut them down quickly. I don’t care what they do and I don’t want to discuss their fears of liberal vaccination camps. I don’t give a shit. They’re ninnies and they’re afraid of their own shadow. They failed the “pandemic resiliency test” – they fell apart.
I swear they’re annoyed I won’t beg them to get vaccinated – they’re so accustomed to being kowtowed to they think I’m going to spend 5 minutes of valuable life talking to them about “herd immunity” – fat fucking chance. They know as much as I do about herd immunity, which is nothing, well, probably WORSE than nothing since they’ve been actively misled so “know” things that aren’t true.
I can’t imagine how they function in the real world. I’m getting treated for osteoporosis – yesterday they gave me an infusion to treat it. It came with a 6 page information sheet about contraindications, possible side effects. If I were one of these people I would be either : cowering under my bed because I got the infusion OR a hunchback at 75.
Jeffro
@Soprano2: it also helps highlight that the VA GOP simply doesn’t care one bit about their candidate in a neighboring district who’s facing assault charges.
(sadly, that candidate is running unopposed, which is why – for the millionth time – we. have. to. have. someone. on. the. ballot. in. every. race, every. time.)
rikyrah
@MisterDancer:
Hemings was MAYBE 15 when Jefferson took up with her.
She wasn’t just a slave, she was Mrs. Jefferson’s half-sister who was a dead ringer for her.
The entire situation was disgusting.
And, for those who still want to pretend that it was someone other than Jefferson.
HEMINGS CAME BACK FROM FRANCE PREGNANT.
Ken
@Brit in Chicago: And that, children, is why math teachers will sometimes give you zero points even though you got the right answer. Frankly, that answer deserves negative points.
MisterDancer
@OzarkHillbilly: That was in 1819. The article says that “When Johnson’s father died, he willed ownership of Chinn to his son.” Wikipedia 2nds that Chinn’s ownership came to Richard Johnson upon his father’s passing.
So I’m lost — he had no ownership over Chinn in 1819, just the ability to order her to work, which, well, slave. When his Father passed, he gained ownership, and there’s no note that said ownership was legally fraught. How does that equate to a legal issue at that point?
(And man, I don’t know what you know. I’m not trying to talk down, and there’s people here who don’t know that critical set of facts around enslaved women in America, at any rate. So please bear with, OK?)
Kay
@Soprano2:
State leg races aren’t as “professional” in terms of vetting (or training) candidates so weird things like this happen. It can be hard to get candidates, let alone candidates with no baggage at all.
Jeffro
@Kay: Kay, this is a really good overall reminder to not waste a minute on fretting about the unvaccinated or trying to convince them to help them preserve their own health. Seriously. Whether as a general concern or in daily interactions, it’s a waste of our mental energy.
Great point!
Doug R
@NotMax: Yeah, it’s good to have greenspace but greenhouse farms use hydroponics which are way more efficient and now this. Maybe some kind of adjustable glass that absorbs solar energy when it gets hot and produces electricity for a/c?
rikyrah
@Geminid:
IS it crazy of me to think that someone running for public office DOES NOT NEED to be having sex with their husband on camera ON PURPOSE?
I mean…are we not allowed to have standards..just for phucking COMMON SENSE!
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: If nearly everyone got vaccinated it really would put a serious dent in these winter waves, because the vaccine does seem to convey some short-term protection against transmitting the virus (though it wears off after a couple of months).
But that horse is out of the barn now. If we can’t even get people who aren’t political antivaxxers to get the boosters (and most of them don’t), I don’t see how we get enough people vaccinated for it to make that kind of difference.
MisterDancer
Thanks for the recommendation! I do have to ration readings in this realm. It’s…not always a ton of fun, or relaxing, for me.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I understood that it was pay for view- or tips. I still think she should stay in. I don’t condone it! But I hate that some vicious, underhanded asshole gets to chase her out.
jonas
I was reminded of the brouhaha a couple of years ago when one of those genetic profiling outfits like 23 and Me cut an ad featuring a 19th-century mixed-race couple falling in love and trying to escape to freedom, leading up to a present-day Black woman discovering she has white ancestry or something. People were like “Yeah, that’s not why so many African Americans have European DNA…”
rikyrah
@Soprano2:
She needs to stay in, even though she has absolutely no common sense.
The utter arrogance to think that you wouldn’t be found out?
Really?
Seriously?
That alone, says something about her judgement.
Kay
@Jeffro:
And you DO have limited energy and public health and health care workers do too.
Triage, right? Don’t follow them down another useless rabbit hole where they’re the star of the show because Their Rights Are Being Violated. Breeze on by and instead check on an elderly neighbor who is a normal person.
It’s literally true at this point that most of the keening and wailing will be on far Right platforms like Twitter and not in the real world so it’s easy to ignore.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Ain’t nobody gonna be begging them. I’m trying to figure out how I can get me and mine this new shot.
Phuck them.
lowtechcyclist
@Brit in Chicago:
I don’t see any x = 5 – y equation to substitute y-3 into. Maybe Bing lucked into the right answer, but I’d have to say it was luck.
At least one of the previous steps is questionable also:
But Sally is a sister of each of the three brothers, so that should give us x = 6 -3 = 3 at this step.
Bing would still need to collapse the 3 non-Sally sisters down to 1, but who knows how Bing would manage that, or whether it even could.
schrodingers_cat
@dmsilev: Wait whut? How is thermodynamics wrong?
Matt McIrvin
@Brit in Chicago: That reasoning is not just convoluted but completely wrong–I would definitely mark Bing down on a homework exercise for showing that work, despite its getting the right number at the end.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin:
Covid is becoming ‘just another flu virus with a vaccine that is less than 100% effective’. I doubt we get 100% participation in the regular flu vaccine, either. Maybe 50% overall population and 75% in the olds? I bet those are both overestimates.
hueyplong
@rikyrah: Exactly. MAGAs will make their death/disability beds and then they can
sleepdie/suffer in them. FREEDOM!Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
This isn’t a case of someone’s private sex tape becoming public. It sounds like she and her husband did live streams, including soliciting tips to perform specific sex acts. It still doesn’t bother me, but I can imagine other people might have second thoughts. Also, FWIW, the part about asking for money in order to do specific things is against the TOS of the platform they were using.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: 🎶White elephants in underground rooms at the station 🎶
MisterDancer
I’m a Belly Dancer. It has been, and still is, 1000% possible for people to see me as a sex object, and to judge me accordingly. To a lot of people still, what I do is not that much removed from stripping. I’ve had a LOT of fights about this, over decades.
And before you say, “yeah, but that’s different” — peep this NSFW Belly Dance music album covers, and keep in mind THAT was the main exposure a lot of people had to this dance I do. There is, in fact, a long history — damn near a century+! — of cross-connects between Belly Dance, Burlesque, and Exotic Dance/Stripping. And all three have been treated as Death, for political ambitions — hell, for employment. I’ve seen it in person, and up close.
If we’re going to be a society that doesn’t prejudge, that has to include sex acts. And that includes properly managed and consensual sex acts done in this fashion. The person who “reported” this chose to see it, to look for it; this couple wasn’t thrusting their sex life in anyone’s face.
It’s as much BS, in not every way but too many, as the people who would shit on dancers in the audience for showing their belly buttons, or running around “in their bras”. I’ve just got not time for it, these days, y’all.
lowtechcyclist
@Jeffro:
I know, but it can be damned hard at this level, given how little most states pay their legislators.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the compensation for Virginia legislators is:
Base pay: $18,000 for Senators, $17,640 for Delegates.
On top of that, they get a per diem of $209 for each day the legislature is in session, plus 58.5¢ per mile.
