California bill: therapist power over parent power

The New Neo Posted on by

California is getting close to passing another dangerous law that undermines parental authority:

California Democrats on Tuesday advanced legislation to let mental health professionals remove children from their homes and place them in state custody without parental consent.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Assembly Bill 665 on a party-line vote. The bill would allow poor children as young as age 12 to check into state-run youth shelters on the unconditional say-so of a therapist or counselor…

The bill’s advance is the latest victory in a campaign by California Democrats to roll back parental rights, often in the name of allowing minors to choose their own gender. Other legislation making its way through the legislature would punish parents and foster parents who do not “affirm” children’s transgender identity.

Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D.) and state senator Scott Wiener (D.), the co-authors of the bill, reiterated on Tuesday that they simply seek to give all children equal access to mental health services, as privately insured minors from age 12 can already receive outpatient therapy without parental consent. The bill would only apply to kids on Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid program that provides health coverage to eligible low-income residents.

“This bill protects children. It makes children safer. It makes children healthier,” said Wiener. “It’s unfortunate that this bill, like so many, has been caught up in this right-wing outrage machine.”…

There would be no obligation, as there is for minors on private insurance, for therapists or counselors to show that a 12-year-old patient is mature enough or in a dangerous situation before transferal to a “residential shelter.” Whether or not to inform the parents of the move would also be left to the discretion of the mental health professional, who could be an intern or trainee.

“Have each of you used your elected platforms and networks to inform and speak with the people of California?” Los Angeles mother Wendy Minas asked the Senate panel during her testimony against the bill. “It doesn’t seem so, because when I talk to my community, no one knows about it. And when they hear about it, they are shocked and angry that you would consider passing an extreme bill that would break apart families during a child’s most difficult and challenging years.”

Other critics have warned that if the bill becomes law, troubled children will exploit its provisions to run away from home. Transgender kids, in particular, could try to negate their parents’ veto over sex-change treatments, including by accusing them of abuse.

That’s already happening – and not just in California.

I predict that, if passed, this will be used to take custody from parents who refuse to “affirm” the child’s “gender.” Affirming a child’s gender is the same as denying a child’s biological sex, by the way, to de-Orwellify the phrase. The age of twelve is the perfect age to choose, because a great many of these cases involve pubescent girls nowadays.

This is not going to be limited to trans cases, either. This is part of a concerted effort on the part of the left to undermine the power of parents and substitute the power of the state or state agents – which therapists increasing are. A huge percentage of therapists are on the left, and those who work in the field of gender are required in California to offer “affirmation therapy” rather than “exploration (that is, traditional) therapy,” which makes it almost a certainty that they will be onboard with the leftist and “woke” agenda involving what they call “trans children.”

Waivers and risk: the Titan submersible

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “sailorcurt” makes a interesting point concerning the Titan submersible when he writes:

Freedom also comes with the responsibility to accept the consequences for those choices and actions.

“Did the waiver that had to be signed by the clients/tourists actually say, “OUR SUB IS NOT CERTIFIED”? And then—perhaps—go on to explain, in detail, the why it wasn’t certified and the risks involved?”

Have you watched the video uncovered where Mr. Rush said, very clearly and explicitly, exactly that? He was leafing through the waiver form reading parts of it and, yes…it explicitly said that his vessel was not certified by any agency or body, that it was experimental and that its use could result in death.

I don’t believe that any of them “deserved” to die for their folly. But with the possible exception of the 19 year old, I don’t feel “sorrow” over their deaths. They weren’t innocent, they chose to undertake those risks freely and willingly. The risks in an undertaking such as this are obvious and clear, there’s no amount of “but Rush insisted it was safe” that’s going to convince me they didn’t understand the dangers they were undertaking.

I have enormous empathy for their families and loved ones…especially the mother of the 19 year old. They are the innocent victims of this tragedy, not the people who willingly put their lives at risk for a thrill.

If the reports that the 19 year old only agreed to go on the voyage to please his father are true, then I do have some sympathy for him. He felt pressured and wasn’t mature enough to resist that pressure. While he was a legal adult and technically responsible for his decisions, he wasn’t willingly accepting the risks, he was pressured to do so and that is worthy of empathy.

I have also seen the relevant waiver language, and a description of the waiver itself:

The three-page document spells out the risks that passengers take when riding in the 23,000-pound Titan, including eye-popping wording such as how the craft “has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used on human occupied submersible.”

