Welcome to a Hump Day (“יום הגיבנת” in Hebrew): Wednesday, February 25, 2026, and National Clam Chowder Day. Of the several varieties, I can recommend only one, the New England variety made with cream and plenty of clams. Avoid anything with tomatoes in it! Your bowl should look like this:
It’s also Let’s All Eat Right Day and National Chocolate-Covered Peanuts Day, which is NOT eating right.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the February 25 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*I didn’t listen to the State of the Union address, as I couldn’t bear more braggadoccio and chest-thumping. Here’s a short summary from the NYT, and I’ll put the video below.
In his State of the Union address, President Trump didn’t bother to introduce a raft of new policies — unusual in a midterm election year with control of Congress on the line. He did not seem concerned with making the case that he gets it when it comes to the issue Americans are most worried about. “Affordability,” he said, was part of a “dirty, rotten lie” perpetuated by the Democrats.
Instead, with the slashing style of a natural campaigner and the instincts of a onetime reality television producer, he spent the better part of two hours baiting the ranks of incensed Democrats in the chamber and endeavoring to define them to the electorate as “sick,” unpatriotic and utterly out of step with the values of most Americans.
“These people are crazy, I’m telling ya, they’re crazy,” Mr. Trump said at one point, while relaying the story of a young person who had been forced to undergo a gender transition. “Boy oh boy, we’re lucky we have a country with people like this — Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time.”
Several Democrats walked out and one was ejected. Here’s the full speech, nearly two hours of bombast:
*Peter Mandelson, Britan’s ex-Ambassador to the U.S., has been arrested because of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
The British police said on Tuesday that they had released Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, following an arrest the previous day amid allegations that he had passed confidential government information to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
London’s Metropolitan Police, which began an investigation into Mr. Mandelson earlier this month, said in a statement on Monday, “Officers have arrested a 72-year-old man on suspicion of misconduct in public office.”
The statement added that the man had been taken to a police station in London to be formally interviewed. He was released on bail pending further investigation, the police said in an updated statement early Tuesday morning.
The police did not name Mr. Mandelson, in line with British rules that ban them from identifying suspects before any charges are brought. But footage broadcast by the BBC showed Mr. Mandelson being led from his home into an unmarked police car by plainclothes police officers and driven away, at around 4:30 p.m. local time. Mr. Mandelson was not handcuffed and was carrying a bottle of water.
The arrest is the latest dramatic development in Britain to follow the U.S. Justice Department’s release of files related to Mr. Epstein, and marks a new low for Mr. Mandelson, a veteran Labour Party strategist and one of Britain’s best known political figures.
It comes just days after the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, on suspicion of the same offense — misconduct in public office, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
. . .Official guidance to British prosecutors says that the offense is committed when a public officer, such as an elected politician or government official, “willfully neglects to perform their duty” or “willfully misconducts themselves” in a way that abuses the public’s trust.
Previously a Labour lawmaker representing Hartlepool in northeast England, Mr. Mandelson served as a minister in Tony Blair’s government between 1997 and 2001, and under Prime Minister Gordon Brown from 2008 to 2010.
In September, Mr. Mandelson, 72, was fired from his diplomatic post in Washington when the depth and duration of his friendship with Mr. Epstein became clear after the publication of emails between them.
The release of new material by the U.S. Department of Justice on Jan. 30 increased the scrutiny of Mr. Mandelson’s relationship with the sex offender and provoked a political crisis for Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The latest batch of documents appears to show that in 2009, when Mr. Mandelson was a senior cabinet minister, he gave potentially confidential and market sensitive information to Mr. Epstein.
Like The Andrew Formerly Known as Prince, the report says that Mandelson, though arrested, “has not been charged with a crime.” I guess those charges will come, but that we won’t know what they are until they are announced in court. I predict that Andrew won’t spend a day in jail (I don’t know about Mandelson).
*Because of reduced vaccination frequency, measles is making a comeback in the U.S. But the WaPo adds that nine other diseases could become more frequent as well.
