Monthly Archives: May 2021

Kompromat:

In Russian culture, kompromat (Russian: компрома́т), short for “compromising material” (Russian: компромети́рующий материа́л, romanized: komprometiruyushchy material), is damaging information about a politician, a businessperson, or other public figure, which may be used to create negative publicity, as well as for blackmail, often to exert influence rather than monetary gain, and extortion. Kompromat may be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by use of a public relations official. Widespread use of kompromat has been one of the characteristic features of the politics of Russia and other post-Soviet states. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Rs are not just lying to us and their supporters. They are lying to each other.”, chloris creator, The Daily Kos:

But what is interesting is why [Republicans] have been lying so much. A lot of speculation has been that that is the only way to keep power. That is what Lindsey Graham has been saying.

But if the support is weaker than they have pretended it to be, if the Rs in leadership are not doing this because they are following the followers, there may be other reasons. Possibly it’s because they have no other plays. Possibly it’s the tRumpian threat to primary these folks, or to send his followers to threaten them in other ways. But possibly it’s because of kompromat. I have been wondering about Graham and kompromat for years.

I missed this from a few days ago:

“The women don’t get the same slack that the men get,” former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), a Cheney ally, said this week by phone. “And I think a lot of the men are attacking her because they resent that she’s got guts and they don’t.

“They’re on their knees for Trump and she’s standing up for herself,” Comstock added. “And that’s kind of an embarrassing thing if you’re the guy on your knees.” …

“It’s an existential crisis for the party to cynically throw out somebody for stating the truth and then say, ‘OK, let’s go find a woman who makes Donald Trump happy.’ You know, really? That’s our standard now?” said Comstock. “Woe to the woman who’s going to be the handmaiden to what is basically a male assault on [Cheney], and has been from the start.”

“Any woman who would take that position under these circumstances, it’s not going to do well for them or for the party,” Comstock continued. “Because … your role is: smile and read the talking points. Then we like you. Then it’s OK to be a woman who smiles and reads the talking points. That’s not where you want to be. That’s not equal.” [The Hill]

Ouch. Good thing she didn’t say anything about where the men’s lips happened to be going…

Some lovely irises.

Here they’re an audience.

Funny thing is that I can’t even see the screen on the camera when I take these in this light.

He was up for the part of Sir George, but another was selected. Here he’s displaying the classic “casting couch” pose.

The Magic Sword (1962) is a cheesy – Cheez Whiz, mind you, not a Stilton with dried apricots – sword ‘n sorcery ‘n horrific humor addition to the said genre. Bodacious and helpless Princess Helene has been kidnapped, you see, by the immortal sorcerer Lodac. The terms of her release? Ummmm, I forget, but we do know Lodac’s castle is a week’s ride away, but through the horrid seven curses that’s Lodac’s put in place. Why? Something about a dead relative.

And if his terms aren’t met? Well, see, he has this young dragon, and it’s a-growin’…

Sir Branton, he of the cute beard and perilous mien, draws his sword and declares his willingness to put it all on the line for the life – and hand – of the Princess. Woo-hoo!

Oh, the cast was caught in a drunken brawl. Here they are at the police station. Someone palmed the lead’s driver’s license. Who can it be?

But wait! Who’s this youth riding into the castle? Why, it’s Sir George, the adopted son of Sybil, another immortal sorcerer, not to mention an absent-minded fluff-ball. George, accompanied by six magic knights and various enchanted accoutrement that he has stolen from his mother – and what does that say about his upbringing?! – is equally ready to charge to the rescue of the beautiful Helene.

Ah, young hormones! They’re so cute.

So off the group gallops, bickering all the way. Sadly, they are careless, as knights keep disappearing in what is honestly rather horrendous ways – the pair with bad sunburn, caught in the grip of a paralyzing power, reminds one of the actions of parasitic wasps on the horror scale, if you’re willing to stretch a point.

Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing – or is it the other way around? – and including a disappointingly meaningless go-around with a most charming, ground-bound gargoyle, we get to meet the kid dragon.

And then things get hot for everyone concerned.

In truth and retrospect, which is rather like hot tar pits, the plot isn’t too bad. It has twists, set-backs, cute asides, and doesn’t concern itself with plausibility. Dammit, I still want to know about the gargoyle! The acting is not in the least bad, although I feared that the monkey might steal the show – he didn’t, apparently the police were menacing enough. The dialog, on the other hand, was little more than rote thievery from other epics in the genre, and the characters do little to advance the state of the art.

The art. Heh.

But the cinematography, oh goodness! Terrible stuff. And I suspect it’s on purpose in order to conceal the rough edges of the special effects, of which there are a plethora. And who taught the young dragon its stage combat skills? That final charge should have been enough to set one’s teeth on edge – preferably, a coffee cup’s edge. Instead, it was plod plod plod kill kill kill man this is tiring work blowing fire out your noses for five minutes straight thud.

Ahem.

There’s little nuggets of humor, and, if you’re a Basil Rathbone completist, Basil is his typically excellent self here – but don’t expect to have this one be a transformative experience. Well, there is some transformation going on here…

At least it’s legible:

Buy Moon property from Earth’s Leading Lunar Real Estate Agency. Lunar land makes a perfect gift and a unique investment for anyone, young or old.

IT’S ABSOLUTELY TRUE…
NOTHING COULD BE GREATER THAN TO OWN YOUR OWN CRATER!

With our partners, including Luna Society International, we are crowdfunding a unique program to return humans from around the world to the Moon. We will build permanent residences, tourist facilities, research centers and develop Luna’s natural resources, while also respecting and preserving its incredible beauty.

— The Lunar Registry

I’m left with the irrefutable visual of Godzilla chasing the former residents of the Moon en masse to their rocket ships, leaving smashed lunar cities in its wake, and shaking a vengeful fist at those pesky humans.

Have fun! I’d never heard of this, but ballet is one of the myriad of subjects to which I’ve paid attention not. So to speak.

Heterologous prime-boost vaccine:

A promising aspect of Sputnik V [the Russian-developed Covid-19 vaccine] is that it is a “heterologous prime-boost” vaccine, which means the first and second doses differ. Each dose uses a different adenovirus vector to get the coronavirus spike protein DNA into human cells. This should prevent the second shot from amplifying an immune response to the vector used in the first shot rather than to the target spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Heterologous prime-boost immunisation is seen as a possible way to squeeze an even bigger response from existing vaccines. [“Sputnik V: Russia’s vaccine is going global – how well does it work?” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (24 April 2021, paywall)]

But that’s more a result of what they really are: a pack of third- and fourth-raters. House of Representatives Republicans, that is. Jennifer Rubin, perhaps rhetorically, expresses disbelief at the latest GOP reaction to the Democrats’ response to the January 6th Insurrection, or Revolution of the Five Year Olds:

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) earned kudos from truth-tellers in March when she released a report simply documenting the social media posts of Republicans “who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” She compiled their words, revealing a hodgepodge of conspiracy-mongering and lying about the 2020 election. This was too much for the snowflake Republicans.

They have now filed a complaint, a copy of which I have obtained, with the Communication Standards Commission, an obscure body in the House formerly known as the Mailing Standards Commission, as it historically dealt primarily with franking issues.

The complaint, filed by Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.), whines: “At its core, the so-called report repeatedly violates the Commission’s rules of decorum and civility by personalizing and politicizing attacks on more than 100 Members of Congress for public statements they made on social media.” Actually, it simply recorded Republicans’ own words, thereby embarrassing them. He claims the report “engages in speculation as to the motivation or intent of the Members,” but it does no such thing. The giveaway is that Carter claims Lofgren only “insinuates” members “aided and abetted the insurrection or incited the attack” on Jan. 6. [WaPo]

But it’s merely a compilation of their own self-incriminating words, so that dog won’t hunt with the most important audience – the American electorate.

