Home » Open thread 4/20/23

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Open thread 4/20/23 — 33 Comments

  1. Very disappointed that the Starship crashed. But Musk will try again, until he gets it right.

    I am already feeling down. Just finished the latest Bosch book. Probably the last one. Won’t say more. Then half way through the latest Rebus book and he is —–.

  2. booster separation is a big deal, you can’t get far without it, you do need to get it right,

  3. To be fair, it was a partial success in that it was able to launch off the pad with exploding. It just aborted (self destructed) after liftoff due to failure to seperate.

  4. When they tested the Saturn V engines in Huntsville Ala, they could feel the earth shaking as far away as Nashville. Hard to imagine rockets twice as powerful.

    Walter Russell Mead says he is going to write about what ails America. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-crisis-walter-russell-mead-via-meadia

    I used to pay attention to him. He spoke at UT at the Baker Center some years ago. Was introduced by Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit). We talked afterward as we walked across campus for 10-15 minutes. He was an Obama voter and said he liked George Soros.

    I doubt he has much insight that will be helpful. Either he is constrained by living in a hyper-Left environment and teaching at a hard left campus or he genuinely can’t connect the dots. He can’t help fall into the false equivalence trap. All the crazy wacky destruction of the Democrats is somehow equaled by the GOP: “On the right, such sentiments powered Donald Trump’s rise to the White House in 2016 and they continued to curdle during the COVID pandemic and the Biden years.”

    A complete absence of particulars in his indictment of the right.

    The way forward in America starts by committing to the truth and calling out the side that knowingly and purposefully lies, steals and cheats relentlessly. I’m not optimistic that Walter has the guts or the sense to do it.

  5. I remember when he was a hard core lefty out of groton and yale, mortal splendor, he was as crazy as anything on daily kos, but with better prose, then he had his ‘buy siberia’ fixation,

    considering we are going to saturn without previous stages like the jupiter and redstone rockets we are doing pretty good,

  6. A pet peeve — Just saw another of the ads. Feeding America and other hunger organizations have been pushing the lie that “1 in 5 children go to bed hungry every night” or “1 in 5 children in America don’t know where their next meal is coming from” or “1 in 5 children is food insecure” for a couple of decades now.

    I don’t mind what they are doing. Happy that they get excess food to people who can use it. But lying about America has very serious political consequences. And the lying corrodes what little is left of our civic moral character.

    Ten years ago we were spending nearly 25 grand for every person living in a household under the poverty line. I can’t find current numbers, but given the explosion of spending we are likely spending 125 or 150k for a welfare family of four. Maybe more than that. If people are hungry after that kind of outlay, we need to examine the system populated and managed by Democrats and their foot soldiers to learn just what the hell they are doing with all that money.

    And note — that spending is just in programs specifically designated as poverty relief. There are a lot of other programs which are even larger which have major income redistribution effects.

  7. Stan—In our pretty high income area, in addition to the many government programs there are also many other private organizations devoted to helping “those in need”.

    Nonetheless, in addition to the few older people I occasionally see, more often I see pretty well dressed ,apparently healthy, often college age people standing in heavily used parking lots and holding handmade signs describing some disaster—major illness, fire, eviction, flood, etc.—and asking for cash for rent, food, child care, etc.

    If the panhandler is a young woman she often has a young child or two in tow (and sometimes in a new, fancy and no doubt expensive stroller).

    So with the plethora of official and private help available, what’s up?

    Are these people who just don’t want to follow whatever rules and procedures might be required to get aid?

    What is going on?

  8. I laughed at how the Starship’s problem was described: “Rapid unscheduled disassembly.”

  9. kate:

    An unscheduled thermal and pressure excursion (Acme kaboom).

    “The front fell off ….”

  10. Snow on Pine @ 11:59: “…What is going on?”

    I wish I knew, but I think shame is a big part of it. When people no longer feel any compunction about “working the system” or, in more personal form, “scamming the rubes,” they get comfortable with handouts of all kinds. And to defend themselves against the residue of learned compunction and shame, they find ways to argue that they are victims and entitled to whatever they can beg, borrow or steal.

    I think we are all prone to such temptations, but thank God most of us are not boxed-in as badly as these people, or have had enough backbone instilled in us, so that we don’t all stand on street corners with a tin cup.

    I am not defending this behavior, I deplore it; but I am trying to understand it. Our systems of public assistance seem misconceived, unable to “map” properly onto the psychodynamics we observe.

  11. Owen—So what percentage of these “needy” do you think are actually legit, 25%, 50%, 75%,, 90% or more?

    Cynical old me thinks that probably upwards of 50-60% of these people are actually scam artists.

