Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
No bio...
User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
Phase 1/2 preliminary results were published in October and Phase 3 results November 20th. Pfizer applied for an EUA the same day the results were announced, which the FDA did not grant until December 11th.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
The Covid vaccine trials were mysteriously delayed until after the 2020 election. I do not think I need to expound on why that influenced the outcome of that election.
Pfizer started Phase 1/2 trials for the vaccine that would become Cominarty in May 2020 and Phase 2/3 trials in July. Just for a very simple fact you get wrong.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
As a small point of clarification. The actual budget for FY 2025 (HR 1) was not bipartisan at all, in votes. It was passed via reconciliation which means it did not need 60 votes for cloture in the Senate. No Democrats, in either the House or Senate, voted for cloture or passage on the final bill.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3d ago
The rearward looking CW angle is too obvious; DEI, affirmative action, grade inflation in High Schools and a "no child left behind" attitude. I'd sprinkle on some helicopter-parent pressuring as well. For those of you interested in that angle, I await your hopefully hilarious takes.
How much of that changed over the 2020-2025 period being examined, though? Race based affirmative action has been banned by California's constitution for almost 30 years. Not to mention the Supreme Court's own decision in 2023. No Child Left Behind, as an educational slogan, goes all the way back Bush's first term.
The report itself gives three contributors to the phenomena:
-
Learning loss from the pandemic decreasing students' retention and preparedness.
-
The move away from standardized tests to GPAs making it more difficult for admissions officers to asses student's actual capabilities.
-
For UCSD specifically, a large increase in admission rates for students from LCFF+ schools, which the report describes as:
The subset of California public schools in which more than 75 percent of the school’s total enrollment is composed of students who are identified as either eligible for free or reduced-price meals, or English learners, or foster youth
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
Who is pretending? I am sure Democrats would have sought to make hay out of it. It's still a thing Republicans could have done. Both Republicans and Democrats have done it in the past. My preference would be to just remove it altogether and have a majority vote for everything. The filibuster is a cancer on US politics.
I guess I do not think (and do not think voters think) assignment of blame like "Republicans are responsible for the shutdown" entails "there is literally nothing Democrats could do to end the shutdown." By this logic no party could ever be responsible for the shutdown, since after all some of its members could vote for a bill to end the shutdown!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
This is a very strange response. I think, and have long thought, ending the filibuster would be a good thing. I think it is singularly responsible for the erosion of Congress's role in our politics and has been a boon to the growth of presidential power. Even if the Senate did abolish the filibuster that would not come close to making Trump a king. The filibuster was not a significant impediment to Congress for the first 200+ years of our nations history. It's only in the last ~20 or so that it's seriously become a problem.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
I mean, what does it mean to be responsible for shutting down the government? There was a procedural path for Democrats to end the shutdown (by voting with Republicans). There was a procedural path for Republicans to end the shutdown (without any Democrat votes). There is no path for Democrats to unilaterally end the shutdown (being the minority party). What is the sense in which Democrats are responsible that does not also apply to Republicans?
Feel like this is where I run into the limits of my government research ability and it is frustrating. As best I can tell the legislation being referenced here is H.R. 5371. At least, the last listed action is that the Senate agreed to cloture 60-40 and the breakdown of Senators matches those described. However this bill, per section 106, seems like it only funds the government through November 21st except for specifically named operations. This is in contrast to the Politico article saying it funds most programs for the rest of the year and some only into January. There are limited references to January in that bill and only one to January 31st. Is there some further piece of legislation I need to reference? I also don't see any amendments in the bill history so it's not clear to me why it would need to go back to the House.
ETA:
I think this is the text of the amended HR 5371 that was passed, which does seem to fund through January 2026. Apparently there is also a companion bill.
On the politics side I think this was dumb. The polling I'm aware of seemed to show Democrats winning this fight in the popular consciousness. "It's bad when people's healthcare premiums go up hundreds of dollars" is a very straightforward message. Republicans nuking the filibuster also would have been a great outcome. If not immediately, then in the future. Feels like the closest thing to a concession is the entirely-symbolic later vote on extending the subsidies. Bad political instincts all around.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
Huh? Democrats (assuming this means voters) are mad that eight Senators voted to end the government shutdown with what seem like no material concessions.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
5d ago
There is no contradiction between those two. Republicans could have, at any time, used their Senate majority to end the shutdown by over-ruling the parliamentarian and invoking cloture with less than 60 votes. What actually happened is that eight Democrats voted for cloture so that Republicans didn't have to do that.
I have read some fascinating articles recently about how the rise of television and video as a medium more generally is a kind of societal regression from a literate culture to an oral one.
More options
Context Copy link