Joe Biden: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

(01-08-2022, 07:19 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-08-2022, 02:04 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...©ollege education... is overrated as an assurance of competence. College-educated people can still be cranks or get enraptured in pseudoscience. I've met people with college degrees who can't hold a credible conversation. I have known some who have done stupid things like use street drugs, sleep with anything that moves in the time of AIDS, drive drunk, join cults, and fall for extremist causes. One is more likely to do those things if one is a half-wit. The connection between IQ and formal learning is generally well established, as the high-school dropouts are largely dummies. Such is also true of the connection between intelligence and crime. Crime is stupid. Some burglars (nasty people, as many are also rapists) who feel assurance that the little yapping dog is only a Jack Russell terrier. My observation with dogs is that the smaller the dog, the more tiger-like its behavior is. Hospitalization rates by breed are twice as high for bites by kitten-sized Yorkshire terriers than for dogs in general. Little ankle-biters? I'd rather be bitten on my thigh, thank you, because that will not cripple me. 

I am at most an amateur at assessing risks. All that I can rely upon is the statistical evidence.

You're not going by statistical evidence or science at this point. You're going by what the Left Wing Media, the Democratic Party, Left Wing bureaucrats, Left Wing Institutions, Left Wing propagandists, Left Wing interest groups/organizations, Left Wing SCOTUS's 's and the Biden/Harris Administration are/have been telling you the entire time. Personally, I doubt COVID itself has killed anyone so far. OK, maybe it has killed a few people so far. We don't know that answer, we only how many deaths are COVID related. Oh, you won't find a dog that's built like a bear or a tiger either.

...as if you ever go by statistical evidence or science at any point, Clasic X'er.  Many of the differences on any social science between those who disagree on the most divisive issues disagree on moral values. You seem to believe in such a principle as "He who owns the gold makes the rules" and that people unlike you do not merit your trust. I am convinced that most of the ethical values that make life tolerable are well established, and deviations that we have accepted have been accepted only upon careful reflection that weighs consequences of the alternatives. The rightful relationship between asset-owners and people in need due to their humanity has yet to be fully solidified. A few centuries ago such was settled in this way: that the poor have responsibilities to the rich (the aristocrats who owned everything and had the power of life and death over everyone) and the aristocrats have none to the peons who are 100% expendable. When such was no longer enforceable only the aristocrats and their intellectual flunkies believed that -- if they were so inclined. Then came the French Revolution that shook the aristocratic ethos at its core, and finally the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Second World War that led to the the annihilation of the aristocracy as a class. Some people thought that people could be literal possessions of others -- before the American Civil War made such an obvious absurdity.    

Quote:You should quit referring to dogs as tigers or saying there are dogs that are like tigers because it makes you look/sound stupid to people like me.

Maybe I overdo this, but the point is that dogs are a criminal's worst enemy. They are the strongest mammals for their size, they are swift, powerful, cunning, and agile. They have keen senses and sharp teeth and claws with dangerous muscles behind them. If they attack, they might attack as one, in which case four 80-pond Rottweilers, Dobermans, or German Shepherds are potentially as dangerous as one giant cat.  We are in Dog Country, and we behave ourselves in their presence or we can get hurt badly. Dogs are far more effective at deterring crime than are guns. I could as easily have compared dogs to lions or bears.  But know well, that a dog can be a perfectly harmless pet and even a companion to a cat (the dog treats the cat as a fellow dog). Unlike a gun, it is far safer to you and your loved ones. Know well that the typical criminal is stupid, motivated only by the most primal of drives. Fear can be more powerful than greed or lust. The real point is whether, should you have fear of crime, to have a dog or a gun. The criminal will never turn the dog against you. Should you be in despair, a firearm is a highly-reliable tool of suicide, and a beloved dog might console you. You can shoot the wrong person in error, but the dog is unlikely to attack the wrong person. Guns are easy to steal, and dogs aren't.

I've seen circus acts on television, and the dog acts and tiger acts are practically identical except that the tigers create awe and the dogs are for comic effect. They can be built much alike. Yes, a tiger wins any conflict with any dog because the dog is smaller. but a dog that I outweigh by a ratio of three to one wins a fight with me should I do something very stupid. If I have said "the smaller the dog, the bigger the tiger" it is because the smallest dogs can get away with more aggression and are more likely in need of using aggression. OK, small dogs have the size of house cats, but we all know what a cat can do with any creature smaller than itself except for the one non-cat that is its peer in a dispute: a similarly-sized dog. I like dogs, but I certainly respect them. 

Here's one other odd similarity: tigers do not so much roar as howl. Except for a higher pitch due to a smaller throat, a dog can make a similar howl. But, yes, dogs are tame -- which means that they are predictable, and tigers are extremely unpredictable.  

Quote:You have a blue stereotype that some blues created for themselves to live up to or fail to live up to/die by in your case. I know a high school drop who works with Tesla. I know another one who owns/runs the gaming/ gaming development division associated with a global internet company. I know several others who have succeeded/are succeeding at whatever it is they do as well. You don't seem to know when it's time to stop and lick your wounds and reassess your situation/position. You're not alone that appears to be a common problem with those on the Left.

When America was more of a manufacturing country, it was possible for high-school drop-outs to get and hold manufacturing jobs that depended upon strong muscles, a solid work ethic, obedience, and the willingness to put up with body aches from the work that they did. The factory was the most reliable exit from grinding poverty, which explains why Booker T. Washington put so much emphasis on industrial education for blacks who were never going  to get white-collar jobs anyway. In general most employers are chary of hiring high-school dropouts  except for raw labor. Back in the old days people dropped out of school to meet the needs of their families as the bread-winning father wore out around age 40. Today dropping out of high school is the mark of someone that no employer wants: a rebel. Someone who cannot deal with the comparatively lax bureaucracy of a K-12 school will quickly find the more rigid and demanding bureaucracy of a fast-food place overwhelming. It is possible for a complete dullard to get a high-school diploma through special education. With a good attitude and integrity one can do menial but necessary work. 

I have seen the critique that people with college degrees typically have any entrepreneurial character drummed out of them. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs knew enough to not stay in school and get a BA or BS degree. Most entrepreneurial activity is honest-to-Horatio Alger work. College grads have an infamous reputation for not wanting to get their hands dirty or to risk industrial accidents that might damage the fingers that give delight from playing classical music on a piano, violin, or cello. Much work that college grads do is glorified clerical work whose purpose they do not understand, as Orwell suggests is the case for white-collar workers.  With comparative privilege dangled before them, meaning a house somewhat 'better' than the tract home that some blue-collar worker might have, a new Buick or Chrysler every seven years, and maybe a cruise in the Baltic or Mediterranean after twenty years when they finally get three weeks of paid vacation that they can finally put together they might ask no questions and hear no lies. 

If you want my idea of who has the sanest economic order in America it is that of the Old Order Amish. They have no bureaucracy and very few white-collar jobs. Such white-collar jobs as they have are selling farm produce or clergy work. It's not an easy way of life, and I could never do it. I wouldn't want my education cut off at eighth grade and age 16, and I am glad that I can appreciate the Haydn string quartet in the background. It takes a certain level of intellectual refinement to recognize that a work described as "Quartet for two violins, viola, and violoncello in G minor, Opus 20 #3" is worth listening to despite the complete lack of any clever title. Music such as this has gotten me through some depressing times as pop music can't. On the other hand, I didn't milk cows or do oil changes which would be far more useful to society than exploring classical music. 

