All that jazz

The New Neo Posted on by

In Wednesday’s open thread this week I alluded to the fact that I don’t like jazz. I’ve tried; I’ve really tried, but it just doesn’t work for me. To my ear and brain it sounds like formless chaos, music dissolving into a wet puddle of glop.

Please don’t hate me for it, you jazz aficionados. I have nothing but respect for jazz musicians, and I know they’re highly skilled and just amazing, but I don’t want to listen to them.

When I thought about writing this post and tried to come up with some jazz that I enjoy, I remembered that years ago I owned the Miles Davis record “Sketches of Spain” and really liked it. However – as I suspected – when I looked the piece up, it says that it’s not really considered jazz by a lot of people:

The opening piece, taking up almost half the record, is an arrangement by Evans and Davis of the adagio movement of Concierto de Aranjuez, a concerto for guitar by the contemporary Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Following the faithful introduction of the concerto’s guitar melody on flugelhorn, Evans’ arrangement turns into a “quasi-symphonic, quasi-jazz world of sound”, according to his biographer.[

Hmmm – quasi jazz. Do I get half credit for that?

Probably not:

According to Davis’ biographer Chambers, the contemporary critical response to the arrangement was not surprising, especially given the scarcity of anything resembling a jazz rhythm in most of the piece. Martin Williams wrote that “the recording is something of a curiosity and a failure, as I think a comparison with any good performance of the movement by a classical guitarist would confirm”.

Davis had an answer for his critics:

Replying to suggestions that Sketches of Spain was something other than jazz, Davis said “it’s music, and I like it”.

Indeed. Me too.

Republicans: once again snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a familiar story. The Republicans are riding high and have the Democrats down on their luck, only to hand them a present: in this case, the House passage of the so-called infrastructure bill.

It’s easy to blame all Republicans, although it’s often just a few, as it is now: 13 out of 213 to the Democrats’ 220, of whom 6 voted against. That’s 6% of the Republicans – but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

Here’s the list:

Adam Kinzinger of Illinois
Don Bacon of Nebraska
Don Young of Alaska
John Katko of New York
Tom Reed of New York
Andrew Garbarino of New York
Nicole Malliotakis of New York
Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania
Chris Smith of New Jersey
Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey
Fred Upton of Michigan
Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio
David McKinley of West Virginia

A couple of these – Kinzinger and Van Drew (the latter is a recent changer to the GOP) – are pretty much Democrats. A great many of the others are from New York or New Jersey, and my guess is that most (although not all) are from purple districts. This is the sort of argument they use:

“Most of the hard infrastructure bill is paid for by unspent COVID money that was already appropriated by Congress. This bill makes our nation stronger and more competitive for years to come,” Bacon said in a Friday statement. “Make no mistake. This is not the Bernie Sanders’ Socialist Budget Busting Bill, which would’ve cost American taxpayers their hard-earned money. When that bill does come to the floor for a vote, I will be a hard ‘NO.’”

He might even be correct, although I tend to doubt it. Politics is about a lot of things, and some of it is about not handing your opponents a victory. It’s a lesson the Democrats learned quite some time ago, but some Republicans haven’t.

Of course, if these thirteen had voted “no” with the other Republicans, I have little doubt that all of the six reluctant Democrats would have been bullied or threatened into submission and the bill would have passed anyway because they all knew they needed to pass something to show success and this bill was their best chance. But the thirteen Republicans gave them bipartisan cover.

The thirteen will almost certainly be primaried, which is not necessarily the best idea ever for those who come from districts in which a more conservative candidate is unlikely to win. That’s the dilemma, and it’s been the dilemma for a long time.

Seemingly stunning COVID news from Italy

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve known for a long time that the COVID death figures are iffy because anyone who has COVID and dies is counted as a COVID-caused death. And yet that’s the way the numbers continue to be reported, which certainly gives the appearance of a purposeful inflation of COVID numbers. And I also would guess that most people are unaware of this.

We’re not the only nation that’s been doing it this way; another is Italy. But Italy has decided to correct its figures to eliminate those who died with rather than of COVID.

The extremity of the results appears shocking at first glance:

The Italian Higher Institute of Health has drastically reduced the country’s official COVID death toll number by over 97 per cent after changing the definition of a fatality to someone who died from COVID rather than with COVID.

Italian newspaper Il Tempo reports that the Institute has revised downward the number of people who have died from COVID rather than with COVID from 130,000 to under 4,000.