There are more than 900 confirmed measles cases in the United States, as of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent weekly count. It’s less than two months into the year, “and we already have over a quarter of [the measles cases] we had all of 2025, so things are not great,” said Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
. . .When vaccination rates decrease, the most highly contagious diseases pop up first, “and that’s why we call measles the canary in the coal mine,” said Wallace. Other vaccine-preventable infectious diseases could follow, the World Health Organization warned in a joint statement with UNICEF and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, last year. Some already show a worrisome upward trend.
“Measles is the most contagious disease that we have, period,” Wallace said. “So as soon as we start to see measles, we know that the [vaccination] rates in that county or state are starting to drop, and so other diseases will follow on to that, but they just take longer to rip through the communities.”
Here are the other nine diseases poised for comebacks:
Pertussis (“whooping cough”). The frequency of cases is rising, but there is an effective vaccine.
Meningitis. “Meningococcal disease, or meningitis, isn’t as widespread or infectious as measles and pertussis. But cases have been increasing since 2021, and the meningococcal vaccine was recently removed from the CDC’s universal recommendation for adolescents.”
Polio. “Children receive four doses of the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) starting at 2 months old. Poliovirus infection can be serious, leading to paralysis or death.” There were still outbreaks when I was a kid, and they were plenty scary. We do NOT want it to return.
Rotavirus. “Rotavirus can cause babies and other young children to become rapidly dehydrated. Before the availability of rotavirus vaccines, which can be given by 15 weeks, ‘almost all children during the first two years of life would get rotavirus infection,’ Kotloff said.”
RSV. “Like rotavirus, symptoms of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are often mild. But certain people are at risk for severe illness, particularly kids who are born prematurely or have underlying diseases, such as heart defects, according to Kotloff.”
Tetanus. “Unlike many other vaccine-preventable diseases, herd immunity doesn’t exist for tetanus, a rare but potentially life-threatening infection caused by Clostridium tetani bacteria.” I got a tetanus shot before I went to South Africa last year.
Rubella. “Like measles, rubella may be mild, with symptoms like a cough, fever and red rash. But serious complications can develop, too, particularly if someone contracts rubella during pregnancy.”
Hepatitis B. “Hepatitis B is a liver infection spread through bodily fluids, often from mother to child. Getting infected at a young age carries a high risk for developing cancer later on, ‘so early vaccination at birth is key to prevent this,’ Lo said.” I also got a Hep-B shot before I went to South Africa.
Diphtheria. “Diphtheria is no longer common in the U.S. But the bacterial disease still circulates in parts of the world with lower vaccination coverage, and there have been cases where it was brought back by travelers.”
The moral is this: get your shots and ensure that your kids are vaccinated (as always ASK YOUR DOCTOR. I believe I’ve had every one of these shots and I’m as healthy as a bull.
*Over at Quillette, Israeli historian Benny Morris discusses “Trump’s Iranian Dilemma“. The subtitle, and dilemma, is this “President Donald Trump must choose between a military strike on Iran, whose consequences no one can predict, and a deal that would leave the Islamic Republic still able to attack its own citizens, menace Israel, and export terrorism worldwide.” Bolding is mine:
The Middle East—indeed much of the world—is currently waiting with bated breath to see whether the United States will attack Iran or whether it will agree to prolong the negotiations in the hope of achieving a peaceful resolution. Back in early January, President Donald Trump assured the Iranian masses protesting against their totalitarian rulers that help was on the way. But that help was not forthcoming, and, on the orders of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime’s security forces, led by the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia, proceeded to mow down some 32,000 protesters and arrest and torture tens of thousands, suppressing the incipient revolt.
Since then, Iran and the US have traded threats while Trump has steadily beefed up America’s offensive and defensive capabilities around Iran. This past weekend, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, and its attendant battle group, arrived in the eastern Mediterranean, thus completing the planned American deployment. For its part, Iran has carried out large naval and missile exercises around the Straits of Hormuz, implicitly threatening to close the waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean, and hence cutting off the main route for oil and gas exports, should America strike. The Iranians have also threatened to rocket America’s Sunni Arab allies and its bases in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Israel. Meanwhile reports suggest that Khamenei, advised by the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, has prepared the country for war, naming successors for himself and for the holders of top civilian and military posts in case of their deaths.