Back when I was still living in Virginia, I thought about running for delegate once, but once I saw the compensation, I realized I couldn’t afford to win.
ETA: I’m glad to see Maryland’s base pay is $50,330/year, with mileage and per diem on top of that.
Ken
@lowtechcyclist: Now I’m wondering how Bing AI would answer the bellhop (missing dollar) puzzle. Though reading the unnecessarily convoluted explanation at wikipedia, maybe they already let it have a shot at the puzzle?
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: Massachusetts is an interesting example, since it’s a very blue state: from the most recent numbers I can find, about 46% of eligible people got the flu shot last season, but the rate of COVID boosting is lower. 97% of people in the state have had at least one shot, 85% got the whole initial vaccine series, but only 30% have gotten any boosters at all after that. That’s as of about a week ago.
I think most people got the impression early on that COVID vaccination is one or two shots and done, and nothing that’s happened since served to shake that impression, whereas they’ve pretty well internalized the message that you get your flu shot every season.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: I took that same infusion for awhile, now I’m on something else. The most important thing in that packet is about scheduling dental work around your infusion schedule.
I gave up being scared of side effects long ago. As long as there is a treatment for the side effects, I figure all is well.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
This made me laugh out loud because I had two separate conversations like that recently with anti-vax wingnut relatives. The new vaccine must be a hot topic on wingnut Facebook pages and other platforms because both brought it up out of the blue.
One seemed almost hurt that I declined to take the bait — I could almost see the “Doesn’t she still LOVE me?” thought bubble forming over his head.
And the truth is, I do still love both of those idiots. But I’m not their mother, and while I hope they make good healthcare choices, it’s not my job to persuade them to do so.
Geminid
@Geminid: The worst part about the Gibson affair is that the 57th House of Delegates District was a toss-up district. The Virginia Public Access Project has analysed the collective precincts’ performance in past elections, and found that Tim Kaine carried them with ~54.4% in 2019, Glenn Youngkin won them in 2021 with a little over 51%.
In last year’s Congressional midterms, Democrats won a little over 50% of the vote (I think the 57th district falls into more than one CD). Western Henrico County is home to 85% of 57th District residents, while eastern Goochland County holds the rest.
I still believe Democrats will retake the House of Delegates in November, but I think they will have to do it without Gibson.
Shalimar
Turned on MSNBC, someone I assume is a Republican consultant said “Hunter Biden is a distraction. Hunter Biden is not sympathetic. Hunter Biden looks bad for Democrats.” Host pushed back, saying Hunter Biden is not the president. She didn’t point out all the horrible things Hunter Biden is accused of were a decade ago. He is not doing anything distracting now. There is no reason to talk about him.
Turned off MSNBC for at least 7 more hours.
MisterDancer
Lord, this. No only are people running on the GOP side usually holding more wealth, they have a system that oft-supports you financially.
It’s not easy to recruit for every position out there. It’s not simple to get people who have real lives to add “running and possibly serving in a political position” to those lives. And thus, I really wish people would consider that, sometimes, we can’t fill those slots because of a host of good reasons. Not just because the state party is “lazy”.
I mean, sometimes, yeah. But I suggest a little benefit of the doubt might go some way, on this point.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
I would hope that the people who give the flu shots would ask if the person wanted a Covid booster at the same time (or make an appointment for one), and stress that it should be annual, just like a flu shot. After a few years of repetition, it might start sinking in.
Matt McIrvin
@MisterDancer: The reason New Hampshire generates so many absurd “Florida Man, only it’s a New Hampshire state legislator” stories is that not only is their state House of Representatives huge for such a small state, the legislators are basically unpaid (they get a tiny token stipend). They’re often either business owners who do some state legislating on the side or they’re retirees who are legislating as a hobby. People who think of government as a profession are not going to touch it.
Shalimar
@Geminid: On a positive note, most of us aren’t attractive enough to make money for having sex. So she has that going for her.
jonas
@Matt McIrvin: I was really disappointed last year when only something like 15-20% of eligible people got the bivalent booster. I’m sure the wave of new Covid infections we’re seeing now is partly a result of this.
I still get exasperated, by so much of the Covid reporting I hear, how each new variant is so much more transmissible and can easily evade previous vaccines, etc., but without putting terms like “transmissibility” or “evade” in any kind of context the average reader or listener can understand. Naturally, the general public is going to conclude that, given that the virus changes so much, any vaccine is pretty much useless.
cain
@MisterDancer: It was intriguing and then I went down the rabbit hole and in some other one I read this:
WTF..
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/chinn-julia-ann-ca-1790-1833/
Yarrow
Does anyone know how long you’re supposed to wait after having Covid to get the booster? Also, would that change depending on age or health status?
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: Heat, apparently, is just a manifestation of spacetime.
BruceFromOhio
Oh, Jen. You’re so cute when you are earnest. In other news, water wet, sun rises east, dog bites man.
Still, good to see someone out there not only gets it, is also willing to write about it, and convince the editor not to suppress it.
Considered, and adopted! Now let’s go win locally this November, and nationally next November!
Soprano2
@Kay: I do that too, it’s Reclast. I’m going again in October. Last year she stuck me three times, and I said “You can try one more time, and if you can’t get it we’re going to do something else, because I’m not a pincushion”. Lucky for both of us she managed to get it in my hand the 4th time.
Ohio Mom
@Geminid: I once voted for an absolute clown running for Ohio Governor because he was a Democrat, on the theory I was making a statement about how loyal a Democrat I was (he was so far behind in the polls there was no way he’d win).
So I know that if I lived in her district, I’d vote for Gibson even though she’s shown herself to be without any judgement and probably an arrogant narcissist. The whole time, hoping she would be a one-termer, replaced by someone better.
Hoodie
@lowtechcyclist: This is a huge problem I noticed in our local government. Our county has a $2B budget, but our commissioners are considered “part-time” and make around $28k. It’s no wonder that these positions (e.g., county commission, school board, etc.) often get captured by crooks and/or nutjobs financed by deep pocketed political action groups.
Jeffro
@lowtechcyclist: Oh, I completely agree. I think the answer in those cases has to be “do we have any pleasant retired folks who’d love for their grandkids to see Pop-Pop’s or MeeMaw’s name on a couple fliers and posters?”
(half kidding, half serious here =)
But literally almost anything to avoid leaving a single office uncontested. Let’s call it the Chris Coons rule. =)
MisterDancer
@Yarrow: From the CDC:
Torrey
@Butch:
I totally agree on the awful job the CDC did on messaging/PR. The people in charge of the budget don’t seem to realize that money spent on hiring professionals on messaging and communication is money well spent when it’s important to get a message across. However, I see the need for a term other than “personal space,” since that really varies significantly from community to community and indeed from person to person. I think a specific term like “six feet” would have been the best choice. It would of course need to be wrapped into a better phrasing than that–a job within your skill set rather than mine, though.
cain
@Geminid:
Yikes ! I mean I don’t judge .. but if you are going to run for political office you’d think that people are going to find out.
Can they find another candidate?
Eta #150!!
Soprano2
@rikyrah: Not saying she wasn’t stupid, just angry that R’s can still chase our people out with things like that while their Orange God faces 91 felony counts and they shrug like it’s no big deal. What she did isn’t nearly as bad as what he did.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: What makes it worse is that as of this cycle, COVID shots aren’t going to get emergency subsidization by the government any more, so whether you can even get them is going to be dependent on your health insurance, much as with most other shots.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Virginia General Assembly members are considered “part time” legislators, and many of them are attorneys. My Senator, Emmet Hanger, is a real estate broker. Some teachers serve, or at least former House Speaker Kirk Cox was a high school teacher.
