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Some quick thoughts on what we just saw

Firstly hardly a unique insight but hard to overstimate the difference between the two last inaugurals. America has meandered sharply along its political arc.

Biden's rhetoric reached high. Every sentence seemed purposefully...


...constructed to negate every political and personal characteristic of his predecessor.

And insofar as he's not Trump, that he does accept, cherish and understand democratic norms, institutions and conventions in a way that Trump never could, Biden will make a real difference.

He will change the tone and tenor of politics, not only in America but across the West. As I've said before, just replacing Trump is a substantial victory for him and will earn him praise from historians.

But that aura will disappear quickly. A governing project it will not make

But how much praise he receives and stature conferred by posterity will depend on what happens next.

Because the big overarching question for me, watching this, is which of those two inaugurals, Trump or Biden's, is going to seem unusual in the future.

The relief that many are feeling is predicated on a type of politics ending. But it is at least as possible that it is Biden ..not Trump who is the last gasp of something. Is it Trump who is the dying embers of a dying, increasingly powerless old white America...
Ok so, the NI #motherandbabyhomes report and its ROI counterpart are not directly comparable for many reasons. However, the NI report models some best practice that deserves to be highlighted/praised.


I (obviously) haven't had time to read the whole thing yet. (But at a first glance, it strikes me as well-written, so I have it on my list).

Like the ROI Commissioners, the academic authors here have huge power over the story. They carefully make themselves accountable for their scholarship and its effects. So here are some good things:

1) The Report attributes its origins to recommendations of UN Treaty bodies. It doesn't engage in sustained human-rights-based analysis, but doesn't ignore it either.

2) The researchers behind the report were appointed following a competitive tendering process.
[From a chat. Someone asked what the origin for most infection comes from close contact]

From the epi reports where you ask the person what they did for a week, etc, and then find that they were close to a positive at some point, so the conclusion is "aha, close contact"

You're never going to know if its because of the 2m with that person, or being in some small room with someone else, because nobody is looking for air spread. Conclusion is that it's the close contact.

Why? because EPI STUDIES ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR DROPLET

Every question, etc, asked, is from the point of view that nothing except certain specific viruses (measles, etc.) are airborne.

Because remember, to them, if air, R0 would = a billion.

https://t.co/cjJvGVY4Vr


That's why if you read the CDC reports, it's rare for them to analyse beyond 2m. Usually its asian studies that do. And even then barely (the South Korean one, even still, used droplet language).

SK
Yes. This is the problem.

Irrational anger & outrage which is easily manipulated, as we see being done, into tribal affiliation. Predicated not on some devotion to core ideals & principles of the country, but something else.

Notice what ea side appeals how they express it.


One side largely is moved by wanting a system, a society, a government that is responsive to the situation and needs of the public. This has a number of aspects, from infrastructure, taking care of the environment, BLM, taking care of the 'least among us' &etc.

These folks...

These folks on "the other side"... Not sure what to call this other side. It is a collection of right wing people, some who are simply "members" by affiliation, by tradition, by location in the country...others by reasoned choice.
However they get there, a large % are like this.

Lets call this the Trumpian side, Trumper Cohort, since that is the current center around which these "73M" are organized.
Within this cohort, there are many who are simply "Republicans" by inertia. Their family has been so forever, and so they are too. In actual fact they

do not like what is being done in their name, wonder what happened to the party, but cannot imagine voting for a "Democrat", no more than the feud over Ford vs Chevy would resolve in welcoming in the other 'team'.
These don't really know or und what a "Democrat" is these days,
"Communist Blogger" is my favorite Neutral Milk Hotel song


Anyway, here are some of the "communist" blog posts about the Qongresswoman from Georgia (thread)

In 2018, she agreed with someone who said that 9/11 was an inside job and argued that the school shooting in Parkland, FL was a false flag.

And then there's another time she said that the Parkland shooting was fake

She claimed that there was "never any evidence" that a plane was flown into the Pentagon on 9/11
Well it's funny but not funny really is it @sally_hines? To any adult who does not question why there has been a 4400% rise in UK girls wishing to become boys via puberty blockers, CSH & surgery over the last decade, we ask you to pause, do some research and think.


On a scale of 1 to 10 how funny is it for children to start a lifetime of medication? How funny is it that other comorbidities such as autism, anxiety, depression are not thoroughly explored? How funny is it that girls as young as 12 in US & 18 in UK have healthy breasts removed?

How much does it make you laugh to imagine a child agreeing with her clinician that she never ever wants to have children? And how funny is it that she knows now, as a child, that she is the opposite sex, because peer pressure & social media tell her so?

How hilarious it is that lesbians have no social places of their own - either as young people or adults? That they are not welcome in LGBTQ+ clubs unless they agree that TWAW & thereby can be lesbians. That they are told they are transphobic if they do not agree.

Will you be splitting your sides when legislation like the "Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020" in Victoria, Australia is passed? (Be aware that similar Bills are being discussed around the world).