I'd Vote Kamala If She Kept That Same Energy For AIPAC...,

Guardian  |  A prominent member of the progressive “Squad” in Congress, Cori Bush, has lost her Democratic primary in St Louis after pro-Israel pressure groups spent millions of dollars to unseat her over criticisms of Israel’s war in Gaza.

St Louis prosecutor Wesley Bell defeated Missouri’s first Black female member of Congress with about 51% of the vote. Bush took about 46%.

Bell’s win marks a second major victory for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) after it played a leading role in unseating New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, another progressive Democrat who criticised the scale of Palestinian civilians deaths in Gaza, in a June primary.

Aipac pumped $8.5m into the race in Missouri’s first congressional district to support Bell through its campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), after Bush angered some pro-Israel groups as one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.

Much of the UDP’s money comes from billionaires who fund hardline pro-Israel causes and Republicans in other races, including some who have given to Donald Trump’s campaign.

Bush condemned Hamas for the killing of 1,139 people, mostly Israelis, and for abducting hundreds of others in October. But she also infuriated some Jewish and pro-Israel groups by describing Israel’s subsequent attack on Gaza and large scale killing of civilians as “collective punishment against Palestinians” and a war crime.

During the campaign, the UDP flooded St Louis with advertising hostile to Bush – although, as in other congressional races targeted by pro-Israel groups, it rarely mentioned the war in Gaza that has claimed nearly 40,000 Palestinian lives, mostly civilians, or her call for a ceasefire.

Instead, the campaign focused on Bush’s voting record in Congress, particularly her failure to support Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure bill in 2021 and her support for the “defund the police” campaign. Bush struggled to get her message across that the UDP is misrepresenting both situations.

The UDP accounted for more than half of all the money spent on the race outside the campaigns themselves.

Bell has denied being recruited by pro-Israel groups to run against Bush, but suspicion lingered after he abandoned a challenge for the US Senate and entered the congressional race not long after Jewish organisations in St Louis began to seek a candidate to take on Bush after accusing her of “intentionally fuelling antisemitism”.

Bell is expected to win what is one of the safest Democratic congressional seats in November’s general election.

Elite Maleficence And Impunity (REDUX Originally Posted 8/17/23)

washingtonexaminer  |  On Monday, we got a bombshell. New documents indicate the entire justification for vaccine mandates was based on a falsehood — and that public health officials knew it. 

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and former NIH Director Francis Collins were aware of, and discussed, “breakthrough cases” of COVID in January 2021 — right when the vaccines became widely available. In her email, Walensky says that “clearly,” it is an “important area of study,” links to a study raising the issue, and assures the person she is sending it to that Dr. Anthony Fauci is looped into these conversations.

However, in public, Walensky was saying something quite different. Two months after discussing this data, she said vaccinated people “don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick.” In a congressional hearing, after it became clear people were able to get infected with COVID even after receiving the vaccine, she defended her original statements by claiming it was true at the time she said it — namely, for the strands we were dealing with in early 2021.

We now know that was not true and that Walensky herself knew it was not true.

Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, called the revelation “stunning.” He pointed out that despite this knowledge, “they continued to push vax mandates anyway.”

This is the real scandal, as there is little harm in getting something like this wrong in a vacuum. After all, COVID-19 vaccines certainly saved many, many lives and reduced the severity of infection for many more. But the fact vaccine mandates were pushed, even though those in charge knew people could contract and spread the virus while vaccinated, is indefensible. That they mislead the public on this makes it even worse.

If the vaccine stopped COVID dead in its tracks, as Fauci explained, then the decision to institute a vaccine mandate would merely be a controversial yet ultimately legitimate public health measure. The fact it did not do that but rather had primarily personal benefits completely removes the justification for mandates.

The Biden administration tried to impose a vaccine mandate on employers, thousands of people were fired from their jobs, and there was a time when unvaccinated people were not even allowed into restaurants in some of the country’s largest cities.

And it was all based on a lie.

 

 

Elite Maleficence And Impunity

washingtonexaminer  |  On Monday, we got a bombshell. New documents indicate the entire justification for vaccine mandates was based on a falsehood — and that public health officials knew it. 

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and former NIH Director Francis Collins were aware of, and discussed, “breakthrough cases” of COVID in January 2021 — right when the vaccines became widely available. In her email, Walensky says that “clearly,” it is an “important area of study,” links to a study raising the issue, and assures the person she is sending it to that Dr. Anthony Fauci is looped into these conversations.

However, in public, Walensky was saying something quite different. Two months after discussing this data, she said vaccinated people “don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick.” In a congressional hearing, after it became clear people were able to get infected with COVID even after receiving the vaccine, she defended her original statements by claiming it was true at the time she said it — namely, for the strands we were dealing with in early 2021.

We now know that was not true and that Walensky herself knew it was not true.

Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, called the revelation “stunning.” He pointed out that despite this knowledge, “they continued to push vax mandates anyway.”

This is the real scandal, as there is little harm in getting something like this wrong in a vacuum. After all, COVID-19 vaccines certainly saved many, many lives and reduced the severity of infection for many more. But the fact vaccine mandates were pushed, even though those in charge knew people could contract and spread the virus while vaccinated, is indefensible. That they mislead the public on this makes it even worse.

If the vaccine stopped COVID dead in its tracks, as Fauci explained, then the decision to institute a vaccine mandate would merely be a controversial yet ultimately legitimate public health measure. The fact it did not do that but rather had primarily personal benefits completely removes the justification for mandates.

The Biden administration tried to impose a vaccine mandate on employers, thousands of people were fired from their jobs, and there was a time when unvaccinated people were not even allowed into restaurants in some of the country’s largest cities.

