US Politics: No longer about flu shots

[Inigima]

So, uh, how about this crazy Seymour Hersh story?

Citing interviews with “a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad” and American sources who “had access to corroborating information,” Hersh writes that the American government did not act alone in locating and killing Bin Laden, as it has consistently claimed. On the contrary, Hersh’s sources say that senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)—Pakistan’s equivalent of the CIA—knew as early as 2006 that Bin Laden was in Abbottabad, and cooperated with the U.S. in the assassination. Specifically, the story says that top Pakistani Army Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI, knew Bin Laden’s location and knew about the Abbottabad raid before it took place.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/10/seymour_hersh_in_london_review_of_books_obama_lied_about_bin_laden_raid.html

No idea if the story is credible. And, to be honest, not entirely sure I understand all the implications if it is.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

The Hersh story will fade away quickly. Even if true, no one will care. The biggest potential revelation is that the ISI was holding Bin Laden prisoner for years without telling the US, but then cooperated with the raid (contrary to the Obama administration's claim) once an informant leaked the information. And then Hersh wants to say Obama somehow fucked US-Pakistani relations by lying about the details of the raid when he was supposed to tell a different lie about a drone strike. This after he's painted a picture of purely self-serving intelligence agencies at cross-purposes or cooperating with one another only depending on circumstances anyway. And by his own acknowledgement there was a legitimate reason for the US to lie about the operation to protect the informant and ISI officials. Tacked on is the assertion that bin Laden was never to be taken alive (duh) and he wasn't actually given a proper Muslim burial- no one in the US is going to give a shit about either of these things.

[MerenthaClone]

First, I'm laughing at the thread title. Second, my only thought so far is that as far as an effect on the 2016 elections goes, it'll be a net gain for Hillary by constantly reminding everyone that she was SecState while bin Laden was killed.

As for credibility, eh, it seems...not very much to me at first glance.

[awesome possum]

Hasn't Hersh generally gone off the reservation the last couple years? Anyway, regarding this "report"

But his allegations are largely supported only by two sources, neither of whom has direct knowledge of what happened, both of whom are retired, and one of whom is anonymous. The story is riven with internal contradictions and inconsistencies.

The story simply does not hold up to scrutiny — and, sadly, is in line with Hersh's recent turn away from the investigative reporting that made him famous into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.

A decade ago, Hersh was one of the most respected investigative journalists on the planet, having broken major stories from the My Lai massacre in 1969 to the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004. But more recently, his reports have become less and less credible. He's claimed that much of the US special forces is controlled by secret members of Opus Dei, that the US military flew Iranian terrorists to Nevada for training, and that the 2013 chemical weapons attack in Syria was a "false flag" staged by the government of Turkey. Those reports have had little proof and, rather than being borne out by subsequent investigations, have been either unsubstantiated or outright debunked. A close reading of Hersh's bin Laden story suggests it is likely to suffer the same fate.

Sounds like the guy is just losing it in his old age, or is so desperate to replicate the fame his former reports gave him that he's throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks.

[The Fallen]

As long as Osama bin Laden is not alive I have no issue with the accuracy of the details. If what's in this story is true then the two Pakistani intelligence officials are probably passed that they've been outed.

The official version always sounded a little too Hollywoo, but again, as long as the main point of the story, bin Laden's death, is true then that's all that matters.

[Fragile Bird]

The Democrats should start tooting their horns about the benefits of ending the Cuban boycott, especially in tobacco-growing states. The Cubans have an advanced lung cancer vaccine (all those cigars - lung cancer is the 4th highest cause of death in Cuba), created by their very impressive bio-tech industry. Back in the early 80s dengue fever hit the island very badly and the Cuban leadership *cough* Fidel *cough*, determined to look after the health of their people, created the industry to search for a vaccine.

