Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

I think because there’s bipartisan criticism. The right is criticizing because they want to make the left look bad, but the left is also criticizing because we could have someone with a future in that seat instead of a fossil. If this were a potentially contested seat I think you’d see the left be a bit more tight lipped, but that seat is going blue no matter what. It’s a seat where we out to have someone relatively young and energetic because we can take a little bit more of a risk there than other places.

FizFashizzle posted:

Most wealthy people with good healthcare go on donepezil once they hit their mid to late sixties. It’s an easy drug to dose and manage with very few side effects (sometimes gi stuff, sometimes make you trip balls while sleeping) so PCP will prescribe it if asked, even if there is no indication. Especially these concierge primaries who just give their patients whatever they want so they can focus on their golf game.

Donepezil is only indicated for Alzheimer’s dementia, has a very modest benefit (like a 7% improvement in screening), only slows down progression and only in early stages. It’s not regenerative. (That’ll be shrooms but we def don’t want Feinstein on those at this point.) it also has no benefit after like 3-5 years and it’s the first thing I take LTC patients off of.

I cannot tell you how many patients I’ve had who are completely with it and have been on donepezil for 10+ years.

“The right” should probably shut their mouths with Mitch McConnell heading for an on camera M1

Main Paineframe posted:

Not really, because political campaign expenditures are highly regulated. It's actually very difficult for a candidate to divert campaign donations to their own pockets without bringing the FEC down on them. There are far easier ways to enrich yourself than running a no-hope campaign.

There's definitely another solution: voters could have ousted her in 2018, and will have another chance to oust her in 2024 if they think she's too old. It's not like this is an RBG situation where someone's clinging to a lifetime appointment till the day they die. She goes up for reelection every six years, and if her constituents think she's too old for the job, they can oust her regardless of what she wants.

In 2018, California voters chose an 85-year-old woman for another six-year term as senator, and it wasn't even all that close.. There was another Democrat running who was much younger (and, in fact, there wasn't even a Republican in the general election at all), but she handily defeated a Dem challenger more than thirty years her junior. Her age didn't seem to be on voters' minds back then.

FizFashizzle posted:

“The right” should probably shut their mouths with Mitch McConnell heading for an on camera M1

burnishedfume posted:

I never ran for president.

ex post facho posted:

How can you take the democrats supposed commitment to abortion rights seriously when they're still endorsing this piece of poo poo?

haveblue posted:

It's the corollary of rotating villain theory, the rotating manchin theory- you have to support the worst person who is still technically on your side, whoever that is at the time. When you're down by 3 in the house going into an election, you scrabble for the garbage incumbents because he might actually make the difference in house leadership which has enormous implications for the next two years

Rappaport posted:

Be the change you want to see in the world, friend

zoux posted:

That article cites a paywalled article, but I don't think they would say what kinds of drugs were being dispensed ever. You'd know more than me of course, but wouldn't a pharmacist know that about that particular drug, and surely that's not the only drug prescribed for Alzheimers?

quote:

This is just a question arisng from my own curiosity and not challenging you or anything but I thought they couldn't identify the specific cause of dementia until a post-mortem, or is all dementia assumed to be Alzheimer's unless proven otherwise?

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

Except this is a safely blue district, isn’t it?

haveblue posted:

It's the corollary of rotating villain theory, the rotating manchin theory- you have to support the worst person who is still technically on your side, whoever that is at the time. When you're down by 3 in the house going into an election, you scrabble for the garbage incumbents because he might actually make the difference in house leadership which has enormous implications for the next two years

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

Except this is a safely blue district, isn’t it?

FizFashizzle posted:

Then, of course there’s at $45,000 a year infusion, which is less effective and never sell, and caused encephalitis in a third of patients that received it in the trials, and is based on the theory of Alzheimer’s that has never produced a med with single successful clinical trial. And the author of this theory is under fire for likely faking all her findings.

the_steve posted:

https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1686785748094345217?t=yvmz-rNcvx6SHnjEWO3klA&s=19

Man, I hope there's a big asterisk hidden somewhere at the end of that statement.

VideoGameVet posted:

So I fund and produce an Oregon-Trail like game about Climate Change, get a complete climate reference eBook into the game, have no ads, give it away, and I can't get into classrooms?

And that lying POS Prager (and Mike Huckabee) get their climate denying poo poo into classrooms?

WOW.

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

Except this is a safely blue district, isn’t it?

zoux posted:

If you'll suffer one more question, I read about this and the impression I got from the article was that beta amyloid plaque has been falsely implicated - I think by this very study - and pretty much all Alzheimer's treatment is aimed at beta amyloids and therefore we actually haven't been doing any good research towards treatments. Was that article, or my impression at least, mistaken, because I found that pretty disheartening.

quote:

A 6-month investigation by Science provided strong support for Schrag’s suspicions and raised questions about Lesné’s research. A leading independent image analyst and several top Alzheimer’s researchers—including George Perry of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and John Forsayeth of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—reviewed most of Schrag’s findings at Science’s request. They concurred with his overall conclusions, which cast doubt on hundreds of images, including more than 70 in Lesné’s papers. Some look like “shockingly blatant” examples of image tampering, says Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer’s expert at the University of Kentucky.