Republicans’ political stupidity is hard to fathom. They chose to attack a strong, informed woman (arguably the most knowledgeable on the subject of impeachment and a master of House rules) for airing their own rhetoric. Did they really think they were going to silence Zoe Lofgren, of all people?

It’s hard to think of a better way for Republicans to remind Americans of their own wholly irresponsible conduct. (The complaint will go nowhere since the commission is split 3-to-3.) What’s more, the timing is priceless. This comes the same week the GOP is attempting to banish Cheney from leadership for the “crime” of honesty, for refusing to sweep Jan. 6 under the rug and for refusal to kneel (as they have) before the MAGA cult leader. They simply cannot abide truth-telling women.

Indeed. But I think that the Republican members are simply overwhelmed. They distrust experts, their concept of a legislative strategy is to say No! No! No! to any substantial legislation, and, rather than engage, they have returned to the old strategy of cultural warfare. They do not have the wit or maturity to attempt to govern in a responsible manner, and I believe their ideological and theological roots will prevent them from progressing on the governing front.

They may think that their former business patrons turning against them can be turned to their advantage through wooden gestures to woke culture, but I suspect that the Democrats will beat their political foes to death with the insurrection club. Common political wisdom has the Democrats losing the House and, perhaps, the Senate in 2022. I disagree. I expect the Democrats to strengthen their grip on each wing of the legislature.

Perhaps substantially. The Republicans have to defend a large number of seats in the Senate in 2022, and everything is up for grabs in the House. There may be a very unhappy Mitch McConnell in the Senate in a couple of years.

From Discover:

Every 26 seconds, the Earth shakes. Not a lot — certainly not enough that you’d feel it — but just enough that seismologists on multiple continents get a measurable little “blip” on their detectors. But even though this pulse has been observed for decades, researchers don’t agree on what’s causing it. The mystery surrounding the phenomenon even has its own XKCD web comic. 

The pulse — or “microseism” in geologist lingo — was first documented in the early 1960s by a researcher named Jack Oliver, then at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory. He’s best known for his later work that supplied some important early evidence for shifting tectonic plates. Oliver figured out that the pulse was coming from somewhere “in the southern or equatorial Atlantic Ocean” and that it was stronger in the Northern Hemisphere’s summer months (or, the Southern Hemisphere’s winter). 

And so what’s going on?

Perplexed, the team [Greg Bensen,  Nikolai Shapiro] examined the blips from every possible angle. Was something wrong with their instruments? Or their analyses? Or was this seismic activity really happening? All signs pointed to the latter. They were even able to triangulate the pulse to its origin: A single source in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western coast of Africa. They dug up Oliver’s and Holcomb’s work, too, and published a study in 2006 in Geophysical Research Letters. But even since then, no one has really confirmed the cause of the regular seismic activity. Though many assume it’s caused by waves, some hold out that it’s caused by volcanic activity. 

Yeah, we don’t know. And that’s what makes this fascinating. Waves? Volcano on a ridiculous timer?

Alien spaceship? No, of course not. That’d be too easy.

I hope they figure this out sometime soon. It makes my toes curl just thinking about it.

For those readers and other fringe right types who feel the January 6th insurrection was a leftist affair, this is a blow – if, of course, they hear about it:

In the six months leading up to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Anthony Antonio spent his days watching Fox News — a habit that actually made him ill, his attorney told a D.C. federal magistrate judge on Thursday.

His ailment? “Foxitis,” his attorney said, the HuffPost reported. “He became hooked with what I call … ‘Foxmania.’ ”

In the virtual hearing, which went awry when another alleged Capitol rioter interrupted with obscenities, Antonio’s attorney, Joseph Hurley, claimed that Fox News’s decision to regularly air then-President Donald Trump’s false claims of mass election fraud contributed to Antonio’s decision to participate in the insurrection.

