Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

What will Trump do after January 20,2021?

Friday, December 18th, 2020

It is quite unlikely that the election fraud can be reversed before Biden is sworn in. I don’t expect any of the nonsense the left has been predicting if that occurs. Trump will leave office peacefully but will not attend the “inauguration,” which will probably be “virtual” anyway.

What will he do next ? He is the titular head of the Republican Party, and the choice of 98% of the 75 million voters who supported him. He got 10 million additional votes this year compared to 2016.

<a href=”https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/12/why-the-future-is-trumpist-1.php”> Here is one observation.</a>

Trump may or may not purposely dominate the political scene in the background as Teddy Roosevelt did from 1909 – 1912 and then run again in 2024, but I argue that Trumpism will dominate the scene for a long time to come, and that any successful GOP presidential nominee will need to be a Trumpist. I go further, in fact, and believe the shuffling of the issue map and the realignment of voting coalitions are as substantial as FDR and the New Deal—and it took FDR four terms to effect that change.

I don’t see Trump running again in 2024. He will be as old as Biden is now and, while he is a good deal healthier than Biden is, the party will need new blood to carry on. What then?

<a href-=”https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/12/trump-bows-to-reality-asks-confidants.html”> This does not seem realistic. </a>

“I received a call from President Trump last week. We chatted about the election briefly [and] he made it clear that he wasn’t giving up on fighting for a second term,” said Eric Bolling, a Sinclair host and friend of the Trump family who appeared on Trump’s reality TV show years ago. “I mentioned to him that I believe whatever happens with the legal fights, he would emerge as the biggest media personality on the planet. Trump has a clear opportunity to be a media mega-personality post-presidency.” 

“I think an Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice revival would be a humongous hit,” Bolling added. “This iteration would be ratings gold for whomever is fortunate enough to get the reboot.”

That is the least likely possibility, in my opinion.

What else?

I’d rather see Trump get involved with something like Newsmax or just generally working to increase the conservative footprint in news media. Since Fox News has become sort of like the Justice Roberts of the news world, there’s a very real opportunity to capture a very large and underserved audience. And with the tech monopolists brazenly practicing story suppression for the Dems, it’s more important than ever.

That is a thought. How about this ?

In my opinion Trump should get together with someone like Vince McMahon and invest in something like Parler, expand the platform to take on twitter and facebook simultaneously. I’d bet taking them down a peg or two would be two would be very satisfying to him, and it would be a huge platform if it worked.

There is a good chance that he will be blocked on Twitter after he leaves office, although Twitter would be foolish to do so financially. Parler is an alternative, as iWe is an alternative to Facebook. I have joined both but not used them significantly. I never joined Twitter and have used Facebook mostly for baby pictures and the like.

Would he stay in the hotel business ? His kids have been running much of that the past five years and , while some like Ivanka might have political ambitions, I don’t see him getting back into development. My personal opinion is that the consequences of the virus and the insane reaction by Democrat Mayors and Governors have killed many cities. New York City is bleeding emigrants.

It will be interesting to see if he chooses to supervise the transition of the GOP from a corporate, Chamber of Commerce, party to a populist one. I think that is coming and he is the likely one to lead it. Third parties do not do well in our binary system. The old Republican Party, and many of its stalwarts, like Mitch McConnell, seem out of date, if not beholden to China. Ross Perot and Sarah Palin were warnings ignored. The Tea Party was an attempt that failed because they (we) lacked leadership. Obama went after the Tea Party with every department of the federal government weaponized. It resembled the assault on Trump the past four years in intensity and motive.

What if the country starts to separate? If the leftist radicals behind Biden try to enact their agenda, their real agenda, we could see a cold Civil War. They would be foolish to pick a hot one with the segment of the population that is comprised of most military veterans and which owns 350 million guns. A book written about such a peaceful separation is <a href=”https://www.amazon.com/America-3-0-Rebooting-Prosperity-America%C2%92s/dp/1594036438″> “America 3.0” and might be timely.</a>

I wrote <a href=”https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RWZ5R2E9JPJS5/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1594036438″> a review of it at the time. </a>

The analysis of American history is worth the price of the book and the time to read it. I wish the recommendations for recovery were more likely to be adopted. There are some excellent points about future trends, as in medicine for example. I like some of the suggestions for defense policy. The whole thing is a nice exercise in predicting the future. I just wish it would happen that way. I previously reviewed George Friedman’s  The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century . I think I like this one better and highly recommend it.