    The only person begging on the side of the road here that I thought was truly legit was an apparently older, heavily sunburned and gaunt woman with a bad complexion and what might have been a lot of insect bites, dressed in pretty ragged clothing.

    Now, she looked like she needed a hand, and wasn’t just some yuppie looking to score some extra cash, and my wife handed her some money.

    Of course, in could have been that she just had a superior game.

  12. P.S.—Then, of course ,there are the more aggressive mobile beggars, who hang around parking lots and come up to you, pace you, and start their hard luck “story” about how they need you to give them some money.

    There was a proliferation of these guys about 10 years ago in northern Virginia, but they have not shown up here in my southern state yet.

  13. P.P.S.—Stationed in Japan in the 60s, and you sometimes saw beggars in tattered military uniforms who were often missing one or more limbs, and propped up outside the Shinjuku train station.

    There was no doubt that these guys needed some help.

  14. I deliver Meals on Wheels. Those few who look as if they could well afford the meal actually pay for it. They do so to avoid having to go out–vision issues, maybe–or cook.
    One guy I know pays $250 a month for lunch five days a week–at our scale that’s more than necessary–but mostly the free meals are for the poor or those too infirm to manage.

    The Great Society, I am told, counts only cash income in finding eligibility for various programs. The result is that, if all benefits are counted, we have one third of our officially poor aren’t actually poor.

    And then the howler where, some years ago, it was discovered that $69 million of California food stamp money was used in casinos. I think the official response was to reprogram the ATM in the casino areas. Not to ask whether this indicated some folks might not actually need the program.

    And changing food stamps for cash at the dusty little grocery stores goes at a thirty percent fee. So people give up a hundred bucks of food for seventy bucks of something else, they’re so hungry.

  15. Richard Aubrey—Several years ago my wife and I went to our local food bank to donate a couple of bags of canned goods, as we had done a couple of other times.

    We pulled in in our old, pretty beat up Sienna, went in, and the place was stuffed to the ceiling with all sorts of fresh vegetables, canned goods, diapers, baby food, bread and pastries, etc.

    Just as we were leaving, up pulls a Hispanic dude driving a huge, shiny new heavy duty truck, and out came him, his wife, and four or more children— all looking well dressed and well fed.

    The weren’t hauling in bags of donations so,I assume that they were headed in to see what the pickings were like.

    That was the last time we made any food donations in northern Virginia.

  16. Owen and Snow on Pine,

    I think things work best when done as close to the ideal source as possible. Charity works well when done by charitable organizations because they tend to be staffed by people in it for altruistic reasons and they are very focused on specific results.

    For over 100 years the U.S. has been shifting more and more charitable roles to government. This is suboptimal.

    It sounds absurd, but something as simple as requiring aid recipients to sit down once a month and write, address and send a thank you note to a tax payer would be beneficial. To the aid recipient as well as the tax payer.

    For at least 10 minutes every month the aid recipient would have to think about the fact that there is an actual American, one of their neighbors, on the other side of that check. An American who has less money that month because of their need. And, for at least 10 minutes every month, when reading the thank you note, the tax payer would be forced to understand there are real Americans, their neighbors, in real need.

    Charities do a lot of good, but one very important component of how most all of them function is that they function on a very personal level. Government removes that from the transaction to the detriment of the donor and recipient.

  17. Quote:

    VERY URGENT: the FDA is raising the white flag on the mRNA Covid shots.
    Unvaccinated adults will no longer be offered more than a single mRNA dose. (Tell that to the 230 million Americans who already took two.) And almost no one under 65 is eligible for a second booster.

    ALEX BERENSON
    APR 18, 2023
    The Food and Drug Administration just all-but-gave up on mRNA Covid jabs.

    This afternoon, under the guise of “simplify(ing)” the Covid vaccination schedule, the FDA ended the two-dose mRNA vaccination regimen for unvaccinated people.

    Americans who have not yet been vaccinated can now receive only a single dose of the newer “bivalent” vaccines, which supposedly work better against the Omicron strain -though real-world evidence of their improved effectiveness is nearly nonexistent.

    https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/very-urgent-the-fda-is-raising-the

  18. One of the problems of welfare is to provide aid to those who need/deserve it means that many who don’t benefit, human nature being what it is.

    Many students in my daughter’s elementary school depend on the school breakfast/lunch programs. If those programs not available, would the parents divert money they’re going to other, possibly selfish uses, or would the kids just go hungry?

  19. As for private charity questions noted above, which is huge (check out the size of the nonprofit sector), I was a den leader for my son’s cub scout pack 20 years ago. The pack leader was the secretary/administrator of the church which sponsored the scout pack. She said they used to have a petty cash fund that she could use to help people in need who showed up at the door of the church. The church had to stop because the scammers were legion. And whenever someone fooled her into thinking they were really in trouble (e.g. can’t pay for the heat in winter), the phone would quickly start ringing off the hook with people claiming to have the same problem and asking for cash. The word had gone out that there was a sucker to be fleeced.

