The Frankish Reich

Are we sure he's not getting money from the RNC? Nothing they'd like better than the return of Hunter to public life.

Only a damn fool wouldn't read on to note that some of those "Mexicans" are ... MENNONITES! They send out new colonies all over the place. South America. Canada. Texas. Africa. Of course measles is endemic in other places. The point is that the Texas/NM outbreak and most of the Canadian cases are traceable to Mennonite outbreaks first, because those communities have abysmal vaccination rates. Sorry to burst your bubble. White people, including white immigrants: they can spread disease too. Who knew? It's about calling out stupid racist/anti-immigrant tweets that are re-posted here with no concern whatsoever for whether they're true. (I know you didn't post it, but please don't feel compelled to defend it)

OK. Be a pedantic creep. Just odd. "The most Mennonites per capita." Now go find support for the dumbass tweet that talks about Indian immigrants.

Alberta and western Ontario. But given the populations of the respective provinces, Alberta's rate is much, much higher. Look at the link. No, white people are not inherently more hygienic. Or look here: https://macleans.ca/society/behind-the-scenes-of-ontarios-mennonite-measles-outbreak/

Just the kind of mature, measured response I expected.

No, I won't, because that would be stupid. How about we look at Canada by province? That's at least sensible. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/measles-rubella/ Per Capita, Alberta is winning. And that's where you will find most Mennonites. Yes, it would make sense to screen/vaccinate people from any place where measles is endemic. But Alberta is, unfortunately, already one of those places. By the way, I just took my first Amtrak trip (at a rather advanced age) and I was really amazed by how many Mennonites/Amish take Amtrak out of Chicago. I had thought trains were not allowed. But it turns out they kind of are allowed.

Where there are Mennonites there is measles. What's so hard to understand? You sound frustrated that you have to blame white Christians and the anti-vaxxers.

Why do you assume they're ignorant? They know damn well that their product is not the economic engine that the (M)NBA is. I'm sure they also know that the NBA essentially subsidizes their league. They also seem to know that a "fairness" play is more likely to succeed than some kind of hard economics play like profit sharing, since there isn't much if any profit to share.

Yes. Yes it does. And now try this one: on the Opinion side of the NYT, Ross Douthut - their resident "conservative," although in a Paul Ryan kind of way (but certainly no TDS guy) - interview the Miami Herald (NOTE: Mainstream Media!) reporter who got the ball rolling on the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing way back when. A really interesting read. It may be available as a podcast too (sometimes those aren't firewalled). Here's some food for thought (excuse the TIkTok link; I know a lot of our readers really like pictures): Here's the full story: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/19/opinion/interesting-times-julie-k-brown-epstein.html Here's the part about how/why Epstein got such a sweetheart deal from the Miami prosecution in 2008: Brown: Well, I found out that Jeffrey Epstein, of course, had a lot of resources, both financially and politically. He cultivated people on both sides of the political aisle — and people across the world, really. He was very wealthy, but there was no real indicator of how he made his wealth. I just learned that he was able to hire essentially a dream team: Kenneth Starr, Alan Dershowitz, Jay Lefkowitz. A lot of these had contacts with the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. Douthat: This is a very prominent law firm. Brown: And Epstein was very shrewd. Every lawyer that he hired had a tie to one of the prosecutors on the case. Alex Acosta had worked for Kirkland & Ellis. And he was very ambitious at the time. He really was a rising star in the G.O.P. Ironically, one of the ways that he was rising was he was handling a lot of child pornography cases. He was part of a team of prosecutors that was prosecuting child porn. So Epstein knew exactly who to hire. I mean, he even hired a lawyer that had dated one of the prosecutors. So every single lawyer had a tie to the prosecutors in some way and was sort of — if you’re a prosecutor, you want to eventually end up somewhere in a good law firm and make more money. So some of these prosecutors were star struck by some of these lawyers like Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz. Douthat: So in that sense it looks like insiders and power create a kind of path of least resistance for the prosecution where you get some kind of conviction. You don’t have to end up at war with this legal all-star team spending all kinds of resources.

