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SpankyMcFarland

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Everything posted by SpankyMcFarland

  1. SpankyMcFarland
    When one loses a contest it’s considered good form to give the winner some credit. Norway was obviously an excellent candidate but I’m not sure why Canadian diplomats were so confident they’d beat Ireland. Irrespective of the party in power, that country has been pursuing this seat for 15 years, tirelessly cultivating support in the Caribbean, the Pacific and Africa. They even had U2 serenading the ambassadors. These days, Ireland fields far more UN peacekeepers than Canada. By their own estimation afterwards, most of the EU voted for them, naturally enough, and all but one Arab state too. Pierre Trudeau and Pearson were probably the keenest supporters of the UN. There’s been a bipartisan decline in interest since.
  2. SpankyMcFarland
    We can agree Hitler was far more racist, given what he did, but Churchill’s many imperialistic statements have not aged well. From that viewpoint, Churchill was a man behind his time, a 19th century figure who lived to see his beloved empire destroyed and Britain become a very junior partner in the so-called special relationship with the US. Anyway, I don’t know why we are so concerned about the presence or absence of any racism at all rather than overt racist acts. We are all racist to some extent, all tribal. The trick is to control that tendency.
  3. SpankyMcFarland
    I don’t run into people who are that keen on any politician and I’m surrounded by Liberals. Nobody notices Canada. It’s been that way for many’s the year and it’s not a bad thing either. People have a vague notion that we’re nice which is enough.
  4. SpankyMcFarland
    Appeasement made more sense than people may think today. Britain and France were still recovering from the extraordinary shock of WWI and were in no mood to fight Germany again. Without Russia they stood very little chance in a land war. WWII revealed what was the case already; together, the US and USSR had resources far greater than any European country. Hitler’s daft decision to declare war on them both sealed his fate.
  5. SpankyMcFarland
    Greece’s PM explains in excellent English how his country has done so well so far in the COVID crisis: https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2020/06/14/exp-gps-0614-greek-pm-covid.cnn
  6. SpankyMcFarland
    These choices are often surprises; the criteria the team make public are often quite different from the ones they are really using. Three possible candidates with 'buts' to all three: Harris is a solid option and would not be caught in any Palinesque moments by reporters but she is rather shrill and may get greater negative attention for her prosecutorial work; Bottoms is easier on the ear and eye but it would be a big jump up for her; Susan Rice is smooth and an experienced administrator but AFAIK is not experienced in electoral politics.
  7. SpankyMcFarland
    It’s a proper randomized trial and the results are highly impressive: Quote: Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that a drug can improve COVID-19 survival: a steroid called dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to one-third in severely ill hospitalized patients. Results were announced Tuesday and researchers said they would publish them soon. The study is a large, strict test that randomly assigned 2,104 patients to get the drug and compared them with 4,321 patients getting only usual care. The drug was given either orally or through an IV. It reduced deaths by 35 per cent in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20 per cent in those only needing supplemental oxygen. It did not appear to help less ill patients. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-19 ... -1.5613706 Needless to say, using an immunosuppressant to treat an infection is a tricky business. Still, we now have different drugs to treat the viral replication, thrombi and inflammation of COVID-19 which is excellent progress in a few months.
  8. SpankyMcFarland
    It looks like there will be incremental progress against this virus, something that we have seen with HIV and cancer. Here is news of a drug trial to reduce ARDS (often associated with diffuse alveolar damage) and lung thrombi in severe COVID-19 infection. The drug is TRV027, an AT1 receptor selective agonist:Blood clots targeted in Covid-19 treatment trialThird of patients develop dangerous blood clotsHere’s some fairly complex background info on ACE2 receptors and COVID-19. They make a fairly important point in the abstract suggesting why patients with diabetes and hypertension may be more vulnerable to a virus like SARS-CoV-2 that targets the ACE2 receptor: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0520301515
  9. SpankyMcFarland
    Bottoms has performed well of late, Harris has done the time and is well vetted, and Demings must be in the mix as well as several Hispanic candidates. While Warren is an excellent speaker, she's a white geezer like Biden There have been many tickets that contained keen rivals, e.g. Kennedy/Johnson, Reagan/Bush, Clinton/Gore. In this age of Trumpian celebrity-worship, I presume Oprah has already turned the job down? Biden needs more pep from his VP choice than most candidates.
  10. SpankyMcFarland
    I agree with the first point. And we certainly shouldn’t be tasering cops.
  11. SpankyMcFarland
    I’m not saying it’s easy to make such decisions in a split moment. Frankly, I’d be more inclined to shoot somebody running towards me, armed or not, with apparent intent to do me harm than somebody going in the opposite direction. I’m also not convinced regular criminal laws should apply in these situations. Quite some years ago, they had a rash of manslaughter convictions of UK doctors who were bad at their jobs until they realized the implications of this for recruitment.
