A brief and belated Roundup

Being on vacation, and hiking, I didn't have time to post a full roundup, and this week, we're doing COVID news with other stuff.

Fauci now says herd immunity requires at least 80 percent and maybe more, not his old 70 percent. Yes, he was trying to soften up America. But, after his "masks not needed"? Platonic Lie No. 2

A Black doctor dies from COVID after being sent home from hospital, and revives reminders that even credentials are no bar to racism.

More Chinese coronavirus lies, including those by Winnie the Pooh himself, President Xi Jinping, have been exposed. These are again about covering up/ignoring the early days and weeks in Wuhan, including Xi's own lies about how quickly he intervened.

Half of America says Trump is a failed president. Well, we've not had a truly successful president since the 18 months LBJ had between Kennedy's assassination and his start on getting us bogged down in Vietnam.

SocraticGadfly shared his photo and some philosophical thoughts about the Great Conjunction.

Early voting is massive for Georgia's Jan. 4 twin Senate runoffs.

And forget line-jumping by athletes and politicians for vaccines. Health care workers are having some battles royale to move to the head of the line. 

ProPublica tells us more about how China's paid Internet trolls stage-manaaged making the coronavirus appear less bad in China than it actually was.

Off the Kuff took a deep dive into the appellate court races that include Harris County.  

DosCentavos teaches you how to warm yourself up with his piping hot, homemade Menudo and even takes you through his first batch of homemade tamales. There's still time to make these during the holiday season, and, anytime after, too! If you learn to make these recipes, you will win elections!

The Bloggess says it's okay to not be okay.  

Mean Green Cougar Red provides his analysis of the 2020 election. 

Kiko Martinez gives the origin story of the South Texas “cholo” version of The 12 Days of Christmas. 

Simone Carter informs us that we have a Shelley Luther biography to look forward to in 2021.  

State Rep. Vikki Goodwin has a few questions about Greg Abbott's plan to take over the Austin police force.

Greg AtLast calls out BOTH Seth Rich nutters AND Trump collusion nutters

Been about a full year, I think, since Greg AtLast, the better half doppelgänger of Greg Palast, has spoken to me.

Listen to him first call out #TheResistance nutters claiming that Trump surely colluded with Russia, then call out Ty Clevenger for his part in continuing to goose the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, along with Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, and other "allegedly outside the box stenos" for their claims that the DNC hacks were NOT by Russia (ignoring the RNC hacks) and failure to offer an option to this being a Russian hack, giving assent by their silence to Seth Rich conspiracy theories.

Per friend Greg, none of this is to say that Trump isn't "unhinged" in his conversations with Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn. It is to say that, AFAIK (and AtLast can tell) there was no collusion. And, re the 25th Amendment, "unhinged" is not "insane" in a clinical sense.

Onward and upward, with three weeks left until Joe Biden does a more graceful management of the continuing decline of America. Given that recent events show the body of the American constitution sucks, this is what we're stuck with until we get a LEFTIST "Convention of the States." AND? It needs to be a skeptical leftist version.

How a President Biden could get us a mask mandate

It's actually pretty simple.

The president IS the chief executive.

The executive branch has nearly 20 Cabinet departments and dozens of independent agencies.

All do a lot of federal purchasing.

So, you start by saying you will only buy products from companies that have internal mask mandates. If you want to get really hardball, you expand that to something like:

"The federal government can no longer buy products from companies with location in states with no mask mandates."

In other words, meat processors in South Dakota? Federal building and department lunchrooms no can do on buying your pork. That would get Kristi Noem's attention for sure.

Extend it from there, under the interstate commerce clause, to stop other products from leaving states with no, or tissue-paper-thin, mask rules. Defense manufacturing would be a biggie, because a president, Biden or somebody with bigger balls, could add "national security" in a way that reverse-spins Trump on meatpackers.

Also getting the attention of a Kristi Noem would be federalizing the National Guard in states with Indian reservations that require masks when the state government doesn't. Tribes are sovereign nations per the Constitution, so this would all be legit, too.

