Weekend Vibes [DOT 18/5/24]

18/5/24 MegMegMcGee 30

Phoning it in from Kalamazoo…

Also, speaking of phoning it in, I have another trip coming up so if anyone wants to claim any of the following DOT days, please let us know.
May 29
May 31
June 1
June 3
June 5

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30 Comments

  1. Will no one rid me of these turbulent Baby Boomers?

    In both the 2000 and 2008 cycles, John McCain released his medical records, recognizing that the public needed reassurance given his advanced age. McCain was 71 in 2008. Kennedy turned 70 in January. Trump turns 78 in June, and Biden turns 82 shortly after the election. Jill Stein turns 75 this month, and Cornel West turns 71 in June. All these candidates ought to release their records or, at a minimum, allow a medical correspondent to review and summarize them.

    Full disclosure: I am either a very young Baby Boomer or a very old Gen Xer. I read Less Than Zero and Bright Lights, Big City, and Slaves of New York when they came out. I loved the movie Slacker. So I think that makes me Gen X. On the other hand, I had a corporate job where the health care was fully paid for (you could go wherever you wanted) and we had a pension plan that we didn’t contribute to, the company did. So I think that is Baby Boomer at least, and maybe Silent Generation!

    Anyway, I’m not particularly spry so good for all these candidates. Nor do I consider myself particularly ageist, since at least half of our friends are older than we are. But I would like to live to see a day where the President is actually younger than I am. Believe me, you would not want to live in a country ruled by me and the other residents of Shady Pines.

    • Was Obama not younger than you currently are when he was president?

      • Nope. Almost two years older. I remember his birthday. August 4, 1961. I celebrate it, much to BH’s eye-rolling. He was not a fan. But Michelle is slightly younger than I am and, sadly, shows no sign of throwing her hat in the ring. I don’t blame her. 

      • Oh, wait, yes, back in 2008 he was younger than I am now, but back in 2008 I was younger than I am now. Imagine it’s November and you could pull the lever for someone who’s not pushing the boundaries for American life expectancies. Which is 76 and change, but our life expectancies dropped thanks to 1.1 million killed by Covid. Plus the gun- and drug-related deaths.

    • I don’t actually disagree with you, but it’s not really relevant for this election. The stakes are too fucking high. Right now, the best chance we have of keeping a criminal, despotic narcissist with designs on fascism out of the White House is Biden. That’s the situation, and it’s won’t change before November, barring something catastrophic (or fortunate, if it happens to someone of the orange persuasion). The damage Trump did while in office is stupefying, and he can’t be allowed to do it again.

      I don’t think Trump will win. I do think that Congress will end up in Democratic hands, which calms me a bit when I think about that orange shitbird winning again, because they will impeach the shit out of him at the first criminal act. Which would occur approximately Day 1.

      But the best plan is keeping Trump out, and the best option is Biden. So I’m not going to worry about Biden’s age.

      • Oh, I don’t disagree. I’m going to be pulling the lever (well, absentee balloting) for Biden, I’m not a MAGAt psychopath. It’s just that…Imagine someone sane in their 40s. How energetic. How fluent in modern life, far more fluent than I no doubt. It would be kind of refreshing. With great age comes great wisdom, yes, but not always. Just ask anyone who attends Thanksgiving with relatives a generation up from them.

    • I think it needs to be someone with skin in the game the way the old folks don’t have.

      Like if the president makes decisions that mean the oceans are boiling and shit in 25 years, but they’re going to be dead in 10 years, oh well. Maybe they feel some guilt for their grandkids, but won’t matter to them personally.

      • Exactly. I think that’s a big part of it. And I’m part of it. I just care about health care and the visiting health care pros who come to my home, and the public schools, I guess, but only insofar as they manage to educate their charges to a certain level and that they’re happy and healthy and around long enough to pay my Social Security!

  2. Then there’s this. Apparently (and this is little reported) someone, Congress I guess, is investigating ‘Murrica’s response to Covid-19:

    A transcript shows that [former NIH boss Francis] Collins was unable to list a single piece of evidence for the six-feet-apart public-health guidance widely adopted by government officials. Collins’s admission follows testimony by Anthony Fauci, who told the coronavirus subcommittee that the six-feet concept came out of thin air.

    I don’t care if it came out of thin air. I loved it. Picture it. It’s around now but 2020. I haven’t shaved in weeks but I don’t care because I’m wearing my mask. No one can see how gross I look. I am walking Faithful Hound and in their panic the few people on the streets are giving us the 6′ berth, always welcome because I live among many freaks. But aside from that a rumor spread (another Covid-related falsehood) that it could be spread by an infected person patting your dog and then you, in turn, would pat your dog, and all hope was lost. So for a few blessed months we were unmolested. Then everyone snapped out of it.

    • I really, really don’t know why you’re citing the National Review on social distancing. You need to stop reading these people and especially stop disseminating their poison.

      They’re malignant actors, and they’ve done even worse parroting the worst people on Covid.

      What Fauci said was that six feet was based on the best possible estimate at a time when Covid was a brand new disease with no established research.

      And what the National Review and House GOP are doing is trying to destroy the credibility of the scientific community.

      Hundreds of thousands of Americans died because of the doubt they sowed with their attacks on epidemiological science. Far more suffered from less fatal exposure. People here in yesterday’s NOT were talking about the lingering effects of Covid, and countless cases could have been prevented if there was less dissemination of GOP idiocy.

      Please. This is for real. Don’t do this.

      • I don’t know how you manage to track down my news sources. I don’t provide links because I know the sources might set people off, and I only pass along stuff that is verifiably true.