Should things go badly as in a horrible war then milking cows, picking fruits or vegetables, or pushing a wheelbarrow will be necessary for re-establishing the material basis of a tolerable life. Those people who made a decent living managing the paperwork for a company that finances long-term purchases of ATVs or pianos will find such work vanishing because people will be unable to buy pianos or ATV's. Just imagine what it would be like at age 40 to have to pick up the bricks that once formed the building of the insurance company in which you recently worked, sweating in the hot sun and wearing out your best clothes because those somehow survived the war.  Yes, it is the construction laborer, the farm worker, and the toiler on a mind-numbing assembly line that creates the basis for a job pushing papers.

Life can be absurd. At age 66, I have never stopped trying to sort it out.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-08-2022, 01:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: There are many unvaccinated people getting covid today. They are mostly the ones in the hospital, including many more children not vaccinated yet or not eligible to be vaccinated yet. Many of them are now saying they wish they had been vaccinated. Some of them die. They are proving you wrong by dying in the process. You keep getting covid Classic Xer, and you may very well die from it. Well, one less right-wing idiot around.





The fate of antivaxxers:
https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

Hey, Classic Xer, please get vaccinated! Without you, who would we argue with around here?

I bet there are more vaccinated people getting/spreading COVID than unvaccinated these days . I know more vaccinated who have gotten it than unvaccinated right now. I haven't got Omicron yet or Delta again despite being directly exposed to both variants by several infected vaccinated people over the last three months. So, how does it feel to be more or less unvaccinated these days?

[Classic-Xer]

(01-09-2022, 01:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...as if you ever go by statistical evidence or science at any point, Clasic X'er.  Many of the differences on any social science between those who disagree on the most divisive issues disagree on moral values. You seem to believe in such a principle as "He who owns the gold makes the rules" and that people unlike you do not merit your trust. I am convinced that most of the ethical values that make life tolerable are well established, and deviations that we have accepted have been accepted only upon careful reflection that weighs consequences of the alternatives. The rightful relationship between asset-owners and people in need due to their humanity has yet to be fully solidified. A few centuries ago such was settled in this way: that the poor have responsibilities to the rich (the aristocrats who owned everything and had the power of life and death over everyone) and the aristocrats have none to the peons who are 100% expendable. When such was no longer enforceable only the aristocrats and their intellectual flunkies believed that -- if they were so inclined. Then came the French Revolution that shook the aristocratic ethos at its core, and finally the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Second World War that led to the the annihilation of the aristocracy as a class. Some people thought that people could be literal possessions of others -- before the American Civil War made such an obvious absurdity.    

What do you mean? I've been going by statistics, the opinions of real doctors, real scientists, real experts and so forth who have been working on COVID, treating COVID, learning about COVID since the beginning and my own personal knowledge/experience related to COVID the entire time. You guys have been going by whatever is being fed to you by those on the Left, whatever looks good, sounds or whatever viewed as beneficial agenda wise, whatever lowers fears or concerns relating to dying from it or whatever you think is beneficial to you or your life and so forth. PB, you are a partisan hack Left Wing Democrat and that's about all you are and will ever be at this point. BTW, you guys have done nothing to earn my/our trust the entire time you've been posting. I mean be honest, look/listen to all the crap you've been going along with or not questioning and supporting for your own benefit. You're kind of lucky that the entire American Right has been relatively patient and largely non violent so far.

[pbrower2a]

(01-10-2022, 05:30 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-08-2022, 01:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: There are many unvaccinated people getting covid today. They are mostly the ones in the hospital, including many more children not vaccinated yet or not eligible to be vaccinated yet. Many of them are now saying they wish they had been vaccinated. Some of them die. They are proving you wrong by dying in the process. You keep getting covid Classic Xer, and you may very well die from it. Well, one less right-wing idiot around.





The fate of antivaxxers:
https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

Hey, Classic Xer, please get vaccinated! Without you, who would we argue with around here?

I bet there are more vaccinated people getting/spreading COVID than unvaccinated these days . I know more vaccinated who have gotten it than unvaccinated right now. I haven't got Omicron yet or Delta again despite being directly exposed to both variants by several infected vaccinated people over the last three months. So, how does it feel to be more or less unvaccinated these days?

You lose the bet.

As COVID-19 runs out of unvaccinated people to sicken and kill, it will likely turn into something more contagious, less calamitous, and less preventable. That is the pattern for viruses -- even HIV. With HIV, people changed their behavior to become less vulnerable to it. HIV/AIDS was largely associated with free-for-all homosexuals who couldn't stop having unprotected sex... and HIV/AIDS killed them off. Then in America the primary cause of the spread of HIV/AIDS was needle-sharing by IV drug users. IV drug users who shared needles died off, but IV drug use has other hazards such as overdoses and shock from withdrawal. 

At some point, SARS-2 (the name of the virus) will morph into something much less insidious after killing off the people who act stupidly in its presence. To be sure, COVID-19 is not the death sentence that HIV/AIDS was around 1980... but something that has a one-in-66 chance of killing one is something to avoid with all due precautions. I don't provoke rattlesnakes or large predators (basically any predator the size of a Maine Coon Cat); I don't drive drunk: I silence my cell phone on the road; I don't use or deal street drugs; I don't do violent crime or break into houses (one result of which might be an encounter with a creature that suddenly becomes dangerously unpredictable. You know which one). Even with the vaccines that we have one can get an infection... but one's immune system is in far-better shape for meeting it, and you ave little chance of death or debility from it.

At some point, more vaccinated people will get a breakthrough case than will unvaccinated people. The consequences for getting COVID-19 if not vaccinated include:

1. death by suffocation 
2. diabetes
3. organ damage
4. cognitive loss
5. long-term disability
6. stillbirths
7.  sexual dysfunction
8.  harm to pets

Which of those is worth not getting an inoculation? Cancer and birth defects are not yet provable results, but I can imagine those as long-term effects. 

.... There's a story behind probability: the study originates in the study of table games. Games of pure chance and not strategy, like coin-flipping, roulette,  and craps, are sure winners for the House. A player usually gets wiped out slowly while feeling himself on the verge of winning. Craps is a loser's game, but some find it entertaining. It's the game in Guys and Dolls, and the players in the "oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York" that Nathan Detroit runs has colorful characters who generally aren't so bright. The game is easy to understand. Slot machines and lotteries? The operators depend on convincing people that their losses are trivial and that the payouts are magnificent while overstating the odds of the big jackpot. Some senior citizens going to the casino with $50 recognize that the $50 will do them little good (actually, one can still buy plenty of groceries with $50, and it is a couple tanks of gas) but that thousands of dollars will solve their problems.