And it was all based on a lie.

 

 

America's Cold-War Military Industrial Complex CANNOT Be Modernized (REDUX 2/15/23)

wired  |  “Let's imagine we’re going to build a better war-fighting system,” Schmidt says, outlining what would amount to an enormous overhaul of the most powerful military operation on earth. “We would just create a tech company.” He goes on to sketch out a vision of the internet of things with a deadly twist. “It would build a large number of inexpensive devices that were highly mobile, that were attritable, and those devices—or drones—would have sensors or weapons, and they would be networked together.”

The problem with today’s Pentagon is hardly money, talent, or determination, in Schmidt’s opinion. He describes the US military as “great human beings inside a bad system”—one that evolved to serve a previous era dominated by large, slow, expensive projects like aircraft carriers and a bureaucratic system that prevents people from moving too quickly. Independent studies and congressional hearings have found that it can take years for the DOD to select and buy software, which may be outdated by the time it is installed. Schmidt says this is a huge problem for the US, because computerization, software, and networking are poised to revolutionize warfare.

Ukraine’s response to Russia’s invasion, Schmidt believes, offers pointers for how the Pentagon might improve. The Ukrainian military has managed to resist a much larger power in part by moving quickly and adapting technology from the private sector—hacking commercial drones into weapons, repurposing defunct battlefield connectivity systems, 3D printing spare parts, and developing useful new software for tasks like military payroll management in months, not years.

Schmidt offers another thought experiment to illustrate the bind he’s trying to get the US military out of. “Imagine you and I decide to solve the Ukrainian problem, and the DOD gives us $100 million, and we have a six-month contest,” he says. “And after six months somebody actually comes up with some new device or new tool or new method that lets the Ukrainians win.” Problem solved? Not so fast. “Everything I just said is illegal,” Schmidt says, because of procurement rules that forbid the Pentagon from handing out money without going through careful but overly lengthy review processes.

The Pentagon’s tech problem is most pressing, Schmidt says, when it comes to AI. “Every once in a while, a new weapon, a new technology comes along that changes things,” he says. “Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt in the 1930s saying that there is this new technology—nuclear weapons—that could change war, which it clearly did. I would argue that [AI-powered] autonomy and decentralized, distributed systems are that powerful.”

With Schmidt’s help, a similar view has taken root inside the DOD over the past decade, where leaders believe AI will revolutionize military hardware, intelligence gathering, and backend software. In the early 2010s the Pentagon began assessing technology that could help it maintain an edge over an ascendant Chinese military. The Defense Science Board, the agency’s top technical advisory body, concluded that AI-powered autonomy would shape the future of military competition and conflict.

But AI technology is mostly being invented in the private sector. The best tools that could prove critical to the military, such as algorithms capable of identifying enemy hardware or specific individuals in video, or that can learn superhuman strategies, are built at companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple or inside startups.

“The big challenge that the US military faces going forward is how to rapidly adapt commercial technologies for military use faster than competitors,” says Paul Scharre, a vice president at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank, and the author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a forthcoming book about AI and geopolitics. Scharre notes in his book that the Pentagon’s share of global R&D spending has declined from 36 percent in 1960 to 4 percent today.

“We're trying to build a 21st century military with 20th century bureaucracy.”

Paul Scharre, Center for a New American Security

The US DOD primarily works with the private sector through large defense contractors specialized in building expensive hardware over years, not nimble software development. Pentagon contracts with large tech companies, including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, have become more common but have sometimes been controversial. Google’s work analyzing drone footage using AI under an initiative called Project Maven caused staff to protest, and the company let the contract lapse. Google has since increased its defense work, under rules that place certain projects—such as weapons systems—off limits.

Scharre says it is valuable to have people like Schmidt, with serious private sector clout, looking to bridge the gap.

 

 

 

Long Overdue Time For The U.S. To Nationalize And Modernize It's Railway Systems

commondreams  |  "The railroads, their CEOs, and the hedge fund robber barons will not listen, but railroad workers have the solution to managing and operating critical railroad infrastructure."

An alliance representing rail workers across the United States published an open letter late Thursday urging all of organized labor to support the nationalization of the country's railroad system, arguing that the private and inadequately regulated industry has "shown itself incapable of doing the job."

"In face of the degeneration of the rail system in the last decade, and after more than a decade of discussion and debate on the question, Railroad Workers United (RWU) has taken a position in support of public ownership of the rail system in the United States," reads the letter, which was published as the small town of East Palestine, Ohio is attempting to recover from the toxic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train two weeks ago.

"We ask you to consider doing the same, and announce your organization's support for rail public ownership," continues the letter, which was addressed to unions as well as environmental, transportation justice, and workers' rights organizations. "While the rail industry has been incapable of expansion in the last generation and has become more and more fixated on the operating ratio to the detriment of all other metrics of success, precision scheduled railroading (PSR) has escalated this irresponsible trajectory to the detriment of shippers, passengers, commuters, trackside communities, and workers."

PSR is a Wall Street-backed model that has taken hold across the U.S. rail industry, gutting workforces and undermining safety in pursuit of more "efficiency" and larger profits for rail carriers and rich investors. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 of the nation's trains derail every year.

In its open letter, RWU—whose ranks include workers from a number of different unions and rail professions—noted that "on-time performance is suffering" and "shipper complaints are at all-time highs" as rail carriers prioritize their profit margins over all else.

Norfolk Southern, which also owns the train that derailed outside of Detroit on Thursday, brought in record revenue and profits in 2022.