You may wonder how anyone could sign something like that. But I submit that millions of us sign something much like that every day, and to a certain extent people have become desensitized to such waivers, which are seen as TL;DR cover-your-ass legalese. The majority of such waivers lie in the medical field and involve procedures and surgery, and a related phenomenon is warning labels on drugs.

The Titan waiver was three pages long; were those pages fine print? Was most of the verbiage boilerplate blabity-blah? We see that quote highlighted and isolated; did they? And what does “may be constructed of…” mean? Was it or wasn’t it? We know that it was not; did they?

Those of us who would not even consider voluntarily going down in a submersible of any sort – and I am one of those people who would not – would also not sign such a waiver, but we wouldn’t be in that situation in the first place. Nevertheless I have signed many medical waivers equally frightening and quite long. The possibility of death is listed there, even for my cataract surgery, plus plenty of other dire possibilities. Sure, I know that most people don’t die of eye surgery, but you know what? As far as I know, the people who have gone down in submersibles to see the Titanic – even this particular submersible – have not died until now. Granted, the n is tiny, but it still would give a false sense of security and might make such a waiver seem to exaggerate the risks as waivers do.

I am not saying that people don’t bear responsibility for what they do. But the main responsibility in this case is with the people who developed the submersible – one of whom unfortunately died in this accident. I say “unfortunately” because to my way of thinking, empathy is a separate thing from blame. Someone can be at fault and still not “deserve” to die – as “sailorcurt” acknowledges in that quote. However, “sailorcurt” also denies feeling “sorrow” over their deaths and adds that they weren’t innocent. With this, I strongly disagree. I do feel sorrow over their deaths and find all but the CEO to be quite innocent. Perhaps they were ignorant of the magnitude of the risks, but they are also innocent in my opinion despite this ignorance. And yes, we need to do our best to have due diligence about discovering the safety of the activities we undertake, but we really cannot know such things for sure and have learned to rely on the expertise of others, the prior safety record of the endeavor, and the fact that waivers state worst case scenarios that usually are only distant possibilities.

One of the things also on that waiver was apparently “that the signer would ‘assume full responsibility for the risk of bodily injury, disability, death and property damage due to the negligence of [OceanGate] while involved in the operation’.” This is unsurprising; waivers often include such statements. In fact, even when my son was little, I had to sign a waiver for every organized sport in which he participated. Little League, soccer, learning to skate, learning to swim – you name it. They all had such waivers about assuming the risk. Having been to law school, I knew such waivers were not usually enforceable, and were placed there to make the ignorant signer think they had signed away such rights – or, of course, in hopes that the harried and rushed signer hadn’t even read them. What I did was add a sentence and initial it, and the sentence said something like: “except in cases of negligence or fault, in which case I retain the right to sue and I invalidate this unenforceable clause” or some such language. Fortunately – very very fortunately – I never had to activate any of this (although my son did sustain some minor injuries, they were nobody’s fault).

And indeed, regarding the strong likelihood of lawsuits over the Titan, there’s this wording:

…and on behalf of myself, my heirs, assigns, personal representative, estate, and for all members of my family, including minor children, I hereby release, waive, and forever discharge OceanGate Expeditions, Ltd. …”

But it’s still possible to sue, depending on the circumstances:

Waivers are not always ironclad, and it is not uncommon for judges to reject them if there is evidence of gross negligence or hazards that were not fully disclosed.

“If there were aspects of the design or construction of this vessel that were kept from the passengers or it was knowingly operated despite information that it was not suitable for this dive, that would absolutely go against the validity of the waiver,” said personal injury attorney and maritime law expert Matthew D. Shaffer, who is based in Texas….

The degree of any potential negligence and how that might impact the applicability of the waivers will depend on the causes of the disaster, which are still under investigation.

“There are so many different examples of what families might still have claims for despite the waivers, but until we know the cause we can’t determine whether the waivers apply,” said personal injury lawyer Joseph Low of California…

OceanGate is a small company based in Everett, Washington, and it is unclear whether it has the assets to pay significant damages, were any to be awarded, but families could collect from the company’s insurance policy if it has one.