There are good bets and bad bets. Unless one is as incompetent a businessman as Donald Trump or has gangsters skimming the profits, it's hard to lose as a casino operator. Even if the games are close to even (if someone keeps playing long enough, the casino will make the money), a casino has other "profit centers" such as built-in bars, restaurants, and shops -- and of course a hotel.  Children can't gamble, but they can be entertained with video games and pinball machines that devour funds about as quickly as slot machines.  People are spending money at casinos (basically paying for some excitement) instead of shopping, I suppose, which is also a predictable drain on assets. 

I won't go into the details, but all in all there are good bets and bad bets. The most attractive ones for some are those that have a small pay-in and potentially a very high pay-out, like lottery tickets. For some, the most attractive are those that look as if one is winning even if one is losing. The worst imaginable bet is something with a high risk of losing big and and a minuscule reward. Casinos have good cause to avoid offering that as such results in disgruntled one-time customers. Most people are good for at most one rip-off as a customer.  

Casino betting, sports betting, and lotteries are on the whole losing propositions for customers. Not getting vaccinated is the worst sort of bet possible, one in which one puts one's life on the line for practically nothing. I'd rather make a bet on the Detroit Lions winning a game at even odds (they won three games, tied one, and lost thirteen, and they have a schlemiel heritage as an organization) than take a pointless risk of death or other catastrophes with a failure to get inoculated. 




    `

[Eric the Green]

Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

[David Horn]

(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner.  When did they vote in earnest?  They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump.  But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right.  They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  This is the problem the Democrats can't see.  By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2022, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner.  When did they vote in earnest?  They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump.  But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right.  They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  This is the problem the Democrats can't see.  By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.

 
President Biden is not exciting. People voted for him in part because they came to despise or dread Trump. American politics does not yet fit millennial norms. When it does it is over for any pol who cannot adjust to the Millennial reality. I expect the last remaining Silent and the first wave of Boomers to vacate the political scene fairly soon. One birth year that now encompasses twenty years of the Presidency (1946) with on the whole mediocre-to-dreadful Presidents has gone from freakishly young for the Presidency to freakishly old. 

Obama is an oddity for a Reactive type in combining Civic and Idealist traits as do the Silent while being a mature Reactive (which is definitely not Silent), and if we have someone else somewhat like him he will not get in the way of the rise of the Millennial generation.

[pbrower2a]

(01-10-2022, 06:26 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 01:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...as if you ever go by statistical evidence or science at any point, Clasic X'er.  Many of the differences on any social science between those who disagree on the most divisive issues disagree on moral values. You seem to believe in such a principle as "He who owns the gold makes the rules" and that people unlike you do not merit your trust. I am convinced that most of the ethical values that make life tolerable are well established, and deviations that we have accepted have been accepted only upon careful reflection that weighs consequences of the alternatives. The rightful relationship between asset-owners and people in need due to their humanity has yet to be fully solidified. A few centuries ago such was settled in this way: that the poor have responsibilities to the rich (the aristocrats who owned everything and had the power of life and death over everyone) and the aristocrats have none to the peons who are 100% expendable. When such was no longer enforceable only the aristocrats and their intellectual flunkies believed that -- if they were so inclined. Then came the French Revolution that shook the aristocratic ethos at its core, and finally the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Second World War that led to the the annihilation of the aristocracy as a class. Some people thought that people could be literal possessions of others -- before the American Civil War made such an obvious absurdity.    

What do you mean? I've been going by statistics, the opinions of real doctors, real scientists, real experts and so forth who have been working on COVID, treating COVID, learning about COVID since the beginning and my own personal knowledge/experience related to COVID  the entire time.

This isn't easy reading, but I can derive only one conclusion from it: get yourself inoculated. This comes from the Journal of the American Medical Association, the industry group of genuine physicians, I don't know what doctors and scientists you consult, but I would stay clear of medical quackery. This article is available free, so try reading it.

Quote:As the US enters the third year of the global coronavirus pandemic, vaccination remains the most effective tool against infections and symptomatic illness. Layered on other public health mitigation tools such as testing and masks, vaccination is central to a larger strategy of control and management of COVID-19 as the pandemic shifts toward endemicity.1 However, emergence of new variants of concern, vaccine hesitancy, and barriers to global vaccine equity have created challenges to containing the pandemic.

While initial studies demonstrated that 2-dose schedules of both the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 and the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine had more than 90% effectiveness for preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections, breakthrough infections due to the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 began to emerge in the summer of 2021.2 The more-recently identified Omicron variant is characterized by immune evasion with frequent symptomatic infections occurring among fully vaccinated individuals, prompting broad recommendations for booster doses to help counter waning immunity.3 Understanding how much protection vaccination provides against Omicron can help inform the need for other mitigation measures.

In this issue of JAMA, Accorsi and colleagues4 report findings from an observational study that estimated the association of receipt of 3 doses or 2 doses of mRNA vaccines (BNT162b2 or mRNA-1273), compared with each other and with no vaccination, with symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, stratified by the Omicron and Delta variants among individuals in the US. This Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–led study used a test-negative, case-control analysis of 70 155 tests from symptomatic adults 18 years or older with COVID-like illness tested December 10, 2021, through January 1, 2022, by a national pharmacy-based testing program (4666 COVID-19 testing sites across 49 US states).

The study sample (mean age, 40.3 years; 60.1% women) included 23 391 cases (13 098 Omicron; 10 293 Delta) and 46 764 SARS-CoV-2–negative controls. Receipt of 3 mRNA vaccine doses was reported for 18.6% (n = 2441) of Omicron cases, 6.6% (n = 679) of Delta cases, and 39.7% (n = 18 587) of controls; prior receipt of 2 mRNA vaccine doses was reported for 55.3% (n = 7245), 44.4% (n = 4570), and 41.6% (n = 19 456), respectively; and being unvaccinated was reported for 26.0% (n = 3412), 49.0% (n = 5044), and 18.6% (n = 8721), respectively. The study results demonstrated that the likelihood of vaccination with 3 mRNA vaccine doses (vs unvaccinated) was significantly lower among both Omicron cases (adjusted odds ratio [OR], 0.33 [95% CI, 0.31-0.35]) and Delta cases (adjusted OR, 0.065 [95% CI, 0.059-0.071]) than among SARS-CoV-2–negative controls; a similar pattern was observed with 3 vs 2 doses of mRNA vaccines (Omicron adjusted OR, 0.34 [95% CI, 0.32-0.36]); Delta adjusted OR, 0.16 [95% CI, 0.14-0.17]). The relatively higher odds ratios for the association with Omicron infection suggested less protection (ie, corresponding with lower estimated vaccine effectiveness) for Omicron than for Delta, underscoring the ongoing need for a layered public health approach to prevention of SARS-CoV-2.

An important secondary outcome of the study by Accorsi et al4 was cycle threshold values among case patients, which is an imperfect but useful proxy for infectivity. Median N-gene and ORF1ab-gene cycle threshold values were higher among cases with 3 doses vs 2 doses for both Omicron and Delta (Omicron N gene: 19.35 vs 18.52; Omicron ORF1ab gene: 19.25 vs 18.40; Delta N gene: 19.07 vs 17.52; Delta ORF1ab gene: 18.70 vs 17.28). While the differences met statistical significance, it is unclear whether these small absolute differences are clinically meaningful.