“Yes, you read that right. Turns out 97.1% of deaths hitherto attributed to Covid were not due directly to Covid,” writes Toby Young.

Of the of the 130,468 deaths registered as official COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic, only 3,783 are directly attributable to the virus alone.

But when you read the details, a different picture emerges:

“All the other Italians who lost their lives had from between one and five pre-existing diseases. Of those aged over 67 who died, 7% had more than three co-morbidities, and 18% at least two,” writes Young.

“According to the Institute, 65.8% of Italians who died after being infected with Covid were ill with arterial hypertension (high blood pressure), 23.5% had dementia, 29.3% had diabetes, and 24.8% atrial fibrillation. Add to that, 17.4% had lung problems, 16.3% had had cancer in the last five years and 15.7% suffered from previous heart failures.”

Here’s the problem with that: many of those things don’t ordinarily kill people for a long long time, although they might on average shorten their lifespan somewhat. Having a predisposing factor that makes a person more vulnerable does not mean that the disease isn’t the main actor in that person’s death.

To understand the figures, in a Western country such as the US or Italy, the percentage of the over-67 population with something like high blood pressure is odinarily enormous: for example, in the US, a whopping 70% of adults over 65 have hypertension, and I would guess the percentage of adults over 67 (as in that quote above) would be slightly higher.

So, if Italy’s hypertension figures are similar to ours, there is actually a slightly lower percentage of hypertensive individuals over 67 in the “death from COVID” category than would be expected by chance.

For diabetes in the US, the rate for the over-65 population is 26.8%, which is only a tiny bit lower than the figure in Italy of those who died with COVID and had diabetes. You get the drift, I think. However, I would guess that people with previous heart failure and recent cancer are probably more likely to have actually died from those diseases rather than from COVID, compared to people with pre-existing hypertension or diabetes who probably did die from COVID.

Therefore I would say I’m pretty sure that, although the 130,468 figure for Italy is almost certainly way too high, the 3,783 figure is almost certainly way too low.

Which leaves us pretty much where we started: not knowing how many people really died from COVID.

[NOTE: I didn’t find something recent on hypertension rates among the over-65 population in Italy, but this slightly older article indicates rates similar to those in the US, although it also depends on whether the definition of “hypertension” is the same in the two countries.]

Pfizer may have a game-changer COVID drug – so why isn’t the game changing?

The New Neo Posted on by

The rush to vaccine mandates isn’t really about COVID science. It masks little sense in those terms. If vaccines are protective, then those who are vaccinated are in no danger from the unvaccinated. And if vaccines aren’t protective, then why mandate them since anyone can catch it?

A small argument can be made that universal vaccination would reduce the potential burden on hospitals and the health care system, but we don’t mandate things (yet) for reasons such as that, especially with a disease that, though lethal in a very small percentage of cases, is fairly mild to moderate in the vast majority of cases (as opposed, for example, to smallpox, which killed one-third of those who contracted it and left many of the rest hideously scarred).

And of course these arguments against mandated COVID vaccination are even stronger where children are concerned, or where those who have already had COVID are concerned. And yet the mandate-advocates don’t seem to care.

Now we have what appears to be the most promising pharmaceutical yet to treat the disease:

When given within five days of the onset of symptoms, the antiviral therapy, called Paxlovid, prevented almost 90% of deaths from COVID-19 compared with a placebo, a Pfizer study found.

By the end of the year, the company plans to complete two other studies of the pill, which is given twice a day for five days. Pfizer plans to submit the study data as part of its rolling submission to the Food and Drug Administration as soon as possible…

Pfizer’s pill compares favorably with a similar one being developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics that cut in half the hospitalization and death rate for COVID-19…

On Thursday, Merck and Ridgeback received authorization to provide their drug, molnupiravir, in the United Kingdom to adults with confirmed mild to moderate COVID-19 who have at least one risk factor for developing severe disease.

It’s not being used in the US yet.

Hopefully, these results will hold up, and the results will be pretty clear fairly soon so that more lives can be saved. In the meantime, vaccine mandates seem even less sensible.

And wouldn’t it be nice if success of this drug would also mean that all the restrictive COVID madness will cease? I predict the latter will take a long time, and some of it will never go away. Meanwhile, our insect overlords have learned a lot about how far they can go – and in many places it’s pretty far.

