Lord Ratner

Agreed with the first part. I'm vaccinated and against mandates, so obviously I agree that the truth is in the middle. I'm sympathetic to the individuals who fell for the right wing conspiracy theories regarding COVID vaccines for the same reason I was sympathetic to the individuals who fell for the left wing conspiracy theories regarding policing and minorities in the US. A simple reality is most americans, even many highly educated ones, do not have the skills required to sift through data that is intentionally misrepresented to them by seemingly authoritative sources. Well I can understand your position regarding other people being vaccinated, and I certainly agree that the vaccines have some effect on transmission, I believe the threshold for a mandate is very high, and the vaccines do not meet that. Pre-delta you could at least make a solid case, but the rates of transmission amongst the vaccinated in the Delta environment are no longer reduced enough to justify a mandate in my opinion. All it's going to do is slow down the inevitable, and looking at the numbers, not by much. Unfortunately a lot of the studies that show efficacy against Delta transmission are measuring a few months after vaccination, subsequently the efficacy against transmission drops quite dramatically. The vaccines do, however, continue to stave off severe hospitalization or death, but that brings us right back to "if you're worried, get the vaccine." Much like the flu, and unlike measles, there isn't going to be herd immunity granted by widespread vaccination to the Covid-19. It's a bummer, but there are many bummers in life. A small nitpic, but being on a plane for 9 hours is one of the safest places you can be. I don't believe there are many documented cases of spread from air traffic. Bleed air and whatnot. A big nitpic, unless your kid has a very severe underlying condition that you just left out of your post, being worried about him or her getting covid would only make sense if you already kept them in a protective bubble 24/7. It is simply a statistical reality that covid does not represent a threat to children. Is one of the most heavily supported conclusions, bar none. And it is example number one of the fear mongering you reference to the beginning of your post. In fact, it's a fairly easy way to immediately suss out whether someone talking about the virus is intentionally full of shit or not. Anyone advocating for the mandatory vaccination of children, using the safety of children as justification, either has no idea what they are talking about or know exactly what they are lying about. On a more interesting and philosophical level, we now have a great case study in *why* mandates are bad. It kind of goes to the entire argument supporting Liberty in general. Some of us, atheist or otherwise unconcerned with a higher power, support systems of Liberty because at the end of the day they just work better. A bunch of people on the left are going to spend the next few years figuring out what they did wrong and how to craft a better mandate, but instead they should be asking themselves why they thought mandates were the best way to get it done in the first place. Clearly they aren't, but I think to admit that only very specific, and very few policies can be successfully turned into a mandate would undermine their entire long range goal of widespread "social progress," which will most certainly require many, many mandates. Thanks for the honest reply.

Crenshaw was completely against the withdrawal, and I agree with him. I like Tulsi, but I get the feeling she's whatever she needs to be to stay relevant. I'd much rather see Nikki Haley with Crenshaw as VP. As a bonus, Haley is a Trump favorite and might just be able to keep him from running again, instead taking the role of "queen maker."

The point is that it completely disrupts the very obvious narrative being pushed that "covid can get anyone." It's bullshit. A couple kids and a couple healthy people under the age of 40 die and their deaths are used as some sort of representation of why everybody is supposed to be terrified of this disease. That's the lie. Some people, maybe you, simply can't accept the fact that others just don't care about covid. There's a vaccine, if you want to protect yourself, if you're fat, if you're old, if you have cancer, if there's any reason why you're at a higher risk, get it. So what the fuck else is there left to care about? What exactly is the point of these articles? So and so died, this 14 year old got sick, these 30-year-olds thought they were fine and then they got covid and died, what is the point? The point is to scare people into getting the vaccine. With misrepresented statistics. The point is to say *actually you're wrong, this disease is incredibly dangerous to you if you're young and healthy, and here's a bunch of examples of how risky this whole thing is*. It's using fear to motivate a desired action. Because the truth doesn't support the mandate. I don't know anybody that is happy that fat people or old people are dying from this disease, but the conversation isn't about covid, it's about compelled behavior, vaccine mandates. So it's relevant if they had comorbidities because their death is no longer an obvious justification for government compulsion.

Shack. Just stop lying. The institutions haven't lost wide scale trust because people just suddenly stopped trusting institutions. On the contrary, people just started catching the institutions telling lies. It's a completely rational survival instinct to stop trusting someone you catch in an overt lie. And considering the response from the institutions when caught is to double down, it's entirely predictable.

