Category: Uncategorized

John AND Scott Write — Clutching Their Collective Pearls! — Of A 2011 Biden-Xi Trip To Sichuan Province, China…

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…you literally could not make this stuff… up.

Well, I guess — these two jokers… could.

That is, BOTH Hinderaker, above — and Johnson, here… think it a blockbuster story that Mr. Biden referred to a journey in central mountainous China back in 2011… as not a 1,700 mile trip over two days, but… as 17,000 miles. He was wrong, on a detail [and yes the whole Earth is only about 6,000 miles around].

But the meetings occurred.

Let’s contrast this though, with the repeated, in office — on the record, clearly calculatingly false statements, involving Ukraine in September 2019 — as just one example (and, often libeling other world leaders, or praising a brutal dictator in North Korea — whose name I won’t repeat) from their boy, Tangerine. Or the daily lies from their favorite governors Kristy Noem, and Ronnie DeSantis. [These two losers prefer leaders who malevolently, and intentionally lie — to open an entirely false agenda… as opposed to someone who forgets what they ate for breakfast in third grade, for example.]

So he got the mileage wrong?! That’s… a news story?!

Jeebus Cristos, boys. Sit down.

Me, I prefer the transcendent truths — in KBJ’s closing remarks (at this same White House event): she indeed is… Maya Angelou’s “hope and dream, of the slave….”

That’s news, Johnny boy — coming on the first Monday in October, to you. Word to your mother.

“Gee — That Doesn’t Seem CRAZY… At All. Nope — Not A Bit…”

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The claim tonight on gab [dot] com by Tangerine is that (wait for it!) HRC is “forcing” prosecutors “throughout the country” to bring (“unjust”) cases against him.

Never mind that she’s been out of government of any kind for what? six some years… is a private citizen mostly retired… and would have no way to force local prosecutors to do… anything, let alone indict T.

And… while we are at it, never mind that the “polls” he refers to were all done by his people. They do not account for any other match-up, besides T v. Joe Biden, and only sample Trump-wing GOP households.

Most Democratic dog catchers would out poll him, head to head in a general, now.

But whatever. He’s likely to be under multiple indictments by the time 2023 rolls around.

Kinda’ a tough sell, to run for POTUS (at least with non-Trump-Wingers) while contending with multiple indictments — possibly including felony tax fraud and… insurrection.

But maybe I am just expecting too much — that we not re-elect an actively indicted potential felon to the highest law enforcement role in the nation.

Silly me. Onward.

Stage Seven [More Chillin’, Of MIRI Detector] — On The Next Gen ‘Scope, Well Underway Tonight…

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This will be a neat trick of thermal engineering, all the way out at L2: the detector of the mid-range infrared wavelengths must be chilled… to a very, very cold state, or else it will see only its own residual heat, due to how red shifted these photons / stretched wavelengths are. So, super cooled gases will be sent through a pinch point, and then sprayed out into the a larger enclosed container, in a process somewhat like a water vapor mister, cooling everyone around the halo of mist — at the Disney (or Universal) amusement parks, on a hot day.

This trick will, it is hoped, let the MIRI cool to EIGHTEEN TIMES colder than your freezer at home, or below seven kelvins. Very near absolute zero. And it will take a few weeks yet, of this “wicking” — but if all goes as planned, we will be ready for science by later in May or early June. Here is the latest:

…“The Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and other Webb instruments have been cooling by radiating their thermal energy into the dark of space for the bulk of the last three months. The near-infrared instruments will operate at about 34 to 39 kelvins, cooling passively. But MIRI’s detectors will need to get a lot colder still, to be able to detect longer wavelength photons. This is where the MIRI cryocooler comes in….

