4550
4551

WaPo tries very, very, very hard to avoid saying what the story is about in this headline:

" Study links covid mortality rates to congressional voting records

The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans, new studies show."

Wait, what’s causing high COVID mortality exactly? Congressional voting records? That doesn’t seem plausible, either grammatically or logically. “The toxicity of partisan politics?” That would seem to suggest the more partisan you are, left or right, the more likely you are to die from COVID. The first paragraph seems to reinforce that:

As the coronavirus pandemic approaches its third full winter, two studies reveal an uncomfortable truth: The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans.

Both sides, would be the reasonable assumption from that sentence. But then the second graf says something completely different:

In one study, researchers concluded that people living in more-conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to covid-19. The other, which looked at health outcomes more broadly, found that the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people.

No wait … it’s not partisanship in general that’s causing higher mortality, it’s specifically being a “conservative” area. But what exactly how was that measured, i.e.what does “conservative” mean in this context? Is it something complex and nuanced?

No. Being “conservative” is measured exactly how you’d think. But it’s not until paragraph nine that the story finally mentions the word “Republican.” And it turns out that’s what the story is trying to say: even controlling for socioeconomic and demographic factors, areas controlled by Republicans have higher mortality rates than areas controlled by Democrats.

So the short and accurate version of the headline is: “Study links higher COVID mortality rates to Republican governance.” But WaPo doesn’t want to hurt Republican fee-fees, so it obfuscates for nine paragraphs (by which point, presumably, Republicans have given up reading.)

4552

I think you misspelled “freedom.”

4553

It’s not the correlation but the causality which is the uncertainty.

4554

I suppose areas that tried to minimize the impact of the pandemic had lower mortality than areas that tried to pretend the pandemic didn’t exist could just be a coincidence ¯\(ツ)/¯

4555

So what happened? What was the extinction event for Good Republicans? Ultimately, it’s the end-stage of what I call the Republican Triangle of Doom™: The toxic and symbiotic relationship between GOP voters, GOP elected officials, and the right-wing infotainment media.

4556

Didn’t know where to put this, so I’m putting it here!

Just read this opinion piece by Katherine Miller in the NY Times… (gift link)

But I’m only sharing it because after reading all her various thoughts about doom and/or gloom, I really loved and appreciated this reply in the comment section from Rune in Duluth, MN.

Sometimes, though, my neighbor who I barely know shovels my sidewalk before I can get to it. Other times I make two loaves of bread and carry one over to my neighbor. Tomorrow on the winter solstice it will be dark and cold and quiet by four-thirty in the afternoon, but in the corner of the yard, under the snow, the compost is preparing for spring.

4557

I don’t know if this belongs in this thread, but is it patently obvious to anyone other than me that this new cable channel “NewsNation” (formerly WGN America) is just old Fox News wine in new bottles? It’s marketed as supposedly “straight” news but the other night I caught a bit of Chris Cuomo seriously entertaining his guest’s allegation that most asylum seekers are making shit up just to get asylum protection.

4558

Every outlet I’ve seen marketed this way is inevitably some far right wackery.

4559

The NYT finally broke pitchbot.

4560

Jesus wept.

4561

Yikes! Poor Pitchbot, it’s tough to be made redundant over the holidays.

4562

Huh. Sometimes the media is surprising. What’s the opposite of a Cletus Safari? (Should be a gift link, provided by a Balloon Juice front pager)

https://wapo.st/3vqi1N9

4563

That’s a nice piece. Thanks for sharing it!

4564

That was a great read. Thank you.

4565

Damn. That’s a hell of an article. Thanks for sharing. Now there’s a dude I’d like to have a beer with.

4566

Who knew Ralph Waldo Emerson was the hero we needed?!

4567

This story highlights the best use of a box of Mac and cheese I’ve read on QT3.

The first was the image of his mother putting away groceries in the kitchen as he tried out a racial slur he’d picked up on the playground. He remembered the box of macaroni and cheese she had in her hand at that moment, and the feeling of the box slapping his face, and the sound of her yelling, “You’re not better than anybody,” and the shame he felt as he cleaned the noodles off the floor, thinking of his best friend, who was Black, and his friend’s father, who was always helping his mother out.

4568

Normally I’d frown at the waste of perfectly good Mac but that time was in service to a good cause.

4569

There’s some damn good profundity in there too:

“To me, anything that starts to dominate everything about you — when you can only interact with an ideal instead of have a conversation — I’m skeptical.”

“It was disgusting that people might think I was okay with that,” he said. “I decided I wasn’t going to just let it slide. Because if you let it slide, you become complicit, and complicity turns into guilt, and guilt turns into shame, and shame turns into fear, and I don’t want to live in fear.”