Caveat emptor indeed, but I have long thought that, as waivers get longer, more complex, and more frightening, many or even most of us become more and more desensitized to their dire contents. It can all get lumped together – a very distant possibility of harm and a much more likely and catastrophic possibility of harm. You might say, “But in the case of a submersible to go miles down to see the Titanic wreck, surely anyone ought to know there’s a high possibility of harm.” Well, yes and no. As I said, I certainly wouldn’t be going down there. But until now, those who did had a good safety record, although I have had difficulty finding the exact number of people who have done so. This article makes it clear that there have been many expeditions over the decades, but provides no numbers. This article from September of 2022 is somewhat more specific in saying that the number is “fewer than 250,” which suggests to me that it’s close to 250. As far as I know, the Titan was the first accident that involved such dives causing casualties, which could breed a false sense of security despite the language in the waiver.

RIP.

The IRS wanted to charge Hunter Biden with felony tax evasion, but it was blocked by the DOJ

The New Neo Posted on by

The two-tiered “justice” system marches on. This time the IRS was willing to apply the usual standard to Biden’s son Hunter and charge him with a felony, but the DOJ never carried out the recommendation:

Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.) said at a press conference that two IRS employees claimed the agency sought felony charges against the younger Biden for attempting to evade taxes and fraudulent or false statements, all felony charges. The whistleblowers, who worked on the Biden probe since its start in November 2018, further claimed that the investigation was marred by “recurring unjustified delays” and “unusual actions outside the normal course of any investigation,” Smith said…

According to Smith, the whistleblowers testified that Hunter Biden failed to pay more than $2.2 million in taxes and received $8.3 million from foreign entities in Ukraine, China, and Romania. Biden received at least $6 million from CEFC China Energy, an energy conglomerate linked to Chinese military intelligence. A Romanian businessman investigated for bribery paid Biden another $1 million for help on his legal case. And Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, paid Hunter Biden more than $80,000 a month to serve on its board of directors.

In one stunning revelation, Smith cited an encrypted text message in which Hunter Biden threatened a Chinese business partner for payment by invoking his father.

“I am sitting here with my father and would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” Biden wrote in a July 30, 2017, message to Henry Zhao.

“I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The whistleblowers claimed that the Justice Department dragged its feet in authenticating the text message, according to Smith.

The Republican said the whistleblowers further testified that U.S. attorney David Weiss attempted to bring charges against Hunter Biden on at least two occasions but was blocked from doing so. Smith said Weiss sought to file charges in Washington, D.C., in March 2022 and in California in fall 2022. He also sought special counsel status in Spring 2022 but was also rejected.

From an interview in early May:

More details here:

*The first son was given the code name “Sportsman” by investigators.

*Delaware US Attorney David Weiss sought to bring federal charges against Hunter, 53, in the Central District of California and in Washington, DC, last year and was denied both times by Biden-appointed US attorneys Martin Estrada and Matthew Graves, respectively.

*According to the second whistleblower, who has remained anonymous, the investigation covered the years 2014 through 2019, during which Hunter and his “associates” received approximately $17.3 million from Ukraine, Romania and China — with the first son alone scooping $8.3 million.

*Investigators pressed for felony charges against Hunter for ducking $2.2 million in tax payments — rather than misdemeanors announced Tuesday as part of a probation-only plea deal.

*Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf discouraged investigators from pursuing lines of questioning related to Joe Biden, saying at one point that there was “no specific criminality,” according to Shapley.

The revelation that Biden appointees blocked charges against his son is politically explosive because Attorney General Merrick Garland testified under oath to Congress earlier this year that Weiss was empowered to bring charges outside of Delaware. Intentionally misleading Congress is a crime.

Weiss, who signed off this week on the Delaware plea deal, sought to be appointed special counsel in the case at least twice — including as recently as spring 2022 — but was turned down by the Biden Justice Department, both whistleblowers alleged.

Please read the whole thing. It contains tidbits such as this:

…[I]nvestigators later did ask [Biden family associate] Walker about Joe Biden’s role. An FBI agent asked if there were “any times when he was in office, or did you hear Hunter Biden say that he was setting up a meeting with his dad with them while dad was still in office?”

“Yes,” Walker answered, according to Shapley, before “inexplicably, the FBI agent changed the subject.”

Inexplicably and unexpectedly.

I wonder how many people who are not already on the right will ever see or hear of these reports.

NOTE: More details here.

