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I admit that I am impressed they even have a vaccine against shingles. I'd like one. I once almost got hit by a falling roofing tile during a storm and it scared the hell out of me.

My mom had shingles years before i was born. A rash on her stomach spreading left & right. My dad told her when the rash met in back she would be cut in half. He continued to be just as helpful throughout his life.

King Charles I had a similar problem. You may not like Cromwell's solution.

Parents can. I may have caused a few myself.

A good comparison would be the “Robber Barons” on the Rhine River in centuries past, who would place barricades across the river to block any traffic until each vessel paid tolls. And there were dozens of such petty nobles doing this, each with their separate barricade. It eventually got so bad that the Rhine stopped being a viable route for shipping. That is what happens when there are too many unregulated fingers in a single pie. In short, we don’t want lots of small road-owners each placing their own fees such that we have to pay a hundred charges in order to cross the country. Instead, we would want nation-spanning “Road Corporations”, akin to rail or air travel, where you could cross the continent on a single company’s system, while having the choice between a few competing systems for reaching most major destinations. Of course, that brings on the same sort of regulatory issues that apply to railroads.

So far, the vaccine testing seems to be up to snuff, although for COVID, the CDC did sign off on short tracking some level of testing to get it out, for a damn good reason. I can foresee an era when government mandated testing is 'too intrusive'; of course the ones who will scream that are the ones who don't want to vax. We had a chicken pox 'vaccine' back in the day. When one kid got sick, the rest were exposed to them. They did measles and mumps the same way. It mostly worked; although the outcome for some is more severe. I get all three that way, none were too severe. But having chicken pox opens the door for shingles in later life. If you had chicken pox, get a shingles vaccine (or sequence). That's funny because congress never votes to reduce their own benefits. You'd think the sheeple would at least follow their leaders. The biggest beneficiaries of federal handouts are red states. Oddly self destructive. I had a libertarian leaning quasi-relative state that we should privatize roads and charge tolls because public roads are socialism. <eye roll> He's not exactly wrong, is he? But we ALL benefit from public roads, it's difficult to frame an argument that posits any real benefits from not having public roads. Imagine how long your trips would take if you stopped regularly for tolls. (Maybe you don't have to imagine; several turnpikes used to have regular stops within many of our lifetimes.) Imagine how much more goods would cost. How much more your food would cost. Maybe the message is that not all social progress is bad. Imagine that!

Serve up the vaccines and I shall partake, as long as they pass reasonable testing first. (Emergencies notwithstanding.) I wish they'd had a chicken pox vaccine back when I was a kid - that crap makes you miserable.

Rat nails it. This is true even when actual bribery is frowned on and illegal. In the US, lobbyists contribute to the reelection campaigns of the legislators. "Corporations are people" is a C or D law school student's statement (I may be being overly generous.) (To be fair, his family may have paid for better grades; his level of comprehension is still down there.) Corporations are a legal fictitious person; they can be treated as a person for many purposes, as granted by lawmakers. (So, yes, in a self fulfilling sense, he had a point, because he changed the rules to allow them to be a person for contribution purposes.) But none of that is automatic, and granting rights with no regard to accountability is irresponsible legislation. The extreme capitalism of the Reagan Era onward is a modern form of feudalism. Power is removed from the people, wealth makes the rules. The next step is an authoritarian banana republic, which Mr. Mango Mayhem gave us a taste of. So, what I find puzzling is, at least the powers that be and the wealthy are acting in their own self interests. Why the hell does he have a base? The peasants are not going to benefit. I've talked to one Trump supporter, and he was grateful for support of farm prices. That's pretty short sighted. When he tanks the economy, you're not going to be doing well with your cabbages and eggs. I can see why the coal miners are enamored, except, it's deadly work, they are vastly exploited by their industry, underpaid, die young, no hope, and their product is killing the planet (not alone, just a significant contributor). If we kill the planet there's no plan B. This seems to be the season for it. Did our electing The Dump give permission to the rest of the world to be stupid along with us? Special mention needs to be given to the religious right, who are having a heyday, and demonstrating how stupid and thoughtless they can be. Do we start with book burnings, denial of racism, womens' rights, gender equality, . . . Doctors in several states, not abortionists per se, face bullshit lawsuits for treating numerous conditions. NPR had an interview, an OB Gyn dealt with several failed pregnancies, all different, all of which carried this threat from any ignorant or gold digging relative. "A uterus filled with blood, the fetus is already dead, but if I get involved, the burden of proof is on me." (She records much evidence now.) A pair of twins, one of which has a condition that will kill the sibling, kill the mother, and will either kill the carrier (93%), or on the chance is survives to be born, will die within ten days. But removing the one that will die anyway to save the sibling and the mother is 'abortion'. No F###ing common sense, no regard for the life of the mother, and no regard for a woman to have control of her own body and health. My conclusion is that abortion is a good thing; we need to have abortions well into the low hundreds of trimesters, and we should start with these legislators.

https://twitter.com/ennolenze/status/1629080178969268224

Sadly, a huge chunk of people have made it a part of their ideological identity to be against anything that their opponents are for—if anything is “woke” or “socialist”, then they will oppose it, no matter how much it might otherwise benefit them personally to support it. This is where we get people who are on Social Security and Medicare who vote to reduce their own benefits.