The entire U. of Washington men's basketball team is vaccinated, but apparently still pose enough of a threat that they must quarantine and cancel games. Why then are non-vaccinated state employees in Washington being fired, based on the unique threat *they* allegedly pose?
Was just on Seattle radio where the host told me about this. If vaccine does not prevent transmission, it makes no sense to punish "the un-vaccinated" on the ground that they allegedly pose some unique threat. This becomes apparent if you stop to think about it for two seconds
The whole premise behind why there was an ethical duty to get vaccinated was because you were "protecting others." If vaccine does not enable you to "protect others," the ethical duty argument is negated. Otherwise it's only about individual health, which was never the argument
Twitch imposed an elaborate "Hateful Conduct" policy this year, which among other things declares: "Attempting to promote hateful viewpoints under the guise of education or comedy will lead to suspension of your account." Very interesting to see who's been banned as a consequence
The policy itself is insane. It seems like any human who's ever cracked a joke could be banned. Every Twitch user is defined as belonging to multiple "protected groups" -- about which "hateful slurs," even if "untargeted," result in bans twitch.tv/p/en/legal/com…
Have the prominent accounts who were just banned ever expressed skepticism of these types of ridiculously over-bearing speech regulation policies? Or, to the contrary, have they advocated for greater regulation of speech, in the name of punishing their perceived adversaries? 🤔
In a radio interview this week CO Gov. Jared Polis rejected *in principle* that public health officials have a permanent right to mandate mask-wearing. Then his office issued a panicked statement claiming he only meant *state* public health officials, which seems like total BS
The host repeatedly badgered him to re-impose a mask mandate. Polis said the "emergency" stage of COVID is over, and government officials cannot permanently "tell people what to wear." If that's his view, why would it somehow only apply to state government cpr.org/2021/12/10/int…
Denver, Adams, Arapahoe and Jefferson counties re-imposed a mask mandate last month, so the Governor's office must've been panicked that Polis clearly rejected the principle underlying those re-impositions. Hiding behind some state/local government distinction here is nonsensical
“Progressive Prosecutors” are Invoking “Terrorism” to Expand State Power and Advance Their Political Ambitions mtracey.substack.com/p/progressive-…
Michigan rushed to enact a "terrorism" law after 9/11, supposedly to protect the state against Al Qaeda. 20 years later, that same law is being used to charge a 15-year-old school shooter who expressed no apparent political motive, under the auspices of "progressive prosecution"
MI prosecutor Karen McDonald -- who ran in 2020 as a "progressive" reformer -- has given a number of vague justifications for her use of the "terrorism" statute. Ultimately it's a new, precedent-setting exercise of punitive state power in the name of advancing "progressivism"
Twitter purged a large number of accounts last night, coinciding with their announcement of a campaign against "state-linked information operations." But they appear to acknowledge at least some of these accounts were "real." Raising the question of how they define "state-linked"
If you don't think the "states" chosen as the target of their campaign has a political purpose, you're dreaming. (Note that these are only the states they choose to publicly "disclose.") Of course no US actor would ever dare launch any "state-linked information operation"
Imagine if they banned US accounts for "amplifying support of the government and its official narratives" in some kind of coordinated fashion. What a joke
Spoiler alert: one reason they get away with it is because the great book-buying frenzy of 2016-2020 has dissipated, such that @SchreckReports' info-loaded Biden book doesn't generate anything close to the same amount of attention as a million garbage-quality Trump books did
Take a look at the NYT best-sellers list from July 2020 -- it's impossible to parody book-reading liberals
The prosecutor (a Dem) is also advocating reform to Michigan gun laws. That's a reasonable enough policy debate, but what's not reasonable is slapping the "terrorism" label on an easily-prosecutable crime for no good reason other than to heighten its political/emotional salience
I also don't agree with commenters saying the Waukesha attack should be automatically labeled "terrorism," unless you favor "terrorism" just becoming this tit-for-tat catch-all term for crimes that seem extra bad. There are plenty of laws on the books to prosecute both suspects
This debate seems like an extension of "hate crime" law where someone's alleged internal bias is said to heighten the wrongness of their violent acts -- so a murder is somehow worse if the perpetrator thinks "hateful" thoughts. Except now they're throwing "terrorism" in the mix