Open thread 11/6/21

The New Neo Posted on by

I can assure you that about halfway to two-thirds of the way into this dance one’s legs turn to lead. It’s too gimmicky and Rockette-ish for my taste, but it’s usually a big crowd-pleaser:

What’s going on with Pelosi? [BUMPED UP: see UPDATES on the passage of the infrastructure bill]

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s some sort of theater, but to what end? Why is she seemingly about to bring some bills to a vote that won’t succeed?:

Pelosi is gearing up for another try again today. She’s announced a floor vote today on the Build Back Better bill, and then the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

But once again, moderate Democrats are balking. This time, it’s the House moderates who have this funny little problem — they’d actually like people to have time to read the text of the mammoth, 2,000-plus page bill, and they’d like to know how much the extravaganza is truly going to cost — not just the spin number from the White House or Pelosi.

Or that’s what they say. Methinks they actually know that if they vote for these bills they stand a good chance of not being re-elected.

So, what’s it all about? Does Pelosi want to intimidate them into voting yes? Or does she want to highlight their “moderate” nature for the voters to see and thus help their re-election chances? Does she just want to placate the base and say she’s tried? I’m not really sure that she can stop trying, because a large segment of the party apparently wants these bills.

Pelosi used to be easier to figure out. My recollection is that it used to be that she didn’t ask for a vote on a bill unless she knew she had the votes. So maybe she thinks she does have these votes after all. She also knows that even if the bills passed, the Senate represents a stumbling block, but maybe it’s okay with her because at least she will have done her job by passing them and then she can pass the buck to the Senate along with the bills.

Anyone have some better ideas on this?

UPDATE 10 PM:

Apparently they’re going to vote in the House on the infrastructure bill this evening. This makes me think that it will pass, and that the “progressives” have folded on linking the two bills. This is the more “moderate” of the two bills. But the outlook keeps changing.

I think the Democrats see it as very very important that they pass something or they will really annoy their base.

UPDATE 11:30 PM:

So the bill did pass with 13 Republicans in the House voting for it (and 6 Democrats against it), which allows the Democrats to call it “bipartisan” although it barely qualifies. After all, they also called it an “infrastructure bill” although at most half of it goes for infrastructure. The cost? A trillion dollars. But hey, the government’s got money to burn, right?

I’m not against improving infrastructure. I just think the amount of this bill is obscene, and although I don’t know what is in it on the Democratic wish list besides infrastructure (who does, at this point?) I bet it’s a lot. And of course, now the Senate has to work on it, and then the infamous Build Back Better monstrosity follows.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Once again, there are so many important stories that a roundup is in order.

(1) Kimberly Strassel on the latest Durham indictment:

Two more years on, Mr. Durham’s indictment says this source–Mr. Danchenko–obtained material from a longtime Democratic operative who was active in the 2016 Clinton campaign. Clintonites here, Clintonites there, Trump “scandals” everywhere.

The revelation shouldn’t surprise us, given that Mr. Danchenko was never some high-level Russian in Moscow. From 2005 through 2010 he worked at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank. Around the end of that employment, the indictment asserts, he was introduced to “PR Executive-1,” a Clinton crony who the New York Times confirmed is Charles Dolan.

Mr. Dolan has long been in Clinton circles, having served seven years as head of the Democratic Governors Association and state chairman of Bill Clinton?s 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns. President Clinton appointed him to a State Department advisory commission, and the indictment notes he was an active “volunteer” on Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He also had far more ties to Russians than anyone in Mr. Trump’s circle, having for eight years helped handle “global public relations for the Russian government” and throughout 2016 interacted frequently with senior Russian officials and Russian Embassy staff.

The indictment reveals that in August 2016, Mr. Danchenko asked Mr. Dolan for any “thought, rumor or allegation” regarding the summer?s resignation of Paul Manafort as Mr. Trump’s campaign manager. Mr. Danchenko explained he was working on a “project against Trump.” Mr. Dolan replied that he?d had a drink with a “GOP friend of mine who knows some of the players” and provided gossip. Sentences of this email appear nearly verbatim in the Steele dossier, though they are (hilariously) sourced to a “close associate of TRUMP.” To add farce to fantasy, the indictment says the Mr. Dolan later told the FBI he’d fabricated meeting a GOP friend and had simply passed on info he’d read in the press.

(2) A January 6th prisoner has been released by a judge due to prison mistreatment:

Some 400 prisoners are being moved out of the jail after the “deplorable” conditions were uncovered. According to CNN, the Marshals’ report found that water was being shutoff in many cells “for punitive reasons” for days at a time, toilets were clogged, and an inmate who had been pepper-sprayed was “unable to wash the spray off for days, leading to an infection.”