Charlottesville Delegate Sally Hudson is an economics professor at U.Va. Unfortunately, Hudson will be out of the next General Assembly because she challenged State Senator Creigh Deeds (an attorney) and lost.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.
BruceFromOhio
@dmsilev:
For a moment I thought it was gonna be about recipes and cooking.
Yarrow
@MisterDancer: Thanks. Three months is short. I’ve seen six months elsewhere. I do not want the flu vaccine at the same time as both of them can make me sick and I don’t want to double up. I could be knocked out for a few days. So I’m trying to time when to get each one.
Roger Moore
@Shalimar:
I’m not sure how true that is. Not everyone’s sexual interests run to the conventionally beautiful. Lots of people are interested in watching sex by people who depart from those idealized beauty standards. They want to see people who are old, short, overweight, scarred, or whatever. There is apparently enough market for those things that unconventional sex workers can make a living.
Elizabelle
If someone has not already put it up, here is a gift link to yesterday’s bombshell WaPost story on Susana Gibson, now known as an internet star, too. (Alas.).
Va. Dem. House candidate performed sex online with husband for tips
Susanna Gibson is running in a competitive district with control of the House at stake
and
I wonder how long GOP operatives knew about this one. Although, the candidate herself made herself vulnerable, and displayed recklessness and a lack of judgment in her extracurricular (although not extramarital!) activities.
I’ve done some volunteer work for Susana, and she is great on the issues. The GOP opponent, homebuilder David Owen, is reported to have described himself as “prolife” at a recent gathering.
So, the choice is a libertine or a prolifer. Great.
This is one district over from me. Gonna see how this settles out; not ruling out further volunteering, but. …
Kay
@Soprano2:
My family of origin has “hyperthyroid”, which I knew, but I didn’t know it leached bones (or whatever!)
They explained it all to me to my satisfaction and said 80% of people don’t have any side effects at all, which is good odds. I don’t need to know who the manufacturer is, nor do I need to do a half assed, ignorant “analysis” of studies. I’m also not planning on polling the internet on which medications I should take, strange as that may seem.
I followed the general guidelines with covid – it was relatively easy although it did involve some small personal sacrifices. I’ll just continue to do that.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas:
Maybe, though this long after most people got the bivalent booster, protection against initial infection is going to be close to zero. I caught COVID (probably some subvariant of XBB) about 4 months after getting mine.
Long COVID, long-term cardiovascular effects and organ damage, etc. from repeated COVID infection are still a concerning question. But since the rapid, acute effects of COVID seem to be kept in decent check by the degree of immunity that most people already have by now, it’s going to be difficult to sustain a sense of perpetual emergency. It’s not ~1% mortality like it was in 2020.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
If you underpay government officials, the only people who take the jobs will be one who expect to make up the shortfall by abusing their office. That’s no guarantee you won’t get some corruption if you pay competitive salaries, but at least with competitive pay you can attract some people who want the work for public interest reasons.
OzarkHillbilly
They had a relationship that clearly went beyond slave/owner. Beyond that I could not say anything more about how close they were or were not. As far as legalities, I have no idea. I am not a lawyer now, much less then. It is pure speculation, on my part. As I said in my first reply to you:
“I can’t help thinking there was a legal reason for it.”
Barbara
@Soprano2: My sympathies for all of this!
Shalimar
@Geminid: She has a point about invasion of privacy in that the archiving sites (as opposed to Chaturbate itself) do appear to violate Virginia law. There aren’t that many videos, so it is unlikely media would have found the shows if they weren’t archived illegally. I hope she sues, but it is so easy to set a site up that even shutting down the major ones would be unlikely to change much.
She and her husband don’t appear to have done the Chaturbate thing very often, so it seems to be a “need extra money desperately” thing rather than being exhibitionists. It’s a shame that will probably kill her political career.
Ken
Things expand when they get hotter… the universe is expanding… It all makes sense now. Dark energy is because God left the oven on.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Me too. I also hate the fact that there is even a stigma to sex work, honestly. It really says nothing bad about a person that they are willing to take their clothes off in front of a camera for money. The only way anyone can see it as a bad thing is if they subscribe to some kind of moral/sexual purity bullshit rooted in misogyny.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: Nice.
Geminid
@cain: I don’t know whether Gibson could be replaced on the ballot . A Mr. Shipp came in second in the primary and would be an obvious choice to replace Gibson if she drops out. I know that in 1978, Republicans were able to put 2nd place finisher John Warner on the ballot when Mr. Obenshain, their Senate candidate, died in a plane crash. I don’t know offhand what the timing was.
Gibson has not dropped out, but the story only broke yesterday, and I have a hunch she will. I remember from the Katie Hill affair that there is a different standard for for public figures like political political candidates when it comes to publishing compromising pictures. The Daily Mail might decide to get in on this one like they did with Katie Hill.
Steeplejack
@Wag:
Thanks.
Ken
There’s a fairly large overlap between people who subscribe to moral/sexual purity bullshit, and people who subscribe to porn sites. Or so the geographic information in the stats sometimes released by the porn sites suggest.
Elizabelle
Virginia early voting begins Friday, September 22. Ten days from now.
NotMax
@Roger Moore
And then there’s — well, see for yourself.
;)
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: What my dog does every morning to clear the squirrels out of the yard LOLOL
Yarrow
@MisterDancer: There’s a difference between a couple having sex and making a private sex tape, even if that gets leaked, and a couple who is performing live sex acts and asking for tips. I personally don’t care what people do, so long as it isn’t hurting anyone else, but it’s unrealistic to think that a woman who performs sex acts for money isn’t going to be judged for that when she runs for office. Maybe at some point in the future that won’t be the case but that time is not now.
Doing what they did is not remotely the same as belly dancing, which is not performing a live sex act on camera for money. Sure there’s a long history of sexualizing belly dancing. Less now than 10, 20, 50 years ago. Good we’ve moved on. Belly dancing is still not performing live sex acts on camera for money.
Old School
@NotMax: Sometimes I wonder about your browser history.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
I’m sure that’s still the case in practically all states, and it’s way past time that changed. In Virginia’s case, legislators are voting (and presumably helping to draft) a 2-year budget for $160 billion.
It’s also a pain in the neck for constituents. When are they in session? If they’re not in session, how do I contact them, and is there any point to calling them when they’re not in session?
I’ve been in Maryland for 25 years, and I know the legislature meets sometime early in the calendar year, but I couldn’t tell you what month they start and which month they’re done by. The state Democratic party really needs to come up with an email newsletter to let us know what legislation is coming up when during the session, so voters can have an idea of when to call.
schrodingers_cat
@dmsilev: That’s a new one!
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Saw an interesting layout in Epcot Center related to growing veggies hydroponically. Vertical growing was a big part of that.
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: At least part of the reason why the GOP has pushed rhetoric about overpaid bureaucrats, term limits, etc. and fought public financing. It makes their political action groups more effective by eliminating the competition. It would not be surprising that a lot of the parental rights stuff is more about disempowering teachers than empowering parents. Teachers often are a political block that favors Dems (this has definitely been the case here in NC). The GOP has historically been adept at this kind of divide and conquer strategy. It’s a type of asymmetrical warfare, perhaps developed because their policies are inherently unpopular.
frosty
I’ve had that thought myself, although it hasn’t stopped me from getting every booster that’s offered. We already know that the flu vaccine is an educated guess as to what this year’s virus will be; it seems reasonable to extend that thought to COVID.
kindness
Never heard of a Kneelback snake before. Looks like a Garter snake to me.
