@OzarkHillbilly:
Years ago I remember saying to Amazon’s biggest fans that they probably wouldn’t like it when the only two retail outlets left available to them would be Amazon and Walmart.
It was “laughable” for anybody to suggest Cheney isn’t a “conservative Republican”, said Cheney’s spokesperson, Jeremy Adler, on Monday.
“She is bound by her oath to the constitution. Sadly, a portion of the Wyoming GOP leadership has abandoned that fundamental principle and instead allowed themselves to be held hostage to the lies of a dangerous and irrational man,” Adler added.
Cheney is now facing at least four Republican opponents in the 2022 primary, including the Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman, whom Trump has endorsed. Hageman in a statement called the latest state GOP central committee vote “fitting”, the Casper Star-Tribune reported.
“Liz Cheney stopped recognizing what Wyomingites care about a long time ago. When she launched her war against President Trump, she completely broke with where we are as a state,” Hageman said.
Fitting for a state that has had a complete break with reality.
The defense attorney Mark Richards contested Binger’s closing arguments, saying there had been “a rush to judgment” in his client’s case while accusing prosecutors of “lying” or “misrepresenting” the video footage in which they argued Rittenhouse was the one who provoked the fatal encounter.
“Mr Rosenbaum was shot because he was chasing my client and going to kill him – take his gun and carry out the threats he made,” Richards told the jury.
Throughout the trial, multiple witnesses – including some of the state’s – have testified that Rosenbaum charged and lunged at Rittenhouse.
Richards argued that Grosskreutz should have “retreated” and not confronted Rittenhouse after the latter shot Rosenbaum. Grosskreutz should have “let him be and go give aid and comfort” to Rosenbaum, said Richards.
“Instead, he joins the mob, chasing Kyle, arms himself, and runs in – the fifth or sixth person there to the melee,” he added. “Mr Grosskreutz decides he’s going to shoot my client. Unfortunately, my client shot him first. If he retreated, it’s over.”
There you have it folks, Jared Loughner was only defending himself from the mob.
@OzarkHillbilly:
What an difference five years make. Back in 2016, Harriet Hageman was virulently opposed to Trump, calling him a racist and xenophobe who’d repel voters. She tried to block his nomination.
Here’s her explanation for her switcheroo: “I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly came to realize that their allegations against President Trump were untrue. He was the greatest president of my lifetime.”
The whole Theranos saga has given me a slight feeling of familiarity, of having heard parts of the story before. Today it hit me, it’s part of Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End.
In the first part of the novel (also the short story it’s based on), the alien Overlords do not allow themselves to be seen. When they meet in their ships with the Secretary General of the UN, they are behind an opaque glass partition.
Guesses as to what they look like abound. One, put forth by the Secretary’s aide (if memory serves), goes something like this: they are hiding the fact they have nothing to hide. That is, they are regular human beings, identical to us, and we wouldn’t put up with them if we knew this, so they hide it.
Theranos was very secretive from the start, which is not uncommon for tech startups, but kept that up in an extreme form for a long time. Few people were allowed to see the workings of the proprietary Edison device, for instance.
Holmes was rather insistent in protecting “trade secrets.” At first, this makes sense. But all Theranos had was a miniature immunoassay machine, the Edison, which didn’t work well, and modified commercial equipment which worked even worse (the equipment was good, but not with the dilution Theranos used). No on in their right mind would steal blood analysis machines which were far inferior to any commercial product.
So, in essence, Holmes and Balwani were hiding the fact they had nothing to hide. If they kept churning analyses to the public through their partner Walgreens, they’d seem to have some special tech beyond what other labs used.
A market valuation in the billions was built on this crap.
Form yesterday’s post about flu shots, it seems to me the annual vaccine uptake is rather limited. We’ve learned from COVID vaccines that herd immunity is necessary to prevent widespread transmission.
Put the two together, and part of the efficacy of the flu shot is lost because not enough people get vaccinated every year.
