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Renacci vs DeWine! Heavyweight fight!
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Ha!Originally posted by Dr. Strangelove View Post
As someone who has been there, I can tell you that empaneling a grand jury and charging are political decisions almost totally separate from investigation. Hillary was absolutely guilty of violating the Espionage Act, but she was not charged. That doesn't mean "they didn't find much of anything..." It means that the well-connected avoid prosecution. As I said here in 2016, the jury in the matter of Hillary's criminal activity was going to be the American people, and the jury spoke.Comment
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One of the authors DSL likes to cite, Charles Cooke, absolutely nails it on the infrastructure bill: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/...tm_term=second
There's so much truth in this and, of course, it echoes much of what I've said.Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.Comment
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No claim of expertise here but in trying to keep informed on "infrastructure" spending I've read that the term means different things depending upon what group is asking for or needs money to improve it. I also learned that most infrastructure is in private hands - there are exceptions. Something upwards of 70% of it is in private hands and regulated to varying degrees by federal or state authorities. Even though the feds may not own it, federal grants to support maintenance, improvement and expansion to the states is significant. Broadband is an example. Expansion into rural areas isn't profitable so, federal grants are common so that Lilly on the farm in Nebraska has internet access.
Asking for a detailed list of things that this infrastructure spending will pay for is fine up to a point. It's OK to identify $3B for interstate highways but no need to know the details beyond that that includes bridge trussing, the bolts that support those trusses - there's a shit ton of detail here as there is with any category, e.g., broadband, rail systems, port facilities, airports, clean water, I could go on.
I guess you have to trust Congress to know, in fairly specific terms, how much is going where and for what. Billions for green energy and nothing for carbon based energy is stupid and should be resisted. There are plenty of examples of how this bill probably already is or could become a socialist manifesto increasing government control of infrastructure currently in private hands. I think that is the danger here of this massive infrastructure bill but, I can see the need to upgrade and modernize. I don't call the exact numbers but spending on infrastructure as a percent of GDP has shrunken dramatically since the 50s. You can see the impact just walking or driving around. In Chicago when I was growing up, rail was how you got around. Nobody drove downtown. They took the train and the "L" (an elevated light rail system). In recent visits, the structures supporting the rails upon which the L rolled looked like they hadn't bee upgraded or repaired since I was there in the early 60s.
Clearly, the need for spending on infrastructure, as I understand that word, is there. What's making it difficult to address specific need and get dollars to places where it's needed most is that almost every piece of legislation these gets booged down in partisan politics. Nothing neew, I suppose but we tend to focus on that instead of doing the hard work necessary to responsibly allocate federal spending to where there is need regardless of that need being associated with the larger and outsized left or right wing agendas.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. JH chased Saban from Alabama and caused Day, at the point of the OSU AD's gun, to make major changes to his staff just to beat Michigan. Love it. It's Moore!!!! timeComment
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I’m not sure there’s a need to spend MORE absent some sort of actual finding by Congress. That’s how it works or is supposed to work. Then you can at least argue we should trust their findings. That’s not occurred.
The notion that we’re going to dump $2T on a problem that may not even exist in the midst of inflationary risks is crazy.
But, hey, everyone loves lunch!Dan Patrick: What was your reaction to [Urban Meyer being hired]?
Brady Hoke: You know.....not....good.Comment
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I can't disagree with this but you and I and everyone else here have seen the need for repairs and maintenance of transportation infrastructure and power grids. and telecommunications systems to name a few. Some of that is continuously underway so, the money is coming from somewhere and I suspect a good portion of it is federal grants.I’m not sure there’s a need to spend MORE absent some sort of actual finding by Congress
Hartsfield Atlanta Airport has undergone major expansion and renovation over the last five years. Parts of the airport are privately owned (terminal structures). Runways have some sort of mix of federal and state ownership/regulatory authority. I know who gets food and retail stalls in the airport is political - who you know shit.
I think it is hard to exhaustively list what infrastructure needs updates or repairs that is meaningful to the public ..... or to congressmen for that matter. I would assume state level regulatory agencies across all segments of the infrastructure that exists in their states have a handle on this but I don't know for sure.
Talking in general terms about infrastructure spending is fraught with pitfalls and places where pork can be added. I'm not sure I'm worried about a $500K beaver dam that protects that species because Mildred from Green Peach asked her Congressional rep, whom she gave $10,000 to his campaign, to stick that in the infrastructure bill. As long as the state transportation department keeps the roads up and got a $3m grant from this bill to do that, I'd probably support it.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. JH chased Saban from Alabama and caused Day, at the point of the OSU AD's gun, to make major changes to his staff just to beat Michigan. Love it. It's Moore!!!! timeComment
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Any infrastructure billi will spend 5% of the money on actual infrastructure and the remaining 95% on critical race theory and gender bias training.Comment
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These "here's who the Trump DOJ was spying on" stories are really dripping out. This one may be unprecedented. At least I can't think of another time where one administration's DOJ was spying on the same administration's White House Counsel and his wife.
