I'm neither a Trump supporter nor hater. I am a veteran but couldn't give less of a shit if anyone speaks badly about the military. That said, he's the commander-in-chief of the military, and citing the tragedy of a training exercise gone fatally awry to make a political point before a dead American soldier has even had time to be buried violates the principles taught in military leadership courses. I'm not offended by his words, but it's not hard to see why retroactively asserting that a soldier's death was incontrovertably the product of her own incompetence is detrimental to troop morale. Whether the military has incorporated DEI practices to a point where it's harmful to the state of military readiness and battlefield lethality is a separate question altogether.
That’s why it’s totally understandable why one of the soldier’s family asked them not to be named publicly. They’re going to be dragged thru the political mud.
Regarding the DEI programs, Blocked and Reported's ex-researcher, who's an ex-mormon gay furry, posted an article last January about how the FAA in 2014 explicitly tried to hire majority black people and disqualified qualified candidates for ATC roles.
Important Quotes:
"the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. Buttigieg, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment. The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification."
"Central to this: the cognitive test posed a barrier for black candidates, so they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test."
There is also some scuttlebutt the pilot of the chopper was a woman and that is why her name hasn’t been released unlike the other two. And there certainly has been a direct “DEI” push to get more women flying jets and helicopters in the military, it has been an explicit goal for over a decade. And as you said in ATC (great work by Trace) and in airliner pilot chairs.
It is not actually nearly as irrelevant as they made light of on the podcast.
And while Trump’s comments were pretty crass, that is sort of how he is and not much different than when more traditional pols (Democrats especially) jump to discuss gun control during tragedies when it isn’t even clear if their proposed policy would impact the particular situation.
The DEI stuff is a legit menace and corrosive to the functioning of society badly. Calling it out as much as possible is good.
Also, some great video floating around of an LAWP board meeting where a citizen points out the super well compensated president seems to have been largely picked due to DEI credentials and then proceeded to make DEI shit the focus of her board updates instead of you know, fixing reservoirs.
Yes to a hammer everything looks like a nail. But sometimes the commentary from a hammer isn’t bad when someone just spilled nails all over the fucking driveway.
Not that I am aware of, but that sort of isn’t the point. What would that even look like exactly?
You would need a massive investigation into the entire training process and decision making all down the line, an investigation I get the impression demands like yours are explicitly meant to short circuit.
Imagine that your child needs a major surgery and it is botched. And the surgeon is 6’5”.
Later you find out the hospital you were at had an explicit policy for years of strongly preferencing and protecting doctors over 6’3” because of some stupid tribal or superstitious or political reason or whatever non-merit based reason.
At that point would you or would you not be suspicious and ask a lawyer to look into the hiring practices around the surgeon?
These types of initiatives have been explicitly criticized for years on the grounds that standards are lowered and excuses are made and the average level of excellence falls all in the service of “representation/fairness/equity/whatever”.
Most those concerns get shot down with preemptive accusations of racism/sexism, or sort of blind/craven/deceptive wishful thinking assertions that lowering of standards or changing processes to get better demographic representation won’t impact outcomes/failures.
When there are major failures it is literally the exact time you want to ask/analyze about whether those trade-offs are actually worth it.
This is a common but heavily suppressed item of discussion in the aviation community.
That you need an investigation to determine if DEI hiring practices contributed to this is exactly the point. Trump and others shouldn’t be blaming DEI before such an investigation takes place. Same goes for the ATC staff.
Edit: I agree that such an investigation needs to look at the qualifications of all involved and whether or not DEI policies led to people being put in positions of responsibility they weren’t qualified for. We shouldn’t shy away from that, but we, and the President especially, shouldn’t be speculating before an investigation takes place.
Politicians speculating about their pet causes before they have all the facts is literally par for the course. It certainly happens all the time with gun violence, weather events, mental health, and all sorts of topics.
I agree it is bad, but it is hardly some giant breaking of political norms like many other things Trump does which are hugely norm breaking.
