Trust no one. Institutions suck. We have no heroes. Give me Fauci and I'll take death. And if I'm I'm Mark Halperin, I'll whine.

[stevenkesslar]

This is a long rant about Mark Halperin.  It involves Anthony Fauci.  And the general pessimism about having any trust in anything or anyone anymore.

I said in another recent post I have a love/hate relationship with Halperin's journalism. I think he did the best job of any journalist covering the 2024 election.  Mostly that means his 2way platform was a way for countless undecided voters to say day after day what was on their minds.  And it was, in most cases, a lesser of two evils decision they were trying to make. I love it that Halperin just let them speak their minds.

This post and this video is what I really dislike about Halperin.  He arguably was Mr. Institutional Media until Me Too.  Then he was accused of being too handsy by at least five women. So he was cancelled.  My sense is he still deeply resents that.  He's a natural skeptic, anyway.  Which probably helps his journalism.  Maybe it turned him into a cynic.  Because basically it sounds like he is jealous of the respect and adulation Fauci got, especially during COVID.  So Halperin seems to be bending over backwards to tear Fauci down.

People Living In Pro-Trump Counties More Likely To Die From Covid, Study Finds

I suppose if we are going to go full on MAGA, we have to assume that Forbes is not a capitalist media institution to be trusted  It is a tentacle of the nefarious and dishonest Deep State.  Whatever.  If you Google Republican v. Democrat COVID deaths you get countless studies showing, in general, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to die from COVID due to vaccine avoidance.  Whatever.  Must all be Deep State bullshit.  You were also more likely to die if you were poor and Black, too.  So West Virginia and Washington DC both were at the extremes on US death rates.  Educated liberals up in Northern California counties had unusually low death rates.

I think Fauci's goal was to keep everyone, including Republicans, alive.  I wrote snidely at the time that if Republicans want to kill themselves in greater numbers, it sure won't hurt Democrats in 2022 and 2024.  In retrospect, I think it's true that Democrats turned off lots of Moms and some young men, as well.  Not so much due to vaccines themselves.  But due to what were seen as excessive school closures and excessive restrictions on younger people much less likely to die from COVID. 

If Halperin wants to document what he thinks Fauci did wrong in his professional life, great!  Go after him.  But this is a rant about how the media should lynch Fauci because he liked being admired and respected.  If Halperin has substantive reasons to think Fauci should not be respected - masks, school closures, gain of function - he should focus on that.  Instead Halperin is petty and whining.

As Halperin alludes to, which most if not all older Gay men know, Fauci got all kinds of crap from ACT UP and the LGBTQ community.  Rightfully!  Nobody cared about whether he had a diary.  They cared about whether he kept Gay men alive.  So this idea that Fauci has always been revered as some kind of saint is just bullshit, anyway.  Lots can be said about that.  But my own view is that, as this LGBTQ writer says, that too humanized Fauci.

Quote

It is clear that Dr. Fauci is familiar with the human side of an epidemic and recognizes just how vulnerable marginalized communities are right now. Let’s bring the courage, dignity, strength, and activism [of Gay activists] that Dr. Fauci praised into the fight against COVID-19.

 

 

 

Roughly the first 25 minutes of this video is Halperin's rant about Fauci, the media, and the "Washington insiders" he says he once "dabbled in," before his fall from grace.

I watched this video because I thought if there is some "there" there about Fauci and COVID, I'm more likely to get it from Halperin than from Rand Paul.  I was wrong.  What this confirms is that there probably is no there there.  And that Halperin is petty and jealous.  He uses this diary to grind his big axe about how the media institutions he used to be at the pinnacle of no longer give him the respect he deserves.  Because he was too handsy with women.

Based on what he can now read in Fauci's diary, Halperin goes after Fauci for being "obsessed" with celebrity.  An example of this is how he liked being called by Barbara Streisand.  He liked telling her personally he listened to her music.  I thought the words Fauci wrote humanized him.  But Halperin thinks it is a "scandal" that he even kept a diary.  Halperin is a good enough Washington hack to know a guy like Fauci doesn't survive and thrive under seven Presidents unless you are a very savvy bureaucrat.  The fact that Fauci kept a diary and was willing to release it proves that, in my mind.  He has nothing to hide.  To me, the diary humanizes him. 

There's a telling moment early in this video where Halperin reads the first part of what Fauci says about a swanky dinner he goes to at a swanky DC restaurant.  Halperin thinks this proves that Fauci was "obsessed" with celebrity.  Here's what Fauci writes: "Although some people may think this is great to have people treat you like Elvis Presley, it is really very unnerving."  Fauci worries that he could have gotten COVID, even though proof of vaccination was an entry requirement.  He states he's going to cancel an appearance at another swanky engagement the following night for that reason.  Sounds like a mere mortal with mere mortal fears to me!

It only gets worse.  Halperin lets his jealousy get in the way of his journalism.  He shows clips of Fauci saying on TV that the White House restricted his access to TV.  I assume most Americans remember that time Trump said, on TV, that we should maybe be injecting ourselves with Clorox.  So instead of assuming Fauci maybe wanted to be on TV to do his job, and give people sound advice to keep them healthy and safe, Halperin just assumes Fauci was on a crusade to be on TV.  If you just listen to the words of Fauci and CBS, the issue was the "restriction" put on Fauci.  As the CBS reporter accurately stated, people were very upset about Trump and Clorox.  They wanted to hear from Fauci.  They trusted Fauci, and not Trump.  Halperin lets his personal jealousy get in the way of his journalism, it seems. 

Should we assume Fauci liked getting death threats, too, because it made him feel like a celebrity?

This invites a question to Mark Halperin, if he wants to hold himself to a similar standard.  Were you keeping a diary when a woman subordinate to you claimed you rubbed your erect penis against her during a meeting?  And refused to get the memo when she kept telling you she didn't want to come upstairs to your room?  Can we read what you wrote about it?  And is that better or worse than Fauci writing about fawning over Barbara Streisand's music in his personal journal?  Why is what he did a "scandal"?  Because the women who said you were a pig with them didn't fawn over you?  Because Morning Joe cancelled you>  But respected Fauci the way they used to respect you?

What really bothers me is that Halperin seems to be doing his piece to tear down whatever institutions and heroes we have left.  Because he is jealous and angry, it seems.  It make me respect Halperin and trust Halperin less.

This is not an argument about specific policies Fauci failed on.  Or about some scandal with China.  It's a whining rant about how the fact that Fauci was seen as a comforting expert by many, including celebrities and media, is somehow a "scandal."  Google says Fauci's approval rating peaked at 78 % early in COVID.  It dropped to the mid-50s as Trump and MAGA tore him down. I'm obviously in the majority who view him as a comforting expert, and also a hero.  I think he tried to keep people alive.  

There was one other moment I experienced with Halperin like this, months ago.  He was talking about how he spends time every week learning to be good at AI.  He suggested his viewers do so.  Which sounded like good advice to me.  Then he said, I thought very smugly, some of you will lose your jobs because AI will do what you do better than you can.  But I'm going to have a job, because I'm training up.  And what I do is special.

It made him sound like a cold prick to me.  If that is the future, Halperin should not be bragging about it.  He should be reporting on it.  It made it sound like he would welcome a world where we have an AI oligarchy and mass unemployment.  As long as he gets to be one of the trusted reporters.  And, by the way, Halperin should know the last thing an AI oligarchy would want is a reporter who is unbiased reporting on what THEY are up to with their money.  And their survival bunkers, if what they are building goes awry somehow.

It's all a sad sign of the times.  I still think Halperin did the best job of any journalist helping me to understand what happened in 2024.  But I also think Trump and Halperin deserve each other.

Rant over.  

 

[RockyRoadTravel]

16 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

This is a long rant about Mark Halperin.  It involves Anthony Fauci.  And the general pessimism about having any trust in anything or anyone anymore.

I said in another recent post I have a love/hate relationship with Halperin's journalism. I think he did the best job of any journalist covering the 2024 election.  Mostly that means his 2way platform was a way for countless undecided voters to say day after day what was on their minds.  And it was, in most cases, a lesser of two evils decision they were trying to make. I love it that Halperin just let them speak their minds.

This post and this video is what I really dislike about Halperin.  He arguably was Mr. Institutional Media until Me Too.  Then he was accused of being too handsy by at least five women. So he was cancelled.  My sense is he still deeply resents that.  He's a natural skeptic, anyway.  Which probably helps his journalism.  Maybe it turned him into a cynic.  Because basically it sounds like he is jealous of the respect and adulation Fauci got, especially during COVID.  So Halperin seems to be bending over backwards to tear Fauci down.

People Living In Pro-Trump Counties More Likely To Die From Covid, Study Finds

I suppose if we are going to go full on MAGA, we have to assume that Forbes is not a capitalist media institution to be trusted  It is a tentacle of the nefarious and dishonest Deep State.  Whatever.  If you Google Republican v. Democrat COVID deaths you get countless studies showing, in general, Republicans were far more likely than Democrats to die from COVID due to vaccine avoidance.  Whatever.  Must all be Deep State bullshit.  You were also more likely to die if you were poor and Black, too.  So West Virginia and Washington DC both were at the extremes on US death rates.  Educated liberals up in Northern California counties had unusually low death rates.

I think Fauci's goal was to keep everyone, including Republicans, alive.  I wrote snidely at the time that if Republicans want to kill themselves in greater numbers, it sure won't hurt Democrats in 2022 and 2024.  In retrospect, I think it's true that Democrats turned off lots of Moms and some young men, as well.  Not so much due to vaccines themselves.  But due to what were seen as excessive school closures and excessive restrictions on younger people much less likely to die from COVID. 

