By The Numbers - part the thirteenth

So, isn't America Great Again??? We lead the world in school shooting deaths. To see the strength of our resolve, here are the numbers. MAGA has 288 kids killed in school by guns (that number may not reflect the latest tally of dead in Uvalde), while Mexico is second with 8. Odd that the originalist Constitutionalists don't assert what is plain in the document, circa 1800: every free white man is allowed, should he be a member of a state militia, to hold a muzzle loading flintlock rifle. That's it.

Jackpot!

It's official

Covid-19 has killed at least 1,000,037 people and infected about 82.7 million in the United States since January 2020, according to data by Johns Hopkins University.

I Told You So - 4 May 2022

Well, now we hear from the Lamestream Media calling out just the issue raised in these missives some time ago.

[I]f Alito's opinion is ultimately rendered, it will represent an opening salvo in a push to target other rights grounded in privacy and liberty. It will also destabilize the law by rendering the legal doctrine of stare decisis -- the notion that courts should follow their precedents even if they disagree with them, to protect the cohesion of the law -- a dead letter. And it will raise new questions about the politicization of the court.

Recall what was proposed in these missives: if there is no right to privacy, Sleepy Joe can let loose the dogs of investigation without regard to anything at all. And so can Big Bidnezz. And so can any Fascist administration that may follow. Sleepy Joe just wants to put the insurrectionists in prison. The Fascists want to put anyone not still living like it's 1829 in prison. Big Bidnezz wants to stop any revelations about bad goods, or pollution, or sexual harassment, or racial profiling, or ... Say or write anything that pisses off the Snappy Cracky Co., and you'll find everything in your life ripped open for them to see. What did Huxley call it?? "Brave New World".

"If there's a majority of justices no longer willing to recognize such a right [to privacy] in the context of abortion -- indeed, who believe the court should never have recognized it -- then that calls into question those other rights, as well," [Steve Vladeck] said.

Let's party like it's 1789!! Bring your wenches and your slaves! Don't bring your children; they've work to do in mills and on farms.

Thought For The Day - 25 April 2022 [update]

Bet on this. If Musk does get his hands on Twitter, that very minute he'll pull in wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 and the rest of the Qanon traitors. Twitter becomes 100% Right Wingnuts 100% of the time. Will sane folks stay on?? Seems unlikely. Batshit J. Moron's bespoke social network has floundered, which is to say; there really aren't as many crazies as the Right Wingnut Reichstag would have the world believe.

[3:13 pm the countdown begins]

Splainin Trump - part the second

A new-ish series; first installment was some years ago, but now that wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 is being pushed past even his unlimited limits by Gov. DeMented, he's more regularly goining nutsoid. I couldn't be happier.

Today he breaks wind.

Wind turbines are an icon for the energy transition and the subject of heated debate in Washington. They've been mocked by prominent members of the GOP, including former President Donald Trump, who recently called wind the "worst form of energy."

Here's the full quote, from the link:

It's so sad when you see that they are approving these windmills — worst form of energy, the most expensive. You talk about carbon emissions, well they are making them. More goes into the air than if you ran something for 30 years. When operating properly, wind turbines do not create carbon emissions as a result of electricity generation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

So, let's look into the expensive allegation. Well, no. But, of course, this analysis is from the lying Woke Left Gummint.

Land-based utility-scale wind is one of the lowest-priced energy sources available today, costing 1-2 cents per kilowatt-hour after the production tax credit. Because the electricity from wind farms is sold at a fixed price over a long period of time (e.g. 20+ years) and its fuel is free, wind energy mitigates the price uncertainty that fuel costs add to traditional sources of energy.

But, from the point of view of the fossil fuel cabal, any large scale form of electric power which isn't fossil fuel driven is a threat. The problem with an electric based society/economy (which wind, hydro, and solar make feasible) is that the transport sector, currently fueled by gasoline and diesel, can't easily leverage it. Yes, there remains the wet dream of battery powered cars everywhere, and may be trucks, but that dream depends on a very long term source of, at least, nickel and lithium. But we already know how to leverage electricity in transport: Europe has been doing it for about a century, electrified trains and trolleys. But that means cities gain sway, since laying track into the hinterlands (which the USofA had before GM put an end to it) these days counters the Real Americans live in the rural places truth. My father was born in 1915, and said that he could go between Springfield and Boston on trolleys, town to town. Turns out, he wasn't lying. Here's the Boston end.

And another bit of history.

The Hartford & Springfield was a very important piece of the electric railway system in New England. It was not only the link between the upper and lower Connecticut Valley, but it was also the only link between the entire street railway network of southern and northern New England. This connection allowed travelers to travel between New York and Boston by trolley.

Given the bias in elections, which the Right Wingnuts have been augmenting since 2020, the "I ain't giving up my F-150 and my dog for no trolley!" attitude, they rural rubes wouldn't even take it even if it's free. Freedom!!!!!!

I Told You So - 15 April 2022

More than once in these missives (and other musing elsewhere), I've opined that any vaccine, whether mRNA or adenovector or protein, that targets the Spike of Covid(s) is doomed to fail in time. A better target is necessary. It's just a matter of how much, if by 'fail' we agree that a proper vaccine is neutralizing. The approved vaccines are neutralizing... against wild-type Covid-19. They were formulated to that specific Spike, so they stop transmission so long as Covid-19 doesn't breed variants. The key to eliminating Covid, in the way smallpox and measles have been, is finding a stable, yet still neutralizing, target that isn't Spike. And, of course, getting said vaccine into arms. We might have, and this is just my fever dream, contained Covid if the Red staters had gotten shots in the first place. Covid had half a country's worth of morons to breed inside. No wonder it's won so far.

Of course, we soon learned that Covid-19 doesn't stand still, unlike measles which is frequently offered as the archetype of successful vaccination. Well, confirmation.

Companies are working on vaccines that would target more stable regions of the virus, including the stem of the spike protein, that doesn't appear to mutate as much. That might create more durable immunity that could stand up to to the shape-shifting of the viruses' variants.
[my emphasis]

The report doesn't say how it is that targeting Stem, or any location other than Spike, would be neutralizing. There was good reason to target Spike, after all.

Of course, finding a target that is both stable and neutralizing will be no mean feat. If at all.

π in The Face - part the second

Well it's been a week since the first π in the face, so let's get an update on the state level spread of Covid, from the CNN graphs.

The only data point you need to know (but go have a look in any case): only 10 states falling both on the 7-day average and last 3 day (and, as noted before, some are not contiguous days) bars.

Overall, infections are climbing over the last couple of weeks. So far not the Space Shuttle solids ignition that was Covid-ο. Fauci be praised.