Just as a side note while watching streaming today with my child I saw an ad for the army that specifically was like "look at this black female helicopter pilot, she is the first black female helicopter pilot in her unit's history, aren't we great?
I almost wonder if it was related to Trump's comments it was so on the nose.
I'll believe you aren't stacking the deck for these candidates when you stop bragging about them.
I think there is a lot of evidence ATC staff around the country are less qualified than they would be without DEI and political meddling. Whether that impacted this particular situation is something only a deep examination could turn up.
Almost always in accidents like this there is like 10 pieces of swiss cheese because aviation has so many safeguards, so you get an accident when all the holes line up. It can be very worth examining whether one of those holes are these non merit based hiring practices.
Watch the movie Pushing Tin. Great movie but also a look into air traffic controllers and the pressure cooker they exist within. Seems like a terrible “agency” to understaff
I volunteered on the Polish-Ukrainian border right after the war started. It was emotionally grueling work. On my flight back to New York from Krakow, mentally fried and drained, I got a seat upgrade so I could stretch out. I wanted to just sleep and listen to music. Then this fucking guy and his elderly mother sat next to me and put their bare, gross feet up on the bulkhead in front of me the entire flight. This part of the pod utterly cracked me up.
This also speaks to the analogy they were trying to make. It is not the case that pharmaceutical companies would never do anything that harms us. There is a business risk there, yes, but they could have gotten away with Vioxx for a lot longer than they did, and there are plenty of other examples of the medical business resulting in harm.
Yes, I definitely remember Biden tariffing all of our allies while threatening Panama and Greenland his first month in office. It's definitely the Democrats fault though.
It is 100% the Democrats fault we have Trump. Your candidates and policies are so bad you can't even beat this human shitbag? Think about that, take some responsibility.
Weren't his main tariffs against China? I remember a lumber tariff but that's pretty targeted. I don't remember any sweeping targets against Canada and Mexico.
Kmele complaining about clueless media coverage of Deepseek seems like Gell-Mann Amnesia.
"""
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
Yeah they all have a very noticeable (though I guess understandable) blind spot about the general level of competence, honesty, and good faith in the media. I really don't think most reporters are just trying to get to the facts and share info. Even 20-25 years ago and certainly not now.
They might tell themselves that, just like Bernie Madoff probably told himself all sorts of shit. But there are few professions with a bigger delta between the virtuousness of what they are actually doing (often stenographers to power and their own biases), and what they tell themselves they are doing (warriors fighting to uncover the truth).
Everytime they repeat their tired talking point about "well the New York Times doesn't ever really *lie* exactly", the collective trust of the media falls even further because it is so transparently horseshit to anyone with a brain and a little knowledge about some topic the NYT touches on occasionally.
You can tell they are liars because they call it "writing a story", like a fucking fisherman. When someone says "tell me a story fisherman", they aren't using the word story because they think it is going to be accurate rendition of events.
Off topic a bit, so I apologize in advance. In Members Only #246, Kmele mentioned that he would post the letter he wrote to his daughter's teacher(s) regarding MLK Day and Black History Month on Substack. Does anyone know where I can find it?
Kmele: "I don't know what the total number of ... executive actions is, but I have to imagine we're in pretty much unchartered territory, in terms of the volume of executive orders that have been issued, at least when it comes to recent presidential administrations."
Matt: "I don't know. I don't know. It's possible not.... [Biden did] a ton, too.... So I would be curious to see.... I would put it like 60/40 that Trump has more than Biden."
You: "Bringing up quantity was some serious whataboutism by Matt."
Me: "I didn't bring it up."
YOU, 22 DAYS LATER: Some comment that didn't involve "my bad."
Speaking of the conversation about Poland having no migrants, the following video from a savvas curriculum my school district is piloting is the opening video for our ELA unit 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7XhrXUoD6U (it comes from Amnesty Poland) Basically the idea is that looking into migrants eyes will elicit empathy or whatever. Which is fine as far as it goes, but no amount of empathy for individual migrants can erase the fact that letting in large amounts of ME immigrants is inviting a certain amount of ..... complications..... Ill show the video in my class, but it is stupid, milquetoast, besides-the-point, propaganda.