I was not optimistic about their suggestions in 2013 but then world has changed markedly since then. We could end up with a country that has blue crusts on each coast. The rest solid red. Chicago is a blue island that is failing. Maybe Canada would take them.

The corona virus epidemic.

Wednesday, March 11th, 2020

A new virus emerged in Wuhan, a city in China known for a bioweapons lab and a “live market” where people buy and eat bars and other wild animals. As it happens, there is a family of viruses, which include the SARS virus, also called Severe acute respiratory syndrome.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a total of 8,098 people worldwide became sick with SARS during the 2003 outbreak. Of these, 774 died. In the United States, only eight people had laboratory evidence of SARS-CoV infection. All of these people had traveled to other parts of the world where SARS was spreading. SARS did not spread more widely in the community in the United States.

This occurred in 2003 and was limited to Asia with a few travelers.

Another similar virus was called MERS virus or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is viral respiratory illness that is new to humans. It was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread to several other countries, including the United States. Most people infected with MERS-CoV developed severe respiratory illness, including fever, cough, and shortness of breath. Many of them have died.

Both of these viruses had high mortality rates for those affected. SARS had a mortality of 774 of 8,098 people worldwide or 9.6%.

MERS mortality was higher at about 33%. It is limited to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia.

The new virus is related and seems much more infectious, similar to influenza, but has a lower mortality rate

SARS-CoV-2 has close genetic similarity to bat coronaviruses, from which it likely originated.[10][11][12] An intermediate reservoir such as a pangolin is also thought to be involved in its introduction to humans.[13][14] From a taxonomic perspective SARS-CoV-2 is classified as a strain of the species severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARSr-CoV).[1] To avoid confusion with the disease SARS, the WHO sometimes refers to the virus as “the virus responsible for COVID-19” in public health communications.[15]

There is speculation that the disease is caused by a virus that might have escaped from the Wuhan bioweapons lab, either in a bat that was the subject of experiments or via another vector, perhaps an infected employee. Bat viruses have been of great interest because, while they cause disease in humans, they appear not to harm bats.

Bats that are naturally infected or experimentally infected do not demonstrate clinical signs of disease. These observations have allowed researchers to speculate that bats are the likely reservoirs or ancestral hosts for several CoVs. In this review, we follow the CoV outbreaks that are speculated to have originated in bats. We review studies that have allowed researchers to identify unique adaptation in bats that may allow them to harbor CoVs without severe disease. We speculate about future studies that are critical to identify how bats can harbor multiple strains of CoVs and factors that enable these viruses to “jump” from bats to other mammals

Possibly research into this phenomenon led to the outbreak.

The virus is an RNA virus, and is an enveloped, non-segmented positive-sense RNA viruses.

Coronavirus virions are spherical with diameters of approximately 125 nm as depicted in recent studies by cryo-electron tomography and cryo-electron microscopy [2,3]. The most prominent feature of coronaviruses is the club-shape spike projections emanating from the surface of the virion. These spikes are a defining feature of the virion and give them the appearance of a solar corona, prompting the name, coronaviruses. Within the envelope of the virion is the nucleocapsid. Coronaviruses have helically symmetrical nucleocapsids, which is uncommon among positive-sense RNA viruses, but far more common for negative-sense RNA viruses.

The receptor at cell level seems to be the ACE2, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2; mCEACAM, murine carcinoembryonic antigen-related adhesion molecule.

Treatment with Remdesivir, a Nucleotide analog, has been effective in the first case report.

at a period consistent with the development of radiographic pneumonia in this patient, clinicians pursued compassionate use of an investigational antiviral therapy. Treatment with intravenous remdesivir (a novel nucleotide analogue prodrug in development10,11) was initiated on the evening of day 7, and no adverse events were observed in association with the infusion. Vancomycin was discontinued on the evening of day 7, and cefepime was discontinued on the following day, after serial negative procalcitonin levels and negative nasal PCR testing for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

On hospital day 8 (illness day 12), the patient’s clinical condition improved. Supplemental oxygen was discontinued, and his oxygen saturation values improved to 94 to 96% while he was breathing ambient air. The previous bilateral lower-lobe rales were no longer present.

Chloroquine has also been reported to be effective in treated the pneumonia.

Early data from clinical trials being performed in China has revealed that chloroquine phosphate could help treat the new coronavirus disease, Covid-19.

