Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
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User ID: 863
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
1d 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
1d 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
1d 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
1d 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:
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Learning loss from the pandemic decreasing students' retention and preparedness.
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The move away from standardized tests to GPAs making it more difficult for admissions officers to asses student's actual capabilities.
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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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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
3d 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.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
Even more recently than that! The big split was only really post-Dobbs. It turns out that once you have skin in the game (abortion can actually be criminalized) people change their mind. I know the phrase arises in the abortion context but I think it is also a synecdoche for a certain kind of politics towards women generally. How many Democrats are talking about how women shouldn't be working outside the home? That we should repeal the 19th amendment? That women's participation in the economy or public life has been bad for society? There is a certain kind of politics that believes women ought to be in positions of legal, social, and economic subordination to men and it is heavily concentrated among Republicans.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7d ago
Wanting a mate who is already established is reasonable from the female perspective, but also means that in modern society you wind up with either 18 year-olds marrying 30 year-olds, or 30-year olds marrying 30 year-olds. It would indeed be better for 20 year-olds to marry 22 year-olds and then build a life together.
Do you have a source for this data?
According to Pew age gap relationships where the husband is 3+ years older than the wife were much more common historically than they are today. At the time this article was written about 60% of marriages featured a husband that was 3 or more years older than his wife. Only 35% of marriages featured spouses whose age was within 2 years of each other. Those numbers are 40% and 51% respectively as of 2022. It turns out when women have control over who they marry, rather than being coerced by threat of economic destitution, they tend to prefer men around their own age.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
7d ago
Republicans are the party of "your body my choice" and Democrats... aren't. It's not complicated.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
If 60ish percent of men vote one way, and 80ish percent of women vote the other, and win, seems like a problem if the men who are in that 60% are ALSO the ones who would be tasked with carrying out/enforcing the laws they expressly disagree with.
What are you envisioning here? Are police going to refuse to make arrests for crimes? What crimes? Prosecutors refuse to file charges? Judges going to toss cases? Are you under the impression all parts of the justice system today think every law they enforce is just? I am very skeptical that is the case.
If fewer than half of the young men buy-in to the ideal of gender equality, what happens to a Democracy that tries to enforce gender equality?
What do you think is going to happen?
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
So in terms of 'trends,' What do you think eventually happens if young women continue voting for Democrats/lefties in droves... and have extreme intolerance for anyone who doesn't, while young men tack further right?
Complete Democrat political dominance? 80+% of women consistently voting for Democratic party candidates would be a nigh insurmountable electoral advantage.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
I am a little surprised by the lack of gender polarization in those numbers, except the 18-29 group. I would have thought it would be a cross-age phenomenon.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
8d ago
Virginia's statewide elections are always off-presidential-year, by state law. Republicans swept all three VA races I mentioned above in the last general election in 2021. It is hardly the case that, at least in recent history, Republicans are incapable of winning statewide offices in VA general elections.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
Can you say more about why Earle-Sears was not a serious candidate? She was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2021.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
The VA AG race had some uncertainty after some controversial texts from Jay Jones came to light. The GA wins by the Democratic party candidates are the first time D's have won a statewide state position (as opposed to federal) in 20 years. Sherrill was probably the favorite in the NJ Governor race but it's also the first time the same party has had a member elected governor for a third consecutive time in decades. The NYC mayoral race had been closely watched (at least in my political circles) due to disgraced ex-governor Andrew Cuomo's attempt to run for the seat. First in the Dem primary, then as a third party.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
9d ago
Who else up watching election results? As of the time of this writing Decision Desk has called all of:
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The Virginia governor race in favor of Abigail Spanberger (D).
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The Virginia lieutenant governor race in favor of Ghazala Hashmi (D and the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office).
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The Virginia Attorney General race in favor of Jay Jones (D lmao).
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The New Jersey governor race in favor of Mickie Sherrill (D).
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The NYC mayoral race for Zohran Mamdani (D, projecting a majority of the vote too lmao).
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Both statewide Georgia Public Service Commissioner races for the Democratic candidates.
Polls are still open in California so no word yet there on the redistricting ballot measure. In other Jay Jones news the house delegate who leaked his texts is on track to lose her re-election, as part of dems winning a trifecta in the Virginia government.
The county by county level results I've seen show pretty much all of the above running ahead of Harris and Spanberger even running ahead of Biden in 2020. Is this indicative of what we might see going forward? Dems had previously overperformed in special elections this year but this is the closest to a general until next years actual federal elections. If these trends hold up not a good sign for Republicans!
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
10d ago
Maybe I am typical minding too much but I think if you tried describing these "tensions" to people who support both the things you identify as in tension they would come off as non-sequiturs.
Trans — Palestine
Violence against women — Palestine
My impression is that most of the people celebrating something like "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" likely believe there is an ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, going on in the West Bank and Gaza. Carried out by some combination of the Israeli government and private settlers. I would be surprised if their objections to this state of affairs evaporated on learning that Palestinians were anti-trans or misogynistic. The two things do not seem connected to each other. I don't think people's objection to Israel's treatment of Palestinians is premised on those Palestinians having progressive politics, though I am open to being wrong about this.
Trans — violence against women
When people are thinking of something like "Transgender Awareness Week" they are thinking about struggles trans people have accessing healthcare. Or discrimination they might face in employment in housing. Similarly when people are thinking of "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women" they are probably thinking of the elimination of, like, intimate partner violence. Assault by strangers. "Male rapists claiming to be trans to access women in prison" are just not salient to either groups conception of what the events are about.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
Maybe I'm confused. In your comment you referred to no-fault divorce as a political solution to a personal problem. My contention is that it is a political solution to a political problem. The circumstances under which one can exit marriage, and the details of marriage as a matter of law, being themselves political creations. Similarly rape shield laws. The rules of evidence for courts being political creations.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
14d ago
What are the personal problems that no-fault divorce is a political solution to? In the absence of such laws it is the state compelling you to stay in a relationship you'd rather end. Is thinking a legal arrangement is unjust a "personal" problem? Same for rape shield laws, which concern the admissibility of evidence in criminal proceedings.
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.
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