LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015.
The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties...
Meanwhile, from deep within the Lysenko Bunker:
...(Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) dismissed Texas’ outbreak as “not unusual” during a Wednesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members...
_____ The AP banned from oval office briefings?...Darned tootin'...And said banning now has a judicial seal of approval, at least for the moment.
...It Sure Would Be A Shame If Anything Were To Happen To It.
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - U.S. negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine's critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting the country's access to Elon Musk's vital Starlink satellite internet system, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters...
{snip}
...Melinda Haring, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, said Starlink was essential for Ukraine’s operation of drones, a key pillar of its military strategy.
“Losing Starlink would be a game changer,” Haring said, noting that Ukraine was now at 1:1 parity with Russia in terms of drone usage and artillery shells. Ukraine has a wide range of different drone capabilities, ranging from sea drones and surveillance drones to long-range unmanned aerial vehicles...
It's as if all of the world has become a stage where the leads are the Godfather and Blofeld.
A new journal co-founded by President Donald Trump’s pick to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) says it will “promote open and transparent scientific discourse” but is drawing controversy within mere days of its launch.
The Journal of the Academy of Public Health (JAPH), announced on Wednesday, is the brainchild of NIH nominee Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and economist at Stanford University, and Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University biostatistician who became known for his opposition to lockdowns, child vaccination, and other public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic...
Hmmmm...
In my opinion there is another word that should and must be used to describe this 'journal'.
And that word is fake, based on the following, also from the Science piece (bolding mine):
...The journal, which has already published eight articles on topics including COVID-19 vaccine trials and mask mandates, eschews several aspects of traditional publishing. It lacks a subscription paywall, posts peer reviews alongside published articles, and pays reviewers for their work. But other researchers have criticized the journal’s exclusivity and lack of quality control. Only members of a newly formed body, the Academy of Public Health, can submit articles, and all submitted articles are published...
Put another way, the journal's submitted articles are generated by a star chamber and the publication of those submissions is pre-ordained.
Which means that this is not science.
Instead, it's gaming the system which is also known as codswallop, regardless the make up of said star chamber.
______ Regarding the star chamber's roster, Jonathan Howard has more on that over at Science-Based Medicine...Much more. Image and Subheader?....This!
Members of Elon Musk's private security detail have been deputized by the U.S. Marshals Service, granting them certain rights and protections of federal law enforcement agents, four sources familiar with the move confirmed to CBS News Thursday...
{snip}
...It was not immediately apparent what authorities Musk's team would be granted, but special deputies are typically permitted to carry weapons on federal grounds and carry out arrests...
And how did the US'ian Secret Service respond when asked to comment?
...In a statement late Thursday, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi referred CBS News to DOGE's communications office...
Gosh.
Like truthiness before it, this has the look of coupiness.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as the Trump Administration's Health and Human Services director on Thursday, February 13th.
On Friday February 14th, the following happened, as reported by the pre-eminent US'ian science publication 'Science':
President Donald Trump’s administration today moved to fire 5200 workers at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), using supervisors across the vast agency to warn probationary employees that they would soon receive termination notices. It also fired the director and much of the staff of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a $1.5 billion agency created 3 years ago to fund high-risk, high-payoff research.
The move came on the first full day in office of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had promised to eliminate hundreds of jobs at federal health agencies “on Day 1.”
At the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), where institute directors were hastily summoned to a meeting this morning to alert them of the imminent firings, some 1500 employees were initially scheduled to be let go; at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the number was 1269...
And, in addition to the generalized gutting of such agencies, there is also the surgical carving up of targeted initiatives:
...At CDC, many of the 50 or so members of the first year class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service—the agency’s prestigious “disease detective” training program for young epidemiologists—were notified they would be terminated. Three division directors in the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, a key front in pandemic prevention, were also on a list of targeted employees...
Clinician scientist David Gorski, who writes at 'Science-Based Medicine', had this to say about the latter:
...It’s almost as though RFK Jr. is trying other make us less prepared for another pandemic. No, strike that. He is, just because he hates what the CDC said about COVID-19, nonpharmaceutical interventions (e.g., masks, social distancing, business closures) to slow the spread of the virus, and, above all, vaccines...
Up here in Canuckistan there is a strain of science geek gallows humour going around about all the outstanding young American talent we will soon be recruiting to the Great White North. Personally, I am not laughing.
_____ No word yet as to whether Science, the magazine, has been banned from White House, CDC and/or NIH press conferences due to a lack of knee bending...Sound far-fetched?....Well, it turns out that the Associated Press has already been banned from Air Force One and the Oval Office for refusing to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, which was first named thusly in the mid-16th century, some 200 years before the American revolution.
For various and sundry reasons, I will not likely be watching the SNL 50 year cash-in-aversary. Regardless, I am betting that Elvis Costello's first appearance on the show back in December of 1977 will be one of the highlighted bits.
What was so special about the former Declan MacManus' first appearance in LorneVille all those years ago?
Well, the record company had pushed him to do 'Watching The Detectives', which he and the Attractions started. However, a few bars in Costello suddenly stopped the proceedings and shouted:
'I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but there's no reason to do this song here.'