China National Center for Biotechnology Development deputy head Sun Yanrong said that chloroquine, an anti-malarial medication, was selected after several screening rounds of thousands of existing drugs.

Xinhua reported that the drug is undergoing clinical trials in more than ten hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province, and Hunan province.

Chloroquine data from Covid-19 trials
Data from the drug’s studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’.

According to Sun, patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups.

The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug.

Chloroquine has so far showed no obvious serious adverse reactions in the more than 100 participants in the trials.

John Brennan in a single post.

Thursday, August 16th, 2018

brennan

Monet’s house at Argentois

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018

Monet's bridge

Trump in Mississippi.

Saturday, June 11th, 2016

mitch-tyner-trump-mississippi-rally

Another post

Wednesday, October 28th, 2015

The previous post has a photo of riots in Germany that laps over the margin so I am adding this post to push the other down.

Waterloo

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015

We spent the day yesterday ( the 16th) at Waterloo. The battle field is largely preserved and reminds me a bit of Gettysburg. There is an excellent museum and we spent an hour or so at Hougoumont Farm where the battle really began.

Napoleon planned to draw Wellington’s reserve to Wellington’s right flank in defence of Hougoumont and then attack through the centre left of the British and allies’ front near La Haye Sainte.

Before the battle started, Hougoumont and its gardens, located on the allies’ right flank, were garrisoned and fortified by the 1st Battalion, 2nd Nassau Regiment, with additional detachments of jägers and landwehr from von Kielmansegge’s 1st (Hanoverian) Brigade. The light company of the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards under the command of Lt-Colonel Henry Wyndham, was also stationed in the farm and chateaux, and the light company of the 2nd Battalion, Third Guards, under Lt-Colonel Charles Dashwood in the garden and grounds

The fighting here lasted all day and ended finally when the defenders were forced out as the buildings burned. It was too late for the French which had been reenforcing failure all day.

The French eventually committed 14,000 troops to Hougoumont Farm, of whom 8,000 were killed. The most famous encounter was The Battle of the Closing of the gate. The French had surrounded the farm which was an enclosed bastion of brick and stone walls with a gate access to the rear. They managed to force open the gate with axes into the yard but a few British soldiers managed to close it again and all the French who had gained the yard were killed. The few who closed the gate, were to be famous after the battle.

Sous-Lieutenant Legro, of the French 1st Light Infantry, broke through the wooden doors with an axe, allowing French soldiers to flood the courtyard. Graham’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel James Macdonnell, led his men through the melee in the courtyard to the gates, in an attempt to shut them against the pressing French. This was done with the help of three officers (Captain Wyndham, Ensign Hervey, and Ensign Gooch), Corporal Graham, and a few other soldiers including Graham’s brother Joseph. James Graham was the one to slot the bar in place. Flagstones, carts, and debris were then piled against the gates to hold them secure. The Frenchmen trapped within the courtyard were all killed, apart from a young drummer-boy.

hougoumont-doors-560

The crucial mistake made here was by Napoleon’s brother, Prince Jerome, who commanded the first French troops to attack Hougoumont Farm. When they were repulsed, Jerome kept reenforcing the attack and drew the French focus to the strong point which resisted all day.

waterloo-map-1-560

The farm is to the left and in advance of the British lines. La Haye Sainte is in the middle and both were to be crucial strong points for the British. A word about British tactics here.

Wellington was outnumbered and the hard center of his force was his British Peninsula Campaign veterans. He stationed them on the “military crest” of the low hill behind Hougomont and La Haye Sainte. This sheltered them from French cannon fire. Direct fire cannon fired cannon balls which would skip and were devastating for infantry in squares. It was important to disperse these squares when under fire by cannon. Napoleon was a master of artillery and had won many battles with it. Wellington, in Spain, had learned to shelter his infantry. He even had them lie down in the grass behind the crest of the hill to rest and make them invisible to French cannons.

The fact that it had rained hard the night before the battle, a reason often given for the late hour of the French attack, made the ground soft and the cannonballs often dug in rather than skip along the surface.

Infantry squares were almost impervious to cavalry assault so the wise commander attacking such a force would combine artillery and cavalry to weaken and disperse the defenders. Napoleon knew this but his brother drew the center of gravity to the strong point.

The two battalions that defended Hougoumont suffered 500 dead and wounded out of strengths of 2,000.

The French lost 8,000 of 14,000 men. The courage of the men who closed the gate is still celebrated in England.