The findings reported by Accorsi et al4 support the 3-dose schedule for mRNA vaccines currently recommended in the US for anyone older than 12 years (specifically, individuals 12 years or older can receive a booster dose of BNT162b2 and those 18 years or older have the option of receiving mRNA-1273 as their booster). However, the authors did not estimate the absolute effectiveness of the 2-dose schedule in their main analysis. This is important, as many countries continue to have an insufficient supply of vaccine. If a 3-dose schedule is indeed more effective, it would be informative for these countries to know whether a 2-dose schedule may still provide considerable protection against severe disease when vaccine supplies are limited. Accorsi et al4 do provide the ORs for the 2-dose schedule for symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection by month since second dose. These ORs indicate limited to no effectiveness of the 2-dose schedule against the symptomatic Omicron infection by 4 to 6 months after the second dose.

While the research on the Omicron variant is emerging, early studies suggest a few patterns. Several studies have estimated the effectiveness of various vaccines used around the world against the Omicron variant for the primary series as well as booster dose.5-8 However, only a subset of these studies had a hospitalization end point for the primary series and booster dose.5,6 In studies that compared the estimated vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant with the effectiveness against the Omicron variant, the estimated vaccine effectiveness was lower against Omicron compared with Delta.6 For studies in which both primary series as well as booster vaccinations were evaluated, the estimated effectiveness of vaccination schedules with a booster dose was higher.5,7 The results from Accorsi et al4 extend this evidence to the US population.

While the data from the current study by Accorsi et al4 on vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 are informative, the report lacks data on clinical presentation and disease severity. From a public health planning standpoint, understanding vaccine effectiveness against clinically meaningful outcomes such as hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit, and death in the Omicron era will be essential. Moreover, in many countries, including the US, the pandemic continues to be substantially driven by unvaccinated individuals. While it is useful to provide booster vaccinations, particularly to high-risk groups, only vaccinating those who are not yet vaccinated will result in sustainable control of COVID-19 and prevent additional morbidity and mortality. Moreover, the message that vaccines are indeed effective against severe outcomes, even with breakthrough cases of COVID-19, has gotten lost in recent weeks as the incidence of Omicron cases continues to rise.

The emerging evidence on the utility of booster vaccinations has global implications because booster recommendations likely mean diversion of additional supplies to high-income countries. If the evidence suggests that a booster vaccination is needed for protecting populations in high-income countries such as the US, which has seen catastrophic levels of COVID-19–related morbidity and mortality, ethical reasoning supports delivering boosters to populations in these countries.9 However, countries’ right to protect their own populations does not absolve them from their responsibilities toward global vaccine equity. Adequate vaccine supplies must be made available to ensure a high level of protection against SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Not doing so maintains the circumstances to promote ongoing emergence of new variants of concern.

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Article Information
Corresponding Author: Preeti N. Malani, MD, MSJ, 4135F University Hospital South, 1500 E Medical Center Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (pmalani@umich.edu).
Published Online: January 21, 2022. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.0892
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.
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Del Rio  C, Malani  PN, Omer  SB.  Confronting the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, summer 2021.   JAMA. 2021;326(11):1001-1002. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.14811
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Del Rio  C, Omer  SB, Malani  PN.  Winter of Omicron—the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.   JAMA. Published online December 22, 2021. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.24315
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UK Health Security Agency. SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern and Variants Under Investigation in England: Technical Briefing 34. Published January 14, 2022. Accessed January 18, 2022. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1048395/technical-briefing-34-14-january-2022.pdf

7.

Ferguson  N, Ghani  A, Cori  A,  et al. Report 49: Growth, Population Distribution and Immune Escape of Omicron in England. Imperial College London. Published online December 16, 2021. Accessed January 19, 2022. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/93038/32/2021-12-16%20COVID19%20Report%2049.pdf

8.

Andrews  N, Stowe  J, Kirsebom  F,  et al.  Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of concern.  Preprint. Posted online December 14, 2021. medRxiv. doi:10.1101/2021.12.14.21267615

9.

Emanuel  EJ, Buchanan  A, Chan  SY,  et al.  On the ethics of vaccine nationalism: the case for the fair priority for residents framework.   Ethics Int Aff. 2021;35(4):543-562. doi:10.1017/S0892679421000514PubMedGoogle ScholarCrossref

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fu...le/2788487

This is what peer-reviewed material looks like.
 

Quote:You guys have been going by whatever is being fed to you by those on  the Left, whatever looks good, sounds  or whatever viewed as beneficial agenda wise, whatever lowers fears or concerns relating to dying from it or whatever you think is beneficial to you or your life and so forth.

This time the Left is more reliably correct about a dangerous disease than you are. OK, from what I hear, physicians have their prejudices -- mostly about people whose habits get them into medical calamity. Smoking, alcoholism, drug use, severe obesity, unprotected sex with anything that moves... it's particularly difficult to get young physicians to specialize in liver ailments because most of those result from heavy drinking. I had an uncle by marriage who had stories about places that he went, and although the place-name changed, the last words of the story were "did I get drunk!" If I am in a strange place, then I certainly don't want to get drunk! (OK, that is cheap on my part because I don't hold liquor well anymore.  When I was in college I could have five drinks on a Saturday...one at 3, one at 5, one at 7, one at 9, and one at 11. That is over. 

Quote:PB, you are a partisan hack Left Wing  Democrat and that's about all you are and will ever be  at this point.

So? What does the current GOP have to offer me? I'm getting Social Security and disability payments that Democrats largely sponsored and voted for. I'm an industrial accident waiting to happen if I did industrial work. The GOP is for low wages and monopolistic organization of the economy, a raw deal for the vast majority of the American people.

On the other hand you are a typical crank.

Quote:BTW, you guys have done nothing to earn my/our trust the entire time you've been posting. I mean be honest, look/listen to all the crap you've been going along with or not questioning and supporting for your own benefit. You're kind of lucky that the entire American Right has been relatively patient and largely non violent so far.

Need I convince you?

[Eric the Green]

(01-22-2022, 01:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner.  When did they vote in earnest?  They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump.  But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right.  They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  This is the problem the Democrats can't see.  By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.

 
President Biden is not exciting. People voted for him in part because they came to despise or dread Trump. American politics does not yet fit millennial norms. When it does it is over for any pol who cannot adjust to the Millennial reality. I expect the last remaining Silent and the first wave of Boomers to vacate the political scene fairly soon. One birth year that now encompasses twenty years of the Presidency (1946) with on the whole mediocre-to-dreadful Presidents has gone from freakishly young for the Presidency to freakishly old. 

Obama is an oddity for a Reactive type in combining Civic and Idealist traits as do the Silent while being a mature Reactive (which is definitely not Silent), and if we have someone else somewhat like him he will not get in the way of the rise of the Millennial generation.

The problem is that there is no viable successor to Biden that can be elected before the fourth turning is over. It appears to be too late for any other leader to appear and fulfill the GC role.