If Halperin wants to document what he thinks Fauci did wrong in his professional life, great!  Go after him.  But this is a rant about how the media should lynch Fauci because he liked being admired and respected.  If Halperin has substantive reasons to think Fauci should not be respected - masks, school closures, gain of function - he should focus on that.  Instead Halperin is petty and whining.

As Halperin alludes to, which most if not all older Gay men know, Fauci got all kinds of crap from ACT UP and the LGBTQ community.  Rightfully!  Nobody cared about whether he had a diary.  They cared about whether he kept Gay men alive.  So this idea that Fauci has always been revered as some kind of saint is just bullshit, anyway.  Lots can be said about that.  But my own view is that, as this LGBTQ writer says, that too humanized Fauci.

 

 

 

Roughly the first 25 minutes of this video is Halperin's rant about Fauci, the media, and the "Washington insiders" he says he once "dabbled in," before his fall from grace.

I watched this video because I thought if there is some "there" there about Fauci and COVID, I'm more likely to get it from Halperin than from Rand Paul.  I was wrong.  What this confirms is that there probably is no there there.  And that Halperin is petty and jealous.  He uses this diary to grind his big axe about how the media institutions he used to be at the pinnacle of no longer give him the respect he deserves.  Because he was too handsy with women.

Based on what he can now read in Fauci's diary, Halperin goes after Fauci for being "obsessed" with celebrity.  An example of this is how he liked being called by Barbara Streisand.  He liked telling her personally he listened to her music.  I thought the words Fauci wrote humanized him.  But Halperin thinks it is a "scandal" that he even kept a diary.  Halperin is a good enough Washington hack to know a guy like Fauci doesn't survive and thrive under seven Presidents unless you are a very savvy bureaucrat.  The fact that Fauci kept a diary and was willing to release it proves that, in my mind.  He has nothing to hide.  To me, the diary humanizes him. 

There's a telling moment early in this video where Halperin reads the first part of what Fauci says about a swanky dinner he goes to at a swanky DC restaurant.  Halperin thinks this proves that Fauci was "obsessed" with celebrity.  Here's what Fauci writes: "Although some people may think this is great to have people treat you like Elvis Presley, it is really very unnerving."  Fauci worries that he could have gotten COVID, even though proof of vaccination was an entry requirement.  He states he's going to cancel an appearance at another swanky engagement the following night for that reason.  Sounds like a mere mortal with mere mortal fears to me!

It only gets worse.  Halperin lets his jealousy get in the way of his journalism.  He shows clips of Fauci saying on TV that the White House restricted his access to TV.  I assume most Americans remember that time Trump said, on TV, that we should maybe be injecting ourselves with Clorox.  So instead of assuming Fauci maybe wanted to be on TV to do his job, and give people sound advice to keep them healthy and safe, Halperin just assumes Fauci was on a crusade to be on TV.  If you just listen to the words of Fauci and CBS, the issue was the "restriction" put on Fauci.  As the CBS reporter accurately stated, people were very upset about Trump and Clorox.  They wanted to hear from Fauci.  They trusted Fauci, and not Trump.  Halperin lets his personal jealousy get in the way of his journalism, it seems. 

Should we assume Fauci liked getting death threats, too, because it made him feel like a celebrity?

This invites a question to Mark Halperin, if he wants to hold himself to a similar standard.  Were you keeping a diary when a woman subordinate to you claimed you rubbed your erect penis against her during a meeting?  And refused to get the memo when she kept telling you she didn't want to come upstairs to your room?  Can we read what you wrote about it?  And is that better or worse than Fauci writing about fawning over Barbara Streisand's music in his personal journal?  Why is what he did a "scandal"?  Because the women who said you were a pig with them didn't fawn over you?  Because Morning Joe cancelled you>  But respected Fauci the way they used to respect you?

What really bothers me is that Halperin seems to be doing his piece to tear down whatever institutions and heroes we have left.  Because he is jealous and angry, it seems.  It make me respect Halperin and trust Halperin less.

This is not an argument about specific policies Fauci failed on.  Or about some scandal with China.  It's a whining rant about how the fact that Fauci was seen as a comforting expert by many, including celebrities and media, is somehow a "scandal."  Google says Fauci's approval rating peaked at 78 % early in COVID.  It dropped to the mid-50s as Trump and MAGA tore him down. I'm obviously in the majority who view him as a comforting expert, and also a hero.  I think he tried to keep people alive.  

There was one other moment I experienced with Halperin like this, months ago.  He was talking about how he spends time every week learning to be good at AI.  He suggested his viewers do so.  Which sounded like good advice to me.  Then he said, I thought very smugly, some of you will lose your jobs because AI will do what you do better than you can.  But I'm going to have a job, because I'm training up.  And what I do is special.

It made him sound like a cold prick to me.  If that is the future, Halperin should not be bragging about it.  He should be reporting on it.  It made it sound like he would welcome a world where we have an AI oligarchy and mass unemployment.  As long as he gets to be one of the trusted reporters.  And, by the way, Halperin should know the last thing an AI oligarchy would want is a reporter who is unbiased reporting on what THEY are up to with their money.  And their survival bunkers, if what they are building goes awry somehow.

It's all a sad sign of the times.  I still think Halperin did the best job of any journalist helping me to understand what happened in 2024.  But I also think Trump and Halperin deserve each other.

Rant over.  

 

Get a room. 

It's probably time for me to read Fauci's book, On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public service. 

[stevenkesslar]

59 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

 

It's probably time for me to read Fauci's book, On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public service. 

Or read Rand Paul's X.

 

To me, that proves Fauci's case.  This is a petty and personal attack.  

I do have mixed feelings about this.  It is never a good thing when someone refuses to answer questions of members of Congress.  There are threats that they will try to get for Fauci for THAT.  I'm not a lawyer, but I think Fauci's lawyers probably knew what they were doing.  

I said it above and I will repeat it.  Fauci has proven he is the kind of savvy bureaucrat who could survive and thrive under seven Presidents of both parties. He has testified hundreds of times and never before taken the 5th.  And he explained why he did it this time.  You guys are trying to entrap me, and use anything I say to try to support your baseless theories.  And throw me in jail if you can.  So fuck you.  I am keeping my mouth shut.

The image above suggests Rand Paul has no case.  If there were secret meetings with the Chinese government or Epstein files that showed Fauci knew there was a lab leak in Wuhan and he was covering it up, Rand Paul would put that on his X.  And I would agree with Rand Paul that the American people and the world have the right to know.  As of today, a majority of Americans do think COVID did originate from a lab leak.  I personally think it's possible.  But China will make sure we never know.

Unrelated point.  Back in 2021 or so, America looked good and China looked bad.  Frankly, I'm a patriot.  So I liked that.  The world thought China birthed a virus and covered it up.  The US, under Trump, and as part of a global initiative, quickly came up with a vaccine that I think saved countless lives.  Fauci was at the heart of that.  Now it is the opposite.  The US looks like shit.  And we deserve to look like shit.  We start stupid wars that raise the price of food and gas all over the world.  Because we have a strategic midget with no impulse control as our leader.

So Rand Paul looks like one more part of this stinky pile of shit.  He ain't got nothing on Fauci.  

Paul released Fauci's diary to intimidate Fauci, in Fauci's words.  I don't think it was Fauci's intention.  There is some stuff in it about COVID, and not Barbara Streisand.  At one point early on he says something about how the Wuhan wet market has to be an accelerator, not the cause.  But the virus had to jump from animals to humans somewhere, he wrote.

To me, that probably discredits any theory that Fauci is hiding something about some gain of function project he knew about or funded that went awry.  You could build a paranoid theory that somehow Fauci constructed a fake diary full of bullshit and lies knowing that years later Rand Paul would get the diary and release it.  So it cleverly suggests Fauci really didn't know where this virus came from, and he was speculating in his own diary.  Team MAGA would like the conspiracy theory. Trust no one.  Institutions suck.  Tear them down. 

Or, you could believe Fauci is just telling the truth.  And he's gonna tell Rand Paul to go fuck himself.

59 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

Get a room. 

You mistake me for my MUCH more beautiful and MUCH younger Sister In Cock, I think.

She will publicly brag about her liaisons with sexy public officials, like Mayor Mamdani.

I'm just not a kiss and tell kind of gal.  😉

[RockyRoadTravel]

3 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

Or read Rand Paul's X.

 

To me, that proves Fauci's case.  This is a petty and personal attack.  

I do have mixed feelings about this.  It is never a good thing when someone refuses to answer questions of members of Congress.  There are threats that they will try to get for Fauci for THAT.  I'm not a lawyer, but I think Fauci's lawyers probably knew what they were doing.  

I said it above and I will repeat it.  Fauci has proven he is the kind of savvy bureaucrat who could survive and thrive under seven Presidents of both parties. He has testified hundreds of times and never before taken the 5th.  And he explained why he did it this time.  You guys are trying to entrap me, and use anything I say to try to support your baseless theories.  And throw me in jail if you can.  So fuck you.  I am keeping my mouth shut.

The image above suggests Rand Paul has no case.  If there were secret meetings with the Chinese government or Epstein files that showed Fauci knew there was a lab leak in Wuhan and was covering it up, Rand Paul would put that on his X.  And I would agree with Rand Paul that the American people have the right to know.  As of today, a majority of Americans do think COVID did originate from a lab leak.  I personally think it's possible.  But China will make sure we never know.