How did Cuba end up with a cutting edge immuno-oncology drug? Though the country is justly famous for cigars, rum, and baseball, it also has some of the best and most inventive biotech and medical research in the world. That’s especially notable for a country where the average worker earns $20 a month. Cuba spends a fraction of the money the US does on healthcare per individual; yet the average Cuban has a life expectancy on par with the average American. “They’ve had to do more with less,” says Johnson, “so they’ve had to be even more innovative with how they approach things. For over 40 years, they have had a preeminent immunology community.”

Despite decades of economic sanctions, Fidel and Raul Castro made biotechnology and medical research, particularly preventative medicine, a priority. After the 1981 dengue fever outbreak struck nearly 350,000 Cubans, the government established the Biological Front, an effort to focus research efforts by various agencies toward specific goals. Its first major accomplishment was the successful (and unexpected) production of interferon, a protein that plays a role in human immune response. Since then, Cuban immunologists made several other vaccination breakthroughs, including their own vaccines for meningitis B and hepatitis B, and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants.

The Wired story that came from: http://www.wired.com/2015/05/cimavax-roswell-park-cancer-institute/

The first drug trials outside of Cuba have started here in Canada: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/13/1037.full

Imagine, a country that makes the health of their people a priority. What a communist idea! Obama must be a commie, eh?

ETA: And have you seen the stories about Raul Castro's visit to Rome to meet Pope Francis? He said he's so impressed with the man he's considering returning to the church....

But, then again, I found out from my friends in the Christian community that most of them don't consider Catholics Christians, so I guess that doesn't help any.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A lung cancer "vaccine"? Is lung cancer something that it is possible to inoculate yourself against? Is it caused by a bacteria or a virus?

[DanteGabriel]

But, then again, I found out from my friends in the Christian community that most of them don't consider Catholics Christians, so I guess that doesn't help any.

Yes, I've been familiar with the Other-ness of Catholics in the thinking of WASP-McJesusite sects, so this does not surprise me. Shit, there was a joke about it in Caddyshack, and of course there was the Protestant reluctance to see an Irish Catholic like Kennedy get elected to the Presidency. This is why I get a secret delight, despite not actually being a practicing Catholic anymore, out of referring to the Catholic Church as "the Old Firm" and any Protestant denomination as "splitters" (with a Monty Python-esque enunciation).

I was pretty appalled by the political alliance of conservative, Mel Gibson-ish Catholics with the virulent McJesusite strain of Protestantism, and I hope that apostasy has run its course.

[Sir Thursday]

A lung cancer "vaccine"? Is lung cancer something that it is possible to inoculate yourself against? Is it caused by a bacteria or a virus?

If you read through the article, it's only a vaccine in the technical sense (in that it is a substance that provokes a beneficial immune response). It doesn't prevent you from getting lung cancer, but if you do have lung cancer then it prevents the growth from metastasizing to other parts of the body by attacking the mechanism tumour cells use to get into the bloodstream.

ST

[Fragile Bird]

A lung cancer "vaccine"? Is lung cancer something that it is possible to inoculate yourself against? Is it caused by a bacteria or a virus?

From the trial story:

The conversation then turned to the rationale for the vaccine, starting with Vincent’s reminder that circulating estrogen—the estrogen that floats in the blood as a matter of course—can drive breast cancer growth.

Similarly, he said, certain other cancers—non-small cell lung and many head and neck cancers, for instance—can be fueled by epidermal growth factor (EGF), which also circulates in the blood. The vaccine, accordingly, is meant to cause a patient’s immune system to form antibodies to EGF that will prevent its doing that.

The real excitement is that the vaccine could stop some cancers from metastasizing, as Sir Thursday says.

[DanteGabriel]

My mother died of lung cancer that metastasized to her brain and bones. Oh, Cuban embargo, fuck you so very much.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

FB,

Interesting.

[Fragile Bird]

My mother died of lung cancer that metastasized to her brain and bones. Oh, Cuban embargo, fuck you so very much.