The D.C. Department of Corrections staff were “antagonizing detainees” and “directing detainees to not cooperate with” U.S. Marshals during the inspection, the agency said, and “[o]ne DOC staffer was observed telling a detainee to ‘stop snitching.’”

As far as I know, none of these prisoners have been sentenced and almost none have previous records. This is an outrage that should have every American incensed, but of course it’s hardly been reported on by our wonderful MSM and many people would think it was perfectly fine because of course these people are evil insurrectionists. “Deplorable” conditions are perfectly all right for the deplorables.

(3) Yes, CRT is being taught in schools – applied CRT. Ace explains.

(4) San Francisco continues the insanity with a ruling that 5-11-year-olds will have to show proof of vaccination to enter many indoor settings. It will take effect after a suitable interval that will allow them to have their vaccinations. I think – although I’m not sure – that this only applies in the city limits and not the suburbs.

Here’s an article that asks the question “why do they want to vaccinate children?” The answer:

The only valid medical reason for vaccination of this age cohort would be to stop the spread of infection.

This, however, cannot be the case, because it is now widely known that the Covid vaccines do not prevent infection…

The combination of extremely low Covid risk to the young, and the vaccines’ inability to prevent transmission, makes vaccinating children a non sequitur from the point of view of public health.

The author concludes that the reason for the rule must be to give more money to the pharmaceutical companies involved in the vaccine. Although I think that motive might be in there somewhere, I don’t think it’s what’s really operating in San Francisco. I think it’s the need of those in charge, and of a lot of the populace, to virtue signal about COVID and to show that they’re doing everything possible to combat it – even if the “everything” makes no logical sense.

Logic doesn’t drive this; fear and self-importance and the need to separate Good People (the vaccinated) from Bad People (the unvaccinated) are the motives.

More thoughts on the Rittenhouse trial

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of us who have followed the story of Kyle Rittenhouse have been well aware for quite some time that the fact situation supports self-defense and that his being charged was a political act.

But in a trial, facts previously unknown can come out, and one’s opinions can change as a result – or become even more firm. And trials are inherently unpredictable. Sometimes the verdict seems to us as though it should be crystal clear, and yet the jury delivers a surprise one way or the other.

In the Rittenhouse trial so far, as I’ve been following it at Legal Insurrection and other sites, my opinion that Rittenhouse is innocent has only become more strong, and it was strong enough already. So far, at least, the trial has been a kind of travesty in which the prosecutor struggles with his own witnesses to get them to say what he wants them to say to implicate Rittenhouse, and they do the opposite because facts are stubborn things.

For an example of what I mean, see yesterday’s post at Legal Insurrection by Andrew Branca, featuring this sort of exchange (Binger is the prosecutor, McGinnis is his own witness, and Rosenbaum is one of the men Rittenhouse killed that night):

Binger had been very unhappy when McGinnis was allowed to suggest during cross-examination that it had been the intent of Rosenbaum to seize Kyle’s rifle. Binger objected at the time, but Judge Schroeder overruled the objection.

Now on re-direct, Binger rather heatedly challenged his own witness: You can’t read Rosenbaum’s mind, right? You can’t know what he was actually thinking, right? Your interpretation of his intent is nothing but complete guesswork, isn’t that right?

McGinnis paused a moment, and replied: “Well, he said “F-you, and then he reached for the weapon.” So, maybe not entirely guesswork.

The trial so far reminds me slightly of some legal dealings I had long ago with much lower stakes of course. I had been stopped at a yield sign at a complex intersection in a large city, and an impatient small truck had clipped me on the side in the driver’s eagerness to go despite heavy traffic coming at us. He sued me for damages to his truck and I had to answer questions for a deposition. The questions all assumed I had been moving, and so when it kept saying some form of “How fast were you moving when you hit so-and-so?” I had to rewrite the whole thing and say something like, “I wasn’t moving when so-and-so hit me.” And on and on like that.

The Rittenhouse prosecution is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. So far it seems that whether the prosecution succeeds or not depends on whether the jury has been prejudiced enough and/or intimidated enough. That’s not how justice should be.

Just a reminder about the Rittenhouse trial

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew Branca is doing a daily write-up of the proceedings at Legal Insurrection. Well worth reading. Here is yesterday’s, and there will be one every day as long as the trial continues.

And here is something Branca wrote today:

The direct questioning of STATE witness Richard McGinnis by ADA Binger was an absolute trainwreck for the prosecution–and, of course, the jury watched it all happen in real-time.