"Passenger trains are chronically late, commuter services are threatened, and the rail industry is hostile to practically any passenger train expansion," RWU's letter states. The workforce has been decimated, as jobs have been eliminated, consolidated, and contracted out, ushering in a new previously unheard-of era where workers can neither be recruited nor retained. Locomotive, rail car, and infrastructure maintenance have been cut back. Health and safety have been put at risk. Morale is at an all-time low."

The alliance also pointed to the White House-brokered contract that Congress forced rail workers to accept last year as evidence of broader industry dysfunction. At the center of the contract negotiations—which nearly resulted in a nationwide strike—was the issue of paid sick leave, which is denied to most rail workers due to PSR.

With The 14th Amendment Fully Gutted - The Guarantee Clause Don't Stand A Chance...,

NYTimes |  But what, exactly, does it mean for the federal government to “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government”?

As James Madison explains it in Federalist No. 43, it means that “In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations.”

He goes on: “The more intimate the nature of such a Union may be, the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into, should be substantially maintained.”

Of course, there’s no real chance in the modern era that any state will become a “monarchy” or “aristocracy” in the 18th-century sense. So why does the Guarantee Clause matter, and what does it mean? How does one determine whether a state has maintained a “republican form of government”?

Ordinarily we would turn to the Supreme Court for an answer to a question of this sort. But here, the court has deferred to Congress. In Luther v. Borden in 1849 — a suit that concerned the authority of a Rhode Island government that still operated under its original royal charter and which rested on the Guarantee Clause — Chief Justice Roger Taney (later of Dred Scott infamy) declared:

Under this article of the Constitution, it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in the State before it can determine whether it is republican or not.

Taney’s ruling held strong, a little more than 60 years later, in Pacific States Telephone and Telegraph Co. v. Oregon, when the court rebuffed a claim that the Guarantee Clause rendered direct referendums unconstitutional by stating that it was beyond the scope of the power of the Supreme Court to enforce the guarantee of a republican government. “That question,” wrote Chief Justice Edward White in his majority opinion, “has long since been determined by this court conformably to the practice of the government from the beginning to be political in character, and therefore not cognizable by the judicial power, but solely committed by the Constitution to the judgment of Congress.”

This remains the court’s view. But it’s not the only view. In his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Justice John Marshall Harlan cited the Guarantee Clause in his brief against Louisiana’s Jim Crow segregation law. If allowed to stand, he wrote,

there would remain a power in the States, by sinister legislation, to interfere with the blessings of freedom; to regulate civil rights common to all citizens, upon the basis of race; and to place in a condition of legal inferiority a large body of American citizens, now constituting a part of the political community, called the people of the United States, for whom and by whom, through representatives, our government is administrated. Such a system is inconsistent with the guarantee given by the Constitution to each State of a republican form of government, and may be stricken down by congressional action, or by the courts in the discharge of their solemn duty to maintain the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

In this vision of the Guarantee Clause, the touchstone for “a republican form of government” is political equality, and when a state imposes political inequality beyond a certain point, Congress or the federal courts step in to restore the balance.

In a 2010 article for the Stanford Law Review, Jacob M. Heller called this a “death by a thousand cuts” approach to enforcement, one where lawmakers and courts understand that “anything that impedes on the state’s republican form is one step closer to eventual unraveling of a state’s republican form of government.”

Kyrie Irving Speaks On His Mandate Stance - Stephen A. Smith Coons....,

theathletic |  Kyrie Irving believes he is fighting for something bigger than basketball — and the unintended consequences are that his mission is conflicting with his career and his franchise, the Brooklyn Nets.

Irving remains ineligible to play in NBA home games at Barclays Center in Brooklyn because he has not fulfilled New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement, and the Nets announced Tuesday that Irving will not play or practice with the team until he is eligible to be a full participant. The Athletic has learned through multiple sources what has been behind his stance and decision to not take the vaccine, reasoning which has not been made public to date.

Nets general manager Sean Marks acknowledged Tuesday that Irving is not vaccinated for COVID-19. The All-NBA star and the Nets had received some good news on Friday when New York City Hall ruled that the team’s practice facility, HSS Training Center, is a public office building — clearing Irving to return to practice on Sunday. But as of now, Irving has no plans to be vaccinated, sources say. Within the franchise and the players in the locker room, it is understood that Irving’s decision is what it is.

Coonius McCoonibus Got So Much Things To Say...,

Damn right I said this S&&@ about Kyrie Irving. And I meant every damn word. Nobody’s backing up pic.twitter.com/3gtE2N5tF3

— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) October 13, 2021

All this has left the Nets to account for how to handle the unprecedented situation and led to a bevy of questions: Is Irving anti-vax and what is really behind his choice? Will City Hall change the vaccine mandate? How will the Nets handle having Irving banished from the team instead of in and out of the lineup and available for road games and home practices?

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of Irving’s decision have told The Athletic that Irving is not anti-vaccine and that his stance is that he is upset that people are losing their jobs due to vaccine mandates. It’s a stance that Irving has explained to close teammates. To him, this is about a grander fight than the one on the court and Irving is challenging a perceived control of society and people’s livelihood, according to sources with knowledge of Irving’s mindset. It is a decision that he believes he is capable to make given his current life dynamics. “Kyrie wants to be a voice for the voiceless,” one source said.

However, the nation’s top doctors and scientists have cleared the vaccine as safe and effective. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), American Medical Association (AMA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) state clearly that COVID-19 vaccines are effective at helping protect against severe disease and death, including from variants of the virus, while also being safe. In fact, multiple studies showed that 99 percent of people who are in intensive care units in hospitals are unvaccinated. Sources say 96 percent of NBA players are currently vaccinated. More than 3.75 billion people worldwide have received a vaccine dose. To be clear, Irving’s stance is not believed to be anti-science, according to sources.