Yeah, my dad's stomach cancer metastasized. The idea you could get a vaccine that will stop a cancer from spreading, and then the doctors can go in and remove the tumour, is incredibly exciting. The time between discovery of a cancer and the surgery to remove it could possibly be very critical. The idea you could stop breast cancer in it's tracks is breathtaking.

[DanteGabriel]

Hey, can someone clued in to the right wing arglebarglesphere, maybe poethatwaspromised or someone, tell me if the Teahadis have turned on Walmart? I thought Walmart was doing God's work of enriching a handful of billionaires by underpaying a legion of almost-captive labor and squashing small business competition in its locality, but now they've been implicated in two Right Wing Outrage Theories of the Week.

First they were secret partners for the federal takeover of Western states by building underground tunnels that the Jade Helm 15 jackbooted federals would use for nefarious staging grounds... Now apparently they are the beachhead for Sharia law spreading to the White Christian God's country:

In a blog post published Monday, West described a recent trip to a Dallas area Wal-Mart with his daughter. West thought it curious that an employee put up a sign in their checkout lane that read "No alcohol products in this lane," and raised his eyebrows further when he noticed that the cashier's name tag indicated that his name was "NOT 'Steve.'"

West thought those two signs taken together could only mean one thing: the cashier was a Muslim who refused to scan alcohol products because he observed Sharia law.

"Imagine that, this employee at Walmart refused to just scan a bottle or container of an alcoholic beverage — and that is acceptable," West wrote. "A Christian business owner declines to participate or provide service to a specific event — a gay wedding — which contradicts their faith, and the State crushes them."

The blog post was originally titled "Sharia law comes to Walmart?", according to a screenshot posted by Media Matters. But at some point after it was published, the post was updated with an editor's note that invalidated the premise.

"We spoke to the Walmart store, and apparently employees under 21 years old are prohibited from selling cigarettes and alcohol," the editor's note read. "However, that isn’t to say Walmart isn’t selectively caving to Muslim demands, such as this case regarding Halal meat in Ohio."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/allen-west-walmart-sharia

Has Walmart been turned to nefarious purposes? I guess that's the risk when you let these all-American companies go international...

[Shryke]

Rand Paul preaches against Net Neutrality to Silicon Valley. Results are predictable.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-rand-paul-heard-silence-san-francisco

Rand Paul: so very, very dumb

[aceluby]

Rand Paul preaches against Net Neutrality to Silicon Valley. Results are predictable.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-rand-paul-heard-silence-san-francisco

Rand Paul: so very, very dumb

"Rand Paul and San Francisco go together like oil and water, and voters shouldn’t be fooled by his claims that he’s a ‘different’ kind of Republican. He’s just not.”

Pretty much sums up 'ol Randy-poo. Sometimes talks like a libertarian, always votes like a Republican.

[Inigima]

With all the idiot pseudolibertarians in tech, you'd think Rand would have an easy job there. But he fucked that up too.

[Commodore]

So, uh, how about this crazy Seymour Hersh story?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/05/10/seymour_hersh_in_london_review_of_books_obama_lied_about_bin_laden_raid.html

No idea if the story is credible. And, to be honest, not entirely sure I understand all the implications if it is.

hrmm, who to believe, Navy SEALs who were there, or serial fabulist Sy Hersh, who wasn't

tough call

[Shryke]

Jonathan Chait absolutely destroys the "Affirmative Action President" meme circulating around the Right these days:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/clinton-obama-affirmative-action-presidents.html

“If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency in 2016 she will not only be the nation’s first woman president but our second affirmative-action president,” writes Joseph Epstein. This may sound like Epstein is making the outlandish claim that Clinton and Obama are uniquely lacking in merit as compared to previous presidential candidates in American history. That is exactly what Epstein is claiming. In a bizarre, rambling essay that the Weekly Standard has deemed worthy not only of publication but of its cover, the esteemed conservative scholar asserts that presidential elections used to be based on intrinsic merit, until 2008. “How have we come to the point,” Epstein asks, “where we elect presidents of the United States not on their intrinsic qualities but because of the accidents of their birth: because they are black, or women, or, one day doubtless, gay, or disabled — not, in other words, for themselves but for the causes they seem to embody or represent, for their status as members of a victim group?”