UPDATE: To provide some context, for more than 12 minutes ADA Binger tried to get McGinnis to testify that Rosenbaum was already falling to the ground when Rittenhouse began shooting him–in other words, that Rittenhouse simply executed Rosenbaum by shooting him in the back when he was helplessly falling…

…[A] reasonable paraphrase would go something like this:

Binger: So Rittenhouse shot Rosenbaum, in the back, as he was falling, correct?

McGinnis: No, Rittenhouse didn’t fire until Rosenbaum charged and lunged at him.

Binger: So he shot him as he was falling?

McGinnis: No, not falling, lunging.

Binger: So you’re saying he shot him while he was falling?

McGinnis: No, that’s not my testimony. Lunging.

Branca usually posts his daily discussions of the day’s events in the trial later in the day, so that’s just a little preview.

Durham marches on: the indictment of Danchenko

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s another development in the snail-like Durham investigation, and – like so much of Russiagate – it’s complicated. That means that most people aren’t following it, but these are some of the allegations:

The 39-page indictment accuses Danchenko of lying about his Russian contacts and travels to the country. The interviews took place between January and November 2017. It also indicates Steele used him as a primary source:

“The March 16, 2017, May 18, 2017, Oct. 24, 2017, and Nov. 16, 2017, counts involve statements made by Danchenko on those dates to FBI agents regarding information he “purportedly had received from an anonymous caller who he believed to be a particular individual, when in truth and in fact he knew that was untrue,” Durham’s office said Thursday.

“The information purportedly conveyed by the anonymous caller included the allegation that there were communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected,” Durham’s office said in a statement.”

Russiagate was a pyramid of lies, and some of those lies were fed to the FBI, which makes them a crime. We’re not talking about some tangential statement that was untrue: we’re talking about the entire edifice.

I said it was complicated, and it’s actually quite a bit more complicated than that. Ace has written at some length about those complications. But here’s a useful summary of a small portion of it:

The Clinton campaign suspected Danchenko was a Russian asset but used him to start the ball rolling AND they promised him a job in the State Department if Hillary was elected.

And here are some more tidbits:

I’m going to assume they thought they’d never be caught. Or they assumed that, if caught, there would be few if any negative consequences.

And I wonder how many people will hear about this, be able to follow it, or care. But I think the term “vast left-wing conspiracy” applies quite well.

Election irregularities, election fraud, past and present

The New Neo Posted on by

First we have a report from Wisconsin about the 2020 election:

Explosive revelations in the Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau’s report on the 2020 presidential election confirm what many in the key swing state have long suspected: Those tasked with administering the election willfully ignored and openly violated state law…

Auditors reviewed 14,710 absentee ballots cast in 29 municipalities across the state, including nine of the 10 cities in which the highest numbers of absentee ballots were cast. Stunningly, the City of Madison refused to allow the LAB to physically handle its ballots. Madison, Wisconsin’s capital and the most heavily Democratic city in the state, was the primary reason Joe Biden won Dane County over Donald Trump, as it voted for Biden by a whopping 75.7 to 22.9 percent.

The review of ballot certificates revealed that 1,022 of the ballots reviewed (representing 6.9 percent) “had partial witness addresses because they did not have one or more components of a witness address, such as a street name, municipality, state, and zip code.” Fifteen of them (0.1 percent) “did not have a witness address in its entirety,” while eight (less than 0.1 percent) “did not have a witness signature,” and three (less than 0.1 percent) “did not have a voter’s signature.”…

Using the LAB’s numbers, it may be reasonably estimated that across the state 135,512 absentee ballot certificates only had a partial witness address, 2,002 did not have a witness address at all, 1,068 did not have a witness signature, and 401 did not have a voter signature. Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by just 20,682 votes.

Much much more at the link.

There are a lot of ways that elections can be fraudulent and/or can raise a strong suspicion of fraud and/or significant error – which in some ways is just as bad because if faith in the integrity of elections is undermined it hurts the entire country. One way is by passing election rules that give ample opportunity for fraud. Another way is by skirting more stringent and protective rules by not enforcing them. Another way is outright fraud: the manufacture of fake votes or the purposeful counting of fake votes.

The Wisconsin audit illustrates how hard – actually, impossible – it is to know ex post facto whether enough errors and/or fraud existed to change the outcome of an election, especially a close one. And that’s what the fraudsters and those who relax the rules are banking on.

NOTE: To bring us to the present, we have New Jersey and its history of voting fraud.