But let’s back up a bit first. The problem with the annual flu shot is we never know in advance which of the many flu strains will be prevalent or dominant. There’s an educated guess based on which strains were found the last flu season, and the vaccines are made against three or four strains (depending on the vaccine) anyway. Still, its possible to leave out one or more strains and leave everyone unprotected against them. It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
Even if we guess right and this season’s vaccine guards against the two or three dominant strains, we still lose something if only 60% or so of the population gets vaccinated. We know the virus will circulate more, giving more opportunities for infection. We know the vaccines have a limit to their efficacy, especially among the most vulnerable groups: the elderly and those who are immunocompromised for whatever reason.
So now the problem is to get more people to take the annual flu vaccine. This shouldn’t be difficult, but in some places it may be costly. In Mexico, for instance, you can’t just get it free at any drugstore. You either pay for it, or get it at a public healthcare hospital or clinic. This gets complicated depending on which public healthcare covers you (there are several), and how many shots are available.
Consider that though the Pfizer COVID vaccine has been approved for everyone 12 and over, Mexico is offering the 12 to 17 age group this vaccine only to those at risk or with comorbidities, not to all (this will let us have a longer pandemic). Nor is there any talk about boosters as yet, and much less on the 5 to 11 reduced dose vaccine.
The American system of distributing vaccines at drugstores, and having the personnel available to administer them, seems to be worth emulating. Of course, it would cost money. And it might not improve vaccination rates much.
@CSK: Corey Lewandowski is just figuring that out now? And if this is a typical revelation, why did a publisher pick this up at all? Is there really that much market for “Well duh!” books?
I had no idea that Lewandowski had this kind of public presence. There’s never been a more WGAF person, for my money. Hope Hicks’ memoirs would be more interesting.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It was something told to Jonathan Karl. He apparently knew it at the time. What I wonder is if all these former loyalists are blabbing now because they know Trump’s time has come and gone.
We sadly live in a time when a segment of the American population really, really want to live in a separate world, and there are lots of people willing to both reinforce and monetize their fantasizing.
So, they’re named after a fictional terrorist, Harry Tuttle, and it looks like one of the twins transitioned early while the other is still finding their identity.
Tuttle wasn’t actually a terrorist, he was just fixing people’s air conditioners without permission.
One of the more subtle things in Brazil, that a lot of people don’t pick up on since none of the characters in the movie ever comes out and says it, is that there are no actual terrorists in Brazil: all the explosions are the duct systems blowing up due to faulty maintenance and the government is just blaming it on imaginary terrorists because they don’t want to admit they’re failing to keep the ducts working.
The big news thus far at the Dubai Air Show is not that for the first time ever Israeli companies are offering military hardware, but that Airbus scored a massive order for over 250 A320 and A321 aircraft from Indigo Partners.
This is a holding company which holds (duh) a controlling interest in Frontier Airlines in the US and JetSmart in Chile, plus large stakes of Volaris in Mexico and Wizz Air in Europe. The Airbus order is huge by any measure.
The other big news is the freight version of the Airbus A350. In third place, Boeing’s debut of the 777X, the newest version of their large widebody airliner.
Usually the news from these trade shows are all about airlines, which observe far less secrecy than military services do.
The oppressive, right-wing government labeled him a terrorist, and it would be un-American to even pretend to think otherwise. Don’t you read the Constitution? 😉
BTW, I thought it was the government setting off bombs and blaming terrorists to justify their own repression.
Nope, just exploding poorly-maintained ducts. Part of the irony in the movie is that there’s no real villain who is causing everything, just a self-reinforcing bureaucratic delusion where each individual thinks what they’re doing make sense, but the whole thing together does not.
Which is sort of the point of the movie: 1984 doesn’t come from an obviously evil inner-party deliberately creating dystopia, but rather from a system that’s gotten too complex for anyone to fully understand, much less control.
@Kathy:
In their defense, if my trade secret was “There’s one born every minute”, I’d of kept that to myself too.