Always get a chuckle when I see a country with no real recent history of mass global migration trying with genuine sincerity to navigate what will often end up a shit show. Bit like that Finnish "no no square" video from a while back, essentially thinking a video of 4-5 middle aged hags (the guy included) doing a little dance to a crap song was going to solve the distinctly different attitudes towards women in the public sphere and their bodily autonomy and rights.
Quick question for you gentlemen. I’ve only been listening to your podcast for the last couple months, but this is probably the fifth or sixth time I’ve heard a very strong defense of pharmaceutical companies. I’m not an insider and I don’t have any secret information. I’m not a huge RFK fan and think he has some good ideas and some bad ideas. I don’t really care that he’s a Kennedy. I’m only 40 years old so maybe I just don’t have enough experience to know why I’m supposed to care that he’s a Kennedy. Not exactly a big fan of JFK’s personal life, and RFK was probably no Saint either. All that said, let’s talk about pharmaceutical companies.
Five years ago, I believed that pharmaceutical companies served a purpose, were regulated by the FDA, probably got away with some nefarious activities in Third World countries, but on the whole medicine had progressed in a way that probably meant the good outwait the bad. I was not in the field during any drug testing, so I understand there may be some people directly affected by pharmaceutical company testing that would have a different opinion. That said, I’m fully vaccinated. My kids were vaccinated, etc.. then Purdue Pharma happened. Short version is that they lied, they didn’t do testing, when they found out the truth, they lied about the truth, they found ways around FDA regulations, they bribed doctors, etc. Lots of people were told OxyContin was not addictive. Lots of people died. Fast-forward to Covid. My wife is pregnant when she gets the Covid vaccine. , The government and the doctors say that the vaccine is safe for pregnant women. Fast-forward six months, turns out it was never tested on any pregnant women. It was just assumed that since no pregnant women had been hurt by the vaccine, then it was probably safe. Not to mention the fact that the vaccine was meant to stop the spread of Covid even though I did nothing to stop the spread of Covid. Fauci often quotes a Princeton study that said something like 6 million people were saved by the vaccine. The Princeton study was not based on data, but was based on a bunch of assumptions. I could make some assumptions that show 10 million people were saved. I can make some other assumptions that show that 1 million people were saved. Assumptions matter a lot when dealing with scientific models. And through the whole 2 to 4 years of Covid, depending on how you keep score, data was very rare if at all available. There were lots of headlines telling you about numbers, but nobody was willing to share raw data. I’m sure plebeians wouldn’t be able to read it anyway so we should probably trust the doctors. We find out later that there were many doctors were skeptical of Covid data, but they were all shut up and deep platformed in someway. I’ve often heard that the FDA is a revolving door with the pharmaceutical companies. I don’t know if that’s true. We’ve seen the same thing with other government agencies like Goldman Sachs CEOs, who decide out of the goodness of their heart to become the head of the treasury. I’ve also heard that were one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to put ads on television, and boy do they put some ads on television. And then last, we know that it takes millions if not billions of dollars for drugs to be created, and tested, and brought to market. We know that because that’s what the pharmaceutical company tells us. Do we actually see that data. Again, circle back to Purdue Pharma. It seems like there’s a lot of taking their word for it going on. I guess I should’ve preface this with, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know what the truth is. You guys seem pretty set on the fact that the pharmaceutical guys are just business men doing the best they can in a world where they are heavily regulated for safety and efficacy. I would love it if you would share that data with me. I really don’t want to be the skeptical of the scientific community, but over the last five years I’ve gone from being a believer in modern medicine, to a believer in the maximum that you should always follow the money. I would love it if you have some evidence to the contrary. Some stats or data from reliable sources that show that there is honesty in the pharmaceutical industry. I still have two kids, and I would love to make the best medical decisions for them for the future. Yes, they are fully vaccinated. Yes I thought deeply about it every time they got another shot. This is a genuinely question for me. I don’t have enough information to say gotcha to anybody. I would love it, though if you could share something that you know that has convinced you as to the virtue of the pharmaceutical industry, and the fact that people literally place lives in their hands. Sorry for the long comment. I really hoped our nation didn’t need an RFK or a Donald Trump for course. Correction. I don’t trust either of those guys. Still, I don’t think the pharmaceutical company is above reproach. If they are, please share your evidence. Preferably something scientific and tested by somebody not paid by the pharmaceutical company to do so.