The Sunni Arab states abominate the Shi’ite regime in Tehran but fear its wrath and armaments and, at least publicly, they have pleaded with Washington not to loose the dogs of war. The Saudis especially remember Iran’s devastating drone and cruise missile attack on their oil installations in 2019 and the intermittent Iran-backed terrorist attacks on their cities. Iran has explicitly threatened to broaden any clash with America into a regional war. But while a closure of the Hormuz Straits would hurt the revenues of the Arab gulf states and cause a global chain reaction that would result in massive hikes in fuel prices, it would also halt Iranian oil and gas exports and possibly trigger an American or joint American–Israeli bombardment of Iran’s oil installations at Abadan and Kharg Island. Blocking oil exports from the gulf would also badly affect China, which is reliant on Iranian oil, though a hike in oil prices might please Russia, which is itself an oil exporter. But bluster notwithstanding, neither power is likely to come to Iran’s aid should hostilities break out between the Islamic Republic and the US.
Since the twelve-day Israel–Iran war in June 2025, during which the United States bombed key Iranian nuclear installations, Washington has tried to engage Tehran in talks designed to halt the country’s march toward nuclear weaponry. At first, Iran refused to play ball. However, the massive anti-government demonstrations last December and January, coupled with the American threat to intervene, propelled the ayatollahs to begin negotiating with Washington, albeit through Omani mediation. The Iranians refused to meet the lead American negotiators—Stephen Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—face to face, who both happen to be Jewish.
As Israeli officials feared, the Iranians have succeeded in dragging out the negotiations and have insisted that they be restricted to the nuclear issue. Washington is demanding the complete cessation of uranium enrichment on Iranian soil and has asked the country to relinquish the 400-plus kilogrammes of enriched material it already possesses. For their part, the Iranians have declared that they will never give up uranium enrichment—which they see as a natural right and a matter of national honour and pride—and are demanding the lifting of the American and European economic sanctions as a quid pro quo for whatever concessions they may make. Some of these sanctions were imposed before the multilateral nuclear deal of 2015: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) and the EU, which curbed Iran’s progress toward the Bomb. Further sanctions have been imposed since Trump pulled America out of the JCPOA in May 2018.
So long as the talks are limited to the nuclear issue, they will fail. The alternative is that they strike a “deal” in which Iran pretends to cut back on enriching uranium, and the U.S. pretends to believe Iran. That’s a bad bargain, and if Trump thinks he can pull it off, it may bring peace, but only at the price of more Iranian protestors shot dead and a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic looming over Israel. I still think Trump will attack, but without U.S. soldiers in the country, there’s no chance of regime change.
*The BBC reports how Russian troops in the Ukraine wars are being executed by fellow soldiers for refusing to take part in “suicide missions” (archived link),.
In the documentary, The Zero Line: Inside Russia’s War, men give detailed accounts about how they were tortured for refusing to take part in assaults they describe as verging on suicide missions. Russian troops call these attacks “meat storms” as waves of men are sent across the front line relentlessly to try and wear down Ukrainian forces.
For the first time, the BBC believes, Russian soldiers from the front line say on the record how they witnessed commanders ordering executions of their own men.
One of the men, whose job was to identify and count dead soldiers, provided detailed lists showing that he is the sole survivor from a group of 79 men he was mobilised with. Because he refused to go to the front line, he says he was tortured and urinated on. Others in his unit who refused would be electrocuted, starved and then forced into meat storms unarmed, he says.
The four men, who are on the run, told of the horrors they witnessed at an undisclosed location outside Russia.
Almost all public opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been stamped out in Russia. Official casualty numbers are not released by Moscow, but the UK’s Ministry of Defence says more than 1.2 million Russian troops have been killed or injured since the full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
. . . The detailed first-hand testimony from all four men also verifies reports of a breakdown of law and order on the Russian front line.
. . .All four men told us in graphic detail about the dreaded meat storm missions – part of the Russian military’s wider “meat grinder” tactic on the Ukrainian battlefields.