Unrelated point.  Back in 2021 or so, America looked good and China looked bad.  Frankly, I'm a patriot.  So I liked that.  The world thought China birthed a virus and covered it up.  The US, under Trump, and as part of a global initiative, quickly came up with a vaccine that I think saved countless lives.  Fauci was at the heart of that.  Now it is the opposite.  The US looks like shit.  And we deserve to look like shit.  We start stupid wars that raise the price of food and gas all over the world.  Because we have a strategic midget with no impulse control as our leader.

So Rand Paul looks like one more part of this stinky pile of shit.  He ain't got nothing on Fauci.  

Paul released Fauci's diary to intimidate Fauci, in Fauci's words.  I don't think it was Fauci's intention.  There is some stuff in it about COVID, and not Barbara Streisand.  At one point early on he says something about how the Wuhan wet market has to be an accelerator, not the cause.  But the virus had to jump from animals to humans somewhere, he wrote.

To me, that probably discredits any theory that Fauci is hiding something about some gain of function project he knew about or funded that went awry.  You could build a paranoid theory that somehow Fauci constructed a fake diary full of bullshit and lies knowing that years later Rand Paul would get the diary and release it.  So it cleverly suggests Fauci really didn't know where this virus came from, and was speculating in his own diary.  Team MAGA would like the conspiracy theory. Trust no one.  Institutions suck.  Tear them down. 

Or, you could believe Fauci is just telling the truth.  And he's gonna tell Rand Paul to go fuck himself.

You mistake me for my MUCH beautiful and MUCH younger Sister In Cock, I think.

She will publicly brag about her liaisons with sexy public officials, like Mayor Mamdani.

I'm just not a kiss and tell kind of gal.  😉

I am not a supporter of Rand Paul and I also would expect more from him than that stupid image. He does seem to have some sort of philosophical consistency beyond just mindlessly repeating whatever the MAGA talking points are to cover up for The Great Incompetent.  Am I being too much of a fan girl here? 

[RockyRoadTravel]

7 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

Unrelated point.  Back in 2021 or so, America looked good and China looked bad.  We start stupid wars that raise the price of food and gas all over the world.  Because we have a strategic midget with no impulse control as our leader.

 

The USA looked like shit during the pandemic as well.  The Great Incompetent's incompetence with managing a public health emergency left a million Americans dead. At a higher rate than similar countries.  Remember one of The Great Incompetent's first acts as President (before COVID hit) was to dismantle the coordinated response plan to pandemics amongst USA government agencies.  

[Suckrates]

I suppose when you have NO solutions for the current problems of Iran War and inflated economy,  you waste time litigating old shit from years ago like the 2020 election and covid....

Just more distractions and a waste of taxpayer money, which we are told there is none of to provide us Healthcare, childcare and education.....

Seems there is ALWAYS money for Trumps Ego projects  and Wars ?... that is, when Trump isnt STEALING it !    

[stevenkesslar]

35 minutes ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

The USA looked like shit during the pandemic as well.  The Great Incompetent's incompetence with managing a public health emergency left a million Americans dead. At a higher rate than similar countries.  Remember one of The Great Incompetent's first acts as President (before COVID hit) was to dismantle the coordinated response plan to pandemics amongst USA government agencies.  

I'll respond to this separately than your first post, which is more complicated and interesting.

Note that I said "back in 2021" or so.

 

I was not trying to defend Trump.  I agree with your points.  All you need is the Clorox moment to prove what an asshole Trump is and was.

The first poll in 2021 supports my point.  Biden was viewed as a much more stable leader.  Poor Joe.  If he had only been a bit younger, and voluntarily been a one term President. 

That said, I do think of the COVID vaccine as one of Trump's biggest accomplishments.  It happened under his leadership.  It is a sign of how fucked up MAGA is that instead of praising Trump for that, they go after Fauci with pitchforks.  And this is a matter of life and death.  They literally died to defend the idea that these vaccines are bullshit.

The second poll excludes 2020 or 2021.  But if I hunt, or you do, I am certain around 2021 there were polls that showed global opinion of China got really low around COVID, because of a global belief in a coverup.  So I think by 2021 when the vaccines were getting out all over the world it is true that the US under Biden looked better, and China under Xi and a seeming COVID coverup looked worse.  Again, I know your point was about The Great Incompetent.  And I agree.

I will now bring in for a few paragraphs a rant from a different post about Iran.  Because, to me, this is even more tragic.  And it could have even more fatal consequences. 

Piers Morgan did this great interview where you had these two US generals, one a Bush-era hawk and the other a Democrat who ran a successful air war to stop a genocide in Kosovo.  They both made great arguments that we can't let Iran get a nuclear bomb.  The President ought to be able to rally the nation and the world.  I don't disagree, in theory.  But we have the precedent of Bush 43 and Iraq, which was a disaster - after he at least tried to rally the nation and the world.  Trump didn't even try.  And his own Veep and Secretary of State told him this intelligence you are getting from The Genocide Jew is bullshit.  And this will be a disaster. 

N.O.F.U.C.K.I.N.G.I.M.P.U.L.S.E.C.O.N.T.R.O.L.

So during this debate Piers Morgan set up Robert Pape says if we continue down this escalation trap with Iran we are flirting with economic disaster.  Recession.  Depression.  And the whole world will blame the US for it.  You could see the generals shaking their heads.  And I don't disagree with the generals, on military strategy.  It won't be a better world when Tehran can nuke New York or London.  But this is the difference between a general and a political scientist.  Pape is right.  That poll about China and the US above proves it.  China is winning and the US is losing.  And we deserve to lose. 

Pape thinks if Democrats win in November they will starve the war to death, just like VietNam in 1974.  I hope so.  I am sending money to Democrats every month.  But solving THAT problem does not solve the nuclear problem.  Trump may go down in history as the strategic idiot who empowered Iran to have nukes.  And maybe the Strait of Hormuz, too.

So, yes.  America is a shit hole.  And Trump is President Shit Hole.   And the best hope now is we avoid even worse disasters.  

There are many Americans like me who appreciate the fact that leaders from places like Mexico and Canada are being clever and smart about trying to keep this from going too far off the rails.  That is what friends and allies are for.

 

 

[Suckrates]

4 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

So, yes.  America is a shit hole.  And Trump is President Shit Hole.   And the best hope now is we avoid even worse disasters.  

There are many Americans like me who appreciate the fact that leaders from places like Mexico and Canada are being clever and smart about trying to keep this from going too far off the rails.  That is what friends and allies are for.

 

 

 

So we are LUCKY ?   🤪

[stevenkesslar]

1 minute ago, Suckrates said:

 

So we are LUCKY ?   🤪

No.  We are fucked.

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

I am not a supporter of Rand Paul and I also would expect more from him than that stupid image. He does seem to have some sort of philosophical consistency beyond just mindlessly repeating whatever the MAGA talking points are to cover up for The Great Incompetent.  Am I being too much of a fan girl here? 

Chairman Paul Delivers Opening Remarks During Whistleblower Hearing on the Multi-Agency Cover-Up of COVID-19 and Gain-of-Function Research

I really won't try to guess what Rand Paul's motivation is.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, the majority of Americans (and maybe the majority of most people on the planet) believe in something like the lab leak theory  The main thing I think is that if there was a lab leak, it's the same as the Kennedy assassination.  It was covered up.  And we will never know for sure.  It is one more thing that undermines trust in government, institutions, and leaders.  And both Rand Paul and Mark Halperin are throwing fuel on that fire, in ways that look petty and jealous to me.

The CIA comes into this, just like they did with the JFK assassination.  There probably is "stuff" there about covert operations and biological weapons and funding for research they don't want us to know about.  The CIA, Paul says, also thinks there was a lab leak.  So if the CIA and a majority of Americans think there was a lab leak, maybe there was.

Fauci was NOT head of the CIA.  Paul says this:

Quote

But… how can Anthony Fauci objectively comment on a discussion of COVID origins when he approved the very funding that may have created the pandemic virus?

Note the words "may have".  Paul does not know.  He is fishing.

So if there is a "there" there, that is where it is.  And this is not new.  Paul has been making this claim for years.  Fauci knew something.  Fauci lied.  Fauci is somehow at the center of some vast government conspiracy.

It's kind of foolish.  I can tell you I have actually choreographed hearings where the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, who by definition is someone to fear, rubbed the noses of redlining banks in shit.  It helped us to create billions of dollars in "public/private partnerships".  So even the idea that poor Rand Paul has no idea and no power to prove what his own government knew or did is kind of insane to me.  And if there is some secret hidden, I'd be looking at the CIA.  More likely, the secret was hidden by China.  I think that is what most people, including Trump, think.

So let me offer two journal entries, both by Anthony Fauci.

Quote

So Cher called me today.  I love that stuff.  I love it that Cher and Meryl Streep worship me.  I really can't get enough of it.  And it makes me wonder what would happen if anyone ever figured out that I secretly funded the research that led to this virus.  I can never let that get out publicly, can I?  What would Cher think?  What would Meryl Streep think?  Shit, I may even win an Oscar some day.  I can't let people know what I really did."

If there was a journal entry like that in Fauci's diary, I think Rand Paul would be putting that on X.

Instead, here is an actual journal entry:

Quote

In one entry — dated Jan. 26, 2020 — Fauci writes that the first Covid infection was “in early December and was not connected to the market.”

“Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier,” Fauci wrote, though the very next sentence in his diary is, “Having said that, somewhere the virus jumped from animals to humans.”

To oversimplify, six days after what Paul labels as this "infamous" phone call that has something to do with a cover up, Fauci is telling himself in his own diary that he doesn't have a fucking clue where the virus started.  I think the words on the page exonerate Fauci, and humanize him.