Kirby was smart, he put the mandate in place well before anybody had radicalized behind their position one way or the other. That left only 3% by the time the government stepped in and guaranteed compromise was dead. American is in a different boat. Something like 3, 000 are on vaccinated, and they've had months of telling everybody who will listen that they're not getting the vaccine. Pride is not so easily overcome, and 3,000 Pilots have a whole hell of a lot of more leverage than 300. I'm genuinely curious as to what's going to happen, because American Airlines couldn't afford even 500 Pilots quitting, and I've flown with multiple Pilots who claim to have already submitted their retirement paperwork. These guys are in their 50s. But our CEO played the same game last year during the furlough crisis. Hardball with the government up until the last minute, and even past it. Then throw his hands up and say he did everything he could but if the government doesn't change their position, all is lost. There's a 0% chance that this administration is going to tolerate this type of turmoil, especially one that will have an effect on the market, when their approval ratings are dipping below 44%. I'm vaccinated, so I don't really have skin in the game. But this mandate stuff is bullshit. The vaccine is no longer sufficient to stop the spread, and thus any justification for mandates, questionable as they were before, are now completely invalidated. And if you're stupid enough to think that it stops here, and won't involve a whole slew of medical decisions starting with mandating boosters, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Ah yes, the only things I find funny are funny argument. A true man of the times.

Just stop fucking with college loans entirely. Like you said, supply and demand. If the government keeps destroying one side of the equation, we can't expect the other side to balance. If the world needs more xxxxx degrees, the market will incentivize those degrees. The problems with advanced education are entries caused by government intervention. The trend line is not good. 60% of college kids today are women. 60% of the workforce is not women. Another imbalance. If you want to make social change you have to get to the chosen minority as toddlers. If they fall behind as small kids then no amount of college loans, affirmative action, or fake degrees will make up for it. But fixing those problems would completely unravel the current social justice narrative that many people are making millions from, so don't expect it anytime soon.

Another fallacy in this line of reasoning is that all bottoms are equal. If you lack the timing and luck that are allegedly required to succeed in america, you still end up in a vastly better position than if you lack the timing or luck required in another country. And if you take one step up from the absolute bottom, you see an even bigger disparity. The second from the bottom quintile in America lead dramatically wealthier and more opportunistic lives than the second to the bottom quintile in European countries. And whereas our citizens in that quintile pay no taxes effectively, European lower and middle class workers pay quite a bit of taxes. So while this system isn't perfect when compared to a non-existent perfect system, it is thoroughly more beneficial to those at the bottom than other systems that do exist. There are only two valid comparisons. That which exists in other countries today, and that which existed in our country in the past. By both metrics, our citizens come out way ahead. Add in the opportunities for upward mobility, and the competition isn't even close. I do agree with the problems regarding college debt, housing prices, and wage stagnation. But the boom times of the 1950s did not come remotely close to the level of regulation and interference we have today. College debt can be directly traced to government backing student loans. That seemingly well-intentioned policy completely decimated a lot of millennial and gen z lives with astronomical debt as teenagers. And we effectively derailed the progress black Americans were making with a series of well-intentioned but ultimately catastrophic programs such as affirmative action. Decades of progress making up for a true evil, completely lost. And now no one on either side has a solution for the glaring racial problem that everyone sees but is uncomfortable verbalizing. The disconnect is that liberals generally see conservative resistance as some sort of lack of compassion. Incorrect. It's generally a realization that second and third order effects of seemingly innocuous (to liberals) government action can have quite devastating effects.

Agreed, except this was a completely foreseeable and realistic outcome. So when policy is developed to toss a hand grenade into the economy and the societal norms at large, a realistic possibility that a mutation will completely negate the monumental fist-fucking the policy exerts on society should be cause to perhaps view said-policy with skepticism. The vaccine is still life-saving, but saving your own life isn't (and shouldn't be) compulsory. The justifications for until-now unthinkable government intervention have been completely invalidated by Delta, but the damage done by furthering the political team sports will not be so easily erased. Let's see how long it takes the party of "follow the science" to acknowledge these studies and adapt their policies. I'm not holding my breath.

Name recognition and the aura of exclusivity. That way, when they eventually stop being a military-only bank, people will view it as a great opportunity to join an organization they weren't previously allowed into, but "always" knew about.

Which was my question 18 months ago when we decided to pause life for longer than the "two weeks to stop the spread." So we're waiting for a vaccine? What if they never make one? And if they do, what if it doesn't work? And if it does, what if the virus mutates? Seemed like shakey ground to nuke the economy on. But here we are, about to run out of government schemes to hide the effects of the past 18 months...

Wrong. 2011 vaccinated.

Again, valid until the vaccine came out. Now you can take free steps to protect yourself.

As long as smokers, obese people, and high-impact athletes are similarly excluded from coverage, you've got my vote.

That argument died when a highly effective vaccine was offered to the entire at-risk population free of charge.