The storms are so deadly, they are likened to suicide missions.“I saw them [commanders] send wave after wave, throwing men like meat at the Ukrainians, so they run out of ammo and drones and another wave can reach their objective,” says another former soldier, Denis.
“You send three guys, then another three. It didn’t work out, send 10. It didn’t work out with 10, send 50,” he says. “Eventually you will break through. That’s the logic of the military.
The Russians are, in effect, conducting “banzai” suicide charges, like the Japanese in WWII. They conscript criminals or anybody with a record, send them to the war to die, and execute them if they won’t go. And then the officers take their bank cards. And, as the article says, no criticism of the war is allowed in Russia.
*The drug wars around Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, have unnerved both vacationers and expatriate Americans who have retired there or plan to do so.
The violence in the Puerto Vallarta area is unnerving America’s community of expat retirees in Mexico, a destination popular with the growing number of people retiring abroad.
The Pacific coast tourist city is home to thousands of American retirees. They include Bill Huebsch, a 79-year-old New Yorker who spends about two months a year in nearby Nuevo Nayarit, also known as Nuevo Vallarta, where he purchased a condo with his late wife, Joanne, in 2012.
. . . More Americans are choosing to spend their golden years abroad, and the violence in Puerto Vallarta is underlining the risks. Advisers to people considering expat retirements are telling clients to consider the risks of natural and man-made disasters, from political upheaval to organized criminals. That is in addition to the financial and personal preparations that come with moving abroad.
. . . Ken Schmier, 75, said he and his wife recently purchased a $2.5 million condo on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. “I can see the thing depreciating in half in the last day,” said Schmier, before adding that he was joking. The real-estate developer, who also lives in Larkspur, Calif., said he believes the area is safe thanks in part to its thriving tourist economy.
I had thought of retiring abroad, but changed my mind. If I want to see foreign countries, I will travel, and I am comfortable enough to live my life in the U.S. But I do need to travel more, though I’m not contemplating any parts of Mexico in the near future. (France is more appealing.)
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is reproving Andrzej, even giving him the STINK EYE! (Look at her picture, which I’ve made my Twitter avatar.)
Hili: Yesterday you did not write a single sentence.
Andrzej: I was reading a book.
Hili: That is not an explanation.
In Polish:
Hili: Wczoraj nie napisałeś ani jednego zdania.
Ja: Czytałem książkę.
Hili: That is not an explanation.
*******************
From Stacy:
From Things With Faces; it’s plenty scary!
From Cats Doing Cat Stuff:
From Masih, more protests in Iranian universities. I fear that the shooting and killing will resume. (Sound up.)
Today, Tuesday, February 24, students across universities in Iran, for the fourth consecutive day, held protest gatherings and chanted slogans against Khamenei and his regime.
At many universities, Basij forces attacked and beat students, leading to violent clashes. The… pic.twitter.com/iEzxDPM4UT
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) February 24, 2026
From Emma, highlighting this article. A film called “I Swear”, about Tourette’s Syndrome (which sometimes causes it sufferers to yell out obscene or forbidden words), was up for a BAFTA Award when its subject shouted out the n-word inadvertently when several black people went onstage. The sufferer, John Davidson, was then demonized for something he could not control. I just found another piece in the free press about the same thing: “It’s not his fault he used the n-word.” The article adds that “the audience had been alerted that someone with Tourette’s was in the building.”
“Only an industry located so firmly up its own backside could gather to honour a film illustrating the grim realities facing someone living with Tourette’s and then be so publicly aggrieved when the actuality of that illness – and the involuntary nature of its effects on those… https://t.co/tfdG9ANAH6
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) February 24, 2026
*Here the pious Cathlic Ross Douthat (author of a new book about why we should believe in God) debates atheist Phil Zuckerman on God. I still haven’t found out the details for Steve Pinker’s debate with Douthat, which I thought was on Thursday. Stay tuned. I haven’t listened to this full debate yet, but the parts I have heard shows Douthat using the “fine tuning argument” and the existence of consciousness as evidence for God. Big yawn!