On the aviation front, a 6 foot scale model of KLM’s* “Flying V” project has completed a short flight. Just a few more issues to work out, like de-icing all that leading edge (and what happens prevents shed chunks of ice from going right into to the engines), challenging seating configuration layouts, and inherent instability at high AoA. Other than that it looks like a go…
In their defense, if my trade secret was “There’s one born every minute”, I’d of kept that to myself too.
Is that still a secret?
Any idea how big the scale model is? the piece does not say, and the photos do not show it near to anything that might indicate scale.
The other issue to consider is whether a full-size version will fit in today’s airport gates. Many airports spent a large deal of money modifying gates for the A380, and now it’s likely many of them won’t ever see another A380 ever again.
@Thomm: Still, when (note that I’m not saying “if”) she decides to run again as a Republican, the declaration from the Wyoming GQP will not affect her ability to be placed on either the primary or the general election ballot as a Republican candidate.
@dazedandconfused: [Note: The following is NOT a criticism of the usage discussed or the ability of the writer. IT IS EXCLUSIVELY a comment on the differences between oral and written language.]
I’d of kept
It’s interesting to me that there is no standardized syntactical scheme available to write what was said related to the above phrase and other similar ones. Logic would suggest that one would write “I’d’ve,” but there’s no guarantee for how readers would decode it (if they did/could at all). My warnings to my composition students that you can’t actually write what you say fell on deaf ears for this category of error because NO ONE EVER says “I’d have kept” (or the even more formal “I would have kept”) no matter how uptight and proper they may be. This is an example of what one of my professors called “bone deep usage.” (He taught several grammar courses I took. Another of his quandaries involved the oral phrase “useta.” The question: what’s the formal–“use to,” “used to,” or something else?)
My unsatisfactory suggestion to my students was to suggest not using contractions; at which point some bright young, enquiring (and snarky) mind would present me with a page from so scholarly missive with all of the contractions highlighted. I would turn to a page in the grammar handbook (that I had specially marked for convenience) that said “don’t use contractions in formal writing” and noted that when they left school (or even, in some cases, the English Department), they could do what they wanted but would have to follow the protocols in the handbook to get an “A.” I hope that someday, grammar handbooks will note that “I’d of” has become so common that everyone reads it as “I would have” as we have effectively reached that point (not even a really efficient grammar check program catches this usage) in real life. As usual, protocol is behind the curve.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: yes, but they will not fund her through the state committees and will greatly reduce fundraising opportunities, which is the kiss of death for a candidate while in the primaries. The power of the party in corralling a possible candidate is to shut off party based funds.
Yeah. This is my big disconnect with the notion that whatever problems the GQP has had/is having involve FG and will go away when he’s gone. He only revealed how genuinely f-‘t up the party has become for the base to see him as the standard bearer.
@Thomm: I’m no expert, but my understanding of the lay of the land is that Cheney has sufficient funds to run and name recognition that hasn’t taken that much of a hit (which might explain the need to expel her publicly, I dunno). If she wins (still even money?), will the party still refuse to support her run? My guess is no.
Again, I have no particular expertise as to Wyoming politics, but it seems like “corralling” Cheney may be more wishful thinking than reality from several states away. The fact that Jax thinks that Harriet and Cheney are “basically the same person” could play a big role, though, in helping the newcomer overcome the advantages of incumbency and having the same name as a “hero of the republic.”
I mean, you guys gotta figure the temperature here, as far as politics. Any Dem who throws their hat in the ring is gonna get death threats. The idiots regularly threaten the State public health officer, the Governor, any local public health officers they can find. There’s cops at the Public Health offices when they’re doing vaccinations. It’s freakin ugly around here.
There’s a youtube out that shows it to have been about 6 ft.
It has a big wall in front of it: Icing certification. Going to take a massive amount of bleed air to heat that massive leading edge. Damn near half the fuselage will have to be ducted.
When someone as disgusting as Corey Lewandowski stabs you in the back…
http://www.yahoo.com/news/corey-lewandowski-said-trump-used-015003955.html
Amazon to pay $500,000 fine for failing to notify workers of Covid cases
Or about 30 seconds worth of profits.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Years ago I remember saying to Amazon’s biggest fans that they probably wouldn’t like it when the only two retail outlets left available to them would be Amazon and Walmart.