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: +1
Not only that, but in Virginia, they cannot accept campaign contributions while they’re in session. So, if you donate at the “wrong” time, it gets kicked back to you (adding time and expense and aggravation to fundraising and to donors).
It’s far past time for state (and local) legislators to be paid a living wage so that they don’t have to have outside jobs and so they don’t have to be in the pockets of big donors.
Grr…,
Scott.
AM in NC
So I wrote to the NYT editors this morning complaining about their Biden is OLD headlines/stories and here’s the response I go back from an assistant/intern. It’s complete CYA BS that gives the occasional example of non-bashing coverage and ignores the overall substance of my letter:
Good Morning,
Thank you for writing to us.
We are an independent newsroom that aims to provide our readers with a full picture of the world by pursuing the facts without fear or favor.
President Joseph R. Biden’s age is a major factor that could affect his candidacy and one that voters have legitimate concerns about. (His peers are less strident.)
The American people expect a lot from their leaders and generally want to be assured that they can live up to those expectations as long as we give them power. In that way, his age seems newsworthy.
That said, it is not the only factor in this race and our editors weigh its relevance to calibrate its prominence among the many issues we will cover.
https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/joe-biden
https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/2024-election
It may even lose some salience as a knock on Mr. Biden if his predecessor wins his own party’s nomination again. As this article notes, Donald J. Trump is only a few years younger than Mr. Biden.
I hope that clarifies and that you will continue to support our journalism. Thanks again for writing.
Aidan XXXXXXX, news assistant
Here’s my original email to them . . .
I am specifically responding to the story/headline “‘It Is Evening, Isn’t It?’ An 80-Year-Old President’s Whirlwind Trip.” from Sept 11th. My comment is a wish for you stop stop the BUTHEREMAILS treatment regarding President Biden’s age.
It doesn’t matter what the man has just done, you lead with his age. It is pushing out rightwing talking points (for balance I suppose, because you need to criticize Biden for something?!). Donald Trump, the overwhelming favorite to be the GOP nominee is 77. I have seen nothing comparable about his advanced age, much less the constant drumbeat of stories on this topic.
Please, just stop this garbage. It is putting your thumb on the scales, and it is unconscionable after your performance in 2016 normalizing rightwing talking points.
Biden is old. Trump is old. Biden isn’t an authoritarian who literally tried to overthrow our government; has sexually assaulted (and bragged about it) multiple women; stole US nuclear secrets and showed them to randos at his country club.
Y’all have completely lost the plot here. VERY disappointed in coverage like this.
UncleEbeneezer
@Elizabelle: I kinda hopes she stays in and leans into the idea that letting women do WHATEVER TF THEY WANT with their bodies, is what really matters. And tying that, obviously, to abortion rights and gender-affirming care etc. Like “I’m the candidate who believes the government should stay out of our family-planning decisions.”
AM in NC
I think my comment is stuck in moderation (because of links?)
cain
@Elizabelle: Someone has been keeping that powder dry and releasing it in time to ratfuck.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
is it just me, or should the Democrats HAVE HAD SOME INKLING ABOUT THIS?
lowtechcyclist
That’s just plain ridiculous. She ought to be laughed out of the race for saying that.
MisterDancer
It’s easy for us to talk about getting a “next generation” of people into politics.
It’s harder to acknowledge that — especially during the pandemic — a lot of people ended up doing sex work, or still do. Younger people. Vast majority, female.
The kind of people whom, in theory, have the drive and ambition to run for office.
This will not be the last time we, as a Party, run into this situation.
Geminid
@Ohio Mom: Oh, I would vote for Gibson too. She’ll lose some Independents who might have voted for her, though. Virginia doesn’t have party registration, so I can only guess at the district’s partisan makeup. But the way the precincts have swung back and forth in recent elections tells me that a candidate probably needs to carry the Independent vote to win it.
UncleEbeneezer
@Ken: Well, everybody watches porn. Those purity people are part of “everyone” so of course they do. I’ve seen the studies showing they do at a slightly higher % but it’s not like they are the only people who like watching people have sex. If not the first, maybe the second or thing humanity has done with any new tech/media (phonographs, photos, video etc.) is use them to capture and replay people having sex. The problem is that it’s the purity a-holes who make a big deal about it and reinforce harmful stigmas. Dems/Progressives do too, but we generally don’t go around passing absurd laws about it or claiming it is some horrible threat to society (Tipper Gore types, excluded).
Alison Rose
Oh good Lord:
Fucking spineless loser.
Jackie
@Doug R: Getting my masks ready. I’m just gonna assume everyone else is not up to date on their boosters and plan accordingly. I live in a deep red MAGA county…
hueyplong
@lowtechcyclist: So I’m guessing some sort of humiliation kink isn’t part of the videos themselves?
When explosive things like this hit the internet, there’s usually no harm in waiting a day before either grabbing pitchforks or circling the wagons.
Kay
As you can plainly see, the Right is very populist and mostly concerned with the plight of the working man in the rustbelt.
Donald Trump’s single legislative accomplishment was tax cuts for wealthy people and if he wins again his single accomplishment willl be tax cuts for corporations. For all the millions of words written about him that’s really all anyone needs to know to see what a fraud he is.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@MisterDancer: The potential legal issues I see here regarding manumission & legally-recognized marriage are that
1. Many states required people freed from slavery to leave that state (they were feared as potential leaders of slave revolts). So probably Julia Chinn would have been required to leave Kentucky if freed. She might have been happy with this but Johnson would not have been.
2. Marriages between enslaved people, or between a free person and an enslaved one had no legal standing, and marriages between Whites and Blacks were outright banned by law in most of the slave states.
Roger Moore
@OzarkHillbilly:
In most slave states, including Kentucky, it was illegal for slaves to marry at all, so Johnson and Chinn could not be legally married as long as she remained a slave. OTOH, Kentucky was pretty lenient about manumission, so they could have been married if Johnson were willing to free her. I don’t know what it says about their relationship that he didn’t.
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom
I would vote for her because this is a General Election.
But, no, I wouldn’t have voted for her in the Primary, between her and another Democrat.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: I know. I wonder if they did. Hadn’t kept in touch, cuz didn’t plan to do much more until just before early voting, and we’ve got an important race in my very own district.
What a headache. Susanna has a lot of endorsements. Abigail Spanberger, former Governor Ralph Northam, a lot of good organizations. I really admired that she was up front about wanting to protect abortion rights and women’s health, and keep guns out of schools/ban assault weapons.
Were I in that district, I would still vote for her, and wonder what other shoes (or lingerie) might drop.
Opponent is prolife Republican, and for two more years we have a GOP governor who has pledged to sign any prolife legislation that crosses his desk. And he’s got national ambitions and a private fortune.
Jackie
@Soprano2: Out of curiosity, did the unmarried Nancy Mace receive any negative backlash for confessing she’s in a sinful relationship? 🙄
hueyplong
@Alison Rose: Spinelessness is the core of the job description. No way they’ll ever find anyone more spineless, so McCarthy will almost certainly keep his job no matter what.
The tiebreaker on any “action” is whatever Trump most recently told him to do. What the other clowns say is fairly meaningless.
MisterDancer
(SIGH) It’s already been said, but no, they wouldn’t. If, in fact, this was one of those illegal recordings, it’s likely that this is someone who knows the couple fairly well, had a hint they were doing this work, and then just went thru the “archival” sites until they found the proof.