Yeah, but if you don't get it more 80+ year-olds will die. Or maybe some kids? No no, some other unvaccinated people who have accepted the risk. Or the hospitals will overflow? I forget. At the end of the day I'm beginning to think this fell along predictable political lines because it's actually a fairly representative disease of conservative vs progressive ideology. Conservatives (today, in the past it was the classical liberals) accept the fallibility and irrationality of individualistic humans and construct a system that works around those constraints (e.g. capitalism, freedom of speech). Liberals disregard the clearly observable limitations of human nature in pursuit of a "perfect" solution, and willfully ignore all evidence of their strategy's failure well past the point of hopelessness (e.g. socialism, climate change, war on poverty). Same goes for the disease. Masks work (science), but mask mandates do not (human nature). Sure, a virus can't spread through a population that doesn't interact, but lockdowns are not in compliance with human nature either. And in further accordance with progressive ideology, when your plan based on centralized control fails, demonize people and pour obscene amounts of money on the problem.

What does that service cost?

All completely plausible. I will only quibble on one point, that politicians and generals are good at covering their ass. They are very good at not giving answers. But when it comes to what they do (when they think they are) behind closed doors, there I have to disagree with you. McChrystal (sp?), Patraeus, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig. Obama's "after the election" message to Putin, John Edwards... Do I need to go on? They absolutely, positively, always cover their ass. But that doesn't mean that they're always smart enough to know when they should. And honestly, at this point I think it's abundantly clear that there is a negative correlation between intelligence, competence, and vision, vs the drive to achieve the highest levels of political power.

Why would they wing someone right before administratively separating them? I'd be surprised.

Nearly everybody on this forum has used the words "if true" or some derivation, and no one said we should bypass his right to a fair trial. Your arguments don't require strawmen to be true. Further, there's no requirement to wait until the trial has been conducted to speculate, since none of us are going to be investigating him. Especially with politics. Politicians (and Milley is probably more of a politician than he is a soldier at this point) act very predictably. One thing they almost never do is allow a false story to float without an outright denial. Think Hunter Biden and his laptop. As I've said repeatedly, I don't trust Woodward as far as I can throw him. However if the journalist is famous as Bob Woodward makes a claim about a politician, and the politician doesn't issue a denial, it's time to pay close attention. There are also some fairly high profile rebukes coming out that I don't believe would occur without some behind the scenes validating. Christopher Miller is one such example. Honestly looking at Milley, a cartoon character of what a military General should be, I'm not at all surprised that he did it, and had the chutzpa to brag about it to a journalist. It seems like a lot of these "dissidents" from the conservative wing get a taste of media adulation for some "heroic" act against the great orange vulgarian and they quickly forget that they are still enemies to the left and will not be forgiven for their unacceptable wrong-think.

Remember that time Flynn communicated with a Russian government official as part of his upcoming duties and it spawned a 3 year investigation into Russian control of the executive branch? That said, I'm skeptical of anything Woodward says these days, but if anything even remotely approximating "I'll tell you if we are going to attack" was said, an example should be made. Prison would suffice.

Woodward jumped the shark a while ago. He'll bite on a juicy story from anyone if it'll give him a shadow of the high he got from Watergate.

Found General Chang

Actually there is missing data there. I'm going to use extremes to make the point, but you'll almost certainly find that it applies here. Those numbers don't show the cohorts of the overall population and vaccine status. So, simplified, 1500 deaths, 1000 vaccinated and 500 unvaccinated. But that's out of a population of 15000, where 1500 are unvaccinated and 13500 are vaccinated. 500/1500 = 33% mortality amongst the unvaccinated, 1000/13500 = 7% mortality amongst the vaccinated. And the follow-up to that would be that if the entire cohort were unvaccinated, you would have 5,000 deaths instead of 1500. Again, the percentages are simplified and exaggerated, but I believe you will find they apply to the data set.

Your analysis is about as small as the people you must be friends with. I've noticed no correlation between shit bags and vaccine status. What I have noticed on both sides are people that you would never guess of having a position suddenly having one. It's also hilarious hearing how many people are suddenly advanced medical professionals with nuanced perspective on the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Face it, you're pro vaccine because you were told to be. Just like me. Just like how you, I, and everyone else out there believes 95% of what we know because that's what we were told. It's a positive trait of the species to be able to transfer knowledge, but now that the knowledge transfer industry has accelerated to a pace we are completely unprepared for (thanks to internet and social media specifically), so all of the original gateways of information that for the most part kept everybody believing largely the same things (which were largely correct) are now defunct. And the gasoline poured on this fire were the bureaucrats and politicians. They haven't changed, they have always lied to influence our behavior, but now their lies are exposed in a way they have never experienced. And regardless of what side you're on, people respond to lies in a pretty predictable way. They stop trusting you. Sure, if the lie was something that you were already positioned to believe, then you are more inclined to let the lie slide. Think Republicans with Trump and liberals with Fauci. But the distrust spreads. So yeah, fall victim to all the human nature quirks and play directly into the hands of the politicians who are only interested in our money and our votes. If you disagree with me you're a shitbag, if you agree with me you're the enlightened. That should fix things. Disclaimer: I am fully and voluntarily vaccinated with the mRNA vaccine.