Wyoming Republican party stops recognizing Liz Cheney as member
Fitting for a state that has had a complete break with reality.
There you have it folks, Jared Loughner was only defending himself from the mob.
@OzarkHillbilly: but, I have been told many times that political parties actually have no say on who is and is not a member. /S
@OzarkHillbilly:
What an difference five years make. Back in 2016, Harriet Hageman was virulently opposed to Trump, calling him a racist and xenophobe who’d repel voters. She tried to block his nomination.
Here’s her explanation for her switcheroo: “I heard and believed the lies the Democrats and Liz Cheney’s friends in the media were telling at the time, but that is ancient history as I quickly came to realize that their allegations against President Trump were untrue. He was the greatest president of my lifetime.”
Well, this chart is certainly informative. Chart is from WSJ via Barry Ritholtz
The whole Theranos saga has given me a slight feeling of familiarity, of having heard parts of the story before. Today it hit me, it’s part of Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End.
In the first part of the novel (also the short story it’s based on), the alien Overlords do not allow themselves to be seen. When they meet in their ships with the Secretary General of the UN, they are behind an opaque glass partition.
Guesses as to what they look like abound. One, put forth by the Secretary’s aide (if memory serves), goes something like this: they are hiding the fact they have nothing to hide. That is, they are regular human beings, identical to us, and we wouldn’t put up with them if we knew this, so they hide it.
Theranos was very secretive from the start, which is not uncommon for tech startups, but kept that up in an extreme form for a long time. Few people were allowed to see the workings of the proprietary Edison device, for instance.
Holmes was rather insistent in protecting “trade secrets.” At first, this makes sense. But all Theranos had was a miniature immunoassay machine, the Edison, which didn’t work well, and modified commercial equipment which worked even worse (the equipment was good, but not with the dilution Theranos used). No on in their right mind would steal blood analysis machines which were far inferior to any commercial product.
So, in essence, Holmes and Balwani were hiding the fact they had nothing to hide. If they kept churning analyses to the public through their partner Walgreens, they’d seem to have some special tech beyond what other labs used.
A market valuation in the billions was built on this crap.
I sometimes think their Confederate grand-pappies would be proud: “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here.”
On the other hand, their ancestors might wonder why they are trying whites over a lynching.
Form yesterday’s post about flu shots, it seems to me the annual vaccine uptake is rather limited. We’ve learned from COVID vaccines that herd immunity is necessary to prevent widespread transmission.
Put the two together, and part of the efficacy of the flu shot is lost because not enough people get vaccinated every year.
But let’s back up a bit first. The problem with the annual flu shot is we never know in advance which of the many flu strains will be prevalent or dominant. There’s an educated guess based on which strains were found the last flu season, and the vaccines are made against three or four strains (depending on the vaccine) anyway. Still, its possible to leave out one or more strains and leave everyone unprotected against them. It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.
Even if we guess right and this season’s vaccine guards against the two or three dominant strains, we still lose something if only 60% or so of the population gets vaccinated. We know the virus will circulate more, giving more opportunities for infection. We know the vaccines have a limit to their efficacy, especially among the most vulnerable groups: the elderly and those who are immunocompromised for whatever reason.
So now the problem is to get more people to take the annual flu vaccine. This shouldn’t be difficult, but in some places it may be costly. In Mexico, for instance, you can’t just get it free at any drugstore. You either pay for it, or get it at a public healthcare hospital or clinic. This gets complicated depending on which public healthcare covers you (there are several), and how many shots are available.
Consider that though the Pfizer COVID vaccine has been approved for everyone 12 and over, Mexico is offering the 12 to 17 age group this vaccine only to those at risk or with comorbidities, not to all (this will let us have a longer pandemic). Nor is there any talk about boosters as yet, and much less on the 5 to 11 reduced dose vaccine.