It may be that Fauci is smart enough to think that.  Maybe he has gamed out that he trusts the majority of Americans who trust him.  Let them read my words.  Let them know what I was thinking.  I have more faith in Americans than this dipshit Rand Paul and his conspiracy theories.  I'll tell Rand Paul to go fuck himself.

If that is what Fauci is thinking, I am on his side.  But unlike my MUCH younger and MORE beautiful Sister In Cock, I will never reveal - even in my diary - how I show Fauci my appreciation. 😉

My rant is that it pisses me off that people like Paul and Halperin just want to tear down institutions and leaders.  At least it feels that way to me.

Especially right now, when President Shit Hole has literally fucked up a century of coalition building with NATO and Europe and Canada and Australia and (name a country) and started this loser war in Iran.  As my Sister In Cock, who is truly more lovely than me, noted, shouldn't we be talking about that?

[stevenkesslar]

I'm on a big old rant.  So I will post three more things to make three points.

1.   COVID vaccines were like the World Cup.  It's a world thing.

Quote

Key Vaccine Creators and Locations

• Pfizer-BioNTech (mRNA): Created by BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, working alongside the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer. [1, 2, 3]

• Moderna (mRNA): Co-developed by Moderna based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Maryland, USA. [1, 2, 3]

• AstraZeneca-Oxford (Viral Vector): Developed by researchers at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca. [1]

• Sinopharm and Sinovac (Inactivated Virus): Developed by state-backed pharmaceutical companies and research groups in Beijing and Wuhan, China. [1, 2, 3]

So you see there the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and China.  If we are talking leaders in modern technologies, nothing on that list is a surprise.  It speaks to global collaboration.  I do think it is one of Trump's greatest achievements, even if it happened as much despite as because of him.  

 

2.  Fauci was at the center of saving lives all over the world.

 

Quote

From mid to late-2021, incidence rates for cases and severe outcomes were consistently lowest among those with a completed primary series and highest among those who were unvaccinated. Unvaccinated individuals were much more likely to be hospitalized or to die compared to those with a completed primary series in all variant periods. Age-specific rates of severe outcomes were consistently highest among those aged 80 years and older across all vaccination statuses.

 

That's exactly what I expected to find, and it took like one minute.  It's a Canadian study about how the vaccines played out in Canada.  

At the end of the day, it had less to do with whether you were Canadian or American, and more to do with whether you were vaccinated.  The US had about 3600 COVD deaths for every 1 million people. That made the US #16 in death tolls of all nations, I think.  Way higher than average.  I'm guessing I could find vaccine-averse parts of Canada that had higher death rates than pro-vaccine counties in Northern California.  That said, Canada's COVID death rate was about 1400 COVID deaths for every 1 million people.  So, yeah.  America did this to itself.  Like I said, it was an interesting and tragic combination of MAGA people in red states or counties, but also poor Blacks and Hispanics with less access to health care.

I said it above, but this is worth repeating.  This is where Halperin literally sucks and fails as a journalist.  The whole point about Fauci and TV is that Fauci's job, like Deborah Birx, was to be very public.  They were both on TV a lot, and they both urged people to get vaccinated.  Not to inject Clorox in their bodies.  Especially older people.  Turns out being on TV helps.  So Halperin's jealous and petty accusation that Fauci just had a big ego and liked to see his face on TV is really shitty journalism. 

Australia was an interesting case.  In the end, they had about 960 deaths per million.  So they did better than most nations at keeping people alive.  What was interesting is they could, and did, simply close the gates.  To vastly oversimplify.  But when they did open the gates, even a lot of older vaccinated people died.  So some of it simply had to do with age.

 

3.   A century ago, this was devastating to young people and young families.

 

Quote

Timeline of the Collapse and Rebound

• 1917: U.S. life expectancy stood at approximately 51 years prior to the worst of the crisis.

• 1918: The peak of the pandemic caused an 11.8- to 12-year drop, crashing the average lifespan down to roughly 39 years.

• 1919: As the acute waves subsided, life expectancy rebounded by 15.6 years up to 54.7 years, completely erasing the prior decline

 

That's a remarkable and tragic fact that no one talked much about.  The Spanish flu targeted young adults for reasons I'm not sure anyone still completely understands.  But in one year, thanks to so many young adults dying, the average life span in the US dropped by 12 years in 1918.  Then it rebounded just as quickly.

 

Quote

Recent Yearly Estimates

• 2024: 79.0 years total (81.4 for women, 76.5 for men)

• 2023: 78.4 years total (81.1 for women, 75.8 for men)

• 2022: 79.11 years total (provisional/trend estimates)

• 2021: 76.1 years (sharp drop due to COVID-19 and increased mortality)

• 2020: 77.0 years (start of the pandemic decline

 

The "sharp" drop from 2020 to 2021 was small ball by comparison.  And now life spans are higher than ever. 

I am really in a minority on this one.  But I would argue these facts speak for themselves.  What happened with COVID, to me, was an example of what government can do when you have good science and global collaboration.  The numbers speak for themselves.  COVID was a disaster.  One bad outcome we still have is lower test scores because young kids lost part of their education.  So you can argue government leaders dropped balls.  But, overall, we came out so much better than we did a century ago.  And at least some of that had to do with government and science, I think. 

So I just reject Halperin and Paul's message that this is an example of how our institutions and leaders suck.  And if we want to attack leaders who suck, I'd put Trump before Fauci.  Call me a liberal Democrat!

[Suckrates]

All these GOP Congressman and Senators at these Congressional oversight hearings just want to make a few "viral moments" which they can exploit with their MAGA base...

There is no other reason for this exasperating Circus of angry blowhards attacking good public servants who simply did their jobs, but not to the liking of Dictator Trump...

There is simply NO way anyone other than the small "sick" slice of MAGA voters pays any attention to their words or outrage....  Its all performative MAGA, a perverted and perverse sideshow perpetrated to manufacture ANGER, and a continued support of Trump.   ONLY roughly less than 30% of citizens BUYS it anymore....and there is nothing that can be done to break that "unbreakable" slice.

Trump is all about distractions, so for the remainder of his term, we can expect this kangaroo court nonsense to continue.   

[RockyRoadTravel]

3 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

I'm on a big old rant.  So I will post three more things to make three points.

1.   COVID vaccines were like the World Cup.  It's a world thing.

So you see there the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and China.  If we are talking leaders in modern technologies, nothing on that list is a surprise.  It speaks to global collaboration.  I do think it is one of Trump's greatest achievements, even if it happened as much despite as because of him.  

 

2.  Fauci was at the center of saving lives all over the world.

 

 

That's exactly what I expected to find, and it took like one minute.  It's a Canadian study about how the vaccines played out in Canada.  

At the end of the day, it had less to do with whether you were Canadian or American, and more to do with whether you were vaccinated.  The US had about 3600 COVD deaths for every 1 million people. That made the US #16 in death tolls of all nations, I think.  Way higher than average.  I'm guessing I could find vaccine-averse parts of Canada that had higher death rates than pro-vaccine counties in Northern California.  That said, Canada's COVID death rate was about 1400 COVID deaths for every 1 million people.  So, yeah.  America did this to itself.  Like I said, it was an interesting and tragic combination of MAGA people in red states or counties, but also poor Blacks and Hispanics with less access to health care.

I said it above, but this is worth repeating.  This is where Halperin literally sucks and fails as a journalist.  The whole point about Fauci and TV is that Fauci's job, like Deborah Birx, was to be very public.  They were both on TV a lot, and they both urged people to get vaccinated.  Not to inject Clorox in their bodies.  Especially older people.  Turns out being on TV helps.  So Halperin's jealous and petty accusation that Fauci just had a big ego and liked to see his face on TV is really shitty journalism. 

Australia was an interesting case.  In the end, they had about 960 deaths per million.  So they did better than most nations at keeping people alive.  What was interesting is they could, and did, simply close the gates.  To vastly oversimplify.  But when they did open the gates, even a lot of older vaccinated people died.  So some of it simply had to do with age.

 

3.   A century ago, this was devastating to young people and young families.

 

 

That's a remarkable and tragic fact that no one talked much about.  The Spanish flu targeted young adults for reasons I'm not sure anyone still completely understands.  But in one year, thanks to so many young adults dying, the average life span in the US dropped by 12 years in 1918.  Then it rebounded just as quickly.

 

 

The "sharp" drop from 2020 to 2021 was small ball by comparison.  And now life spans are higher than ever. 

I am really in a minority on this one.  But I would argue these facts speak for themselves.  What happened with COVID, to me, was an example of what government can do when you have good science and global collaboration.  The numbers speak for themselves.  COVID was a disaster.  One bad outcome we still have is lower test scores because young kids lost part of their education.  So you can argue government leaders dropped balls.  But, overall, we came out so much better than we did a century ago.  And at least some of that had to do with government and science, I think. 

So I just reject Halperin and Paul's message that this is an example of how our institutions and leaders suck.  And if we want to attack leaders who suck, I'd put Trump before Fauci.  Call me a liberal Democrat!

You're on a big ole rant.  Good thing I was sitting down. The shock of it all.

As much as I appreciate the facts and arguments you bring up. It's also bringing on a bit of PTSD of other COVID discussions with cherry picking hypocrites.  The one that always made my eyes roll cherry picking promotion of Sweden's model of a non-shut down.  While at the same time actively ignoring that the Swedish model was based on universal free public health insurance, paid sick time, an almost 70% unionization rate etc. etc. etc.    