“Why so cold? MIRI’s state-of-the-art light sensitive detectors that are tuned to work in the mid-infrared are blind unless they are cooled below 7 kelvins (-266 degrees Celsius, or -447 degrees Fahrenheit). For contrast, a standard domestic freezer cools its contents to about 255 kelvins (-18 degrees Celsius, or -0.7 degrees Fahrenheit). At higher temperatures, any signal that may be detected from the sky is lost beneath the signal from its own internally generated ‘dark current.’ Even if the detectors are cooled, Webb images would still be swamped by the glow of thermal infrared light emitted by MIRI’s own mirrors and aluminum structure if they are to get warmer than 15 kelvins (-258 degrees Celsius, or -433 degrees Fahrenheit)….

If you compared it on the Fahrenheit scale, your freezer would only be about one-four-hundreths as cold as the MIRI detector, when fully cooled to around 7 kelvins.

As it snows here, again… that’s… some CRAZY hard frozen ice cream sammy! Smiling… be excellent to one another.

नमस्ते

Scott Johnson Complains That Brown Was Never Nominated (circa 2004)… Weird.

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Ahem… you see, Scott how this works is… Bush43 had to NOMINATE her, in order for a Senate hearing to occur. That Bush Jr. did not do.

All the rest he writes is clearly just butt sore whining this morning, that we now have a black female Supreme Court Justice… (Oh, the humanities!) who will simply follow existing law and precedents, rather than try to reshape the US into an Ayn Randian / Hard Right ideologue’s wet dream.

Consider that the the supposed candidate Johnson supports authored a dissent on the record in a California criminal case — claiming that black women, as a group should not be cognizable as a protected class — in short, prosecutors should be allowed to strike jurors, solely because they are black women.

I N S A N E.

Here it is:

“Brown has been critical of affirmative action and abortion rights. In People v. Robert Young, 34 Cal. 4th 1149, 1237, (2005) [see the last five pages of that link], Brown, ignoring prior precedent set by the California Supreme Court in 1985, argued that black women should not be considered as a “cognizable group” and that prosecutors could therefore “use preemptory [sic] challenges to exclude jurors solely on the basis that they are black women….”

So, not only can she not spell, but she would dis-enfranchise her own gender and race.

Sure — sure, cool story, bro — Johnson makes this argument largely because she used to teach a “Boalt Hall” (somehow fitting that she taught under a racist’s name) law practicum / extension class with Steve Hayward, and the infamous “9/11 torture memo author” John Yoo… at Berkeley. Charming.

I guess these Powerliners confirm — as they do every day with endorsements of one Candace Owens… that the only time skin color matters to them, is when they need cover for their own racism. They need the “paid” black friend defense to rush in.

Disgusting.

Friday’s Good News, In Rural Virginia — 150 High-Paying New Jobs At Merck’s Elkton Vaccine Manufacturing Facility…

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Since we did report the Cherokee layoff news in late March, it is only fair that we mention this. Earlier this week, Merck completed the more than $1 billion cap ex program at its Elkton, Virginia vaccine manufacturing plant. This, in turn will now allow it to once again double the US deliveries of the Gardasil® HPV vaccine. Equally important, it brings 150 new high-paying manufacturing line jobs to the community there. [That HPV jab has been in short supply since late 2017 — experiencing occasionally acute stock-outs, in 2018 in particular.]

Now, Merck will no longer be forgoing revenue (on vaccines it might otherwise sell, but had no finished inventory to fill the orders). And US teens won’t have to wait multiple weeks — to get this early-prevent vaccine. If the company sees excess capacity in coming years, it will almost certainly be able to sell those extra jabs in the UK or EU (albeit at a lower net selling price, in all likelihood). Here’s the latest, from FiercePharma:

…After running into HPV vaccine supply shortfalls throughout 2018 and 2019, Merck & Co. is now reaping the rewards of a more than $1 billion manufacturing investment.

The Gardasil maker has expanded human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine capacity at its facility in Elkton, Virginia, to the tune of 120,000 square feet and 150 new jobs, Merck said Monday.