The American system of distributing vaccines at drugstores, and having the personnel available to administer them, seems to be worth emulating. Of course, it would cost money. And it might not improve vaccination rates much.
@CSK: Corey Lewandowski is just figuring that out now? And if this is a typical revelation, why did a publisher pick this up at all? Is there really that much market for “Well duh!” books?
I had no idea that Lewandowski had this kind of public presence. There’s never been a more WGAF person, for my money. Hope Hicks’ memoirs would be more interesting.
I haven’t seen the video, but the description and transcript make it sound like a real life version of Who’s On First.
Apparently it’s too hard to say “There’ a show called ‘You’.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
It was something told to Jonathan Karl. He apparently knew it at the time. What I wonder is if all these former loyalists are blabbing now because they know Trump’s time has come and gone.
@Kathy: In her defense, that’s sounds like one of my family’s conversations after we had a few too many bottles of wine.
@Scott:
What wine do you pair with lies and propaganda?
@Kathy:
Trump Wine. Obviously.
An ad for The Tuttle Twins, a MAGA children’s book series, popped up on one of my feeds:
https://tuttletwins.com/
We sadly live in a time when a segment of the American population really, really want to live in a separate world, and there are lots of people willing to both reinforce and monetize their fantasizing.
@Kingdaddy:
Initially misread that as “Turtle Twins” and briefly thought it was based on the childhood escapades of Mitch McConnell…
@Kingdaddy:
So, they’re named after a fictional terrorist, Harry Tuttle, and it looks like one of the twins transitioned early while the other is still finding their identity.
@CSK: 😀 😛 😀 😛
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
What could be better?
@Kathy:
Tuttle wasn’t actually a terrorist, he was just fixing people’s air conditioners without permission.
One of the more subtle things in Brazil, that a lot of people don’t pick up on since none of the characters in the movie ever comes out and says it, is that there are no actual terrorists in Brazil: all the explosions are the duct systems blowing up due to faulty maintenance and the government is just blaming it on imaginary terrorists because they don’t want to admit they’re failing to keep the ducts working.
The big news thus far at the Dubai Air Show is not that for the first time ever Israeli companies are offering military hardware, but that Airbus scored a massive order for over 250 A320 and A321 aircraft from Indigo Partners.
This is a holding company which holds (duh) a controlling interest in Frontier Airlines in the US and JetSmart in Chile, plus large stakes of Volaris in Mexico and Wizz Air in Europe. The Airbus order is huge by any measure.
The other big news is the freight version of the Airbus A350. In third place, Boeing’s debut of the 777X, the newest version of their large widebody airliner.
Usually the news from these trade shows are all about airlines, which observe far less secrecy than military services do.
@Stormy Dragon:
The oppressive, right-wing government labeled him a terrorist, and it would be un-American to even pretend to think otherwise. Don’t you read the Constitution? 😉
BTW, I thought it was the government setting off bombs and blaming terrorists to justify their own repression.
@Kathy:
Nope, just exploding poorly-maintained ducts. Part of the irony in the movie is that there’s no real villain who is causing everything, just a self-reinforcing bureaucratic delusion where each individual thinks what they’re doing make sense, but the whole thing together does not.
@Stormy Dragon:
Which is sort of the point of the movie: 1984 doesn’t come from an obviously evil inner-party deliberately creating dystopia, but rather from a system that’s gotten too complex for anyone to fully understand, much less control.
@Kathy:
In their defense, if my trade secret was “There’s one born every minute”, I’d of kept that to myself too.
On the aviation front, a 6 foot scale model of KLM’s* “Flying V” project has completed a short flight. Just a few more issues to work out, like de-icing all that leading edge (and what happens prevents shed chunks of ice from going right into to the engines), challenging seating configuration layouts, and inherent instability at high AoA. Other than that it looks like a go…
https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/v-wing-aircraft-fuel-efficient-advanced-airliner-2948619/
*NOT Gibson’s.
@dazedandconfused:
Is that still a secret?
Any idea how big the scale model is? the piece does not say, and the photos do not show it near to anything that might indicate scale.