If Millennials have not moved to the right, then why do polls show Republicans leading by a point or two for the 2022 congressional elections, and why are approval ratings for Biden down by 10-14 points? You don't have to come out and vote to answer a poll. Why didn't Sanders win the Democratic primary in 2020? Why doesn't congress reflect a Millennial demand for the Green New Deal?

Biden is where he was when he ran, pretty much. He had moved to the left of his prior record. I don't see that Biden has moved to the middle; granted that this "middle" in the USA is center-right at best; but the Millennials and other generations don't seem willing to support or elect a genuine left leader. The USA just does not seem able to separate itself from Reagan. We are stuck, it appears; with Biden, and with the center-left as the best we can ever get in the USA. Right now, it appears that once again a center-left Democratic president is not getting support once elected. We only get a center-left government every 12 or 14 years or so, and then only for a year or two at best (the previous time it was only for 7 months). If this pattern has not changed, then we have not entered a genuine 4T this round, and the saeculum cycle is over. Only decline lies ahead.

It would be nice if a leader would appear and step up who was exciting and willing and able to convince center-right Americans, including Millennials, to participate and go further left and deal with real issues. But there is no such leader available who can get him, her or them-self elected.

Mike Alexander and David Kaiser have speculated whether we entered the 4T much too late or too early. I am wondering now whether we will ever enter it, and whether indeed the cycle has stopped entirely for the foreseeable future. In dark ages, there isn't much of a saeculum cycle going on.

[Eric the Green]

(01-10-2022, 06:26 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-09-2022, 01:23 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...as if you ever go by statistical evidence or science at any point, Clasic X'er.  Many of the differences on any social science between those who disagree on the most divisive issues disagree on moral values. You seem to believe in such a principle as "He who owns the gold makes the rules" and that people unlike you do not merit your trust. I am convinced that most of the ethical values that make life tolerable are well established, and deviations that we have accepted have been accepted only upon careful reflection that weighs consequences of the alternatives. The rightful relationship between asset-owners and people in need due to their humanity has yet to be fully solidified. A few centuries ago such was settled in this way: that the poor have responsibilities to the rich (the aristocrats who owned everything and had the power of life and death over everyone) and the aristocrats have none to the peons who are 100% expendable. When such was no longer enforceable only the aristocrats and their intellectual flunkies believed that -- if they were so inclined. Then came the French Revolution that shook the aristocratic ethos at its core, and finally the chaos of the Russian Revolution and the Second World War that led to the the annihilation of the aristocracy as a class. Some people thought that people could be literal possessions of others -- before the American Civil War made such an obvious absurdity.    

What do you mean? I've been going by statistics, the opinions of real doctors, real scientists, real experts and so forth who have been working on COVID, treating COVID, learning about COVID since the beginning and my own personal knowledge/experience related to COVID  the entire time. You guys have been going by whatever is being fed to you by those on  the Left, whatever looks good, sounds  or whatever viewed as beneficial agenda wise, whatever lowers fears or concerns relating to dying from it or whatever you think is beneficial to you or your life and so forth. PB, you are a partisan hack Left Wing  Democrat and that's about all you are and will ever be  at this point. BTW, you guys have done nothing to earn my/our trust the entire time you've been posting. I mean be honest, look/listen to all the crap you've been going along with or not questioning and supporting for your own benefit. You're kind of lucky that the entire American Right has been relatively patient and largely non violent so far.

The Left is fact-based; the Right-wing is based on conspiracy theory and right-wing ideologies.

We don't need your trust.

The only benefit you seek Classic Xer from politics is to defend trickle-down neoliberalism, keep your taxes low and keep your guns. We on the Left are not interested in those things. I don't care if you lose your guns or have to pay higher taxes.

The American Right is losing its patience already. It has attacked the capitol and state capitols and threatened election workers with violence. It is shutting down democracy.

[David Horn]

(01-22-2022, 01:37 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 01:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner.  When did they vote in earnest?  They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump.  But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right.  They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  This is the problem the Democrats can't see.  By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.

 
President Biden is not exciting. People voted for him in part because they came to despise or dread Trump. American politics does not yet fit millennial norms. When it does it is over for any pol who cannot adjust to the Millennial reality. I expect the last remaining Silent and the first wave of Boomers to vacate the political scene fairly soon. One birth year that now encompasses twenty years of the Presidency (1946) with on the whole mediocre-to-dreadful Presidents has gone from freakishly young for the Presidency to freakishly old. 

Obama is an oddity for a Reactive type in combining Civic and Idealist traits as do the Silent while being a mature Reactive (which is definitely not Silent), and if we have someone else somewhat like him he will not get in the way of the rise of the Millennial generation.

The problem is that there is no viable successor to Biden that can be elected before the fourth turning is over. It appears to be too late for any other leader to appear and fulfill the GC role.

If Millennials have not moved to the right, then why do polls show Republicans leading by a point or two for the 2022 congressional elections, and why are approval ratings for Biden down by 10-14 points? You don't have to come out and vote to answer a poll. Why didn't Sanders win the Democratic primary in 2020? Why doesn't congress reflect a Millennial demand for the Green New Deal?

Biden is where he was when he ran, pretty much. He had moved to the left of his prior record. I don't see that Biden has moved to the middle; granted that this "middle" in the USA is center-right at best; but the Millennials and other generations don't seem willing to support or elect a genuine left leader. The USA just does not seem able to separate itself from Reagan. We are stuck, it appears; with Biden, and with the center-left as the best we can ever get in the USA. Right now, it appears that once again a center-left Democratic president is not getting support once elected. We only get a center-left government every 12 or 14 years or so, and then only for a year or two at best (the previous time it was only for 7 months). If this pattern has not changed, then we have not entered a genuine 4T this round, and the saeculum cycle is over. Only decline lies ahead.

It would be nice if a leader would appear and step up who was exciting and willing and able to convince center-right Americans, including Millennials, to participate and go further left and deal with real issues. But there is no such leader available who can get him, her or them-self elected.

Mike Alexander and David Kaiser have speculated whether we entered the 4T much too late or too early. I am wondering now whether we will ever enter it, and whether indeed the cycle has stopped entirely for the foreseeable future. In dark ages, there isn't much of a saeculum cycle going on.

I don't see the young moving toward the Trumpists.  I don't see them fleeing in horror either.  They seem more disgusted than angry, and resigned to their fate. 

I agree that the 4T may fizzle. I don't see it as a left-right thing though.  The youth, both Millennial and Z, are less idiomatic in that sense.  Stress has led them to view the world in the starkest of terms, and that degree of realism doesn't promote the kind of cohesion needed to create movements.  What might break through and trigger another wave of political engagement is something only a Millennial (or Z) might be capable of producing.  The one missing and necessary element: a real leader they can rally around and follow.  Biden's not it.

I disagree about the end of the saeculum, though.  The so-called ACW anomaly may have merely be the FOAK for transformational 4Ts.  How it plays this time is TBD, but assuredly not like the last 4T.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-22-2022, 05:13 PM)David Horn Wrote: I don't see the young moving toward the Trumpists.  I don't see them fleeing in horror either.  They seem more disgusted than angry, and resigned to their fate. 