I liked Fant when the Broncos drafted him. But he started with a dysfunctional offense, and now that time has passed his advantages - speed/athleticism - have likely declined while he doesn't appear to have improved in other (blocking) ways. In some alternative universe he would've been a real weapon; the wormhole to that universe is now closed.

Find me a reputable study that shows that the overall costs to society of the COVID vaccination program exceeded its benefits. Hint: there isn't one. So we are left with people arguing that COVID vaccines do have some costs, and do cause side effects in some people. Like we didn't already know that with respect to all vaccines since the concept of a "vaccine" was invented. And look back to my opening post. I didn't say we needed to mandate vaccines for pre-HS kids. Life is dangerous. Going to school - something the government has always mandated, at least in the pre-"home school" folly days - is dangerous. The COVID vaccine mitigated the dangers of COVID. Period.

Not surprising. Talk about something else other than the solid reporting done by the NYT on Boelter.

Just asking questions. That's what you want to say now that the tables are turned. Just asking questions.

The non-hate take of the mainstream media. And it's a good and fair read. Find a non-gated version and read it! Then discuss how the hot takes of the alt Twittersphere compare .... Short story: a man ruined by religious zealotry. Not a condemnation of religion; a condemnation of zealots.

I don't recall saying anything about whether children below a certain age should get it. To say it did "minimal good" without rigorous study or citation to such study more about mood affiliation than analysis. And remember, when we are talking about herd effects, the efficacy of a vaccine on the individual recipient is not the sole form of analysis. If the vaccines caused widespread horrific side effects, I think we'd be seeing better evidence than this after 4+ years.

tl;dr Pfizer vaccine correlated to minor/ clinically insignificant and temporary thickening of cornea in some subjects. Panic!!!

The em dash and the semicolon: two abused/misused grammatical siblings. Learn the rules and prosper!

I believe the ratings stuff, but the timing? I doubt it’s coincidental. More Shari Redstone cozying up to Trump to complete the CBS sale without FCC interference. Enjoy the New CBS, brought to you by Oracle and the Ellison kids.

No offense, but many of you folks read the alt right media exclusively. The WSJ published this after Trump threatened to sue them if they did, and after Trump was given an opportunity to comment. The WSJ follows good journalistic practices, and they have good lawyers to run this by. I therefore assume that the source is credible and is backed up by other evidence. This isn’t Jack POS making up silliness about the underage sex slave den in the nonexistent Comet Pizza basement. I will refrain from the obvious your mama jokes.

I'm pretty sure vague references to "meals" means eating infant blood. I mean, that's what Jack Poseur told us with Hillary.

Trump tried desperately to kill the WSJ story, even though that story is pretty mild. He's absolutely terrified about anything else coming out about his Epstein connection. Is the letter real? Yeah, it's real, and it came (somehow) from Ghislaine Maxwell and her circle. So they have a source, and a source means More to Come. Hence the Trump panic.

Keeps the story going for another news cycle ... Look, everyone knows Trump is a perv. The question is whether he's been an old creeper for decades, trying to bed 19 -25 year olds, or whether he's a legally culpable perv trying to bed girls under the age of consent in the relevant jurisdiction. Oh, and this: https://people.com/ex-casino-boss-claims-trump-epstein-brought-underage-girls-casino-floor-11774374 That seems to cut in the direction of garden variety old creeper. On the other hand, the little "secrets" we share with Ghislaine and Jeffrey suggest legally culpable perv.

I'm not much of a late night talk show guy, but my personal preferences are: 1. Kimmel. Trump calling him out actually sharpened his comedic edge. And I'm all about edgy. [big gap] 2. Colbert. Mostly boring. Has always been. Annoying. Can't watch him. Not sad to see him go. 3. Fallon. No edge whatsoever. Bad wig in lame attempt to preserve "boyish charm."

Well, that certainly is "counterintuitive."

Yes, loyal reader. I was.