I will read your rants tomorrow when I've had time to calm down.   

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

I will read your rants tomorrow when I've had time to calm down.   

I was curious so I spent a few more hours going down rabbit holes.  Several  other boring conclusions.

 

1.  Maybe there was a CIA coverup.  And there should be more oversight, regardless.

I did not make it clear.  That Rand Paul press release I posted above was from a May hearing with a CIA whistleblower, James Erdman.  Not Fauci.  Here's the whistleblower:

https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYSRl_SRcJS/  

Everything he says makes sense to me.  The main complaint regards "CIA refusal to comply with lawful oversight".  What a shocker!  He says the CIA downplayed or dismissed analysis that a lab leak was the probable cause.  So if they want more oversight of any part of the CIA, I'm all for that.

It suggests, but does not prove, that maybe the CIA is funding bioterror research that they don't want to talk about publicly.  Just a guess.

The main bitch about Fauci is that he is alleged to have helped form a scientific consensus that Erdman, and Paul of course, don't agree with. 

The closest you can get to "Fauci lied" is this.  If I assume the worst about Fauci, that he didn't want people - or Senators - looking into what kind of research his agency funded, he sure lost that fight.  I know very little about China.  Llike most Americans I suspect.  But for some strange reason, for years I have known all kinds of things about bat research in Wuhan.

I hope one thing that came out of 2020 was more oversight of these weird science experiments with possible bioterror weapons. And, by the way, 2020 could be child's play compared to what kind of bioterror tools AI might be able to create soon.  Why don't we have more oversight of that, too?

 

2.  There is no there there with a Fauci coverup.

Rand Paul and the Wall Street Journal cite these facts to argue that Fauci put pressure on other scientists to change their views to conform to his dogma.

https://www.paul.senate.gov/266583-2/

So what you have is one scientist who thinks maybe there is a 30 % chance of a lab leak.  Another thinks maybe a 10 - 20 % chance.  Fauci himself says publicly and privately it can't be ruled out.  When four scientists write a paper, including these two, it concludes the virus was not created in a lab.  It's fair to say maybe the paper should have expressed more doubt. 

Regardless of what any one paper said, there was a very public debate about the lab leak theory.  Fetterman said at the hearing maybe we should not be so quick to label some ideas as "red" or "blue".  That's true.  Again, polls say something like 2 in 3 Americans believe the theory.  Fauci himself said publicly and wrote in his private notes that he leaned to the idea of natural origin, and that "alternate theories were not equally probable."  All this suggests you have scientists who have doubts, and don't feel 100 % certain.  Including Fauci.  Doubt is not a conspiracy.  In science, it's a plus.

 

3.  Rand Paul would better serve America by calling for Trump and Elon Musk to be prosecuted for mass murder.

Elon Musk said in a recent interview that there were zero deaths due to DOGE cuts in health programs like PEPFAR.  Why don't we have hearings on that?

Here's what Google says.

Sweeping U.S. foreign aid cuts and freezes to programs like PEPFAR and USAID driven by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have severely disrupted HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa. Predictive public health models estimate tens of thousands of excess HIV deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, with broader modeling tracking hundreds of thousands of total preventable deaths globally from suspended medical logistics

Here's something Fauci said at a 2024 speech:

Quote

“President George W. Bush asked me to go to Africa and determine if we could put together a feasible and implementable plan that could save lives,” Fauci said. He claimed that President Bush believed the U.S. had a moral responsibility as a wealthy nation to not allow people to die of a treatable disease “because of where they happen to be born.”

Quote

Twenty years after the introduction of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), $115 billion have been invested in the global HIV/AIDS response and, subsequently, 25 million lives have been saved. “That tells you what the leadership of a president can do,” Fauci said.

 

AND THAT IS MY POINT!

This started with a rant about Mark Halperin being jealous and petty.  Our heroes are hollow.  Our institutions suck.  The media sucks.

Maybe Mark Halperin would argue Fauci is just a publicity whore for saying he had something to do with saving the lives of millions of AIDS patients.

I'm no fan of George W. Bush.  But as Fauci says, that's a great example of what leaders and governments can and did do.

But not this President.  And not Elon Musk.

[stevenkesslar]

I've made my point about this already, more than once.  🫢

But I have paid a lot of attention to this during the week.  So I will ramble on.

As I said in my first post, what bothers me more than anything is the intentional breeding of cynicism, as I see it.  Maybe it is witless breeding of cynicism and mistrust.   But these people like Mark Halperin and Rand Paul and Robert Kennedy Jr.  ought to know better.  They all claim to be or want to be or were "Washington Insiders."  They all say they want transparency, which builds trust.  So they should know that all they are doing is taking one of the few people most Americans still trust and admire and trying to tear him down. 

If they had a reason to do it, I'd be all for it.  But they don't. 

I'm 100 % with Fauci on this.  No one attacking Fauci is reporting that Fauci wrote in his notes in 2020 that Trump's public statements during COVID were "spewing nonsense" and a "true embarrassment."   They focus on how Fauci did write that he was restricted from being on TV by Team Trump.  The logical conclusion from the words on the page is that Fauci wanted to do his job, and spew facts on TV.  Which he did.  While 1 million Americans were dying.  These so-called "journalists" and "leaders" are ignoring some facts and amplifying others to paint a completely distorted picture of reality.  How MAGA!

Across Partisans, Doctors Are the Most Trusted Source for Reliable Information on Health Issues; Fewer Trust Government Agencies and Officials

I thought that was an interesting and actually somewhat hopeful survey.  Just about half of Americans trust the CDC.  No surprise, slightly more Democrats (58 %) than Republicans (49 %) do.    No surprise, the vast majority of Republicans trust Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. to provide "reliable information" on health issues.  The vast majority of Democrats and Independents do not trust Trump or Kennedy.

I'd call this healthy skepticism.  The one thing I give Rand Paul credit for is that he has helped make "gain of function" a household word.  He held a hearing on what kinda sorta sounds like a CIA coverup of bioweapons research.  Maybe.  Shining a spotlight on what research happened in Wuhan and what role the US government played made sense.   Journalists should and did push back on Fauci's opinion that this was likely caused by a natural transfer from some animal to humans.

Gary Peters' opening statement at The Pitchfork Hearing is worth a listen. 

Sen. Peters makes opening statement in Fauci hearing

He notes that the Senate committee looked into this and learned from it, on a bipartisan basis.  He also says this is now a backward looking partisan exercise in sharpening pitchforks around partisan crusades.  He argues, and I agree, that Rand Paul is more interested in distorting truth than exposing truth.

The claim that somehow Fauci was involved, directly or indirectly, in creating the virus he was responsible for dealing with is nonsense.  In 2021 Tucker Carlson, being the intentionally deceptive piece of shit he is, claimed Fauci "created" COVID.   Rand Paul is smart enough to add "may" and "could have" and "possibly" to any sentence he utters arguing Fauci is somehow culpable.  Fauci is entitled to his opinion, which is that COVID did not originate from a lab leak.  Both publicly and privately he continued to say some scientists disagree, and while "less probable than the alternatives" it can't be ruled out.  Doubt is not deception, or a crime.

Here's a very long fact check article about the issues Rand Paul is rightfully concerned about.  One thing the length and detail makes clear is this is complicated, and nuanced. 

I'll amplify a few things that are opinions, but seem close to facts.  One scientist says NIH is not going to fund gain of function research that makes viruses more lethal to humans.  And they are certainly not going to do it China.  That seems like common sense to me.  Especially while Trump was President.  Another scientist says that even if some experiment went awry in China, it can't be tied to the specific research NIH did fund that used a subcontract with Wuhan:

Quote

Back in February, MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt told PolitiFact.com that a 2017 paper published with the help of the EcoHealth grant involved, as PolitiFact described it, “certain techniques that … seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function research.” But Esvelt said “the work reported in this specific paper definitely did NOT lead to the creation of SARS-CoV-2,” because of differences between the virus studied and SARS-CoV-2.

I suspect Rand Paul knows this.  Why he thinks Fauci should be thrown in jail, discredited, and humiliated is a good question.  Why he won't let go of this crusade is a good question.  Every President since Ronald Reagan said the opposite about Fauci, repeatedly and publicly.  Even Donald Trump, at least when he thought it was politically expedient.  Elon Musk is going to kill lots of kids in Africa that George W. Bush and Anthony Fauci have proven could be saved.  Tom Tillis, to his credit, turned Trump against him by taking a stand on how Medicaid cuts would hurt people in North Carolina.

These Trump people and ass lickers are cynical and power-hungry.

Lacking an argument, he MAGA Pitchfork crowd focus on the claim that Fauci kept a diary to admire himself.  Because he loves adulation.  Including self-adulation.

I don't even know if there is a "diary."  Kennedy said the "diary" had to be pulled off 11 servers over the course of months.  So they actually sound more like notes Fauci kept.  No one who wants to attack him is talking about how often he wrote that the death threats against him and his family were very concerning.  So the Tucker Carlsons will make up total bullshit about how Fauci created COVID.  But when nitwits listen to this bullshit and threaten to kill Fauci, then they want to say Fauci just likes all the public and private adulation.

They totally ignore statements like this:

Quote

"The 'swag' around me is getting really ridiculous. You can but [sic] Fauci T-shirts, mugs, donuts, sweat shirts, candles, pillows, etc. Geeeez!! I do not like this one bit," he wrote in late March 2020.

Nor did he like Trump "spewing nonsense" about Clorox.  Who committed what crime here?