  12. SpankyMcFarland
    The police are public servants, guardians of the peace. They should only kill people when absolutely necessary. Too often in the US, situations get escalated into shooting homicides that should not have occurred. It’s crazy. Foreigners can see that.
  13. SpankyMcFarland
    They were chasing a guy with a taser, not an assault rifle. Was he going to kill loads of people on a tasering rampage in the next ten minutes? Why use deadly force? The dumb answer is because you can.
  14. SpankyMcFarland
    Defunding has become a vague term. I suspect most people using it do not mean getting rid of the police. Reallocating some funds to other departments is one interpretation.There’s no question that police unions in the US have become belligerent monsters who terrify politicians. An exception is made for this particular union even by inveterate union-busters. It’s high time their wings were clipped.
  15. SpankyMcFarland
    American police are just too violent to people they encounter. In this case, they could have eased off out of taser range, let him run a few blocks, call in back-up and corner him when he’s knackered like the British police would do. And why are they trained to always shoot to kill? The guy was sleeping in his car when they got involved. Two rounds into his legs or backside would have brought him down. Although US policing seem to have taken on a paramilitary mindset, many units of this ridiculously fractured force (18,000 separate bodies with their own policies and counting) haven’t learned the first lesson of counter-insurgency - earning the trust of the community. Camden seems to offer a few lessons in this regard. It has its own problems but it sounds like a better approach: https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/08/872416644/former-chief-of-reformed-camden-n-j-force-police-need-consent-of-the-people https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/06/14/us/ap-us-america-protests-rethinking-police.html
  16. SpankyMcFarland
    It would be rather churlish of him to be otherwise, given that he was saved from his creditors on more than one occasion by generous Jewish friends.
  17. SpankyMcFarland
    When one reads the words of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, there is no question what the Lost Cause was all about: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech
  18. SpankyMcFarland
    I think David Petraeus spells out perfectly well why these people should not be glorified. They betrayed their country for the cause of slavery. Most of this base-naming and statue-making occurred long after the Civil War and was an exercise in asserting racial supremacy.
  19. SpankyMcFarland
    Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany. I’m not a massive fan of Churchill but he was a great man and I don’t think we should be erasing the past.
  20. SpankyMcFarland
    Let’s reverse this so we can deal with a reasonable list: what do I like about conservatives? Well, at the group level, I like the Mormons I’ve met, not when they’re trying to convert me with zany tales from their book but really any other time. Two lovely girls knocked on our door a few years ago and offered to do chores for a meal or two. In one day, they cleaned out my utterly chaotic shed. It was a Mormon miracle. They’re wholesome, cheerful, friendly people - what’s not to like? At the ideological level, I like the following qualities that some conservatives believe in: frugality; restraint; scepticism about the perfectibility of mankind; industriousness; independence. I also agree that two parent families should be preserved as much as possible to raise children - preferably extended families, actually.
  21. SpankyMcFarland
    I have several relatives over there who were in the police but none that I know of who are. One way or another, my generation’s example persuaded the next to try something else.
  22. SpankyMcFarland
    I think David Petraeus makes a reasonable point here about military bases in the US. None should still be named after Confederate generals:
  23. SpankyMcFarland
    Does Camden NJ offer any lessons for reform? All I know is it’s getting some favourable coverage. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/08/872416644/former-chief-of-reformed-camden-n-j-force-police-need-consent-of-the-people
  24. SpankyMcFarland
    Two things: 1. COVID-19 is still very much on the loose. The sight of people crowding together in those demonstrations makes me nervous. 2. We need the police. We need good people who want to work in police forces. The conversation should start there. They do work that is difficult and dangerous - for us, for our welfare. Of course, we should be open to suggestions for reform - there are lots of areas where improvement could occur - but not for the wholesale defunding of the guys who protect us.
  25. SpankyMcFarland
    In the UK and Ireland, police find themselves in these situations and sometimes have to deal with them without guns. The cost is more risk to the police. Some UK police jackets are designed to be stab-proof. After a particularly unpleasant experience, a friend of mine used to bring an enormous flashlight in with him to any disturbance. He found it more effective than the small baton he was officially issued. I think police over there are more used to physically scrapping with people. You don’t run the risk of being killed with your own weapon. There are no easy answers but, where possible, I would prefer to see a mental health professional accompanying police on calls to those who are already known to be schizophrenic, and trying to keep the situation as calm as possible. Psychotic patients may not react rationally to threats of more force and louder commands. Apparently, Peel already has some sort of program like this. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/02/04/peel-police-and-crisis-workers-partner-on-rapid-response-team-for-mental-health-emergencies.html This is a bit curious, though - five family members in the house, three of them witnessing the event. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fifth-estate-d-andre-campbell-police-shooting-family-1.5602503
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