Irving has made more than $160 million over his NBA contracts and has a massive Nike shoe endorsement deal, so those who know Irving understand he is not driven right now by money, nor cares for inheriting more, but rather the stand for larger issues in his mind that need his support. He’s a seven-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA member and former Rookie of the Year who now stands to lose over $200 million by deciding to use his platform to stand up for his stance of each and every person being able to decide for themselves on whether they should take the vaccine without impacts on job statuses. However, the fact of the matter is there are consequences for being unvaccinated in some industries and municipalities. Just as Irving wants to stick with his principle belief on the matter, policies and requirements are subject to local and federal governments.

Until The Neovaccinoid Mandate - I Had No Idea Bomani Jones Is Such A Shrivelled Little Sellout....,

Slate |  S1: Today on the show, will the NBA find its season reshaped by COVID again? I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next? Stick around. During the last two seasons, it seemed like the NBA was handling the pandemic pretty well. The 2020 season got cut short, but it finished up inside the Disney bubble. The 2021 season had a pretty stringent testing regimen and pretty much went off without a hitch. But when negotiations happened over this season, the players union said a vaccine mandate was unequivocally off the table, even though referees and other NBA employees had agreed to one. When did you first hear that vaccination could be an issue with some of the players?

S2: I didn’t actually hear that it could be an issue, but I figured that it might cause is an issue for everybody else. Like, there was no reason for me to expect this particular group of people to be more or less enlightened than anybody else is on this matter. There are some things that a union is going to push back on, particularly in an industry like this one. And in this industry, you have to put this in your body is something that is never, ever going to be able to fly. It really is a slippery slope. I think for them in particular, because so much of their job does involve putting things in your body, you got at least had the option to say no if you want to do that. And so this is somewhere where as much as people can talk about the weakness of the National Basketball Players Association in different negotiations, this is one that they had to stand on and they stood on it. And I think that the owners ultimately understood that it was necessary that the players are going to stand on it because they didn’t try to bring them to the ground, right?

S1: Because your body is your livelihood. Right, right. What are the rules exactly for NBA players at this point? I mean, I recognize it’s different in different places because of the regional differences. But what did they eventually agree to after this tense negotiation with the players union?

S2: It’s increased testing. If you were not vaccinated, your locker, for example, has to be. I think it is literally as far as possible away from the rest of the team if you were not going to be vaccinated. I think there’s increased masking requirements if you’re not going to be vaccinated. I mean, they make it sound really inconvenient if there’s going to be the case now of what’s happened with the travel in the legs. And this is I actually think people are paying enough attention to this. So in New York City and in San Francisco, there have been local ordinances passed that basically you can’t come inside to a large indoor event. If you have not been vaccinated in New York, it requires one shot in San Francisco. I believe you have to be fully vaccinated in order to do that. Now we talk about this strictly in the context of those two places, but I don’t know why we’re assuming that that won’t be adopted by other places. If the delta or whatever else starts raging even more. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you saw those places then make the same calls as these other cities have. And then when that happens, it’s going to be a lot to do is caught flat footed.

S1: That’s because whatever rules the NBA’s got in place, players are also going to be bound by the laws of whatever state they happen to be playing in. For some unvaccinated stars like Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn, restrictions in their home states mean they could be barred from home games. Let’s talk about some of the reasons people are giving, because I think it’s useful to just kind of listen to the players a little bit here. We’ve got Jonathan Isaac from Orlando Magic. He’s talking about natural immunity. He’s had COVID and he actually, I listen to this press conference he gave. He was incredibly clear and straightforward, and he was very angry at being misrepresented by some journalists he felt in this process.

S5: I would just I would start by saying that that I was pretty badly misrepresented. I’m not anti-vax, I’m not anti medicine, I’m not anti science.

S1: But he was basically saying, I have the utmost respect for health care workers. I’m not anti-vax, I’m making a choice for me.

S5: With that being said, it is my belief that the vaccine status of every person should be their own choice.

S1: And by the way, I already had COVID, and so I’m protected a little bit. What did you make of that?

S2: Well, the I already had it unprotected, like that’s that that begs follow up questions, right? Like how protected are you? When did it happen? Is not like, this is a it’s not like the chicken pox, right? You’re not about to be like, I’m good from here on out. Yeah, you can’t get it twice. Yeah, I mean, Lamar Jackson to tell you that, like, that’s not really how that one works. I. As someone who has heard Jonathan Isaac taught before and found him to sound ridiculous, I did not think that he necessarily sounded ridiculous on this one, even though he is taking an approach that I do not agree with. Where where I look at him and I’m like, OK, I get that you’re not worried about you. But this isn’t just about you. And I think that the the libertarian streak of a lot of the non the not even anti-vax broadly, but anti this particular vaccine right here is purely looking at it through the prism of themselves and not thinking about anybody else, like when we were doing the super hardcore social distancing thing, when the test was short and everything else reason was everyone was supposed to assume that they were an asymptomatic carrier and that to stop the spread is by not interacting any more than you absolutely had. Two people instead looked at that is, stay inside so you don’t catch it as opposed to stay inside so you don’t spread it. So you get guys like him who are only thinking about this in the context of catching it, not in the context of transmitting it.

 

 

To Deny Natural Immunity Is To Deny Science...,

alexberenson |  The question I get more than any other:

I had Covid. I had an antibody test to prove it. Am I protected (and do I need to get the vaccine)?

Let me start with the usual disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE. I AM NOT A PHYSICIAN.

But the answer is now increasingly clear: natural immunity from Covid following infection and recovery is HIGHLY protective against future Covid infections. Rates of reinfection are very low.

