Lord Ratner

*On the internet.

@pawnman, focusing on mandates specifically, how much do you feel they need to reduce the spread to justify a mandate (outside of the military)? A few posts back I posted the research showing minimal effect on spread. To be clear, I'm not arguing about hospitalizations or death. Clearly the vaccine works to reduce that. But it's that justification for a mandate?

Yup. Expect this story to disappear from the national coverage. But it'll get (R)s elected in WI.

If you were talking about a disease that had low transmission rate, *maybe* you could justify a minor reduction as successful. But you would also have to have a massively high infection fatality rate. Covid-19 is exactly the opposite. "Unfortunately, the vaccine’s beneficial effect on Delta transmission waned to almost negligible levels over time. In people infected 2 weeks after receiving the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, both in the UK, the chance that an unvaccinated close contact would test positive was 57%, but 3 months later, that chance rose to 67%. The latter figure is on par with the likelihood that an unvaccinated person will spread the virus. A reduction was also observed in people vaccinated with the jab made by US company Pfizer and German firm BioNTech. The risk of spreading the Delta infection soon after vaccination with that jab was 42%, but increased to 58% with time." So no, it does not meaningfully prevent transmission. Should we mandate things for "almost negligible" effects? You do have Google, right?

They (the political/activist class) are not ignoring reality, they are attempting to redefine it. It's the well-meaning liberals who fall for the lie who are ignoring reality. For now.

I've tried answering that question for a long time. Since the Kavanaugh hearings. The voters' mindset I get, they just believed the lie they were told. But the people in that picture know they are lying. Why? I think it's because this has become the religion of the progressives. The dogma of power hierarchies and systemic oppression (that old friend, Marx), the original sin of slavery, and the requirement that you proclaim your faith despite what your lying eyes see. There are hymns (SJW vocabulary like antiracism, unconscious bias, systemic racism, white rage, whiteness, privilege), prophets and priests (Ta- Nehisi Coates, Ibram Kendi, Robin DiAngelo), tithing (political campaign donations), confession... The list goes on. And just how the Catholic Church reacted horribly to the enlightenment, and nearly every scientific discovery that even remotely challenged the church's narrative, the progressives *hate* anything that threatens the "perfect word" of their God: the evil and racist nature of the American system, in which there is no justice for the oppressed. That's why they hated Rittenhouse so much, and it's especially why they hated the Darren Wilson case so much, and why they completely ignored the Eric DeValkenaere case. The first case attacks the purity of the cause. If Kyle was justified, then that night in Kenosha really was a riot, not "mostly peaceful protesting" for black rights. The second case reminds us that cops are more likely to be killed by black people than black people are likely to be killed by cops. There are very few actual cases of cops killing unarmed black people on which to build this vision of wide-spread sport-hunting by the police of minorities; Michael Brown was a martyr turned villain. And the last case proves that there is infact justice for minorities in America. Once you accept that the people driving the progressive movement know the narrative they are promoting is false, it becomes a lot easier to predict the behavior. The things you focus on and ignore when protecting a lie are different than when protecting the truth. Gaslighting, straw men, ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority, false equivalency... All tactics to distract from a weak position. They have committed to the fundamental notion that America is broken and needs to be radically changed. Build back better, right? They want the "new America" but lack the justification, considering the wild success of the American experiment for *all* citizens. So they are just making it up. Now that they are committed, and their power is tied to that cause, what choice do they have?

When did the burden of justifying mandates fall on the mandated? Vaccination does not stop the spread of Covid. I wish it did, but it does not. In light of this unfortunate news, the case for mandates fails. The virus is too transmissible and the vaccine is too short-lived. And contrary to 18 months of catastrophism, there are no longer wide-scale hospital overloads beyond what hospitals usually operate at. People shouldn't have to resort to religious or medical excuses to avoid doing something they don't want to do when it doesn't even serve the greater good. Vaccinating protects yourself. It does not offer long- or medium-term protection to others. You are either ignorant of the science or subconsciously turning this into a disciplinary fight. Because I said so...