This is not the kind of work even most PIs are trained to do. Given how much material these sites pump out, it’s not a thing where you can just dive in without a hint for what you’re looking for. It’s why a lot of belly dancers can “hide” fairly well with a stage name; if you see a dancer but don’t know that name, good luck finding a video of them on YouTube!
(Also, too — I knew someone well who actually did work manually filtering porn videos for content. It is NOT a simple process, even for cam sites that have pretty strong rules. Asking the Party to check all these sites every time a candidate runs for office is…a huge ask.)
Plus: this is pretty new as a problem; part of why we’re jawboning about it here and it’s getting such play in media is its “novelty”. So it’s unlikely anyone did any oppo research on this person to being with in any deep way; certainly not enough to turn up a camming career.
cain
@Alison Rose:
The press will salivate over this – it will bring a lot of hits because controversy! It leans into the horse race mentality.
UncleEbeneezer
@MisterDancer: There’s also influencers who, especially if they are women, often do non-explicit posing etc., that will also be held up as being a bit too sexy, if they ever chose to run for office. The lines between influencer, instagram model and sex worker are becoming much more blurry imo.
Semi-related: we just finished watching The Mask Girl, on Netflix, which is a really fun/weird (though also VERY intense with some sexual violence) K-drama about a woman who has been ostracized for being “ugly” and puts on a mask and starts doing non-sexual cam work and becomes an internet sensation. It was really good and had some interesting explorations of our obsessions with physical attractiveness. I wouldn’t put it on quite the same level as Squid Game, Mr. Sunshine, Crash Landing Onto You, etc., but probably on the next tier down on my list of K-dramas.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: I think Kraven McCarthy plans to start the impeachment process without putting it to a vote before the House. Some in his caucus including Colorado conservative Ken Buck have spoken against this already, and I don’t think McCarthy has 213 votes for such an inquiry.
Elizabelle
@MisterDancer: I would not call it “work.” Both are (one would assume) well-compensated professionals. She is a nurse practitioner; he is an attorney. They have a gorgeous and expensive home, with the two kids and retriever dog.
I think this is maybe excitement and risktaking; kink if you want to call it that.
ETA: It is absolutely piss-poor judgement, and a real headache for her political supporters and endorsers. Not an issue anyone needs to be dealing with in a competitive offyear election cycle.
CaseyL
@dmsilev:
Here’s my take on that nutbar: In physics, heat is energy and energy is heat. I’m not sure how or why he’s talking about heat as if it isn’t energy: does he think “heat” is some inherent, immutable state of matter in splendid isolation?
It’s like saying penne isn’t pasta because only spaghetti can be pasta. Or something,
MisterDancer
@OzarkHillbilly: @a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): @Roger Moore: Thanks for the historical info and feedback. Overall, I confess I’m a little riled up on this situation, so I’ll bow out.
Alison Rose
@Geminid: It’s just so dumb. But then, this is the GOP we’re talking about. They are incapable of being anything but dumb.
wenchacha
@Soprano2: Even if I think I’m sex-positive, something like this makes me pause. Maybe it shouldn’t; there have been other sex workers and people in scandals who have run for office. Or served. Ahem.
I didn’t read all of it. Is the video recent? If it’s from her past, like ten years ago, it’s ancient history. If it’s from last year, I would have to question her judgment in running for public office. If you run, you have to be realistic that everything in your past will come out.
.
Elizabelle
And, NY Times email. The coward.
Kevin McCarthy, under pressure from the right, will endorse a House impeachment inquiry into President Biden, people briefed on his plans said.
Tuesday, September 12, 2023 11:18 AM ET
The move comes as some far-right House Republicans are threatening to depose Mr. McCarthy from his leadership position.
Elizabelle
@wenchacha: I put a free link to the WaPost article up, around comment 158.
I’m not sure when the videos were made, but it seems fairly recent.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev: The excerpt is jam by itself, but your commentary on it is jam-plus. (or something. I may be mixing my food metaphors.)
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: A scion of nepotism he was, verily!
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: No. TR was on the other side of the Roosevelt tree.
moonbat
@Scout211: Maybe not as fascinating as wannabe Virginia legislators having consensual sex for tips (?) but…I am very happy to see this analysis. Thank you!
I want Meadows and all the Washington insiders who enabled Trump in his dictatorial fantasies to see jail time. All of them. I want Meadows behind bars. And I LOVE speculating on the fact that he probably flipped for the feds on Jack Smith’s cases, but that makes zero difference to Ms. Willis’ case. Hahahahahahaha
Paul in KY
@MisterDancer: VP R.M. Johnson is buried in Frankfort’s main cemetery. Under a monument that has a relief of him shooting Tecumseh (who unfortunately brought a tomahawk to a gun fight).
Him not freeing her was pretty low class. Among many other things that were low-class and cruel, IMO.
smith
@Elizabelle: From the time the GQP took the House I expected they would be impeaching Biden every other week (with Harris impeachments on the odd weeks). I’ve just been surprised it’s taken so long. Biden’s people undoubtedly had the same expectations and have prepared for it.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@MisterDancer: I understand. We know a lot about this, but not a single thing about what Julia Chinn thought and felt about it all.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Maybe they think you are a troll of some sort (not really going to donate a car!).
Jeffro
Shorter Kraven: “I am willing to let 10-12 ‘moderate’ House GOP members be the object of the Freedumb Caucus’ anger than have me be the object of the Freedumb Caucus’ anger (and potentially lose my speakership”
Kraven indeed!
UncleEbeneezer
@Elizabelle: If you do something and people pay you for doing it, it is work. This is no different than if I do a livestream of a set of music and people pay to access the feed. It’s a performance that people pay for. Lots of people do video content to make part of their living even if they have day jobs.
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: He seems to know heat is energy but thinks this is something nobody else ever noticed (before spiraling off into nonsense).
That’s a characteristic of cranks as well; they often assume other scientists are fools who made an elementary mistake a child could detect. It’s often because what they know of science comes from oversimplified popular explanations.
lowtechcyclist
@MisterDancer:
As long as they’re upfront about it, that’s one thing. The Dems in a given legislative district can decide if they want a person with that resume to be their candidate. But they were excluded from that decision; she made it for them.
Miss Bianca
@UncleEbeneezer: *Everybody* watches porn? You mean, I’m the only person in the world who thinks watching other bodies bang together is kinda boring and gross?
Now, *reading* porn and letting my imagination fill in the blanks is another story, but then I’ve always known I was a weirdo.
Geminid
@Alison Rose: Speaker Pelosi was pressured by some Democrats to impeach Trump only a few months into his term. But Pelosi ran her Caucus and did not let any one part of it run her, and correctly waited until October, 2022 to greenlight impeachment proceedings.
I don’t think there has ever been such a contrast between the moral courage of one Speaker and that of their successor. Pelosi had plenty, and I’m not McCarthy has even a shred.
Under present circumstances, impeachment is a loser politically, as Rep. Buck has pointed out. I would just stand back to point and laugh, except that we need to pass Biden’s request for $22 billion in miltary aid to Ukraine. This will become a political football among House Republicans, and that could make passage very problematic with the spineless McCarthy as Speaker.
Barbara
@MisterDancer: No idea about this case in particular, but there were a lot of impediments to manumission. In some states, for instance, it would not be granted unless the slave had reimbursed the owner for the expense of maintaining them. Manumission was also frequently opposed by the owner’s other family members, and many slaves were “inherited” through marriage, and so not always securely within the ownership rights of the husband. In some cases, people had to use a lot of legal machinations to successfully free their slaves. And some states required the freed person a grace period in which to leave the state, while others did not consider the children of freed persons to themselves be free. I would not make many presumptions one way or the other about most of these situations, it is very strange, however, that a marriage would even have been recognized as valid between a non-free and free person, white or otherwise.