Sorry if this comment should’ve been in an email instead of a comment. I don’t really do social media, and I really rarely comment on on anything. Not sure what the norms are. Also, not sure what your email address is.
I'm neither a Trump supporter nor hater. I am a veteran but couldn't give less of a shit if anyone speaks badly about the military. That said, he's the commander-in-chief of the military, and citing the tragedy of a training exercise gone fatally awry to make a political point before a dead American soldier has even had time to be buried violates the principles taught in military leadership courses. I'm not offended by his words, but it's not hard to see why retroactively asserting that a soldier's death was incontrovertably the product of her own incompetence is detrimental to troop morale. Whether the military has incorporated DEI practices to a point where it's harmful to the state of military readiness and battlefield lethality is a separate question altogether.
That’s why it’s totally understandable why one of the soldier’s family asked them not to be named publicly. They’re going to be dragged thru the political mud.
World's worst social media account --
Moynihan: travels to a former Eastern Bloc country to attend a unique historic ceremony at an infamous location fraught with meaning
We get: an instagram stories photo of some guy's bare feet on an airplane
Regarding the DEI programs, Blocked and Reported's ex-researcher, who's an ex-mormon gay furry, posted an article last January about how the FAA in 2014 explicitly tried to hire majority black people and disqualified qualified candidates for ATC roles.
Important Quotes:
"the class-action lawsuit currently known as Brigida v. Buttigieg, brought by a class who spent years and thousands of dollars in coursework to become air traffic controllers, only to be dismissed by a pass-fail biographical questionnaire with a >90% fail rate, implemented without warning after many of them had already taken, and passed, a skill assessment. The questionnaire awarded points for factors like "lowest grade in high school is science," something explicitly admitted by the FAA in a motion to deny class certification."
"Central to this: the cognitive test posed a barrier for black candidates, so they recommended using a biographical test first to "maximiz[e] diversity," eliminating the vast majority of candidates prior to any cognitive test."
https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview
There is also some scuttlebutt the pilot of the chopper was a woman and that is why her name hasn’t been released unlike the other two. And there certainly has been a direct “DEI” push to get more women flying jets and helicopters in the military, it has been an explicit goal for over a decade. And as you said in ATC (great work by Trace) and in airliner pilot chairs.
It is not actually nearly as irrelevant as they made light of on the podcast.
And while Trump’s comments were pretty crass, that is sort of how he is and not much different than when more traditional pols (Democrats especially) jump to discuss gun control during tragedies when it isn’t even clear if their proposed policy would impact the particular situation.
The DEI stuff is a legit menace and corrosive to the functioning of society badly. Calling it out as much as possible is good.
Also, some great video floating around of an LAWP board meeting where a citizen points out the super well compensated president seems to have been largely picked due to DEI credentials and then proceeded to make DEI shit the focus of her board updates instead of you know, fixing reservoirs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE23fp91PEE&t=233s
Yes to a hammer everything looks like a nail. But sometimes the commentary from a hammer isn’t bad when someone just spilled nails all over the fucking driveway.
Is there any evidence the pilot of the helicopter was unqualified but still allowed to fly because she was a woman?
Not that I am aware of, but that sort of isn’t the point. What would that even look like exactly?
You would need a massive investigation into the entire training process and decision making all down the line, an investigation I get the impression demands like yours are explicitly meant to short circuit.
Imagine that your child needs a major surgery and it is botched. And the surgeon is 6’5”.
Later you find out the hospital you were at had an explicit policy for years of strongly preferencing and protecting doctors over 6’3” because of some stupid tribal or superstitious or political reason or whatever non-merit based reason.