Brexit deal: No, Boris, you didn't win

A "Brexit deal" between the UK and EU is now here. Ireland-Northern Ireland appear the big winner overall. The UK is the bigger winner on fisheries issues, but the bigger loser on most other regulatory issues, and a number of things were punted down the road, which means Boris Johnson is lying (shock me) when he says "we have taken control." And, it was symbolic bullshit, as fishing is less than 1 percent of the British economy. Also per that NPR link, the claim that Britain will get some special deal in new trade negotiations with the US or elsewhere? Any new deal with the US will be one that will not harm US-EU relationships.

And, US banksters, knowing the UK is now cut off from the Continent that way, may push to further undercut The City of London's financial power. That — the details of Britain's financial services relationship to the EU — was one of the punts.

There's also still the question of whether Scottish nationalists will plump for another independence vote, and if Johnson would attempt to fight that.

Also contra Boris, the long-term game is much more in the EU's hands than the UK's. The leverage over Britain no longer being in the EU's financial services market is one reason. The European Central Bank and EU member state banks, plus major private banking firms, especially in Germany, will throw new weight around.

Ditto if, on the punted regulatory issues, Johnson or a successor tries to get hardcore on Ireland. Here in the US, a President Biden is ardent about the Good Friday accord, and if Johnson appears to be doing anything to hurt that? Related to Ireland? As Patrick Cockburn notes, there, the EU-UK border was agreed by Boris to shift to the middle of the Irish Sea, not between the 22 and the 6.

Coronavirus news: Keep wearing a damned mask, week 38 and beyond

• And, hopefully, in the not too distant future, you and I will know how well it works! NIOSH and ASTM are developing mask efficacy standards. As the story notes, the FDA, post-Scott Gottlieb, midst-Stephen Hahn semi-kowtowing to Trump, could have worked on such standards, and didn't.

• None too soon, either. London went on lockdown last Friday as the result of a new strain of coronavirus evolving, and Canada and many other countries temporarily blocked travel. Meanwhile, yet another new strain, perhaps worse than the London one, has also evolved, primarily in South Africa, and reportedly more dangerous than the London mutation, especially as it's more "aggressive" against younger people. I saw a piece by Outside mag recently speculating on how soon international travel might pick up again. Latest answer? Not very, and it is probably irresponsible of Outside to do any more speculating. That said, Dr. Anthony Fauci (wait a minute, is he an MD or not?) has said he opposes a travel ban here.

• A mix of sad and disgusting here in Texas. So many health care workers in the Valley passed on getting vaccinated (wish ProPublica/Trib had at least a few comments as to why) that it had extra vaccine available ... and ConservaDem Legiscritter Eddie Lucio cut in line, by standards of vaccination eligibility, as pictured at left.

Meanwhile, here's the latest on Chinese censorship at the start of the spread of the coronavirus. It's also yet another reminder not to trust Chinese case and fatality stats. Sidebar: The piece is also a reminder that I take commenters who pooh-pooh the seriousness of China's reported plans for a social media credit system with a grain or three of salt. The bigger question yet? How long before Beijing tracks down these leakers?

• Another reminder that, contra Trump's "reopen America" and Abbott's "reopen Texas" — dead people don't buy anything.

• That includes the 16,000 and counting age 25-44 COVID deaths.

• Reminder: Face shields, by themselves, are not great protectors. They help. But have gaps — literally.

• Texas, weddings, and maskless COVIDiocy. Shock me.

• Deborah Birx: The coronavirus' John Cornyn of (allegedly) talking tough to Trump in private. Oh, also, a big fat hypocrite.

• Bud Kennedy reports small-town Texans are "angry at COVID." From where I live, they're not angry enough to mask up like they should. He notes it's the same in places like Granbury. What this really is? Another form of American exceptionalism. "We're Merika, we shouldn't be getting bossed around by this little bitty V'uh-EYE-russ."

• Merika's expansive definition of "essential worker" and other things means that there's some major medical ethics involved with vaccine triage. (That doesn't stop Andrew Sullivan from playing "gotcha" with professor Harald Schmidt near the end of the story.)

• Reopening schools has had its own round of detritus in "blue" areas, especially ones that also have teachers unions in contract negotiations. Slate has details of how certain blue state considerations can trump science .... kind of like Trump did. Part of the story in Brookline is "blue against blue" .... Berniecrat type teachers vs. neoliberal Hillbot/Obamiac administrators and parents.