Don't call them that, please. I know what you are trying to convey, but this war is going to be won through a split in the Democratic party, where the more temperate liberals cast out the progressive/socialist/Marxist radicals. That split is going to take *a lot* of dialog between conservatives and liberals. "Woketarded shitlibs" does nothing but shut off the listening part of the brain for anyone who remotely identifies as liberal. It's a free country, so do what you want, but realize you are exacerbating the problem and empowering actual "Woketarded shitlibs" by using childish language that they will use to keep the rational liberals on their team.

The same place it went after Chauvin. These cases are not the cause, they are the symptom. The disease is manifesting everywhere, with Virginia being the most clear infection. I wasn't sure if the disease had gotten bad enough to trigger a strong enough response, but it seems like the progressives are doubling down, so maybe there's hope?

They are not enemies. Merely sheep in wolves' clothing.

Southwest has a bigger presence. There's always been a question at American as to whether or not Phoenix has a long-term future for AA. Considering how weak our footprint is in the west, I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon, but we certainly don't treat it like it has a future of growth. That being said, they decided to make Charlotte a megabase, so anything is possible. If you want to fly something other than the 737, then your decision is made for you.

They don't. The problem is they don't believe it in the first place. The current system has been set up perfectly so that each side inherently does not believe the other side. This is the problem with making a broad derogatory judgement about the other "side." If you simply disagree with someone, it's not hard to find common ground. But no one wants to have common ground with someone who is evil or stupid. And unfortunately it's not just Democrats now. It blows my mind how many captains I fly with honestly believe that liberal voters hate success, or hate white people, or hate America. Make no mistake, I believe the highest level of political activists, media personalities, and in many cases elected politicians on the left do in fact hate America as it is today and are indeed Marxist at heart. But to think that Insanity infects the average Democratic voter is nuts.

Shack

Hang on, are you implying that healthy military aged people face a significant threat from COVID? The easy way to backup that claim would be to post the number of deaths in the military from COVID. We can operate under the assumption that all of them were unvaccinated, since that's the most likely scenario.

I'm not in anymore, but my opinion was always that if you're not willing to fly under allowable circumstances, then you're not allowed to fly at all. If you don't trust yourself to fly to the training standard, which are the regulatory minimums, what else aren't you comfortable with that you might encounter? Every once in awhile in the kc-135 someone would say that they won't do a 50 flap landing. They'd gotten so complacent with 40 flap landings that they somehow convinced themselves it was unsafe to do the landing the plane was designed for. Eventually 50 flap landings were added as a required currency item, but it was always a fun conversation with someone asking them why they weren't skilled enough Pilots to fly the plane in accordance with SOP.

Yeah we definitely disagree on the importance of the capitol. The BLM riots resulted in hundreds if not thousands of people's lives being ruined, and a few dozen being ended. The capital riots did substantially less damage, and overwhelmingly to the idiots who perpetrated it. I consider the government to be for the protection of the people, so if I have to choose between the the livelihoods of regular citizens in every major city, and the building that failed so spectacularly over the last few years to protect their interests, it's an easy choice for me. And while I get the argument that things are worse when they come from the president, I guess you and I also disagree on the sanctity of the presidency. In my lifetime every president has failed to live up to the standard we should expect. Whether it was Bill Clinton defiling an intern in the oval office, or Obama planting the seeds that have brought us to this new world of chaotic racial division, or everything Trump did publicly, I viewed Trump as merely the outward expression of the political disease that has infected Washington for a long time. And I think that's why they hated him so much. He looked the way they acted, and that was a threat to the very good deal they were all operating under for a long time. I also push back on the notion that the BLM riots didn't originate from a president. Those riots didn't start in 2020, they started in Ferguson years before (with another outright lie supported still to this day by the left), and we're well aware of who the president was at that time. He also had a funny way of not quite endorsing yet casually supporting a notion that was patently false and led people to riot. Very Trumpian of him. Like you said, it's very tribal now. I think liberals have had a very rosy view on political discourse because at the end of the day, until Trump no one was calling them evil for their mainstream beliefs on a national scale. Now the same bitter hate the conservatives have watched for a couple decades is going both directions. Part of me thinks that's a very bad thing for all of us, but maybe that's what it's going to take for both sides to realize that no one wins in this arms race of dishonorable behavior. And on a political level, Virginia proves that the Democrats have violated the only constant rule in American society. Don't fuck with my kids.