    A volunteer at another church in town that used to prepare meals for Thanksgiving said she would take calls from people asking for the free food. When they were told to come to the church to pick it up, they got pissed. “If y’all ain’t bringing it here, the heck with it.”

    But see — About 15 years ago I was visiting a large Methodist church that had established a local food pantry. No proof of need required. Wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone. That Sunday the minister reported that the local economy was in very, very dire straits because use of the free food pantry had nearly doubled since it opened. Imagine that — word got out that they were giving away free food to anyone who asked and the number of people asking had only doubled! Sounded to me like a good indicator that the economy was doing pretty damn well.

    The minister’s understanding of economics and human nature, however, not so much.

  20. Just when you thought the Secretary of Transportation had gone AWOL again, Bootygag shows up to ask Congress for $20 million for his department’s 2024 budget– to develop female crash test dummies. It goes without saying that Rosa DeLauro, probably the ugliest person in Congress, is pleased with the proposal because it “will start to fight the gender inequity among vehicle safety and crash victims.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/buttigieg-wants-to-spend-20-million-on-female-crash-dummies/

    If ex-Mayor Pete gets his money, I hope that at least some of the dummies will be trans or nonbinary.

  21. VV:

    That’s not waving a white flag. See this. They’re saying the older shots are now outdated because of new strains, and the newer shots cover those strains and are more effective. They are going to a flu-shot-type model, which was long predicted:

    The original COVID-19 vaccine was matched against the first strain of the virus first identified in Wuhan, China. That strain of the virus is no longer circulating — the omicron variant and its sub variants are the predominant strains throughout the world. The bivalent shots target both that original strain and the omicron variant. They were first authorized as booster doses in fall 2022 and research shows they offer stronger protection against infection and serious illness from omicron than the original shot.

    Now, they’ll be the only vaccines available in the US. Adults who haven’t been vaccinated and who want to get vaccinated can get just a single dose of that vaccine, rather than a series of multiple shots. Unvaccinated children will still get multiple shots. Children 6 months through 5 years of age can either get two doses of the Moderna bivalent vaccine or three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine…

    But a single, annual shot could help encourage more vaccination, says ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

    “Simple and clear messaging is critical when it comes to ensuring vaccine uptake,” he said. “Moving to a model that resembles the yearly flu shot campaign will help focus messaging and help increase population immunity ahead of a potential fall surge.”

  22. of course jasmine plaskett is suing taibbi, for telling the truth, that will learn him,

  23. Used to drive into DC for work on a route that passed under an overpass where a bunch of what were reported to be homeless veterans were living.

    Traffic being what it was, you often crawled through this bottleneck, or it was stop and go.

    One time we were stopped behind a pickup, and on the side of the road was one of these “veterans” holding a sign asking for work.

    We were close enough to see and hear what was going on, as the guy in the pickup yelled to the “vet” that he ran a construction business, and he handed the vet his card and told him that, “if he showed up for work next day, he had a job.”

    Whereupon the “vet” started yelling that “he “didn’t want no damn job, he wanted money.”

    Given all of these experiences detailed above, you can perhaps understand why I have a rather jaundiced view of people who claim to be in need of charity.

  24. @ neo at 5:48:

    I respect your right to your opinion. However, I trust neither the FDA (or anything.gov), nor abc news (or any mainstream “news”), nor “Science”, etc., to force NON-vaccines on the public which permanently mess with their DNA. I for one (of many) will never get another “covid jab” (“God willin’ and the creek don’t rise”). I consider the whole sordid mess to be a hoax/racket, “the better to control–and destroy– the entire country with, my dear”. (Nothing personal vs. you, just my opinion.)

  25. Quote from abc news article posted above:

    “Unvaccinated children will still get multiple shots. Children 6 months through 5 years of age can either get two doses of the Moderna bivalent vaccine or three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine…”

    This is criminal child abuse. “Keep the ‘Vax’ barons rolling in dough”; children are expendable.

  26. VV:

    I don’t support mandatory COVID shots. Fortunately, for the most part, at this point they are not mandatory.

    And I don’t think it’s at all necessary to vaccinate children, except for those with immune deficiencies or other very special problems.

  27. I think anyone choosing to get an experimental, poorly tested, DNA-altering shot from a company with a long history of dishonesty is insane. Especially when it is only claimed to be helpful for very short time frames against strains that will evolve. And that is if you take the word of proven liars that it doesn’t cause horrific side effects.

  28. Stan—Why are you complaining, the
    DNA altering drugs were tested, on all of us.

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