THE DAILY MAIL
Carl G.: “True, the COVID risk to kids is inflated; however, if it’s your kid and something bad happens, telling yourself the odds were a thousand to one isn’t going to make you feel better.”
→ No question. But it’s way more than 1,000 to 1 — more like a quarter million to one — and much lower than the risk of allowing kids to swim or bike or ride in a car. So I would argue we OWE it to them to be rational.
Carl M.: “I somehow missed your March 23 post, so was still holding 4,000 shares of SPRT when I saw Friday’s. Now I have $160,000, and I promise a small portion will go to the DNC.”
→ Wonderful! Click here. Whatever small portion you decide on, I’ll see it right away to say thanks.
Margaret G.: “So glad to see you’re updating your ‘only investment guide.’ I have three 30-something kids and their many friends who need this book! Have preordered.”
Tony B.: “FindCenter is an awesome resource.”
Robert F.: “I don’t understand why the Dems are not plastering the media with the fact that Trump and Stephen Miller were responsible for huge delays in approving visas to our Afghan allies.”
“The seeds of the insanity that we’re seeing right now were planted in Stephen Miller‘s brain,” said Matt Zeller, a former Army officer who served in Afghanistan and co-founded the group No One Left Behind, adding that Miller is as much to blame for the deaths of interpreters and others as the Taliban themselves. “He’s complicit in their murders … He’s brilliant at how evil he is.”
Paul: “The downside of wearing masks, if any, is negligible. Why not err on the side of caution and make everyone wear masks, including kids, when they are around other people?”
→ The Brits disagree. And I think forcing little kids to wear masks in school all day to protect vaccinated teachers (who need no protection) is more than a “negligible” downside. I would let school districts decide.
Israel is requiring masks in school. And the overwhelming consensus of experts is that masks help, as intuitively one assumes they must. But worth noting is the absence of many (any?) studies showing their effectiveness. The vaccine, by contrast, is indisputably proven to be wonderfully effective. Tons of my vaccinated friends are getting COVID, but with only minor illness at worst. It is both a tragedy and an outrage that 80 million Americans have thus far failed to rally to the nation’s defense.
And now . . .
THINGS THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN
No evacuee-filled planes were shot out of the sky.
No Americans were held hostage.
No troops were sent back to resume endless war . . . as they would have to have been had we broken Trump’s agreement to leave. An agreement which assured relative peace until we did leave but collapse of the Afghan government once we were gone.
There is plenty of blame to go around, beginning, most egregiously, with George W. Bush. And there is much room for grief today and fear tomorrow. But to have successfully evacuated more than 120,000 and pulled the world together to pressure the Taliban to act less horribly than they have in the past . . . these are accomplishments of which the Biden Administration need not be anything but proud.
Fingers tightly crossed, especially for the Afghan women, girls, and gays.
A country without music. How incredibly sad.