Should Everyone Be Religious? Phil Zuckerman, in conversation between Ross Douthat, eloquently explains why we shouldn’t. https://t.co/K3XuaZcC2j via @YouTube
— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) November 8, 2025
From Susan, another inadvertent act:
Please give him one of the medals too😅🙏 pic.twitter.com/o5mA2aLaHa
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 22, 2026
One from my feed; a cat singing the feline blues:
The cat who sang the blues, a duet between this guitarist and his cat
📹Badu The Singing Cat
— Science girl (@sciencegirl) February 24, 2026
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This Dutch Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 13 years old. https://t.co/yrEEgKog0Z
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) February 25, 2026
And two from Dr. Cobb. First, a kot, with Peter O’Toole as its staff:
Peter O'Toole and a cat1962
— Marie Ruiz-Vidal (@ruizvidal7.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T18:44:05.475Z
And a famous Darwin quote, now repurposed:
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge…”This quote from Darwin's Descent of Man, published #OnThisDay in 1871, pretty much sums up the challenges the world is facing now, a century & a half later.
— Simon Fisher (@profsimonfisher.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T09:29:49.001Z
A BIRTHDAY THOUGHT:
To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms. -John Leonard, critic (25 Feb 1939-2008)
EPSTEINOLOGY!
So a prince is cast into social hell and a royal family disrupted b/c…. 25 years ago (!) he… allegedly had sex with a much younger woman who was above the age of consent at the time, and was later proven to be a wild fabulist. Who was paid millions to just go away.
And now another senior British official is arrested for… knowing a guy?
Here’s my question: If this isn’t a moral panic… what, exactly does a moral panic look like? I’m so sick of this stupid Wicker Man level madness.
D.A.
NYC
Neither of these characterisations are correct, David. Both Andrew Windsor and Peter Mandelson have been arrested and are under investigation for “misconduct in public office.” The allegation is that they had financially valuable insider information that they shared with Epstein.
Well Simon I think that actually helps prove my point.
Given the nature of the crimes here, and the context, the defendants, etc. I’m guessing neither would be charged with anything if they’d never known Epstein.
The charges – when you look – have nothing to do with Epstein and are flimsy indeed. (Real estate opportunities, for sale, shown to a centi-millionaire real estate investor?)
When you start charging “people involved” with things OTHER than the wrongs alleged (Epstein stuff), I’d call that class A prosecutorial misconduct. One of the indicia of a moral panic surely.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
As Hempenstein pointed out in a Hili comment yesterday, Paul Offit, in his “Beyond the Noise” substack, addressed the CDC’s recent lack of interest in data that many medical providers have relied on. URL for yesterday’s Beyond the Noise one-pager, “What RFKjr’s CDC Doesn’t Want You to Know” should be:
https://pauloffit.substack.com/p/what-rfk-jrs-cdc-doesnt-want-you
I believe that the CDC has also stopped doing its YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Survey), in which they, since 1991ish, have surveyed high school students nationally with 80-100 questions on their risky behaviors in areas such as smoking and alcohol use, drug use, dangerous driving, sex and gender issues, family stability, etc. The questions have morphed over the years, but was distributed every two years with the analysis published in the in-between year. No bad news in this administration!
I doesn’t much matter where your clam chowder is from, it is always going to taste better when you have dug the clams yourself! Though to be honest, I would take a Breton côtriade over a chowder anyday.
This is correct. Most clams you get in clam chowder have the consistency, flavor, and bite of pencil erasers. I grew up eating chowdahs (that’s also the correct pronunciation) and the mollusks should protest being used, they shouldn’t be dumped without complaint from a can. The juice from the cans is NOT the same the juice as from the clams. Fresh clam juice, besides being concentrated clam yumminess, can have the occasional Pea crab; kleptoparasites which in chowdah count as flavor crystals. And NO fat free milk. You can use whole milk if you must, but it just isn’t going to be as right if you don’t use half/half.