Whether or not this defense, if it even is such a thing, is accepted, it squarely plants the blame on the fringe right, with Fox News as its representative. Every attempt to cast blame on Black Lives Matter or antifa can be met with, “And how do you explain Mr. Antonio’s defense strategy?”

And it leaves the far right fringe, in the person of the opinion leaders at Fox News, such as Tucker Carlson, as well as every single GOP House of Representatives member who voted against accepting the electoral college results, guilty of attempted insurrection. The latter’s behavior is incompatible with the requirements of Congress, and they should resign.

Knowing the location of towers of power is half the battle for survival. But you have to get them to sing!

I’ve been avoiding writing a review of Malice in Wonderland (2010) because it’s, well, nearly incomprehensible. A rendition of the classic down the rabbit hole, set in modern times, the audience is introduced to the netherworlds of shadowy figures, from the bedraggled creature in the pedestrian’s tunnel, to the lure of Whitey, the cab driver, from Harry Hunt, menacing master of the lands, to Alice herself, the baffled, and … and through it all flits questions of parentage. Who are these bodyguards, or assassins, sent by her immensely rich father? Where did mother go?

And do these netherworldly types ever really die?

A jigger of rum may help this one go down, although admittedly there’s little downtime for tilting one’s head back for that favored tipple’s chase down your rabbit hole. But wondering where the chase may lead next may be enough to keep the cable channel open, calling for your questing eye and befuddled brain.

That may have been too much rum.

Or movies.

Spaceweather.com has it as a movie and adds an explanation:

The shadowy wave emerging from the blast site is a “solar tsunami“–a swell of hot magnetized plasma about 100,000 km tall racing along the sun’s surface at 250 km/s (560,000 mph).

Strange but true: You can “hear” a solar tsunami. When such a shock wave ripples through the sun’s atmosphere, it causes solar plasma to oscillate, generating natural radio emissions detectable by shortwave receivers on Earth.

That spot above is probably larger than Earth. Sort of puts you in your place.

The annals of mythic “B” movies.

It Came Out Of The Cheese Drawer.

Successive families had been found murdered in this house, set in a quaint, secret Finnish village in Queen Maud Land. Silently tolerated by a Norwegian government that was flabbergasted at this foreign outpost in its ancestral lands, the locals sucked in their cheeks and looked the other way, hopeful that the screams emanating from the ancient petrified structure were nothing more than playful …

Fantasy? Real? Does it matter?

The Hellsquid.

For those readers who recall the case in SDFLA concerning the juror who stated the Holy Spirit had told him the defendant was innocent, in which the defendant appealed based on the juror’s dismissal was unfair and lost the first appeal, the defendant, former Rep Corinne Brown, has won the second appeal, a rare en banc reconsideration by the 11th Circuit:

The panel in a 2-1 decision affirmed the conviction (Rosenbaum for the majority and Pryor for the dissent). The en banc court lined up as you would expect it, with the 7 conservative judges saying you can’t strike a juror based on a religious vote, while the 4 moderate judges dissented … [SDFLA Blog]

Dissenting Judge Rosenbaum states it best:

Every judge of this Court agrees on this much: the same rule governs dismissal of both the juror who says his religious authority told him the defendant is not guilty on all charges and the one who says his religious authority told him the defendant is guilty on all charges. So let’s be clear about what we’re really doing today: we are holding that a district judge is powerless to dismiss a juror who, on a record like this one, says the Holy Spirit told him the defendant is guilty on all charges and he trusts the Holy Spirit—even though the judge finds after investigation that the juror is not capable of basing his guilty verdict on the evidence but instead will base his verdict on what he perceives to be a divine revelation. Just think about that. We are prohibiting district judges, on records like this one, from dismissing jurors they find beyond a reasonable doubt will return a guilty verdict that is not based on the evidence. Why bother with the trial? Yet while the Majority Opinion guarantees this result, it invokes the grandeur of the right to a jury trial, ironically dedicating an entire section to how its decision protects the rights of defendants to unanimous jury verdicts.