For what it's worth, Sessions, Barr, and Rosenstein have all denied having any knowledge about these subpoenas but I don't see how that's possible unless they're just being handed a list of phone numbers and aren't being told who they belong to and the bosses don't ask. Because it's hard for me to believe that you wouldn't need the approval of someone very, very high up the chain to seek a subpoena of the White House Counsel's phone records, emails, and data.
This McGahn one in particular happened in 2018 so at least Barr is off the hook
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Jeff, your thoughts on the "Delta variant"? And please, feel free to elaborate in detail.Comment
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Some of the information you're looking for is in my post below but the Delta variant is thought to be more transmissible and produce more illness from COVID than previous iterations. The good news is that vaccines work against the Delta variant. The problem is low vaccination rates globally. That Delta is more transmissible accelerates new case numbers and even though I don't put a lot of relevance to rising case numbers taken out of context, more case numbers in unvaccinated regions means more disease burden and deaths.Originally posted by Dr. Strangelove View Post
If you are in a region with low vax rates, like too many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, you should be worried about the Delta variant. If not, and you've been vaccinated, not so worried I feel pretty good about where the US, the UK and others along with the EU sit right now. But there is going to be a lot of suffering in low vaccination rate places to add to the poverty there already.Last edited by Jeff Buchanan; June 14, 2021, 08:55 AM.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. JH chased Saban from Alabama and caused Day, at the point of the OSU AD's gun, to make major changes to his staff just to beat Michigan. Love it. It's Moore!!!! timeComment
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Something interesting has emerged in COVID reporting. The MSM is providing balance. You folks here may be aware becasue you look for it but the folks on the periphery, the ones who really need to know, don't. I think we'd all agree the shift can be partly associated with the Biden effect. Good news trumps bad for this particular president.
Cases have stopped falling in the US and the Delta variant is thought to be part of the problem. The other is regional low vaccination rates. Alone this news could be more of the dire consequences shit we've become accustomed to from the press. But no ......for the first time since I've been watching (and bitching about it's absence in reporting on COVID) deaths and hospitalizations are loudly proclaimed as continuing to drop. The NYT had a graph that showed a steep rise in new cases in the UK - all of it due to Delta which describes 90% of new infections there. Superimposed on that graph of rising case numbers is deaths. That graph continues its steep decline. The UK is one of the few countries globally that has a high vaccination rate among it's population and the continuing steep decline in deaths is attributed to that. The message here is that falling vaccination rates in the US could slow a return to normalcy
Not mentioned in the NYT's piece is the path that Boris Johnson chose to pursue which was to get more shots into arms by significantly delaying administration of a second dose - that was recently reversed and at risk Brits are getting their second dose on an urgent basis. There's a good chance that the lack of a second dose is behind an increase in transmissibility and attendant steep rise in new cases. The takeaway here, also not mentioned in recent reports of this circumstance is that you can't draw parallels to the circumstance in the US which is approaching 60% of the population vaccinated at least once and 50% twice. The US also has a high per capita rate of SARS2 infections which is known to confer some degree - the level of it over time is unknown for now - but the US is theoretically closer to a level of herd immunity that may, by itself, tamp down R(0) in the coming months.
The takeaway here is that the vaccines plus high levels of herd immunity are capable of restoring normalcy more quickly than most expected. However, those who are able and refusing to get vaccinated are hindering that effort. The science does support that if you had COVID and developed detectable ABs, you're likelihood of contracting COVID is about 10X less than uninfected persons without ABs. However the data is preliminary, not peer reviewed and goes out to only 120d. After that the question is, how long does natural immunity last? We don't know - studies are ongoing but any loss of natural immunity might stoke a seasonal jump in infection prevalence this fall. We do know this: 6 months of vaccine availability has allowed small studies following people that got vaccinated in December. This group shows a stronger AB presence than those with natural immunity only. Vaccination significantly boosts an AB response from previous COVID infection IOW, vaccines produce a more robust immune response than natural immunity does. That unquestionably relates to lower rates of transmission across all age cohorts.
We know that relying on new case numbers as a measure of disease control and disease burden or lack of it is unreliable, there are better measures, right? Do politicians who ultimately make PH policy decisions know this? Is there a risk of an uninformed public putting pressure on these politicians and PH officials to "do something" when case numbers rise in the US? The answer is obvious. Keep case numbers low. Get vaccinated.Mission to CFB's National Championship accomplished. JH chased Saban from Alabama and caused Day, at the point of the OSU AD's gun, to make major changes to his staff just to beat Michigan. Love it. It's Moore!!!! timeComment
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Yeah, I think I saw a graph at the BBC that showed in Mid-April, only maybe 1 or 2% of active covid cases in the UK were the Delta variant and today it's 90% or more. Basically in six weeks time it became the dominant strain.
Incidentally got my second shot this weekend. Again felt kind of crappy for about 8 hours and then it was over. Definitely not as bad as after the first shot thoughComment
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The same Texas power grid (ERCOT) that collapsed in the winter is warning people to conserve electricity through the end of the week because they are expecting record usage from the heat
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