In my teens a couple of friends and I were desperate to get fresh clams for a bake so, having a license but no rakes or a boat, we jumped into in a saltwater pond and waded around up to our necks using our toes to find the clams in the mud. We got our limit in ten minutes. Our girlfriends on shore were royally pissed because why the hell didn’t we just buy a can of clams from the grocery? They just didn’t understand.
Regarding drop in vax rates: I reside in one of the worst regions in the US for this, unfortunately, and in the past several years, as a grown adult, have needed to get whooping cough booster and measles booster, due to exposure where I teach.
During the summer, when the temps are 30 to 40C, hero moms push their children around the grocery store wearing balaclavas and thick mittens because they went to chicken pox or measles parties, and openly discuss not bringing the children to a doctor because it will be reported.
I feel sad for these children later in life. Shingles is horrid. The sequelae to measles are generally horrid, and may be lifelong.
And pertussis kills babies regularly.
(Adults are the reservoir as vaccination wears off after 10 years)
Here’s another piece on the Tourette’s “incident”:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/02/23/cancelling-a-man-with-tourettes-is-a-new-low-for-the-woke-elite/
And from Freddie de Boer, who is open about his own disability (bipolar disorder). I’m not a subscriber so couldn’t read the whole thing, but I like “people who deny that Tourette’s can provoke racist outbursts are wrong, but when we’ve turned disability into a social prop, what do you expect?”
https://open.substack.com/pub/freddiedeboer/p/this-tourettes-controversy-is-what?r=rerwz&utm_medium=ios
Thanks for that. I love Freddie, he’s a communist so I disagree with him about a lot of things, but not about this. His essay “The Gentrification of Disability” is on point and evergreen.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/the-gentrification-of-disability
Thanks. This article hits close to home because my son is severely disabled.
I don’t know how much credence to give the BBC on Russia. Russia is one of those things they are dedicated to hating. On the other hand, during the Second World War, the Soviets used NKVD units with machine guns to make sure Army units attacked and didn’t falter.
Well, if you have counterevidence, or think that what they reported is wrong, you should give us data—not an opinion that the BBC cannot be trusted.
Russia has no sense of the value of individual life vs. the sacrosanct state. This is incompatible with aspirations of humanity for freedom.
The arrest of Peter Mandelson was apparently spurred on by fears that he was about to flee the country. His passport has now been retained by the police. The Speaker of the House of Commons has admitted that he was the person who reported Mandelson’s flight risk to the cops: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d5792yj9qo
Mandelson had been forced to resign as a government minister on two separate occasions before also having to resign as the UK’s ambassador to the US. How he managed to get appointed to the latter role given his prior track record and earlier knowledge of his links with Epstein (i.e. before the release of the latest tranche of the Epstein Files) is the subject of an ongoing investigation.
Again, I think this is all for show – to be “DOING SOMETHING!” about the terrible tragedy and moral curse of our times, the Black Death of the 2020s.. EPSTEINOLGY!
I love ya Jez but gimme a break, what horrors and felonies has that chap Mandelson committed to be considered a… FLIGHT RISK? That’s so bananas. Didn’t they “arrest” him and have nothing to even charge him with? What keystone cops. (Maybe they should be on the beat in Rotherham and other northern cities where there is… real crime).
How would somebody like that even flee avoid prosecution assuming the cops, like, found a bunch of heads in his basement?
International flight to avoid prosecution is a great 20th century movie theme (and I’ve personally spent a lot of time thinking about it as a lawyer hobby) but in today’s world it is … for many many reasons.. next to impossible. This defendent (and the crown) is smart enough to know that. Its a show, a scam, just another torch baring prole chanting all the way to their Wicker Man. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
If you are a parent that refuses to vaccinate their children, I’m not sure which of these you are more ignorant of: a) the Germ Theory of Disease or b) the history of infectious diseases.
Sufficiently advanced ignorance is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I watched the State of the Union address last night, paying close attention to what the President would say about Iran. What he said (approximately) was that “Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” He did not talk about ballistic missiles or uranium enrichment or Iranian proxy states or the sponsorship of terror (IIRC). Trump did talk about the 30,000 protestors that the regime put to death.