Completely disagree. The first consideration: Where do you live? Work there. I have friends at Delta (I'm AA) and I crush them on earnings and hours flown. But I work the system. What type of person are you? If you are the I just fly my schedule type, then go Delta and move to a Delta base. If you are the I live in the loopholes type, then you want the airline with the most problems. That's AA 😂🤣. Like someone above said, the particulars of the loopholes don't matter, you won't be able to appreciate them anyways. But by this point in your life (and especially after being in the military) you should know which type of person you are. But in either case, if DFW is where you are staying, American and Southwest are your options (or cargo, if you can do that lifestyle). We have pilots from nearly every airline living in our Airpark in DFW. I don't know a single one that wouldn't transfer to American if they could take their seniority with them.

Thanks for responding, and I agree with the desire for better choices. I won't be holding my breath. I think a fairly large disconnect right now between Republican voters and Democratic voters is summed up nicely above. You can't see how Republicans aren't as horrified as you are about the occurrences on January 6th. But the truth of the matter is the Republicans have been horrified for quite some time, and January 6th was just the ultimate instance of what-about-ism. Democrats danced gleefully, rationalized, or at the very least looked the other way while dozens of cities in the US burned over the overt lie that police were massacring unarmed black people. A whole lot of well-intentioned but foolishly gullible liberals, and a whole second cohort of people who just wanted to burn something down, destroyed the livelihoods of small business owners, looted bigger businesses, and literally set fire to government buildings. Crickets. Major political figures, including the vice president, made statements that implied these rioters were in fact heroes. Go ahead and dig around now, it is almost impossible to find any prominent liberal figures who made unqualified condemnations of the riots. "Yeah, stealing is bad, but....." So by the time January 6th happened, for a lot of people like me who have no sympathy for Donald Trump losing the election that was absolutely his to lose, and no sympathy for the fools who bought into his narrative and stormed the capital, it doesn't jive that I'm supposed to lose my mind over what happened simply because it's the first instance of unjustified rioting that you or the Democrats are upset about. Welcome to the party. I've said this for 5 years, and in 5 years I've been proven wildly correct. Donald Trump was the response from conservatives to a political system that had become cartoonishly dishonest. And the imbalance in Washington and the media that covers it created an environment where conservatives were regularly characterized as evil, bigoted, backwoods, stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist, imperialist, redneck, hyper religious, anti immigrant deplorables. Objectively good men like George W Bush, Mitt Romney, and (after Trump was elected) Brett Kavanaugh were treated like reincarnations of Hitler. Kavanaugh was openly accused of being a gang rapist on the basis of zero evidence and quite a bit of counter evidence, so if you want to know where the final straw was from the conservative side, that was it for a lot of us. Now, and what I can only interpret as a tragedy for the country, the right has seemingly decided that if you can't beat them join them. The left doesn't seem particularly fond of their own medicine, and maybe with some time that will be what's needed for us to find a better way. But really this is just a long way of saying we agree on January 6th, but you've been ignoring all of the January 6ths that came before, and since I am not particularly fond of anything that has come out of Washington DC for many, many years, I don't see why I should be more upset that people vandalized the capital over when people vandalized the true lifeblood of this country, small business and entrepreneurialship (the icons of individual liberty and freedom) all while attacking the rule of law, another institution that sets us apart in the world.

You guys are giving Biden too much credit for making decisions. His approval rating is at historical lows. After today's election in virginia, assuming the Republican wins, I wouldn't anticipate much mandating of anything through the next election cycle.