The band, which was only booked on the show because Malcom McLaren screwed up the Sex Pistols' visa applications, then immediately launched into the much more up-tempo 'Radio Radio'.
This turn of events sent Mr. Michaels into a tizzy given that it messed with the show's timing. Feet were stomped, things were shouted and Costello was apparently banned from the show forever.
But.
This bit of snot-nosed behaviour actually served Mr. Costello well and the entire thing became quite infamous, so much so that Mr. Michaels, who never met a bit of infamy, self-generated or not, that he didn't attempt to exploit, later recycled the incident when Costello suddenly cut in on a Beastie Boys performance to sing about old timey British rules about what could, and could not, be played on the long wave.
Anyway, in an oddly irony-free twist of fate, it turns out that, whenever things go really wrong at one of his shows, Weird Al Yancovic, will suddenly halt the proceedings, shout out Mr. Costello's immortal words and, well, you guessed it...
If you need to step back from the the onslaught and are looking for perspective on what is going on down south, the piece to read a piece in Foreign Policy titled 'The Path to American Authoritarianism' by academics Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way.
Essentially, Levitsky and Way predict that the United States is well on its way down a path they call 'competitive authoritarianism' which will ultimately lead to democracy of a sort:
...U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy: full adult suffrage, free and fair elections, and broad protection of civil liberties.
The breakdown of democracy in the United States will not give rise to a classic dictatorship in which elections are a sham and the opposition is locked up, exiled, or killed. Even in a worst-case scenario, Trump will not be able to rewrite the Constitution or overturn the constitutional order. He will be constrained by independent judges, federalism, the country’s professionalized military, and high barriers to constitutional reform. There will be elections in 2028, and Republicans could lose them.
But authoritarianism does not require the destruction of the constitutional order. What lies ahead is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but competitive authoritarianism—a system in which parties compete in elections but the incumbent’s abuse of power tilts the playing field against the opposition. Most autocracies that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, and contemporary El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legal and aboveground, and they contest seriously for power. Elections are often fiercely contested battles in which incumbents have to sweat it out. And once in a while, incumbents lose, as they did in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system is not democratic, because incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics. Competition is real but unfair...
And how and why would this happen?
Well, essentially, the weaponization of the state would force many to give in:
...Although Trump’s critics won’t be jailed, exiled, or banned from politics, the heightened cost of public opposition will lead many of them to retreat to the political sidelines. In the face of FBI investigations, tax audits, congressional hearings, lawsuits, online harassment, or the prospect of losing business opportunities, many people who would normally oppose the government may conclude that it simply is not worth the risk or effort.
This process of self-sidelining may not attract much public attention, but it can be highly consequential. Facing looming investigations, promising politicians—Republicans and Democrats alike—leave public life. CEOs seeking government contracts, tariff waivers, or favorable antitrust rulings stop contributing to Democratic candidates, funding civil rights or democracy initiatives, and investing in independent media. News outlets whose owners worry about lawsuits or government harassment rein in their investigative teams and their most aggressive reporters. Editors engage in self-censorship, softening headlines and opting not to run stories critical of the government. And university leaders fearing government investigations, funding cuts, or punitive endowment taxes crack down on campus protest, remove or demote outspoken professors, and remain silent in the face of growing authoritarianism...
Gosh.
I'm not sure that last part even needs an insightful academic crystal ball to illuminate the future given that it already appears to be happening.
Regardless, Levitsky's and Way's piece is well worth reading in its entirety, and bookmarking for posterity if and when CanuckiStanMikitaVille starts to take on all the finest characteristics of, say, the current Hungarian regime
A year ago there were 10 Broadway Plan new high-rise projects in East Kits—today there are 25 new high-rise projects “in the pipeline” between Burrard and Vine Streets, 1st and 16th Avenues—that’s one additional per month.
Meanwhile the city’s official tracking advises 12 projects are in the pipeline—their definition of what to include is way less than the reality on the ground.1
Those 25 projects will involve demoviction of 13 existing mature rental buildings—that’s one affordable “mature” rental building gone for each pair of new projects.
The 25 projects total 3,821 homes2. At the city’s (and others’) standard of 2.2 persons per home on average, that means more than 8,400 new residents in East Kits—admittedly that excludes the populations demovicted from the 13 mature rental buildings, unknown because the city does not track that number (why not? you may ask).
“Only” four projects have had their rezoning approved to date, for a total of 795 housing units, 20% of which (159 units) are supposed to be “below market” rentals. The good news is that of these four, only one, 1960 West 7th Ave, involves destruction of an existing mature rental building. One down, 12 to go.
There are still no plans for additional schools, community centres or park space.
It's that last bullet point that disturbs me most.
______ Image at the top of the post?...A 3D projection of the potential ultimate BWay Plan build out (white towers are in the pipeline; grey towers are possible/potential) looking East from Vine St by Stephen Bohus who uses the moniker 'digitalmonkblog' over at CityHallWatch...Here's his latest post on the proposed twenty story towers just west of Arbutus on 6th avenue.