Peggy Noonan just published an essay that, to me, reads like "1000 Points Of Libel."  She tears Fauci down, too, focusing on how lots of people - like me - chose to admire him.  Without mentioning that Fauci said again and again and again he did "not like this one bit."  The diaries humanize him.  He was no doubt both amused and honored by the sudden admiration.  Who wouldn't be?  People wanted heroes and truth.  We sure as fuck were not getting that from President Clorox.  And we now know for a fact that Fauci knew and wrote that Trump was "spewing nonsense" in his private notes.  No wonder MAGA doesn't like or trust Fauci

A so-called "journalist from The Atlantic just weighed in, too.  And I think it confirms my theory.  Petty and jealous journalists like Mark Halperin are just that:  petty and jealous.  In his rant against Fauci, here's what Mark Leibovich reported Fauci wrote after going to another "Washington A List" Party:

Quote

I (Fauci) tend to shy away from these functions since everyone gathers around me wanting to take photos and telling me what a wonderful job I’m doing.

Can anyone imagine Donald Trump ever writing that?  Or being humble or introspective in any way?  Like maybe before starting a stupid war that America has already lost and that is doing a massive amount of global harm?

Here is what Mark Leibovich has to say about what sounds like, to me, Fauci's amusement and humility in the face of sudden fame.  But also outright fear of things like death threats to his family.  

Quote

For the record, I (Mark Liebovich) too go to a lot of Washington brunches and book parties—yet I have never met Fauci. Am I not getting invited to the right “Super a list” parties? Whom do I talk to about this?

I'll take that as an admission of what this is really about:  jealousy, and pettiness.  

The title of The Atlantic essay is "What The Fauci Diary Reveals About Washington."  I think the title gets it right.  What I just learned about Fauci really told me nothing new.  But it did humanize him.  What this reinforced about Washington is that it is chock full of petty and jealous people.  Including journalists. 

Like Mark Halperin.  His fall from grace was that some women claimed he rubbed his erect penis on them when all they wanted was an assignment, or a job.  I'm all for redemption.  I think Halperin was and is a very gifted journalist.  But this proves he is also a petty, jealous, and tone deaf man.  

 

 

[Suckrates]

17 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

I've made my point about this already, more than once.  🫢

But I have paid a lot of attention to this during the week.  So I will ramble on.

As I said in my first post, what bothers me more than anything is the intentional breeding of cynicism, as I see it.  Maybe it is witless breeding of cynicism and mistrust.   But these people like Mark Halperin and Rand Paul and Robert Kennedy Jr.  ought to know better.  They all claim to be or want to be or were "Washington Insiders."  They all say they want transparency, which builds trust.  So they should know that all they are doing is taking one of the few people most Americans still trust and admire and trying to tear him down. 

If they had a reason to do it, I'd be all for it.  But they don't. 

I'm 100 % with Fauci on this.  No one attacking Fauci is reporting that Fauci wrote in his notes in 2020 that Trump's public statements during COVID were "spewing nonsense" and a "true embarrassment."   They focus on how Fauci did write that he was restricted from being on TV by Team Trump.  The logical conclusion from the words on the page is that Fauci wanted to do his job, and spew facts on TV.  Which he did.  While 1 million Americans were dying.  These so-called "journalists" and "leaders" are ignoring some facts and amplifying others to paint a completely distorted picture of reality.  How MAGA!

Across Partisans, Doctors Are the Most Trusted Source for Reliable Information on Health Issues; Fewer Trust Government Agencies and Officials

I thought that was an interesting and actually somewhat hopeful survey.  Just about half of Americans trust the CDC.  No surprise, slightly more Democrats (58 %) than Republicans (49 %) do.    No surprise, the vast majority of Republicans trust Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. to provide "reliable information" on health issues.  The vast majority of Democrats and Independents do not trust Trump or Kennedy.

I'd call this healthy skepticism.  The one thing I give Rand Paul credit for is that he has helped make "gain of function" a household word.  He held a hearing on what kinda sorta sounds like a CIA coverup of bioweapons research.  Maybe.  Shining a spotlight on what research happened in Wuhan and what role the US government played made sense.   Journalists should and did push back on Fauci's opinion that this was likely caused by a natural transfer from some animal to humans.

Gary Peters' opening statement at The Pitchfork Hearing is worth a listen. 

Sen. Peters makes opening statement in Fauci hearing

He notes that the Senate committee looked into this and learned from it, on a bipartisan basis.  He also says this is now a backward looking partisan exercise in sharpening pitchforks around partisan crusades.  He argues, and I agree, that Rand Paul is more interested in distorting truth than exposing truth.

The claim that somehow Fauci was involved, directly or indirectly, in creating the virus he was responsible for dealing with is nonsense.  In 2021 Tucker Carlson, being the intentionally deceptive piece of shit he is, claimed Fauci "created" COVID.   Rand Paul is smart enough to add "may" and "could have" and "possibly" to any sentence he utters arguing Fauci is somehow culpable.  Fauci is entitled to his opinion, which is that COVID did not originate from a lab leak.  Both publicly and privately he continued to say some scientists disagree, and while "less probable than the alternatives" it can't be ruled out.  Doubt is not deception, or a crime.

Here's a very long fact check article about the issues Rand Paul is rightfully concerned about.  One thing the length and detail makes clear is this is complicated, and nuanced. 

I'll amplify a few things that are opinions, but seem close to facts.  One scientist says NIH is not going to fund gain of function research that makes viruses more lethal to humans.  And they are certainly not going to do it China.  That seems like common sense to me.  Especially while Trump was President.  Another scientist says that even if some experiment went awry in China, it can't be tied to the specific research NIH did fund that used a subcontract with Wuhan:

I suspect Rand Paul knows this.  Why he thinks Fauci should be thrown in jail, discredited, and humiliated is a good question.  Why he won't let go of this crusade is a good question.  Every President since Ronald Reagan said the opposite about Fauci, repeatedly and publicly.  Even Donald Trump, at least when he thought it was politically expedient.  Elon Musk is going to kill lots of kids in Africa that George W. Bush and Anthony Fauci have proven could be saved.  Tom Tillis, to his credit, turned Trump against him by taking a stand on how Medicaid cuts would hurt people in North Carolina.

These Trump people and ass lickers are cynical and power-hungry.

Lacking an argument, he MAGA Pitchfork crowd focus on the claim that Fauci kept a diary to admire himself.  Because he loves adulation.  Including self-adulation.

I don't even know if there is a "diary."  Kennedy said the "diary" had to be pulled off 11 servers over the course of months.  So they actually sound more like notes Fauci kept.  No one who wants to attack him is talking about how often he wrote that the death threats against him and his family were very concerning.  So the Tucker Carlsons will make up total bullshit about how Fauci created COVID.  But when nitwits listen to this bullshit and threaten to kill Fauci, then they want to say Fauci just likes all the public and private adulation.

They totally ignore statements like this:

Nor did he like Trump "spewing nonsense" about Clorox.  Who committed what crime here?

Peggy Noonan just published an essay that, to me, reads like "1000 Points Of Libel."  She tears Fauci down, too, focusing on how lots of people - like me - chose to admire him.  Without mentioning that Fauci said again and again and again he did "not like this one bit."  The diaries humanize him.  He was no doubt both amused and honored by the sudden admiration.  Who wouldn't be?  People wanted heroes and truth.  We sure as fuck were not getting that from President Clorox.  And we now know for a fact that Fauci knew and wrote that Trump was "spewing nonsense" in his private notes.  No wonder MAGA doesn't like or trust Fauci

A so-called "journalist from The Atlantic just weighed in, too.  And I think it confirms my theory.  Petty and jealous journalists like Mark Halperin are just that:  petty and jealous.  In his rant against Fauci, here's what Mark Leibovich reported Fauci wrote after going to another "Washington A List" Party:

Can anyone imagine Donald Trump ever writing that?  Or being humble or introspective in any way?  Like maybe before starting a stupid war that America has already lost and that is doing a massive amount of global harm?

Here is what Mark Leibovich has to say about what sounds like, to me, Fauci's amusement and humility in the face of sudden fame.  But also outright fear of things like death threats to his family.  

I'll take that as an admission of what this is really about:  jealousy, and pettiness.  

The title of The Atlantic essay is "What The Fauci Diary Reveals About Washington."  I think the title gets it right.  What I just learned about Fauci really told me nothing new.  But it did humanize him.  What this reinforced about Washington is that it is chock full of petty and jealous people.  Including journalists. 

Like Mark Halperin.  His fall from grace was that some women claimed he rubbed his erect penis on them when all they wanted was an assignment, or a job.  I'm all for redemption.  I think Halperin was and is a very gifted journalist.  But this proves he is also a petty, jealous, and tone deaf man.  

 

 

Re-litigating COVID now while Trump is still in power, is a waste of money and everyones time.  Budgets to research infectious diseases have been cut by Trump,   he doent care about HEALTH,  especially the health of "the little people or ethnic folk"....

So what the fuck are we doing here,  allowing this charade, specifically designed to put Fauci in jail ?   We are allowing the GOP to grandstand and reshape and revise a narrative....    Media air time for THIS ????      SHAME.......

As for Halperin,  opinions are like assholes, ,every person has one,  and His asshole is "dirty"....

[RockyRoadTravel]

On 8/1/2026 at 11:15 AM, Suckrates said:

Re-litigating COVID now while Trump is still in power, is a waste of money and everyones time.  Budgets to research infectious diseases have been cut by Trump,   he doent care about HEALTH,  especially the health of "the little people or ethnic folk"....