ADDENDUM: From a comment at Ace’s:

The Biden family crest needs the motto: “Guilty as Sin, Free as a Bird” inscribed under the seal.

No need to hide it as a Latin phrase, either. They’re literally mooning us with their grift, and laughing all the way to the bank.

One small quibble – not literally; figuratively. Then again, perhaps “literally” for some of the photos on Hunter’s laptop.

Our two-tiered system of justice: Harriet Hageman queries Durham

The New Neo Posted on by

I hadn’t previously heard much about Hageman, the Wyoming Republican who trounced Liz Cheney this past go-round. But here she is, describing how our two-tiered system of justice at the hands of the FBI and the DOJ has damaged the country. Note Durham’s answer as well:

Speaking of two tiered systems, there’s this:

Lawyer for hip-hop artist Kodak Black, who was charged with the same federal weapons crime as Hunter Biden and sentenced to over three years in prison, slammed the prison-free plea deal reached by the Justice Department and the president’s son.

“There’s no such thing as not getting jail time on a gun charge on any kind of gun charge,” Bradford Cohen, criminal defense attorney for Black, told Fox News Digital in an interview…

Cohen commented in a Tuesday Instagram post reacting to the news: “2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over 3 years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?”

Kodak had prior convictions, but from what I’ve read, his lawyer is correct that it is virtually a given that lying on a gun application will get a person prison time even without priors – unless, of course, that person is the child of a prominent Democrat. By the way, Trump pardoned Black.

More:

In speaking with Fox Digital on Tuesday, Cohen said the DOJ’s plea deal with the younger Biden is out of step with a prosecutor’s typical treatment of federal crimes, especially when they involve public figures.

“I’ve never seen anyone where this offense was charged,” Cohen said, “and they didn’t get some sort of prison sentence. And in fact, most of the time in federal court, you very rarely see people get anything but a prison sentence.”

The DOJ and FBI isn’t even bothering to hide things now. They have the power and they are using it, and there have been zero consequences so far except the consequences they intend.

On the Titanic submersible rescue operation and extreme adventure excursions

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ll start out by saying that I think the five people in the submersible are dead, and that even days ago I thought they probably had been dead from the moment the vehicle stopped communicating with the mother ship about an hour and forty-five minutes into its dive to see the wreck. And now there’s an announcement that a debris field has been found (see also this).

Sad news.

Apparently, there have been a lot of angry people on the left who, as Ace writes, are “in full psychopathic gloat mode, celebrating the deaths of five strangers who never did a single thing to them.”

That is one of those “shocking but not surprising” phenomena we’ve grown to know so well.

Ace quotes Ben Dreyfuss on the subject:

But one of the defining characteristics of normal people is that our empathy machines, fortunately for society, are not so singularly transactional. We care about people even when it isn’t immediately obvious that there is something in it for us.

The normal people on Monday did what the normal people do. But the abnormal people didn’t do that.

They heard the news, read the stories, took in all of the information that made you sad, and their first reaction was: anyone who can afford a $250k tourist trip deserves to die.

Very chilling, but a lot of things are chilling these days.

Which doesn’t mean that I think it’s wise to pay for adventures such as these; you couldn’t pay me enough money to do it, even before this event. But I don’t mountain-climb either, or do any number of risky things. I don’t get my thrills that way. But other people do, and I don’t condemn them.

What about the enormous expense, effort, and risk of the rescue efforts? Well, that’s what moral human being do for each other, and such rescue is not ordinarily predicated on the virtue of the victims however we might define virtue. Of course, there’s always the “what about Hitler?” question. There is obviously a line of evil – true evil, not mere lifestyle or political disagreements – beyond which the argument not to save that person (or even to kill that person) grows stronger. But that is almost never the actual situation, and it certainly doesn’t apply to those who pay tons of money for adventure excursions.

The subject comes up regularly in places such as New England, where there are mountains to climb and where people often get stranded. Those people are often foolish or even stupid in the manner in which they set out, failing to take proper precautions or gear or training. Just about every rescue mission is questioned, because they are both expensive and risky for the rescuers. However, I think it’s a mark of civilization that we are willing to bear that expense and assume that risk in order to rescue our fellow flawed humans.

