Friday Ephemera

Safety first.
That’s getting their goat.

I had a prayer granted for which I promised publication and praise. My soul glorifies the Lord!
Back in MY day, you could place such notice in a respectable newspaper, but there are few left, so I put it here where David buys a can of Oust once a year, whether it’s needed or not. At least he has standard.
Well, no, that’s not fair. He has standardS. Only once have I known him to print something untrue, when he was asked if he’d used the Xmas flame thrower, and even then it wasn’t an outright lie of CNN-ian mendacity. He merely mumbled unintelligibly. The citizenry would be better off if cable news adopted the same policy.

I plan to go armed with a fat book just in case.

Mebbe if you go in with one of those jars instead you could get dismissed even earlier. You could state being friendly, and offer some to the judge . . .

Jury duty was the best two weeks ‘serving the state’ I’ve ever spent! Even if the defendant in one of the cases I tried has now met an untimely end…

Morning, all.
For a second there…
Heh. I’m assuming she uses a really good moisturiser.

This just in
Well played.

Harry’s awesome hill house.
[ Checks calendar. ]
Ooh. Three months ‘til season six.

This just in.
I see what you did there.

Real-time map of coronavirus incidents.
5,806 cases in Hubei, population 58,500,000 or a provincial attack rate of 10/100,000. If all those are actually just Wuhan metro, the attack rate is 50/100,000. 204 deaths, from reports mainly from those already with some form of immunocompromise, in Hubei=a case fatality rate to date of 3.5% (same if just for Wuhan), less than half that of SARS (also a coronavirus) which we all already died from except those of us who died from the last Ebola outbreak which had a total CFR of around 50%.
Probably not TEOTWAWKI as it is being billed.

Anyone else looking at the two figures on the right (Coronavirus), the number dead and the number recovered, doing some elementary maths and thinking the death rate might be a bit higher than 2/3%? Bear in mind that most of the “number infected” total probably haven’t completed their full ‘term’ yet.
I know they are only counting the cases serious enough to get to hospital, but it is a bit disquieting. Hoping that the number of mild cases not counted vastly outnumbers the cases they have counted.

This corona thing isn’t even a gnat on an elephant’s backside, relatively speaking.
I think we’re safe, but the concern is that the numbers are being massively under-reported in this particularly fragile time for the ChiCom ruling elite, and that they have and will prioritize their reputation over global health.

Japanese sea-creature teabags of note.
Squid teabags? Why was I not informed of this sooner?!
Do they have a North American distributor? Hell, I’ll be their North American distributor!

getting banned at Patterico
Ouch. How did that happen? I confess that I read that blog only sporadically (it’s not exactly a favorite) and the comment thread even less.

Indecent exposure.
Hey, I’m just going with the numbers.
Well, that’s not a bad strategy, all things considered. But kinda the opposite happened. I don’t kiss people’s posteriors on demand, which was a secondary requirement to not being banned. Actually, it’s quite easy to get banned there. In spite of what the numerous sycophants there themselves think. Certain corners of the anti-anti-Trump internet are littered with people he’s banned. I only go there on occasion to take the temperature of the NeverTrump fever so on a percentage basis, I probably got banned pretty quick. Perhaps not as fast as obviously blatant trolls. Of which I’m sure they considered me one. But pretty quick. I don’t recall the specific incident but I do remember getting in hot water for objecting to the objections about ‘tone’ from dissenters after an original post said that Tucker Carlson had “a punchable face”. Which IIRC, I said was a rather disturbing thing for a prosecutor to be saying about someone. If certain kinds of people mention what he does for a living, it’s pretty much an automatic ban. You do get a chance to grovel and apologize. Which in the context of that exchange was simply not going to happen. But it’s been a while and I may be conflating a couple of things.

I seem to recall a disagreement between Jeff Goldstein and Patterico way back in the olden days. I think Jeff called him out for discarding principles when inconvenient, which Patterico took exception to, since there’s simply no way a man of his standing could be anything less than perfect.
I’m on Team Jeff ’til I die, so that was pretty much the last time I paid attention to anything P had to say.

I read an author’s blog (I like his early novels) because he often chats about the craft of writing and he’s good. When he talks about stuff outside his knowledge (politics, economics) he’s boilerplate hopeless.
He has a post today about Independence Day. It has all the establishment cliches you’d expect. The bitterness, condescension and sheer ignorance splutters forth. You could happily fisk it line by line:
http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2020/01/31/upon-brexit-day/
The commenters are the in the same bigoted echo chamber. I particularly liked one of the comments that has a joyous lack of self-awareness:
“Well said, Christopher. I could weep. At least I live in Scotland, where if we gain independence there might, one day, be hope of regaining the EU.”
If we gain independence…regain the EU…brain hurts…