Indeed, why bother with a trial? It’s not a rhetorical question. Rosenbaum has pointed at a key intellectual mistake by the majority in this case, the confusion of the best, shared efforts of a representative group of humanity, vs the alleged message of an alleged all-knowing Divine creature.

This is a category error.

And a tragedy. All it takes is one juror – earnest or bribed – to invoke the Holy Spirit, and a defendant, hands red with blood, can walk free.

What to make of Erick Erickson’s remarks on Facebook’s conundrum regarding former President Trump? I found them a slight puzzle:

Facebook has decided for now to keep Donald Trump off of their website. This story was misreported by the media that it was a permanent ban. It’s not a permanent ban as you will see.

But then he quoted WaPo:

Facebook tried to pass the buck on former president Donald Trump, but the buck got passed right back.

For several years, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has pushed the idea that he and his company shouldn’t be in the position of creating the rules of the road to govern the personal expression of billions of people. He went so far as to dedicate $130 million to fund an independent panel of outside experts to which the company could outsource the thorniest decisions about what types of content — and voices — should be allowed to stay up on Facebook.

When the company banned Trump on Jan. 6 for social media posts encouraging the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, Zuckerberg turned that hard decision over to that newly formed independent panel, the Oversight Board, for review, hoping it would make the final determination.

But on Wednesday, the 20-member panel punted the decision back to Facebook, recommending the company decide within six months whether to permanently ban or restore Trump’s account. He is currently suspended “indefinitely,” a one-off penalty outside Facebook’s usual rules.

Clearly, WaPo says nothing about this being a permanent suspension; indeed, that’s the point.

But Erickson is part of the propaganda leadership of the conservative movement, and since part of the task of that ministry is to discredit the opposition – the mainstream media – he has tacked on the customary discrediting statement and then plunged on with his own thoughts on the matter.

And trusts that readers don’t actually pay attention.

As for the rest of his post – he advocates for special privileges for former Presidents and that sort of rot – as a former social media provider myself^[1], I say that this is clearcut. FB is corporate, not governmental, so they get to set the rules of the road and enforce them as they will.

And if their users don’t like their rules or their enforcement, they can state the same by taking their trade elsewhere. That’s the free market for you.

I suppose Erickson can special plead all he wants, but quite honestly that’s a quagmire just waiting for FB CEO Zuckerberg to fall into it. I recognize that Zuckerberg is trying to dance the line between alienating one group and alienating another group, but right now he’s in danger of alienating both. He should simply state that Trump crossed the line and is out, and if that pisses off his supporters, well, it’s a group that’s small and getting smaller, and he’ll just have to live with it.

This ceaseless agony isn’t good for FB’s rep, though. I’ve noticed the FB feed is getting sparse, and I have to wonder if this is a contributing factor.

¹ Yep, ran a BBS back in the early 1980s to April of 2002. I never tried to make a dime directly off it, though. It was a lovely learning time, at least the first three quarters of it. Then the Web came and swallowed us.

Remember my post or two on the prophetic community? Julia Duin says it’s quite, ummm, large:

I’ve been amazed at how this large Pentecostal chunk of American Christianity — and there are roughly 65 million Americans that belong to this group — is being ignored by much of the media. Trump’s spiritual advisor, the Rev. Paula White-Cain, is part of this segment, so it’s not an obscure bunch. [GetReligion]

Really? If true, ouch. That’s a lot of marks.

And, yeah, that’s condescending of me. As an agnostic, I should simply profess ignorance and let it go at that; historically speaking, though, there is no evidence that proclamations of prophecy have any connection to the Divine, if any, so far as I know. There’s been the lucky guess, which falls well within the scope of probability, and, of course, I have to wonder how many of the leading prophets in this movement actually forecast Obama would win, or Hillary Clinton would win. There would be no points given for getting the first right, and when Clinton lost, I’m sure it made the reputation of a lot of prophets who bet against the odds.