At that point would you or would you not be suspicious and ask a lawyer to look into the hiring practices around the surgeon?
These types of initiatives have been explicitly criticized for years on the grounds that standards are lowered and excuses are made and the average level of excellence falls all in the service of “representation/fairness/equity/whatever”.
Most those concerns get shot down with preemptive accusations of racism/sexism, or sort of blind/craven/deceptive wishful thinking assertions that lowering of standards or changing processes to get better demographic representation won’t impact outcomes/failures.
When there are major failures it is literally the exact time you want to ask/analyze about whether those trade-offs are actually worth it.
This is a common but heavily suppressed item of discussion in the aviation community.
That you need an investigation to determine if DEI hiring practices contributed to this is exactly the point. Trump and others shouldn’t be blaming DEI before such an investigation takes place. Same goes for the ATC staff.
Edit: I agree that such an investigation needs to look at the qualifications of all involved and whether or not DEI policies led to people being put in positions of responsibility they weren’t qualified for. We shouldn’t shy away from that, but we, and the President especially, shouldn’t be speculating before an investigation takes place.
Politicians speculating about their pet causes before they have all the facts is literally par for the course. It certainly happens all the time with gun violence, weather events, mental health, and all sorts of topics.
I agree it is bad, but it is hardly some giant breaking of political norms like many other things Trump does which are hugely norm breaking.
Just as a side note while watching streaming today with my child I saw an ad for the army that specifically was like "look at this black female helicopter pilot, she is the first black female helicopter pilot in her unit's history, aren't we great?
I almost wonder if it was related to Trump's comments it was so on the nose.
I'll believe you aren't stacking the deck for these candidates when you stop bragging about them.
Blocked and reported did a primo episode with trace about this: https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/premium-the-faas-bizarre-diversity
Is there any evidence that the ATC personnel on duty that night weren’t fully qualified?
I think there is a lot of evidence ATC staff around the country are less qualified than they would be without DEI and political meddling. Whether that impacted this particular situation is something only a deep examination could turn up.
Almost always in accidents like this there is like 10 pieces of swiss cheese because aviation has so many safeguards, so you get an accident when all the holes line up. It can be very worth examining whether one of those holes are these non merit based hiring practices.
See my response to your other comment above.
The only information I know for certain is that the tower was understaffed.
Watch the movie Pushing Tin. Great movie but also a look into air traffic controllers and the pressure cooker they exist within. Seems like a terrible “agency” to understaff
https://substack.com/@kenklippenstein/note/c-89761814?r=dw8wf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Matt you were thinking of Malicious compliance, but sadly we can’t turn this into another no step on snek.
Should we call Matt misremembering things a snekism?
I volunteered on the Polish-Ukrainian border right after the war started. It was emotionally grueling work. On my flight back to New York from Krakow, mentally fried and drained, I got a seat upgrade so I could stretch out. I wanted to just sleep and listen to music. Then this fucking guy and his elderly mother sat next to me and put their bare, gross feet up on the bulkhead in front of me the entire flight. This part of the pod utterly cracked me up.
"Has the press learned its lesson?" No
Moynihan talking about Karoline Leavitt without a single remark on her appearace? Is he unwell?
Maybe the age gap in her marriage has left him too disgusted to contemplate her attractiveness.
Idk he seems ok complimenting Olivia Nuzzi 💀
Olivia falls within the traditional “half his age plus seven” constraint that Moynihan seems to broadly follow.
They make this analogy that it would be silly for drug dealers to put fentanyl in cocaine because it would kill their customers. Speaking as someone who reviews drug tests from people who use drugs on a daily basis, there is definitely fentanyl in cocaine. It is well documented (e.g https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37826988/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30635841/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34726975/).
This also speaks to the analogy they were trying to make. It is not the case that pharmaceutical companies would never do anything that harms us. There is a business risk there, yes, but they could have gotten away with Vioxx for a lot longer than they did, and there are plenty of other examples of the medical business resulting in harm.
I love how they automatically start bothsidsing when they're discussing something bad Trump did.