The update comes after Merck in 2019 threw down more than $1 billion to tackle “unprecedented global demand for [its] HPV vaccines.” At the time, Merck pledged to bolster capacity at existing facilities and build new ones.

Alongside the Elkton upgrade plans in Virginia, Merck said it would spend more than $680 million over five years to build a 225,000-square-foot API plant at its site in Durham, North Carolina, and expand packaging facilities in nearby Wilson….

Now you know… good news, to be sure (even with the now very rare kidney-related adverse event reports, associated with the vaccine).

In truth, I am still grinning, ear to ear, about yesterday’s history making Senate confirmation. Onward, to a great weekend, and a milestone birthday party, for an old Chicago friend of mine….

नमस्ते

Irony Alert: As The GOP In Tennessee Moves To Remove Age Barriers, In Its Marriage Statutes….

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Hinderaker is yammering about some nonsense this afternoon, to deflect the fact at a BIPARTISAN Senate majority just rebuked the bitter, twisted lies Blackburn and Cruz told about KBJ.

She is the next… Supreme, and John’s “back porch is… painted all bright red” — over it, now.

So he strings together some insipidly misleading tweets, to link it all to the odious Florida law [soon to be overturned, at the Supremes, BTW]. Charming.

As we’ve shown before, Hinderaker has repeatedly mis-characterized what the law tries to proscribe.

It is both wildly over- and under-inclusive, such that there is no reasonable way to read what is prohibited — without running afoul of First Amendment rights, for which “Congress shall make no law” (as applied to the State of Florida, by the Fourteenth Amendment) becomes… a fatal flaw in the law as signed by that Yale (non-merit) / legacy admittee, [now FL Gov.] Desantos.

Ah… well, KBJ will confront a full docket, on her first Monday day in October, next — 2022. And I for one, cannot wait to see Clarence Thomas’ head explode. Hilarious!

[U: 53-47! Bipartisan!] Even As Speaker Pelosi Tests Positive For Covid, Today Is A Historic Day: “KBJ”!

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UPDATED — “Still, like air… she’ll rise…” The vote was 53-47. Meet the next Justice, America! End updated portion.

To be clear, the Speaker has no symptoms at present — even so, we wish her all the best, and continued robust good health.

But this moment I take, is to celebrate… KBJ Day 2022. She will be confirmed later today. She will be another first for people of color.

[But of nearly equal importance, she will prove that those shameless, hateful Senators who lied about her, her record, and her qualifications… are wholly-unfit to serve in the Senate, any longer. It is time to end the careers of the lying QAnon charlatans Blackburn, Cruz and Hawley… among others.]

Here are some of the positives, though — from the overall narrative arc of the story, this morning:

…All 50 Senate Democrats, including the two independents who caucus with them, are expected to vote for Jackson’s confirmation. They will be joined by at least three Republicans: Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee reached an 11-11 tie along party lines on the question of whether to advance Jackson’s nomination to a vote before the full Senate. Democrats, expecting the deadlock, immediately moved ahead with a procedural step to discharge the nomination to a vote before the full Senate.

During her hearing before the Senate Judiciary committee, Republicans attacked Jackson as a partisan and leaned heavily on culture war fights rather than inquiries concerning the nominee’s qualifications….

History will sternly rebuke the vast majority of today’s GOP… rightly, as it has, the supporters of then Alabama Governor George Wallace… in 1963.

Let them be eviscerated in prose, for all eternity, indeed. They now so-richly deserve it.

Onward, to a grand celebration evening, tonight!

नमस्ते

[Spoiler Alert] How “The Dropout” Ends — Seems It Might Be Worth Watching, Afterall…

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I’ve cross-posted this on a few of my blogs, because Martin Shkreli’s appeal of his lifetime ban is now about to flame out, and he may be one of the few stories like hers… where the consequences are both completely life-inverting, and permanently… immutable.

