Wednesday, February 22, 2023

News bits: Prostitution research; etc.

Researchers report a positive effect of legalized prostitution on rape:
Liberalizing prostitution leads to a significant decrease in rape rates, while prohibiting it leads to a significant increase. The results are stronger when rape is less severely underreported and when it is more difficult for men to obtain sex via marriage or partnership. We also provide the first evidence for the asymmetric effect of prostitution regulation on rape rates: the magnitude of prostitution prohibition is much larger than that of prostitution liberalization.

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Esquire writes about one of the Republican Party's nutbag crackpots in congress, of which there are many:
Marjorie Taylor Greene's "National Divorce" Riff Is Weapons-Grade Trolling

This year may see her take her final form as a being of pure grievance, existing online as a pulsing ball of energy.
MTG is a radical right Republican Party elite who is a self-serving grifter-blowhard. 'Nuff said.

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Radical right Republican crackpottery in Idaho is going to get some folks killed:
Bonkers Republican bill in Idaho would make mRNA-based vaccination a crime

It's unclear if the two lawmakers know what messenger RNA is exactly.

Two Republican lawmakers in Idaho have introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor for anyone in the state to administer mRNA-based vaccines—namely the lifesaving and remarkably safe COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. If passed as written, it would also preemptively ban the use of countless other mRNA vaccines that are now in development, such as shots for RSV, a variety of cancers, HIV, flu, Nipah virus, and cystic fibrosis, among others.
We all well remember Germaine's award winning blog post from Jan. 2021 about the little nipper called the Nipah virus. It comes to humans from bat urine and feces in food that people eat. The death rate of infection is generally ~40-75%, but it might sometimes be worse. Can't wait for the little nipper to visit the proudly, patriotically unvaccinated Idaho Republican state legislature. My condolences in advance to all the innocents that get killed. The innocents will just be unavoidable collateral damage in the radical right Republican onslaught against any and all science, facts, true truth and sound reasoning they perceive as inconvenient to their authoritarian anti-democracy agenda.

Recently, in 2018, a NiV outbreak was recorded in the Kozhikode district of Kerala, a South Indian state where the index patient was reported to have contracted NiV from fruit-eating bats. However, no clinical or statistical evidence was available to prove the incidence, though the spread was mostly through nosocomial infection. All the outbreaks have recorded high rates of fatality including the 91% mortality rate during the recent Kerala outbreak [10].
The feisty little Nipah

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Multiple sources are reporting that Democrats in congress are in a snit over Republicans giving 1/6 coup attempt security videos to Faux News' Liar-in-Chief, Tucker Carlson:
Kevin McCarthy offers his first sacrifice to the MAGA cult

His gift to Tucker Carlson is one of many capitulations to the far-right extremists in the party for Kevin McCarthy

Last week, America received proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Fox News is a dishonest institution that spread Donald Trump's Big Lie knowing full well that he did not win the election.  
.... House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he saw fit to give unfettered access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection to none other than Tucker Carlson.  
These tapes have been closely guarded by the Capitol Police ever since the event and have been turned over to the January 6 Committee and Justice Department prosecutors, as well as defense lawyers, but no one in the media has been given access — until now: ....
Tucker probably planes to use the footage out of context to foment rage and hate. If someone(s) gets killed, he can always happily blame it on Joe and Hunter Biden and that pesky laptop. Most of the base will probably love it. Lest we forget, NPR reported this in Sept. 2020:
Now comes the claim that you can't expect to literally believe the words that come out of Carlson's mouth. And that assertion is not coming from Carlson's critics. It's being made by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York and by Fox News's own lawyers in defending Carlson against accusations of slander. It worked, by the way.

Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' "

She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."

Vyskocil, an appointee of President Trump's, added, "Whether the Court frames Mr. Carlson's statements as 'exaggeration,' 'non-literal commentary,' or simply bloviating for his audience, the conclusion remains the same — the statements are not actionable." (emphasis added)
There we have it. Lots of exaggeration, non-literal commentary and bloviation. That is evidence under oath in a court of law, not just public opinion. Carlson argued, and the judge agreed. Tucker is a professional bloviator that no one should believe. Of course, millions of Americans believe him and his divisive, rage-fomenting deceit. Some act on their false beliefs and hurt others. For Faux and its deceived and betrayed audience, collateral human and democracy damage is just for-profit business as usual. MAGA!!

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