Your points are all non-sequiturs. Drawing parallels between a literal military campaign and a vaccine policy is absurd. By that (lack of) logic, everything is readiness. I know a lot of shitty commanders who agree with you. Second, COVID, the illness, is not a readiness issue. "Sweeping through the ranks" ≠ incapacitating military personnel. If we weren't testing everything with a pulse, something never before done, you wouldn't even notice a disease "sweeping through the ranks" unless people were dropping like flies. That happened in the nursing homes. Not in the military. Now, the government policies surrounding vaccination have absolutely become a readiness issue. But that has little connection to the actual mechanics of the disease at this point, since the vaccines do not effectively limit COVID spread. More importantly, and to your last callous and unimpressive statement, none of this is about the vaccine. This is about a society that is increasingly bullied and manipulated by politicians, bureaucrats, and "elites" who think they know best, and who get caught repeatedly lying and distorting in order to scare their "subjects" into compliance, while flagrantly violating their own mandates. Those subjects are too busy maintaining the functions of modern society to research every claim and dictate of the anointed leaders, so after catching them in overt lies over and over, they've just decided to say "let's go, Brandon" and take every subsequent claim as a lie. Five years ago they decided to elect their own liar when civility and coexistence failed. So now we have a bunch of people who think a largely safe vaccine is a threat to their family's health. But by all means, keep calling them whiners while simultaneously whining about their lack of conformity. That'll fix things. Freedom is good as long as you're only free to do the things I agree with, right?

My only modification to what you said would be to ensure that members can quit without repercussion. I think in matters of wide social disagreement, tie goes to freedom. So members unwilling to participate in the military mandate should be allowed to leave. Of course, if they have any bonuses or other financial obligations they would also be required to pay those back. Covid isn't a threat to military readiness, and the numbers bear that out. Old and fat. Everybody has an anecdotal story about a military member who got sick, but it does not represent a wide scale threat to operations. And as with all things human nature, the choice isn't between readiness issues stemming from a lack of vaccination and a mandate that eliminates COVID hospitalizations and deaths. The choice is between readiness issues stemming from a lack of vaccination vs readiness issues stemming from a minority rebellion to a poorly-justified mandate. A similar false choice was presented with masks and lockdowns. Universal compliance was never a realistic option.

People committed to a position they didn't personally verify based on the assurances of experts (if the word has any meaning left), then called the people who challenged their position idiots, paranoid, viscously uncaring, and hysterical. Now reality is quite obviously different than it was portrayed, and they look a bit stupid in retrospect. That's a frustrating position to be in. I've been hearing a lot of "well you couldn't have known that at the time so really my position made more sense." Sure, except we knew about the susceptibility of old and fat people, the impact of good ventilation, the nearly-perfect immunity of young children, the airborne nature of covid spread, the Wuhan lab connection, and the rapidly mutating nature of coronaviruses back in May of last year. Couple that with a general understanding of basic human nature and it was not at all "shooting in the dark" to take the positions that deviated from the "expert" consensus. But as with everything these days, being wrong is never an option for politicians and bureaucrats, so we will be gaslit into believing that the skeptics were just lucky guessers and they were gambling with people's lives.