I agree that the 4T may fizzle. I don't see it as a left-right thing though.  The youth, both Millennial and Z, are less idiomatic in that sense.  Stress has led them to view the world in the starkest of terms, and that degree of realism doesn't promote the kind of cohesion needed to create movements.  What might break through and trigger another wave of political engagement is something only a Millennial (or Z) might be capable of producing.  The one missing and necessary element: a real leader they can rally around and follow.  Biden's not it.

I disagree about the end of the saeculum, though.  The so-called ACW anomaly may have merely be the FOAK for transformational 4Ts.  How it plays this time is TBD, but assuredly not like the last 4T.

Agree that Biden hasn't been the cheerleader for the young.  Thing is, he has identified the right positions on the right issues.  I'm still hopeful that the steady obstruction of the Republicans will cost them in the mid terms.  If you are going to solve the problems we are facing, it is clear you have to give the Democrats a few more seats in the Senate.  If he gets that, Biden looks very different.

Yes, in prior crisis nobody had trouble about getting behind change.  Democracy, not being on the wrong side of colonial imperialism, slavery, enabling the industrial revolution over a government controlled by agriculturalists, letting the government regulate the economy and containing expansionists powers all attracted the youth of the time.  This time, the need seems less pressing to a rural population who doesn't see the difficulties as clearly.  At the time Covid was politicized, it was more an urban problem.  Prejudice is desired in the rural areas.  Attempts to overthrow democracy weren't as obvious.  The environment still seems wild and exploitable enough.  Trump's criminality was not as obvious.  It is still not clear that the rural folk will see the problems, but two votes in the Senate might be possible?

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2022, 08:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 05:13 PM)David Horn Wrote: I don't see the young moving toward the Trumpists.  I don't see them fleeing in horror either.  They seem more disgusted than angry, and resigned to their fate. 

I agree that the 4T may fizzle. I don't see it as a left-right thing though.  The youth, both Millennial and Z, are less idiomatic in that sense.  Stress has led them to view the world in the starkest of terms, and that degree of realism doesn't promote the kind of cohesion needed to create movements.  What might break through and trigger another wave of political engagement is something only a Millennial (or Z) might be capable of producing.  The one missing and necessary element: a real leader they can rally around and follow.  Biden's not it.

I disagree about the end of the saeculum, though.  The so-called ACW anomaly may have merely be the FOAK for transformational 4Ts.  How it plays this time is TBD, but assuredly not like the last 4T.

Agree that Biden hasn't been the cheerleader for the young.  Thing is, he has identified the right positions on the right issues.  I'm still hopeful that the steady obstruction of the Republicans will cost them in the mid terms.  If you are going to solve the problems we are facing, it is clear you have to give the Democrats a few more seats in the Senate.  If he gets that, Biden looks very different.

Yes, in prior crisis nobody had trouble about getting behind change.  Democracy, not being on the wrong side of colonial imperialism, slavery, enabling the industrial revolution over a government controlled by agriculturalists, letting the government regulate the economy and containing expansionists powers all attracted the youth of the time.  This time, the need seems less pressing to a rural population who doesn't see the difficulties as clearly.  At the time Covid was politicized, it was more an urban problem.  Prejudice is desired in the rural areas.  Attempts to overthrow democracy weren't as obvious.  The environment still seems wild and exploitable enough.  Trump's criminality was not as obvious.  It is still not clear that the rural folk will see the problems, but two votes in the Senate might be possible?

In the introduction to the life of the shtetl  Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof the leading characters of the community are introduced, one of the figures is of course the highly-learned rabbi who is noted for having a blessing for anyone and everything. One of the Jews asks "Is there a blessing for the Tsar?'

To this the Rabbi responds, "May the Lord keep and bless the Tsar... far away from us!"

The more distant a powerful creep is and less likely to do harm, the safer he is to his potential victims.  People in urban areas and suburbia find Donald Trump easy to recognize for the vile, loathsome creep that he is. This dreadful man is much that city-dwellers despise: an extreme narcissist with an overweening sense of entitlement, someone who in economic life puts his hooks into someone's personal and economic life and keeps taking while offering little more than the threat of separating one from what one considers a basic decency in life or a survival need. He is the bad boss who sees a subordinate who exists solely to make that executive look good and the landlord who sees a tenant as nothing more than an income stream. He is also the skirt-chasing maniac around whom no woman beyond the end of childhood (which opinion changes should he be connected to the Epstein/Maxwell ring of high-profile perverts). Urban America (and Suburbia is becoming legitimately urban as it loses such rural character such as low density) knows him well. It is telling how Trump did in the three states (Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York) that have been most exposed to him as a Personality through the news media that have exposed his sordid character over time in the 2016 and 2020 elections:

rank/
state    '16   '20
CT        11     8
NJ        10   13
NY         6     6    

The numbers are the years in which Trump ran for President, and below those years the rank from the bottom among the states in voting for him. Ordinarily over time a person acclimatizes to the community in which he lives and to the cultural and behavioral norms. Even for such failures as Goldwater in 1964, McGovern in 1972, Carter in 1980, and Mondale in 1984, such pols have done  well, or at least relatively well in their home states. The only state that Goldwater won outside of "Kukluxistan" was his home state, Arizona. McGovern lost South Dakota, but he did sixth-best by stare there. Carter's best state in 1980 was Georgia in the most troubled bid for re-election for President since at least Hoover. Mondale barely won his home state, Minnesota, in 1984 -- and the District of Columbia.   

People in the Tri-State Area surrounding the Big Apple know Trump about as Arizonans knew Goldwater, South Dakotans knew McGovern, Georgians knew (or know) Carter, and Minnesotans knew Mondale; the difference is not that they recognize Trump as an obnoxious and offensive character. To be sure, Trump has no voting record and thus has never brought home any political goodies like highway funds, military bases, or farm subsidies -- but people who live in the biggest media market have had more exposure to the grandiose expressions of his overweening self.

But -- if one lives out in the sticks, where Trump does not invest and where he does not seek to indulge himself, he might be a hero for sticking it to sophisticated urban dwellers --"rootless cosmopolitan" types proud of their formal learning, having more of a cultural connection to some foreign country, contemptuous of such gross ignorance as young-earth creationism, indifferent or even hostile to 'whiteness', and accepting of feminism and homosexuality instead of 'family values'. Never mind that people can be highly ethical and exemplify Christian morality without being Christian (actually, "Christian morality" is really Jewish morality) and that urban dwellers can see the sleaze of America at its immoral worst and reject that -- I love to contrast Dearborn to abutting southwest Detroit...the Muslims seem to hate prostitution, drugs, drunkenness, and brawling and I would suggest that anyone who indulges in prostitution, drugs, drunkenness, and brawling avoid Dearborn. Then again I am an arch-conservative on family values except on feminism and homosexuality because other divergences lead to great harm to children and other vulnerable people. I have written some nasty diatribes against pornography and even worse against human trafficking, much of which involves forced prostitution.

Trump is seen in rural America as someone who agrees with them about people whom city folk have the reputation of believing that their excrement has some delightful aroma. (OK, rural folks typically have indoor plumbing by now and are proud of it. It has been an absolute necessity in giant cities for over a century just to prevent outbreaks of cholera). 