What I infer from this is that Trump, looking for a way to avoid war, may be prepared to limit his demands to the narrow matter of the nuclear weapon—as per Iranian demands. An agreement narrowly confined to those grounds would leave the theocratic government intact and would do little to stabilize the region. Since Iran will pursue a nuclear weapon whether an agreement is reached or not, I fear that we’re heading for a scenario whereby the U.S. President declares victory but nothing of substance changes.
Now, I may be reading too much into a couple of sentences from the State of the Union address, but those are the sentences that will be repeated. So if the President gets an “agreement” on a nuclear weapon, he will be able to claim that he achieved his stated goal, while leaving the Iranian menace remains fully intact.
Here’s the section on Iran from the transcript of the speech:
“They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, “We will never have a nuclear weapon.” My preference, my preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.”
Correction to my original comment above: Trump mentioned terrorism, but he didn’t demand that Iran end it. He only demanded that they not develop a nuclear weapon.
No more from me on this topic: the Roolz.
Jerry, neither you nor anyone at all close to us in age have received vaccines against measles, mumps, rubella, meningococcal meningitis, rotavirus, RSV, or hepatitis B — the last not in childhood, anyway. Nor, for that matter, have any of us have been vaccinated against chickenpox, Haemophilus influenza type b, or human papilloma virus. All these vaccines were introduced long after we were children. You could more accurately say, “I’ve had natural measles, mumps, rubella, and chickenpox and I’m healthy as a bull.” Which of course would be the wrong thing to say because it’s what the anti-vaxxers say, preventing (I think) better uptake of vaccines to prevent diseases we all had ourselves. In both cases your testimonial would be undermined by survivorship bias.
To Jeff Vader @9, the sneer that anti-vax parents must be ignorant of certain facts that you are not doesn’t get you very far, especially because they probably really aren’t that ignorant. Their minds won’t be changed by compulsory suitable education about what they already know. People believe certain things that aren’t fact-based for complex psychological reasons, just as some parents want gender-“affirming” doctors to mutilate their children.
The choice for society is to compel parents to vaccinate their children if it believes strongly enough in the virtue of the cause to prevail against virulent resistance (as we do for life-saving blood transfusion or treatment of type 1 diabetes), or lay off and let those children get vaccine-preventable diseases. It’s not the end of the world if measles and its sequelae return to the unvaccinated….or tetanus for that matter. Not my kid. Look the other way and pass by on the other side.
Sorry, but I have had the Hep B series, though as an adult As for saying that society is okay with not vaccinating childen, well, you seem to also be saying that it is okay if a parent decides not to vaccinate their kids against polio or measles. A kid cannot make that choice for hin/herself, and I, for one, do not want to see pregnant women get measles from an unvaccinated child and I do not want to see a chlld in an iron lung. Maybe that is okay with you, but not for me.
I often think of vaccines in the same frame as taxes. We may not like them individually* but they only work if everybody “does it.”
*I love ’em. Just yesterday I was at the vet’s getting my puppy all his shots!
And the “vaccine injury” crowd and arguments are full of huge holes.
They often hold up VAERS (?) database as “proof” – which betrays their ignorance – as immunologists here will attest.
You don’t have to spectacularly and successfully drop out of medical school to love vaccines. Say.
D.A.
NYC
But society does say it’s okay for a parent to decide not to vaccinate her kids against polio and measles, and everything else. That’s the whole point. No western country compels vaccination by putting children under state guardianship when parents won’t consent. All therefore must accept that voluntary compliance will be less than the 99.9% you’d get if only medical exemptions were respected. (It’s something like 92-93% averaged across the U.S., about 78% in Idaho, and it’s about the same for MMR as for DPTP.* This all-or-nothing response suggests that most parents haven’t made a factoid-based decision to accept DPTP as “safe from decades of use against horrible diseases” and MMR as “maybe not safe because new-fangled against diseases that we all had as kids” (which I might have thought given the nonsense around autism.) No, they’re either pro-vax or they’re anti-vax, which means it’s cult-based opposition.