Perhaps natural immunity eventually wanes, but we don’t know when. In fact, a little-noticed paper from June suggests it may actually strengthen for at least a year - and provide plenty of protection from Delta and other variants.

I am not going into the problems with vaccine-generated protection today or with our political unwillingness to recognize natural immunity. (Remember, GOOD NEWS - we could all use it).

Let’s just look instead at why natural immunity works so well.

You immune response comes in two forms: “humoral” and “cellular.”

When you are infected with Sars-Cov-2, your body’s “B-cells” - part of the immune system - quickly pour out “antibodies.” These antibodies attack the viral particles circulating in your blood and other fluids, hoping to keep the virus from entering your cells and replicating itself.

This is humoral immunity. Your B-cells make antibodies in many different shapes. Some are better at sticking to the virus. Scientists call these “neutralizing” antibodies because they neutralize the “antigen,” the foreign body attacking you, keeping it from entering your cells.

Amazingly, your B-cells quickly figure out which antibodies neutralize most effectively and make more of them, while cutting back on those that don’t work.

At the same time, another part of the immune system - killer or CD8 T-cells - attacks cells that the virus has already infected. You destroy your own cells to prevent the virus from using them to make more copies of itself. This is cellular immunity.

For a few days after you are infected, your immune system is in a race with the virus. If you win the race, defeat the virus, and recover - as the vast majority of people infected with Sars-Cov-2 do - within a week or two you should have no measurable levels of virus in your body.

Fugg Around With Sheeple Quantum Biology, But You Not Gonna Phug With Mine...,

medical-net  |  Quantum biology is an emerging field of science, established in the 1920s, which looks at whether the subatomic world of quantum mechanics plays a role in living cells. Quantum mechanics is an interdisciplinary field by nature, bringing together nuclear physicists, biochemists and molecular biologists.

In a research paper published by the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, a team from Surrey's Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre used state-of-the-art computer simulations and quantum mechanical methods to determine the role proton tunneling, a purely quantum phenomenon, plays in spontaneous mutations inside DNA.

Proton tunneling involves the spontaneous disappearance of a proton from one location and the same proton's re-appearance nearby.

The research team found that atoms of hydrogen, which are very light, provide the bonds that hold the two strands of the DNA's double helix together and can, under certain conditions, behave like spread-out waves that can exist in multiple locations at once, thanks to proton tunneling. This leads to these atoms occasionally being found on the wrong strand of DNA, leading to mutations.

Although these mutations' lifetime is short, the team from Surrey has revealed that they can still survive the DNA replication mechanism inside cells and could potentially have health consequences.

Dr Marco Sacchi, the project lead and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, said: "Many have long suspected that the quantum world - which is weird, counter-intuitive and wonderful - plays a role in life as we know it. While the idea that something can be present in two places at the same time might be absurd to many of us, this happens all the time in the quantum world, and our study confirms that quantum tunneling also happens in DNA at room temperature."

There is still a long and exciting road ahead of us to understand how biological processes work on the subatomic level, but our study - and countless others over the recent years - have confirmed quantum mechanics are at play. In the future, we are hoping to investigate how tautomers produced by quantum tunneling can propagate and generate genetic mutations."

Louie Slocombe, PhD Student, Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre and Study Co-Author

Jim Al-Khalili, a co-author of the study and Co-Director of the Leverhulme Quantum Biology Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Surrey, said: "It has been thrilling to work with this group of young, diverse and talented thinkers - made up of a broad coalition of the scientific world. This work cements quantum biology as the most exciting field of scientific research in the 21st century."

U.S. Elites Haven't Yet Provided Ole'Cornpop An Approved Roadmap For Agriculture

politico |  President Joe Biden needs the help of the powerful farm industry to reach his sky-high climate goals. But his plans for cutting agricultural emissions might not have enough teeth to take a big bite out of global warming.

Biden on Thursday pledged a drastic reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But the White House hasn’t set any specific targets yet for agriculture, which accounts for 10 percent of all U.S. emissions, according to the EPA. Those discharges mostly stem from fertilizers, livestock and manure.

“To be realistic, the administration has to look at cutting some of the existing emissions,” said Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who sits on the House Agriculture Committee. “We are going to have to talk about cutting emissions from farms and changing some of the practices.”

The administration has steered clear of discussing stricter environmental regulations that could scare off the largely conservative farm sector, as well as the rural lawmakers that Biden will need to advance many of his environmental goals. Farmers have been slow to wake up to the reality of climate change, though increasingly extreme weather of late has hammered farm country and forced a reckoning.

A summary of Biden’s climate pledge notes that agriculture is both a source of greenhouse gases and potentially a key piece of the solution by capturing and storing heat-trapping carbon dioxide in forests and farmland. Environmental advocates, like the left-leaning Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, say the White House needs to address both sides of that equation to make a dent in global warming.

 

Christian Nationalism Doesn't Account For Black, Latino, Or Medical Vaccine Hesitancy

nakedcapitalism |  Yves here. I’m running this post with its original headline, although the article doesn’t make terribly clear what “Christian nationalism” is. The author defines is at extreme evangelism but I’m at a loss to understand what makes that “nationalism”. The reason I am running this article is that it discusses an specific issue that IM Doc mentioned back in early February.

And even though we are discussing different subcultures in America, we might as well be talking about different countries. One of the lessons I learned by virtue of deciding to see the world on the McKinsey plan, was that virtually without exception, US companies entering a foreign market would royally screw things up. Even if they’d managed to hire good managers from the new market, the top brass would reject recommended changes to the product or branding to cater to local tastes: “They can’t possibly want that! Of course they’ll prefer our superior dog food!” They almost always had to fail before they’d listen to how the locals thought about things and understand why they wanted what they wanted.