Always bet on your man is what it taught them.

It’s hard to be polite to them, given the history of mankind, and so I’ll own that remark above, without embarrassment, but with a bit of shame that I can so easily justify the remark. Not for myself, of course, but shame on all those marks.

Thomas Reese doesn’t seem to understand that politics can exist in virtually any arena, as he tries to explain why anti-Biden no Communion for you! news isn’t news at all:

Recently, a handful of American Catholic bishops have issued statements questioning whether anyone who supports abortion rights should be receiving Communion, and journalists immediately pounced: Will President Joe Biden, they wanted to know, be denied Communion by the U.S. bishops’ conference because of his pro-choice position on abortion?

Journalists, here’s your answer: This is a stupid story for canonical, theological and political reasons.

First, and foremost, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops does not have the canonical authority to tell Biden that he cannot go to Communion.

During the papacy of John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, emphasized the limited authority of bishops’ conferences. Who can or cannot go to Communion in a diocese is to be decided by the local bishop, not the bishops’ conference. The most the conference can do is make recommendations to local bishops. [Religion News Service]

While it’s lovely to think that Catholicism, one of the most political of animals, runs by the rules, the truth of the matter is that even if the rules are followed here – and I’m sure that, in the glare of world-wide news coverage, they will be – it’s not the rules that matter.

It’s the influence.

Something called a  U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is going to have influence simply because it’s an aggregate of important people. They wield influence over the affairs of the church, they’ll remember who crossed them, and they’ll stay in communication with each other.

And if someone has ambition to move up the clerical ladder, they’ll have to remember who not to cross.

And that’s why I can’t take Reese’s claim seriously.

Because … cheaters wouldn’t think to use the proper paper?

John Brakey, an official helping oversee the audit of the 2020 Arizona election, says auditors are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40K ballots from Asia were smuggled here. #AzAuditPool pic.twitter.com/57UOBYIehg

— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021

I noticed he tries to cover up by citing everything he’s done, but I notice he doesn’t claim any victories. Anybody can sue if they have brass balls. It doesn’t mean they have any kind of credibility.

And bamboo paper used for election fraud? Really? Come on.

As I’ve written about at tiresome length, the Republican Party has been taken over by extremists because of a culture of toxic team politics, combined with a loathing of experts, at least experts whose pronouncements are in disagreements with one of the Holy Tenets of the Party, whether that be taxes are evil or regulation is an economy killer or something out in authentic holy land, such as abortion is evil.

This combination results in the rejection of the idea that competency is relevant; we instead see deeply incompetent extremists, such as Boerbert and Greene and Gohmert and so many others, who do think the 2nd Amendment Jig or the anti-tax polka really well, convince the zealots who often guide the candidate selection process that they’re loyal to the ideology, and so we see idiots on the ballot.

But as I contemplated this article on ranked choice voting, it occurred to me that it was too bad the writer aimed it at progressives rather than who really needs to see it – conservatives.

Or, does Rep Cheney (R-WY) have enough self-respect to exit the Republican Party if removed from leadership? She’s currently #3 in the House GOP caucus, and is the GOP Conference chair. She easily survived a challenge shortly after she voted in affirmation of the second impeachment of former President Trump three months ago. But a new challenge is anticipated in the wake of undiplomatic remarks she has since made. Now she may have lost more support:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday he’s “lost confidence” in Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) during a moment of candor caught on a hot mic, a tape reviewed by Axios shows.

What he’s saying: “I think she’s got real problems,” McCarthy told Steve Doocy off-air ahead of a live “Fox and Friends” interview. “I’ve had it with … I’ve had it with her. You know, I’ve lost confidence. … Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place.” [Axios]

I hope, when the vote is brought up, she has a chance to present a statement, and that it’s this:

This is a vote about morality. I represent truth, decency, and democracy. My opponent, a Trump supporter, therefore represents mendacity, immorality, a hostility to democracy, and all the things we despise in Democrats.