The authors “appeared to have composed figures by piecing together parts of photos from different experiments,” says Elisabeth Bik, a molecular biologist and well-known forensic image consultant. “The obtained experimental results might not have been the desired results, and that data might have been changed to … better fit a hypothesis.”

FizFashizzle posted:

You're correct. Nearly 20 years and untold billions down the drain if accusations of fraud are correct. And based on the fact there hasn't been a single effective trial of a drug based on this hypothesis.....yeah

https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabrication-research-images-threatens-key-theory-alzheimers-disease

koolkal posted:

It's a safe blue district (56.7% - 43.3% in 2022) and Cueller won the 2022 primary by <300 votes

Methodist Pastor David Barnhart posted:

"The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.

Harold Fjord posted:

Mellow Seas posted:

Maybe it’s safely blue because Cuellar runs there. Joe Manchin won 60%-36% in 2012 but that didn’t make WV a safe blue Senate seat.

Like, the whole reason we’re talking about it is because Cuellar isn’t a normal Democrat, so I don’t think we can assume a normal Democrat would perform the same way. Cisneros was equally popular among the primary electorate but that doesn’t mean she’d be equally popular in the district.

shimmy shimmy posted:

Sounds like the people of California made a pretty bad mistake and should feel bad about their choices. They elected a senile Senator, they're getting a senile Senator. Otherwise, where's the sanctity of the ballot box?

zoux posted:

There is no sufficient response to the problem.

This is not the first, second, third, or nth time a senile senator has carried on past their sell-by date

It might be an interesting question to ask is why this particular case is getting such scrutiny. Likely just because they are doing a very bad job hiding it and it is in certain groups' interest to continuously promote the story.

I don't know that any democratically elected body anywhere on earth has ever had an upper bound on age. This is how all elected posts have always worked, blame the voters who keep electing cryptkeepers.

zoux posted:

https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1687198419910275072

Big Boy's been arraigned (again). We'll see if he violates the gag order before five pm.

gurragadon posted:

I agree with you for the most part, that was a bad choice by Californian's. Democrats should remove Senator Feinstein of all her committees because when she is doing work in those, she is holding up work for the whole country, not just specific work for California. That won't happen because of seniority and deference towards Senator Feinstein from the Democrats in the Senate.

NPR posted:

Burgum's offer raises questions about money's role in U.S. politics and the ethics and legality of sending money to potential voters.

"My immediate reaction to this scheme is a concern that it violates the federal prohibition on straw donors," Michael S. Kang, a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, told NPR.

"It's illegal to reimburse another person for their campaign contribution. Giving a donor a $20 gift card for donating seems a bit like that."

Crouse says that in her view, the practice might not be illegal, "but from my perspective, it's a bit unethical." Burgum isn't technically "buying" votes, she noted: "He is simply buying the right to compete."

The threshold for competing on the debate stage on Aug. 23 is set by the Republican National Committee, which hopes to winnow a wide field of 2024 presidential hopefuls down to a manageable group.

"Burgum is competing within the Republican primary and is just trying to game the debate qualification rules," Kang said, adding, "The scheme does test the limits of current law."

When contacted by NPR, a Federal Election Commission representative declined to comment on the legality of Burgum's offer, saying the agency "is unable to comment on specific activities, nor may we speculate on matters that may have the potential to come before the agency."

zoux posted:

https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1687198419910275072

Big Boy's been arraigned (again). We'll see if he violates the gag order before five pm.

the_steve posted:

https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1686785748094345217?t=yvmz-rNcvx6SHnjEWO3klA&s=19

Man, I hope there's a big asterisk hidden somewhere at the end of that statement.

Gumball Gumption posted:

Elected officials who can't be removed from office due to not being capable of performing their role is bad for democracy. I think it's as simple as that. There needs to be a way to remove people who literally can't perform the job and have become a proxy for others to act through. No one elected their handlers, they elected the politician.

VikingofRock posted:

My solution to corporate ownership of housing is to jack up property tax rates, but then make your primary residence tax-free (up to some high value tied to inflation). It would mean restructuring how some local things are paid for, but that is very doable.

Politically I think it would work because most homeowners would get a pretty big tax break. And I personally don't think the extra taxes would get passed onto renters, because if the landlords could charge more, god knows they already would.

zoux posted:

Which liberal democracy, either current or historical, would you recommend we look to for best practices?

Gumball Gumption posted:

Elected officials who can't be removed from office due to not being capable of performing their role is bad for democracy. I think it's as simple as that. There needs to be a way to remove people who literally can't perform the job and have become a proxy for others to act through. No one elected their handlers, they elected the politician.

selec posted:

Why not innovate, this is the American Experiment after all.

They should solve this with congressional car pools. Everybody has to drive, in a rotation. If nobody is willing to ride with you three times in a term, you are removed and a special election is held. We can get fun with it, the stakes are so low, obviously, that if we let a situation this bad persist so long the solutions might as well be whimsical.

zoux posted:

Which liberal democracy, either current or historical, would you recommend we look to for best practices?