Well, some things do two side. TBF
Yes, I definitely remember Biden tariffing all of our allies while threatening Panama and Greenland his first month in office. It's definitely the Democrats fault though.
It is 100% the Democrats fault we have Trump. Your candidates and policies are so bad you can't even beat this human shitbag? Think about that, take some responsibility.
Nothing the Democrats have done in living memory has been this stupid.
He did tariff our allies.
Weren't his main tariffs against China? I remember a lumber tariff but that's pretty targeted. I don't remember any sweeping targets against Canada and Mexico.
Kmele complaining about clueless media coverage of Deepseek seems like Gell-Mann Amnesia.
"""
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
"""
https://ritholtz.com/2002/04/michael-crichtons-why-speculate/
Yeah they all have a very noticeable (though I guess understandable) blind spot about the general level of competence, honesty, and good faith in the media. I really don't think most reporters are just trying to get to the facts and share info. Even 20-25 years ago and certainly not now.
They might tell themselves that, just like Bernie Madoff probably told himself all sorts of shit. But there are few professions with a bigger delta between the virtuousness of what they are actually doing (often stenographers to power and their own biases), and what they tell themselves they are doing (warriors fighting to uncover the truth).
Everytime they repeat their tired talking point about "well the New York Times doesn't ever really *lie* exactly", the collective trust of the media falls even further because it is so transparently horseshit to anyone with a brain and a little knowledge about some topic the NYT touches on occasionally.
You can tell they are liars because they call it "writing a story", like a fucking fisherman. When someone says "tell me a story fisherman", they aren't using the word story because they think it is going to be accurate rendition of events.
Off topic a bit, so I apologize in advance. In Members Only #246, Kmele mentioned that he would post the letter he wrote to his daughter's teacher(s) regarding MLK Day and Black History Month on Substack. Does anyone know where I can find it?
According to the federal register Trump has signed 45 executive orders so far.
According to Wikipedia Biden signed 42 in his first 100 days which was the most since Truman.
Bringing up quantity was some serious whataboutism by Matt.
I didn’t bring it up.
At 14:43 you say you don't know who did more executive orders. You put it at 60/40 that trump has more.
Kmele: "I don't know what the total number of ... executive actions is, but I have to imagine we're in pretty much unchartered territory, in terms of the volume of executive orders that have been issued, at least when it comes to recent presidential administrations."
Matt: "I don't know. I don't know. It's possible not.... [Biden did] a ton, too.... So I would be curious to see.... I would put it like 60/40 that Trump has more than Biden."
You: "Bringing up quantity was some serious whataboutism by Matt."
Me: "I didn't bring it up."
YOU, 22 DAYS LATER: Some comment that didn't involve "my bad."
Thanks, I did not know that at the time of taping the episode.
Not fact checking since no claim was made. Just facting (yeah I know that’s not a word).
Give me the bit coins
are they in dis drawer? are they in dis suit-KEHZ?
Speaking of the conversation about Poland having no migrants, the following video from a savvas curriculum my school district is piloting is the opening video for our ELA unit 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7XhrXUoD6U (it comes from Amnesty Poland) Basically the idea is that looking into migrants eyes will elicit empathy or whatever. Which is fine as far as it goes, but no amount of empathy for individual migrants can erase the fact that letting in large amounts of ME immigrants is inviting a certain amount of ..... complications..... Ill show the video in my class, but it is stupid, milquetoast, besides-the-point, propaganda.
Always get a chuckle when I see a country with no real recent history of mass global migration trying with genuine sincerity to navigate what will often end up a shit show. Bit like that Finnish "no no square" video from a while back, essentially thinking a video of 4-5 middle aged hags (the guy included) doing a little dance to a crap song was going to solve the distinctly different attitudes towards women in the public sphere and their bodily autonomy and rights.
Does Matt think a blunderbuss is a kind of bus that people use to blunder into things?
Isn’t it actually an antique firearm?