The same occurred at La Haye Sainte, another fortress in the center. It was well in advance of the infantry lines at the hill crest. The French attacked and the result was the destruction of The King’s German Legion, which had not prepared the farm as well for defense. However, they did hold it until afternoon.

It was the scene of a famous charge by Marshall Ney who led the French cavalry on a futile charge that destroyed the center of Napoleon’s army.

the French could not see the squares until they were almost on top of them.
Here then they came over the ridge at a steady canter, to be decimated by grapeshot from Mercer’s and other batteries, and by musketry from the squares, at an opening range of about 50 paces.

Pressed on by the ranks behind, they charged past between the squares, losing their formation as they did so. Lord Uxbridge came up with the survivors of the Household Brigade, and the infantry watched a bloodthirsty cavalry battle which raged all round them. At least ten times the French cavalry retreated down the hill, or round by the Nivelles road, reformed their ranks and attacked again, until all this ground between the lane and the ridge was so covered with dead men and horses that they could not ride over it.

Uxbridge lost his leg in this battle and it is buried, in the town.

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It is buried here, behind Wellington’s headquarters in Waterloo town. He had a very good prosthesis made which is displayed in the museum at Wellington’s headquarters in Waterloo town.
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The La Haye Sainte farm is still there although it is not open to visitors.

la-haye-after

The farm lies in the center and is at present privately owned. I understand there is a pending sale to add it to the museum.

Brussels

Monday, September 14th, 2015

We are here in Brussels staying in a business hotel near the center city. Not far is The Grand Place, where the Hotel de Ville and the Guildhalls are located.

At the beginning of the 13th century, three indoor markets were built on the northern edge of the Grand Place; a meat market, a bread market and a cloth market.[3] These buildings, which belonged to the Duke of Brabant, allowed the wares to be showcased even in bad weather, but also allowed the Dukes to keep track of the storage and sale of goods, in order to collect taxes. Other buildings, made of wood or stone, enclosed the Grand Place.

It has been destroyed in several wars since then and always rebuilt.

Town Hall

The Hotel de Ville is the town hall and dominates the square.

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Here we stand in the Grand Square. It was raining and the rain stopped for a hour or so, then resumed.

Museum

The “Museum” which began as the “Bread house” and then became the palace is now partially covered by plastic cloths as work seems to be going on. We were there on a Monday so the museums were all closed. We walked about and Jill found a Starbucks coffee place so she was content.

We did quite a bit of walking and found The Black Tower, which is the only remaining remnant of the city wall.

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The Black Tower is near the St Catherine’s Church and was on our walk. Naturally, any visit to Brussels must include Manneken Pis, the statue of the small boy urinating. Why this is an attraction, I:m not sure but it was surrounded by Chinese tourists snapping their pictures with it. We of course, had to follow suit.

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Today we go to Waterloo Battlefield.

The Medical History of the American Civil War V

Friday, September 4th, 2015

This series is a slightly annotated version of a lecture I have given in several places. One of them was at the Royal Army Medical Corps Museum in the Salisbury Plain.

Slide42

Two major diseases at the time of the war were Smallpox and Malaria. Both affected large bodies of men in close quarters. Both were infectious but not water borne. Vaccination had been discovered by Edward Jenner in 1796.

In the years following 1770, at least five investigators in England and Germany (Sevel, Jensen, Jesty 1774, Rendell, Plett 1791) successfully tested a cowpox vaccine in humans against smallpox.[20] For example, Dorset farmer Benjamin Jesty[21] successfully vaccinated and presumably induced immunity with cowpox in his wife and two children during a smallpox epidemic in 1774, but it was not until Jenner’s work some 20 years later that the procedure became widely understood. Indeed, Jenner may have been aware of Jesty’s procedures and success.

By the early years of the Napoleonic Wars, Larrey had vaccinated the French Grand Army. By 1870, the French army had forgotten Larry’s work and they were decimated by smallpox while the Prussian army had been vaccinated by Billroth.

Malaria could be treated with Quinine, an extract of Cinchona bark.

Quinine occurs naturally in the bark of the cinchona tree, though it has also been synthesized in the laboratory. The medicinal properties of the cinchona tree were originally discovered by the Quechua, who are indigenous to Peru and Bolivia; later, the Jesuits were the first to bring cinchona to Europe.

The Union Army used 19 tons of cinchona bark to treat malaria in the troops. The Confederates were blockaded and had little to use. The Germans were blockaded in World War I and used their new organic chemistry industry to find alternatives, chiefly from organic dyes, like Methylene Blue.

