Pentagon Purges Portend Perils Of Politicization

Apparently, it’s spread to New Mexico. Australia has cases too. Is it possible this is a newer variant and our childhood vaccines won’t be as effective? I’ve heard rumors some parents are hosting “measles parties” for their kids. I don’t know if this is true, or just a gruesome urban legend. But the Covid pandemic taught me that some people will do monumentally stupid shit to avoid the jab.

We used to do that with chicken pox back in the day. I remember most of the neighborhood kids had chicken pox at the same time. But measles is quite different and it’s probably better to be vaccinated against it than catching it from a friend while playing. The world is getting scary.

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Dude, she’s saying ‘that’s not enough, we have to go further’. She’s been rising to the emergency. She’s been one of the voices out there, consistently. And now she’s warning people that it doesn’t end with Trump. It’s gonna take more.

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Oh, as a follow up to @josh_m on Bluesky:


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Share the same message with him tomorrow.

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Lol!!! I just realized that I was the victim of autocorrect.

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Not much legal binding, but a sufficiency of protecting.

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As far as I know, measles is usually a more serious disease than chickenpox. The latter does not threaten death to the same degree maladies like loss of hearing and blindness. But chickenpox is very unpleasant while you suffer from it, there sometimes are very serious complications, and – most important – later in life there may be shingles, which aside from being very painful sometimes leads to terrible complications. (For instance, a friend’s otherwise very healthy mother, in her 60’s, had shingles which spread to her eyes and then her brain, leaving her brain-damaged after the shingles had cleared up.) Of course, there is a vaccine that helps protect against shingles, but – well, for these people it’s just another vaccine to reject.

Btw, there’s also mumps. Not usually as bad as measles or chickenpox at the time, but not fun. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Rarely, mumps can affect your organs, including your brain, pancreas, testicles or ovaries. This usually only occurs in adolescents and adults…” (Testicles: infertility.) And there’s also rubella (“German measles,”), usually a mild disease, but it can, rarely, have serious complications. Rubella is definitely a serious disease for pregnant women since the complications for the fetus are not rare. The Mayo Clinic:

However, if you’re pregnant when you get rubella, the effect on your unborn child may be severe, and in some cases, fatal. Up to 90% of infants born to mothers who had rubella during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy develop congenital rubella syndrome. This syndrome can cause one or more problems, including:

** Growth delays*
** Cataracts*
** Deafness*
** Problems with the development of the heart (congenital heart defects)*
** Problems with the development of other organs*
** Problems with mental development and learning*

The highest risk to the fetus is during the first trimester, but exposure later in pregnancy also is dangerous.

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I want to bring attention to the big story on Friday from the White House and Pentagon: https://apnews.com/article/trump-brown-joint-chiefs-of-staff-

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Is your point that following the link leads to “Page Unavailable”?

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SpaceX engineers were said to be simply touring the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday. In fact, some were already being onboarded at the agency under a policy designed to increase “employment opportunities for people with disabilities"

Ummmmm, isn’t that explicitly DEI hiring?!?

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Shows tacit approval to me.

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Every cabinet member fundamentally opposes the existence of the agency they lead.

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I apologize for the bad link, try this one for AP: Trump fires chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other military officers

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What is it with these performances by CEO’s? CEO on stage, thumping music, light show, adoring fans in the audience. Tim Cook shit. A flashier version of TED talks, which also annoy me even when you learn something of value from them. And then the overproduced events of presidents, from “flier” George Bush to Obama’s appearance in Chicago after his first election to the presidency, to all the gala inauguration crap. JFK’s “Camelot.” And, of course, Trump’s rallies.

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Is this a disease that can be confirmed with a pregnant woman via amniocentesis?

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Again, it’s only Monday so why would I feel alarmed?


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A blood test is all that’s needed to determine if a pregnant woman has already had rubella or has contracted it while pregnant. NBD. With my first pregnancy over 40 years ago, my ob/gyn had me take the blood test to be sure I had had rubella, as I believed I had. And yes, I’d had it. If I hadn’t already had it, I probably would have been given the vaccine or (because I’m not sure if there was yet a vaccine) advice about how to avoid contracting it. I don’t know if, but rather doubt that, amnio would reveal any birth defects in the fetus of a woman who contracted rubella while pregnant.

As a child I had a bad case of the measles and two of the world’s mildest cases of chickenpox and rubella. I don’t think I ever had the mumps, though. I had the flu once (maybe at age 11 or 12) but never since, even though I only started getting flu shots maybe 15 years ago. Knock on wood. Thanks to vaccines, my children missed out on all the “childhood diseases,” as they were called in my youth, except chickenpox – they’d just missed the development of that vaccine. So, they’ll have to get the shingles vaccine in not too many years.

Oh, and I am of an age that I got a small pox vaccine and, welcomed by the world with great celebration, a polio vaccine.

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Flat , but layered - DUH! :roll_eyes:

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So, this was related to me a couple of decades ago by a financial guy I’d used for decades. He was a regional supervisor for the IRS, and later helmed a division for BDO. Unfortunately, he’s passed on, so I wasn’t able to ask him. There are other tranches of tax payments that the states collect as well, I just can’t recall or find them right now. I do remember that they are fairly substantial.

AI did turn this up

Yes, state governments pay federal taxes, primarily through payroll taxes for their employees and other federal tax obligations.

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