I had sent a link from the Ghion Journal, which was and is pretty up in arms about the Covid vaccines, as an example of vaccine alarmism in the black community. IM Doc said then that he was hearing a lot of reports from doctors in his network in big cities of vaccine hesitancy among blacks and if anything more so among Latinos at that point. But he was the first to alert me to opposition among conservative Christians, beyond those based on the mistaken belief that fetal cells had somehow been used in vaccine development (true in a very strained sense with the J&J vaccine). From his e-mail:

We are seeing all this rage and rush to get vaccinated right now. It is easy to assume there is widespread demand. That is not true…. And then the fun will begin. If you think the anti-mask, anti-lockdown people have been ridiculed and shamed – you have not seen anything yet. I know my Big Pharma and it is obvious they have a stranglehold on our agencies and politicians. They have gotten so used to complete acquiescence that they are becoming supremely over-confident. Trust me, if they think they will get away with forced vaccination of kids for school, they have no idea what they are stepping in. Also, I can think of no quicker way to bankruptcy for airlines and cruise companies then to demand a vaccine passport. They will instantly cut their customer base by 30-40%.

It is not just blacks and Latinos. Our medical and public health elites have their head so far up their ass that they are missing critical cultural and religious issues going on all over this country with regard to the vaccine. For example, my oh so Protestant family members and all their friends back home have zero intention of taking this vaccine. All the talk of vaccine passports and vaccine cards to get in and out of stores and restaurants and events have convinced them that this is the first manifestation of the long anticipated Mark of the Beast. To take the Mark of the Beast is a certain trip to Hell for Eternity….And because of our elites’ complete bungling insensitivity, they have already completely and permanently alienated these people. Again, this is being preached from their pulpits, and no amount of coercion or threats is going to work. I grew up in that environment. I know what I am talking about. They will starve to death before they take The Mark of the Beast.

I have no idea how large this population is. IM Doc gave an estimate for rural America and the South that struck me as high, having lived in the rural upper Midwest, Oregon, and spent a lot of time in Maine. But the point is this is a cohort that is not trivial in size, and its existence has finally gotten the attention of some in the officialdom, too late in the game for them to change course. You’ll see the out-of-touch recommendation in the piece:

…faith leaders can guide their followers and use their pulpits to encourage parishioners that the vaccine is safe and in line with religious doctrines.

That could work with concerns that are based on misinformation, but not ones based on views that see social control/surveillance as evil. There’s no way of prettying up the more heavy-handed schemes to get citizens to take the shot.

And IM Doc, then as now, argued that the bureaucrats have done a terrible job with general practitioners by failing to give the information needed to give honest answers and “best available data” assessments of outcomes and risks:

And again, I will remind you – as a primary care physician I have been tasked with educating patients about these vaccines. I have little if any information about safety. I have zero information on how these vaccines will help death or hospitalizations. I have zero information on how long the immunity will last. I have zero credible and often wildly disparate information about whether it will work on these variants, which are now this month’s panic porn topic on the news. I have very educated patients who come to ask questions all day every day. I will not lie to them, nor will I smile and pass out happy horse shit like so many of my colleagues seem to be doing. The medical elites have put the normal PCPs of this country in a very difficult if not impossible situation.

I hope and pray that all goes well. I, like everyone else, want this to be over. However, if something goes majorly wrong with this gamble, God help us.

Oh Hell GNAW!!!! Trump Should Give Fauci And The Establishment His Short, Stubby, Middle-Finger

dailymail  | Dr Fauci tells Trump he could be a 'game changer' in the fight against COVID if he tells his supporters to get the vaccine after HALF of Republican men said they will not get the shot

• Asked whether Trump should speak to his supporters directly, given the recent poll numbers, Fauci said: 'I think it would make all the difference in the world'
• Trump, Fauci said, 'is a such a strongly popular person...it would be very helpful' 
• The government's top infectious disease expert said politics needs to be separated from 'commonsense, no-brainer' public health measures
• Trump did tell supporters at CPAC last month to 'go get your shot' 
• The other living former U.S. presidents are set to appear in two public service announcements for the vaccine alongside their wives, without Trump
• Joe Biden and other political leaders received their shots publicly to encourage Americans to get vaccinated; Trump was vaccinated privately in January

Dr Anthony Fauci has said 'wildly popular' Donald Trump could be a 'game changer' if he tells his supporters to get the COVID-19 vaccine.  

Almost half of Republican men say they will not get the vaccine when it is available to them compared with just six percent of Democrat men, according to a new poll.

Asked whether Trump should speak to his supporters directly, given those numbers, Fauci told Fox News: 'I think it would make all the difference in the world.' 

Trump, Fauci said, 'is a such a strongly popular person...it would be very helpful for the effort for that to happen.'

Fauci added: 'If he came out and said, "Go and get vaccinated. It´s really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country," it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him.

'I think it would make all the difference in the world. He’s a very wildly popular person among Republicans.' 

Though it wasn't publicized at the time, Trump and First Lady Melania Trump got the vaccine in January before they left the White House, a Trump adviser told DailyMail.com in February. 

In a round of interviews on the morning news shows, the government's top infectious disease expert said politics needs to be separated from 'commonsense, no-brainer' public health measures.

Gagged On Too Much Woke, "Liberal" Whites Are Starting To Choke

americanthinker |  The headlines were about the fact that, when Megyn Kelly appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO show on Friday, she complained about the way her children’s pricey private schools in New York were indoctrinating them with pro-transgender values and anti-white animus. Bill Maher to his credit, agreed with Kelly that matters are getting seriously out of hand, at least when it comes to the anti-white hatred that’s becoming the norm in education. Maher’s always been a bit of maverick, though. The real surprise was the enthusiasm his audience showed for that sentiment.