• And, schools largely opened up in Europe, for a variety of reasons that included but weren't limited to weaker unions in a few countries to more centralized (as in federalized/nationalized) school control in many.

• Shelley Luther got off scot-free. Had she been non-white and in the Valley? She'd have been arrested. 

• A guest poster at Skeptical Raptor says she'd like coronavirus vaccine liability cases moved OUT of an emergency use liability limitations court system and into the general vaccine court system. 

• Jef Rouner talks to Dr.Peter Hotez about the forthcoming anti-vaxxer backlash.

Is China's discussed great social media credit system feasible?

In the latest round of his suggested readings, Massimo Pigliucci mentions it in passing, mainly from the point of view of a Stephen Kershnar, philosophy prof at SUNY, who among other things, utters this:

The problem with Shen’s argument is that people do not have a right to dignity, privacy, or reputation.

Just. Wow.

"Saphsin" in comments, with multiple links, responds vociferously that it taint so. And I, in my last comment on Sunday, countered with this ProPublica piece about China's degree of social media and general Internet control over early days and weeks of coronavirus news.

First, per my comment with that link, I do NOT think there's a huge degree of scalability on the tech side. Also, unlike the US, where an Amazon, if it ever actually developed a corporate conscience, could walk away from CIA work, many of the Chinese tech companies involved with furthering Xi Jinping Thought through censorship of questioning of it, if not state-owned, do so much business with the Chinese government that they can't walk away.

Per Lee Majors speaking the opening to "The Six Million Dollar Man," Xi could easily say: "We have the technology. We have the capability ... "

To the degree there IS anything like a scalability issue? It's on the people side.

Sure, it would take at least an extra 100,000 people to make this truly work. And unlike Hucksterman outsourcing Facebook content moderation to the Philippines, this would have to be done in-house, so to speak.

But, impossible? Μὴ γένοιτο, to riff on Paul; there, it means "god forbid," translated idiomatically, or something similar. Would that there were a god to forbid on something like this! In reality? I look at pre-1989 East Germany. The Stasi reportedly had as many as 200,000 informants on its books in a country 2 percent the size of China.

The REAL issue? It's a philosophical one. A Platonic one. Per "The Republic," who watches the watchers? Who guards the guardians? Actually, per a program this big, in a country the size of China, per theory of other minds, you'd certainly need a third level, that of people watching the people watching the watchers. Per Monty Python, the people watching the watchers who watch the watching the watchers have been sacked from the subtitles.

But, with carrots and sticks, or bread and crucifixions, to spin Caesar a bit, you can get enough spying on the spies to make this happen.

Facebook and Twitter themselves offer ideas. Both allow people to report things like fake news, misleading claims about elections, etc. (Though Twitter, at least in the case of one certain elected official, doesn't actually do anything with that, of course. Not really.)

Let's say that Chinese social media platform Weibo, roughly similar to Twitter, had similar reporting tools. Let's also say that, for each comment by someone else I report and that Weibo agrees needed to be reported auto-tweaks my algorithm to make future comments by me more visible to others. Let us also say that, short of account suspension, the more posts of yours that are reported and that Weibo agrees needed reporting auto-tweaks your algorithm in the reverse direction. (Surprised that Twitter hasn't already thought of this; the cesspool would clean up a fair amount right there.) Let us now say that CCP officials oversee Weibo's reporting system and that, in addition to Facebook and Twitter reporting categories, there is one that is called "Insults Xi Jinping Thought" or similar, and that CCP officials monitor this category of reports most closely.

ProPublica tells us more about how China's paid Internet trolls stage-manaaged making the coronavirus appear less bad in China than it actually was. This, too, should show us how a social media credit system could be controlled. You use fluffers to fluff the subservient.

Sorry, Saph, but your links aside? This shows how that wouldn't be that hard. It's just a subtler, more insidious form of the Cultural Revolution.

Xi could even say, per Mao: "Let a thousand Weibo accounts be shut down!"

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More Chinese coronavirus lies, including those by Winnie the Pooh himself, President Xi Jinping, have been exposed. These are again about covering up/ignoring the early days and weeks in Wuhan, including Xi's own lies about how quickly he intervened.