Yes, that’s right. America used to elect presidents on “intrinsic qualities” rather than “accidents of their birth.” And this process resulted in the election of forty-three consecutive white men, an outcome Epstein must regard as an extreme coincidence. The last president to be elected on the basis of intrinsic qualities rather than accidents of birth was George W. Bush, whose birth circumstances, Epstein apparently believes, had no bearing upon his career trajectory.

In a larger sense, of course, the very existence of Epstein’s piece serves to disprove its thesis. If it is still possible for a white man to write an incoherent farrago of self-pity whose only shred of evidence directly undercuts its thesis, and have such drivel thrown onto the cover of a national magazine, then white men are probably still doing okay.

That last paragraph burn. Damn.

[lokisnow]

last thread, Shryke said I'm a chicken little for refusing to believe that Clinton is an electoral college lock in 2016 or for suggesting that she's got an uphill battle. specifically, I said she's going to lose if the strategy is to employ a Electoral College "Prevent Defense" since that approach has always failed to win elections but is the approach advocated by most liberals in this thread, it seems to me.

I've also pointed out that Republicans won every presidential election from 1968 to 1988, other than once-in-200-years outlier occurrence of the biggest political scandal in american history resulting in the fluke election of Carter. Any perception originating from drawing a line in 1992 and claiming democrats have an advantage at winning the presidency is profoundly stupid because nothing on the scale of the Civil War, the New Deal, or the Civil Rights Act / Voting Rights Act happened in 1992 to fundamentally alter national politics.

Turns out, Nate Silver agrees with me.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-blue-wall/

The error that these commentators are making is in attributing the Democrats’ recent run of success to the Electoral College. In fact, the Electoral College has been a minor factor, if it’s helped Democrats at all, and one probably best ignored until the late stages of a close presidential race.

But wait. Wasn’t Barack Obama’s margin in the Electoral College in 2012 — 332 electoral votes, to Mitt Romney’s 206 — awfully impressive given that he won the popular vote by only a few percentage points?

Actually, it was pretty much par for the course. The nature of the Electoral College is to accentuate small margins in the popular vote; Obama’s electoral vote tallies have been fine, but historically ordinary.

In the chart below, I’ve plotted the past century’s worth of presidential elections (from 1916 to 2012). The horizontal axis shows the Democrat’s margin of victory or defeat in the popular vote and the vertical axis how many electoral votes he received. (Totals are prorated to 538² electoral votes, the current total.)³ Then I’ve drawn an “S”-shaped curve to show the long-term relationship.

Based on the past century’s worth of data, you’d expect a Democrat who won the popular vote by 3.9 percentage points — as Obama did against Romney — to win about 330 electoral votes. That pretty much exactly matches Obama’s 332.

And you’d expect a Democrat who won the popular vote by 7.3 percentage points, as Obama did in 2008 against John McCain, to claim about 380 electoral votes. Obama won 365 that year instead. By comparison, when F.D.R. won the 1944 popular vote by 7.5 percentage points, he won the Electoral College 432-99.

So when commentators talk about the Democrats’ “blue wall,” all they’re really pointing out is that Democrats have had a pretty good run in presidential elections lately. And they have, if you conveniently draw the line at 1992 (it doesn’t sound so impressive to instead say Democrats have won five of the 12 elections since 1968). During that time, Democrats have won four elections pretty clearly, lost one narrowly and essentially tied the sixth. This has been evident from the popular vote, however. The one time the Electoral College really mattered — that was 2000, of course — it hurt the Democrats.