Our own commenter “physics guy” mounts a milder version of this “fools” argument when he writes:

Anyone who would pay that amount of money and not thoroughly research the charlatan who put this piece of crap together is, and now was, a fool. The depth of the Titanic is a much more dangerous environment than going to space; not something to have a sightseeing trip…

What makes me mad is the millions of dollars spent to rescue fools. The Darwin award committee needs to be notified.

I don’t think physicsguy thinks they should have died. It’s just that he is angry that they put themselves in that position and that the rest of us have to pay for it. But “millions of dollars” are often “spent to rescue fools.” I would not have it otherwise – and my guess is that physicsguy might agree; he just wishes there were fewer fools. On that last subject, I will say that the impulse to do risky things for adventure is somewhat allied to the willingness to do risky things in general, and that such an impulse is part of what drives humankind to explore and to learn, including space exploration. If we eliminate that, we eliminate a great deal of good.

This is a scene from one of my favorite movies, “Starman.” I think it’s relevant:

And here’s a stanza from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving Into the Wreck”:

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

And then there’s the last portion of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I don’t mean to equate these people with Ulysses. But I see their impulse as a fragment of the same impulse. You might say that their motive is more narcissistic, and I will concede you may indeed be correct. But I still think it is somewhat allied with the motive that drives all human accomplishment, and without which we still would be chipping away at stone tools.

“Cis”: the worm turns on Twitter

The New Neo Posted on by

“Cis” is one of those insidious politically-motivated language changes of which the left is so fond. “Cis man” and “cis woman” supposedly mean what was formerly covered by the terms “man” and “woman.”

Musk has announced a new Twitter policy that is sure to rile the left:

“Yesterday, after posting a Tweet saying that I reject the word ‘cis’ and don’t wish to be called it, I receive [sic] a slew of messages from trans activists calling me ‘cissy’ and telling me that I am ‘cis’ ‘whether or not I like it’,” James Esses, co-founder of Thoughtful Therapists, tweeted.

In his original tweet, Esses declared his rejection of the term. “I formally and publicly declare that I reject the label of ‘cis’. I don’t believe in gender ideology. I don’t self-identify as ‘cis’. Using this term makes me feel unsafe and is demonstrative of your hatred towards me. Anyone who uses the term ‘cis’ to describe me is a bigot.”

It’s an interesting and appropriate tactic, using the left’s identity-group tactics against them. The approach bore immediate fruit, as Musk declared that cis will now be considered a slur on Twitter and might possibly cause suspension, at least temporarily.

By the way, I’m familiar with Esses’ work, from several podcasts I’ve watched. Here is his backstory:

I am a trainee therapist who was expelled from a university course over email for launching a public petition trying to safeguard therapy and counselling for vulnerable children with gender dysphoria.

He is suing. His website can be found here, and this is his Twitter page.

The Webb telescope and habitable planets

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s get far away from politics, if only for a moment.

Far, far, far away.

For the second time, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has looked for and failed to find a thick atmosphere on an exoplanet in one of the most exciting planetary systems known. Astronomers report1 today that there is probably no tantalizing atmosphere on the planet TRAPPIST-1 c, just as they reported months ago for its neighbour TRAPPIST-1 b.

Tantalizing atmosphere.

More:

Because planets of this type are common around many stars, “that would definitely reduce the amount of planets which might be habitable”, says Sebastian Zieba, an exoplanet researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany…

All of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets, which orbit a star some 12 parsecs (40 light years) from Earth, have rocky surfaces and are roughly the size of Earth. Astronomers consider the system to be one of the best natural laboratories for studying how planets form, evolve and potentially become habitable. The planets are a key target for JWST, which launched in 2021 and is powerful enough to probe their atmospheres in greater detail than can other observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope…

The planets’ host star is a dim cool star known as an M dwarf, which is the most common type of star in the Milky Way. It blasts out large amounts of ultraviolet radiation, which could erode any atmosphere on a nearby planet.

The system’s innermost planet, TRAPPIST-1 b, is blasted with four times the amount of radiation that Earth gets from the Sun, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when JWST found that it had no substantial atmosphere2. But the next in line, TRAPPIST-1 c, orbits farther from its star, and it seemed possible that the cooler planet might have managed to hang on to more of an atmosphere.

They’re going to keep looking at the other planets farther away from the star. But my gut feeling, for what it’s worth, is that they won’t find what they’re looking for. I think that the conditions for life, and particularly for the development of intelligent life, are far more rare than most people think, given the size of the universe.