Linda Holmes, deftly writing for NPR this morning, offers a very cogent take on it all:

…She runs away, literally, through the big glass doors, down the stairs, out the front door of the building, pulling the dog behind her, as Linda [the former GC] calls after her that she hurt people. She runs, and then she spends a moment screaming, just screaming as hard as she can, and then she calmly climbs into an Uber with her bright smile back on, and that’s the end….

There’s an obvious way to structure a story about a figure like Elizabeth Holmes: she builds herself up, she’s on top of the world, and then she has a dramatic downfall….

So The Dropout builds not to Holmes’ fall from grace as a CEO or a billionaire, but to a scene in which you watch her flee under pressure. The climax is not the fall; it’s the moment when you learn who she is, what her flaw is, why her downfall won’t stick. You learn why it won’t change this version of Elizabeth Holmes, and why she’ll never admit what she did….

She developed the ability to entirely separate the past from the future, to sever any connections between those two things at any time. And without a connection between now and later, there is no connection between actions and consequences, and without that, there is no real room for a conscience to operate. It’s incredibly sad, because it starts at the point where she is harmed, and it moves forward to how she harms others. But it doesn’t frame that progression as absolution, only as an insight about one of the things, perhaps the many things, that went wrong to allow her to become the person she became….

Even as to Martin, I do agree that at some future point, people like this may no longer be defined by their crimes. But for now, and until they center their lives around something larger than returning to the circles of the glitterati… it will define them for 99% of America.

And, specifically as to Holmes — much will remain unclear, until we know how long she spends in the can. Her glitterati relationship (and son, perhaps, even)… may not be there, when she finally returns to breathing free air.

Then, and maybe only then — will her life no longer be defined by her crimes. [R. West is likely right, that the series probably takes too much air time to get there, but seems worthy, overall. Especially to the extent that asks us all… to think of those we’ve… hurt.]

Harsh? Yes. But it is my honest (and sadly… experienced) take.

Evidence-Free Claims Dept. At Powerline… Shutdown Edition — Via Peter Doocy.

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So — just quickly, Peter Doocy routinely asks truly moronic — and malevolently misleading questions at White House press briefings. He hopes to pontificate, rather than gather information, with 90 per cent of his “questions”. It is a multi-year pattern.

Yesterday, Jen Psaki — the Press Secretary flattened his face, quite elegantly, with some questions of her own about whether, as a journalist, he had any evidence of any kind to support his casting of aspersions. [The jousting was over monitoring people awaiting hearings on asylum in the US.]

He did not. No evidence. He just… made it all up, on the spot.

End of story. Flattened.

But Scott thinks this is… somehow abusive. Asking for evidence.

All you guys are… morons.

Sit down.

Hinderaker’s No-Science Stupidity: “It Burns… It Burns.”

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Well. Now… John — quoting his idiot buddy the “healthy skeptic” — makes a long winded, bombastic and illogical case that the COVID vaccines aren’t worth much.

The problem with his — and the “skeptic’s” — logic… is that they have to use only the statistics for an age co-hort OVER 65… to get to the (thus false) conclusion that vaccines are not effective in the GENERAL populations of the US (all people age 21 and over).

My reaction? Geez, guys… at least work up some more plausible lies.

Hinderaker’s conclusion is that no one should have been fired for refusing the vaccine — because it wasn’t (in his falsely skewed view) highly protective for people over 65.

Damn — that’s a silly lie. He ignores the fact that the people most-likely to ACTUALLY be in the workforce with the non-vaxxers, and most at risk are… people aged 21 to 64. Not OVER 65. There are far fewer 65+ people in the workforce, in the US, than in any ten year wide age co-hort, below that marker.

Dumb dumb dumb.

The mid-career 40 to 55 year olds have seen vast reductions in hospitalizations and mortality, when we control for obesity and other elevated risk factors, in the population — among the more highly vaccinated.

Seriously John (and that moron “healthy skeptic”!): Sit down and shut it.