Quick question for you gentlemen. I’ve only been listening to your podcast for the last couple months, but this is probably the fifth or sixth time I’ve heard a very strong defense of pharmaceutical companies. I’m not an insider and I don’t have any secret information. I’m not a huge RFK fan and think he has some good ideas and some bad ideas. I don’t really care that he’s a Kennedy. I’m only 40 years old so maybe I just don’t have enough experience to know why I’m supposed to care that he’s a Kennedy. Not exactly a big fan of JFK’s personal life, and RFK was probably no Saint either. All that said, let’s talk about pharmaceutical companies.
Five years ago, I believed that pharmaceutical companies served a purpose, were regulated by the FDA, probably got away with some nefarious activities in Third World countries, but on the whole medicine had progressed in a way that probably meant the good outwait the bad. I was not in the field during any drug testing, so I understand there may be some people directly affected by pharmaceutical company testing that would have a different opinion. That said, I’m fully vaccinated. My kids were vaccinated, etc.. then Purdue Pharma happened. Short version is that they lied, they didn’t do testing, when they found out the truth, they lied about the truth, they found ways around FDA regulations, they bribed doctors, etc. Lots of people were told OxyContin was not addictive. Lots of people died. Fast-forward to Covid. My wife is pregnant when she gets the Covid vaccine. , The government and the doctors say that the vaccine is safe for pregnant women. Fast-forward six months, turns out it was never tested on any pregnant women. It was just assumed that since no pregnant women had been hurt by the vaccine, then it was probably safe. Not to mention the fact that the vaccine was meant to stop the spread of Covid even though I did nothing to stop the spread of Covid. Fauci often quotes a Princeton study that said something like 6 million people were saved by the vaccine. The Princeton study was not based on data, but was based on a bunch of assumptions. I could make some assumptions that show 10 million people were saved. I can make some other assumptions that show that 1 million people were saved. Assumptions matter a lot when dealing with scientific models. And through the whole 2 to 4 years of Covid, depending on how you keep score, data was very rare if at all available. There were lots of headlines telling you about numbers, but nobody was willing to share raw data. I’m sure plebeians wouldn’t be able to read it anyway so we should probably trust the doctors. We find out later that there were many doctors were skeptical of Covid data, but they were all shut up and deep platformed in someway. I’ve often heard that the FDA is a revolving door with the pharmaceutical companies. I don’t know if that’s true. We’ve seen the same thing with other government agencies like Goldman Sachs CEOs, who decide out of the goodness of their heart to become the head of the treasury. I’ve also heard that were one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to put ads on television, and boy do they put some ads on television. And then last, we know that it takes millions if not billions of dollars for drugs to be created, and tested, and brought to market. We know that because that’s what the pharmaceutical company tells us. Do we actually see that data. Again, circle back to Purdue Pharma. It seems like there’s a lot of taking their word for it going on. I guess I should’ve preface this with, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know what the truth is. You guys seem pretty set on the fact that the pharmaceutical guys are just business men doing the best they can in a world where they are heavily regulated for safety and efficacy. I would love it if you would share that data with me. I really don’t want to be the skeptical of the scientific community, but over the last five years I’ve gone from being a believer in modern medicine, to a believer in the maximum that you should always follow the money. I would love it if you have some evidence to the contrary. Some stats or data from reliable sources that show that there is honesty in the pharmaceutical industry. I still have two kids, and I would love to make the best medical decisions for them for the future. Yes, they are fully vaccinated. Yes I thought deeply about it every time they got another shot. This is a genuinely question for me. I don’t have enough information to say gotcha to anybody. I would love it, though if you could share something that you know that has convinced you as to the virtue of the pharmaceutical industry, and the fact that people literally place lives in their hands. Sorry for the long comment. I really hoped our nation didn’t need an RFK or a Donald Trump for course. Correction. I don’t trust either of those guys. Still, I don’t think the pharmaceutical company is above reproach. If they are, please share your evidence. Preferably something scientific and tested by somebody not paid by the pharmaceutical company to do so.
Sorry if this comment should’ve been in an email instead of a comment. I don’t really do social media, and I really rarely comment on on anything. Not sure what the norms are. Also, not sure what your email address is.