For conservatives, nothing that Kelly said about her children’s experiences in New York’s toniest private elementary schools came as a surprise. Kelly said that, while she and her husband identify as “center-right,” she was okay with the fact that the schools were on the left side of the political aisle. That changed, though, when “they went hard left, and then they started to take a really hard turn toward social justice stuff.”

One of the hot-button issues was the schools’ efforts to normalize transgenderism, a form of body dysphoria that’s recognized as a mental illness when the subject is anorexia, not sex. Kelly told Maher that, when one of her sons was in third grade – that is, 8 years old, the school “unleashed a three-week experimental trans-education program.”

You talked about this letter the school put out. … Can I read some of the things that are from this letter, lest people think I’m losing my mind?

“There’s a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn. White children are left unchecked and unbothered in their homes,” one sentence starts. Well, how old do you have to be before you can just be unchecked and unbothered. You know, what age to you get bothered?

“I’m tired of white people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravities, snuffing out black lives with no consequences.” You know, “go reform white kids.”

You know, it bothers me so much that I have to be on this side [Kelly’s side] of this issue. Because I’ve always been a civil rights advocate. You know, don’t make me Tucker Carlson. You’re the f***ing nuts. This is insane.

“As black bodies drop like flies around us by violent white hands.” There is racist problems in this country. But this is hyperbole, and this is making people crazy.

It was with those words that the amazing thing happened: Maher’s audience applauded. Over the years, Maher’s audiences have always been trained seals, reliably clapping at every hard left, anti-George Bush, anti-Trump, pro-Obama statement the host utters. But this time, he said that the BLM rap pushing Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) on American society is dangerous insanity – and the audience clapped.

At This Stage 80 Million Americans Know We Were Cheated

How do we know we were cheated?

MSM – Four years of hysterical lies about how our man was controlled by The Kremlin. The entire press corps was allied in unified opposition to the elected president. Good luck arguing this one.
Polls – Blatantly rigged to favor the other side and discourage Trump voters. Given the results good luck arguing this one.
Cyber – Blanket one-sided censorship, Blue Checking, search result games, and deplatforming. Case closed.
Primaries – Show me a single democratic thing about how Bernie was knifed or how the sneering IdPol queen who received zero primary delegates was elevated to vice president.
People – Q: Did former president Obama label Trump voters “racists” in his new book? A: Yes. Q: Did his wife say all Trump voters voted for “lies, hate, and chaos”? A: Yes.
Voting – Q: Can a Secretary of State legally change State laws in a Federal election (GA)? A: No. Q: Can a governor legally change State laws in a Federal election (PA)? A: No. Was the Smartmatic/Dominion software designed from the outset to allow external parties to remotely change vote tallies? A: Yes. Q: Was the software used to change the vote results in places like Venezuela? A: Yes. Q: Did Liz Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Ron Wyden send a letter from Congress expressing deep concerns about Smartmatic/Dominion software security in Dec 2019? A: Yes. Is Smartmatic chairman Peter Neffinger on Biden’s transition team? A: Yes.

Good luck extracting legitimacy from all this. It will not be the fault of Trump voters when you can’t.

 

“In November 2020, Neffenger was named a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to support transition efforts related to the Department of Homeland Security.[10]

Neffinger is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Smartmatic, a multinational company that specializes in building and implementing electronic voting systems.[11]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_V._Neffenger

• The year 2000: Smartmatic was founded by three engineers from Venezuela and officially incorporated in Delaware in 2000 after the hanging chad controversy in the 2000 US presidential election. Smartmatic established its headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.

• The Year 2004: Smartmatic expanded rapidly between 2000 and 2004 with offices in Venezuela, London, Florida, and California. Litigations of its connections with the Chávez regime never ended.

• Smartmatic bought Bizta, in which both Smartmatic and the Venezuelan government had large stakes. “The Miami Herald revealing that the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of Bizta – a company operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic. Bizta bought back those shares after the article appeared, and Smartmatic now characterizes the deal as a loan.

• “Bizta and Smartmatic had partnered with Venezuelan telephone giant CANTV to win a $91 million contract to supply electronic voting machines for Venezuelan elections, including the controversial 2004 referendum Chavez won. Smartmatic categorically denies any link to the Chavez regime.”

(Source: https://votingmachines.procon.org/additional-resources/sequoia-alleged-to-have-ties-to-venezuelas-chavez/ )

• “Smartmatic was a little-known firm with no experience in voting technology before it was chosen by the Venezuelan authorities to replace the country’s elections machinery ahead of a contentious referendum that confirmed Mr. Chavez as president in August 2004…“

(Source: “U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties,” New York Times – Oct. 29, 2006 https://votingmachines.procon.org/additional-resources/sequoia-alleged-to-have-ties-to-venezuelas-chavez/)

• The Year 2005: Smartmatic purchased Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the leading US companies in automated voting products.

• The Year 2006: Sequoia provided technical assistance in the elections held in Chicago and Cook County by sending a number of Venezuelan nationals to support the machines manufactured by Sequoia.

(Source: ABC Local, 7 April 2006, Alderman: Election Day troubles could be part of ‘international conspiracy’)

“Meanwhile, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor recently concluded after two days of testing that vote totals on a Sequoia model, different from those used here, could be manipulated. That prompted Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County to scrap plans to buy the machines.”

(Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2006-04-08-0604080149-story.html)

• “The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chavez… “

(source: https://votingmachines.procon.org/additional-resources/sequoia-alleged-to-have-ties-to-venezuelas-chavez/)

• Smartmatic Corp sold its U.S. subsidiary Sequoia to end a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. into whether Smartmatic is partially owned by the Venezuelan government.

(Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116674617078557263)

• Bain Capital purchased Sequoia (Smartmatic-US).

(https://seeingtheforest.com/why-did-romney-associates-buy-a-big-voting-machine-company/)

• The Year 2011: Dominion Voting Systems, a previously little-known Canadian company engaged in manufacturing electronic voting hardware and optical scanners, acquired Sequoia Voting Systems

The Year 2014: Sequoia filed a bankruptcy petition under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code.

 

• Smartmatic buys Sequoia. Then Romney Associates buys Sequoia. Then Dominion buys Sequoia. Dominion made “donations” to the Clinton “Foundation” in 2014. Nancy Pelosi’s former Chief of Staff Nadeam Elshami works for Dominion.

$15 - $25 Trillion? The True Wild-Assed Guess Cost Of Transitioning To Renewables

oilprice |  This is the amount of money to be invested in new power capacity globally over the next three decades. Most of this—80 percent—will be poured into renewables. This certainly makes the energy transition far from cheap, but no one—at least no one reputable—ever said going green would be cheap. Yet the amount of investments to be directed towards expanding wind, solar, and associated systems will not be the only costs to be borne during the transition. There may well be steep environmental costs as well.

BloombergnNEF, which conducted the analysis that resulted in the investment estimate for the next 30 years in energy, also said that between 2020 and 2050, another $14 trillion will be invested in the grid, likely to adapt it for a surge in solar and renewable power deployments, which, according to the analysis, will constitute 56 percent of total global generation capacity by 2050. And it will have spurred a mini golden age in mining.

Wind power, like solar power, requires a lot of metals and other minerals to produce essential components for the installations. Therefore, as the demand for wind turbines and blades jumps, so will the demand for the metals they are made of. It’s the same with the metals and minerals necessary for the production of a solar panel.

Here’s just one example that could perhaps illustrate the trend: according to a 2017 report by the World Bank, demand for silver could soar from the then-current 24,000 tons annually to more than 400,000 tons. And that’s under a best-case scenario that features a greater penetration of silver-free thin-film PV panels in the energy mix, at the expense of crystalline silicon panels that use silver. Under a worst-case scenario, demand for silver could top 700,000 tons.

This is quite an increase that will require a major expansion in mining and mining is an energy-intensive, not particularly environmentally friendly way of getting finite resources out of the ground, as investor Sam Kovacs writes in an article for Seeking Alpha addressing the challenges of the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewables. Now add to silver a host of other metals used in renewable energy installations, and the mining expansion becomes even more substantial, adding economic, social, and environmental costs to the transition.

Then there is energy storage. Without it, the transition will simply not happen. In fact, some are questioning whether it could happen given the current stage of development of energy storage technology. Two years ago, an article by James Temple for the Massachusetts Technology Review questioned the viability of the energy transition precisely because of energy storage, which, Temple argued, was still prohibitively expensive in light of the scale, to which such storage would need to be developed.

 

Not Only No - But Phuk Yu For Even Asking DeBlasio!!!

Forbes  |  Mayor Bill de Blasio is aggressively pushing for a $12.4 billion federal bailout— because New York City faces an unprecedented $7 billion budget deficit over the next two years.

Last week, in a public relations stunt, the mayor announced a one-week unpaid furlough of himself and 494 employees within his office — a taxpayer savings of a paltry $860,000.  

So, how did the city get so deep into trouble?

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com dug into the skyrocketing city payroll. In 2016, there were 76,166 employees with pay exceeding $100,000. By 2019, there were more than 114,000 — a 50-percent increase in six-figure earners.

In 2019, plumber helpers earned $172,988; thermostat repairmen made up to $198,630; regular laborers hauled away $213,169; electricians lit up $253,132; and plumbers pocketed up to $286,245. 

School janitors ($256,000) out-earned the principals ($154,000). Four deputy mayors made over $241,641 each and 5,998 city employees out-earned New York governor Andrew Cuomo ($178,000).

The city has 331,520 full-time equivalent employees – up from 297,349 in 2014.

No Nancy Pelosi, Not Having Bailouts For Blue Cities Or States That Destroyed Their Own Economies

Forbes  |  The revised Heroes Act is approximately $1 trillion smaller than the original Heroes Act and includes:

• $1,200 stimulus checks for individuals and $2,400 stimulus checks for married/joint filers
• $600 weekly federal unemployment benefits
• $120 billion of funding for the restaurant industry
• financial relief for the airline industry
• $225 billion in education funding
• $436 billion in financial aid for state, local and tribal governments
• $75 billion for Covid-19 testing and tracing 
• $15 billion for the U.S. Post Office 
• Food assistance benefits

Senate not gonna do it..., (the item highlighted in red is why)

Pelosi could bring her new stimulus bill to the House floor for a vote as early as this week. Will this stimulus bill become law? No, the Heroes Act will unlikely become law in its current form. Why? Democrats need bipartisan support to pass any stimulus bill. While Democrats control the House of Representatives, Republicans control the U.S. Senate and the White House. While the revised Heroes Act would result in lower federal spending (which Senate Republicans generally prefer), Republicans have been clear that they won’t support a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is negotiating a potential stimulus deal on behalf of the White House, says Republicans would be willing to agree to a $1.5 trillion stimulus deal—but no more. Both Mnuchin and President Donald Trump want a new stimulus deal, more stimulus checks and aid to small businesses. However, they have not committed to spend $2 trillion. Trump has also called to use some Covid relief funds to send stimulus checks. However, the White House has not publicly supported a $2 trillion stimulus deal.