From reader Eye in the comments: ..."The reason there are still no plans for additional schools, community centres or park space, is that there is no money for it. As predicted, the Broadway subway is acting as a major black hole sucking every available dollar to fund this massive pork barrel project."...
You know that old ode to complicity, and all that it can and will wreak, that was written as a post-WWII confessional by German pastor Martin Niemoller:
...Some of the nation’s largest professional scientific and medical associations are still trying to decide how best to respond to the Trump administration’s aggressive intervention. Major research universities have been similarly cautious in their responses. The generally muted reaction, according to leaders in the research community, is partly due to the rapid pace of the executive orders, the vague nature of their wording and the judicial interventions...
To which I say hogwash.
Instead, I am of the opinion that it is a fear of retribution (including losses in big money funding) that is cowing these fine folks.
Look.
These are dangerous times.
And acquiescing in advance is not going to make things any less so.
Training for politicians that emphasizes their first duty is to the public, not the party;
Implement term limits;
Strict accountability for politicians and senior public servants;
Limit the power of unelected bureaucrats and institutions;
Reduce or end the influence of paid lobbyists and special interest groups;
Increase transparency in all functions of government and government agencies;
Address economic disparities to create a more equitable society;
Protect marginalized groups and ensure their participation in democratic processes;
Limit the influence of those who consciously spread disinformation;
Take regular advice from citizen forums involving people selected at random.
Personally, I reckon it is hard to argue against any of Norm's suggestions.
Regarding the lobbying thing, I've seen how insidious/corrosive that can be, up close.
Awhile back I was doing some science geek volunteering for a health charity that does really good work for many constituencies. When I noticed that they used a lobbyist I asked why and was informed that this was the only way they could consistently get in front of, not just elected officials, but also the politically appointed bureaucrats that run things. Essentially, it was that arms race thing that we also see with political donations wherein even good actors are afraid not to play the game for fear of being shut out of the system.
Fed Lib firebrand Evan Scrimshaw took a lot of heat for his long time insistence that big changes, including a leader change, had to happen to protect the party from an electoral massacre.
And now, well, Mr. Scrimshaw just can't help but say 'I told you so':
...In late September, I did a podcast about Ontario, but at the end I teed off on the Federal circumstances, and the fact that there was no sense of urgency despite the fact that the Liberals had just lost a second safe seat Byelection weeks before. It was obviously an exaggeration - I was not, in a literal sense, the only person trying to get Trudeau to resign, but it wasn’t much of one. That my motives and my loyalty to country were so routinely maligned by those defending the PM was infuriating, because all of this came from a sincere belief that the Liberal Party unburdened by Trudeau would be at least in somewhat fighting shape. And I have been completely vindicated, with today’s Pallas release reaffirming again that this is a tight race...
And what is this vindication born of a one-off poll from an a polling outfit called Pallas all about this time Alfie?
The confirmation hearings for Bobby the Younger are scheduled to take place later this week.
And yet, the following, as noted by Anil Oza at STAT News, has already happened:
A flurry of scientific gatherings and panels across federal science agencies were canceled on Wednesday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about how the Trump administration will shift the agencies’ policies and day-to-day affairs.
Several meetings of National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT.
A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29...
The point is, they don't even need to install Mr. Kennedy as their codswallop spewing figurehead because the extremists are already at the helm.
_____ While the immediately scary stuff here is the halting of the vaccine and antibiotic resistance advisory committees, in the American NIH biomedical research system 'study sections' are, essentially, the same as grant panels in the much smaller Canadian CIHR system. These study sections are where the real hard-nosed biomedical discovery funding decisions are made by scientists, not bureaucrats. Thus, the fact that the extremists are also cancelling US NIH study section meetings is really worrisome as it could be a spanner chucked in the gears of the world's biggest evidence-based, scientifically driven biomedical research engine. And we already know how threatened the extremists are by evidence and science.
What does Joe Rogan have in common with L. Ron Hubbard?
Well, it would appear that Mr. Rogan's podcast thingy is a place where uber-thetans of a certain narcissitimilitudinous nature who were never nurtured go to get, well...
It would appear that, according to her press release at least, Christy Clark's lousy french is a major reason that she has decided not to run for the leadership of the Canadian Liberal Party:
...While we have come a long way, in a short time, there is simply not enough time to mount asuccessful campaign and for me to effectively connect with Francophone Canadians in their language. I have worked hard at improving my French but it’s not where it needs to be, today...
Ignoring that use of the collective noun for the moment, one can only wonder if, perhaps, all that time Ms. Clark spent working hard might have been more effective if she had actually spent it Francophone Canada rather than, you know, France:
However, fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your point of view), Ms. Clark has also assured us that this press release is not a 'you won't have Nixon....errrr...Clark to kick around anymore' kind of a statement because:
..Friends, I will continue to fight for Liberal candidates and am deeply thankful for the outpouring of support I have received from the grassroots over the past week.
We will meet again...
Oh boy.
_______ Of course, as we have noted before, last summer was not the first time that Ms. Clark worked hard on something that may or may have not been learning french while in France.
All snark aside, if Ms. Clark were to run for the Fed Libs in the next election, is there any riding in Lotusland, Coastal Division, that she could actually win?