Paul in KY
@dmsilev: Does heat have a maximum temperature? Higher temperatures cause the atoms to move more energetically. Can the temperature get so high that the atoms are moving faster than the speed of light or can that not happen, so thus there is a theoretical maximum temperature?
sixthdoctor
@MisterDancer: I read Danica Roem’s autobiography (Burn The Page) and before she ran for state senate she hired a PI to go through her own past so she could see her vulnerabilities and control the narrative. Think that should be standard practice for anyone entering politics.
rikyrah
Brynn Tannehill (@BrynnTannehill) posted at 10:38 PM on Mon, Sep 11, 2023:
Talking with some folks tonight. It sure looks like we’re heading to the mother of all government shut downs here. Like: my over/under is 90 days. Let me give a brief summary of the dynamics I’m hearing. 1/n
(https://x.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1701440164843631072?t=PV8Q3Wkb9Scdc0IKBt8dyw&s=03)
First the Freedom Caucus is demanding a vote on impeachment hearings in order to give McCarthy a vote on a “dirty” CR that is stuffed with poison pills. What might those poison pills be? 2/n
1. Abortion bans / making it impossible for raped or dying service women to get an abortion
2. Banning trans people from the military or getting health care from facilities receiving federal dollars
3. Ending support for Ukraine.
These are all DOA in the Senate and WH. 3/n
But, they’re also all completely non-negotiable to the Freedom Caucus. McCarthy doesn’t want sham impeachment hearings, but it only takes one person from the FC to trigger new speaker elections. Given how evenly divided the house is, they could take weeks. 4/n
While the Speaker’s Chair is vacant, there can be no vote on a CR, clean, dirty, or anything in between. Some of the saner Republicans don’t want a full shut down, but they don’t have the votes to get past the FC. 5/n
One of the open questions is what the FC will do regarding pay for the Military. If the shutdown were to happen now, there is no NDAA. They might vote of extending pay to the military at the last minute, but yikes. 6/n
Some Republican leaders, particularly in the Senate, are worried that the blame will fall on them in the 2024 election.
There’s the remote possibility that this all gets untangled by a few Republicans backing Jeffries to break the deadlock. 7/n
But, the FC has the ability for now to hold the entire system hostage to get what they want (which is all generally unpopular stuff anyways). It means no SS checks going out, full government shut down.
They’ve shown little interest in pragmatism. 8/n
If you look at what Sen Tuberville is doing, it sort of clues you in how far they’re willing to go to get their way: they’re more than willing to kill the hostage to advance an unpopular social agenda. They’re betting that someone will eventually cave. 9/n
Perhaps that the blame can be pushed on democrats who stink at messaging. Or perhaps they believe that can control the system after they destroy it. Or maybe blame the economic effects on Biden. But, from where I’m sitting, the situation is worse than any previous shut down 10/n
The previous record was 35 days. I don’t really see the FC and McCarthy finding a compromise they can live with, and CR that will get past the Senate and WH. Things are going to have to fall apart BADLY for the FC to see a breakthrough. 11/n
Plunging poll numbers. All the blame falling on the GOP. RNC billionaire donors threatening to annihilate them all with spending on their opponents in the primaries, and no spending in the general because they’re losing money from the shut down. 12/n
But, at the end of the day, these are ideologues. They’ll happily destroy the nation to “save” it from the menace of abortion and transgender people. We are not dealing with rational actors here, and that’s dangerous AF, and why I think this will go on for a long time. 13/n
Steeplejack
Just got a notification from the NYT that McCarthy will “endorse” an impeachment inquiry into Biden, which reminded me of my ongoing question: doesn’t impeachment have to involve “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed while in the office for which you’re being impeached? (Clumsy phrasing, but whatever.) Or is it, as the House nutters seem to think, applicable to anything you may (or may not) have done in a former office (or at any point in your life, apparently)? Everybody (media, pundits) seems to be watching this process with bemusement and without a “Whut?” to be seen anywhere. If there is one, point me to it.
ETA: Huh. Times headline has just been changed, in the time it took me to write this comment, from “McCarthy, Under Threat from Right Flank, to Endorse Impeachment Inquiry” to “McCarthy, Under Threat from Right, Orders Biden Impeachment Inquiry.”
Shalimar
@Alison Rose: Let the spineless loser pursue impeachment. Put everything on the table in a show trial for voters to judge. I’m pretty confident it will hurt them even more than it destroyed Gingrich in 1998.
And if impeachment is what McCarthy has to give to get the votes to keep government working for the next 14 months, even better.
Maxim
I imagine this thread is almost dead, but this video of a Seattle police officer laughing about the death of a young woman struck by a police cruiser is appalling:
https://www.tiktok.com/@medievalfilthcauldrons/video/7277787063708093739
Paul in KY
@Baud: The incel/weirdo vote was just their for the taking!
wjca
You might be interested in
Jen Rubin’s Green Room
Available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, etc.
Paul in KY
@Kay: I think it is reckless (IMO) to be a candidate for Rep & to be having/putting that out there in the intertubes.
Not a candidate for office, rock on!
Geminid
@rikyrah: Susanna Gibson might have a chance in the 57th District after all!
Government shutdowns do not play well in Virginia.
Emmyelle
I walked out of my gym today and terminated my membership because I had to listen to the owner blather on and on and on about directed energy attacks on Maui (by….who exactly? To accomplish….what exactly) and puppy-torturing scientists and more illegal aliens than the population of 30 states and all the Democrat-sanctioned child porn on Hunters laptop and sleep Joe lying about 9/11 and Nancy Pelosi’ daughter propping up Finestein.
I fortunately had the self control to not lob the 50-lb kettle bell at his head. I will have to pay an early termination fee. Fine with me. Fuck these mother fuckers.
tobie
It looks like China is the big victor of the G20, even though it didn’t show up. China’s started a rapprochement with India because of the weak language on Ukraine in the G20 resolution which they see as a green light for Taiwan.
I’m furious that the State Dept let Biden go to the G20 without the language of the resolution settled in advance.
The US got pwned. It’s a bad look.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-667830157
lowtechcyclist
@hueyplong:
My point in the comment you responded to was that it was absurd for her to be getting upset about an invasion of her privacy.
Imagine, since we’re talking about Virginia, that back in 2006, George Allen’s ‘macaca’ comment had been made in front of a large but officially private gathering, rather than in public. But someone recorded it and shared it more widely, and it got into the news. People would have laughed at him if he’d bitched about his privacy being invaded.
I don’t see a difference here.
Alison Rose
@Maxim: Holy fucking shit. What an absolute sociopath.
J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)
@dmsilev:
I thought everybody knew this?
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: Speed has an upper limit but energy doesn’t… at least in the regime where we can reasonably do physics and understand the rules. So that doesn’t give us an upper limit to temperature.
In discrete systems, like a lattice of atomic spins, the concept of temperature gets a little funny and temperature can become infinite or even negative (in an absolute sense). But this is somewhat abstract and applies to idealized models of the real world–though it can be useful in understanding some systems, like “population inversion” in a laser.
Ken
I’m reminded of one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, I think The Last Hero, where there is a major emergency and everyone has shown up in the Patrician’s office with their ideas and demands. So he forms some committees and puts them in meeting rooms where he can ignore them, while he works with the five people who are actually competent to deal with the problem.
