dpberr

That's why despite the media's exuberance at NYC's use of it, my guess it's only being followed in places patronized by the upper crust. Your corner store in the city doesn't care and won't care. The restaurants and gyms checking for vax status in Philly are for rich white people or those that cater to the crew that work at Thomas Jefferson.

IMO, for whatever the reason, President Biden is back in Delaware for the same reasons he hung out there for nearly all of 2020. He gets infusions, he gets rest, whatever it is they do to recharge that battery, but they make sure it happens in a private setting on private property. It's on cue. He hits that inevitable low period, then comes the blackout period, and then boom, he reappears, full of energy, ready to go.

No I'm not. We are both...correct. See below. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/19/world/asia/Afghanistan-withdrawal-contractors.html https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/16/afghanistan-military-collapse-private-contractors/

Two of the most damning things I've read about the US leaving the country that are pinned not on only Biden but the US military are: 1. We didn't even tell the Afghan military we were leaving. We just got up and left. In the middle of night. 2. We prohibited contractors from remaining in or entering the country to maintain and repair the helicopters, vehicles, etc. The Afghans barely knew how to operate them. Fix them? Once broken, stays broken. A helicopter in that environment needs *daily* maintenance just to remain airworthy. 3. We did absolutely nothing to ensure the safety of the THOUSANDS of Afghans that worked with us until there were days to go. Unless the Trump plan of withdrawal specifically said to do those types of things, that's a disaster that falls on the shoulders of the Pentagon and State.

Of interest, you'll start seeing pediatric physicians start to talk about the dangers of RSV instead of Covid as we enter the fall. It'll be the new Boogeyman for parents. Not lost on me...guess what new toy Pfizer has for kids...an RSV vaccine they'd like the FDA to grant EUA for use.

You could only fully eliminate the Taliban by cutting off their Pakistani and Saudi funding, help and safe harbor, and that would have required killing a lot of Pakistani and Saudi politicians, intelligence and military. 9/11 doesn't stop with the Saudis - it also includes the Pakistanis. Those two go way back. A little known story is that the Saudis and Pakistanis helped the Afghans in the 80s not out of goodwill towards their neighbor, but that the Soviets had their eye on invading Pakistan in 1981 and using Afghanistan as the base.

Eh. It was improperly filed. Even if properly filed, it was a terrible legal approach because they weren't asking the Supreme Court a question. That's a dumb lawyer. They essentially wanted the US Supreme Court to issue a stay on the IU action while their case was on appeal. The Court can't do that. IMO all they had to do was make IU defend it's claim it's not a state institution which is an absurd claim, but all the detail they'd need. The Indiana legislature prohibited the state and state "organizations" from enacting mandates.

Keep protesting nicely NZ and Australia. Don't get too rowdy. The army would appreciate you wrap up your organized shouting by 5pm, a few hours before curfew.

There's not much he can do about it. This was going to happen in the Trump presidency timeline too.

Kabul will be in Taliban control by 9/11. That's their push.

They want all those United employees, especially the pilots.

The military campaign, yes. Every second of every minute afterwards, failure. The biggest blunder was the elimination of the Iraqi Armed Forces post-conflict because we needed to create an Iraqi military in our image. That just funneled thousands of desperate, unemployed men to the insurgency. The Iraq War was an unnecessary war. From a realpolitik viewpoint, Saddam was a pressure door against the Iranians and al-Qaeda.

I had to check to see if time travel was invented and the entire planet was transported back to April 1st. I truly thought this was satire.

Can they find just one person not being financially enriched by a vaccine manufacturer? Just one? When Gottlieb started hawking N95 masks all of a sudden for kids, I thought yep, that bastard wants a seat on the Honeywell board.

I'd say they are absolutely fine with the circus. The White House could certainly reign in the talk show appearances with a couple phone calls.