So what the fuck are we doing here,  allowing this charade, specifically designed to put Fauci in jail ?   We are allowing the GOP to grandstand and reshape and revise a narrative....    Media air time for THIS ????      SHAME.......

As for Halperin,  opinions are like assholes, ,every person has one,  and His asshole is "dirty"....

I've got one word for this topic.  Ebola.

There isn't the planning and public health concern that was in place during the Obama White House years when the last Ebola scare was emerging. 

Now we have an Incompetent in the White House - sorry - what's left of the White House. 

[stevenkesslar]

I'm going to post several videos which I found interesting for specific reasons I will point out.

This whole thing has been litigated to death.  And I have now beaten it to death, again.

That said, I personally found it helpful and interesting.  I learned some things I did not know before.

The clearest and saddest thing about is is that this is culture war and political war, not science.  There are interesting debates that could still be had about the value of gain of function research.  Or about how we could have had a lower death rate with COVID.  Or about what we do to get test scores for kids back to what they were before COVID school closures.  But this is about none of that.  And I blame it on Rand Paul.  Which is a partisan thing to say.  But this looks, feels, and sounds like a one man partisan crusade to paint Dr. Fauci as Dr. Frankenstein.

Happily, my guess is the American people are ahead of the politicians on this.  While it is suspect, 87 % of people in one non-scientific poll said that Congress should grant Fauci immunity in return for his testimony.  I'm reading into what that could mean.  It suggests to me people understand what Fauci did say:  that Rand Paul is "unhinged", and is simply looking for any reason to paint him as Dr. Frankenstein and put him in jail.  So 87 % of Americans say take that threat away and just let the guy speak his mind.  I agree.

What is weird about that is that I think we have now heard everything we could possibly want to know from Fauci.  Including that he likes Barbara Streisand's music, and didn't like the public adulation "one bit."  We have certainly openly heard his views about gain of function research and the likely origins of COVID.  For like a decade.  But if we want to hear it again, give him immunity from Rand Paul and a MAGA lynch mob and let him speak. 

The one thing I credit Rand Paul for is putting the public spotlight on gain of function research, and the lab leak theory.  But, like before, if Fauci does speak, I think Fauci will make Rand Paul look like an unhinged zealot who thinks his opinion is God's word.

 

I started this thread as a rant about Halperin.  His website has an email portal.  And I sent him a bitchy email saying he did a great job covering the 2024 election.  But here he sounds jealous and petty.  Maybe he got a bunch of backlash.  Because, to his credit, in the video above he has almost completely dialed back the petty and jealous nonsense.  He gets one dig in at Fauci for going out to lunch with Brad Pitt after his testimony.  Ha ha ha.

I timestamped that video to 9:30 because I think the most interesting part of it is what Republican talking head Larry O'Connor has to say.

Quote

....He [Fauci] directed policies in this country that put us through hell.  How many people died without being able to have a loved one next to them because of the protocols he put in place?  And if he was wrong and if he got it wrong, maybe he should say that."

O'Connor's rant is longer than that.  But I think that is enough to explain the core of it.  I think that explains what is happening.  Probably with Rand Paul, too.

Rage.  Irrational rage.  Of course, rage is always irrational.  At least Paul can keep a lid on the rage, when his neighbor is not beating the shit out of him.  Robert Kennedy, Jr - who is no moral icon - just flew into the same kind of rage with Dana Bush because she focused calmly on facts.

What testosterone!  What men!  They probably have three foot long cocks, too!  What BDE!

But, sorry.  Here's my rage.  They are stupid dangerous barking dogs who got hundreds of thousands of their own Trump voting older Republicans killed by pushing their irrational and unscientific anti-vaccine theories.  So my rage goes like this:  YOU REPUBLICAN FUCKERS KILLED YOURSELVES!  Affluent liberal Democrats in Marin County did not die at anywhere near the rate as you OLD REPUBLICAN BARKING MORONS in red California or red states.  Why?  Because we listened to Fauci and got vaccinated.

I find it infuriating that Republicans now want to have a witch hunt and blame it all on Fauci.  You should have a fucking hearing on Trump.  Trump rape.  Trump lies.  Trump graft.  Trump Forever Wars.  Trump burning Iranian girls to death and lying about it.  Trump cutting Medicaid and killing poor Americans.  Trump cutting PEPFAR and killing hundreds of thousands of poor women and children with HIV all over the world. 

PEPFAR saved 26 million lives all over the world, AI says.  And you want a witch hunt against the guy who started THAT?  While you cut it and lie aboiut fraud and get hundreds of thousands and eventually maybe millions of poor people in Africa and Asia and South America killed?

YOU are the monsters.  YOU are the fucking Dr. Frankensteins.  YOU are the cruel irrational barking pieces of shit.

PLEASE.  Have a hearing.  Let Fauci say what he has said publicly and openly without threat of throwing him in jail or clobbering him with your irrational manly rage.

This is obviously about partisan axe grinding and political witch hunts.  Not facts.  And I am sure it plays well among the MAGA base.  Who want to believe Dr. Fauci is Dr. Frankenstein.  That's the other thing this video in its entirety makes clear.  As Hyma Moore, the one calm voice in the video says at 18:00, this is about politics.  And "we are on a fool's errand."  I agree with him.  If we want to talk about the five worst things we did wrong on COVID that caused more deaths, let's do THAT.

Doctor Fauci was Dr. Vaccination all through COVID.  The whole world proved that vaccination worked.  Americans were 5 times more likely to die than Australians because of vaccines.  Meaning anti-vaccine dogma.  Americans were more than twice as likely to die as Canadians because of vaccines.  Trump voters in reddest  parts of Michigan were about 7 times more likely to die than Biden voters in the bluest parts of Michigan because of anti-vaccine dogma.  These are established facts.  So blaming the disaster on Dr. Vaccination is irrational.  What a shocker!

Measles cases in the US are above recent historic norms for the second year in a row.  It's not a disaster yet.  But if fewer and fewer people get vaccinated, science says it will be.  But who cares about science, and facts?

It is very sad.  And it is very much America and the world, 2026.

[stevenkesslar]

 

I realize I have used way more than my bandwidth on this issue.  But I learned some things in revisiting it.

I'm posting this video specifically because of the part with Dr. Birx, who literally stood side by side with Fauci through much of this.  It is timestamped at about 19:00.

I think she is right that the fuel to this is anger, from the right especially, that somehow the government fucked up.

Birx says we ought to be trying to think about what we do next time and not sort ourselves to red and blue.  There is no county where everyone is either red or blue, she says.  True. 

But the fact is that in red counties in Michigan that supported Trump the most, people were 7 times as likely to die after the vaccines came out, because they did not use them.  So if the point of "debate" and "meeting in the middle" is to lynch Fauci - and Birx - because they told us lies that killed us, there is zero value in that.  It's like interviewing that evil bitch Elon Musk who smugly laughs and says there were "zero deaths." As if we should applaud his arrogance and ignorance and pretend we learned something or know something.

I like that Birx singles out John Fetterman as a voice of reason at this hearing.  Fetterman, like Birx, was pushing the "meet in the middle" approach.  I think they are well meaning and sincere.  I don't believe Ron Paul is well meaning.  I think he wants a partisan lynching.

Saager Enjeti on Breaking Points took his typical anti-government line and went with the idea that all these people someone screwed up.  But he had some interesting fact-based perspectives.  He said we were lucky because, unlike the Spanish flu, this virus mainly killed "fat and old" people.  While blunt, that explains why Australia had a death rate about one-fifth of the US.  And why many of the people who died were vaccinated.  And fat or old.  Australia closed the gates and waited until after most people were vaccinated to open then.  But the virus still killed old and fat people. 

The "zero facts" crowd wants to pretend somehow Fauci and Birx lied to them.  It's whining bullshit.

Assessing the impact of Australia’s mass vaccination campaigns over the Delta and Omicron outbreaks

Quote

In Australia, data consistently shows that unvaccinated people face a significantly higher risk of death from COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals. Studies tracking older demographics and specific outbreaks (such as the PLOS ONE population study) indicate that unvaccinated Australians aged 50 and over experienced an average weekly death rate 7.7 times higher than double-vaccinated people and 11.2 times higher than those with a booster shot

 

Even in Australia, which had an overall death rate 80 % lower than the US, whether you got vaccinated - after the vaccines came out - increased your chances of living 7 to 11 times if you were over 50.  The part about "over 50" matters a lot.  As Enjeti said, that made COVID very different than the Spanish Flu, which for reasons still unknown targeted and killed younger men and women like him and his partner Krystal Ball, both young parents, in particular.

 

Birx tells grandmother’s story in social distancing plea

Quote

Birx noted that her grandmother Leah lived with a lifetime of guilt, because she caught the flu at school and, in turn, infected her mother. Leah’s mother, who had just given birth, died of the flu — one of an estimated 50 million worldwide who died in the 1918 influenza epidemic, Birx said.

 

So there is a two minute video and a related new article there.  It explains why the right wing should lynch Deborah Birx, if they want a good lynching.

Why?  Because Birx followed horrible social distancing rules, as explained in the first video, because she was worried about killing President Trump or Vice President Pence. 

Why was she worried?  Because her own grandmother never forgave herself for killing her own young mother, when she brought the Spanish flflu home from school and unknowingly infected her own Mom.  Who died in 1918.

This is the kind of story our stupid dangerous dog loves.  The barking dog could care less when children die of HIV.  He would probably be barking loudly and happily when the pitchforks go into Dr. Birx for pushing the same rules that Dr. Fauci pushed.  Which the mad barking dogs now say caused death, when actually they prevented death.