Not that I think McCarthy is anywhere near as politically adept as the Patrician.
cmorenc
@Spanky: “nepo babies” are common in the musical world. Hank Williams, Jr does have enough showmanship and musical chops that he could likely have made it playing the honky-tonk bars along Broadway in Nashville, but questionable if he would have made it among the top levels of touring country musicians with hit records if it wasn’t for his famous name. Willie’s son Lucas definitely has enough talent and musical chops to deservedly make it – but without his famous father, would he be able to distinguish himself among the flood of talented Nashville or Austin musicians to make it big rather than be a successful local club act?
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: The impact might be identical, but there is a big difference about a speech at a private campaign event being released without consent, and a tape of your private personal event being leaked. Even if it’s just your birthday or anniversary party — it was not recorded with the expectation that it would be used by others.
So I do get why that probably doesn’t matter as to the consequences — the release of the 2006 Illinois senate candidate’s divorce records that included a lot of detail about his sexcapades caused him to withdraw from the race, paving the way for Barack Obama’s relatively easy path to victory.
But saying there is no difference is a bit much.
rikyrah
In order to impeach, everyone has to GO ON THE RECORD, right?
They have to take an actual VOTE, right?
so, we’ll get all these muthaphuckas on record.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Word.
Baud
@rikyrah:
To actually impeach, yes.
Mel
@Steeplejack: The FDA guidelines just released this week say that you can get the new booster 8 weeks / 2 months after getting your last bivalent booster.
Hope this helps! I’m counting the days, as well!
Baud
@Barbara:
If she’s doing it for money, it’s not a private personal event.
Paul in KY
@Shalimar: Good point!
Paul in KY
@dmsilev: Our sun having a whole lot of spacetime.
dmsilev
@Paul in KY: Well, eventually things get hot enough that the atoms fly apart. First, the electrons dissociate from the nuclei and you get a plasma. Then, at Sufficiently Higher energies, the nuclei themselves fly apart. Higher still, the protons and neutrons dissociate into something called a quark-gluon plasma. That’s about as high as our quantitative understanding goes (the last bit is “right at the center of a particle accelerator” high energy); string theorists and similar like to talk about “grand unification” energy scales, but it’s so far away from what we can realistically test that it’s largely just highly-mathematical wankery.(*)
Speed of light is still a firm upper bound on speed though.
(*) Some bias on my part. I’ve never liked string theory…
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Ken:
In the same sense that a damp firecracker isn’t anywhere near as energetic as a supernova.
Also, McCarthy, despite his wishes, isn’t operating under the Ankh-Morpork “One Man, One Vote” system, in which Lord Vetinari was the One Man, and he had the One Vote. McCarthy’s trying to use the impeachment kabuki to buy off a bunch of irrational actors, and there’s no guarantee – I’d go so far as to say it’s unlikely – that those irrational actors will stay bought.
dmsilev
@Matt McIrvin:
The amusing thing about the “negative absolute temperature”, or perhaps more accurately “negative thermodynamic temperature” idea is that in systems which show it, the negative temperatures are actually hotter (higher energy) than the positive temperatures.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: I wonder if Susanna Gibson might pull it off. Dobbs, and Governor fake ass ready to sign anything that crosses his desk. Personally, I would vote for her. Or whatever Democrat is on the ballot this year.
Source: The 19th. Will a ‘brick wall’ against abortion restrictions fall?
Virginia’s Republican governor is pursuing a 15-week abortion ban. Legislative elections in the state will decide the fate of that proposal.
Dunnavant is my state senator. I wish The 19th had included a quote from her Dem opponent, Schuyler Van Valkenburg; he is a high school history/government teacher and current state delegate.
Paul in KY
@Ken: Thank you for your succinct explanation. It all finally makes sense…
Steeplejack
@Mel:
Thanks.
smith
@rikyrah: I don’t think the House loonies have any illusions that they have the evidence to actually win an impeachment vote. If they did, the Squeaker wouldn’t have to do an end run around a vote to initiate an impeachment inquiry. What they want is to generate a stream of bogus “evidence” to counter the stream of real evidence coming from TFG’s trials, and the media will no doubt collaborate on this. They can’t keep it up the entire campaign season, though, and eventually it will have to come to a vote, and the non-loonie Republicans (especially those in close districts) will then be caught in a vise — do they against, and lose the MAGA vote, and the election? Or do they vote for, and lose sane independents, and the election?
Jackie
@rikyrah: I believe so.
I just forced myself to watch My Kevin’s speech. A bunch of blah blah blah… and then he said a political office is not for sale… DIDN’T he prostitute himself to buy the Speakership?
cain
@Elizabelle: Considering that Trump’s wife literally did the same kind of thing and these idiots were talking about how great she is – this should be just fine.
wjca
@Geminid:
Gotta wonder why she didn’t just say something like “Isn’t it amazing what kind of editing you can do with computer images these days?” And, if pressed on the subject, just roll her eyes and say something like “Oh, please”.
It’s not quite a denial. But, unlike her reported response, it’s not a confirmation either.
Tenar Arha
@Yarrow: I’m actually the weirdo that gets the flu shot in my dominant arm, and a COVID booster in my non-dominant arm on a Friday bc it hurts more and I feel only a “little” crappy afterwards.
But, if I had COVID recently, I’d probably rationalize my way to something like—I just had Covid, so get I’ll get my flu shot now since I’m probably more vulnerable bc I just was sick, then I’d get the booster next a couple weeks to a month later. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Best wishes & no side effects!
ETA grammar
cain
@tobie:
It’s good revenge since if you read yesterdays Ukraine thing – the language telegraphed to Ukraine as well what we think of them.
So overall a foreign policy disaster in every way.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: I think you have to be a bit off in the head to run for public office (in this day and age) and think that you’ll never be found out. Just reckless.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Shalimar: I caught some Fox News while greeting my parents last night. At this point, if it turns out th White House cocaine belonged to Hunter, I will quit my job and devote my life to shilling for Biden until election day.
Cocaine is for people who get shit done. Needless to say, I don’t prefer the stuff, myself.
ETA: Fuck you autocorrect what even is cochise? That’s not even near the buttons I pushed.
NotMax
@Old School
Suffice to say eclectic is an understatement.
;)
Mel
@Maxim: Google Seattle Tech Bloc Open Oversight and Daniel Auderer. I apologize for not linking – can’t get the link to work, and just had surgery so too tired to wrestle with it at the moment.
It appears that he has a list of prior complaints and issues a mile long for things like unnecessary use of force, biased policing, etc.
He also showed his true nature back in January with an unhinged rant about “Antifa” and other Maga dog whistle issues. That one at least earned him a reprimand, finally.
He’s human garbage. A sociopath with a badge.
Frighteningly, he is an officer entrusted to “determine” if officers involved in accidents like this are under the influence. Raise your hand if you think someone who laughs joyfully at an awful death caused by a fellow cop id actually likely to tell the truth if his fellow cop is intoxicated or otherwise impaired…
He needs to be jailed for the safety of society.
My heart is breaking for that young woman, so intelligent and by all accounts a kind, lovely person, cut down in the prime of her life, with everything bright and good ahead of her.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: Schuyler Van Valkenburg? He sounds like a dam’ Yankee!
But I guess that doesn’t matter so much anymore.
Brachiator
This! This!
I expect an angry response from the people at 538 and other poll pundits, but this is right on the money. The funny thing is that even pollsters admit that early polls have very little predictive value. But if these people don’t regularly churn out polls and analyses, they don’t get paid.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Brachiator: Can’t they find more useful things to poll until closer to election time? Data on schoolchildren’s lunches might be interesting. Perhaps a more detailed look at where the income of working people us going.
I don’t know, be creative, pollsters.
wjca
It occurs to me that this might be a contributing factor to why we have a gerontocracy. Someone who is retired is likely to have income outside what they get from their political position. And so is more likely to be able to afford to serve.