The rural-urban divide is one of the most common, and one of the most pervasive in history. It typically overpowers even the class struggle, with smallholder peasants often siding with urban plutocrats against city-slickers on taxes and spending. In most democracies, small farmers are the cornerstone of mass support for the conservative party. (Obviously if the peasants are landless laborers or tenants being gouged they are very much on the Left but typically are excluded from the vote, and the Party representing the rural elite is arch-reactionary and hostile to anything urban and learned).    

Trump is an exploiter and abuser, which should make him a pariah everywhere. For people in the sticks, his exploitation and abuse is of people that the rustic types hold in contempt for being denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.

[David Horn]

(01-22-2022, 08:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Agree that Biden hasn't been the cheerleader for the young.  Thing is, he has identified the right positions on the right issues.  I'm still hopeful that the steady obstruction of the Republicans will cost them in the midterms.  If you are going to solve the problems we are facing, it is clear you have to give the Democrats a few more seats in the Senate.  If he gets that, Biden looks very different.

Today's youth are damaged -- many to the extreme. Think about it. They need outrageously expensive educations to have any hope of being their parents, but the payoff isn't there anymore -- not for most of them. Their more blue-collar brethren aren't doing any better either, though they managed to avoid the crushing and unavoidable debt from student loans. It's hard not to be myopic when your own personal problems are inches from your face. Yet they are the missing numbers needed for change, and Svengali is othewise engaged.

Bob Butler Wrote:Yes, in prior crisis nobody had trouble about getting behind change.  Democracy, not being on the wrong side of colonial imperialism, slavery, enabling the industrial revolution over a government controlled by agriculturalists, letting the government regulate the economy and containing expansionists powers all attracted the youth of the time.  This time, the need seems less pressing to a rural population who doesn't see the difficulties as clearly.  At the time Covid was politicized, it was more an urban problem.  Prejudice is desired in the rural areas.  Attempts to overthrow democracy weren't as obvious.  The environment still seems wild and exploitable enough.  Trump's criminality was not as obvious.  It is still not clear that the rural folk will see the problems, but two votes in the Senate might be possible?

As the Bard noted, "Wherein comes the rub!". We're among the last cohorts who experienced a true Civics education in secondary school. Massachusetts and New York were among the last states to degrade education in favor of mythic social goals (yes, one of liberalism's unintended consequences), and now the results are clear. Today's youth (and even older cohorts in less progressive areas) never were given the tools to appreciate the complexities of democracy -- and it shows. So Biden is actually faced with a unique challenge: being both a conciliatory and inspirational leader. This would be hard for a leader less grandfather than cousin to the ones he's trying to reach, all the while not seeing this as a critical need.

And let's agree: if the urban/suburban young are hard to reach, the rural folks are the proverbial bridge too far.

[pbrower2a]

(01-22-2022, 08:05 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 05:13 PM)David Horn Wrote: I don't see the young moving toward the Trumpists.  I don't see them fleeing in horror either.  They seem more disgusted than angry, and resigned to their fate. 

I agree that the 4T may fizzle. I don't see it as a left-right thing though.  The youth, both Millennial and Z, are less idiomatic in that sense.  Stress has led them to view the world in the starkest of terms, and that degree of realism doesn't promote the kind of cohesion needed to create movements.  What might break through and trigger another wave of political engagement is something only a Millennial (or Z) might be capable of producing.  The one missing and necessary element: a real leader they can rally around and follow.  Biden's not it.

I disagree about the end of the saeculum, though.  The so-called ACW anomaly may have merely be the FOAK for transformational 4Ts.  How it plays this time is TBD, but assuredly not like the last 4T.

Agree that Biden hasn't been the cheerleader for the young.  Thing is, he has identified the right positions on the right issues.  I'm still hopeful that the steady obstruction of the Republicans will cost them in the mid terms.  If you are going to solve the problems we are facing, it is clear you have to give the Democrats a few more seats in the Senate.  If he gets that, Biden looks very different.

President Biden has not inculcated any semblance of a personality cult. He believes that he can govern without one, which has been true for nearly the whole of American history. The rest of American history involves the Trump Presidency and (one hopes not) its political aftermath. We are still in the aftermath of the Trump Presidency. A dark shadow remains upon our Republic, and Trump has not been alone in casting it. The erosion of liberal democracy began when ruthless people found the seams in our Constitutional republic and started ripping those on behalf of corporate power of executives, large-scale urban landlords, Junker-like rural estates, and principal shareholders. Plutocracy entails the evisceration of democracy until the well-being of a few is the expression of politics and personal survival of anyone else becomes a privilege that economic elites can deny at will. Worse, as the economy increasingly becomes one of bureaucracy and retail presentation, the elites can demand that the rest must smile no matter how much they suffer. 

The Michigan plot (a partial analogy is to Mussolini's Blackshirt thugs kidnapping and murdering Giacomo Matteoti in 1924), the Capitol Putsch, and efforts to reshape electoral practice all portend the twisting of our political system into a sick travesty of democracy. We are in a Constitutional crisis due to a combination of mass ignorance and the sadistic greed of 'our' economic elites.

Quote:Yes, in prior crisis nobody had trouble about getting behind change.  Democracy, not being on the wrong side of colonial imperialism, slavery, enabling the industrial revolution over a government controlled by agriculturalists, letting the government regulate the economy and containing expansionists powers all attracted the youth of the time.  This time, the need seems less pressing to a rural population who doesn't see the difficulties as clearly.  At the time Covid was politicized, it was more an urban problem.  Prejudice is desired in the rural areas.  Attempts to overthrow democracy weren't as obvious.  The environment still seems wild and exploitable enough.  Trump's criminality was not as obvious.  It is still not clear that the rural folk will see the problems, but two votes in the Senate might be possible?

'Our' economic elites seek to impose pervasive change -- a monopolized economy with a command system with political leaders responsible exclusively to that elite. They will create an economic crisis or manufacture some military disaster that mandates coalescence around their agenda through a puppet resembling Berzelius Windrip in Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.  Just as the political leaders will be responsible to those elites, so will we. We will work as they dictate and spend as they dictate, all in the name of prosperity. We will appear happy because we will be punished for any complaint. We will experience only what those elites tolerate.

Some change mandates resistance. If we must choose between an economic depression and tyranny, then we must accept the depression. If we all share much the same plight then such will itself be cause for solidarity that underpins a civil society. All forms of tyranny eventually become "every man for himself" or derive from such.

[Eric the Green]

If my old prediction that 2022 sees progress start again is to come true after all, and some things still get accomplished, it will likely happen in March or April. There is some chance that the midterms won't be a disaster. We'll see.

[Eric the Green]

(01-22-2022, 05:13 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 01:37 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 01:00 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-22-2022, 08:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-21-2022, 06:44 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Biden is down in approval ratings by over 10 points. It's been like this for several months now. It looks hopeless right now. I really thought the Millennials would turn the country around. Now it looks like they have been absorbed into Classic Xer's "America". I guess my prediction is not going to turn out. What I expect now is just more and more-severe disaster, with no further basis for any recovery in any future turning. America has been right-wing now for over 40 years. It might as well be Russia or China by now.