I've thought the DB Cooper case is one big story. It was literally a "money plane" heist or a Lufthansa heist, but years earlier by the mob or the CIA of unmarked cash from overseas. Northwest Orient had hubs in North America and abroad. They likely routinely moved money back and forth from their Japanese hubs. DB Cooper the man, never left the plane mid-flight, but a pallet or crate, or whatever of unmarked cash did. FBI wanted to keep it quiet to deter copycats. All the specificity about the man but not about the plane or where the plane was, always made me curious.

The US was doomed to fail in Afghanistan the moment it decided to occupy it, just like all those that came before it tried to do. China is there to control the heroin fields. They will pay the Taliban not to destroy them and to look the other way. Nobody seems to wonder who funds the Taliban. It takes a lot of money to fund and equip an army, and I doubt Pakistan is footing that bill for 20 years.

I think he likes playing for winners. The trade-off was worth it in the Brady era. I don't want them to do this but strategically, the Pats should trade Gilmore for picks, and try to get a blue chip QB in next year's draft via record and/or draft assets. I'm a-ok with them being early 90s Pats for a decade. 😀

Yes. He "looks" healthy, therefore he is. It's a disingenuous article. No details on blood work, whether he smoked, whether he did drugs, whether he was immunocompromised. I know a few people who are HIV positive who are in amazing physical shape. Still... immunocompromised bodies.

The CDC Director keeps lowering her prospects for keeping her job with each interview. I don't think she even knows what's fact and what's fiction anymore. (Does anybody?) All of these "experts" need to stop hitting the talk show circuit individually and just do ONE daily or weekly press briefing. No individual twitter accounts, no hot take opinion pieces on CNN, just a professional press briefing.

You're about to be stunned....for about a decade, Europe has been trying to make the severity of its flu season less by fortifying its food supply with Vitamin D. Some countries have really gotten to it, others haven't. I think there's a lot of data points flying around out in the air about a person's Vitamin D levels and how it correlates to COVID severity. Why nobody is trying to really understand that relationship beats me, It'd seem like a simple way for people to keep themselves from not getting sick.

I'm sure I've beaten this to death but Sweden likely has Europe's longest and most complete mandatory Vitamin D food fortification program in Europe, and has for a decade. It's in everything - milk, oils, butters, sundries. The population's risk of deficiency and extreme deficiency is likely substantially lower than say...the UK that's getting broadsided with cases.

Trump and Biden are mostly the same kind of President and personality IMO. Use the same sorts of tactics. I think both are divisive, bitter personalities at their core, and they have a hard time keeping it controlled. I don't think the Biden Presidency feels all that different from the Trump Presidency. It's just as chaotic and partisan, with the administration filled with partisan hacks who are way out beyond their skis. You've got a lot of nothing getting done. Clinton, Bush and Obama are in a different class, different generation. I don't see those guys being anywhere nearly as divisive. I don't think the us vs. them rhetoric would be at the fever pitch it's been for the last couple years. Not saying they were great Presidents, but I think if this pandemic hit during their respective eras, the approach would be entirely different.

Concur. The actors and actresses today don't "buy in" to their characters like the "old timers" did because they they all want to be the Rock and Cena with dreams of mainstream movies and appeal. Can't get too weird, too crazy. I really blame Hulk Hogan for that. Remember in the 90s when UPN essentially took Weird Al's UHF and made it a reality and started pumping out random shows? I think they hit it big with Star Trek TNG, but Hulk Hogan had a dumb show on there where he literally rode around in an invisible speedboat. Hahaha.

*Failed .gov roll out of 1976 swine flu vaccine for those around when it happened. Today's rollout more or less is the 1976 program if it continued. *Botched MMR vaccine in the 1980s which led to Reagan giving vaccine manufacturers blanket indemnification. *All of those required school immunizations have decades of safety data and are covered by the VICP program. Covax has months of safety data and is not covered by VICP. Third bullet is the big one for me - if the government is so certain these vaccines are so safe, all of them should be moved into the VICP immediately so that those injured by them can petition for damages. There should be no mandate unless the vaccines are treated like any other vaccine - they are treated as workplace injuries per OSHA if you mandate them, and if you personally are injured by them, you can file a claim through VICP.