If I were to be made Dictator-for-Life, I would try to compel all parents to vaccinate their children with every vaccine under the sun, unless they had a medical exemption acceptable to me as DfL. It’s not okay to not vaccinate your kids. Public Health, though, is the only real-life authority that could seek that power under state/provincial legislation that answers to other instances of parental refusal to provide necessary health care. But nowhere (except maybe in China) does it. The closest it gets is requiring vaccination for school or daycare and excluding exempted children during outbreaks. It can also enforce its quarantine power, which is draconian and backed by the police….and which will hardly ever have to be used against vaccine-preventable diseases if everybody complies like good citizens and gets vaccinated.
The rest of us can fulminate all we like against irresponsible parents who won’t vaccinate. But we can’t change their minds and we can’t keep their children from suffering vaccine-preventable disease. It’s not okay with me, but since I can’t do anything about it, I guess it has to be. It’s not my fault for not tut-tutting loudly enough. The civil libertarians have won this one all over the free world.
I’ve made my point I think. No bickering.
You posted something a while back that I meant to bookmark. It was about the efficacy of childhood vaccines in older adults. Are our childhood vaccines still protecting us? I live in this damn hillbilly state with poor adherence to vaccine recommendations (among other things). https://azpha.org/2025/08/01/arizona-again-among-the-worst-states-for-childhood-mmr-vaccination-rates/
OTOH, the Overton window for what is considered child abuse has shifted towards more protection. Some common practices in the 50’s are today viewed as unacceptable child abuse or neglect (and as a recipient of some, I heartily support most of this reclassification). So it’s not a stretch that neglecting to vaccinate one’s children could be added to the list, if there is sufficient public outrage in response to a preventable epidemic.
The secret ingredient in NE Clam Chowder is……. bacon.
And the BBC re. Russia in Ukraine is just catching up to what Reporting from Ukraine has been saying for at least the last year.
And since tetanus is included in the WaPo list, John Roebling, of Brooklyn Bridge fame, died of tetanus. The description of that death, in David McCullough’s Great Bridge, that I’m just finishing now is gruesome. (His son Washington, who finished the Bridge, very nearly died from Caisson Disease aka The Bends, but that doesn’t involve a microbiological agent.)
And Leslie, an RSV vaccine for seniors is now available and recommended, or at least it was before the return of Orange Julius. I got mine before that event.
I watched the SOTU live, as it started midday here in the land of Oz and I am now retired. I have to say it was the most entertaining SOTU I have ever seen by far. Trump must be the ultimate Showman POTUS, like him or not.
The low point for Congressional Dems was when Trump asked everyone to stand to affirm the proposition that priorities of the US government should be toward American citizens not illegal aliens. All the Repubs stood up; not one Dem stood up. The Dems fell straight into his trap – now he can claim, with evidence, that they want government to prioritize illegals over, or at least equal to, its own citizens. Which it seems many of them now do want, but why?
Oh, I don’t know. I think that refusing to acknowledge the weeping mother whose daughter was butchered like livestock on a public train might give it a run for the “low point” money.
You know, the we-love-all-things Ukrainian crowd—until a violent repeat offender who happens to be black, and thus trumps the young girl in the oppression Olympics, slaughters a young Ukrainian immigrant in our own country.
As much as Trump’s character can disgust me at times, I must say that it takes a devoted act of hardening one’s heart to play oppositional politics of that form. It’s a repeat of them refusing to clap last year for the 13-year-old who recovered from cancer–only worse, much worse.
Would I have invited the mother? No. But he did, and she came. Perhaps she thought it was the best way to draw attention to a horror that most of the media was quite content to quickly move on from and which virtually no national-level Democratic politicians will publicly acknowledge. To which your ending question is also apt: but why? I think the answers to both your question and mine are linked.
Thanks for the correction. You are right – the Dems’ refusal to stand in support of the grieving mother of the beautiful young woman slaughtered by a murderous lunatic was truly the bottom of the barrel for the Dems yesterday. The lowest of many low points for them.
Russian tactics have been ever thus. In World War II, an elite squad of true believers followed the ordinary soldiers into combat and shot any who turned back.