Favorites December 3rd 2021

Jeff Yang @originalspin

The bad news: Omicron seems to evade vaccines more readily than Delta—including boosted vaccines The good news: Vaccines will still likely keep you from dying or going to the hospital so please get vaxxed and boosted, and tell your friends and family to do the same

Weijia Jiang @weijia

All three of the people who have Omicron in the U.S. were fully vaccinated, and one (the man from Minnesota) had a booster shot. The other two did not. Doctors say the good news is that their symptoms are mild, which shows the vaccine works to prevent severe cases.

So while omicron continues to be a bummer, it's nice to know that being vaccinated still makes a significant difference, even if it is somewhat able to escape our immune response.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

I do think the "unelected judges making decisions" line will be useful for Dems, just as it was useful for the GOP after Roe. But I think the language of "we don't live in a democracy" delegitimizes the government and is bad.

The Daily Beast @thedailybeast

Stephen Colbert goes off on SCOTUS over 'Roe' challenge: "We don't live in a democracy" https://t.co/UnJbHJFxve

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

By delegitimizing the government -- by claiming that we have no democracy to defend -- liberals merely play into the hands of the rightists who want to *actually* overthrow the government and actually abolish democracy. It's just not a good move. (end)

It's sorta depressing to be already preparing the response for SCOTUS overturning Roe, but it definitely is worth thinking in detail about how to respond. Horrible outcome of a strategy that was created relatively recently.

Timothy B. Lee @binarybits

Funny and basically accurate thread.

Andrew Fleischman @ASFleischman

James Madison: Now I'm going to put this 9th Amendment here to remind you that people have some rights that we haven't specifically listed here. Obviously we couldn't cover everything. SCOTUS: Got it just the list

If we want to have a better outcome on Abortion, we need federal legislation. As the linked thread concludes SCOTUS was really "[only] a bastion of liberty from like 1961-1973"

Ezra Klein @ezraklein

The Biden administration should purchase and send out at-home tests rather than directing insurers to reimburse private purchases of them. But also: There’s no reason a state with a more swift-moving legislature, like California, couldn’t lead the way on this instead.

I can't believe that we're a year and a half into this and we still aren't doing this.

March 2018, Rocky Mountains (I think)