        I am quite widely read (the “New York Post” is my favorite, I’ll confess: did you read about the woman who—I’ll stop there) but I subscribe to dozens of news sources and newsletters and anything not paywalled, including D/S favorite “The Guardian.” They have a Weekly Europe newsletter, by the way, that I read avidly. I was just reading more about Geert Wilders and the shaky proposed Dutch coalition government. Not going very well I think.

        I am not, believe me, in any way, minimalizing the horrific impact Covid had worldwide. In the last 4 1/2 years I have left Manhattan (not New York; Manhattan) precisely once, for my brother’s funeral. I can tell you about what it’s like to be in hospitals and rehab centers at the height of Covid. It wasn’t fun. I contracted Covid myself last year in a Manhattan hospital, but luckily I was asymptomatic (apparently one of “vaccine-hesitant” employees—I don’t even want to talk about it. But they were spreading it around.)

        But I think, whatever the source, NR, or in the old days the Village Voice would have covered this, it’s important to know that authority figures are just pulling stuff out of their asses and affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. And don’t get me started on the years’ long public school closures.

        • This isn’t the first time you’ve spread absolutely toxic right wing propaganda on Covid. Cut these people out of your life.

          • I laughed at this comment because I’m actually considered quite left-wing among people who know me in real life, and not a spreader of right-wing propaganda. If anything I get a raised eyebrow or two when I champion leftist opinions that they wouldn’t necessarily agree with.

            But whatever. Disagreements are what make the world go ’round. And I’m (recently) already stumping for Joe Biden! I’m phone banking from the comfort of my own Underground Lair. We might have already spoken, but I’ve been given Deep Red states. Eye-opening, but fun for me, and the elderly who answer the phones sure are chatty! Their concept of Christianity is a little different than mine, but I know what they’re talking about.

          • I’m going to respond again to this, in retrospect. I’m not spreading unfounded conspiracy theories, which are always in abundance. If two very senior government officials provide testimony under the penalty of perjury and it is entered into the Congressional Record I think it is fair game for discussion, no matter how unpleasant it might be to others who took and wanted to believe a different view of things.

            Look, I was not a Covid-denier, but we didn’t go insane. We didn’t wear masks in the house, and we didn’t swab down our groceries (?!) When the Pfizer vaccine was rolled out we were first in line when we were eligible. I carried my vaccine card like a passport. You couldn’t go lots of places without it, even if you were masked. God, what a horrible time that was.

            Well, let’s hope another plague doesn’t descend on us.

            • …I think it’s become a hot-button topic but there’s some…well…physics, I guess it’d be…that argued for it not having been nonsense at the time

              …any airborne pathogen has an uphill struggle to make it from person to person but its odds improve drastically once people are in closer proximity &/or remain in proximity for longer

              …if the basic theory of social distancing was nonsense then we wouldn’t have seen the flu rate fall off a cliff at the same time…when people washed their hands slightly nearer to as often as they claimed & generally kept their distance from others they caught less viruses…arguing, on or off the congressional record…that this or that measure was too strict or not strict enough isn’t about the parts you can actually show through empirical data though…so maybe there’s an argument that you could have closed that distance by 50% & only borne an uptick in transmission of…say…10%…& argue it was ineffective in some senses

              …but to say it’s not harder to catch it from someone further from you is not…even in that debate…a thing that anyone is arguing in good faith

              …I had family who were immuno-compromised or whatever they were calling it & I can’t claim some of the things they required if they were going to let me in the house weren’t…between excessive & impractical…to the point where for stretches of time I simply couldn’t…so they wouldn’t/couldn’t…& that kinda sucked…but if I gave them that shit it would have sucked a whole other scale of a lot…so in the context it didn’t seem like an argument worth having then…& probably less so now?

        • not going very well….is probably how you can describe the next few years of our gubment…

          total shitshow would also be accurate

           

    • The amendment to get abortion legal again in Missouri is sadly limited at 15 weeks. I would prefer a longer period of pregnancy before the cutoff, but I will take a 15 week ban over a total ban.

      The real thing to keep in mind with just how pissed off Missouri people are about the abortion ban? A fuckton of people signed that ballot initiative that aren’t democrat, I guarantee it. There are too many conservatives in the state for it to be all dems who signed, especially given that signatures were needed in all the voting districts.

      But I digress. Prior to the abortion ban that voters didn’t decide (thanks, legislative assholes), there was exactly 1 clinic performing abortions in Missouri for years – Planned Parenthood in downtown St Louis. See, when I was in college, they passed a great TRAP law that oh geez wow, abortion clinics needed to have the same access for EMTs etc as hospitals do, etc, so that meant that we went from like 7 clinics providing abortions (mostly medication abortions) to just the 1. And there was already a limit at like 15 weeks or 16 weeks or something.

      So functionally, abortion has been basically done in Missouri for almost 20 years. And this ban still pissed off so many people that they got double the signatures needed.

    • 1) That’s a lot of bleach blonds.

      2) They seem quite old for Roodles

      3) Bobby Lee?

    • now i get…..that you need to be served to give you notice of shit you have to do coz you getting sued…..legal niceties n all…

      but i kinda feel like posting about it….negates the need for serving?

      i mean….you clearly already know you are about to get sued

    • Well, the NYT did a lot of that in the service of Murricah during the Cold War.

      So did my grandfather’s 2nd cousin who ended up manipulating the polls one too many times and getting ousted in 1961 (many of my relatives would protest against him, even my dad.)

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