Vote carefully, because this is how you’ll be known.

It’d infuriate Trump supporters, because all but the bit about the Democrats would be true.

A reader writes regarding Cellebrite:

Oh, it’s even more interesting. Cellebrite sells their software to anyone with money, because of course they do. Do angry ex-boyfriends and redneck sheriffs would qualify if they had the cash, certainly larger law enforcement agencies in the US. But even better is that Signal took some “exception” to being included in the software and data that Cellebrite’s products could crack. One of the leaders at Signal posted a nice blog post taking them to task, but more importantly, he mentioned how Signal would now ship with random blocks of data that were neither used by the app or would have any effect on the mobile device on which the app resided. Implied in that description, however, is how those blocks of data would hack Cellebrite’s software, and do as-yet unspecified things — but clearly once in, could do anything, like corrupt the veracity of all Cellebrite data extraction from that device.

In short, Signal +10, Cellebrite, 0.

Cellebrite is evil, amoral, greedy, stupid, and incompetent.

A selection of attributes which often go together.

After reading this article on no-vaxxers and their self-centeredness, and then this article on vaccination hesitancy among Latino evangelicals, it occurs to me that statements like this need a rejoinder:

“I thought for a while ‘I’m not going to get it’,” Miranda said in Spanish to an audience of about 100 Latinos, largely from the Caribbean and Central America. “Not because I thought there was something harmful, sinister in the vaccine, but simply because God has brought me here without having to use any kind of medicine. God has protected me,” he said, as people nodded and applauded with excitement. [WaPo]

And it’s roughly this:

How many here have been exposed to smallpox and not become ill? I see no hands going up, no hands going up – no, you haven’t, put your hand back down. Do you know how I know that? Smallpox has not been seen in the wild for decades. And do you know why?

Vaccination.

You, all of you, didn’t suffer agony, you didn’t have terrible disfigurement inflicted upon you, you didn’t die a hideous death from smallpox, because hundreds of millions of people underwent smallpox vaccination – and thus benefited themselves, their children, their friends, and you.

Don’t prance about proclaiming God would never let you become ill with Covid 19. Vaccination is how you haven’t had smallpox.

Now it’s time. Now it’s time to pay forward your debt to those people who ensured you didn’t have to endure the tragedy of smallpox. Whether vaccinations are the work of Man or the work of God, either get your Covid vaccination, or admit you’ve spat upon a gift.

Especially if you take it seriously. In India, which is currently in desperate straits, the Haridwar Kumbh Mela religious festival took place early in April of 2021 (yes, just a couple of weeks ago), and has contributed to the Covid-19 wave currently tormenting and kill Indians.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta is furious.

Kumbh Melas are held every 12 years. The last Haridwar Kumbh Mela was held in 2010. The actual due date for the ‘current’ Kumbh at Haridwar was 2022, not 2021. So how did it get advanced by one whole lethal year at a time India’s second Covid wave was expected? And when epidemiological studies indicate that second waves of infection are always worse than the first. Let me tell you the reason.

It was ‘advanced’ by a year, to 2021, because the ‘astrological configurations’ of the ‘Sun entering Aries’ and ‘Jupiter entering Aquarius’ were available for 2021 this time. This happens once every 83 years, and it happens because of the need to reconcile astrological configuration charts to calendrical years. The calculative arcana of this ‘adjustment’ is beyond my capacity. I suggest none of you try it if you don’t want to give yourselves a headache. [The Wire (India)]

They do take their astrology seriously in India, as I learned during a business trip to Pune years ago. Unfortunately, I fear that this time it’s going to cost them: in lives, in wealth, even in prestige.

But it’s of a piece with various forms of quackery, from acupuncture to therapeutic touch to whatever your favorite form of pseudo-medicine might be. They may seem like a harmless alternative medicine, but there’s often a hidden danger to them. This one is rather exotic, but that neither invalidates nor excuses astrology.