The other issue to consider is whether a full-size version will fit in today’s airport gates. Many airports spent a large deal of money modifying gates for the A380, and now it’s likely many of them won’t ever see another A380 ever again.
@Thomm: Still, when (note that I’m not saying “if”) she decides to run again as a Republican, the declaration from the Wyoming GQP will not affect her ability to be placed on either the primary or the general election ballot as a Republican candidate.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: It’ll be an interesting race. Her and Harriet are basically the same person, but one is declaring fealty to Trump.
@dazedandconfused: [Note: The following is NOT a criticism of the usage discussed or the ability of the writer. IT IS EXCLUSIVELY a comment on the differences between oral and written language.]
It’s interesting to me that there is no standardized syntactical scheme available to write what was said related to the above phrase and other similar ones. Logic would suggest that one would write “I’d’ve,” but there’s no guarantee for how readers would decode it (if they did/could at all). My warnings to my composition students that you can’t actually write what you say fell on deaf ears for this category of error because NO ONE EVER says “I’d have kept” (or the even more formal “I would have kept”) no matter how uptight and proper they may be. This is an example of what one of my professors called “bone deep usage.” (He taught several grammar courses I took. Another of his quandaries involved the oral phrase “useta.” The question: what’s the formal–“use to,” “used to,” or something else?)
My unsatisfactory suggestion to my students was to suggest not using contractions; at which point some bright young, enquiring (and snarky) mind would present me with a page from so scholarly missive with all of the contractions highlighted. I would turn to a page in the grammar handbook (that I had specially marked for convenience) that said “don’t use contractions in formal writing” and noted that when they left school (or even, in some cases, the English Department), they could do what they wanted but would have to follow the protocols in the handbook to get an “A.” I hope that someday, grammar handbooks will note that “I’d of” has become so common that everyone reads it as “I would have” as we have effectively reached that point (not even a really efficient grammar check program catches this usage) in real life. As usual, protocol is behind the curve.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: yes, but they will not fund her through the state committees and will greatly reduce fundraising opportunities, which is the kiss of death for a candidate while in the primaries. The power of the party in corralling a possible candidate is to shut off party based funds.
@Jax:
Yeah. This is my big disconnect with the notion that whatever problems the GQP has had/is having involve FG and will go away when he’s gone. He only revealed how genuinely f-‘t up the party has become for the base to see him as the standard bearer.
@Thomm: I’m no expert, but my understanding of the lay of the land is that Cheney has sufficient funds to run and name recognition that hasn’t taken that much of a hit (which might explain the need to expel her publicly, I dunno). If she wins (still even money?), will the party still refuse to support her run? My guess is no.
Again, I have no particular expertise as to Wyoming politics, but it seems like “corralling” Cheney may be more wishful thinking than reality from several states away. The fact that Jax thinks that Harriet and Cheney are “basically the same person” could play a big role, though, in helping the newcomer overcome the advantages of incumbency and having the same name as a “hero of the republic.”
@Jax:
@Thomm:
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Best case scenario they both run, one as an independent, split the GQP vote, and the Democratic underdog wins (Utopian scenario?)
@Kathy: I don’t there’s a Dem willing to run. Not that I’ve heard, anyways. The Dems here seem to be throwing their support behind Cheney.
I mean, you guys gotta figure the temperature here, as far as politics. Any Dem who throws their hat in the ring is gonna get death threats. The idiots regularly threaten the State public health officer, the Governor, any local public health officers they can find. There’s cops at the Public Health offices when they’re doing vaccinations. It’s freakin ugly around here.
@Kathy:
There’s a youtube out that shows it to have been about 6 ft.
It has a big wall in front of it: Icing certification. Going to take a massive amount of bleed air to heat that massive leading edge. Damn near half the fuselage will have to be ducted.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
“Formerly”.
@dazedandconfused:
Thanks.
I know little about anti-ice systems, but I’d look at what planes with engines in the back did, like the DC-9/MD-80/90, B727, VC-10, etc.