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara: They had 5700 followers on that forum, per the WaPo, and it wasn’t even password protected. YMMV, but to me that isn’t very private.
Geminid
@wjca: In my opinion, we don’t have a gerontocracy, we have a gerontocracy panic.
trollhattan
@MisterDancer: Interesting. That would put me at first week of November to get the jab. Good to know.
Ksmiami
@Alison Rose: may the house gop all get Covid
Paul in KY
@Emmyelle: Certainly better for your mental health!
JPL
@Mel: I typed in his name and it’s all over both local, state but now popping up on national news. They are investigating and hopefully the sociopath is at least fired.
Paul in KY
@dmsilev: Thank you for that explanation.
wjca
Just a thought on possibly gaming the system. Do the state legislators get an allowance for staffing their offices? If so, is there an explicit bar on hiring yourself for one of those positions?
wenchacha
@wjca: Because she’s not a politician! So she didn’t have the skill-set to field a question like that.
I always kinda ignored all the stuff about Lauren Boebert having been an escort, figuring it was just garbage posting. And me trying not to judge about it. OTOH, is sex work a big deal or not? Was it Mary Carey who ran for office in Nevada?
Paul in KY
@wenchacha: Once you are running for office, you are a politician and you have to start thinking like one, IMO.
Barbara
@lowtechcyclist: Okay, but that’s not what you said above. Of course, if you yourself make it public that’s different. It’s still not “the same” but there’s no question it will have the same impact.
wjca
@Geminid: Fair enough. But we have enough people in government who are old enough to generate that panic.
It’s perhaps worthwhile to look at why that might be. If only to motivate fixing things like salaries for legislators set at levels which were maybe reasonable compared to the cost of living 50 years ago or more. But ridiculous today.
Roger Moore
@cmorenc:
Also in Hollywood. There are plenty of acting families, where it’s pretty obvious the second and subsequent generations never would have gotten a look-in if they hadn’t had the right parents. Drew Barrymore is a fine actor, but you can bet her name opened a lot of doors for her that she might not have been able to open on talent alone. Does anyone think Jaden Smith would get any roles if not for his parents?
wjca
OTOH, sex work is legal in Nevada.** You can run a brothel and be part of the local Chamber of Commerce.
** Outside Clark and Washoe counties.
Gravenstone
Woof?
Alison Rose
@wenchacha: She ran in California, actually. She was one of like 200 people running for governor after Davis’ recall.
Geminid
@wjca: I think it’s more productive to look at and appreciate all the younger Democrats entering Congress in the last three cycles. Maybe the problem of the supposed “gerontocracy” is being solved, and people are ignoring it.
I also think that a lot of people griping about Nancy Pelosi’s age have an ideological axe to grind. They wanted a Left party, not a Center-Left party, and Pelosi wouldn’t go along.
tobie
@cain: The weak language on Ukraine, the backstabbing of the US by Modi and Xi, Vietnam’s arms deal with Russia…all this comes on the heels of the disclosure of Musk’s shenanigans with Starlink. Can Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken please start throwing some elbows?
wjca
Ditto the people meeping about Biden’s age.
Roger Moore
@wjca:
I sincerely believe a lot of the people meeping about Biden’s age are bigots uncomfortable with Kamala Harris being next in line for the presidency. They don’t want to come right out and say they don’t want a woman of color in the top job, but they see the issue of Biden’s age as a way of bringing it up slightly more subtly.
piratedan
@Geminid: I still think she has a chance to win, it’s not as if one of their requests was to read the 1619 Report in Librarian glasses, that would have doomed her for sure.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: Yes! Note, this phenomenon where absolute temperature becomes infinite and then goes negative is a consequence of the statistical definition of temperature, not as a measure of energy density, but as a measure of how entropy varies with heat transfer. That corresponds to what you may have learned in chemistry class for an ideal gas, but for other systems it can get very weird.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: Also, there is a notion that with Harris, the Democratic “Establishment” will block the path for a “bold progressive” to take over the party. Most Sanders and Warren supporters have gotten behind Joe Biden, but some still have wistful feelings about what might have been. They worry that the Sanders/Warren wing will never achieve its deserved place in the sun. And consciously and/or unconsciously, they identify Harris with the African-American component of the party that they believe keeps the “Establishment” in power
And then there are the ones who never got behind Biden, like Sanders’ former press secretary and former speechwriter. They and their allies try to whip this issue up out of spite.
Shalimar
@lowtechcyclist: The reporting isn’t based on the Chaturbate shows, which were live and had a limited number of people watching. There is no evidence in any of the reporting that any reporters have seen the live shows, which ended more than a year ago. The reporting is based on videos housed on sites that illegally recorded the shows to sell for a profit. Which is something she should be outraged over.
Geminid
@piratedan: I agree, Gibson could still win, especially if there is a Blue wave and that could happen. But this matter will cost her a few points, I think. And I don’t think someone has to be a bigot or a misogynist to vote against her on account of this issue, either.
This story is less than 24 hpurs old, though. It will get plenty of attention now, so I am going to see how it shakes out over the next week.
piratedan
@Geminid: agreed, just an observation that the societal and sexual mores of the generations that followed my own are a tad more liberal than mine. The idea that she could have sex, with her own husband (no less), enjoy it and use it as a side hustle seems pretty tame to me, I mean what kind of leverage does this knowledge have if they agreed to it consensually? In the old days, people would have to arrange to strategically walk their pets and the drapes be open for that kind of show.
I guess the only objection the GOP could raise is that it’s a shame that she’s not an evangelical pastor preying on her flock?
Yes, I can see why this would affect the opinions of her, but cripes, its really none of my bidness.
Citizen Alan
@Brit in Chicago:
The thing about this is that the AIs are trying to treat it like it’s a math problem when it’s actually a word problem. Ignore the numbers for a second. The relevant information is that Sally has 3 brothers, and each brother has 2 sisters. But because of how the words “brothers” and “sisters” are defined, we know that all three brothers have the same 2 sisters, one of whom is Sally and the other of whom is Sally’s only sister.
Knowledge of what the words mean about the relationships involved is more important than any math needed. If, OTOH, the problem said “Sally has 3 brothers, each of whom has two daughters. How many nieces does Sally have?” the AIs would have been correct.
Geminid
@piratedan: Yes, this is one of those things that shouldn’t matter but probably will to some swing voters.
But check out State Senator L. Louise Lucas’s response at #201 in the next thread!
Origuy
@Barbara: As far as I can tell, Kentucky was not one of the states that made it difficult to free a slave. However, I don’t know what would happen if a freedwoman went into one of the states that didn’t allow manumission. Would they recognize her as a free person or an escaped slave?
DKinSD
I watched the Biden speech and unless I’m completely missing something, it looks like it was delivered without notes and without a teleprompter. Anyone who claims that Joe “can’t string two sentences together” should be forced to watch that ‘Clockwork Orange’ style.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
We might be seeing some of the post WWII baby boomers (like me), retiring. Enough of them retire that would shorten the work force of experienced people likely higher up the food chain. That would be people born in the mid 50s, maybe early 60s, I used to call them youngsters, who would be retirement age now but as pay was a lot lower 55-65 yrs ago their retirement funds maybe would have had to been added to on this end of working. Ask me how I know.
DKinSD
@Origuy: I don’t know how prevalent it was, but as I understand, it was not entirely unusual for a freed person to be snatched from locations in the north and transported into the south to be sold as a slave (think “12 Years a Slave”). So it would at the least be dangerous for a freed person to travel into the south.