I don't think the Millennials have moved to the right; they've moved to the corner.  When did they vote in earnest?  They liked BHO, and some came out to oppose Trump.  But as a rule, they feel screwed and neglected by the older gens, and they're right.  They see the two parties as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  This is the problem the Democrats can't see.  By trying to add to their base from the middle, they lose any chance at adding the masses waiting for someone to lead them.

 
President Biden is not exciting. People voted for him in part because they came to despise or dread Trump. American politics does not yet fit millennial norms. When it does it is over for any pol who cannot adjust to the Millennial reality. I expect the last remaining Silent and the first wave of Boomers to vacate the political scene fairly soon. One birth year that now encompasses twenty years of the Presidency (1946) with on the whole mediocre-to-dreadful Presidents has gone from freakishly young for the Presidency to freakishly old. 

Obama is an oddity for a Reactive type in combining Civic and Idealist traits as do the Silent while being a mature Reactive (which is definitely not Silent), and if we have someone else somewhat like him he will not get in the way of the rise of the Millennial generation.

The problem is that there is no viable successor to Biden that can be elected before the fourth turning is over. It appears to be too late for any other leader to appear and fulfill the GC role.

If Millennials have not moved to the right, then why do polls show Republicans leading by a point or two for the 2022 congressional elections, and why are approval ratings for Biden down by 10-14 points? You don't have to come out and vote to answer a poll. Why didn't Sanders win the Democratic primary in 2020? Why doesn't congress reflect a Millennial demand for the Green New Deal?

Biden is where he was when he ran, pretty much. He had moved to the left of his prior record. I don't see that Biden has moved to the middle; granted that this "middle" in the USA is center-right at best; but the Millennials and other generations don't seem willing to support or elect a genuine left leader. The USA just does not seem able to separate itself from Reagan. We are stuck, it appears; with Biden, and with the center-left as the best we can ever get in the USA. Right now, it appears that once again a center-left Democratic president is not getting support once elected. We only get a center-left government every 12 or 14 years or so, and then only for a year or two at best (the previous time it was only for 7 months). If this pattern has not changed, then we have not entered a genuine 4T this round, and the saeculum cycle is over. Only decline lies ahead.

It would be nice if a leader would appear and step up who was exciting and willing and able to convince center-right Americans, including Millennials, to participate and go further left and deal with real issues. But there is no such leader available who can get him, her or them-self elected.

Mike Alexander and David Kaiser have speculated whether we entered the 4T much too late or too early. I am wondering now whether we will ever enter it, and whether indeed the cycle has stopped entirely for the foreseeable future. In dark ages, there isn't much of a saeculum cycle going on.

I don't see the young moving toward the Trumpists.  I don't see them fleeing in horror either.  They seem more disgusted than angry, and resigned to their fate. 

I agree that the 4T may fizzle. I don't see it as a left-right thing though.  The youth, both Millennial and Z, are less idiomatic in that sense.  Stress has led them to view the world in the starkest of terms, and that degree of realism doesn't promote the kind of cohesion needed to create movements.  What might break through and trigger another wave of political engagement is something only a Millennial (or Z) might be capable of producing.  The one missing and necessary element: a real leader they can rally around and follow.  Biden's not it.

I disagree about the end of the saeculum, though.  The so-called ACW anomaly may have merely be the FOAK for transformational 4Ts.  How it plays this time is TBD, but assuredly not like the last 4T.

I have no idea what FOAK means. Acronyms might hide more than they communicate.

You can say Biden is not it, and that seems perfectly logical; but the problem remains that there is no one else, and anyone else appearing before the end of the 4T is highly unlikely. It is unequivocal that whoever unlikely hero steps up must be a new Democratic candidate not now mentioned, and (s)he/they must have a good enough horoscope score to win over whoever the Republicans put up. And this assumes that Biden is put aside or steps aside in 2024. 

I still think the center-left has a good chance to win in 2024 IF the Millennials assume their civic role and do what Obama asked of them. Even if Biden is the nominee. The full range of millennials according to S&H dating will be eligible to vote for the first time in a presidential election, and they will be the majority of the electorate all by themselves. So it is up to them to step up and show up. They will need to put in a liberal congress too.

If there is any overwhelming cynicism among younger generations, and indeed among all generations today, it may actually be the cynicism about leaders. Trusting in a new boss just gives us the old boss. I think the necessary element remains the people themselves. As Obama, the best excuse for a leader we are likely to see, told his young audience, "you're the antidote". "The inclusive many" is the key to triumph over the powerful few. Like FDR, Obama said he would "be right there with you, every step of the way." And he told them," you can't opt out just because you are not that excited about this or that particular candidate (e.g. Biden, Hillary...). This is not a rock concert; this is not Coachella. You don't need a messiah; all we need are hard working people who are accountable, and who have America's best interest at heart. And they will step up, and they will do the work, IF they have support." So the leader of the young remains Obama, not the actual president. I assume you watched that speech that I have posted a hundred times?

The civil war anomaly was merely a phase where the saeculum was speeding up, and yet had to reckon with a section that preferred to remain a feudal aristocracy with no saeculum rather than a modern state in the midst of one. But it was "gone with the wind." That 4T was another example that the left must win a 4T, as it always has, and did that time as well. If the left does not win this one, the cycle will end. We will be Nazi Germany or imperial Japan with no-one to rescue or restore us, or a Confederacy with no Union.

[pbrower2a]

Republicans can still get hammered on the Capitol Putsch and their toadying for Donald Trump. Prosecutions seem more directed now at people outside, basically the ones encouraging the incursion.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-23-2022, 02:12 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Republicans can still get hammered on the Capitol Putsch and their toadying for Donald Trump. Prosecutions seem more directed now at people outside, basically the ones encouraging the incursion.

No one other than people like you care about the Capital Putsch or care about your views of Trump. You are in the same boat as Eric. Like I said the other day, you're fate is sealed. So, what blue shit hole would you prefer to die in? You have a choice now but you won't have it for much longer.

[Classic-Xer]

(01-22-2022, 01:55 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Left is fact-based; the Right-wing is based on conspiracy theory and right-wing ideologies.

We don't need your trust.

The only benefit you seek Classic Xer from politics is to defend trickle-down neoliberalism, keep your taxes low and keep your guns. We on the Left are not interested in those things. I don't care if you lose your guns or have to pay higher taxes.

The American Right is losing its patience already. It has attacked the capitol and state capitols and threatened election workers with violence. It is shutting down democracy.

The American Right didn't attack the capitol. A bunch of crazy anarchist's forced entry and took over the capitol. The American Right was/still is currently idle and waiting for Left  to fuck up and justify the need for another American Civil War. Like I said, you should thank the two American Senators who recently diffused the beginning of another American Revolution/American Civil War. In less than a year, the ball will still be in your court despite a devastating political loss and fate will still be in your hands like it is now and like it was with the Confederates, the Imperial Japanese, the Nazi's and the Bolshevik's who proceeded you. Hell, the American Right basically gave the Left the power that it has and is losing today. You see, the rest of America had to see for themselves that the American Right has been right about the Left the entire time.