Author: Redactor

Pocket Prohibition?

vape, backpack, authoritarianism, surveillance,

Should the FDA outlaw backpack pockets?

Trick question.

Oh, you said “no”?

Okay, not that tricky . . .

But a little tricky. The FDA doesn’t want to prohibit backpack pockets as such. Only backpack pockets that can hide vaping equipment, like an e-cigarette.

Such pockets could presumably also hold a pen, thermometer, stick of beef jerky, perhaps even a plastic straw or spindled dollar bill. The list of cacheable contraband is endless. But it’s the thoughtcrime that counts.

The FDA wants to deploy its power to regulate food and drugs to also bully makers of pockets and other things that facilitate peaceful actions of which FDA officials disapprove. For now the agency is sending stern letters to sellers of legal products.

Tomorrow it may send SWAT teams.

“The FDA is especially disturbed by some of these new products being marketed to children and teens by promoting the ease with which they can be used to conceal product use,” frets Mitch Zeller, king of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. (It’s not an emporium.)

Various products that could help a person vape furtively are on the FDA’s hit list. Many of these products never hurt a fly. Backpack pockets in particular are getting a bad rap. I’m a fan of backpack pockets and hope the production of every kind of backpack pocket will continue unabated.

So, regardless of any animus that certain functionaries may feel about the covert carrying of e-cigarettes, pencils, or swizzle sticks, let them leave backpack pockets alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags authoritarianism, backpack, surveillance, vape

Today

Virginia for Independence

Post author By Redactor
Post date May 15, 2020
No Comments on Virginia for Independence

On May 15, 1776, the Virginia Convention instructed its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States’ Declaration of Independence.

Today

Constitution, huzzah?

On May 14, 1787, delegates convened a Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presided over the convention.

On the same day a century later, jurist and pamphleteer Lysander Spooner — author of an infamous pamphlet titled “No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority” — died.

media and media people

Chuck Truth

Meet the cheating press.

“I want you to listen to this Bill Barr answer to a question about what will history say about this,” Chuck Todd, host of Meet the Press, said to commentator Peggy Noonan last Sunday.

That last “this” referred to the Justice Department dropping charges against General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former National Security Advisor.

As the “tape” rolled, we witnessed CBS senior investigative correspondent Catherine Herridge ask, “When history looks back on this decision, how do you think it will be written?”

“Well, history’s written by the winners,” responded Attorney General Bill Barr. “So it largely depends on who’s writing the history.”

“I was struck, Peggy, by the cynicism of the answer,” Chuck chimes in as the clip ends. “It’s a correct answer. But he’s the attorney general. He didn’t make the case that he was upholding the rule of law. He was almost admitting that, yeah, this is a political job.”

If only NBC retained a peacock feather’s worth of credibility, you might be surprised by the rest of the story: in the interview CBS News had broadcast, Barr’s answer was more extensive.

“But I think a fair history,” Barr went on, without pause after what NBC presented to viewers (above), “would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law.”*

After cutting Barr’s specific “rule of law” contention, Todd then claimed he made no such argument.

On its website, NBC has added an editor’s note to the Meet the Press transcript, clarifying that they “inadvertently and inaccurately cut short a video clip of an interview with AG Barr.”**

Without bothering to provide the full statement.

From Mr. Todd? No comment.

From us — shock?

No, merely well-informed disgust.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “It upheld the standards of the Department of Justice,” Barr continued, “and it undid what was an injustice.”

** “And there you go,” MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough charged last Friday, using the same dishonest editing of Barr’s remarks, “. . . that tells you all you need to know. Might makes right. The rule of law doesn’t matter.” Editors at The New York Times did likewise.

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Tags Chuck Todd, lie

Today

Brazilian slavery

On May 13, 1888, Brazil abolished slavery with the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”).

Thought

Seneca the Younger

“Apply reason to difficulties; harsh circumstances can be softened, narrow limits can be widened, and burdensome things can be made to press less severely on those who bear them cleverly.”

national politics & policies too much government

The Rationale Has Ended

hospital, bed, pandemic, corona virus, Covid, lockdown,

Early on, we feared the worst. Based in no small part on the extravagant predictions of serial alarmist/lockdown scofflaw Neil Ferguson, a British epidemiologist, the worry quickly became: our hospitals will be swamped!

To prevent that, governments around the world

instituted lockdown orders, shutting down most commerce and peaceable assembly, to “flatten the curve,” thereby postponing many incidents of coronavirus and giving hospitals a steadier workload over time; and
set up emergency clinics and hospitals, to take on overflow.

In the U.S., the Army Corps of Engineers contracted with private companies to set up field hospitals. Given the alarmist talk of “exponential growth,” that sure seemed like a prudent use of $660 million.

Now?

Well, most never saw a patient.

Many field hospitals are being dismantled.

And so is the case for the lockdowns: the hospitals are generally not being swamped, which means that as summer approaches we can open things up and let herd immunity build up.

Indeed, we may already have reached that condition, according to Nic Lewis writing on Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. blog.

At issue is the “Herd Immunity Threshold” (HIT). The disgraced Ferguson’s original HIT was over 50 percent, while Lewis argues that the actual HIT level “probably lies somewhere between . . . 7% and 24%,” suggesting that “total fatalities should be well under 0.1% of the population by the time herd immunity is achieved.”

Why the lower HIT?

More realistic models take into account human diversity — a point also made by economist Daniel B. Klein, who adds important truths like “[f]or most people COVID-19 is scarcely a disease at all!”

It turns out that being reasonable about this pandemic requires neither complete gloom and doom nor risky response.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags bed, corona virus, covid, hospital, lockdown, pandemic

Thought

Jean-Paul Sartre

“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”

Today

Axis in Africa

On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.

media and media people national politics & policies

Of Light and Darkness

AYTU, ultra violent, UV, light, Covid, Corona Virus, epidemic, pandemic,

Josh Disbrow runs a pharmaceutical company called Aytu Science.

So far, so good. We all know that we need medicines in order to treat pandemic infections and so forth.

But the company blundered. It promoted technology that President Trump found occasion to refer to publicly, perhaps in a too offhand way, as a means of fighting the COVID-19 virus: “Supposing,” said the president, “you brought the light inside the body. . . .”

As you know, all presidential utterances must be reviewed beforehand by committees and focus groups in order to perfect the calibration. Apparently that didn’t happen this time.

Disbrow reports that the work Trump mentioned — using ultraviolet light against microbes — “has been in development since 2016 . . . and is a promising potential treatment for COVID-19.” Aytu had licensed the tech, called Healight, from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

After Trump spoke, Disbrow knew there’d be ill-informed controversy about Healight (the man’s an oracle!). So Aytu Science created a video to explain it, posted the video to YouTube and Vimeo, and promoted it through Twitter.

But YouTube and Vimeo quickly took down the video, and Twitter suspended Aytu’s account.

These guardians of “platform” discourse apparently contend that given the life-and-death stakes, it’s crucial to weed out misinformation. One must simply smother discussion about “a light inside the body,” etc. Because it makes the president look reasonable.

Strange standard.

Open discussion and debate help us learn what is true, breaking down rigid opinion and prejudice, in effect shining light where it could not reach before.

YouTube and Vimeo and Twitter have embraced darkness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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