You're missing the point, and getting the relationships backwards. I'm not inherently against ads being selected for you based on browsing history and consumer profile. That was the original genius of Google. The problem is that once infinite scrolling became a thing, and thus infinite ads, the model changed. Now the *content* is modified in order keep you on the site, keep you scrolling, and keep more ads on your screen. And yes, those ads are also customized for you. This forum doesn't change which topics show up based on your previous activity, or activity from other unrelated sites. This forum is not continually tweaked, automatically, to measure which topics result in the longest engagement time for *you specifically* and then provide that type of content at a higher priority to you. They just aren't the same, and to conflate the two is to miss the real threat. Web forums have been around a long time. Algorithm-based social media has not, and it coincides perfectly with the rise in tensions. The privacy concerns are also important, but not related to the topic at hand. I don't like the direction we're going with cancel culture and an overall lack of grace. But what we're talking about here is the distortion of reality through selective exposure. The intent has always been there, but the tools have not. Learning algorithms and computers have changed the game. Politicians and media figures were simply not interesting enough to a wide enough range of people in order to engage everyone enough to warp the public consciousness. But now these algorithms can customize messages to millions of people simultaneously, each receiving content designed specifically for them, while never even realizing that there are a plethora of opposing views and facts. Even this in and of itself wouldn't necessarily be a problem if there were good intentions. But there aren't good intentions, there are only monetary intentions. This isn't even a Democrat vs Republican thing, because if it was Facebook/Twitter/YouTube wouldn't allow the overwhelming proliferation of conservative news sources on their platforms. Even though most of the executives working at these tech companies have a deep hatred for conservative ideology, they allow the content to stream largely unfettered because more engagement means more advertising means more money. This is not healthy. I do not blame the social media companies, just because they are steering the ship doesn't change the fact that the ship didn't exist until very recently. But just as pure libertarianism is impractical upon meeting reality, the solution is probably legislative. There are just some types of power that should not be wielded by anyone. It's not a new concept, the power to censor was the fear du jour when our country was founded. Right now everybody is focused on who gets to control the content, but I think the real problem is the algorithm. And it's something we can address without treading deeply on the liberties of the involved companies. Yes, they will make less money, because making more money is how we got into this mess. But it is a very targeted approach that will not stifle innovation or brew resentment amongst the very people we are trying to help, unlike banning individuals such as Trump or Alex Jones. So my "simple" solution is that you cannot tailor content on your service using data collected from other services. It is reasonable that someone who has spent years on Twitter would understand that the content they see on to Twitter is tailored for them. It is not logical for that person to assume that their Google searches are also being influenced by what they did on Twitter. This would greatly increase the chances of randomly bumping into content you are not familiar or aligned with, just like how you randomly bump into people at work, in your neighborhood, on vacation, and at school that you don't already agree with from your previous relationships. I think.

While I agree with jazz dude initially, the problem is that companies like Facebook are making money through advertising before and after the links that a user posts. And the very act of users posting links to other news sources is what keeps eyeballs on the Facebook newsfeed. If users were no longer allowed to post links to other sources then other Facebook users would be less likely to spend as much time on facebook, meaning Facebook would not be able to advertise as much. So while it is not a direct relationship, Facebook is very much making money off of those links. I don't know what sort of payment model is required for Facebook to continue this arrangement, but it's not accurate to compare it to a web board like base ops, because fundamentally Facebook models themselves around making money on those exact interactions. As far as influence goes, I'm afraid I don't have a great answer for that either. We're clearly now in a middle ground between the government's constitutional obligation to defend free speech in a private organizations constitutionally protected right to run their business as they see fit. Honestly I don't find Facebook as comparable in this dilemma as I do the government. Too many elected and unelected officials have been using the social media companies to do what they cannot. If this trend continues, I suspect the only solution would be to subject the social media companies to the same constitutional obligations that the government is subject to. And then we have the third problem of personalization and tracking. It is problematic that every individual user experiences a different internet based on an algorithmic encapsulation of all of their previous browsing behavior. It's creating a social problem, while at the same time making social media companies billions in profits. I think we probably need legislation that bans tracking users across websites and domains. If Facebook wants to track users actions on facebook, and adjust their Facebook experience accordingly, I have no issue with that. But what you do on Facebook should not translate to what you see on a Google search, or an Amazon product search, or what advertisements appear on CNN. These algorithms are ultimately tuned for one purpose, to keep your eyeballs where they are. The second and third order effects are a rapid increase in conspiracy theory and distrust/hatred of neighbors with opposing viewpoints. I'm not sure the live-and-let-live philosophy of individual liberty can survive in a society where profitable algorithms and self-serving media/political figures prevent us from knowing and loving our neighbors with different views. It's healthy and normal that you cannot control who you bump into in the broader world. It exposes you to a diversity of experiences and ideas. These algorithms are having the exact opposite effect, while the internet is more and more becoming a part of the public space. I think it is probably in our best interests to maintain some element of unpredictable encounters if we don't want that split into multiple societies with myopic views.

Yup. But one effect of the fed meddling has been to split the stock market and real estate from the rest of the economy, which gets hit even harder when things go to hell, while stocks and real estate recovery quickly and skyrocket. Wanna guess where all the politicians' wealth is tied up?