To me, one of the worst moments of COVID, in retrospect, is when Birx told that story.  The story is simple.  Sending a child to school innocently killed her young mother, and meant the young girl felt guilty her whole life.  On the face of it, it explains why Dr. Birx felt passionately about masks, school closures, and social distancing.

I feel bad about a specific conversation I had with a friend who was the CEO of a well known education corporation.  He said in late 2020 these school closures would have devastating consequences for school kids and test scores.  I told him the store of Trump's expert, Dr. Birx.  Happily, I'm not Joe Rogan.  I don't have to worry about giving anyone bad advice.  Turns out, as Enjeti noted, this virus was less fatal to young adults than the Spanish flu.  By late 2020 we knew that.

In retrospect, as Birx gets at in the recent interview, I think those kinds of stories and fears did cause people to overreact.  As Birx said, we learned this along the way.  And, as Birx said, the partisan war prevented Americans from using that knowledge the way some other countries did.

My own simplistic and overly rigid view is this.  Everyone should have gotten vaccinated, just like we do with measles.  Had everyone gotten vaccinated, it would have made it far easier to keep schools and businesses open.  Older grandparents or obese Moms might have died anyway, after vaccination.  But all the facts say they had a better chance. Of course, the vaccines did not come out until 2021.

What pisses me off is the "zero facts" lynch mob wants all of us to live on their fact free diet.  Nobody tells me a fucking thing!

And Birx and Fauci were dead right.  Lots of Republicans went to the grave fighting for their principles.

 

[stevenkesslar]

Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt

And there ya have it.   A completely partisan witch hunt.   

It's telling that Paul doesn't want to go through the full Senate.  Because he knows he doesn't have the 60 votes.  A full Senate vote would also probably give Susan Collins one of her moments to show how she finds certain Trump behaviors "disturbing."

 

 

I timestamped that interview with Rand Paul to 8:00 because I think Rand Paul answers a question Piers Morgan asks in a way that really illustrates why Paul is on a witch hunt.

Morgan asks Paul why he doesn't do something that 85 % of Americans support (in a clearly unscientific poll):  offer Fauci full immunity in return for telling Americans "the truth."  That 85 % is an interesting number.  I'd guess about half or more of Americans, including me, believe Fauci did tell us "the truth" as best he could, given the ambiguities of a deadly and evolving virus that experts disagreed about.  But I'd guess a lot of the MAGA hardcore, who no doubt think Fauci lied to them, are pragmatic enough to say let's just focus on getting "the truth."

Paul will have none of it.  He says Fauci is not capable of telling the truth.  Rand Paul is clear in his mind that Fauci is a criminal.  So the only way he's willing to think about this is how do I take the criminal down.  That unscientific poll suggests most Americans just disagree.  They are more focused on "the truth" than branding Fauci a criminal, and taking him down.  There are no scientific polls to prove that.  Yet.  But I don't think Paul is winning either the political or legal argument.

What's fascinating is that if the goal is to get "the truth", both Morgan and Paul say things is this interview that I think are clearly untrue.

Morgan, who says he is or at least was mostly supportive of Fauci, says that science flip flopped.  First they said getting vaccinated meant you could not spread the virus.  Then they said "it makes no difference," to quote Morgan.  Neither are true.  I don't think Fauci or Birx ever said that this is simple and black and white.  The science now says that getting vaccinated reduced viral load and the chances that you would infect someone else.  But that became less true as the virus mutated into Omnicron, and itself because less fatal.  

Paul definitely wants to take all kinds of shades of gray things, assign them a "truth" as he sees it, and brand Fauci a criminal because he does not agree with Paul. 

The one thing I like about this is that Paul is beating a drum about the dangers of "gain of function" research.  But he completely lies about the past, as far as I can tell.  Fauci did fund some scientist from the Netherlands to do gain of function research a decade ago that many scientists thought was dangerous when the findings were publicized.  It seems clear that Fauci himself built a consensus that we should pause this research while we evaluate its value.  The research Fauci did fund years later that  subcontracted with Wuhan studied a virus that, according to scientists, was simply different than the COVID virus.  Rand Paul has never disputed this fact.  So to allege that Fauci "may" have been culpable for unleashing the COVID virus, you just have to make a lot of shit up.  

The saddest thing about this is it confirms that we are not at a point where we can do what Dr. Birx wants:  evaluate the science, and what we could have done better.  To me, personally, she was one of the best people.  But she made an emotional and personal plea that turned out to be at least politically wrong. 

I cited the story about her grandmother's guilt for basically unintentionally "killing" her own young Mom by bringing the Spanish flu home from school.   When Birx said that, I took away this bumper sticker:  "CLOSE SCHOOLS NOW."  Turns out, as we now know, COVID was thankfully not as lethal as the Spanish flu.  In 1918 the average life span dropped by almost a decade for one year because so many young men and women died..  Nothing like that happened during COVID.  The average life span is now longer than it was during COVID. 

Birx, like Fauci, seems to be the kind of scientist that is open to having an honest discussion about what we can learn, and how we can do better.  Fauci has done that, publicly, again and again.

I don't think that is what Rand Paul wants.  I think he has proven, in his own words, he is a zealot on a partisan witch hunt. 

[RockyRoadTravel]

40 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

Senate panel votes to hold Fauci in contempt

And there ya have it.   A completely partisan witch hunt.   

It's telling that Paul doesn't want to go through the full Senate.  Because he knows he doesn't have the 60 votes.  A full Senate vote would also probably give Susan Collins one of her moments to show how she finds certain Trump behaviors "disturbing."

 

 

I timestamped that interview with Rand Paul to 8:00 because I think Rand Paul answers a question Piers Morgan asks in a way that really illustrates why Paul is on a witch hunt.

Morgan asks Paul why he doesn't do something that 85 % of Americans support (in a clearly unscientific poll):  offer Fauci full immunity in return for telling Americans "the truth."  That 85 % is an interesting number.  I'd guess about half or more of Americans, including me, believe Fauci did tell us "the truth" as best he could, given the ambiguities of a deadly and evolving virus that experts disagreed about.  But I'd guess a lot of the MAGA hardcore, who no doubt think Fauci lied to them, are pragmatic enough to say let's just focus on getting "the truth."

Paul will have none of it.  He says Fauci is not capable of telling the truth.  Rand Paul is clear in his mind that Fauci is a criminal.  So the only way he's willing to think about this is how do I take the criminal down.  That unscientific poll suggests most Americans just disagree.  They are more focused on "the truth" than branding Fauci a criminal, and taking him down.  There are no scientific polls to prove that.  Yet.  But I don't think Paul is winning either the political or legal argument.

What's fascinating is that if the goal is to get "the truth", both Morgan and Paul say things is this interview that I think are clearly untrue.

Morgan, who says he is or at least was mostly supportive of Fauci, says that science flip flopped.  First they said getting vaccinated meant you could not spread the virus.  Then they said "it makes no difference," to quote Morgan.  Neither are true.  I don't think Fauci or Birx ever said that this is simple and black and white.  The science now says that getting vaccinated reduced viral load and the chances that you would infect someone else.  But that became less true as the virus mutated into Omnicron, and itself because less fatal.  

Paul definitely wants to take all kinds of shades of gray things, assign them a "truth" as he sees it, and brand Fauci a criminal because he does not agree with Paul. 

The one thing I like about this is that Paul is beating a drum about the dangers of "gain of function" research.  But he completely lies about the past, as far as I can tell.  Fauci did fund some scientist from the Netherlands to do gain of function research a decade ago that many scientists thought was dangerous when the findings were publicized.  It seems clear that Fauci himself built a consensus that we should pause this research while we evaluate its value.  The research Fauci did fund years later that  subcontracted with Wuhan studied a virus that, according to scientists, was simply different than the COVID virus.  Rand Paul has never disputed this fact.  So to allege that Fauci "may" have been culpable for unleashing the COVID virus, you just have to make a lot of shit up.  

The saddest thing about this is it confirms that we are not at a point where we can do what Dr. Birx wants:  evaluate the science, and what we could have done better.  To me, personally, she was one of the best people.  But she made an emotional and personal plea that turned out to be at least politically wrong. 

I cited the story about her grandmother's guilt for basically unintentionally "killing" her own young Mom by bringing the Spanish flu home from school.   When Birx said that, I took away this bumper sticker:  "CLOSE SCHOOLS NOW."  Turns out, as we now know, COVID was thankfully not as lethal as the Spanish flu.  In 1918 the average life span dropped by almost a decade for one year because so many young men and women died..  Nothing like that happened during COVID.  The average life span is now longer than it was during COVID. 

Birx, like Fauci, seems to be the kind of scientist that is open to having an honest discussion about what we can learn, and how we can do better.  Fauci has done that, publicly, again and again.

I don't think that is what Rand Paul wants.  I think he has proven, in his own words, he is a zealot on a partisan witch hunt. 

Metaphorically I wish that Rand was as smart as the virus.  I'd like to see him mutate into a less viral Senator and learn that to survive it's best not to kill your host (the rule of law and democracy).  

[Suckrates]

2 hours ago, RockyRoadTravel said:

Metaphorically I wish that Rand was as smart as the virus.  I'd like to see him mutate into a less viral Senator and learn that to survive it's best not to kill your host (the rule of law and democracy).  

And he needs to abandon that wetlook "jherri-curl".....

[Suckrates]

Its just funny to me that Rand Paul is pushing his "contempt of court" bullshit on Fauci,  when Bondi, Hegseth and Patel  pulled similar stunts on a variety of questions, and noone Blinked !