That doesn’t mean I think that we are alone; the universe is vast. But I think we might be alone or effectively alone, which is not the same thing but would be the same thing in the practical sense. There’s also the Fermi Paradox, although there are ways around that as well (one was discussed today already here).

Contemplation of the question is both fascinating and anxiety-provoking, and awesome (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) either way.

Sounds heard in the search for the Titanic submersible

The New Neo Posted on by

But it’s not known whether those sounds are coming from the vehicle. Time is running out, and the obstacles to rescue are daunting:

Experts have not yet identified the source of these noises, and officials have warned the sounds may not have originated from the missing vessel. Analysis of the noises has been “inconclusive”, Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches have been deployed in the area where the P-3 aircraft recorded the noises, US Coast Guard officials said.

The five passengers on board the missing Titan sub had 96 hours of breathable air, according to its operator OceanGate’s specifications. This would mean oxygen could run out by Thursday morning, but experts say the air supply depends on a range of factors…

Documents show that the sub’s operator, OceanGate, had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”…

Even if Titan is located, a successful rescue would require remote-controlled vehicles (ROVs) capable of allowing operators on the surface a clear view of the submersible’s location, any obstacles that may be present and where to attach cables capable of lifting it thousands of metres through the water.

If the Titan and its five-person crew did arrive at the Titanic wreck, they will be located 3,800 metres (12,500ft) below the surface on the seabed – too deep for most ROVs to reach. Only a “tiny percentage of the world’s submarines operate that deeply”, David Marquet, a former US Navy submarine commander, told CBC.

Were the passengers fully aware of the risk?

NOTE: When I chose the category “disaster” for this post, it occurred to me that it could potentially apply to the submersible but also of course applies to the original Titanic sinking.

Biden is quite popular with Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

I find that rather stunning. About a recent poll:

For Biden to start dropping, Democrats would have to stop thinking he’s doing a good job as president. Biden’s approval rating among Democrats in a Quinnipiac University poll released last week was 84%. Just 16% either disapproved (13%) or didn’t hold a view (3%).There is no precedent – at least since World War II – of an incumbent president losing a contested state primary while polling above 70% nationally within his party.

And this despite the fact that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run.

I can’t quite reconcile those two facts, except to say that they recognize Joe has reached his pull date and yearn for someone else more charismatic and sharp, while at the same time liking what has been done during Biden’s presidency and not seeing a good alternative who has yet entered the ring. So if Biden runs, they’ll vote for him, because they think he’ll just continue the same policies even if others are really controlling him.

However, why they might like what’s going on now is a mystery to me. Perhaps they simply blame the bad stuff on others, like Trump, and although the mental gymnastics it would take to reach that conclusion are formidable, I think they can be accomplished. Or perhaps they’re just paying zero attention.

That poll I linked about Democrats not wanting Biden to run, taken about a month ago, had both Trump and DeSantis leading Biden by similar numbers, 52/47 and 52/48. That was before Trump’s indictment, but it’s still interesting and it’s a bigger lead for the Republicans than I’d ever seen before, for what that’s worth.

A more recent poll taken last week by Quinnipiac is the one that showed that 84% approval for Biden from Democrats, which represents 48% who strongly approve and 36% who somewhat approve.

Strongly approve – let that sink in. That’s the group that will never, never ever, abandon a Democrat for the presidency.

Democrats approve of the way he’s handling the economy (Republicans and Independents do not), but the approval is especially strong among black voters. Interestingly, the youngest voters approve less of how he’s handling the economy than the older voters. That difference also holds true for general approval of Biden’s job as president – younger voters are less happy and very few strongly approve.

Meanwhile, in the same poll, Trump has higher disapproval ratings than Biden, and here he loses an election matchup to Biden by four points. DeSantis versus Biden is not polled, so we can’t compare, but a much larger group of people say they don’t know enough about DeSantis to approve or disapprove. The same is the case with RFK and the rest of the entrants – except of course for Biden and Trump.

And yes, I know – polls are unreliable and somewhat meaningless in terms of predicting the election, for a host of reasons. I focus on this poll, though, because it reveals what I’ve long suspected, which is that Biden’s awfulness is either escaping a lot of Democrats or just doesn’t matter to a lot of Democrats.