Amy Alkon likes the crease of Adam Schiff’s pants. More seriously, I’ve basically ignored much of the impeachment proceedings because it reminds me of listening to people argue the minutiae of Quidditch. Unless you’re a nerd nothing can be gained from parsing the details of a work of fiction. After PissGate! and Election Hacked! and Russian Collusion! and the daily reminders that my political opponents wish to deprive me of my rights I felt safe assuming this whole thing was a farce. Ms Alkon, with whom I often agree, believes most right-wingers haven’t heard these facts (with the implied assumption these facts are true) about Trump’s actions, and in my case she’s mostly correct:
•Trump mentioned the Bidens and Burisma but not “corruption” during the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
•Trump followed up with a call to Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, on whether the investigations he demanded would happen.
•A text by a Trump appointee to Zelensky’s top aide sent 30 minutes before the July 25 call stressed that Trump was looking for an announcement of an investigation into the Bidens.
•When Trump, standing on the White House driveway, told the media that he wanted both Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden, he was not pursuing corruption in Ukraine, but rather looking for foreign countries to smear the former vice president.
•The draft statement announcing that Ukraine would undertake corruption investigations was rewritten by Sondland and Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to specifically include Burisma and the 2016 election (i.e., Crowdstrike).
•Giuliani openly bragged about interfering in an investigation in Ukraine.
•Ukrainian officials threw Trump’s corrupt scheme back in our faces when asked not to investigate their political opponents.
•Ukraine was confronted with a cut-off of vital aid in the middle of a hot war.
•The aid was only released when Trump was caught (and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney confirmed it publicly).
I’m not sure why this particular instance affected me, but now I feel compelled to dive in to each of these claims and investigate for truthiness, instead of taking Schiff’s word for it like Ms Alkon. Which means trawling thru lefty nonsense and righty screeds. Any suggestions where comprehensive summaries of both can be found would be much appreciated.
Though I understand the meta – that the left has been eyeing removal from day 1, that this standard has no chance in hell of being evenly applied, that the Trump presidency has exposed beyond doubt the reach and power of the permanent bureaucracy, etc – I still wish to be informed of the ostensible charge in question, Trump’s likely guilt or innocence of it, and my own acceptance of his potential guilt in the service of my ideological goals. But I fear hours of my life will be spent in the academic, whataboutism-free pursuit of truth only to discover that, once again, the left are just a bunch of lying shits.

I’m on Team Jeff ’til I die,
Yep, me, too. Add to that I had occasion to meet up with Patterico IRL years and years ago and was … meh … Then the Goldstein thing done both in the open and some very nasty backstage machinations aimed at driving Jeff offline had me crossing off reading his site. I may be banned there, too. Don’t know. Don’t care.

Jury duty…
I’ve been called (in two California counties) a few times, and served once. Mostly, the attorneys are put off by my engineer to-the-point attitude, I think. But you never know. The one trial panel I was on included a law student, which I thought would have been an automatic excusal. All the judge did was ask him “Can you refrain from discussing the law during deliberations? Can you accept my statements of what the law is?” to which the student replied yes.
See, I would have reserved to myself the ability to review absolutely everything about the case, including the law.
Nonetheless, I recommend serving at least once. Partly it’s the responsibility of any citizen to do their little part to manage the legal system. And partly because it can be a fascinating process.
And you might have the luck (good, bad) to be on a panel of an important case, like my unfortunate colleague back in the 80s. It was a significant embezzlement & fraud case The trial and deliberations took several weeks. All I know about it is that, after it was all over, he told us a bit about the defense’s summation. It included the defense attorney pointing at his client, and saying “Ecce Homo!” as if to imply that his client was some kind of sacrificial lamb. Priceless.

Well, I’ve got some bad news. Seems the people in Thailand and Oz and Japan who were previously listed as recovered (according to the link above) are now listed as dead. Well there goes that theory. Though to Muldoon’s point, what any of these statistics mean is suspect. As my dad used to say, lies, damned lies, and statistics. Though TBF I think he got that from somewhere.
I seem to recall a disagreement between Jeff Goldstein and Patterico way back in the olden days
Yeah, I wasn’t hip to it but I believe Darleen previously referenced that it was somewhat tied to the Kimberlin (or whatever…can’t even say his name on Ace out of fear of conjuring him up) mess. Sympathies for all parties involved there. My recollection of Jeff was not very positive but also at the time I wasn’t aware of what he was going through with BK. I wasn’t a regular reader of PW. I took him and P to be of similar stubborn character. Jeff wrote the NeverTrump screed that effectively defined NeverTrump, AIUI. Though also AIUI, Jeff has come around to being more accepting of the current realities, even somewhat supportive. Can’t really blame some people much for their early on concerns but much of that was unfounded. Genuinely a lot of concerns but given the choice available in 2016, it really should not have been all that hard. Personally discomforting, but still not that hard.
Just checked in at P, given that this shampeachment thing is looking to be over. He’s got a post up calling Trump a “King” and comparing him to Caligula. I kid you not. Well, Trump does have a sister so…

Well, praise be to Jesus! It seems those Thai, Ozzies, and that Jap have been raise back from the dead and are showing as “Recovered”! Wow. Can you imagine what that must be like? I mean first you get the deadliest virus in the world, but you recover completely, then you’re dead, but before ole Nick can get you through Human Resources (which is pretty much all Hell), you’re back on your feet on the shiny side of the planet. What a day. I think when something like that happens you should be obliged to buy a round for the house.

I just looked at Patterico, a site I’d never heard of. Excitable chap, isn’t he? If he was on the jury, he’d be played by Lee J. Cobb.
The nutroots are already discussing the possibility of impeaching Trump AGAIN. There has also been an attack on Mar-a-Lago. Although to be fair, Mar-a-Lago is in Florida, so the attackers may have been random nuts, rather than politically motivated nuts.

There has also been an attack on Mar-a-Lago.
Don’t know if Trump is there but when he is, like over Christmas when we drove up that way, the police, etc. presence is pretty thick. When he’s there you can’t drive up A1A any further and have to exit back to the mainland. As you cross over the Intracoastal, you see a few small craft mounted with large caliber weapons. Numerous cars/suvs/whatever blocking the path in past the temporary concrete barriers blocking the roadway. I think you’d have to be a random nut to attack that overtly….Googling, I see now it was an SUV driven by a 30 year old woman who was involved in a police chase that started elsewhere. Apparently she failed Eluding Police 101. Badly.

Two hours into my furious cram session on impeachment and have yet to find an explanation from lefty sources why no statutory crime was cited. This isn’t promising.

Your date’s arrived.
The thing is some guy will, um, “date” her(?). Many guys, in fact, will be thrilled to do so. So feedback loop that led to…that…continues unabated.