Slide43

There obviously was some understanding of the role of mosquitoes in transmission of malaria as we see with the use of mosquito nets in hospitals.

Slide44

Other infectious disease were scourges although nothing was known about the cause. Tonsillitis was seasonal and diphtheria was treated with tracheostomy although I don’t know how many were done. The story of diphtheria is the story of the great triumph of bacteriology in the late 19th century. In the Civil War the only treatment was tracheostomy.

Wounds were always assumed to be infected and treated accordingly.

Slide45

The treatment of extremity wounds was almost always amputation as there was no understanding of infection.

Here is an amputation tent with a pile of amputated limbs nearby. Baron Larrey, Napoleon;s surgeon personally amputated 200 limbs in 24 hours at the battle of Borodino. That was one amputation every seven minutes and was prior to the discovery of anesthesia.

There was little treatment available for wounds of the head or the body.

Slide49

The wounds from a small battle are listed in The History. Head wounds were mostly fatal although a few survived.

Slide50

Early wound care was mostly in the open as the dressing stations were overwhelmed easily.

Slide51

Saber wounds, inflicted by mounted cavalry were survivable if the skull was not penetrated and they did not become infected.

Slide52

The Battle of Chancellorsville was a success for Lee but a great loss resulted as Jackson was lost.

Slide53

Many believe that all chance of success in the war died with Jackson.

Slide54

Jackson was shot by his own men as he reconnoitered the battlefield. His left arm was amputated but he did not survive. His wife was with him when he died.

Slide55

Gunshot wounds of the extremities were most of the survivors. The mortality rate of amputation was 27%. In the Franco-Prussion War, the incompetent French military surgeons had a 50% mortality rate even though antisepsis had been described three years before by Joseph Lister. Lister was treating tuberculosis of the joints, which was a common condition at the time. He found that infection was prevented by carbolic acid.

In August 1865, Lister applied a piece of lint dipped in carbolic acid solution onto the wound of a seven-year-old boy at Glasgow Infirmary, who had sustained a compound fracture after a cart wheel had passed over his leg. After four days, he renewed the pad and discovered that no infection had developed, and after a total of six weeks he was amazed to discover that the boy’s bones had fused back together, without the danger of suppuration. He subsequently published his results in The Lancet[8][9] in a series of 6 articles, running from March through July 1867.

He instructed surgeons under his responsibility to wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with 5% carbolic acid solutions. Instruments were also washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre. One of his additional suggestions was to stop using porous natural materials in manufacturing the handles of medical instruments.

The Germans adopted “Listerism” and the French did not. His reports were after the American Civil War although Semmelweis had tried to introduce hand washing in 1846.

Slide56

Vascular injuries were untreatable and would remain so until Vietnam, when new techniques resulted in salvage of most arterial injuries.

To be continued.

Muslim Lives Matter

Tuesday, May 19th, 2015

black-lives-matter-1

The current trope on the left is that “Black Lives Matter.”

vietnam

The Democrats have an impressive record of genocide, beginning with the abandonment of South Vietnam. The Vietnam War was begun by Democrats, specifically John F Kennedy, who agreed to the assassination of South Vietnam leader Ngo Dinh Diem, who was killed by Vietnamese generals with Kennedy’s agreement.

Now we are faced with a somewhat similar situation in the Middle East. To quote Richard Fernandez, who I have always found reliable,

The collapse in the Middle East feels like Black April, 1975, the month South Vietnam fell. And it should, because just as the collapse of Saigon did not happen in Black April, but in a political American decision to allow South Vietnam to fall after a “decent interval”, so also is the ongoing collapse rooted, not in the recent tactical mistakes of the White House, but in the grand strategic decision president Obama made when he assumed office.

We are about to witness the total collapse of any American influence in the Middle East.

The reason the press has been trying to corner interviewees into “admitting” that George Bush made an error in toppling Saddam Hussein is the need to reassure themselves that catastrophe in the Middle East isn’t really their fault. The constant need to be told it’s not their doing is a form of denial. The more certain they are of their blunder the more they will need to tell themselves that the sounds they hear aren’t the footfalls of doom.

Because the alternative is to admit the truth and accept that to reverse the tide, 20th century Western liberalism has to die or radically reform itself. None of the people who have built political and establishment media credentials want to hear that, but all the same …

We are on the verge of a massive human catastrophe, one that the world has not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union or, in terms of percentage, since the fall of Rome.

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